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Frustrated voters in a left-leaning city are seeking a new leader in a time of “crisis,” with the leading candidates a former Republican billionaire and a prominent Democratic congresswoman.
People ride electric scooters near a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles last year. (Philip Cheung for The Washington Post)
LOS ANGELES – This is a troubled city, unsettled, with much of its grievance directed toward the Democrats who run it.
There’s plenty to be mad about. Close to 50,000 people do not have permanent housing, according to homeless advocates and elected leaders, with a likely majority living outside on a regular basis. The Los Angeles Police Department is confronting both a rise in gun violence and a deepening contempt among liberal activists over recent responses to civil rights demonstrations. City Hall is a venue for pay-to-play investigations.
Then there is the up-all-night worry that, even with a place to live and a good job, Angelenos find it increasingly hard to secure a financial handhold here. Rents rise quickly, the housing market is exorbitant, and in a city of endless highways and long commutes, gas now costs more than $6 a gallon.
People have been voting with their feet in an unhappy exodus from the nation’s second-largest city. U.S. census numbers released earlier this year showed that Los Angeles County saw more people leave in the pandemic’s first year than any county in the nation.
Now those who remain have a chance to vote Tuesday in the first open mayor’s race in nearly a decade. The campaign is providing a vivid X-ray of a famously sunny city, founded on a pioneer optimism, made wary by recent history and wallowing in uncertainty. The results could suggest the potential trajectory for establishment Democrats elsewhere in the nation this midterm season.
In this overwhelmingly Democratic city, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso has emerged as a front-runner, harnessing deep public anger over homelessness and crime. Caruso registered as Democrat just this year, and for much of his public life, has given to Republican causes. He has spent more than $25 million of his fortune in a bet on himself, as he has through much of his business life.
Paying the price is Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), who has served six terms in Congress and was a shortlist finalist to be President Biden’s running mate. She emerged from years of community organizing in activism, particularly in South Los Angeles, but the abiding public animus to those in power now has her fighting hard to keep up with Caruso and his message that the city leadership must change.
There may not be a clear winner on Tuesday. If neither candidate secures more than half the vote — and there are others in the race, making that very unlikely — then the top two candidates will compete in November. The winner will replace Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is prevented from seeking reelection because of term limits, but who will leave behind an unhappy city and a confused Democratic Party.
“We’re the most pessimistic we’ve been in the last decade,” said Fernando Guerra, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
Guerra said that as recently as 2015, two-thirds of Angelenos believed the city was heading in the right direction, according to a social-study survey the school conducts, making it one of the most optimistic in the nation. Today the figure is 42 percent.
“We’ve come back to being like every other city in our outlook,” Guerra said. “Angelenos are anxious, concerned in ways they have not been before. And it’s overwhelming.”
Recent polling and focus groups financed by leading business groups show homelessness as the chief concern and deepest source of frustration.
“I don’t see this as ideological, I don’t see it as one party over another,” said Miguel A. Santana, a former city administrator who now heads the Weingart Foundation, an influential grant-making organization involved in homeless advocacy and anti-poverty efforts. “I see this as a failure of leadership and management.”
Santana calls homelessness “part of the L.A. brand now, like the weather and food and traffic.” On a recent 20-minute walk to the Metro station from his home near downtown, Santana said he saw six homeless sites — encampments, lines of parked RVs, a couple of tents outside his house.
“And this is a street where one home is currently for sale for $1.9 million,” Santana said. "What we need as Angelenos is leadership that focuses on outcomes and is honest about the scope of the problem.”
In broad ways, the race has become a referendum on the Democrats’ ability to govern here and in similar big cities across this giant blue state of essentially one-party rule. Nearly 60 percent of the city’s eligible voters are party members.
Caruso, 63, first turned from the Republican Party a decade ago when he first considered a run for mayor. This year he officially changed his “no party preference” affiliation into Democratic registration. Even in announcing that he was joining the party, Caruso sought some distance, insisting that he would “not be a typical Democrat, that’s for sure.”
The Caruso phenomenon, as puzzling as it is to some Democrats, has caught on very quickly, even if his sales pitch is typical of campaigns led by wealthy, politically connected candidates.
“This city is at a major inflection point about how it's going to be led,” Caruso said during a recent interview. “Career politicians have failed us, and we've got these problems that have been getting worse under their watch.”
Although he has never held elected office, Caruso has long been a Los Angeles insider, serving on influential city commissions and working within the power structure to build his commercial real estate properties.
At 26 years old, the wealthy son of the owner of car dealerships and founder of Dollar Car Rental, Caruso was appointed by Tom Bradley, the city’s only Black mayor and a Democrat, to the Department of Water and Power board of commissioners. He later served as president of the city Police Commission, a less than popular credential today among the city’s young Democratic voters, but one that may resonate as other voters worry about crime. Crime rates, already falling, continued to drop during his time on the commission in the early 2000s.
The commercial real estate developments that made him rich are often characterized by a bit of fantasy, a certain urban-dream quality mostly unavailable on the streets just outside his mall properties. His signature development is the Grove, a glamorous enclave in Los Angeles walled off from the surrounding neighborhood where shoppers can dine and drink and buy luxe goods.
His spending — in some cases eight times his rivals’ outlay — has made his “Caruso Can” message as inescapable as the city’s summer fog and tent camps.
“Everything I did in the community was very quiet,” Caruso said. “I'm running against people that have spent the last 20 years in political office, that have had name recognition. And, frankly, they've done it on taxpayer dollars.”
The ads pop up on TV, and on YouTube, and in online windows of local media sites. Many offer a dark picture of the city, emphasizing homelessness and crime, which his opponents say he has exaggerated for political purposes. (The LAPD has reported more homicides this year than last year at this time, but the numbers were nearly three times higher in the early 1990s.)
“He is promising, essentially, that the world can be just like the Grove,” said Manuel Pastor, a distinguished professor of sociology and American studies at the University of Southern California. “And that we can sanitize our streets from homelessness.”
Pastor said the pandemic, which has exacerbated the rate of gun crimes and homicides in the city, “is a disease which revealed our larger sicknesses” around inequality.
“Caruso has clearly tapped into something, and this is an unsettled city now facing very stark choices,” Pastor said. “What has happened is that the center of political life here has shifted so far to the left in ways that have now become dramatic and unpredictable.”
Caruso’s positions on homelessness are not that different from those of his rivals — to build more affordable housing but with an edge of accountability from those on the street — but his views on solving crime are. He has called for adding 1,500 LAPD officers, far more than anyone else in the race.
The two issues have become intertwined, crossing ideological lines, as even liberals grow frustrated with the city’s problems. In some ways Caruso is counting on the same cross-party support won by Donald Trump, although he denies any similarity between them.
Theo Henderson, Black and homeless himself and an activist-in-residence at UCLA’s Luskin School, calls the Caruso candidacy a form of “white saviorism” that the city and country has seen and endorsed through the decades.
“This is the same siren song that Trump played,” said Henderson, creator of the podcast “We the Unhoused.” “And look where we are in the system, and in this society, where a lot of this unrest has been let loose, and the discontent is causing much harm.”
Christian Arana, the vice president of policy at the Latino Community Foundation, a philanthropic institution that promotes Latino civic action at the grass-roots level, needed to point only as far as his parents to explain how Caruso has gained ground.
His father delivers carpets. His mother works in a call center. Both Democrats, neither has ever voted for a Republican. Both are also worried about themselves and the city. They are undecided but leaning toward Caruso.
“It’s because he is not a politician,” Arana said.
Guerra, the Loyola Marymount professor, said he no longer argues with his liberal friends now considering Caruso, saying the failure of what he calls the city’s “one-party” Democratic government makes any shift “a completely legitimate choice.”
“The Democrats are fat and happy,” he said. “And what happens to animals who are fat and happy? They get roasted.”
That is an argument it is tough for Bass to counter.
Raised in West Los Angeles, Bass is a six-term congresswoman who represents a central slice of the city. Now 68, she was chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus and, earlier, the first Black woman to serve in the powerful post of state Assembly speaker.
Bass, who worked to rebuild Los Angeles in the aftermath of racial violence here three decades ago and founded Community Coalition, an organization committed to creating economic opportunities in South Los Angeles, emphasizes consensus in the way she would govern. She is openly derisive about Caruso.
“If you have $25 million you can do a lot,” Bass said in a recent interview. “That and playing into the frustration with the city and people’s fears.”
Bass has made the homeless her campaign centerpiece, outlining new spending to build more housing and pledging to house 15,000 homeless residents in her first year in office. But she also acknowledges — and sympathizes with — the public fury in recent years.
Twice since 2016, Angelenos have voted for bond measures and local tax hikes to raise billions of dollars specifically for housing and homeless programs, only to find more people on the streets. That has backfired on Democrats.
“It’s an exasperation with leadership,” Bass said. “People tax themselves and have seen nothing in return.”
Yet Bass has failed to galvanize the liberal vote here, in part because she has called for more funding for the LAPD, if far less than Caruso has. Her plan includes shifting 250 people from desk jobs to the streets, among other measures.
“I would describe this city right now as one in crisis,” Bass said. “I mean we have 50,000 people without homes, many living outside, living outside, living outside. I’m sorry but just saying that is shocking.”
Bass also strongly defends her party and believes that, despite the criticism, voters will see through Caruso’s sudden partisan turn.
“There is more to being a Democrat than just filling out forms,” Bass said. “Being one also means you subscribe to a set of values.”
Jessica Lall, president of the Central City Association, a downtown-advocacy group, ran briefly for mayor before determining that she could not raise enough money to stay viable. Lall said the race, in some ways, has turned into one about “the ‘Rick Way’ and the ‘Karen Way’.”
“This election has become a much more symbolic race than I had first thought,” said Lall, whose group, which comprises 300 businesses, nonprofits and other civic organizations, endorsed Caruso this week. “And I think right now, looking at the undecided numbers, people are not necessarily seeing themselves in either of the candidates.”
In a different moment a third option might have been City Councilman Kevin de León (D), given that Latinos make up nearly half of Los Angeles’ population. De León is perhaps the most liberal candidate in the race, a former state Senate leader who pushed through California’s “sanctuary state” legislation to protect undocumented immigrants from federal agencies, and has driven environmental policy at the state and local levels. He is also, according to public polling, losing to Bass and Caruso.
He has worked to thin encampments on the city’s east side, get people into at least temporary housing, and usher the sick into care. His reward: opponents within his own party criticize what they call his “coercive approach,” limiting his mayoral ambitions.
“Once you are in a position of power you have a responsibility to govern,” de León said. “People’s lives are at stake. I mean this city is not ‘Lord of the Flies.’” | 2022-06-03T09:11:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Los Angeles mayor's race between Rick Caruso and Karen Bass proves a test for Democrats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/los-angeles-mayor-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/los-angeles-mayor-democrats/ |
Federal judges resist ‘mandatory’ training on workplace disputes
Internal email shows two senior judges did not plan to attend session about resolving employee claims of misconduct.
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit gather for a portrait presentation in the ceremonial courtroom in May 2022. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
At least two federal judges in D.C. have resisted attending workplace-conduct training scheduled in response to courthouse concerns about how the judiciary handles allegations of misconduct, according to an internal court email.
Leaders of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. District Court announced the training sessions this spring after employees detailed accusations of bullying, gender discrimination and racial insensitivity in a confidential workplace survey.
Sentelle was responding to a reminder from the court’s workplace relations coordinator asking employees to register for a 45-minute online session, which includes a review of the court’s employee dispute resolution process known as EDR. The subject of the email was “Mandatory 2022 EDR Plan Training for Everyone,” and the message described the session as “mandatory,” written in bold, underlined text.
Sentelle, who joined the D.C. Circuit in 1987, declined to comment on his initial refusal to participate. Randolph, appointed in 1990, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
In the days since he sent the email, Sentelle has decided to attend the training, according to a court official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal court operations. Sentelle did not mean to reply-all, the person said. He also did not object to the substance of the training, the official said, but to the characterization that it was mandatory for judges. Since 2019, courts across the country have been required to conduct annual training, but the judiciary leaders who adopted that policy did not require judges to attend.
It was not immediately known whether Randolph would also attend one of the remaining sessions this month.
Chief Judges Sri Srinivasan of the D.C. Circuit and Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court announced the training in late April as one of two concrete steps in response to employee feedback in the workplace survey. The judges said the sessions would cover “resources to address workplace conduct.”
“We are committed to ensuring that this courthouse is a workplace where we all treat one another, and the members of the public we serve, with dignity and respect,” the judges wrote in an April 21 email.
The survey, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, details allegations of misconduct by some judges and a reluctance by courthouse staff to file formal complaints against their supervisors. Most survey respondents described the courthouse as a positive work environment and said they had not personally experienced or witnessed wrongful conduct. But some employees also cited fears of retaliation and said they did not believe that the judiciary’s system for workplace accountability would resolve their concerns.
Courts drop survey question about workplace misconduct, but not before judges’ staffers said they had witnessed problems
Leaders of federal courthouses throughout the country have worked to overhaul the system for handling workplace misconduct in the years since Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California stepped down after allegations of sexual harassment from women he supervised. U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who oversees the federal judiciary, has resisted intervention by Congress on the matter, and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has opposed proposed legislation that would extend anti-discrimination rights to the court system’s more than 30,000 employees.
After The Post published a report about the survey’s findings last month, the House Judiciary Committee requested a copy of the D.C. Circuit workplace survey. Srinivasan, the chief judge, asked Sentelle, a former chief judge and former prosecutor, to lead an investigation into the leak of the document.
Judges representing the courts’ administrative office told lawmakers at a March oversight hearing about steps the judiciary has taken to improve workplace protections and to increase reporting options. A March report from the judiciary’s workplace conduct committee notes a “dramatic increase in training related to workplace conduct” and says that judges and other court leaders are “actively engaged in training and leading by example through their personal commitment to maintaining an exemplary workplace.”
The report recommends tracking and ensuring training is completed by all employees, including judges. Training efforts could be “strengthened,” the report says, “if courts and employing offices ensured that all their employees not only have access to but also complete EDR training on an annual basis.”
Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge in Massachusetts who teaches at Harvard Law School, said the apparent resistance to training from the federal appeals court judges in D.C. “sends a troubling message.”
“Saying I’m not going to the training is saying, ‘It’s not important,’” Gertner said. “It’s the functional equivalent of the CEO of the company saying, ‘I’m not going to bother to go to the training.’”
Federal judges, who are nominated to life-tenured positions, place a premium on their independence and may bristle at the idea of being told something is required.
“There’s a judicial independence theme judges resort to,” Gertner said. “But telling judges that they have to behave cordially and responsibly is not the same thing as telling them how they should decide. That’s a different issue.” | 2022-06-03T09:11:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. federal judges Sentelle, Randolph balked at worplace training, email shows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/judges-training-conduct-harassment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/judges-training-conduct-harassment/ |
With name-brand support, Catholic baseball reaches World Series
Catholic Coach Ross Natoli, far right, and his team celebrate after clinching a berth in the Division III College World Series. (Catholic University)
Wally Pipp and Brian Cashman are the most famous Catholic University baseball alumni, but no one has had a greater influence on the program than longtime coach and native Washingtonian Ross Natoli. Natoli has more than 700 wins during his 37 years at the Northeast Washington school, and this season he has led the Cardinals to their first appearance in the Division III College World Series.
“Our goal every year is to take our program further than we’ve ever been, and credit to the guys on this team for pulling it off,” Natoli said ahead of the eight-team tournament, which begins Friday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “When you can be playing baseball in June, it’s pretty special.”
Natoli, who went to Churchill High and was an outfielder at George Washington, took over at Catholic in the fall of 1985 after serving as an assistant at GW and Gonzaga College High. His first season coincided with Cashman’s freshman year.
Cashman, now the New York Yankees’ general manager, was a speedy second baseman and leadoff hitter who started every game over the next four years. He has remained close with Natoli and kept tabs on the program while building four World Series champions in New York since taking over in 1998. Cashman addressed the Cardinals during a visit to campus in early April, when he was inducted to the Catholic Athletics Hall of Fame.
“They already seemed to have a good, tight unit, and it seemed like they were capable of great things,” Cashman said in a phone interview. “I’m so proud of what Ross Natoli and [assistant coach] Bobby Picardo and this crew have been able to accomplish thus far. They’ve already opened a lot of people’s eyes and forced the baseball universe to pay attention.”
Building on the success of legendary coach Bob Talbot, who coached the team from 1964 to 1977 and later became the school’s athletic director, Natoli guided Catholic to NCAA tournament appearances in 2011, 2015 and 2018. He said he had an idea that this team could be special during its annual trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C., in March. With Catholic trailing by three and down to its final out in the first game of a doubleheader against the University of Rochester, sophomore Jesse Lacefield, who had entered as a defensive replacement in the top half of the inning, hit a walk-off grand slam.
Catholic (34-14) earned one of 19 at-large bids to the 60-team NCAA tournament, and the Cardinals’ run to Cedar Rapids has been stunning. In the deciding game of the Winchester (Va.) regional, Catholic fell behind 6-0 in the first inning before scoring 13 consecutive runs in a 13-10 win over Shenandoah.
Last weekend, the Cardinals dropped the first game of a best-of-three super regional at Ithaca (N.Y.) College before winning twice Sunday to clinch their World Series spot. Junior Ben Nardi had a grand slam and five RBI in Catholic’s 16-2 rout in the winner-take-all game.
“I think we really truly believe in each other, from underclassmen to upperclassmen,” said Peter Giombetti, a senior designated hitter and the Division III Region 5 player of the year who is hitting .373 with 15 home runs, a school record. “There’s just a faith and belief in each other and that our coaches will put us in the right position to succeed.”
If the slipper fits.🕺 https://t.co/JNX8Vc4JVh pic.twitter.com/cRNPP0JJjD
— Peter Giombetti (@Giombetti4) May 29, 2022
The groundwork for the most successful season in Catholic history, including a fitness test dubbed the “Cedar Rapids Challenge,” was laid in the fall and winter, as it always is under Natoli. Cashman said one of his former coach’s mantras, preached year-round, set him up for success after graduation.
“When you’re out there and you’re going through your reps — whether it’s sprints, whether it’s doing cardiovascular work between the fall and spring season or you’re taking batting practice, fielding groundballs — you’ve got to do it a certain way,” Cashman said. “He always told us: ‘Don’t cut corners, don’t cheat yourself, because if you cheat yourself here, you’re going to cheat yourself in the most important spot. It’s going to manifest itself later in a game.’ … If you can build up that type of consistent approach, it will serve you well in life.”
Natoli said he has heard from more than 50 of his former players since Sunday’s win, which culminated with the coach on his back in the infield, reveling in a celebratory Gatorade cooler shower. One of those players has provided added motivation for Natoli and the Cardinals this season. Matt Kurkjian, the older brother of ESPN baseball reporter and Bethesda native Tim Kurkjian, was a third baseman on Talbot’s 1977 Catholic team that advanced to the Division I tournament and came within three wins of a trip to the College World Series in Omaha. Last summer, Matt Kurkjian, who played against Natoli in college and with him on summer league teams, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
HALL OF FAME WEEKEND!
Last night, we were honored to celebrate Matt Kurkjian and members of the 1977 team, including head coach Bob Talbot as well as @Yankees GM Brian Cashman who will be inducted into the @CatholicUniv Hall of Fame later today.#ThisIsCatholicU #d3baseball pic.twitter.com/tvDTba3hbt
— Catholic U. Baseball (@CatholicU_BSB) April 2, 2022
On the same weekend that Catholic honored Cashman, Natoli arranged for Kurkjian to throw a ceremonial first pitch, with several of his 1977 teammates at his side. The Cardinals have worn shirts modeled after that team’s jerseys, with “M. Kurkjian” and his No. 2 on the back, during warmups throughout this season. Kurkjian couldn’t make the trip to Cedar Rapids, but he won’t be far from Natoli’s mind.
“We’ve kind of dedicated this year to Matt,” Natoli said. “It’s a special motivation for me because he was the best teammate I ever played with. I just feel really fortunate that we’re able to stand on the shoulders of the teams from the ’70s that had a special run to the NCAA regional under Coach Bob Talbot. We have a lot of support behind us, and there’s no bigger supporter of our program than Matt Kurkjian.”
Catholic, the No. 8 seed, opens the World Series at 11 a.m. Friday against Ohio’s Marietta College (43-5), the top seed. The tournament begins with double-elimination bracket play and culminates in a best-of-three championship series. All games can be viewed at NCAA.com.
“We’re here for a reason,” said Natoli, who credited the “best coaching staff in the country,” including three of his former players, for much of his success. “We want to savor every moment that we can here and at the same time prepare to the fullest because in this game of baseball, it’s not necessarily the best team or the highest-ranked team that wins the game. It’s whoever plays their best ball when it means the most.” | 2022-06-03T09:12:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Catholic baseball rides name-brand support to College World Series - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/catholic-baseball-college-world-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/catholic-baseball-college-world-series/ |
Rob Vaughn led the Maryland baseball team to the best season in school history. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Rob Vaughn is 34. He already has been the baseball coach at the University of Maryland for five years. This spring, the Terrapins won 45 games, more than they had in the 130-year history of the program. They were crowned Big Ten regular season champions, the school’s first such title in more than half a century. This weekend, they host an NCAA tournament regional for the first time.
So the easy read is, “This guy’s outta here.”
And then you talk to him.
“I believe in building stuff,” Vaughn said Thursday. “That’s what I’ve been about my entire career.”
This weekend’s event — in which the Terrapins face Long Island on Friday evening but also will have to beat out Connecticut and Wake Forest to advance to next weekend’s super regionals — is in some ways the culmination of what Vaughn and his staff have built. The Terps have now reached the NCAA tournament eight times — five since Vaughn arrived from Kansas State for his first full-time assistant coaching job in 2012.
Maryland baseball is having the best season in school history and wants more
But how Vaughn ended up in this spot at this time is exactly what Maryland’s administration must prevent from happening again, just as the program is starting to take hold like it never has before. Vaughn came to College Park from his alma mater to work under John Szefc, the former Kansas State assistant who landed the head job with the Terps. The job was open because Erik Bakich, the Terps’ coach for three seasons, left for Michigan.
“The cupboard was full,” Vaughn said, and he and Szefc turned Bakich’s talent into back-to-back dream seasons in 2014 and ’15, when the Terps advanced to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.
And then Szefc left for … Virginia Tech?
Yes, Szefc has the Hokies in the NCAAs this year as the fourth seed with a 41-12 record, coming out of the rugged ACC — well above the 15th-seeded Terrapins, who lost back-to-back games for the first time all year in the Big Ten tournament. But it says here that Maryland shouldn’t be a springboard to land at Virginia Tech — no matter the coach, no matter the sport.
Back to Vaughn. Because of his combination of youth and experience, because of his obvious strengths as a communicator and the results he has gotten on the field, it’s not hard to imagine some prominent school in a conference where baseball matters more than it does in the Big Ten would take a run at him — and soon.
And then he talks about Maryland. Not the limitations, with Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium wedged modestly onto campus, its backless red seats faded to a dull pink under so much sunlight. Rather, he sees the possibilities — tickets for the weekend sold out five hours after they went on sale, an administration that decided not to punt on hosting but to embrace it.
“The more we do this in the next couple of years, the more it signals that, ‘Holy cow, this is not a steppingstone,’” Vaughn said. “As we dig our heels in and continue to work, there’s no reason this shouldn’t be the next Oregon State, the next Vanderbilt, the next Virginia. A few years back, those places weren’t what they are. But a coach stayed.”
He chose those schools for a reason, and they demonstrate the lofty thoughts that not only float through Vaughn’s mind but push him in his work. In 1995, Oregon State had been to three NCAA tournaments in its history and hired Pat Casey. When Casey retired after the 2018 season — which the Beavers concluded by winning their third national title — he had made 13 trips to the postseason and reached the College World Series six times. In 2003, Vanderbilt had been to three NCAA tournaments and hired Tim Corbin. Sixteen postseason appearances later, Corbin is still at it, trying to reach Omaha for the sixth time, where he would go for his third national title. In 2004, Virginia had reached only three NCAA tournaments as well and hired Brian O’Connor. This is the Cavaliers’ 16th appearance in the tourney under O’Connor, who won the championship in 2015.
A coach stayed. That could happen at … Maryland?
“It’s a joint effort,” Vaughn said. “It’s the administration deciding, ‘Hey, we can do this thing.’ Which they’re doing, man.”
The easy thing, Vaughn said, would have been for Maryland’s administrators to allow, say, Wake Forest to host this regional because the Demon Deacons have a combination of experience and facilities that Maryland doesn’t. Instead, Vaughn’s bosses maxed out, bringing in extra bleachers in left, hanging banners, turning Smith Stadium into the best version of itself.
“Everything that they put together, they did a great job of doing that really quickly,” said junior lefty Ryan Ramsey, who will get the ball against Long Island. “It’s going to be really exciting to see that kind of atmosphere this weekend.”
Those extra bells and whistles — yeah, they’re for show. But what it shows Vaughn is a commitment. It’s a step to creating something sustainable. The next is continuity.
“Getting a coach who wants to build, who doesn’t chase the bright, shiny things,” Vaughn said. “That’s how we recruit here. We get kids who care about the right stuff. But it starts with me at the top. If I care about stuff that doesn’t matter or care about the wrong stuff, it sends a signal.”
The signal Vaughn wants to send: All of these milestones — a 24-2 record at home, the third-most home runs in the country, the Big Ten player of the year in senior outfielder Chris Alleyne — aren’t the end result of years of work. They’re the basis for a foundation that should hold up well into the future.
“Kind of the whole vibe from the team is we have a lot left to accomplish this year,” sophomore shortstop Matt Shaw said.
With the first regional in College Park afoot and the clear goal and expectation of winning it, that’s a reasonable assessment for a kid in the lineup. For the coach who fills out the lineup card, the vision has to be broader. Vaughn’s is.
“Being another brick in the wall is never a problem,” he said. “You can go to a program and jump somewhere bigger and be there a little bit and think something else is more pristine. But the reality is when you can look past all that, you see what you’re capable of doing where you are.”
What the Terrapins are capable of is a lot more than when Rob Vaughn arrived from the prairie a decade ago. The trick will be continuing to help him put more bricks in that wall so that 2022 isn’t an outlier that exists in a scrapbook but one of the seasons that established the Terps as a postseason participant year after year after year. | 2022-06-03T09:41:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rob Vaughn's Maryland baseball program is on the rise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/maryland-baseball-rob-vaughn/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/maryland-baseball-rob-vaughn/ |
Frank Gore ends remarkable 16-year career by retiring as a 49er
Frank Gore spent his first 10 seasons with the 49ers after an injury-filled college career. (Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images)
Most running backs, including some very good ones, don’t last in the NFL as long as six seasons. For Frank Gore, that’s how long he continued playing after a whopping 10 years with the San Francisco 49ers.
Proclaiming his allegiance Thursday to that organization, Gore finally wrapped up a highly unusual — and impressive — career. Beginning in 2005 and ending, it turned out, with his final game in 2020, he racked up the third-most rushing yards (16,000) and attempts (3,735) in league history.
Only a pair of legends, Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton, accumulated more in both categories. Just those two, plus all-time leader Jerry Rice, gained more yards from scrimmage than Gore’s 19,985. The 241 NFL games played by Gore are also the most for a running back.
After signing a one-day contract with the 49ers on Thursday so he could retire as a member of the team, Gore declared that he could “confidently say that I put all I had into the game of football.”
“Football was and is everything to me,” Gore, 39, said in a statement released by San Francisco. “From meetings and film study to practice and just being in the locker room, all of it meant the world to me. I am happy to officially close this chapter of my life and proud of what I was able to accomplish and the legacy I leave behind.”
The 49ers, with whom Gore earned all five of his Pro Bowl selections, announced that he will be inducted into their Hall of Fame.
Asserting that Gore will be taking “his rightful place among our all-time greats,” 49ers chief executive Jed York said in a statement, “Frank had to overcome many challenges upon entering the NFL and now leaves the game not only as one of the best backs in NFL history, but one of the best football players ever. ... His grit, toughness and commitment to greatness earned him the respect of his coaches, teammates and opponents.”
If Gore’s longevity is remarkable in retrospect, it would have seemed all the more so when San Francisco made him a third-round pick in 2005 out of Miami. Gore’s career with the Hurricanes was twice interrupted by torn knee ligaments, which required lengthy recoveries and kept him from putting up the college numbers he otherwise could have.
Gore then missed two games in his rookie season with a groin injury and underwent major surgeries on both shoulders the following offseason. However, he never played in fewer than 11 games in any of his 16 years, and in all but one season, he appeared in at least 14.
“One of the very first things I told the 49ers organization when they drafted me in 2005 was that they got the right guy,” Gore said in his statement. “I knew early on that I wouldn’t let my college career define me in regards to injuries, and that I would have to outwork a lot of people to get to where I wanted to be.”
Even as a 37-year-old on the New York Jets in 2020, Gore led the team in carries and rushing yards.
“Guys respect him so much,” then-Jets head coach Adam Gase said before that season. “They watch him practice and they’re blown away that at his age, the way he goes, it shows you that’s what a Hall of Fame running back looks like.”
Between his 2015 departure from San Francisco and a final season spent in New York, Gore had stints with the Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills. In his comments Thursday, though, Gore made clear where he left his heart.
“Being inducted into the 49ers Hall of Fame, one of the most historic franchises in all of sports, is something that is hard to put into words,” said Gore, who is the team’s leader in rushing yards (11,073), rushing attempts (2,442) and rushing touchdowns (64). “This organization will always be a part of me, one that I will forever associate myself with. I will talk about San Francisco as ‘we’ and ‘us’ for the rest of my life, and will support the 49ers and The Faithful in every way possible.”
Also retiring from the NFL on Thursday were longtime quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick and center Alex Mack, whose 13-year career ended with one season in San Francisco.
Since his last NFL game, Gore has twice appeared in the boxing ring. He lost to former NBA player Deron Williams in a 2021 exhibition, and in his professional debut last month, Gore scored a knockout win.
In another reflection of his longevity as a running back, Gore nearly played long enough to see his son possibly join him in the NFL. Frank Gore Jr. will be eligible for the draft after this season, in which he is set to be a junior running back for Southern Mississippi. | 2022-06-03T10:12:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Frank Gore ends 16-year NFL career by retiring with San Francisco 49ers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/frank-gore-retirement-san-francisco-49ers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/frank-gore-retirement-san-francisco-49ers/ |
Historical Quaker Farm in Loudoun County for sale
Stone Eden Farm is typical of the small farms owned by Quakers in the 18th century
The stone house was built in 1765. An addition was made in 1817. (Mario Mineros Photography)
Stone Eden Farm, a historical Quaker farm in Hamilton, Va., with roots that go back more than 250 years, is on the market for just under $1.4 million.
When Lord Fairfax owned what would become Loudoun County, he granted land there to William Hatcher, a Quaker who moved to the area from Pennsylvania. By 1765, Hatcher had built a house on the land as required by Fairfax as a condition of the deed, or patent. That stone patent house has been home to generations of farmers.
Like most Quakers who came to Loudoun County, Hatcher was drawn to its fertile pastureland. Stone Eden Farm was typical of the small farms owned by Quakers in the 18th century. Because of their religious beliefs, Quakers did not rely on enslaved labor, and their farms tended to be smaller than the plantations in eastern and southern Loudoun.
Stone Eden Farm | Stone Eden Farm is a historical Quaker farm in Hamilton, Va., with roots that go back more than 250 years. It is on the market for just under $1.4 million. (Mario Mineros Photography)
Hatcher was a founding member of the Goose Creek Meeting House, a place of Quaker worship. Goose Creek, a village southwest of Hamilton, was later renamed Lincoln, for the president, following the Civil War.
The National Register of Historic Places nomination form for the Goose Creek Historic District declares, “No other section of Northern Virginia contains more examples of stone architecture and few other settled rural areas of the Commonwealth possess such a high degree of unspoiled pastoral beauty.”
Stone Eden Farm remained in the Hatcher family until 1930, when the Brown family bought it. Bobby Brown was the last of his family to own the farm. While he was thinking about selling it, he approached Allen Cochran, a stone mason who grew up a mile away from the farm in Lincoln.
“He said, ‘You would be a perfect guy for that house up there,’ and I sort of laughed at him,” Allen said. “I didn’t think I’d be able to own it, but he worked with me.”
Allen and his wife, Nancy, moved to the farm in 1999, becoming only the third family since 1765 to own it.
“I’m a Quaker,” Allen said. “My family’s heritage goes back to Lincoln and its early settlers. This [farm] is very much a heritage, something that I feel like I’m a little part of. I’m a small link in a very long chain.”
Nancy also has deep roots in Loudoun. She grew up a half-mile from Allen and went to high school with many of Brown’s grandchildren.
“It was like coming home even before we lived here,” she said. “That link to the past and preserving the past, that story for people to carry into the future is very important to me in so many ways.”
For some people, the amount of work the house and barns needed would have been intimidating. But Allen’s business, Cochran Stone Masonry, restores and preserves old structures. He welcomed the challenge.
“Ninety percent of my work is undoing,” he said. “It was nice to grab something that was pretty much original.”
Nancy added: “Allen did all the work. I might have held a couple of boards.”
Like many houses of this period, the 1765 stone patent house had been expanded. An addition was made in 1817. As part of the restoration, the Cochrans kept much of the fabric of the house and its footprint. They redid the floors and plaster work and refinished the doors. The fireplace in the patent house had been covered by a wall with a sink in front of it. It was uncovered and restored.
When the Cochrans decided to enlarge the house, they found an 1870s log cabin in West Virginia and attached it to the back. Brown told them that his mother remembered a log structure that was part of house when they bought it.
The log cabin was in poor shape, but the flooring and paneling made it worth saving. From a red oak in his grandmother’s yard, Allen milled the wood to create the floor joists and a load-bearing beam in the cabin.
“All the floor system came out of one tree so it’s pretty cool,” Allen said.
The main floor of the log cabin became the kitchen. The cabinetry is reclaimed brown face pine — from a barn in Purcellville, Va. — that Allen treated with a simulated whitewash.
“The patina was very beautiful, but with the stone, wood floor and wood ceiling, I thought the room would be very dark,” he said.
The countertops are reclaimed white oak, and the sink is soapstone from Albemarle County, Va. A stone gable wall with a seven-foot cooking fireplace was built from stones on the property.
Allen took as much care restoring the barns as he did the house. The stone barn is believed to have been built in 1869 after the original barn was destroyed in the 1864 Burning Raid by Union troops during the Civil War. The barn has offices, a woodworking shop and guest quarters.
“It’s just my favorite place on earth,” Allen said. “It’s where I run my business. … It’s been a really fabulous place to work. It’s a great piece of Loudoun history.”
The other barn is used by the Cochrans for birthing sheep but could be an equestrian facility. Although the Browns raised cattle, the Cochrans have chosen to raise sheep. Their sheep drive each January has become a local attraction.
“This has been an amazing place to live,” Nancy said. But “I think it’s time for a new steward and time for us to go.”
In addition to the four-bedroom, three-bathroom, 3,300-square-foot stone house, the nine-acre property has a spring-fed creek and several outbuildings. The outbuildings include the stone barn — with the offices, woodworking shop and one-bedroom, one-bathroom guest quarters — and the barn with the lambing wing, which has a horse stall as well. There is also a chicken coop.
17889 Sands Rd., Hamilton, Va.
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 4/3
Approximate square-footage: 3,300
Lot size: 9 acres
Features: Stone Eden Farm is a historical Quaker farm with roots that go back more than 250 years. William Hatcher was granted the deed to the farm by Lord Fairfax and built a house there in 1765. The farm has been home to only three families since then. In addition to the stone house, the property has several outbuildings and a spring-fed creek.
Listing agent: Keren Jayne, Pearson Smith Realty | 2022-06-03T10:16:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Historical Quaker Farm in Loudoun County for sale - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/historic-quaker-farm-for-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/historic-quaker-farm-for-sale/ |
In reshaped D.C. attorney general’s race, candidates vie to stand out
From left, Democratic D.C. attorney general candidates Bruce V. Spiva, Ryan Jones and Brian Schwalb. (PhotograhyByAlexander.com, Ryan Jones, Brian Schwalb campaign)
When Eric Jones sees neighbors who still have signs in their yards supporting Kenyan R. McDuffie for the District’s next attorney general — even though the former candidate was disqualified from running weeks ago — he stops to talk.
“We’re having these same conversations: What do you do now?” Jones said. “Because folks really don’t know.”
Jones, who advocates for the interests of landlords and property owners as a vice president of the Apartment and Office Building Association, thought McDuffie would be the best choice to replace outgoing Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D).
But that was before McDuffie, a Ward 5 council member who had been the top fundraiser in the attorney general’s race, was deemed ineligible to run by the D.C. Board of Elections after another candidate filed a challenge against him.
Yet McDuffie’s presence has loomed over the contest despite his absence, and with just weeks to go until the June 21 Democratic primary, his supporters have struggled to discern which of the remaining candidates — Brian Schwalb, Ryan Jones or Bruce V. Spiva — should be their second choice.
Some voters say the three men’s platforms and policies are so similar that it’s hard to decide among them; others, such as Christopher Macchiaroli, say they are simply refusing to vote after McDuffie’s exit.
“I am not going to be forced to consider candidates who I ultimately did not support,” said Macchiaroli, a law firm partner and former D.C. prosecutor. “I backed one horse and I’m staying with that horse.”
Longtime Brookland activist Verna Clayborne said some of McDuffie’s supporters may be waiting for him to endorse; in mid-May, when he endorsed Faith Gibson Hubbard as his successor in Ward 5, McDuffie did not rule out backing a candidate in another race.
In an interview Wednesday, McDuffie said each of the remaining attorney general candidates asked for his endorsement in the past few weeks, although he hasn’t decided whether he’ll endorse in the race or whom to back. Jones says he’s sought out McDuffie’s endorsement for more than a year and tried to do so again recently; spokespeople for Schwalb and Spiva said they have also had recent conversations with McDuffie, seeking both his support and to tap into his knowledge of the community.
“A lot of people who wanted to vote for me, their emotions are ranging from being upset, to disappointed, to really unsure about how to move forward,” McDuffie said. “People should certainly vote in this election, and they should vote for the candidate who uses the law as a tool to open the doors of justice and opportunity for residents, particularly those with unmet needs.”
But some of McDuffie’s ardent backers, including Clayborne, are sure of one thing: They are unlikely to vote for Spiva, a former managing partner at the Perkins Coie law firm who successfully argued that McDuffie did not meet the minimum qualifications to run for the office.
That point was echoed by Anacostia attorney Donovan Anderson, who has found it challenging to pick between Schwalb and Spiva, the two candidates he now views as the front-runners. He said he might write in McDuffie’s name instead.
“I don’t believe I’m going to vote for the individual that had [McDuffie] disqualified,” Anderson said. But he also says Schwalb, partner-in-charge of the Venable law firm’s D.C. office, is overpromising in his six-point plan to address crime. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
Last month, at a debate hosted by the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance, the most contentious moment arose when Schwalb claimed he was not supportive of Spiva’s effort to remove McDuffie from the ballot. In April, after a panel of D.C. Court of Appeals judges upheld the election board’s decision that McDuffie was ineligible to run, Schwalb tweeted that the result was disappointing and asserted his campaign “had no part in trying to prevent him from being on the ballot.”
“We don’t necessarily want or need an attorney general that makes every argument just because he or she thinks it can be won,” Schwalb said of the challenge at the debate. “I think we want somebody who exercises judgment.”
Spiva shot back: “To wait until the argument was over and then to make that [Twitter] statement? Mr. Schwalb is my friend, but again, that’s not leadership.” He maintained that he did the right thing in scuttling McDuffie’s campaign and he has said frequently that the challenge wasn’t personal. “I don’t think it’s divisive to raise an issue of qualifications that the council put in place and that the people put in place for a reason,” Spiva added.
Political observers say Spiva and Schwalb have an edge over Jones, who started his own legal practice in 2014 and has comparatively lagged in fundraising. But after that, they say, meaningful differences in policy are less clear between the two, who were in the same Harvard Law School graduating class.
Schwalb and Spiva both have spoken highly of Racine — who endorsed Schwalb and overlapped with him at Venable before he became the District’s first elected attorney general — and have referenced community-oriented approaches to advancing Racine’s initiatives around consumer protection, tenant rights and addressing what they both describe as the “root causes” of crime.
Spiva has repeatedly called the attorney general’s office the city’s “largest public interest law firm,” citing his background as a civil rights attorney and his time spent advocating D.C. statehood. He’s earned endorsements from several left-leaning groups including the Sierra Club and Jews United for Justice Campaign Fund and from liberal leader Ed Lazere. 32BJ SEIU, a property services union with more than 20,000 workers in the D.C. area, said in May that they would back Spiva after originally endorsing McDuffie.
Schwalb, meanwhile, has touted his work recruiting, training and mentoring a large team of lawyers at Venable and often mentions his breadth of experience, which ranges from prosecuting civil tax matters as a trial attorney for the Justice Department to handling pro bono cases involving police misconduct. In addition to Racine, he’s been endorsed by The Washington Post’s editorial board (which is separate from the news operation), several labor unions and Irvin B. Nathan, the District’s last appointed attorney general.
Whether the candidates are using the city’s public financing, which prohibits large donations and matches contributions from D.C. residents, has also emerged as a rare point of contention. Schwalb and Jones opted in to the program; Spiva did not. At last month’s debate, Spiva defended his choice, explaining that it allowed him to loan his campaign money and noting that he pledged not to take contributions from developers.
But Schwalb said that wasn’t good enough. “Part of judging who brings judgment and discretion to this is to look at the decision we’ve made as candidates,” he said. “One of us chose to participate in the program and one didn’t.” Spiva, in turn, criticized Schwalb for accepting small-dollar donations from people who work for him at Venable and from business owners.
Spiva’s decision to reject public financing left a negative impression on Lorenzo Sanchez, a self-described progressive voter from Petworth who said he also closely examined each candidate’s stances on transportation and traffic safety. Sanchez liked that Schwalb has talked about aggressively enforcing traffic laws in a way that Spiva has not emphasized. Jones, meanwhile, has argued that speeding cameras are too sensitive and has said the city should focus more on rewarding good drivers.
“Schwalb has been more at the forefront on transportation,” Sanchez said. “On crime and housing, I didn’t see a lot of differences in their platforms on those issues.”
‘They basically sound the same’
Edward Ungvarsky, a criminal defense attorney who is voting for Spiva, said he thinks the policy differences between Spiva and Schwalb are more acute now than earlier in their campaigns, especially in the realm of crime. While both candidates have advocated for more spending on violence intervention, Ungvarsky said Schwalb’s emphasis on holding repeat offenders accountable is more akin to a “law and order” approach to the job than Spiva, who he has heard talk more about keeping young people out of the criminal justice system altogether.
“That language especially matters because their primary involvement in the legal system is juveniles,” Ungvarsky said. (Because D.C. is not a state, the attorney general primarily prosecutes juvenile offenses while the U.S. attorney for D.C. handles most serious crimes by adults).
Those supporting Jones, meanwhile, say they’ve appreciated his focus on residents in underserved communities and those who have had negative experiences with the city’s judicial system. Jacque Patterson, the at-large representative on the D.C. State Board of Education, is supporting Jones in part because of his local connections — he earned his master of laws degree from George Washington University Law School before starting his own firm in the District.
But Patterson also liked that Jones has been less enthusiastic than other candidates when asked if he would continue to pursue the high-profile lawsuits Racine has brought against companies such as Amazon.
“It’s nice to do things that take on a federal profile, but how will you make an impact on D.C. residents? That’s what I was looking for,” Patterson said. “With the attorney general, it can be hard to wrap one’s mind around what they do and how exactly they serve D.C., so when they try and separate themselves, they basically sound the same.”
D.C. attorney general hopefuls debate; McDuffie off ballot, offstage
Efforts to pull disagreements out of the candidates have even been a flash point in forums and debates. More than an hour into a debate hosted by the D.C. Bar last month, an exasperated moderator asked: “What is the difference between you and your opponents?”
A week later, at the debate hosted by the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance, the candidates offered limited insight into their differences.
The men put forth a few unique ideas, such as Spiva’s plan to focus on increasing compliance with child support obligations — including offering job counseling to parents so they can get work that lets them pay what they owe — and Schwalb’s vow to boost the office’s focus on reckless driving. Jones and Spiva said they support having police officers in schools in some cases, while Schwalb said he supports the council’s recent decision to remove police from schools.
But the candidates’ answers to many other questions, such as how they would balance the jobs of defending city agencies versus looking out for malfeasance, or how they would improve conditions at the troubled D.C. jail, were nearly identical.
When offered the chance to ask one another a question at the debate, for example — a chance to highlight policy differences — only Schwalb opted to do so, eventually settling on this question for his opponents: “Where are we going for beers?” | 2022-06-03T10:16:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In reshaped D.C. attorney general race, candidates vie to stand out - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/dc-attorney-general-race-candidates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/dc-attorney-general-race-candidates/ |
Their stories are part of a national crisis, and their families are left to ponder how two lives might have been different
Kelly Beitz, left, fatally overdosed on a synthetic opioid in September 2021 at age 26. She is shown with her father, William Beitz, in this undated family photograph. (Family photo) (Family photo)
Before she died of an opioid overdose in Alexandria, Va., Kelly Beitz, 26, was a bartender and restaurant server who used illicit painkillers to ease her chronic anxiety, according to her boyfriend and her father, who said Beitz struggled in vain for years to break her addiction.
“Kelly was a beautiful, beautiful girl,” her father, William Beitz, said in an interview. “There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t terrified about something happening to her.”
Before Anthony Moaf, 25, was found dead last month in an Alexandria jail cell of what authorities said was “an apparent medical emergency,” he ran a veritable pill factory in his parents’ basement, making counterfeit oxycodone tablets using metonitazene, a synthetic opioid “shown to be 100-fold more potent than morphine,” according to a criminal complaint filed against him.
“Anthony was a caring and a loving brother, son and friend,” his mother, Jacqueline Moaf, said in an email. “Anthony psychologically dealt with a lot of guilt before his passing, particularly surrounding the charges that he was facing.” Authorities had accused him of selling Beitz the pills that killed her last September.
An overdose victim and her accused dealer: Their stories are part of a national crisis, and their families are left to ponder how two lives might have been different.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported early this year that from May 2020 to April 2021, fatal drug overdoses in the United States — a vast majority of them involving opioids — rose 28.5 percent to 100,306, compared with 78,056 in the preceding 12 months. And the CDC warned that a new drug variety known as benzimidazole opioids has “begun appearing in cities across the country … adding a new threat to public health.”
Among those newly emerging illicit substances is metonitazene, the synthetic opioid that an investigator said Moaf used to make phony oxycodone pills. Although fentanyl is far more notorious, metonitazene has been causing a growing number of overdose deaths in recent years, according to the report.
New opioids, more powerful than fentanyl, are discovered in D.C. amid deadly wave of overdoses
The criminal complaint against Moaf was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on May 16, the day he was arrested, and dismissed later that week after he died in the city jail. It includes a transcript of what authorities said were texts between Moaf and Beitz on Sept. 24, in the hours before he sold her the pills.
As authorities tell it, their exchange began this way:
“Are you feeling bad?” Moaf asked her.
“Yeah,” she replied.
“I have these if you want,” he wrote, attaching a photo of more than two dozen blue pills. “But don’t abuse them be safe.”
Beitz, the second of three siblings, grew up in Waldorf, Md., and focused on culinary arts at a vocational high school. “She loved bartending; she loved being a server,” especially in bustling Old Town Alexandria, William Beitz, 55, said. “Kelly was always working. I don’t think there was ever a time when she didn’t have two jobs, and she made a good living.”
She was a year out of high school, in 2013, when her opioid habit became apparent to her father. At the time, William Beitz’s job with the Defense Intelligence Agency often required him to be away from home, so he quit and went to work in real estate to stay close to his troubled daughter.
“Kelly was really hurting,” he recalled. “But once they’re adults, you can’t make them do anything.” He described the eight years before her overdose as “a long, long struggle with a lot of ups and downs. Counseling, rehab — and cold turkey, which is brutal. … She tried desperately.”
He said: “Guilt is what I feel. Every day. Guilt. Because as a dad, it’s your job, you know? Protecting your daughter. I had one job. And me just not knowing what the hell to do.” He paused. “I can’t even explain the depth of the pain.”
Read The Post’s investigation of the opioid epidemic
When Kelly Beitz and Colin Fitzpatrick, now 46, began dating four years ago, they were bartenders at Chadwicks, a pub in Old Town. Their age difference didn’t matter to them, but her addiction “was a real issue,” Fitzpatrick recalled. “I don’t do drugs. And I told Kelly: ‘This has never been my thing. I’m not interested in dealing with it’ ” — which seemed to motivate her to strive to get well.
As she fought for recovery, she told Fitzpatrick in a 2019 letter: “I thank you from the bottom of my heart and soul. I love you. I thank you for not giving up on me.”
“She was always trying,” Fitzpatrick said. “She never gave up.”
Beitz had long been plagued by anxiety, and she used a doctor-prescribed sedative, clonazepam, marketed as Klonopin. “It didn’t help her enough,” Fitzpatrick said, so she bought black-market opioids to calm herself further. He said her struggles worsened during the pandemic, when she couldn’t see her therapist in person and their sessions were reduced to brief, twice-monthly video meetings.
People in addiction treatment are losing crucial support during coronavirus pandemic
A few days before she died, Fitzpatrick said, she resolved to start fresh with a new therapist to whom she had been referred, which she hoped would put her on the road to sobriety. She planned to call the therapist on Monday, Sept. 27, to make an appointment.
She bought the pills on Friday, Sept. 24, according to the complaint. “I think she was just trying to get through the weekend,” Fitzpatrick said. Beitz lived in a rented basement bedroom in Alexandria, and one of her two jobs was at an Old Town social club, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, where she and Fitzpatrick were bartenders. After she didn’t show up for work at noon Saturday, and he couldn’t reach her by phone, he called the police and asked for a welfare check. Officers found her face down in her room. She had been dead for hours.
On her desk were five blue pills resembling 30 mg oxycodone, stamped “M” and “30,” like the real thing, according to the criminal complaint against Moaf. The text messages indicate she had purchased eight. The pills contained metonitazene, lab tests showed. An autopsy found that Beitz died of “accidental acute metonitazene and clonazepam intoxication,” although the clonazepam in her system was “at low therapeutic levels.” Even without that prescription sedative, the complaint says, the amount of metonitazene she ingested was lethal.
Months would pass before Moaf was arrested.
Police say 10 people died in fatal fentanyl overdoses in Northeast D.C.
The youngest of three siblings, Moaf, who earned a GED in 2013, lived in the basement of his parents’ house in Herndon, Va., and worked full time at a Public Storage facility, according to his mother. “Anthony enjoyed and loved all things technology,” she wrote. “He had aspirations to eventually apply what he was good at through employment in a career in information technology.”
But he also had his share of trouble.
In 2017, he was sentenced to jail after pleading guilty to grand larceny and impersonating a police officer, court records show. Then, one Sunday in January 2018, he barricaded himself in the family home with a gun, threatening to kill anyone who tried to enter, authorities said. The 10-hour standoff, in which no one was hurt, involved numerous officers, a police robot and gas grenades, and ended with Moaf’s arrest on a charge of reckless handling of a firearm. He pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a gun and got a seven-month jail term.
“His family believes that Anthony had a lot of life left to live and the potential to love and help others deeply,” Jacqueline Moaf, 61, who works at a data center, said in the email.
On Oct. 13, less than three weeks after Beitz’s death, Moaf drove to Inova Fair Oaks Hospital with an unconscious woman in his car, the criminal complaint says. After a doctor pronounced her dead, Moaf left the hospital without giving his name or waiting for Fairfax County police to arrive. It turned out that the woman had fatally overdosed on a combination of ketamine, a psychedelic; flubromazepam, an illicit synthetic drug; and cocaine. The complaint says detectives went to the Herndon house that day after identifying Moaf through “vehicle information obtained by hospital staff.”
In statements that authorities described as often vague and contradictory, Moaf told them that the woman, who has not been publicly identified, had spent the night with him in the basement, had used drugs and was unconscious when he woke up Oct. 13. In a search of the basement, the complaint says, investigators found a pill press, a pill mixer, pharmaceutical binding and diluting agents, packing material, a label printer and numerous pills, including ketamine and 536 tablets that tested positive for metonitazene. Moaf was not charged in the woman’s death.
Nor was he arrested immediately after the October search. A Fairfax police spokesman said the case “went federal,” meaning it was turned over to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force for the Washington region. The task force investigation eventually linked Moaf to Beitz’s fatal overdose, the complaint says, and he was arrested May 16 on a federal charge of “distributing metonitazene … resulting in serious bodily injury or death.” Authorities said they were still investigating, with the goal of building a bigger case, when Moaf died May 18 in the Alexandria jail.
The Virginia medical examiner’s office has yet to officially rule on the cause and manner of his death.
Officials investigating possible overdose deaths at D.C. jail
“Anthony wanted nothing more than to have the weight of any legal consequences lifted from his conscience,” his mother wrote, without addressing the criminal complaint’s description of his basement pill-making.
The key evidence against him were the texts with Beitz before police found her body.
“How many you want?” Moaf asked that Friday night before he drove to her place.
She said eight, for $25 apiece.
“You have cash right?”
Then early Saturday morning, he messaged her again.
“How are they? … Hey kell. … How are they?”
The transcript shows no reply. | 2022-06-03T10:16:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia man accused of selling opioids that killed woman dies in jail - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/man-charged-in-overdose-death-dies-in-jail/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/man-charged-in-overdose-death-dies-in-jail/ |
Stalled federal loan increased the cost of Potomac River crossing
The clash with Maryland officials highlights the limits of federal power on transportation infrastructure.
By Ian Duncan
Construction on the replacement Nice/Middleton Bridge near Newburg, Md., looking east. (Maryland Transportation Authority)
Federal transportation officials stalled on approving Maryland’s loan application last summer to replace a Potomac River bridge crossing, using a six-month delay to raise questions about bike lanes on another section of the highway.
In 2019, the agency responsible for Maryland’s toll roads and bridges decided not to include a proposed bike and pedestrian path as part of a $463 million replacement of the Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge, about 37 miles south of Washington. Maryland officials said it was that decision that appeared to bring additional federal scrutiny.
The bridge was already under construction without the path, and Maryland refused to consider alterations to the plans. The loan ultimately was approved without new conditions — but the wait increased its cost by at least $20 million as interest rates rose, according to a February estimate provided in documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The episode highlights the challenges faced by the Transportation Department, which under the Biden administration is seeking to promote bike and pedestrian safety, racial equity and the environment. To achieve those goals, the federal agency must work with states that sometimes have other priorities — and typically have the final say. It’s a dynamic that will help shape $350 billion for road funding that’s part of the infrastructure law, which gives states near-complete control over which projects move forward and leaves federal authorities looking for informal ways to influence what gets built.
“This is a microcosm of the broader challenges of the federal program structure,” said Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “You can point to this as a great example of where the administration is constrained by the law.”
The infrastructure package handed the Department of Transportation new discretionary grant programs and increased the size of other programs, which the administration has tied to goals like combating climate change and promoting racial justice. But the bulk of federal highway money is passed to states with few conditions on how it is spent. Attempts to influence the decisions of state transportation departments — such as a December memo encouraging them not to widen highways — have provoked opposition from state leaders.
The Transportation Department said in a statement that the loan to Maryland ultimately “closed to the satisfaction of both parties.”
“As part of the process to greenlight a $200 million loan, our team did its due diligence, which includes asking standard questions and exploring alternatives that could benefit the people who rely on the bridge and help protect safety, which is a priority in everything that DOT does,” the statement said.
Under federal rules, ‘significant progress’ on infrastructure can mean more road deaths and decrepit bridges
The Maryland Transportation Authority, which operates toll roads and bridges, had already been working with federal authorities for more than a year when the state formally applied for the loan last summer to help replace the 80-year-old bridge. Officials expected a quick approval to lock in a favorable interest rate.
Instead, the Transportation Department subjected the application to months of scrutiny, making what Allen Garman, the Maryland authority’s director of treasury and debt, called in an email obtained by The Post “seemingly unprecedented demands for unrelated bicycle projects.”
Garman briefed the authority’s finance committee about the application in December, saying federal officials initially wanted guarantees about an unrelated project on Interstate 95, then requested the state install bike and pedestrian lanes on another stretch of highway. Garman told board members that, in his view, the federal money was in “jeopardy.”
But Maryland transportation officials refused to alter their plans, according to the documents obtained under the Maryland Public Information Act. And after a six-month delay, the Transportation Department approved the 30-year loan without new conditions.
The Nice/Middleton Bridge opened in 1940 and carries two lanes of U.S. 301 for 1.7 miles over the Potomac, connecting Charles County, Md., and King George County, Va. It supports about 6.5 million vehicles annually. With the aging, narrow bridge seen as a traffic bottleneck, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced a plan in 2016 to replace it with a new crossing that would carry four lanes of traffic and include a separated bike and pedestrian path.
But the toll authority decided the path wasn’t a good use of money and that the $64 million it would cost could be better spent on widening Interstate 95. The decision came as a disappointment to Maryland bike advocates, who viewed the bridge as a key link in what they envision as a 50-mile network spanning Maryland and Virginia.
“It just doesn’t make sense in this day and age” to build a bridge without dedicated space for cyclists and pedestrians, said Bill Niedringhaus, president of the Potomac Heritage Trail Association.
The new bridge will include signage alerting drivers to cyclists and special joints between sections to accommodate bikes, but Niedringhaus said even die-hard cyclists have told him “they’d rather ride on the Beltway.”
The law gives federal officials little say in how projects are designed — generally requiring them to approve loans to creditworthy applicants — but Maryland’s application was pulled from the agenda of the Transportation Department’s Council on Credit and Finance in August. Approval by the council was one of the final steps in securing the loan, but federal officials wanted to wait “pending further discussions with project sponsor regarding pedestrian safety questions,” according to the agenda.
$27 billion in new money aimed at fixing the nation’s aging bridges
In late September, then-Maryland Transportation Secretary Greg Slater and Stephanie Pollack, the deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, discussed the project by phone, according to emails.
Jim Ports, then the executive director of the Maryland Transportation Authority, followed up in a Sept. 30 letter to Pollack, saying his state agency lacked the authority to build bike lanes on U.S. 301 because it doesn’t control the road. The agency had already spent $1 million on the application process, Ports wrote, and “failure to close the loan would mean that public funds would be wasted.”
With the loan stalled, Slater wrote to Ports in October while Slater was in California attending a convention of the influential American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
“Based on some conversations here in California, I think we might need [to] get a ‘put our foot down’ letter drafted,” Slater wrote in an email.
In December, Slater wrote to Garman to wish him a happy birthday. Garman had the still-stalled Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan application on his mind.
“I greatly appreciate your help with the TIFIA loan and am sorry that USDOT has made seemingly unprecedented demands for unrelated bicycle projects,” he wrote. “Perhaps we can offer them the old bridge for bicycles and save on the cost of demolishment.”
Slater, now the head of the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority in Florida, declined through a spokeswoman to comment on the Maryland project. Ports, who replaced Slater as state transportation secretary, said in an interview that Maryland officials were trying to make sure their position was understood by a relatively new set of leaders at the Federal Highway Administration.
“I think it’s reasonable that with new people, you would have different questions,” Ports said.
With no signs of movement on the loan application, a manager at the contractor building the bridge wrote to the toll authority in January to make sure the company would still get paid. Maryland officials then began laying the groundwork for alternative forms of borrowing.
Wider sidewalks, higher railings, new lighting planned for Roosevelt Bridge
Still, the federal loan was more appealing because it would allow the state to lock in what would likely be a lower interest rate before drawing on the federal funds in 2023. On Feb. 9, Garman wrote to colleagues to say the loan remained uncertain and that the delay would cost an estimated $20 million more as interest rates crept up.
Ports said in the interview that Maryland officials ultimately were able to satisfy federal authorities and clear up misunderstandings they might have had about the loan application. In February, it was put back on the federal committee’s agenda and the loan was closed in late April.
Advocates for the bike path are exploring ways to keep the original bridge as a dedicated bike and pedestrian crossing. Local leaders in Charles County previously concluded they couldn’t manage the cost of maintaining the bridge, and the transportation authority plans to demolish it, using the debris to build a fish reef. | 2022-06-03T10:16:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stalled federal loan increased cost for Nice/Middleton Bridge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/06/03/maryland-potomac-nice-bridge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/06/03/maryland-potomac-nice-bridge/ |
Moises, with the Baja California International Liaison Unit, stands on a beach in the village of San Felipe, Mexico, while searching in October for a fugitive American couple.
Story by Kevin Sieff
Photos by Luis Antonio Rojas for The Washington Post
ENSENADA, Mexico — The fugitive could have been anywhere, so Ivan kept his voice down.
“We know he’s probably armed,” he told the members of his team.
They had pulled into a parking lot near the cruise ship terminal, a semicircle of undercover Mexican police officers, handguns hidden in the waistbands of their jeans.
If anyone asked, they were just friends on their way to the beach on a cloudless morning. But behind their sunglasses, their eyes darted between possible suspects. They were searching — as always — for an American.
“Another guy who thinks he can create a new life in Mexico,” Ivan said.
Information had trickled in from the U.S. Marshals Service in the case of Damion Salinas, a 21-year-old accused of killing a man after a traffic accident in Fresno, Calif.
But the intelligence was weak. Salinas appeared to have crossed the border into Mexico. He might be working as a barber in Ensenada. Or he might be in Tijuana. Or in any of the expat hideouts in between along the rocky coastline. Authorities had lost track of him more than a year earlier.
Members of the liaison unit, or Gringo Hunters, gather in southern Baja to discuss their pursuit of the fugitive couple.
The cops knew this feeling well. Their cases almost always began the same way — with a sense that the gringos could be anywhere.
There are a lot of them: Americans on the run from U.S. law enforcement who have slipped into northern Mexico. They include fugitives on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, serial killers, billionaires accused of securities fraud.
[3,134 miles, 18 pairs of sneakers, multiple cartel checkpoints: A run across Mexico]
Here in Baja California, there’s one small unit of state police — 10 men and two women — assigned to catch them. Officially, they’re the International Liaison Unit. But they’re known by another name: the Gringo Hunters.
Pursuing American fugitives in Mexico might seem like the punchline of an unwritten joke, a xenophobic stereotype inverted: Donald Trump’s “bad hombres” in reverse.
This is, after all, the Baja Peninsula, a dagger of land jutting into the Pacific, with deserted beaches and sprawling cities that nurture anonymity. Among its most popular tourism campaigns? “Escape to Baja.”
“Another guy who thinks he can create a new life in Mexico.”— Ivan
The unit now catches an average of 13 Americans a month. Since it was formed in 2002, it has apprehended more than 1,600. Many of those suspects were inspired by one of America’s oldest cliches: the troubled outlaw striding into a sepia-toned Mexico in the hope of disappearing forever.
“I’m goin’ to Mexico,” Susan Sarandon says in “Thelma & Louise” after her character kills a man.
“Way down to Mexico way,” Jimi Hendrix sang. “Ain’t no hangman gonna — he ain’t gonna put a rope around me.”
Ivan knows the stereotypes — all the ways life imitates art in Baja — because he apprehends versions of the same misguided fugitive every other day.
“We find them everywhere,” he said. “And almost always, they have no idea we’re looking for them. They think: ‘We’re in Mexico. We’re home free.’ ”
A woman rings the doorbell of a nightclub in Tijuana on a Sunday afternoon in April. Many fugitives have been found in downtown Tijuana.
People stand on a street in Tijuana known for its sex trade.
A dog rests on his bed in a neighborhood of Tijuana near the border wall.
A woman rings the doorbell of a nightclub in Tijuana on a Sunday afternoon in April. Many fugitives have been found in downtown Tijuana. People stand on a street in Tijuana known for its sex trade. A dog rests on his bed in a neighborhood of Tijuana near the border wall.
Here’s an incomplete list of where Mexican officers have found American fugitives:
In beach resorts. Dangling from parasails. In remote mountain cabins. In fishing boats. At a nightclub called Papas & Beer. In drug rehabilitation centers. In trailer parks. Tending bars. In cars with prostitutes. In Carl’s Jr. parking lots.
Some were on crystal meth. Some had undergone plastic surgery and acquired new names they couldn’t pronounce. Some were found dead.
There were former Playboy models, Catholic priests, professional athletes, C-list celebrities, ex-Marines.
So when the case of Damion Salinas crossed the Gringo Hunters’ desk, it seemed pretty straightforward. Then again, so had other cases.
[The war next door: Conflict in Mexico is displacing thousands]
The Salinas case was another one that seemed to reflect something rotten across the border. On Aug. 16, 2020, Salinas allegedly arrived at the scene of a traffic accident involving his girlfriend. Several people argued over who was responsible for the crash. Within minutes, authorities say, Salinas pulled out a handgun and shot 36-year-old Joshua Thao at close range.
“He never saw it coming because he shook the killer’s hand thinking everything was fine,” the victim’s sister, told a local TV news reporter.
Nineteen months later, Baja police received a tip that Salinas was cutting hair at the Teximani barbershop in Ensenada, a small black storefront painted with murals of boxing champions.
The bulletin from U.S. authorities was emblazoned with Salinas’s photo.
“DANGEROUS,” it warned in bold.
“Remember,” Ivan told his team at the outset, “don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
Luis, one of the Gringo Hunters, stands in the parking lot of their office in Mexicali, Baja's capital, at the end of an October workday.
One of the younger undercover officers, a lanky man with braces named Carlos, went into the barbershop and sat down for a haircut.
“Just a little off the sides,” he said, and looked around for Damian.
[In Cuba, a desperate search for milk]
The Gringo Hunters are trained to spot the ways Americans make themselves conspicuous in Mexico. They wear more shorts and more flip-flops. Many speak little Spanish. One officer swears he can identify how long a gringo has been in Mexico by the depth of his tan.
Carlos had studied the photos of Salinas from his Facebook profile. He was 6 feet tall and 185 pounds, an amateur rapper. He wore his hair in dreadlocks. “Forever West Coast" was tattooed on his right arm.
“This guy is going to stand out,” Carlos thought.
Scanning the shop, he didn’t see Salinas. But there was an apartment upstairs and a steady flow of clients. He called for backup.
That’s how three unmarked cars, each with two or three heavily armed agents, came to be sitting outside the barbershop. I was in the back of one of the cars, behind Ivan and his colleague Abigail.
Spring-breakers were taking selfies along the bay. New copies of the biweekly Gringo Gazette — with its tagline “No Bad News” — had recently been delivered. Ivan turned up the Bad Bunny song on the radio. He squinted through the windshield.
“Where are youuu, Damion?” he said, to no one in particular.
[Devouring the rainforest: How America's love of beef is helping to destroy the Amazon]
Ivan, like the rest of the team, had grown up along the border. He prefers “thank you” to “gracias." He worked for years in construction and then as a bodyguard. In 2010, he was recruited by the Gringo Hunters.
The unit’s existence surprised him.
“I was like, wait, you chase Americans?”
He shuddered when he learned that fugitive pedophiles often settle near primary schools. He noticed the mark the job was beginning to leave on him — the way he triple-checked that his front door was locked when he got home, or reproached his wife for sitting in the car too long outside their home.
“You’re raising our profile,” he insisted.
He learned that the dumbest fugitives were often the most violent. There was the Oregon man running from rape charges who worked as a surfing instructor with a LinkedIn profile (“High performing, results oriented”). There was the California murder suspect found in Tijuana after he posted a music video for a song called “Stay Gangsterific.”
Ivan’s job flickered between humor and danger, suddenly and without warning.
On his phone, he saved the photos of dozens of American fugitives he’d caught, like a digital trophy gallery. One recent photo showed the body of Anthony “Lucky” Luciano.
The police had been surveilling Luciano last year as he cruised downtown Tijuana. He was wanted for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Los Angeles. Hours into the mission, Luciano leapt from the car, spraying bullets. Then he hijacked a Mini Cooper with a woman in the back seat and continued shooting at the police. Ivan was hit in the foot.
The officers fired back. Luciano died of his wounds.
“I was like, wait, you chase Americans?”— Ivan
Parked in front of the barbershop, Ivan read through the WhatsApp group “DAMION SALINAS.” It included a map showing Baja barbershops where the target might be working.
“This guy must know people here,” Ivan said, scratching a chin covered by a few days of stubble. “Someone’s got to be hiding him.”
[We traveled deep into the Amazon to investigate deforestation. A grisly discovery awaited us.]
For decades, fugitives fleeing to Mexico have posed a profound challenge for U.S. law enforcement officers, who cannot operate independently on this side of the border. They rely instead on Mexican police to make apprehensions on their behalf. It isn’t extradition, which involves a formal request by the United States and a court process in Mexico. Technically, the gringos are deported for violating Mexican immigration law.
“Without the Mexicans able to do this for us, no one is going to get caught," said Scott Garriola, a former FBI agent who led a fugitive task force in Los Angeles until 2019.
U.S. officials pass intelligence on to Mexican police. Sometimes it comes from tracing U.S. wire transfers to rural Mexican banks. Sometimes it’s from phone records of relatives in the United States. Sometimes it’s a tip, prompted by U.S. reward money.
After big cases, U.S. officials send plaques, FBI apparel and gift certificates to their Mexican counterparts. They invite the Mexican agents to training sessions across the United States and ply them with drinks and dinners.
“A lot of it boils down to keeping the jefes happy,” Garriola said.
Ivan and the others say they have a different motivation.
“We don’t want a bunch of criminals in our community,” Ivan said.
Moises rides an ATV toward where other unit members think they saw the fugitive couple in southern Baja.
Ivan observes a beach near an enclave of foreign residences during the October operation.
A view of the enclave from a unit pickup truck.
Moises rides an ATV toward where other unit members think they saw the fugitive couple in southern Baja. Ivan observes a beach near an enclave of foreign residences during the October operation. A view of the enclave from a unit pickup truck.
The Gringo Hunters had been sitting in front of the barbershop for about an hour when the U.S. marshals called again.
Ivan picked up his phone and nodded. His eyes widened.
“He’s not here,” Ivan told a colleague. “It looks like he’s in Tijuana.”
The team sped north, the ocean on their left. The sun above was parchment white. A string of gated communities sat perched along the cliffs. Many of the signs and billboards were in English.
“Last Corona for 25 miles.”
“Your home from $134k.”
“Thong and Tequila Party.”
[Small children are climbing 60-foot trees to harvest your açaí]
It was a Mexico bent to the contours of a foreigner’s fantasy. Abigail sped through it at 90 miles an hour. She gripped the steering wheel with one hand and held her phone with the other, firing off voice memos to headquarters.
“That’s the telephone number of the target,” she said in one. “Check to see if it’s registered.”
“Find out who has the deed to the barbershop,” she said in another.
“This is a homicide case,” she advised gently. “It’s a little bit urgent.”
Abigail was the only woman on Ivan’s team. She wore blue jeans and had straight hair down to her shoulders.
Unit members gather in March in the parking lot of an Ensenada restaurant where they had just breakfasted to plan the capture of a fugitive. (Luis Antonio Rojas For The Washington Post)
She, too, had grown up on the border, in Tijuana, secretly dreaming of becoming a police officer. Her mother begged her not to. Abigail waited until her own daughter was 2, and then signed up.
A few years later, she transferred to the Gringo Hunters and immediately helped make several major arrests. Still, even when her colleagues praise her, the compliments can sometimes be loaded.
“She can do anything,” Ivan said. “She’s like a man in a woman’s body.”
Abigail says she isn’t bothered. She rose to the top position in the liaison unit’s Tijuana field office.
She became known for finding ways to capture fugitives without engaging in high-speed chases or shootouts. When a former Texas police officer, wanted for sexually assaulting a child, fled to Rosarito, she tracked his Facebook account until he posted to a local expat group, looking for a woman to show him around.
Abigail created a fake profile and contacted him to offer a tour. When he showed up, freshly coifed and wearing cologne, the team arrested him.
“You expect these guys to be smarter than that,” she said.
The team quipped about her having a “woman’s sixth sense” — and maybe there was something to that, she thought.
“As a woman, I knew how to hook him.”
She half-joked about migrating to the United States to increase her salary, roughly a thousand dollars a month.
“I could apply a lot of blush and tell them I’m Ukrainian,” she said.
But the more time she spends in the unit, the less appealing the United States has come to seem. Is it possible to arrest a nonstop procession of gringo criminals without feeling a little less enthusiastic about their country?
Last year, during my first trip with the unit, we followed a couple accused of murder in Hilmar, Calif., to the small fishing village of San Felipe, near the southern tip of Baja California.
Members of the team drove along the beach in ATVs, pretending to be tourists while doing their reconnaissance. Afterward, they barbecued carne asada on the beach. Their pistols were visible at their waists. At times, the team seemed to exhibit more swagger — the power trip that came with arresting dozens of Americans a year — than tactical prowess.
[Accused in deaths of innocents, a former colonel confronts his shame]
It was Abigail who seemed to do the job most effectively — and without the ego. She worked her phones from the beach, checking with police contacts in the United States and Mexico. She interviewed potential witnesses and collaborators, inching closer to the couple. They were eventually detained off a desolate beach road. They asked: How’d you find us?
If that wasn’t enough to win her colleagues over, it was Abigail who had shot Anthony “Lucky” Luciano in Tijuana.
Abigail climbs onto the back of an ATV as unit members look for the fugitive couple in southern Baja.
Abigail has breakfast with other unit members in San Felipe while seeking the couple in October.
Abigail speaks on the phone beside the back of a pickup while surveilling a street in Ensenada in March.
Abigail climbs onto the back of an ATV as unit members look for the fugitive couple in southern Baja. Abigail has breakfast with other unit members in San Felipe while seeking the couple in October. Abigail speaks on the phone beside the back of a pickup while surveilling a street in Ensenada in March.
It was noon when Abigail parked across the street from Bunker Cuts in Tijuana.
The U.S. marshals believed Salinas might be living in the apartment above the barbershop. Abigail could see a rack of clothes left to dry on the patio.
They waited, air conditioning blasting, staring through the windshield. The conversation turned — as it always did — to speculation about the fugitive’s life on the run. Which version of the Baja outlaw life had Salinas chosen, they wondered. Was he parasailing? Was he in a mountain hut, protected by cartel gunmen?
[Ana Estrada is fighting for a right to euthanasia. But she doesn't want to die.]
Some fugitives have lived in Mexico for decades without being caught. Others last only a few days. Baldomero Barrientos Banuelos, who allegedly stabbed his wife to death in North Hollywood, Calif, has been at large for 29 years.
“Some of these guys are really gifted at blending in,” Ivan said.
Abigail went to the store next to the barbershop, bought a plastic cup of potato chips dipped in chili and came back shaking her head.
“Nothing,” she said.
To pass the time, they talked about old cases: the alleged pedophile who tried to stab himself when he was apprehended, the ex-football star who was so strong that it took the entire team to detain him.
The call came out of nowhere, another officer on the walkie-talkie.
“That looks like him. In the beige Honda Accord.”
Abigail and Ivan turned on a siren and took off, tearing through two lanes of traffic. It took them about 15 seconds to cut off the Accord. They pulled a tall, thin man out of the car.
He didn’t look much like the picture of Salinas I’d seen, grimacing at the camera. He was gangly, with a bowl haircut and a wispy mustache. He wore a pair of Air Jordan sandals. He looked like he’d just woken up from a nap.
“I don’t think it’s him,” Ivan said.
But when Ivan took a wallet out of the man’s pocket, there it was: a California driver’s license with the name “Damion Ariza Salinas.”
“Pon las manos atras,” one of the agents shouted.
It became clear Salinas didn’t understand, so the agent repeated the words in English.
“Put your hands in the back.”
“Do you speak Spanish?” Ivan asked.
“Muy poco,” Salinas responded.
[The last bullfight? Mexico City weighs a ban.]
Traffic had halted. Pedestrians gawked. A few faces peered out from the barbershop and then ducked back inside.
“Who should we give the key to the car to?” Abigail asked.
Salinas looked confused.
“Well I’m going …” he began.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You’re coming with us.”
An officer approaches Salinas after the unit cut him off in traffic in Tijuana.
An officer holds Salinas as he makes the arrest.
An officer leads Salinas away to one of the unit's vehicles.
An officer approaches Salinas after the unit cut him off in traffic in Tijuana. An officer holds Salinas as he makes the arrest. An officer leads Salinas away to one of the unit's vehicles.
The agents handcuffed Salinas and led him to the back seat of one of the unmarked cars.
They agreed to let me sit in the back with him, if an agent sat between us, ready to restrain Salinas if he lunged. But he didn’t. He looked calm.
I told him I was a journalist.
“That’s a badass job,” he said.
He’d been watching “Narcos,” the Netflix series, which includes a journalist character.
First he told me that he had no idea why he’d been apprehended. When he shrugged, his handcuffs jangled.
“I’m just chilling,” he said. “I came out here for a better life.”
“You seem pretty relaxed,” I said.
“Inside I’m freaking out,” he said.
[Haiti's assassination probe has stalled. The U.S. one is advancing.]
Abigail was weaving through traffic on the way to the police intake center. Ivan called his colleagues in the United States.
“We got him,” he said.
A few minutes into our conversation, Salinas hung his head. His tone changed, as if he had realized that playing a bemused tourist wasn’t going to work. He acknowledged fleeing to Mexico to hide from U.S. law enforcement.
“I knew they were looking for me,” he said.
Salinas started describing his year in Mexico as if it were a semester abroad. At first, he said, he was careful, changing motels almost every night. But as the months passed, he took more chances.
He’d spent some time on a Jet Ski. He’d picked up a few women at bars. He’d visited hotels on the beach.
“You know, resort trips,” he said.
[Tourist drug demand is bringing cartel violence to Mexico’s most popular resorts]
When cops pulled Salinas over for traffic infractions, he would pay them off with small bribes.
Other times, he watched officers from a distance, and assumed they were looking for him.
“I’d look at them and be like, ‘Look at those dumbasses. They hit the wrong spot.’ ”
But over time, the life wore on him. He tired of keeping constant watch for the police. He got lonely. He would wake up covered in sweat.
“I thought about just crossing back over the border, turning myself in,” he said.
He refused to talk about the killing. But when I asked about his efforts to hide, he beamed.
“I was always 10 steps ahead. I just stopped trying after a while.”
I was always 10 steps ahead. I just stopped trying after a while.— Salinas
I asked why he hadn’t tried to go farther south, away from the border.
“That’s too deep, bro. I don’t know what’s out there.” Tijuana, he said, “is kind of Americanized in a way.”
Ivan put “Gangsta’s Paradise” on the stereo and turned up the volume. He asked me to ask Salinas if he was a rapper. Salinas smiled and said no.
Ivan then pulled up a video on his phone of Salinas rapping.
“Oh,” Salinas said, getting his first glimpse into the manhunt that had led to his apprehension.
The car pulled up at the police station and the agents escorted Salinas inside. They were still struggling to communicate across the language barrier.
“You really need to learn Spanish,” Ivan told him.
“Everyone tells me that,” Salinas responded, blushing a little.
Ivan and Daniel, another Gringo Hunter, use a webcam to photograph Salinas at a state police station in Tijuana.
Unit members hold one of Salinas's arms as a photo is taken of a tattoo. It reads: "Forever West Coast."
Salinas in the provisional jail of the state police after his arrest.
Ivan and Daniel, another Gringo Hunter, use a webcam to photograph Salinas at a state police station in Tijuana. Unit members hold one of Salinas's arms as a photo is taken of a tattoo. It reads: "Forever West Coast." Salinas in the provisional jail of the state police after his arrest.
After Salinas had been processed — his fingerprints taken, his tattoos documented — the next stop was a small immigration office.
A poster enumerating “A Foreigner’s Rights and Duties in a Migratory Station” was posted on the wall in English.
“Am I being extradited?” he asked me. I asked Ivan to answer.
“Tell him he’s being deported by Mexican immigration,” he said.
I asked Salinas what he thought.
“Does California have the death penalty?” he asked.
I said I didn’t think so.
“Then I’ll be good,” he said.
[Separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by Trump, a mother and daughter try to reconnect]
We got back in the car. The sun was setting as we drove to the border.
Abigail passed the first sign for San Diego. Then the encampment of recently arrived Ukrainian refugees.
She parked the car. We walked toward the plaque that marks the boundary between the United States and Mexico. Salinas’s feet were now shackled, too. He walked slowly with his head down.
A group of U.S. agents was waiting. One stood up straight, as if preparing to give chase if the fugitive ran.
Unit members arrive at the San Ysidro border crossing to deliver Salinas to U.S. authorities.
Salinas is handed over to U.S. authorities. He was deported to the United States on an immigration charge.
LEFT: Unit members arrive at the San Ysidro border crossing to deliver Salinas to U.S. authorities. RIGHT: Salinas is handed over to U.S. authorities. He was deported to the United States on an immigration charge.
A Mexican agent took the handcuffs off Salinas’s wrists and a U.S. agent immediately replaced them with a different pair of handcuffs. The exchange had the feeling of a ceremony without an audience. Then Salinas was gone, escorted by a team of agents in tactical gear into a maze of government buildings. On May 19, he pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder.
The Gringo Hunters walked away from the border crossing, California at their backs. If the image felt familiar, it’s because I’d seen it before, a Hollywood cliche now turned on its head: the protagonists, tired but triumphant, striding into Mexico.
Their next assignment had already popped up in a WhatsApp message. A California woman had been accused of kidnapping and drugging a 5-year-old girl. The report said she was living in a trailer park near the beach west of Tijuana.
Abigail and Ivan exchanged a fist bump and set a time to meet the following morning.
The next day looked to be another long one.
Editing by Matthew Hay Brown. Copy editing by Martha Murdock. Research by Gabriela Martinez and Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul. Photo editing by Kenneth Dickerman. Video editing by Alexa Ard. Design and development by Allison Mann. Design editing by Joe Moore.
Losing Control: How criminal groups are transforming Mexico
The search for the disappeared points to Mexico’s darkest secrets
The sniper rifles flowing to Mexican cartels show a decade of U.S. failure
With its leader in jail, this city cowered to his will
Violent criminal groups are eroding Mexico’s authority and claiming more territory
As Mexico’s security deteriorates, the power of the military grows
Kevin Sieff has been The Washington Post’s Latin America correspondent since 2018. He served previously as the paper's Africa bureau chief and Afghanistan bureau chief. Twitter Twitter | 2022-06-03T10:16:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An American murder suspect fled to Mexico. The Gringo Hunters were waiting. - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/mexico-us-fugitive-gringo-hunter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/mexico-us-fugitive-gringo-hunter/ |
Swiss researchers have created a tool that could store a liver for up to 10 days outside a body and still keep it viable for transplant — transforming a decades-old process.
Researchers in Switzerland have developed a machine that can store livers outside a body for multiple days, dramatically increasing the window in which the organs are viable for transplant. The tool, which allows doctors time to improve the liver’s condition, could increase the supply of organs eligible for donation, transforming a decades-old transportation process that still relies on antiquated methods, such as iceboxes.
In a medical paper released on Tuesday in the journal of Nature Biotechnology, scientists from University Hospital Zurich unveiled a machine that successfully mimics the human body, allowing livers to survive outside a body for up to 10 days — far longer than the 12 hours most transplant experts consider safe using current methods.
“We offer a window of time to fix problems,” said Pierre-Alain Clavien, the study’s lead researcher and director of surgery at University Hospital Zurich. “Now, you can take a liver that is in poor shape ... and to try to use medication or whatever you want to make [it] better."
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Transplant surgery is one of the most impactful innovations in modern medicine, experts note, allowing doctors to extend the lives of people who faced significant organ ailments. In 1954, surgeons at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston performed the first successful transplant, giving a patient a new kidney donated from his twin brother. In the 1960s, liver, heart and pancreas transplants followed.
Since then, medical science has advanced transplant surgery techniques but has barely changed the way organs are physically moved and stored. When an organ comes up for donation, doctors furiously hop onto airplanes to retrieve it, and then shuttle back to the recipient — all within hours — trying to keep the organ in stable condition.
With more time, transplant surgeons could make attempts to improve the state of livers that otherwise couldn’t be donated. Livers are often discarded for simply being too fatty, but with more time, surgeons could surgically reduce fat content. (In 2021, 944 of the 9,541 livers recovered for transplant were discarded, according to UNOS.)
Klassen also said it could alter the logistics of transplant surgery. Instead of patients being summoned to the hospital at odd hours of the night, they could schedule a procedure. Additionally, doctors wouldn’t have to rush patients into an operating room, giving them time to make sure their vital signs are stable or any infection in their body is dealt with. “It is a milestone,” he said.
Federal judge allows new liver transplant policy to take effect
In the past few years, other machines have landed on the market to improve the way organs — such as kidneys, lungs, hearts and livers — are stored. But Klassen said he does not believe any of these machines are used to extend transplant time into days.
“This differs from what has been done before,” he said, adding the Swiss researchers “have really extended the [transplant] window quite dramatically.”
Clavien’s team — a consortium of Swiss doctors and researchers from University Hospital Zurich, the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich — began working on their liver storage machine roughly six years ago. The device externally stores a human liver at 98.6 degrees and has machines attached to it that mimic heart, lung and kidney functions. Tubes attached to the liver can provide hormone and nutrient infusions, while flushing out toxins and providing the organ with antibiotics to keep it healthy while awaiting transplant.
“The machine [may] need some modification,” he said. “But I think the concept of preserving should apply to any solid organ.”
Lawsuit alleges bullying tactics by transplant executives in bid to revamp system
In the current system, where livers are stored over ice, the “preservation clock" can run out before doctors overcome logistical hurdles for an operation, such as coronavirus testing. They can also have limited time to improve the state of an organ to ensure it is suitable for donation.
“There are some livers that currently are not being used in the United States that could be used if you didn’t run out the clock," he said. “This technology would help salvage some of those livers from discard.”
“The current system works 90 percent of the time," he said. “It [could] add a bunch of extra costs to transplants when it’s not needed.” | 2022-06-03T10:29:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This machine could make many more livers available for transplant. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/03/liver-transplant-machine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/03/liver-transplant-machine/ |
Flames during Windy Fire in California's Sequoia National Forest on Sept. 19, 2021. (Noah Berger/AP)
Western wild lands are blazing, and those who fight the flames are hurting.
Federal firefighters still haven’t received a pay boost approved last year. It’s not known which employees will get the money once it is implemented. In some high-risk areas, the U.S. Forest Service has only half the staff it needs.
Meanwhile, the number of acres burned as of Wednesday was 112 percent higher than the 10-year average, according to the government’s wild land fire outlook. Drought, heat and wind are creating additional fire hazards.
Yet the nation risks losing wild land firefighters because a pay hike, signed into law by President Biden in November as part of his massive Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, has not been delivered. Under the law, that boost would only apply to firefighters in “a specified geographic area in which it is difficult to recruit or retain” them. It provides for increasing annual pay by $20,000 or 50 percent of base pay, whichever is less.
In testimony to a Senate Appropriations Interior subcommittee hearing last month, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said his agency’s staffing levels are at 90 percent overall. But “it’s as low as 50 percent in some areas,” he added, citing Oregon, Washington state and California.
“Fifty percent sounds a little scary,” replied the subcommittee’s chairman, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), whose home state is in deficient territory.
Recruitment and retention, along with pay, are scary challenges not just for the Forest Service, an Agriculture Department agency, and the Interior Department’s firefighting components, but also for the individuals who risk their lives beating flames.
“Congress appropriated this money months ago, and yet, federal wildland firefighters have still not seen a dime of it,” National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) President Randy Erwin complained in a letter Wednesday to top Biden administration officials. “Congress intended this money to move quickly into the hands of wildland firefighters, a very large percentage of whom experience significant difficulty making ends meet on their current salaries.”
Her husband did earn overtime pay. Without it, “we would not be able to afford our mortgage or my medical bills,” she added. “Our financial well-being is directly tied to how severe the fire season is. The busier the season, the more money he makes … While the overtime keeps us afloat, the downside is all the family time and mental and physical health that must be sacrificed.”
Eric Franta, 45, has fought fires or worked to prevent them in 16 states from Alaska to Florida. The 15-year Forest Service veteran, speaking as a NFFE union steward, said he has a “very badly herniated disk” and a burn scar on his back to show for his efforts.
“In the last couple years, I have begun dissuading folks from pursuing this as anything other than a short-term pursuit of a ‘life experience’ if they desire any semblance of a ‘normal’ life,' ” he said by email. What firefighters must do “to make the money juice worth the squeeze, is beyond most folk’s tolerance.”
Franta, of La Grande, Ore., said his base pay is $19.68 hourly, not including overtime and hazard pay. The main thing that keeps him on the job is his time off the job. Firefighting is seasonal work, giving Franta four months free. “If I had to do this job year-round,” he said, “I never would have stayed in it past a couple, few years.”
Biden pledged a short-term firefighter pay increase last year and “more than 11,300 firefighters received an additional $24.3 million in pay in 2021,” according to the Forest Service. Officials “are working diligently with the Office of Personnel Management on the increased payments for our employees,” the agency said. “Our goal is to have these payments into paychecks by this summer.” A statement from the Bureau of Land Management, part of Interior, said the “pay increases require a more detailed analysis of recruitment and retention to fulfill the goals of the legislation.”
“In truth, there should be no complex analysis to do. Every geographical area in the country has a proven recruitment and retention problem,” he wrote to Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja. | 2022-06-03T10:29:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal firefighters plea for pay raise included in infrastructure package - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/federal-firefighters-wildland-pay-raise-infrastructure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/federal-firefighters-wildland-pay-raise-infrastructure/ |
Protesters call for action on gun control as Senate Democrats speak last month on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Democratic candidates in high-profile Senate races are renewing a push to squash the filibuster, this time to pass stricter gun laws. They say that if elected, they would not let Republicans, or even some Democrats, stand in the way of acting on an issue with wide public support.
But party leaders and some Senate incumbents are wary of a fight they’ve already lost over voting rights and abortion, and they aren’t interested in revisiting the filibuster debate, much preferring to keep their energy focused on the Republican opposition to gun-control laws. Democratic candidates, looking to rev up voters in the fall midterms, are planning to keep the pressure on Senate incumbents and President Biden, who addressed gun violence Thursday in a prime-time speech.
The president said it was “unconscionable” that the majority of Senate Republicans have opposed most gun-control proposals, but he did not call on Senate Democrats to end the filibuster. He said he supported the bipartisan group of senators working on a compromise proposal that could win Republican support. “We can’t fail the American people again,” he said.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is running in a crowded primary to face Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in November, said Democrats should end the filibuster to pass their most pressing policies.
“I will never let archaic Senate procedure stand in the way of our basic human rights, whether it’s the right to live free from gun violence, abortion access or the right to vote,” Barnes said in an interview on Wednesday. “People are motivated, they want leaders that will do everything possible, and that means getting rid of the filibuster … it has to go.”
Other Democratic Senate candidates in the Wisconsin primary, including Milwaukee Bucks senior vice president Alex Lasry and state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski also have called for ending the filibuster.
John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, who won last month’s Senate Democratic primary, has continually raised the issue in his campaign speeches.
Some incumbents, like Sen. Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia, who won a special election last year and is running for a full term this fall, have called for making rule changes that would make it harder to filibuster legislation.
Under the filibuster rule, one senator can block a bill that doesn’t have at least 60 votes. Democrats hold 50 seats, and two of them, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have refused to go along with eliminating or amending the filibuster.
If Democrats can pick up at least two seats in November, the party could have the votes needed to end the filibuster and pass legislative priorities, such as universal background checks for gun purchasers.
Before the recent mass shootings, several Democratic candidates, including Rep. Val Demings, who is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida, and Rep. Tim Ryan, who is running for the seat in Ohio left open by GOP Sen. Rob Portman’s retirement, were calling for an end to the filibuster to get major legislation on voting rights and other issues through Congress.
Shortly after the Uvalde tragedy, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed, Ryan did so again.
“But while we mourn the 21 Americans murdered in another entirely preventable attack, I am beyond frustrated that the legislation we passed out of the House continue to stall in the Senate, held hostage by the filibuster and by politicians who refuse to do the right thing,” Ryan said in a statement. “It’s literally a matter of life and death and the Senate must act.”
Demings’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview on the topic.
Warnock defeated Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a January 2021 special election runoff that helped Democrats gain control of the Senate. Warnock worked behind the scenes last year to persuade his colleagues to change the filibuster and pass voting rights legislation with a simple majority. But in January, Manchin and Sinema were the only members of the Democratic caucus to vote against the rule change. The failure of the year-long push for action frustrated and divided Democrats. Warnock did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Charles Booker, the Democratic Senate nominee in Kentucky who is running against Republican Sen. Rand Paul, said gun regulation is an issue that can reach voters, even in his conservative state.
“If you listen to the people of Kentucky, you’ll hear a resounding call for common-sense reform. We just don’t have leaders that pay us any attention,” Booker, a former state representative, said in an interview. “Any effort for progress is being used once again in the filibuster. And I’ve been a very strong proponent of getting rid of the filibuster so we can deliver results for the American people. And that includes gun safety and security and addressing this chaos.”
Despite increased calls for action in the wake of the Uvalde shooting, Manchin and Sinema have signaled they remain unwilling to undo the filibuster. Manchin told reporters a day after the Uvalde shooting that the rule was “the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.” Sinema, when asked about eliminating the filibuster for gun-control laws, said she was not interested in “D.C. solutions” to the problem of mass shootings.
Promising to end the filibuster was a major applause line in Fetterman’s stump speech the week before he overwhelmingly won last month’s Senate primary in Pennsylvania.
“Do we have any Joe Manchin Democrats in the room?” Fetterman asked supporters crowded into an airport hangar in western Pennsylvania. The air filled with laughter and shouts of “No!”
“Keeping the filibuster in place means as a Democrat you believe there are 10 to 12 Republican senators of conscience who are going to say, ‘Oh my God, we got it wrong our entire career … gun-control legislation? Yes, yes, where have I been all these years?’ ” Fetterman said.
Manchin and Sinema are now working with a bipartisan group of senators that is exploring a possible deal to change gun laws after the recent mass shootings.
Weeks before the mass shooting in Buffalo, which killed 10 people, pollsters for the gun regulation groups Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety briefed Democratic midterm strategists in April on new research that indicated gun politics could help the party respond to Republican attacks on crime.
The polling found large concern in Senate battleground states about increasing gun crime. Democratic candidates who pushed for measures like stricter background checks, crackdowns on irresponsible gun dealers, and combating the spread of illegal guns gained an advantage in the research over Republicans who opposed more regulation. The effect was more pronounced in suburban areas.
Angela Kuefler, a longtime pollster for Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords, said there also has been some shifting over time in the way the public responds to mass shootings.
“There used to be a profound sadness,” she said. “Now that has been taken over by rage and anger, and anger is a motivating emotion.”
But Democrats remain cautious about predicting a clear political effect in November from continued Republican reluctance to change gun laws, despite polls that show overwhelming voter support for expanded background checks and “red flag” laws, which enable court orders to seize guns from people considered a danger to themselves or others. Although several members of Congress, like Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) and Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), were successful in the 2018 elections by campaigning on the issue of gun violence, they remain the exception and not the rule.
Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence, said Democrats should call a vote now on gun legislation, and when it fails, Biden “needs to say right then and there that we need to end the filibuster.”
“I do think it’s a now-or-never moment. This is very much on people’s minds, they are devastated, and it’s not the America they want,” Brown said. “It’s on the lawmakers, but it’s also on the president. I would like him to say that this is a ‘top priority for this Senate,’ and I’d like him to say that ‘the filibuster is killing us.’ | 2022-06-03T10:29:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democratic Senate candidates say party can't keep letting GOP filibuster to block bills with wide public support - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/senate-filibuster-gun-control/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/senate-filibuster-gun-control/ |
Look past the fracas about Jamie Dimon’s shifting prognosis for the US economy — from cautious optimism a week ago to warning of an imminent “hurricane.” What matters is that a titan of American finance is prepared to say what too few have over recent decades: Domestic conditions can look pretty good, until they’re quickly undercut by adverse events abroad. (And this isn’t the first time Russia has been a major player.)
Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., warned investors Wednesday to brace for an economic shock that’s “coming our way.”His remarks surprised observers, in part because they painted an outlook much bleaker than the one he described a week earlier. Dimon cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation and higher interest rates. To that string of negatives, let’s add a pronounced deceleration in world growth forecasts and a Chinese performance so anemic that it could lag behind the US for the first time in almost two generations.
As markets slumped on Dimon’s comments, I reflected on a speech by Alan Greenspan almost a quarter century ago, when the US economy appeared to be cruising. The jobless rate was low, inflation was under control and a storied tech boom boosted productivity. Many parts of the world were in dire straits, however. The financial crisis in Asia hadn’t quite been extinguished and Russia was teetering. How long could America’s expansion withstand broader upsets?
Greenspan, then chair of the Federal Reserve, wanted to send up a flare. “It is just not credible that the United States can remain an oasis of prosperity unaffected by a world that is experiencing greatly increased stress,” he told an audience at the University of California, Berkeley, on Sept. 4, 1998. Markets took his remarks to indicate the Fed was preparing to reduce interest rates, which the central bank did shortly thereafter.
A cut isn’t in the offing today. The debate is more about whether the Fed can return to quarter-point hikes after flagging half-point increases in the benchmark rate this month and in July. Inflation was contained in 1998; today it is well above the Fed’s 2% target, in part because of disruptions caused by Russian aggression. But the idea that a little hyperbole can go a long way remains relevant. In his 2007 memoir, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Greenspan wrote that he didn’t think his Berkeley comments had much impact at the time. In fact, he said he was aiming to shape perceptions over a much longer period: What happens in the rest of the world matters greatly to the US. “Isolationism runs so deep that people still haven’t let it go,” he wrote. “There’s always a presumption that since America is better, we should go it alone.”
While surging inflation is a strain on the contemporary US economy, other aspects appear to be in good shape. The jobless rate is close to historic lows and job vacancies abound. A key gauge of manufacturing was surprisingly strong last month and retail sales grew at a solid pace in April.
Global developments aren’t always top of mind at the Fed, whose mandate for maximum employment and price stability was granted by the most parochial of institutions: Congress. At critical junctures, though, international events have forced their way in. In the early 2010s, the euro zone’s debt travails contributed to the Fed’s go-slow approach to withdrawing accommodation. China’s botched efforts at revaluing the yuan in 2015 were a factor in the Fed hiking just once, as opposed to the four increases projected at the end of the preceding year.
Even if dire warnings are unpleasant to hear, they can serve a useful purpose. During the Obama administration, Dimon was sometimes said to be in the running for a top job, perhaps even Treasury Secretary. That didn’t pan out. If his goal this week was to shake people out of complacency, he nevertheless has performed a real public service.
• A Russian Default Will Hurt, But It Won’t End the War: Editorial | 2022-06-03T10:42:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Jamie Dimon Learned From Alan Greenspan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-jamie-dimon-learned-from-alan-greenspan/2022/06/03/6602979e-e31c-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-jamie-dimon-learned-from-alan-greenspan/2022/06/03/6602979e-e31c-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
These panels are a sneak peek at the first “Popeye” comic by its new cartoonist, Randy Milholland, who inherits the syndicated strip Sunday. (Randy Milholland/King Features Syndicate (2022))
One aspect of Segar run’s that Milholland cherishes is that Popeye would say: I will protect any child I meet. Oh, you’re down on your luck? I will be here to help you.
“Popeye is much more than a goofy comic character to me,” Segar is quoted as saying in the book “Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation.” “He represents all of my emotions and he is an outlet for them. … to me Popeye is really a serious person and when a serious person does something funny — it’s really funny.”
Segar guided “Thimble Theatre” till his death in 1938, and his former assistant Bud Sagendorf steered the Popeye comic for decades, beginning in 1959. | 2022-06-03T10:43:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Popeye is getting a makeover at age 93 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/06/03/popeye-strip-randy-milholland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/06/03/popeye-strip-randy-milholland/ |
Students are told that dolls aren’t just for girls, and that there are no ‘boy colors’ or ‘girl colors’
Science Teacher Max Firke watches the closing panel at the end of the annual Pride Town Hall at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md., in May. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Some lessons are direct: “Who can describe what transgender means?” In other classes, the discussion is more subtle: “Remember, families can come in all shapes and sizes!”
Sometimes teachers simply shift their language to reflect gender diversity that may be in the room. Instead of “Good morning, boys and girls!” the teacher might say, “Good morning, scholars!”
“There’s years of research that demonstrate that curriculums that include respect for others regarding their sexual orientation and gender identity are more effective,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the division of adolescent and school health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s true not just for LGBTQ students, she said. “When you make a school environment safe and supportive for the most vulnerable youth, you improve the school environment for everyone.”
The restrictions often go beyond the classroom. Many districts have resisted efforts to allow transgender students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, and 18 states limit transgender women from competing in women’s and girls’ sports, though some measures are on hold pending a court challenge. Philadelphia’s school district even came under fire for informing teachers about an independent Trans Wellness Conference where some attendees discussed how to support youth who are transitioning genders.
Classes that address gender identity are still the exception in American schools. But an increase in the number of young people identifying as trans or gender nonconforming has prompted many schools to change course and adopt lessons that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. A Gallup survey released last year found 16 percent of young adults in Generation Z identify as LGBT, more than any other generation.
The approaches vary, particularly for elementary schoolchildren. In some classrooms, lessons about gender identity focus on gender stereotypes. Students in first grade, for instance, may be prompted to consider that there are no “boy colors” or “girl colors.”
Some classes use the book “I Am Jazz,” the story of a transgender girl. “I have a girl brain but a boy body,” she says. “This is called transgender. I was born this way!”
A lesson meant for first grade called “Pink, Blue and Purple” comes from a curriculum called “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” developed by the activist group Advocates for Youth. It tells students that gender is not a fixed attribute.
“You might feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts,” the teachers are told to say. “You might feel like a girl even if you have body parts that some people tell you are ‘boy’ parts. And you might not feel like you’re a boy or a girl, but you’re a little bit of both. No matter how you feel, you’re perfectly normal!”
The lesson continues with students looking at various toys and assessing if each best suits boys, girls or anyone. Through discussion, the teacher helps students understand that all the toys — dolls, drums, paints, helicopters — are for anyone.
New Title IX rules set to assert rights of transgender students
In his kindergarten classroom, one teacher in western Massachusetts using “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” introduces the idea of gender as part of an exploration of identity. He explains that people use all sorts of pronouns: he, she, they, ze. He introduces the terms transgender and gender queer but doesn’t fully define them because that is too much for kindergartners, said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his district did not authorize him to speak publicly.
He talks to students about anatomy but declines to classify various body parts as male or female. “We don’t say a penis belongs to a man,” he said. It belongs to a human, he explains.
And he makes clear that even if a doctor proclaims at birth, “It’s a boy!” that baby may not be a boy. “Someone who was born a boy may not feel they are a boy.”
But she said her pupils often ask about it, and she will answer. Once, for instance, a student asked: “Can we stop our periods if we don’t want them because we feel like a boy?” So she explained how hormones work.
Another curriculum called HealthSmart obliquely addresses gender identity in fifth grade in the context of respect for oneself and others. Students read stories about children their age and discuss whether the characters seem to be boys or girls or whether it’s unclear. They read about a child who is bullied because of gender expression and then create a text message campaign to encourage their peers to accept and respect diversity.
HealthSmart explores the subject more directly in middle school, where body parts are presented in a gender-neutral way: It might refer to a “body with a penis,” for instance, rather than specifying that boys have penises. People are referred to as partners, not boyfriends or girlfriends.
“There’s a real push to be inclusive of all students,” said Suzanne Schrag, senior curriculum editor at ETR, which publishes the HealthSmart curriculum. She said gender identity was not discussed in the previous version of the HealthSmart curriculum, published in 2012-2013, but was added in a 2020 update.
“LGBTQ identities are a naturally occurring facet of human variation, and that is why we need to learn about them in the context of biology and human anatomy,” he said.
Bill Farmer, a science teacher in Evanston, Ill., takes a similar approach. Like Long, he teaches about people with intersex traits — those born with reproductive or sexual anatomy who do not fit a traditional male or female binary. And he introduces the idea that gender is a social construction, not a biological fact.
He teaches that there are three separate identities: biologic sex, or what sex organs one has at birth; gender identity, or what gender one identifies with; and gender expression, meaning how one presents to the world. So a student might paint his fingernails — a typically female gender expression — but still identify as a boy.
“There’s not many spaces where students have the opportunity to engage in these discussions in a more structured way and where there’s a safe space to ask questions,” he said. He added that there are at least one or two trans or nonbinary students in each of his classes, more than ever before. “Most students are testing out or trying to figure out where they fall in their gender identity.”
In Maryland, officials at the Education Department included gender identity in the statewide standards that were recently adopted for sex ed. But that doesn’t mean all teachers will teach these topics, said Lea Jaspers, who helped write the plan.
The framework calls for instruction to represent all students regardless of gender identity and other factors, but as a matter of practice, each district decides for itself how to teach the subject. Jaspers thinks it’s mostly used in schools where a student has identified as transgender, and she said one of the goals was to be sure those lessons were state-approved for teachers who need them.
“The framework is very comprehensive so a teacher could never say, ‘We are not allowed to say that,’ ” she said.
“One district might have a safe and affirming and inclusive curriculum,” she said. “Another across the way could be having a vastly different experience … It’s deeply uneven.”
Sometimes, schools add these lessons because they become aware of a particular student grappling with identity questions and want them and their peers to feel comfortable. In other cases, the lessons reflect a changing culture where these subjects are considered less taboo, and where school leaders want kids who haven’t yet realized they might be LGBTQ to come out in a supportive climate.
“There are trans and nonbinary kids from K through 12. It is not unusual. It is probably true in every school in the country,” said Ellen Kahn, senior director of programs and partnerships at Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which offers training for schools that want to adopt an LGBTQ-inclusive approach. “Some are more willing to lean in and learn.”
Conservatives argue that inclusive curriculums pose a special challenge. Lessons in schools amounts to “cult grooming and ideological grooming,” in which students are taught that their gender is “fluid” and can be changed, said James Lindsay, a conservative activist who has advised legislators on measures dealing with gender and race.
“The message is if you dress or act a certain way you might not be the sex you are,” he said. “When I was a child I wanted to grow up to be a firetruck. Children do not always know exactly what is going on in the world and they need some strong boundaries to protect them.”
In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills (D) removed a video where a teacher explains gender identity to kindergartners from the state’s education department website after the Maine Republican Party began airing an ad attacking the governor for it. In the video, the teacher says that sometimes doctors “make a mistake” when they tell parents whether their newborns are boys or girls.
“A review of the video led the Department to conclude that the lesson is not something we would recommend including as part of kindergarten instruction, and, as such, has been removed from the site,” spokesman Marcus Mrowka said in a statement.
The teacher, Kailina Mills, replied that she was disappointed by the move. “The Maine Department of Education and Mills administration caved to pressure instead of standing up for some of the most vulnerable people, families and students in Maine,” she said in a statement.
In New Jersey, statewide standards for teaching sex ed are set to take effect this fall. They include discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. One school system caused a stir when it presented a possible first-grade curriculum that explained to first graders that some boys may not feel like boys even if they have “body parts that some people might tell you are ‘boy parts.’”
Gov. Phil Murphy (D) responded by ordering a review of the guidelines and said some lesson plans “do not accurately reflect the spirit of the standards.”
The state education department then issued a clarification that discussion of gender identity should involve gender stereotypes (math isn’t just a “boy subject,” for instance). It added: “They should also help children to understand that every person deserves respect, no matter their identity or expression.” | 2022-06-03T10:43:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gender identity lessons: What schools are teaching students - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/03/schools-gender-identity-transgender-lessons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/03/schools-gender-identity-transgender-lessons/ |
As some propose arming teachers or increasing police presence on school campuses, parents of color see new threats.
Clyde McGrady
UVALDE, TX-MAY 25: Police stand inside caution tape near Robb Elementary school on Wednesday, May 25, 2022 in Uvalde, TX. Twenty one people were killed after a gunman after a high school student opened fire inside Robb Elementary School on Tuesday where two teachers and 19 students were killed. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post)
It was the day after an 18-year-old gunman massacred 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Tex., and Shane Paul Neil kept imagining what it might have felt like if his 15-year-old daughter or 9-year-old son had endured that type of violence. As Neil sat in his home office in New Jersey, reflexively scrolling for new updates, he paused to read a Facebook post from his town councilman — an announcement that there would now be an increased police presence and more frequent patrols at local schools in the aftermath of the shooting.
Nothing about this news brought Neil any measure of comfort. Instead, as a parent of Black children, he found himself confronting the nexus of two uniquely American fears: the possibility of random gun violence, and the consequences of racially biased policing. He shared his reaction in a tweet that soon went viral: “As a black father I now have two potential threats to be concerned over.”
When Neil, a 44-year-old freelance writer and photographer, scrolled down to the comments unfurling below the councilman’s post, he was surprised — and somewhat relieved — to see that local parents were overwhelmingly opposed to the presence of more police officers. “For White parents it was, ‘we don’t want to bring more guns into school,'” he said. “For myself and other Black parents, it’s that we don’t want to force police interaction in school with our children in particular.”
In the aftermath of the rampage in Uvalde, Republican lawmakers have revived a familiar array of proposals: More police in schools. Increased patrols. “Hardened” campuses with more stringent security measures. Several conservative leaders, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, insist that arming teachers or school staff with guns might be the best way to guard against another mass shooting.
More law enforcement officers at schools, Neil says, means more potential for encounters with Black children that could go awry. “It only takes one incident for my son or daughter to have an arrest record, a juvenile record,” Neil says, “and those things stick with you, they follow you.”
Natalie Moss, 43, who works in intellectual property and patent prosecution and lives in Prince George’s County, Md. with her husband and their two preschool-aged sons, finds the idea of anointing teachers as de facto law enforcement officers disturbing. She thinks of her older son, who just turned 4: “There’s a culture of adultification bias against Black children,” she says. “They’re cute when they’re 2 or 3. But when they reach a certain height, it’s different. My child is in the 99th percentile for height — he’s on par with most 6-year-olds in terms of height, so when people approach him, they often think he’s older than he is, already.”
Moss knows what that will mean in just another year or two, she says; her friend recently gave her own young son ‘the talk’: “Types of toys that he’s not allowed to play with outdoors, types of toys that he can’t bring to school with him, certain things he can’t say,” she says. “The way that she wants him to interact if he does encounter law enforcement, because the ultimate goal as a Black parent is to have your child get home safe.”
It doesn’t help, she adds, that the credibility of the police who responded to the shooting in Uvalde has steadily unraveled, as law enforcement officials have made contradictory statements and changed their story numerous times. The failed police response is now the subject of a Justice Department investigation.
Timeline: How police responded to the Texas school shooter
They rehearse the scenarios; there is a script. “I don’t want him to forget,” she says. “I want it to become muscle memory so that when he’s in that moment, he hears my voice.”
“My fear is that in being his full, free self, which he has every right to be, that some police officer will see him as a criminal,” Beckford says.
Beckford, who lives in the historically Black Bronzeville section of Chicago, says her community is already “inundated with school police” and she’s heard horror stories, including one about an officer who zip-tied a student.
Finding a way to improve school safety is “complicated,” says Beckford, 41, adding that some parents have told her their children have had positive interactions with school resource officers. But that is the exception, she says.
Biden vows to ‘continue to push’ for gun laws after visiting Uvalde
“There’s not enough space to dream beyond a world where we rely so heavily on police for everything,” she says. “We rely on them to discipline in the classroom. We rely on them to intervene when there’s a mental health crisis.”
As the debate about how to stop school shootings escalates, Ratasha Harley, a 37-year-old mother of four in Maryland and member of the advocacy organization Parents of Black Children, says she is dismayed but not surprised to see the perspectives of families like hers overlooked. She thinks of how she tried to rally community action following outbreaks of gun violence that affected predominantly Black neighborhoods in her area, those efforts didn’t gain much attention or support from White parents. She thinks of the White mom at one PTA meeting who, after recently proposing an active-shooter simulation drill in their school, said: Well, some kids already know what this is like, because they see this in their neighborhoods.
“Our parents remain voiceless,” Harley says. “Nobody is ever really saying: how is this going to affect schools that are predominantly Black, that have negative perceptions and interactions with police all the time, that have trauma from gun violence?” | 2022-06-03T10:43:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The prospect of more police at schools is no comfort for Black parents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/03/uvalde-shooting-black-parents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/03/uvalde-shooting-black-parents/ |
Longtime guitar hero Mark Tremonti, formerly of Creed, was inspired to record an album of standards and create a charitable venture
Guitarist Mark Tremonti, best known as a metal hero who co-founded Creed, also has a soft spot for Ol' Blue Eyes. (Chuck Brueckmann)
There he was, sitting in his wife’s Escalade at his son’s soccer practice, singing “Luck Be a Lady” at concert volume. Mark Tremonti, the metal hero proclaimed “Riff Lord” and co-founder of Creed, had the windows rolled up, but that didn’t seem to help. After practice, his teenage son, Pearson, walked over with a report.
“Dad, I can hear you across the street,” he said.
“So from that point on, I had to park across the street at another parking lot,” Tremonti says. “I don’t want to embarrass my kid.”
But now, three years later, Tremonti isn’t keeping Frank Sinatra to himself. The guitarist, considered one of the few modern day-guitar heroes, has released an album of Sinatra covers — and he’s not playing a single monster lick. Instead, he’s at the mic to sing 14 Sinatra standards, including “Luck Be a Lady,” “My Way” and “Fly Me to the Moon.” What’s more, Tremonti is backed by several members of Sinatra’s final band. The album, “Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra,” surprised those who have heard him shredding on his PRS guitar.
“It blew my mind,” says Slash, the Guns N’ Roses guitarist. “It just sounded so authentic. And it’s Mark from Alter Bridge, a metal guy, so I’m not expecting it at all. But all the vocal inflections, the personality, the Frank-centric feel of it, went way beyond any expectations I had.”
Norm Macdonald had one last secret
Genre-bending records can, of course, go terribly wrong, whether it’s Pat Boone doing metal or the Beach Boys trying country.
But Tremonti never saw Sinatra as a marketing opportunity. The new record emerged as a series of chance conversations, life circumstances — and connections. There also was his genuine love for the music.
At first, Tremonti, 48, fell into a funk. He wondered how the diagnosis would affect his family and work. That’s when he talked to his manager, Tim Tournier, whose older brother has Down syndrome and is high-functioning, with a job and girlfriend.
“Breathe,” Tournier recalls telling Tremonti. “I know it’s scary, but it’s going to be awesome. And I remember telling him that, and he was just kind of like, ‘You know, I believe it.’”
“After she was born, I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’ve never smiled this much in my life,’” Tremonti says, pointing to a photo of Stella in his studio as he talks over Zoom. “This little thing, this little girl, makes me smile still.”
Before Stella’s birth, there were other anxieties as well. The pandemic had shut down touring, and Tremonti, a prolific performer, was antsy. Hearing this, Tournier thought of one of the guitarist’s great loves, the music of Sinatra. Tournier has a personal connection to the crooner: As a young guitarist in Chicago, he was mentored by guitarist Dan McIntyre, who had been in Frank Sinatra Jr.’s band. So, wanting to cheer up his friend, Tournier called McIntrye to ask whether it might be possible to round up some musicians to do a few Sinatra songs with Tremonti.
“I could tell right away that he was a phenomenal musician, even though the genre and everything was different,” Smith says. “And like Duke Ellington said, there’s only two kinds of music, good and bad.”
Carey Deadman, who worked on Sinatra’s tours as an arranger, was more skeptical. He figured he had heard this tune before: Someone wants to live out his fantasy through Frank.
“We’re all kind of rolling our eyes like, ‘Oh, another Sinatra wannabe,’” Deadman says. “Like, ‘How many are there? When will the stream end?’”
Tremonti didn’t grow up dreaming of smoky barrooms and a glass of Jack. He decided to play guitar after hearing the powerful barre chords that drove the J. Geils Band’s “Love Stinks.” He got into harder stuff through his Black Flag and Metallica tapes. At Florida State University, he got to know singer Scott Stapp and they formed Creed, a partnership that led to four albums that sold more than 50 million copies. Creed eventually dissolved over tensions with Stapp, but Tremonti and his other bandmates, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips, went on to form Alter Bridge with singer Myles Kennedy.
Tremonti was never known as a singer, serving on backup vocals with Creed and Alter Bridge before taking lead for his namesake band’s records. (He has made five Tremonti albums since 2012.)
“Initially, when we started working together, he seemed strangely hesitant to sing when we would write together,” Kennedy says. “And I thought, ‘Well, he’s got a wonderful voice, a rich baritone.’”
Nabil Ayers has barely spoken to his father. But he has no regrets.
“I think one of the cool things about Sinatra is he didn’t just sing it straight on the beat,” Tremonti says. “And he never sang the same song the same way twice. I picked my favorite version and tried to sing it as close to that and then naturally put my own thing on it. A lot of people are like, ‘Yeah, it’s great how you took Frank Sinatra and made it your own.’ I’m like, ‘The only way I made it my own is because I couldn’t make it exactly like Frank Sinatra.’”
“He came early and I said, ‘Let’s go upstairs, just you and me,’ and so he started singing and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you did a lot of homework here,’” Smith says. “I thought it was going to be good, but not as good as it was.”
“He went to school on Sinatra,” says Deadman. “You can tell he listened to him a lot, but he is singing it in his own voice. And he’s bringing in his own phrasing. But he particularly seemed to listen to the earlier crooner days. And you know, I think that’s the vibe he was going for. It’s a really beautiful sound.”
After those sessions, Tremonti and Tournier talked about Sinatra — the musician and the man. They knew he had raised millions for charity. Then the idea came to Tremonti. What if he put out a Sinatra album and donated the proceeds to the National Down Syndrome Society? Medical procedures are often required — Stella had a heart operation just nine months after her birth — and there is a constant need for physical therapy.
And more than a one-time fundraiser, Tremonti also decided to launch Take a Chance for Charity, a venture meant to inspire others. He’s already heard of interest from a couple of buddies, comedian Larry the Cable Guy and the wrestler Edge.
But Tremonti isn’t ready to give up Frank. In May, he performed with a 17-piece band that included Smith, Deadman and McIntyre in Orlando, where he lives, to launch the album. The show raised $150,000. He’s hoping to take it on tour later in the year.
“It was good to see these people that I’ve seen for 20-plus years coming to rock concerts and black T-shirts in their suits and cocktail dresses,” he says. “Except for one guy. He was like, ‘You’ll never see me dressed up like this again.’” | 2022-06-03T10:43:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How metalhead Mark Tremonti shared his inner Sinatra - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/03/mark-tremonti-creed-sinatra-album/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/03/mark-tremonti-creed-sinatra-album/ |
Why I reclaimed my South Korean citizenship after losing it as a baby
Perspective by Bryan Pietsch
Bryan Pietsch is a reporter covering breaking news for The Washington Post from its hub in Seoul. He previously covered breaking news for the New York Times in Colorado.
A photograph of Bryan Pietsch by the East Sea (also known as the Sea of Japan) in Gangwan-do province, where he was born. (Yuri Doolan)
SEOUL — Underneath the plexiglass window at the immigration office, I presented the officer with my Korean resident card and my American passport. Like a bank teller handing over an envelope of cash, she slid me a certificate in return.
I couldn’t read what it said, but it had my American name on it, as well as my Korean one — some of the few words I can recognize in written Korean. A friend who came with to translate pointed to the bolded words that confirmed that I had successfully reinstated my Korean citizenship. Because of the pandemic, there was no pomp and circumstance: no pledge, no anthem, no handshake. I filled out some forms, the immigration officer handed me a flag and a mug, and off I went.
I left the immigration office as a Korean citizen, something I hadn’t been since I was a young child. I was brought from South Korea to the United States when I was 9 months old, adopted by an American family in Minnesota. When I was a few years old, I was naturalized as an American citizen. That entailed the forfeiture of my Korean citizenship, a decision I had no choice in as a toddler.
The document I received in the immigration office in Seoul brought me closer to regaining what I had lost. It was a first step toward reclaiming my Korean identity, a process that will bring its own challenges but nevertheless comes as a relief.
Growing up in middle America, I never really identified as Korean American, as I struggled to relate to the typical Asian American immigrant experience:my adoptive family’s ancestors were from Norway, Germany, France, Poland, Ireland and Canada. My family’s American immigration story was two or three generations back. I didn’t call my mother “Omma,” and I grew up around sauerkraut, not kimchi.
I always thought of citizenship as something you were either born with or aspired to. During my undergraduate studies in Phoenix, some of my classmates were DACA recipients, with stories similar to mine — we’d grown up in the United States from a young age, feeling at home there and maybe not knowing anywhere else — though our situations were materially different. I could live or work where I wanted to in America and enter and exit the country freely, while they had to tread carefully and have faith in American bureaucracy to allow them to stay.
What happened when my kid fell in love with K-pop
Given all of that, it feels indulgent, and perhaps even a bit silly, to claim South Korean citizenship just 10 months after waltzing into the country. All the more so when you consider that I barely speak the language, know only the first two lines of the national anthem and don’t intend to make a home here. But I’m simply taking back what is mine — what was taken from me without my consent.
While the exact number is unclear, about 200,000 Korean children have been sent overseas for adoption since the 1950s. According to Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link, the group that assisted me in my reinstatement process, adoption agencies actively discouraged adoptive parents from maintaining Korean citizenship for their children while naturalizing them in their new countries.
GOA’L, as the organization is commonly known among adoptees, successfully lobbied South Korea to enact a 2011 law allowing adoptees born here to reinstate their citizenship without losing their adopted nationality. The law, GOA’L says, gives adoptees “the choice to restore their Korean citizenship as a basic right of the individual.” Before the law went into effect, adoptees who had reinstated or somehow maintained their citizenship had to choose by the age of 20 or 22, depending on gender, which citizenship they wanted to keep. For me, that would have felt like choosing which life to accept: the one I had been destined to live or the one that was created for me when I was brought abroad.
Regaining my Korean citizenship is not without its downsides. I lose tax perks for expatriates, can’t cash out my pension when leaving Korea as most foreigners are able to and cannot visit the English-speaking international clinic with public insurance, as I could before. I’ll need to do annual military readiness training, though I’m exempt from the nearly two years of service that other Korean men are obligated to perform. (When I tell people I reinstated my Korean citizenship, their first reaction is usually a gasp as they ask whether I knew about the military service requirement. I am exempt because I was adopted; I interpret the exception as a sort of mea culpa from the Korean government, which has moved in recent years to lessen the number of children it allows to be adopted outside its borders.)
Every international adoptee’s story and relationship with their native country are different. In my adult life, my relationship with Korea had come in the form of occasional trips to Korean restaurants and to H Mart for Korean snacks. It was a relationship of novelty and of convenience, not an innately held part of me.
Reinstating my citizenship was, in a way, an effort to force a permanent relationship between myself and Korea. I wanted to formally declare myself a person of the country, to carry its passport as a badge of honor and an escape hatch, should the need for one arise as political fires and actual blazes threaten to burn down my adopted country.
But I also wanted to revive my identity in Korea. Before I returned in July 2021, the last record of me was as an infant, with no information about who I had become since then. Now that child is an adult, a working journalist with a Korean bank account and an apartment in Seoul.
Being able to produce at any moment a Korean identification card or passport — or simply retort that I am a Korean citizen to anyone who doubts it — may seem like a small thing, but it feels like a powerful shield, a reminder that had my life not changed drastically at the age of 9 months, I could have been one of them. But perhaps I don’t need a reason to have reclaimed it. Perhaps rather than fawning over my fast pass to citizenship, I should be questioning why I had to come here to ask for it back in the first place.
A few weeks after receiving my citizenship, I went to the local community center to apply for my Korean identification card. The receptionist, speaking to my colleague who came along to translate, said foreigners needed to go to immigration for an ID card. My co-worker reassured her that I was Korean, just adopted.
As a government worker collected my fingerprints and my photograph, I considered how strange it must be for him to go through this process for someone who couldn’t answer the most basic questions in his language.
I was the first adoptee whose ID card application he had processed, he said. When we asked how he felt about the experience, he said he at first went about the task mindlessly, but the sight of my empty family registry gave him pause — an orphan registry, as most registries are filled with generations of family members. The barren document was a reminder of how I had left the country under unfortunate circumstances, he said, adding that he was glad I made my way back and that he wished me a prosperous life in Korea if I chose to stay.
Asian Americans’ uneasy place in the national narrative
But as an openly gay man, I likely won’t. Korea is a country whose homophobia threatens to drag down its hopes that Seoul will become a leading global, modern city. “Sexual minorities” are not widely accepted, with 54 percent of Koreans surveyed by the Korea Institute of Public Administration saying they would not want a friendly or romantic relationship with a sexual minority.
I am also doubtful that I will be able to conquer the challenge of being Korean while struggling every step of the way to feel like one. Jane Jeong Trenka, an adoptee who repatriated and has written about her experience in memoirs, put it best when she wrote: “In a country where ‘American’ is used synonymously with ‘white,’ my inability to speak fluent Korean combined with my inability to be white is a deformity. I am a sort of monster, a mix of the familiar with the terribly unexpected, like a fish with a human face or a chicken that barks.”
I look ambiguously Asian, prompting daily questions from Korean shopkeepers and restaurant owners about where I am from. Answering in accented Korean that I was born in Korea forces a puzzled face; explaining that I was adopted conjures a pitiful one. I often wish I could go about my life here — enjoying the country’s food, spunky people and four starkly different seasons — without a daily recollection of the complexities of my identity or the trauma from which my life began.
Of course, I am grateful for the privileges that my adoption has afforded me: a loving family, a wonderful childhood, an American education and native English proficiency, albeit with a slight Midwestern accent. But those perks don’t undo the original sin of my bifurcated life.
Neither does reinstating my Korean citizenship. It is, however, a first step in regaining one aspect of my Korean life that wasn’t, but could still be. | 2022-06-03T10:43:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why I reclaimed my South Korean citizenship after losing it as a baby - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/citizenship-south-korea-adoption-goal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/citizenship-south-korea-adoption-goal/ |
I didn’t get esports. Then I went to a tournament with my son.
I was used to thinking of sports purely in terms of physical exertion. Watching esports players do their thing taught me otherwise.
Perspective by Amy Fusselman
Amy Fusselman is the author of the forthcoming comic novel, "The Means."
Fans react during an esports event. (Johnny Milano for The Washington Post)
For as long as I have been alive, spectator sports have worked like this: You go to Ye Olde Stadium, you sit down in your seat, and you watch the human players below as they vigorously move their major muscle groups. I’ve never questioned this structure, which is, I now realize, an indication of how old I am. Now, here is a good question that could only be asked by a person who hasn’t been on the planet long: How great would soccer be if the players were instead … flying cars?
I found the answer to this question at the recent Rocket League Championship Series at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. Rocket League, if you don’t already know it, is a computer game where flying cars play soccer. When you go to a Rocket League game in person, here is what you see: Six human players — two teams of three players each — sitting onstage at giant computers. Overhead are three huge screens where the players appear as their flying-car selves. The relationship between player and car is a bit like a shadow puppeteer to puppet. The puppeteer is in plain view, but disappears into the action.
Everything parents need to know about esports
This event, which I attended with my teenage son (at his urging), inspired me to reexamine many of my basic assumptions about sports. Notions I thought were foundational — what an athlete is, for instance — were suddenly called into question. But in a world where flying cars play soccer, suddenly anything is possible.
One of the pleasures of Rocket League is the way it leans into the improbable. Over the span of a day, as I sat in my cushy seat at the YouTube Theater, I watched Rocket League games played in a variety of funky settings: a post-apocalyptic stadium made of a rusted metal (“Wasteland”); a glitzy stadium set in a Tokyo nightscape (“Neo Tokyo”); and a spare stadium set against desert rocks seemingly colored by George O’Keeffe (“Deadeye Canyon”). I asked my son, a fan, what other stadiums we might see. “Maybe they’ll bust out the farm,” he replied. The farm stadium? I looked it up: “Farmstead” is a stadium set in a bucolic field, with views of a giant oak tree and a tire swing. This setting is all the more joyfully bonkers when you know what a Rocket League game sounds like: giant robots brawling in a parking lot full of revving Lamborghinis.
Rocket League players choose their own monikers, customize their own cars and can control details like what happens when they make a goal. When a player named retals (the given name of Slater Thomas, spelled backward) scored, the net exploded with flowers and butterflies. When Joyo (real name, Joe Young) shot a goal, there was an eruption of pink icicles that matched his dyed-pink hair. When asked why, his answer was refreshingly devoid of any of the common, hypermasculine posturing. “I like the color pink,” he said simply.
Players wear noise-canceling headsets so they can talk to their teammates — communication is a crucial part of the game — and reduce the sound of the crowd. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, there hadn’t been a live Rocket League event in two years and the audience was particularly animated. “You don’t hear the audience, you feel the audience,” retals said to a journalist, after his team, Spacestation Gaming, earned a win.
If one of the reasons we go to see sports is to admire human physical prowess as it involves the aforementioned major muscle groups, Rocket League dashes that expectation. Instead of bodies pirouetting around each other in real space, the game’s flying cars can crash into, and destroy, each other, only to resurrect unscathed moments later. This is called “physical play.”
The pro players who qualified for this event have logged thousands of hours of practice. Among their skills are verbal communication, hand-eye coordination, and a fine-tuned mastery of the gaming controller. And of course, they also boast the mental qualities that all competitive athletes share: commitment, focus, and, for lack of a better term, drive.
The surprising physical toll of professional esports
The professional Rocket League players at this championship were mostly younger than age 22, with some only 15 or 16. The young-skewing audience was largely made up of their peers. Surrounded by young people, I found myself trying to view these questions through their eyes: What does it mean to play together? What does it mean to be on a team? What does a “real athlete” look like?
It’s been widely reported that there is a juggernaut of money and effort being invested in making sure that football, basketball and baseball fandom is passed down to young consumers. We’ll see how that goes. What I do know is that by the end of the weekend, I stopped assuming I knew the answers to any of the questions I’d asked myself as I watched. As a former athlete myself, as well as the author of a book of nonfiction that is essentially a love letter to physical space, this was a shift. But there was no denying that what I was experiencing in the YouTube theater stands: the vibrant energy of fandom. If I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of these games, the delighted audience had no such qualms. They looked at the flying cars and were ecstatic at what they saw there: themselves. | 2022-06-03T10:43:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What I learned when I went to the Rocket League Championship series with my sone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/esports-parenting-rocket-league-championship-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/esports-parenting-rocket-league-championship-series/ |
Gun-rights activists remade the Second Amendment over past 40 years
How they turned a legal consensus on its head through politics
Perspective by Duncan Hosie
Duncan Hosie is a writer and civil rights lawyer. A graduate of Yale Law School, he previously was a Marshall scholar at the University of Oxford, where he received a master's degree in history.
The silhouette of an AR-15-style rifle on signage for a gun store in Yuma, Ariz., on June 2. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
The Second Amendment looms large in the grim ritual that follows mass shootings like the massacre at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex. Conservatives cite the amendment to justify their opposition to any new form of gun control — positing that unfettered gun rights are a fundamental freedom. Liberals decry the amendment as a dangerous relic; some even call for its repeal. Advocates of gun control like Beto O’Rourke argue the Founders never could have envisioned people having the high-powered weapons available in 2022.
This constitutional divide paralyzes legislative debate, stymying change to lax gun laws and the ensuing stasis enables more gun-fueled massacres. As President Biden put it Thursday night, “How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we say enough?”
Yet while the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, its role as an impediment to gun control is a modern creation. In the late 20th century, gun rights activists forged a new understanding of the amendment through politics. Exploring their constitutional coup provides a blueprint for those who aim to supplant it in the name of reducing America’s epidemic of gun violence.
For most of American history, the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right to bear arms. As a natural reading of its text would suggest, it was understood to safeguard the rights of “free state[s]” to maintain “well-regulated militia[s].” During the ratification of the Constitution, drafters worried the emerging document could eradicate state militias and create a standing army that threatened state sovereignty. The Second Amendment aimed to prevent that.
In 1939, the Supreme Court unanimously endorsed this militia-based understanding of the amendment. Three years later, a federal appellate court noted that it was “abundantly clear” that the Second Amendment “was not adopted with individual rights in mind, but as a protection for the States in the maintenance of their militia organizations against possible encroachments by the federal power.” This legal consensus over the Constitution’s meaning held for another three decades.
But the political consensus underpinning it started to unravel in the tumult of the late 1960s. Protests, riots and rising crime led many Americans to buy guns for personal protection. Among them were White Americans dismayed by civil rights activism. Members of gun groups like the National Rifle Association demanded their organizations focus more on politics instead of marksmanship and recreation, the domains that primarily defined the NRA’s earlier years.
These calls intensified after Congress responded to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Gun Control Act in 1968. The new law banned gun sales to people with mental illnesses and felony convictions, gun sales via mail order and the importation of foreign-made surplus firearms, among other provisions.
This push led to changes in many of the gun groups — especially the NRA — as existing leaders either relinquished their posts or were deposed by hard-liners. Accordingly, the groups became more militant, adopting new priorities, tactics and rhetoric. Beginning in the 1970s, the NRA’s brass rallied behind the idea that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right, an idea that came from members agitating for the organization to take a different posture. This constitutional conviction became a shibboleth and a lodestar — even as it remained outside the legal mainstream.
While courts remained unreceptive to this argument, the gun lobby and its supporters built a political infrastructure to advance it. The NRA set up a lobbying operation in 1975 and a political action committee in 1977, capitalizing on changes to campaign finance law and new direct mail fundraising tactics developed by the New Right. It also expanded — and in many cases, established — political machines in all 50 states.
These well-resourced affiliates pushed for state constitutions to be construed as recognizing individual gun rights, which would legitimate later arguments that the Second Amendment did as well. This federalist approach allowed the NRA to go on the offensive in supportive jurisdictions even when facing head winds elsewhere.
Shrewd right-wing politicians, including Ronald Reagan, saw the promise of the emerging gun-rights movement. As governor of California, Reagan signed gun-control bills into law, but by 1975, when he prepared to challenge President Gerald Ford from the right, his stance had shifted. The Second Amendment “ought to be interpreted” to protect the “individual citizen” and “appears to leave little if any leeway for the gun control advocate,” Reagan declared during the 1976 Republican primary. In 1980, he became the first presidential candidate the NRA would endorse.
As president, Reagan cemented a symbiotic relationship between the gun lobby and the GOP. He selected federal judges committed to implementing the gun lobby’s constitutional vision, like Justice Antonin Scalia, and staffed his administration with gun rights supporters including Stephen Markman, who led the Office of Legal Policy for four years. Reagan’s Justice Department, particularly under Attorney General Edwin Meese from 1985 to 1988, championed an “originalist” theory of constitutional interpretation that gave binding force to pro-gun views. The gun lobby, in turn, provided money and foot soldiers for Reagan’s political efforts.
The NRA knew the importance of how ordinary Americans and the legal system understood the Second Amendment. Along with its growing number of allies, the organization wrote an individual rights interpretation into Republican platforms, congressional reports and campaign pamphlets. It also subsidized and promoted conservative intellectuals who championed this revisionist reading of the Second Amendment, as did well-heeled conservative benefactors like the Olin, Scaife and Coors families.
According to historian Carl Bogus, a majority of the new articles published from 1970 to 1989 that supported an individual-right reading of the Second Amendment “were written by lawyers who had been directly employed by or represented the NRA or other gun rights organizations, although they did not always so identify themselves.” These academics built a repository from which conservative judges would draw and moved the Overton Window of respectable debate on guns and the Constitution.
This revolution prevailed in politics before law.
In 1988, Judge John Gibson, a staunchly conservative federal appellate judge, rejected a litigant’s claim that Second Amendment protected “individual rights” by observing that “for at least 100 years” courts “have analyzed the Second Amendment purely in terms of protecting state militias.” And in 1991, retired Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative, famously called the gun lobby’s reading of the Second Amendment “the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen.”
Yet the view of these “special interest groups” ultimately triumphed in law, thanks to continued ideological vetting of judicial nominees by Republican presidents and the Federalist Society, a network for conservative lawyers. After the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which five Republican appointees joined an opinion that reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion, the conservative legal movement began to insist on greater ideological screening of nominees. They demanded that there be “no more Souters,” a derisive reference to Justice David Souter, a George H.W. Bush appointee who drifted left on the Court.
In 2001, a Reagan appointee to a federal appellate court recognized an individual’s right to bear arms, citing the reams of scholarship subsidized and promoted by the NRA as justification. Five Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion in the watershed 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which marked the first time the Supreme Court invalidated a gun-control law. In the coming weeks, the court — lurched further to the right by Donald Trump’s three appointees — is poised to go even further.
Legal experts expect it to strike down a New York law that restricts carrying guns outside the home as a violation of the Second Amendment.
This history reminds us that the Constitution does not require America to have anomalous and extreme gun laws. As the new breed of conservative judges reads the Second Amendment to strike down firearm regulations, gun-control proponents can adopt the playbook that has worked so well for their opposition. Motivated citizens and organizations committed to playing a long game can remake constitutional interpretation. Everything from state-level laws to scholarship and new judicial appointments can catalyze change.
In the wake of the mass shootings in Uvalde, Tex., Buffalo and now Tulsa, Republicans have turned to the Second Amendment to defend their opposition to expanded background checks and restrictions on the most dangerous weapons. In reality, they are talking about an interpretation of the amendment — one that dates back not to the Founders in 1791, but to the gun lobby in the relatively recent past. But these conservatives don’t have a monopoly on interpreting the amendment. That power is reserved to the American people. | 2022-06-03T10:43:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gun-rights activists remade the Second Amendment over past 40 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/gun-rights-activists-remade-2nd-amendment-over-last-40-years/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/gun-rights-activists-remade-2nd-amendment-over-last-40-years/ |
In the past, Americans confronted gun violence by taking action
Legislators experimented with new laws until they solved the problem
Perspective by Brennan Gardner Rivas
Brennan Gardner Rivas is currently a Lecturer in history at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) speaks during a House Judiciary Committee markup hearing on gun legislation on Thursday. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
We’re not the first generation of Americans to confront a troubling and heartbreaking epidemic of gun violence. What is new today, though, is the rise of hopelessness and inaction that disempowers 21st-century Americans in ways that previous generations would neither recognize nor tolerate.
The national post-mass shooting ritual of arguing about gun-control measures is underway after massacres in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tex., and Tulsa. As usual, many Republicans are emphasizing that policies supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans, like universal background checks, would be ineffective or constitute a gross violation of Americans’ Second Amendment rights. When cajoled into going further, they blame mental health problems or something else rather than gun policy.
This naysaying attitude is a far cry from what politicians in previous eras said about reducing gun violence. At no time was this clearer than during the half-century after the Civil War — a period of tremendous change in American social, cultural, economic and political life.
The new and deadly firearms of that era were six-shooter pistols. By the 1880s, dozens of gunmakers offered revolvers of varied sizes, caliber and quality. Some cut corners to produce pistols that were inexpensive and easily distributed across the country. The results spoke for themselves as Americans witnessed petty disagreements turn into the tragic loss and ruination of lives.
But policymakers’ response wasn’t cynicism and naysaying. Instead, they experimented with new ways of stopping the bloodshed and restoring peace to American streets.
Invented by Samuel Colt in the 1830s, revolvers did not become widely available until the era of the Civil War. Colt’s patent expired in 1857, opening the market to such competing companies as Smith & Wesson, which were eager to capitalize on the popularity of these new weapons. Government contracts put pistols in the hands of thousands of soldiers, encouraging arms manufacturers to create the infrastructure for the mass production of the weapons.
Companies proliferated, flooding the market, dropping prices and putting pistols in the hands of millions of Americans. The result was the country’s first experience with rampant gun violence.
Alarmed lawmakers moved to curb this violence. Their first instinct was to ban the carrying of such small, concealable weapons as pistols and daggers. These public carry laws predated the Civil War, but they multiplied exponentially between 1870 and 1900. Still, many Americans were unsatisfied with limiting their gun-control efforts to these kinds of regulations. Policymakers thought long and hard about new strategies that would do even more to protect the public.
Some states, such as Arkansas and Tennessee, prohibited the sale of certain kinds of pistols within their borders. Other states, including Georgia, imposed occupation taxes on dealers in pistols and pistol cartridges. Punitive taxes like these were less about raising revenue than they were about discouraging the sales of pistols — an indirect form of regulation akin to taxes on tobacco products today. Texas experimented with a sales tax of 50 percent on all pistol purchases to make guns more expensive and reduce sales.
When some of these laws proved less effective than their supporters hoped, legislators didn’t throw up their hands. Instead, they tried something new. For instance, when dealers found a workaround to avoid the Texas tax, lawmakers moved to turn the existing crime of publicly carrying a pistol into a felony offense that put violators in the state’s penitentiary for a year or more. The governor vetoed the bill but appeased the restriction-minded majority by supporting the creation of a new crime category called “assault with a prohibited weapon” — a felony carrying serious penalties.
One of the most successful and popular strategies outlined in the late 1800s came out of California and involved issuing pistol permits only to those who could show a pressing need to carry such a weapon in public. Municipal governments from the capital, Sacramento, to the small coastal town of Eureka gave police the power to “grant written permission to any peaceable person, whose profession or occupation may require him to be out at late hours of the night, to carry concealed deadly weapons for his own protection.” Without such a need and the resulting permit, one could not carry a pistol in public.
The strategy gained ground quickly, reaching New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia by 1910, New York in 1911 and became a statewide policy in California in 1917. Over the ensuing century, many cities and states embraced discretionary handgun licensing, making it one of the most common approaches to gun control.
Many of these new regulatory strategies faced constitutional challenges. Repeatedly, however, the courts upheld them. When Arkansas and Tennessee tried to ban the sale and possession of all pistols within their borders, judges objected. But lawmakers responded by rewriting the policies with the necessary changes to pass constitutional muster. A trade association for gun dealers filed suit against the hefty sales tax in Texas. But an appellate court upheld it as a reasonable exercise of the state’s police power because the “business so taxed can be classed as harmful to the welfare of society.”
The “good cause” laws permitting schemes pioneered in late-19th-century California have withstood numerous constitutional challenges over more than a century — though their future is in doubt now that a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court is revisiting the issue, with a ruling expected in June.
The national mood of seeking out creative solutions to the growing gun problem enabled states to swiftly ban fully automatic weapons when they began to hit consumer markets in the early 20th century. Widespread support for automatic weapons bans and other reasonable gun regulations ultimately encouraged Congress to start setting certain national standards for the manufacture, sale and distribution of firearms in the 1930s.
Critics who considered these efforts a waste of time did not get to dominate the public square because a much more vocal majority created an atmosphere in which doing nothing simply wasn’t an option — and politicians knew it.
This story about America’s first brush with unbridled gun violence reveals that attitude matters. Not every solution worked. But legislators from across the political spectrum didn’t throw up their hands when something failed. Instead, they adopted new strategies and policies — all aimed at reducing bloodshed and saving precious lives. Their open-mindedness allowed for experimentation with policies that they could amend or refine to be more effective as technology and public sentiment changed over time.
This attitude provides lessons for today. Surrendering to the circumstances or blaming something other than gun policy for mass shootings or broader violence is a guaranteed way not to solve the problem. Republican claims that gun control is new or offensive to our heritage also are false. Americans in the past were deeply committed to regulating firearms in the name of public safety. The history of such efforts shows that experimentation — adopting reasonable regulations, adjusting as we see how they work and not despairing when new obstacles emerge — is a proven strategy for combating gun violence, one that has worked before and can work again. | 2022-06-03T10:43:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In the past, Americans confronted gun violence by taking action - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/past-americans-confronted-gun-violence-by-taking-action/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/past-americans-confronted-gun-violence-by-taking-action/ |
This photographer spent years documenting the everyday poetry of Paris
From "Belleville," published by Stanley/Barker. (Thomas Boivin)
Can photographs swoon? I mean, they aren’t people, although they can be of people. Hmm. I think they can. The photographs in Thomas Boivin’s book “Belleville” (Stanley/Barker, 2022), a lyrical examination of his Paris neighborhood, seem to back me up on this.
It seems a necessary luxury right now to get lost in something for no other reason than it brings you pleasure and joy. The infinite loop of dismal headlines has created a collective depression that needs to be burst through every now and then for a small respite. “Belleville” comes along at the perfect time.
Boivin presents us with a collection of photographs imbued with a subtle beauty. I’ve visited Paris only once, but it was such a great experience. No doubt I was searching for the vision I had constructed from my youthful readings of Camus and Sartre and my encounters with films like “Amélie” and, my favorite, “The 400 Blows.”
I know that’s not a real understanding of Paris. It’s a fantasy made up of surface impressions. And I think it’s just fine. One of my favorite quotes, paraphrased, comes from French photographer Lise Sarfati. She has talked about how her process of building stories and projects is one of creating her own universe that she can inhabit. I love that. And I think that’s precisely what Boivin has done in “Belleville.”
Boivin spent more than a decade wandering through his neighborhood, camera in hand, pausing here and there to record a delicate, gauzy landscape, or a shabby-chic storefront, or the pensive look of a black-clad woman, hair piled lazily atop her head, who, rewind a few decades, wouldn’t be out of place in one of Brassai’s depictions of this romantic city.
We all bring our own baggage to the things we see, and that colors our interpretations. Sometimes the interpretation is accurate; sometimes it flares out wildly and may be relevant only to the viewer. “Belleville” is the kind of book that lends itself to a multiplicity of readings, like a novel, a short story or, yes, a film.
Boivin acknowledges that the photographs don’t necessarily correspond to an “accurate” portrayal of Paris:
“I started to photograph its streets and people as soon as I moved there, and kept photographing for years. Photographing people, above all, was what I found meaningful. Although the photographs hardly depict the city, I find they convey the sensation that I had, walking the streets of Belleville: A mixture of beauty and decay, of joyful moments and sadness, the warm feeling of light and the bitter sweet sensation that one can experience walking around all day, searching for a stranger’s eyes.”
Now is as good a time as ever to retreat into a journey of sensations that can transport us. Sit back, relax and get lost in the universe that Boivin conjures in “Belleville.” It’s worth it.
You can see more of Boivin’s work on his website, here. And you can find out more about the book, and buy it, here. | 2022-06-03T10:44:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of Belleville Paris - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/06/03/this-photographer-spent-years-documenting-everyday-poetry-paris/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/06/03/this-photographer-spent-years-documenting-everyday-poetry-paris/ |
How do North and South Americans view the U.S.?
Leaders are gathering for the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles
Analysis by Dinorah Azpuru
President Biden meets with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the White House last year. (Susan Walsh/AP)
The ninth Summit of the Americas will be held in Los Angeles from June 6-10. The summit brings together the heads of government for North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean: Canada, the United States, 19 Latin American countries and 14 Caribbean countries. This is the second time the United States will host the summit, after organizing the original meeting in Miami in 1994; since then, the summit has been held in countries throughout the Americas. This year’s agenda is ambitious; parallel to the presidents’ meetings, business leaders and civil society organizations will hold talks as well.
There have been diplomatic controversies over which leaders will and will not attend the summit. As of this writing, most of the invited heads of government have confirmed their attendance, but some are still pending. While the news media are watching the heads of government, what do ordinary Latin Americans think about the United States and other powers vying for world leadership?
Who will attend the summit?
At the last meeting in Peru in 2018, the invitation list became a source of conflict when Peru did not invite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Several countries’ governments, including the United States, had instead recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader. Controversy continues this year, as the United States has refused to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, arguing that those countries’ presidents were not freely elected and violate human rights. (In fact, all the organizations that assess measures of democracy deem the three countries authoritarian.)
However, some left-leaning leaders, particularly Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Bolivian President Luis Arce, said they would not attend unless all heads of government in the Americas were invited. The presidents of Argentina, Chile and Honduras, among others, joined the call to make the summit all-inclusive. With the U.S. government risking embarrassment, the Biden administration launched last-minute diplomatic efforts to persuade presidents to attend. For different reasons, Brazil’s president had hinted that he would not attend but finally confirmed that he will.
China and Russia have welcomed these snubs to the United States. In recent years, both countries have been making inroads in a region long considered to be within the U.S. sphere of influence. Some analysts suggest that the United States has not paid enough attention to the region, despite its importance in migration, trade, the environment and political support.
Learn more at TMC's Latin America topic guide
How do people in the Americas feel about the United States?
My previous research using survey data showed that, 10 years ago, many citizens throughout the Americas felt that U.S. influence in the region was dwindling. At that time, citizens on the left of the political spectrum had lower levels of trust in the United States, while those on the right had a better opinion about U.S. influence exerted on their countries.
What about now? The AmericasBarometer, hosted at Vanderbilt University, has asked the following question since 2012: “The government of the United States. In your opinion, is it very trustworthy, somewhat trustworthy, not very trustworthy, or not at all trustworthy?” The figure below shows the trend in responses since 2012. As you can see, the average trust in the United States in early 2021 was 53 points, barely above the midpoint. Trust in the U.S. government has been declining since 2014, plummeting in 2018; it recovered slightly by 2021, shortly after President Biden’s inauguration.
The figure below shows results by country and includes late 2020 data from another regional survey, the Latinobarometer, which asked respondents their opinion of the United States more generally: very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable. As the figure shows, citizens of most countries generally thought well of the United States, or at least more than halfway on a 100-point scale — with the exceptions of citizens in Bolivia and Uruguay.
However, Latin Americans do not have a particularly high opinion of the United States, except in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, where opinion hovered in the 70-point range. In eight countries — Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Bolivia — opinion of the United States was below 60 points. These same countries show the lowest levels of trust in the U.S. government.
Is the U.S. really losing ground to China in the Americas?
For the United States, one of the purposes of the summit is to improve relations with the rest of the Americas. However, the rough road to the summit revealed that many challenges remain. China has used the summit’s invitation controversy to decry the U.S. role in the region. Meanwhile, China has made advances in trade and investment in the Americas, surpassing the United States in some countries.
However, citizens of the Americas don’t have much trust in the government of China. According to the AmericasBarometer 2021 data, trust in the Chinese government is much lower than trust in the U.S. government: average trust in China in the region is 41 points, which is noticeably lower than the 53 points for the United States. In most individual countries, trust in China rates below 50 points. Even in countries like Bolivia, where trust in the U.S. government is very low, trust in China is even lower.
The Summit of the Americas can be an opportunity to reconnect the United States with geographically close countries. The Biden administration has set an ambitious agenda that touches upon several of the issues that citizens care about, including economic investment to create jobs in a region hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Further statistical analysis of the data shows that trust in the U.S. government — and opinion of the United States in general — is higher among citizens of the Americas who support democracy and among those who don’t see a lot of corruption in their home countries. Continuing U.S. efforts to strengthen democracy and fight corruption in the Americas may increase Latin Americans’ trust in the United States in the long run.
Dinorah Azpuru is a professor of political science at Wichita State University in Kansas and a research affiliate at the AmericasBarometer at Vanderbilt University. | 2022-06-03T10:44:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Which leaders are boycotting the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/americasbarometer-latin-america-opinion-summit-trust/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/americasbarometer-latin-america-opinion-summit-trust/ |
Biden calls for action on assault weapons. He probably won't get what he wants.
Good morning, Early Birds. Happy birthday to Rafael Nadal, who faces off against Alexander Zverev at Roland Garros today. Tips: earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us.
In today’s edition … Theo talks to Sen. Chris Murphy on why he thinks this time may be different when it comes to a congressional response to mass shootings … President Biden later this month will travel to Saudi Arabia, a country he once vowed to make a ‘pariah,’ amid worries over gas prices … The Jan. 6 committee next week will begin a series of high profile public hearings and is promising to reveal new details about “the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election” … but first …
Biden challenges Congress to act on guns, but is unlikely to get what he's demanding
President Biden called on Congress to pass a range of measures to prevent future mass shootings in a rare, emotional prime-time address to the nation on Thursday evening in which he invoked recent shooting in New York, Texas and Oklahoma.
Biden urged lawmakers to ban assault weapons — or at least raise the age to buy them to 21 — and high-capacity magazines, as well as other measures such as expanding background checks, as our colleagues Tyler Pager, Seung Min Kim and Mike DeBonis report. There is little indication any bill addressing assault weapons could pass the Senate due to Republican opposition.
“After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done,” Biden said. “This time, that can’t be true. This time we must actually do something.”
Biden spoke as the House Judiciary Committee was voting on Thursday night on party lines to approve a package of gun bills that includes many of the measures Biden called for. The House is expected to take up the package when lawmakers return next week as well as a bill by Reps. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) and Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) to incentivize states to strengthen their red flag laws and implement a federal red flag laws.
A bipartisan group of senators, meanwhile, is working to eke out agreement on a much more limited set of proposals …
Sen. Chris Murphy on why ‘a really emotional moment for the country’ could lead a deal on gun legislation
Seven questions for … Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.): We spoke with the lead Senate Democrat working on a bipartisan gun compromise about where the negotiations stand. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
The Early: You told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday that your bar in these negotiations is passing a law that would save lives. What’s the minimum bill you would accept?
Murphy: I'm not going to broadcast my bottom line to the press. [But] I know there are some on my side who are worried that we will do something that might look good on paper but actually won’t significantly decrease the chances that the wrong people get their hands on weapons. I just want to assure my friends that while I'm willing to compromise, I'm not willing to do something that isn't going to be impactful.
The Early: What would you like to see on mental health in a potential bill?
Murphy: So we're engaged in a conversation right now about what investments in mental health would help us get the biggest number of votes possible in the Senate. There's a number that's too low, that wouldn't be significant enough for many colleagues who want to see a big mental health title. There's also a number that's too big, that would cause some conservatives to balk. We're trying to find that right amount — and also trying to find a way to concentrate resources on the populations that tend to be most likely to cause violence to themselves or to others. It does tend to be younger people, particularly younger men, who end up pulling the trigger. So I think there's some interest in concentrating resources in the populations that tend to be most at-risk of resorting to gun violence.
The Early: When it comes to background checks, you told the New York Times after Buffalo — but before Uvalde — “Manchin-Toomey doesn’t have 60 votes. I spent much of the last two years trying to find a piece of Manchin-Toomey that could get 60 votes. Ultimately, we couldn’t find a landing place.” What, if anything, has changed?
Murphy: I think the conscience of the nation has been moved by Uvalde, and that has compelled my colleagues to come to the table. A universal background checks bill still doesn't have 60 votes in the Senate. I wish that weren't true, but it is. So we're trying to find some common grounds on an expansion of background checks or provisions to cut down on the abuse of our background check system. I can't tell you that we’ve found the sweet spot yet but we're working very hard.
The Early: Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Angus King (I-Maine) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced a bill last year that would incentivize states to pass red flag laws. Is that the basis of any of the discussions you're having on red flag laws? Are you looking at the bills that Reps. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) and Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) have introduced?
Murphy: I personally don't think it would be terribly constructive to have a federal system of red flag laws. I think this is much better off done at the state level. I think there's some broad interest in helping states develop those laws.
The Early: You said earlier that you hope to have concepts to be able to present to your colleagues as soon as next week. Do you have any sense of what that’s likely to look like? Is that going to be a one-page framework, or something closer to actual legislative text?
Murphy: I don't know yet.
The Early: House Democrats marked up their own gun package on Thursday. Are there elements of that package that you think could gain traction in the Senate such as safe gun storage legislation?
Murphy: There has been bipartisan interest in the Senate on the issue of gun storage. Sens. [Bill] Cassidy [(R-La.)] and [Tina] Smith [(D-Minn.)] have a bill on gun storage. Sens. [Richard] Blumenthal [(D-Conn.)] and [Susan] Collins [(R-Maine)] have a bill on gun storage. That's certainly a possibility for bipartisanship in the Senate.
The Early: What do you think the odds are at the moment that the Senate will be able to pass some sort of gun bill in the coming weeks?
Murphy: This is a really emotional moment for the country. I think this time the country is not going to accept nothing as the answer. People had hoped and prayed that something like Sandy Hook would never happen again, and it has. I've failed a lot in these negotiations. But these talks feel different, because I think members on both sides realize that there's a real risk to the legitimacy of government if we don't act. All I know is that there are signs all around me that this moment is different. Whether that results in the logjam being broken, I don't know. But there are more signs that this could be the moment than at any other time in the last 10 years.
More Democrats back assault weapons ban
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged on Thursday in a “Dear Colleague” letter to hold a hearing on a bill to ban assault weapons. But Pelosi didn't promise to put it up for a vote on before the full House and it wasn't included in the package of gun measures that the House Judiciary Committee approved on Thursday night because, as we reported on Thursday, it doesn't yet have the votes.
We’ve polled the members who aren't among the more than 200 Democratic co-sponsors of the bill and some members said that while they are not co-sponsors, they would vote for it.
Aides to two of the 16 House Democrats who haven't signed on as co-sponsors — Reps. Cheri Bustos (Ill.) and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (Fla.) — told The Early on Thursday that they would do so.
A spokesman for another Democrat who isn't a co-sponsor, Rep. Josh Harder (Calif.), said he supports the bill. Two others, Reps. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), indicated earlier this week that they'd vote for the bill if it came to the floor.
And a spokesman for Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), another Democrat who isn't a co-sponsor, told The Early that “she would be open to voting for it if it came to the floor.”
Pelosi is likely to bring the bill up ONLY if it would pass.
Coming soon to prime time: The Jan. 6 committee
The House Jan. 6 committee select committee will hold it's first public hearing on June 9 at 8 p.m.
It "will include ‘previously unseen material documenting January 6th’ as well as witness testimony and a preview of additional hearings, and it will provide the American people a summary of its findings about the ‘coordinated, multistep effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,’ according to an advisement. Additional details regarding witnesses will be announced next week,” per our colleague Jacqueline Alemany.
“One of the key questions the January 6 House committee is expected to raise in its June hearings is why Trump failed to publicly condemn the attack for hours, and whether that failure is proof of ‘dereliction of duty’ and evidence that Trump tried to obstruct Congress’ certification of the election,” CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart report.
Several Trumpworld figures, including Fox personalities and his own son, texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging Trump to denounce the violence, per CNN. “Even those closest to the former president believed he had the power to stop the violence in real time.”
“He’s got to condem (sic) this shit. Asap,” Donald Trump Jr. sent at 2:53 p.m.
“TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!” former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said at 3:09 p.m.
“POTUS should go on air and defuse this. Extremely important,” former Trump HHS secretary Tom Price messaged at 3:13 p.m.
“Fix this now,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) texted at 3:15 p.m.
Biden to head to Saudi Arabia
Pariah? “Biden is planning to visit Saudi Arabia later this month, a remarkable departure from his vow as a presidential candidate to treat the country as a ‘pariah’ state,” three administration officials told our colleagues Tyler Pager and John Hudson. “The president’s trip to Riyadh follows broader efforts by his administration to build ties with the oil-rich nation to reduce the price of gas in the United States, which has skyrocketed in recent months.”
“Biden’s trip is likely to raise fresh doubts of the Biden administration’s promise to keep human rights at the center of its foreign policy, given Saudi Arabia’s history of abuses, particularly toward women.”
Following the news of Biden’s trip, the wife of murdered Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi requested a meeting with Biden, urging him to “demand the release of political prisoners before he travels to Saudi Arabia,” per a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner’s Katherine Doyle.
In Los Angeles, public anger drives an identity-focused mayor’s race. By The Post’s Scott Wilson (pub. 5 a.m.).
Beto O’Rourke focuses on guns after Uvalde, but faces familiar hurdles. By The Post’s Annie Linskey.
Beijing chafes at Moscow’s requests for support, Chinese officials say. By The Post’s Cate Cadell and Ellen Nakashima.
How women’s lives were different before Roe v. Wade. By The Post’s Youjin Shin, Rachel Siegel and Ted Mellnik.
Fetterman's health, return to campaign trail a mystery as some Democrats grow 'very nervous' about Pa. Senate race. By NBC News' Sahil Kapur, Jonathan Allen and Henry J. Gomez
Pennsylvania court orders counting of undated mail ballots in win for McCormick in his GOP Senate race against Oz. By the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jeremy Roebuck and Jonathan Lai.
Casinos pled poverty to get a huge tax break. Atlantic City is paying the price. By ProPublica’s Alison Burdo.
Which one are you today? We're number 3 … TGIF 🥳
All my moods demonstrated by Prince Louis: pic.twitter.com/ITpGHEdWLw
— Roswell Encina (@roswellencina) June 3, 2022 | 2022-06-03T10:44:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden calls for action on assault weapons. He probably won't get what he wants. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/biden-calls-action-assault-weapons-he-probably-wont-get-what-he-wants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/biden-calls-action-assault-weapons-he-probably-wont-get-what-he-wants/ |
Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), then the House minority whip, delivers remarks on the GOP's so-called Contract With America in Washington on Sept. 27, 1994. (John Duricka/AP)
Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Democrats should offer a straightforward, comprehensive agenda and commit to passing it if they keep control of Congress (or, in the case of the Senate, gain true control). Such an agenda could mobilize the party’s base, woo swing voters and, most important, guarantee that we don’t see a repeat of the demoralizing do-little Washington of the past two years.
The Republican Party isn’t fit to lead, and most voters know it — that’s why Joe Biden won the presidency. But all those 2020 Biden voters shouldn’t be expected to turn out for two more years of Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) blocking most legislation in the Senate, sometimes joined by moderate Democrats in the House. Case in point: The response from some congressional Democrats to the threat to Roe v. Wade being overturned has not been an urgent, aggressive legislative push but buck-passing — essentially, “You voters need to elect even more Democrats, then we might do something.”
They should be clear, too, about the solution: a Senate with at least 52 Democrats and a House with at least 218 Democrats. If they get that, they can say, they will pass a specific agenda, something like this:
Eliminate the filibuster.
A national law guaranteeing a right to an abortion in the first trimester and in all cases of rape and incest.
A democracy reform law mandating independent commissions to draw state and congressional districts lines free of gerrymandering; vote-by-mail and two weeks of early voting; proportional representation through multi-member congressional districts; and measures to prevent election subversion.
A ban on the sale of military-style weapons such as AR-15 rifles and high-capacity magazines, along with universal background checks for gun sales.
A minimum income tax of at least 20 percent on billionaires.
A ban on members of Congress buying individual stocks.
National marijuana legalization.
A climate change plan that puts the United States on a path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
A required civics and life-skills course for high school seniors, with the same curriculum throughout the country.
Voluntary term limits of 12 years in Congress for all Democrats (six terms in the House, two in the Senate).
What connects these ideas? First, many of them are already popular. The civics and life-skills course, in particular, should appeal to Democrats, independents and even Republicans.
Second, they directly confront America’s biggest problem: the radicalized Republican Party and how our political system gives a small bloc of GOP voters, the party’s donors and its elected officials veto power over the preferences of most Americans, including many Republicans.
Third, they acknowledge this stark reality: The United States is experiencing a non-military, uncivil war that the Democrats must win.
The Republican agenda of expanding gun rights, narrowing voting rights and functionally abolishing abortion rights doesn’t seem coherent or logical until you view it as an agenda of White male Christian hegemony. Then it fits together perfectly. The Democrats must stop trying to duck the so-called culture wars and instead fight hard to win them. There is no middle ground between White male Christian hegemony and multiracial, multicultural social democracy — and the Democrats shouldn’t be shy about using their power to impose the latter, since it’s what a clear majority of Americans want.
But there is a catch, and it’s where the last item on my list comes in.
Term limits for members would have to be voluntary, because it’s not clear that they are constitutional. But a promise of new leadership on Capitol Hill, term limits for all members, a billionaires’ tax, a ban of members owning individual stocks and electoral reforms like multimember districts all push in the same direction — an acknowledgement that America’s economic and political establishments have failed and need to be changed.
I intentionally didn’t include a lot of economic policies on this list. Biden last year leaned into the idea that proposals such as the child tax credit in the economic stimulus would create a groundswell of support for Democrats. But there is little evidence that political theory panned out. Inflation, which I realize is a huge problem, poses a different kind of challenge. There is little evidence Democrats know how to address it, and even less that voters trust them on the issue.
I understand, too, that the Supreme Court, under its current membership, would likely strike down many of these proposals. We need court reform, probably something like the proposal of legal writer Elie Mystal to create a 29-member high court. But the case for Congress and the president reforming the Supreme Court would be much stronger if most Americans thought the legislative and executive branches were doing a good job. Basically no one outside of hardcore Democrats believes that now.
The Democrats can’t call this agenda a “Contract With America” because Republicans already used that 28 years ago. Something like “Promises to the People” would work fine. But whatever the slogan, the message should be clear: We failed, we will do better and we will put new people in charge who are better than we were. | 2022-06-03T11:30:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A Democratic ‘Contract With America’ for 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/democrats-2022-midterms-agenda-contract-with-america/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/democrats-2022-midterms-agenda-contract-with-america/ |
By Kate Cohen
(Ellen Weinstein for The Washington Post)
Last month, after news broke that the Supreme Court apparently intends to strike down Roe v. Wade, President Biden said the word “abortion” out loud for the first time in his presidency. Officially, he supports the right to abortion, but he prefers to use terms such as “reproductive choice” and “women’s health.”
Biden’s hesitancy may reflect personal discomfort. But he’s not alone in avoiding the term.
Supporters of the right to abortion often stumble over the word itself, choosing “choice” as a more acceptable thing to be “pro.” Only recently in the long history of the abortion debate have advocacy groups started to press for use of the word “abortion” and ask that people “shout” their abortions, as one campaign puts it.
But clearly the word still makes people queasy. So I think we should try using a different one — a word that frames abortion not as the end of a pregnancy but as the restoration of a pregnant person’s health and agency. “Abortion” points to the pregnancy, after all, not to the person who doesn’t want to be pregnant. “Abortion” points to what happens to the development of the fetus, not to what happens to the person unwilling to be its host.
There is precedent for this. In fact, the practice of reframing abortion in terms of women’s health and well-being is deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition.
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In the 18th and most of the 19th century, before abortion became the province of the medical establishment and the courts, the procedure was widespread, and abortifacients — drugs that cause abortions — were widely marketed. But there was no advertising for “abortions.”
Instead there were ads for “Relief for Ladies” suffering from “obstructed menses.” “Female renovating pills” treated “all cases where nature has stopped from any cause.” Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription promised to clear away “all the troubles and ailments that make woman’s life a burden to her. She’s relieved, cured, and restored.”
“This invaluable medicine,” read an ad for Sir J. Clarke’s Female Pills, “moderates all excess, removes all obstructions, and brings on the monthly period with regularity.”
Another promised that “Beecham’s Pills taken as directed restore females to complete health.”
The woman-centered language was a code of sorts. The advertisers encrypted the word “abortion” to evade moral censure and — after the Comstock Act of 1873 criminalized the distribution of abortifacients — to avoid legal consequences as well.
Women knew what regaining their “regularity” really meant, though, just as today we all know that a “cleanse” or a “detox” most likely includes a laxative or diuretic. Early Viagra ads said “love life again” — not “chemically induce your erection.”
But even if marketing Dr. Peter’s French Renovating Pills as “a blessing to mothers” was euphemistic, it circulated a potent message about women’s perfectly reasonable desire not to be pregnant. A desire they have been seeking means to fulfill since at least the Roman Empire.
Many of the pills, powders and potions of yesteryear were impotent or poisonous or both. Now, happily, abortifacients are more than 99 percent effective, declared safe by the Food and Drug Administration and responsible for more than half the abortions in the United States (and three-quarters of those in Europe). No clinic or surgical procedure necessary. Just a (possibly painful, likely uncomfortable, probably brief) reset.
Yes, a reset.
As in, “We weren’t ready for kids yet, so I ordered reset pills.” As in, “I went for a reset as soon as I found out I was pregnant.” As in, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll help you get a reset.”
Some abortions, to be sure, are absolutely not “resets.” They are tragedies of pregnancies doomed by biology: acts of mercy for wanted children who would otherwise experience grave suffering, or acts of maternal self-defense.
These tragedies are by far the minority, however. Most abortions are safe and simple medical procedures performed soon after a woman knows she’s pregnant; two-thirds occur at or before eight weeks.
Renaming them “resets” would remind people what abortion is actually for: It allows a person who does not want to be pregnant to retrace her steps and get back on her chosen path. To restore her body to its natural state — the one she never meant to change. To return to normal.
We should champion the reset. We should embrace the medical advances that have brought us mifepristone and misoprostol and telehealth, the technological advances that allow us to buy anything from anywhere and have it shipped to our homes quickly and discreetly, and the effectiveness of some good old-fashioned ad copy. Such as …
Are you feeling bloated, nauseated, fatigued and anxious that your future may be derailed? Our Supreme Reset Regimen will put you back on track in a matter of days.
Or, more simply: “Love life again.”
Dear grads: This is how to write a real thank-you note | 2022-06-03T11:30:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Forget ‘abortion.’ Bring back ‘Relief for Ladies.’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/rename-abortion-as-natural-health-reset/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/rename-abortion-as-natural-health-reset/ |
The crypto-skeptics’ voices are getting louder
A growing number of tech and financial experts are issuing warnings about cryptocurrency investments. What will their cries mean?
Representations of the ripple, bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin virtual currencies on a PC motherboard. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
Maybe it was when the author of the influential book “Black Swan” said bitcoin was worth “exactly zero.”
Perhaps it was the assessment from a billionaire hedge-fund manager that cryptocurrencies are a “limited supply of nothing.”
Whatever the turning point, a growing group is sounding dire warnings about the dangers of cryptocurrency investment. Call them the crypto-catastrophists — bloggers and billionaires, mathematicians and economists, computer-scientists and 2008-crisis prophets and, even, a 2000’s-era Hollywood personality — who have all come together to unleash a warning to government and citizens about cryptocurrency investment. And their voices have, slowly, begun to rise above crypto’s evangelist din.
“For a long time it felt like just a few of us shouting from the rooftops,” said Nicholas Weaver, a computer-security expert from the University of California at Berkeley, who has long mounted both a financial and ethical case again crypto investment. “But I think there are more of us now, and hopefully that will help us be heard.”
On Wednesday, Weaver was one of 26 influential technology personalities to direct those cries to Congress.
In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other congressional leaders, the group outlined what it described as potentially grave dangers of cryptocurrencies.
“The catastrophes and externalities related to blockchain technologies and crypto-asset investments are neither isolated nor are they growing pains of a nascent technology,” it said. “They are the inevitable outcomes of a technology that is not built for purpose and will remain forever unsuitable as a foundation for large-scale economic activity.”
The missive — which was titled “Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy” — did not spell out many policy proposals. But it was clear the group wants dramatic moves to rein in, if not outright eliminate, crypto investing.
“We need to act now to protect investors and the global financial marketplace from the severe risks posed by crypto-assets,” it said.
On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) joined the skeptics, sending out an “investor alert” about the fundamental nature of crypto risks.
“Even well-known virtual currencies from reputable trading platforms can still crash and investors can lose billions in the blink of an eye,” she said, citing conflicts of interest and limited oversight. “Too often, cryptocurrency investments create more pain than gain for investors. I urge New Yorkers to be cautious before putting their hard-earned money in risky cryptocurrency investments that can yield more anxiety than fortune.”
Besides Weaver, the letter’s signatories include Harvard cryptographer Bruce Schneier, Google engineer Kelsey Hightower, Netscape Navigator pioneer Jamie Zawinski, the England-based blogger and author David Gerard, “The O.C.” actor Ben McKenzie and Molly White, the popular blogger and social media presence who was one of crypto’s earliest critics.
But the larger group of catastrophists goes beyond the signatories and includes a number of finance-world veterans who helped foresee the 2008 subprime-mortgage crisis, including the economist Nourel Roubini, the hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Nassim Taleb, the author and mathematician who wrote the best-selling “Black Swan,” which posits that many of the most impactful events of history were unpredicted.
While disparate of profession, the catastrophists have come to very similar conclusions about the 2020s digital-coin investment craze. A crater is coming, they say. And it’s going to be big.
Many others of course don’t agree. Mayors from Miami to New York are embracing crypto with vigor, while both forward-looking financial firms like Silvergate and blue-chip tech companies like IBM have thrown in with it. A trillion-dollar market capitalization is not going away anytime soon, they say, nor should it.
But the catastrophists say the market’s size only reinforces the stakes. They cite a lack of regulation, a product devoid of inherent value or cash flow, a system whose solvency depends on an ever-larger number of new players and markets manipulated by a few financial elites. All of that, they say, makes for a de facto Ponzi scheme that can only crash.
“You have extremely shoddy traders who are taking advantage of an unregulated market, and they want to skin you and they want to skin you again, and then they want to skin your friends, family and pension funds until eventually there’s nothing left to skin,” said Gerard, a longtime financial blogger and author, offering a colorful version of the catastrophists’ message. “So I and others feel like we need to stand up and say something about it.”
It was a remote prehistoric time — all the way back in 2021 — when cryptocurrency seemed to be ascendant in the mainstream. A new Pew Research study had concluded that 16 percent of Americans used or invested in crypto. Venture capital giant Andreesen Horowitz was humming with a crypto fund. Jack Dorsey was telling Cardi B that bitcoin would replace the dollar.
Shortly after, Larry David went viral with a Super Bowl commercial that only Luddites avoided crypto, while Matt Damon suggested non-crypto investors were cowards. Suddenly that nice couple at the block barbecue was tossing off words like “stablecoin.”
But a crash of Terra’s luna by more than 95 percent, a drop in bitcoin of 56 percent off its all-time high and a continued hammering of their message seems to be tilting the narrative in the catastrophists’ direction. The climate now seems more conducive to the group’s message than ever — maybe.
“Those voices are certainly getting louder,” said Edward Balleisen, a Duke professor and historian of financial bubbles. “But the classic thing in any bubble is there are going to be a lot of people who wave it off and say ‘It’s just a correction’ so keep going.”
He noted that the catastrophists must contend with beloved names sending people the opposite message. “I mean, even with all these warnings you’re going to have Stephen Curry on TV in the NBA Finals this weekend telling people how easy it is to invest in crypto,” referring to the Golden State Warriors star’s high-profile FTX ad.
Of course, it’s not at all resolved that crypto-catastrophists are right, and a whole industry is predicated on the idea that they’re not. Crypto executives point to a long history of skepticism where new technology is concerned. Befuddlement characterized Web 1.0 in the mid-1990s, they note, a position that now seems laughably out of touch.
To the skeptics, though, far more economic fundamentals are at play here. They argue that the lack of inherent value makes crypto a “zero-sum” game in which for every winner there’s a loser — akin to gambling — instead of stocks, which not only rely on underlying earnings to determine their price but reward shareholders with dividends, buybacks and other benefits.
“Investing in crypto is just like what investing in [Bernie] Madoff’s fund in the 1990s would have been — if he had openly admitted, since the beginning, that there was no portfolio, no stock or options trading, not even a small cash reserve,” says the pinned tweet of Jorge Stolfi, a Brazil-based computer science professor, referring to the man who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
Stolfi, a signatory of Wednesday’s letter, is among the most pointed of the crypto catastrophists. Stolfi did not reply to a request from The Washington Post seeking comment. But shortly after the letter went out, he began promoting it, retweeting the messages of a London software engineer named Stephen Diehl. Diehl has become a social media star among the catastrophist set, drawing some 60,000 followers with his own crypto-warnings. (After the letter went out he posted that “Crypto fraud is spiraling out of control” and “regulators are paralyzed and people are getting hurt left and right.” He said it fell to “us as citizens and responsible engineers to help fix the problem we created.”)
Stolfi’s tweet last month asking computer scientists to call out the “dysfunctional payment system” and “technological fraud” around crypto kick-started the letter, which was organized among the signatories with the input of the liberal nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform, an umbrella group advocating for more banking regulation.
Paulson, who made billions shorting the housing market, told Bloomberg News last August that crypto was “a limited supply of nothing.” He added that cryptocurrencies, “regardless of where they’re trading today will eventually prove to be worthless.”
Taleb goes a step further, offering a mathematical postulate. Despite calling bitcoin the “first organic currency” as recently as 2018, he now believes it should, mathematically speaking, be worth nothing.
“Any probabilistic analysis means zero valuation,” Taleb said in an email to The Post.
“Owing to the absence of any explicit yield benefiting the holder of bitcoin, if we expect that at any point in the future the value will be zero when miners are extinct, the technology becomes obsolete, or future generations get into other such ‘assets’ and bitcoin loses its appeal for them, then the value must be zero now,” he wrote. Gold, with its real-world uses, is also distinct from cryptocurrency in this regard, he said.
Roubini, who appeared before Congress in 2018 calling crypto the “Mother of All Scams and (Now Busted) Bubbles” has continued the drumbeat, saying another bust is coming and will be even worse than the “crypto winter” that began in 2018.
Even the most dire crypto catastrophists say it is unlikely, at least at the moment, that a crash would bring much contagion to the broader economy. The S&P 500 has a market cap of $40 trillion, dwarfing crypto’s $1 trillion. But they say that doesn’t mean Americans shouldn’t be on guard for such spillover.
“The biggest fear is if it does get into the mainstream economy via retirement funds, it could start bringing other things in the system down with it, like with Fidelity,” said Gerard, noting that company’s plan likely to go into effect later this year that would allow participants to allocate as much as 20 percent of their 401(k) to crypto. “That’s why we have to stop it now.”
If a financial shock wave is looming, it is unclear how much these voices will help head it off. Duke’s Balleisen notes that 2008 was filled with people warning about a housing bubble for at least four years before the collapse, and it did very little.
Then again, he noted, “the big difference is that you have many people in positions of influence now who remember 2008, where you didn’t have anyone in 2008 who remembered 1929.”
But that can’t go on forever, the catastrophists say; beyond a certain point, it will just become a self-reinforcing plummet.
“I don’t think you need the government for the crypto space to essentially disappear — people losing a lot of money will do that too,” Weaver said. “Unfortunately that’s a very painful way for it to happen.” | 2022-06-03T11:34:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The backlash to cryptocurrency investment is growing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/crypto-skeptics-growing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/crypto-skeptics-growing/ |
This crypto investing was supposed to be “stable.” It’s a wild ride.
Most people should just avoid investing in the financial roller coaster of stablecoin cryptocurrencies
The collapse of the Terra ecosystem will go down as one of the most painful and devastating chapters in crypto history. (Gabby Jones/Bloomberg News)
I used to like the exhilaration of the climb and the emotional high of screaming as the ride plunged down and around curves at hair-raising high speeds. But then I started to get headaches from the tension of anticipating the stomach-churning steep drops. The dizzy feeling I get after stumbling off the ride just isn’t fun anymore.
This is how I feel about investing in cryptocurrency. As thrilling as this new technology is, it’s not worth the jerky and unpredictable movements.
Some folks thought they found a way to ride the cryptocurrency roller coaster and minimize wild drops by investing in stablecoins. The concept behind stablecoins is that they are supposed to maintain a certain value. They are promoted as less risky relative to the volatility of investing in other cryptos, such as bitcoin or ethereum.
What are stablecoins and why did the Terra system go so wobbly?
That promise of stability failed to deliver when Terra, also known as UST, imploded. It was designed to maintain its value of $1. It didn’t. Not by a long shot.
Even the most popular stablecoin in the world, Tether, dropped below its price of $1 in May. Online you can find postings on Reddit and Twitter from people distraught and surprised at their spectacular losses after betting big on Terra.
I like to use times like this as a teaching moment. Before you put your money in stablecoin, you need to ask yourself a lot of questions, because this isn’t a ride for the financially faint of heart.
Their cryptocurrencies crashed the market and they are back at it
You understand that stablecoin investing is just as risky as other cryptocurrencies. As an asset class, stablecoins purport to be stable. But the very name is a misnomer, says Joe Rotunda, director of enforcement at the Texas State Securities Board. Rotunda also serves as vice chair of enforcement at the North American Securities Administrators Association.
“There’s no guarantee that they actually will be stable,” Rotunda said in an interview. “Someone who bought Terra recently may have lost a lot more than if they had bought one of the mainstream cryptocurrencies. If you put your money into Terra thinking it was a stablecoin, thinking it wasn’t going to fluctuate like bitcoin, you lost quite a bit of money.”
Usually, stablecoins are backed by assets like Treasury bills or commercial paper rather than directly investing in the currency they track, said Madeline Hume, a senior research analyst at Morningstar. Or it’s an “algorithmic stablecoin.”
You understand the difference between investing and gambling. You should never put all your money in one stock or asset class and certainly not in something as highly speculative as cryptocurrency. I asked Terraform Labs, the company behind Terra, about reports of people investing their life savings and losing most of their money.
You get that high yields also mean a higher risk. The higher the potential profit, the more financial risk you are exposing yourself to. When you see high yields, you should immediately raise the question of why an investment needs to offer a yield that high to attract customers.
You understand that stablecoins are not as safe as money market funds. A money market fund is a type of mutual fund that invests in high-quality and short-term debt securities. A money market fund aims to maintain a net asset value of $1 per share.
“FOMO” is not your primary reason for investing. Don’t have fear of missing out or be swayed by the cryptocurrency commercials featuring Matt Damon and basketball icon LeBron James. They’re already rich with real dollars.
You want to transact using stablecoin. “It can be beneficial to keep money in stablecoins that are getting used elsewhere in the cryptocurrency ecosystem,” Hume said. “Because where investors really get clipped with cryptocurrencies is when they’re converting actual fiat U.S. dollars into cryptocurrency.” | 2022-06-03T11:35:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why stablecoins are not as stable as some investors think - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/terra-stablecoin-investing-lessons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/terra-stablecoin-investing-lessons/ |
Trudeau accuses China of ‘extremely troubling’ harassment of Canadian jets
China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force planes fly in formation during a military parade in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused China of harassing Canadian military jets in the skies above Asia, calling the situation “extremely troubling,” as he promised to raise the issue with Beijing.
Canadian military aircraft are in the region as part of a United Nations-backed military patrol to monitor sanctions placed on North Korea.
On “several occasions” between April 26 and May 26, Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) planes came into close interaction with China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), Canada’s National Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
“In these interactions, PLAAF aircraft did not adhere to international air safety norms. These interactions are unprofessional and/or put the safety of our RCAF personnel at risk,” the statement said.
“In some instances, the RCAF aircrew felt sufficiently at risk that they had to quickly modify their own flight path in order to increase separation and avoid a potential collision with the intercepting aircraft.”
China, which is in the midst of a national holiday, has yet to publicly comment on the events.
Trudeau told reporters on Thursday that he took “this situation very seriously.”
“Canada is an active part of an important mission in the North Pacific to ensure that the sanctions applied to North Korea are properly enforced and the fact that China would have chosen to do this is extremely troubling,” he said at an event in Alberta.
Sexual misconduct report finds Canadian military culture ‘deficient’
Canada said the pilots of China’s planes were “very clearly visible” as they attempted to divert Canada’s jets from their flight path in international airspace.
The mission is part of a U.N. effort to monitor sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to the state’s nuclear weapon tests and ballistic missile launches. The Canadian CP-140 Aurora aircraft, along with crew, are stationed in Japan as part of the mission.
Such aerial interactions, sometimes known as “buzzing,” is “of concern and of increasing frequency,” Canada’s Defense Department said, adding that the occurrences have been “addressed through diplomatic channels.”
Last week, Russia and China flew strategic bombers over the Sea of Japan (also known as the East Sea) and the East China Sea while President Biden was in Tokyo wrapping up his first trip to Asia. It was their first joint military exercise since the invasion of Ukraine. However, some experts have said the “no limits” diplomatic relationship affirmed between the two countries in recent months is already being tested, with tensions over trade and how much geopolitical support China is willing to give to Russia amid the war.
Ties between Ottawa and Beijing frayed after Canada detained top Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 at the request of U.S. authorities amid charges of bank and wire fraud. Soon after her arrest, Beijing imprisoned two Canadian men in China — Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor — in what Western officials termed tit-for-tat “hostage diplomacy.” All three individuals were released last year and returned to their homelands.
Amanda Coletta contributed to this report. | 2022-06-03T11:35:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada accuses China of harassing its military aircraft in Asia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/china-canada-military-airplane-north-korea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/china-canada-military-airplane-north-korea/ |
FILE - In this June 5, 1989, file photo, a Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Cangan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square. The man, calling for an end to the recent violence and bloodshed against pro-democracy demonstrators, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on their way. Thousands of students demonstrated for democracy in Tiananmen Square. Hundreds died when the government sent in troops. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener, File)
Once a week, Chinese activists Sophia Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing gathered friends and acquaintances together, mostly just to talk.
In Wang’s single-bedroom apartment in downtown Guangzhou city, attendees would share experiences about work in China’s embattled nonprofit sector, about being LGBTQ or about preserving mental health when marginalized by the Chinese Communist Party’s vision of society.
Sometimes the group just watched a film, went hiking or played mah-jongg or a board game. It was meant to be a safe and inclusive space to support each other or speak openly about ideas banned from public discourse by state censors.
Now, in part because of these gatherings, Huang and Wang face a charge of “inciting subversion of state power.”
Chinese women reveal sexual harassment, but #MeToo movement struggles for air
Nearly nine months after they disappeared, the case of “xuebing” — an amalgamation of their names their supporters use — has become an example of how far the Communist Party will go to stifle ideas divergent from its own. Now 33 years after the crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstration, authorities make sure such movements never even get started.
Beyond a high-profile campaign to smash public advocacy from pro-democracy activists and human rights lawyers, China’s security state is increasingly devoting vast resources to policing the private lives of socially active people with views it deems problematic.
Human rights activists were critical of a visit last week by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to China where she made only cautious criticism of a mass internment campaign in Xinjiang. Supporters of Huang and Wang voiced frustration that Bachelet spoke at Guangzhou University, mere minutes away from where Wang used to live, and praised the “movements and actions of young people challenging discrimination, injustice and inequalities” but did not publicly raise the case.
Since the pair were detained in September 2021 a day before Huang was set to fly to Britain to study, Chinese police have interrogated dozens of individuals who attended the weekly gatherings, sometimes traveling across the country to track them down or picking people up on the street, close friends of the pair told The Washington Post in interviews. The questioning usually lasted 24 hours.
The individuals, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, say there is no basis for considering the meetings subversive. In the process of being questioned, however, it became clear that this was the conclusion police had drawn. One friend said that the interrogators used photos from events in early 2021, suggesting they had been monitoring the group for more than half a year before detaining Huang and Wang.
Police labeling these meetings an attempt to subvert the state is “a complete fabrication,” said one close friend of Huang’s who attended the gatherings. “It’s complete bulls---, coming from their own paranoia.”
“We were just making friends and talking about topics ranging from how hard it is to be gay or how many nights of insomnia we had this week and how hard it is to find a job,” she said.
Neither the national or Guangzhou branches of China’s Ministry of Public Security responded to faxed requests for comment.
The opacity of the Chinese legal system, especially for cases that touch on national security, means the exact nature of the prosecutors’ case against Huang and Wang is still unclear, even to their lawyers. Wang’s lawyer was able to meet him for half an hour in April for the first time. Huang’s lawyer’s request to meet her client or view the prosecutor’s case against her were both denied, with authorities citing coronavirus prevention measures.
Both had previously worked on issues deemed sensitive by the Chinese state. A prominent feminist, Huang had moved from journalism to activism over the course of the #MeToo movement as she supported women to come forward with stories of sexual harassment and assault. Wang worked in labor rights nongovernmental organizations supporting workers who suffered from job-related ailments.
It’s unclear how much their activism is also considered a reason for the subversion charge. In 2019, Huang was detained for three months after she wrote articles about protests in Hong Kong against Beijing’s imposition of a stifling national security law. But friends say the police primarily appeared to be interested in the nature of the weekly meetings as well as any international events they attended or foreign funding they might have received.
Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese security state has intensified efforts to prevent dissent before it can take root. Cracks in surveillance that allowed previous generations of activists to gain traction are increasingly being filled in by new campaigns urging police vigilance against any sign of emerging threats to national security and social stability.
In past administrations, movements were often able to gain a degree of public traction before arrests. When the Chinese military put a bloody end to the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement 33 years ago this Saturday, its legacy lived on in figures like Liu Xiaobo, who helped to write and promoted a manifesto known as Charter 08 that in 2008 urged an end to one-party rule.
Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate imprisoned in China, dies at 61
After the document gained thousands of signatures, Liu was imprisoned for “inciting subversion” — the same crime Huang and Wang are accused of — shortly before he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His death from liver cancer in 2017, while under the watchful eye of Chinese security agents, drew an outpouring of grief from liberal Chinese.
A later “rights defense” movement largely abandoned calls for democratization in favor of demanding basic civil liberties for the downtrodden. Lawyers and activists defended victims of forced eviction, HIV spread by unclean needles or practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Again, these efforts were crushed in multiple crackdowns that culminated in a sweeping campaign launched on July 9, 2015, when dozens were detained overnight.
Since then, the government has sought to guard against both the reemergence of older movements and the arrival of a younger generation like Huang and Wang who focus more on the preservation of personal dignity and individual well-being.
Trove of damning Xinjiang police files leaked as U.N. rights chief visits China
Rights lawyers now struggle to take on sensitive cases due to an increasingly delicate system of control that has been built in recent years, according to Mina Huang, a Chinese human rights lawyer. She also worries that the normalization of big data monitoring during the pandemic will worsen the situation.
“The work done by Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing was very meaningful. It gave young people a space to become aware of this era and our situation,” she said. “The charges against them are a typical of the suppression of young activists. The authorities are afraid the younger generation will become active.”
According to friends of the pair, the idea of starting a new movement was far from their minds when attending gatherings in Wang’s apartment. Many, including Wang, were struggling with depression and anxiety at a time when civil society was under attack.
Over tea, wine and fruit provided by Wang, they would discuss their personal struggles alongside the issues of the day. “It was not about how to respond. It was about how do we understand what’s happening. Because we didn’t think we had any space to perform any kind of activism,” said one friend.
Another friend lamented the authorities’ knee-jerk intolerance to communities operating beyond its control. “But not every meeting is about the CCP. Not everything is about you guys.”
Pei Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report. | 2022-06-03T11:35:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In the 33 years since Tiananmen, China's learned how to strangle activism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/china-rights-tiananmen-sophia-xeuqin-wang-jianbing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/china-rights-tiananmen-sophia-xeuqin-wang-jianbing/ |
Making sense of North Korea’s covid mystery — and its menace
An employee of the Pyongyang Dental Hygiene Products Factory disinfects a dining room in Pyongyang, North Korea, on May 16. (Cha Song Ho/AP)
TOKYO — It’s always been difficult to get an accurate picture of what’s going on inside North Korea, one of the most closed-off countries in the world. But its handling of the covid crisis has been particularly enigmatic, with potentially long-lasting ramifications for the welfare of its people — and neighboring countries — amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.
North Korea’s self-proclaimed “public health crisis” appears to have mysteriously subsided as quickly as it spread, according to state media. Less than three weeks after announcing its first official positive covid case that led to an “explosive” spread of fever symptoms afflicting more than 3.7 million (out of population of 25 million), North Korea is heralding a rapid fall in new cases and a “favorable turn” in epidemic response.
But international public health officials warn that there is no way to corroborate those claims. This week, a top official at the World Health Organization raised concerns that things may actually be getting worse inside the impoverished country, which has a fragile health care system, limited supplies and no coronavirus vaccines.
“This is not good for the people of [North Korea]. It is not good for the region. This is not good for the world,” said Michael Ryan, WHO emergencies chief. “We assume the situation is getting worse, not better.”
What you need to know about the covid crisis hitting North Korea
When the latest outbreak was first announced, Ryan warned that with its poor health infrastructure and lack of vaccines, North Korea could become a breeding ground for new variants that could threaten peoples beyond its borders.
Expert analyses, limited trade data, satellite imagery and the accounts of North Korean defectors and informants provide clues to help make sense of the gravity of North Korea’s covid crisis — especially as authorities assess potential reopening plans as the outbreak supposedly ebbs.
Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, North Korea reported zero positive coronavirus cases — a dubious claim, given outside reports of likely exposure along its border with China. But on May 12, North Korea reported its first positive case of the BA.2 subvariant of omicron. It has since diligently released daily updates on the spread of “fever,” an apparent euphemism for potential covid cases due to its lack of testing capacity.
The sudden change in behavior has experts wondering: Why did North Korea decide to disclose its cases now? Have covid cases really improved as rapidly as it claims?
The exodus of foreigners in the pandemic means the full impact of covid may not be known for many years, until aid workers can reenter and new defectors can provide firsthand accounts. For example, the extent of the 1990s famine in North Korea was not known until researchers interviewed the wave of defectors who fled in its aftermath.
Kim’s announcement of the spread of covid indicates the outbreak could no longer be contained quietly at local levels, especially given the heavy concentration of cases in its capital of Pyongyang, where the elites reside, said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a former intelligence analyst and an expert in North Korean media propaganda.
In fact, North Korea used an extremely rare, if not unprecedented, term to describe a crisis to its domestic audience, Lee said: the “great upheaval since the founding of the state.” Kim has also provided unusually detailed information about infection numbers and deaths, which risks inviting the public’s disbelief, she said.
One reason may be to project the regime’s control over the outbreak through its national public health campaign, and to show that he takes concerns in Pyongyang seriously, experts say.
This week, North Korean authorities “positively assessed” the control of the virus and reviewed plans to ease restrictions, according to state media. If North Korea’s figures are accurate, its fever cases sank to below 100,000 in recent days, a significant drop from nearly 400,000 in late May.
Coronavirus cases, deaths in North Korea surge as Kim blames officials
Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat based in London who defected in 2016, said it is “quite probable” that the virus’s spread slowed down because of Kim’s containment policy. In the past three weeks, Kim “has been depicted as the heroic and benevolent savior of the nation.”
“This is how North Korean governmental propaganda manipulates the situation in favor of the Kim Jong Un regime in any and every case; there is a crisis but it shall be solved and overcome by the dear leader who is benevolent, wise and capable like a god,” said Tae, now a South Korean National Assembly member.
When the pandemic first broke out, North Korea quickly halted land-based trade with China and banned travel between its provinces. But in the first quarter of 2022, it reopened to low levels of trade with China, which may have exposed it to covid.
Cases began spreading in April, state media said. A massive military parade on April 25 may have contributed to the spread as soldiers from across the country traveled to Pyongyang to practice and perform, said Ryu Hyun-woo, North Korea’s former ambassador to Kuwait who defected in 2019.
“The military parade on April 25 in Pyongyang appears to have been a fertile ground for a super-spreading event,” Ryu said. “The military parade gathered tens of thousands of people from capital Pyongyang and different parts of the country. A large number of people were seen without masks, which shows a complacency among North Koreans about covid-19 at that time.”
Even as North Korea reports a decline in cases, it has emphasized quarantine measures, a sign that the regime does not feel the situation has stabilized yet, said Lee, the former intelligence analyst.
Meanwhile, the quality of life for ordinary North Koreans outside of the privileged Pyongyang area appears grim. Kim’s lockdown order came amid what the United Nations believes is a worsening food and medication shortage caused by its border closure.
The country’s public health situation “is the worst one can imagine,” Ryu said, describing a lack of supplies, proper sanitation and reliable electricity even in the country’s top hospitals for Pyongyang residents.
Lockdown fatigue is spreading among many residents, said Lee Sang Yong, editor in chief of Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that reports from informants inside North Korea. Those who had fever were ordered to quarantine at home, with no way to access food from the outside, he said.
“In areas under stringent lockdown, people were starving to death as access to new harvests or market purchases were restrained by the lockdown measures,” Lee said.
China draws North Korea closer than ever as Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions rise
Kim also needs workers to focus on the rice-planting season, and has an incentive to tout success in controlling the virus, Lee said. The supply of rice harvested in the fall is dwindling, and North Korea appears to be experiencing a prolonged drought — which does not bode well for this autumn’s harvest and could deepen the severe food crisis.
Satellite images of North Korean rice fields suggest delays in meeting the country’s planting targets compared to last year, said Chung Song-hak of South Korea’s Kyungpook University.
Rice-planting appeared to be only about two thirds complete in images of five main rice fields this month, lagging behind a nearly 90 percent completion rate during the same period last year, according to Chung.
This week, state media reminded the public that North Korea endured the 1990s famine and other hardships, and can overcome its current challenges.
“This is the strong fighting spirit peculiar to the Korean people pushing ahead with the anti-epidemic struggle and the economic construction simultaneously,” it urged. | 2022-06-03T11:35:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside North Korea's covid outbreak and its vulnerable population - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/north-korea-covid-outbreak-information/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/north-korea-covid-outbreak-information/ |
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, attended the thanksgiving service on day two of the Platinum Jubilee celebration on June 3 in London. (Video: Reuters)
LONDON — Crowds outside of St. Paul’s gave a polite round of huzzahs as Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, entered the Anglican cathedral in the heart of London for a service of thanksgiving, as day two of the Platinum Jubilee celebration for Queen Elizabeth II began.
Prince William and his wife Katherine, Duchess of Cambridge, got an even bigger hand.
The bells rang as Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, arrived.
The queen herself is absent, watching the show on the BBC from her rooms at Windsor Castle.
There is a steady transition of responsibility — and soft power — passing now from the queen to her son Charles and grandson William, who are playing more prominent roles during the jubilee.
The Sussexes of California are in Britain with their young children, Archie, 3, and Lilibet, who will celebrate her first birthday on Saturday.
This trip marks the first time that the queen has met Lilibet in person. Harry and Meghan named their daughter after her majesty, using the queen’s childhood nickname.
Harry has made only a few public trips back to the U.K. since settling in California. In April, 2021, he attended the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip, although he did not return this spring for Philip’s memorial, which was a much larger affair as covid restrictions had lifted. Last summer, he returned to the U.K. to unveil a statue of his late mother, Princess Diana.
The two sides agreed to a review of the situation after 12-months. But according to royal biographer Robert Hardman, the queen was not expecting them to resume their British life. Writing in his book “Queen of our Times,” Hardman says that the queen knew that the Sussexes were unlikely to return as senior royals. | 2022-06-03T11:35:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Platinum Jubilee: Prince Harry and Megan Markle make first public appearance in U.K. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/queen-elizabeth-platinum-jubilee-harry-meghan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/queen-elizabeth-platinum-jubilee-harry-meghan/ |
To recruit workers, big employers team with historically Black colleges
Under pressure to diversify, companies are investing money and mentorship in HBCUs
By Jon Marcus
Morgan State University, a historically black school in Baltimore, has partnerships with companies including IBM, NBCUniversal and a Minneapolis advertising agency called Solve. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
As it did in workplaces worldwide, the police killing of George Floyd — just a few miles from its offices in Minneapolis — led to deep introspection about diversity and fairness at the Solve advertising agency.
The company was more than 80 percent White and part of an industry in which Black and Hispanic employees are greatly underrepresented in comparison with their proportions of the general population.
“It obviously pushed the entire industry to reflect, ‘Are we doing enough?’ ” said Andrew Pautz, a partner in the firm and its director of business development. “And the answer was really no.”
To respond, Solve looked 1,100 miles away, to Baltimore. That’s where it found a historically Black university, or HBCU — Morgan State University — willing to team up to create an entry-level course that would introduce its students to careers in advertising.
“Advertising isn’t on the radar of diverse candidates when it really counts, when they’re trying to find a career to engage in,” Pautz said. So he and his colleagues asked: “Where is there a high concentration of diverse students? And that’s what brought us to HBCUs.”
It’s not only Solve that has come to this conclusion. So have some of the nation’s largest employers, which are descending on HBCUs to recruit the workers they need to meet diversity promises or are expanding collaborations that already existed — often underwriting courses and programs and the technology needed to provide them.
These employers include Google, IBM, Northrop Grumman, Novartis, NBCUniversal, the airlines United, Delta and Southwest, and even the NFL, which teamed up last month with four historically Black medical schools to boost the number of Black team physicians and medical professionals.
“At many HBCUs, the phones have been ringing off the hook,” said David Marshall, professor and chair of the Department of Strategic Communication at Morgan State. “Given that these institutions are producing some of the highest numbers in terms of Black and Brown students in some professions, it’s a natural development to come to where the students are.”
About 1 in 11 Black college students are enrolled in the nation’s 101 HBCUs, which produce more than a quarter of Black graduates with degrees in math, biology and the physical sciences, the National Science Foundation reports, as well as 50 percent of Black lawyers, 40 percent of Black engineers and 12.5 percent of Black CEOs, according to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
“People who have attended HBCUs, we know the value,” said Cheyenne Boyce, a graduate of historically Black Spelman College and senior manager in the Education Partner Program at the software developer and marketing company HubSpot, which also teams up with HBCUs to find interns and employees. “We’ve always known that. But it does help to have additional external validation.”
No one tracks how many companies are collaborating with HBCUs to find workers. But many such affiliations have been announced over the past two years. There’s been “a significant uptick,” said Marshall, at Morgan State. “It’s been deeper over the last couple of years,” said Lydia Logan, vice president for global education and workforce development and corporate social responsibility at IBM. Added Yeneneh Ketema, university relations diversity program leader at Northrop Grumman: “From what we’ve heard from our campus contacts, yes, there are a lot more companies coming there.”
This expanding pipeline to jobs with top employers could attract more students to HBCUs, whose enrollment overall declined by 14 percent in the 10 years ending in 2020, according to the Education Department — although about a third of the schools have seen a record rebound in response to racist incidents at predominantly White institutions, the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions reports.
“Having companies really be willing to make investments, it benefits the students. It’s great for the parents. It’s great for the universities,” Boyce said.
Amid nationwide enrollment drops, some HBCUs are growing. So are threats.
For HBCU students who are lower-income or the first in their families to go to college, closer relationships with corporate recruiters and mentors also could help offset the advantage long enjoyed by wealthier counterparts who can network their way to jobs.
“What’s exciting to see coming out of the HBCUs right now are these opportunities to build real relationships,” said Jeffrey Moss, founder and CEO of Parker Dewey, which helps employers and colleges arrange short-term internships.
That’s because many employers are investing more than an occasional campus recruiting visit. They’re showering HBCUs with technology and other support, mentors and money to help develop talent.
IBM announced in May that it would underwrite new cybersecurity centers at six HBCUs: Morgan State, Xavier, North Carolina A&T State, South Carolina State, Clark Atlanta and Louisiana’s Southern University System.
In addition to supplying academic content, the company will furnish experts to conduct guest lectures and even simulated hacking events.
“This is our next new big thing with HBCUs,” said Logan, at IBM, which already had a program to recruit students from historically Black schools.
“We’ve had a long commitment to diversity. For other companies, it’s newer. For everyone, it’s gotten deeper over the last couple of years,” Logan said.
There’s now not only a social imperative for these companies, but also an economic one: a huge demand for workers — not just in cybersecurity, but in other fields that require education in science, technology, engineering and math.
“We have a talent shortage,” Logan said. And “if you’re looking for diverse talent in STEM, it’s a natural fit to recruit from HBCUs.”
The Grow with Google HBCU Career Readiness Program provides digital education and funding to help expand the pipeline of Black tech workers, who represent only 4.4 percent of Google employees in the United States, even though 13.4 percent of the U.S. population is Black. Last year — facing criticism, including from one of its former diversity recruiters, that it previously didn’t seriously consider Black engineers from HBCUs for jobs — the company’s CEO met with the presidents of five HBCUs. Google has now added a program called Pathways to Tech to provide those universities with technology resources.
Google’s approach to historically Black schools helps explain why there are few Black engineers in Big Tech
To recruit airline pilots — less than 4 percent of whom are Black even as the Bureau of Labor Statistics says 14,500 openings will need to be filled each year through at least the end of this decade — United Airlines has teamed up with historically Black Delaware State University, Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina and Hampton University in Virginia. Delta has formed a partnership with Hampton, too, and Southwest with Texas Southern University in Houston.
The NFL announced last month that it would offer month-long clinical rotations to students from the historically Black Howard University College of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College and Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science as a way to increase diversity among NFL physicians, only 5 percent of whom are Black.
“It’s really important for us to have that pipeline” from HBCUs, said Ketema, at Northrop Grumman, which also has collaborations with HBCUs and this fall will hold its fourth annual “HBCU Invitational,” during which it invites students to interview for jobs and participate in workshops and other activities.
It’s important that employers give more than lip service to these partnerships, Ketema’s colleague, said Chris Carlson, Northrop’s director of university recruiting.
“One thing that we all know from working with HBCUs is, the students can truly tell if a company is there to check a box — just showing up at a career fair to collect résumés — or if the company is in it with a school,” Carlson said.
Marshall agreed that the onus is on employers to live up to their diversity goals.
“This is not a story about HBCUs,” he said. “It’s about companies and corporations that are under increased pressure from their stakeholders, their shareholders, their customers saying, ‘You can no longer sit on the sidelines. You’ve got to do something.’
“I don’t think the burden is on the HBCU side. I think the burden is on the corporations that suddenly woke up and found Jesus.”
In the meantime, HBCUs are indisputably enjoying a surge of employer interest.
“It’s great for HBCUs to get this attention,” said IBM’s Logan. “For a long time, I think they were overlooked, and now they’re getting the recognition they’ve always deserved.”
This story about historically Black colleges and universities was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. | 2022-06-03T12:14:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Big employers team up with HBCUs to recruit new hires - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/03/hbcus-companies-recruitment-partnerships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/03/hbcus-companies-recruitment-partnerships/ |
The Uvalde, Tex., shooter is part of a long list of male perpetrators of similar ages. Some experts think gun laws need to change to address that.
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Meghan Hoyer
Tim Meko
Candles were lit at dawn last Friday at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the Uvalde, Tex., school shooting. (Wong Maye-E/AP)
When Vanderbilt University psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl learned that the perpetrator of the Uvalde, Tex., school massacre was a young man barely out of adolescence, it was hard not to think about the peculiarities of the maturing male brain.
Salvador Rolando Ramos had just turned 18, eerily close in age to Nikolas Cruz, who had been 19 when he shot up a school in Parkland, Fla. To Adam Lanza, 20, when he did the same in Newtown, Conn. To Seung-Hui Cho, 23, at Virginia Tech. And to Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, in Columbine, Colo.
Teen and young adult males have long stood out from other subgroups for their impulsive behavior. They are far more reckless and prone to violence than their counterparts in other age groups and their leading causes of death includes fights, accidents, driving too fast, or, as Metzl put it, “other impulsive kinds of acts.”
“There’s a lot of research about how their brains are not fully developed in terms of regulation,” he said. Perhaps most significantly, studies show, the prefrontal cortex, which is critical to understanding the consequences of one’s actions and controlling impulses, does not fully develop until about age 25. In that context, Metzl said, a shooting “certainly feels like another kind of performance of young masculinity.”
In coming weeks and months, investigators will dissect Ramos’s life to try to figure out what led him to that horrific moment at 11:40 a.m. Tuesday, May 24 when he opened fire on a classroom full of 9- and-10-year-olds at Robb Elementary School. While clear answers are unlikely, the patterns that have emerged about mass shooters in the growing databases, school reports, medical notes and interview transcripts show a disturbing confluence between angry young men, easy access to weapons and reinforcement of violence by social media.
Federal law requires people buying handguns from licensed dealers to be at least 21. But in Texas and in most other states, 18-year-olds can purchase what are known as long guns, which include assault rifles. In a prime-time address Thursday night, President Biden called for banning assault weapons, but said that if that’s not possible, lawmakers should raise the age to purchase such a weapon to 21. “The issue we face is one of conscience and common sense,” the president said.
In the wake of the 2018 Parkland shooting and other violent acts by young men, six states, including Florida, did raise the purchasing age for long guns to 21, over the objections of the National Rifle Association. The NRA calls such restrictions a “categorical burden” on the right to keep and bear arms, while Florida state attorneys argue that since “18-to-20-year-olds are uniquely likely to engage in impulsive, emotional, and risky behaviors that offer immediate or short-term rewards, drawing the line for legal purchase of firearms at 21 is a reasonable method of addressing the Legislature’s public safety concerns.”
The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments over challenges to the state gun law this month.
“Age is the untold story of all this stuff,” said Metzl, who is also a sociologist. “I feel very strongly we should not have people 18 to 21 with guns.”
‘Not knowing your place in the world’
The United States is one of the only countries in the world where mass public shootings are a regular occurrence. Researchers Jillian Peterson from Hamline University and her colleague James Densler from Metropolitan State University, both in St. Paul, Minn., have spent their careers tracking these events and their research shows attacks are overwhelmingly carried out by men whose ages are strikingly clustered around two key periods in their lives.
Workplace attacks have been mostly carried out by men in middle age. School shootings, on the other hand, involve perpetrators mostly in their late teens or early 20s. Men in these same two age groups, Peterson points out, also have higher rates of suicide largely using firearms.
A Washington Post analysis of 196 mass public shootings in which four or more people were killed since 1966 shows nearly 98 percent, or all but five, of the perpetrators were men. Forty percent of the shooters were between the ages of 18 and 29 and another third were between 30 and 45.
Amid the jumble of information, there’s a familiar pattern to the young men’s trajectory to violence.
“I think it is this kind of coming out of adolescence not knowing your place in the world, and being depressed and isolated and more vulnerable to what you are reading online,” Peterson said.
Peterson is a criminologist who studies the life histories of mass shooters, and when she has gone back decades later to interview perpetrators who committed an attack in their teens or early 20s, “they don’t even recognize the person that did that.” She said the perpetrators describe feeling “disconnected” from their murderous earlier selves.
Under the U.S. legal system, age is a critical part of how laws are written and justice is meted out. Most states allow people to drive at 16, federal law allows voting at 18 and drinking at 21.
The Supreme Court itself addressed the importance of neuroscience in how crime and punishment should be viewed. In Roper v. Simmons in 2005, the majority held the death penalty for juvenile defendants, who are under 18, was unconstitutional and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that a “lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth,” quoting one of his own previous decisions.
Kami Chavis, director of the Criminal Justice Program at Wake Forest University School of Law, said the country needs to use that same logic when it comes to regulating the tools those young people use to commit their crimes.
“We need to pay attention to the scientific evidence that suggests these young minds may not be capable of having the serious responsibility of owning an assault rifle,” she said.
Dreams and fantasies
In the stories of young shooters, experts say there’s often a disconnect between the lives they lead and the lives they think they should have. But while most people endure such disappointment, these perpetrators appear to have gone through a series of psychological changes that led to their explosions of violence.
Fantasies “of unlimited power and greatness” and an intense desire for admiration is how Frank Robertz, director of the Institute for Violence Prevention and Applied Criminology in Berlin, characterizes one common thread among the perpetrators. Peter Langman, a psychologist who researches school shootings, noted in a paper in The Journal of Campus Behavioral Intervention that “the sense of damaged masculinity is common to many shooters and often involves failures and inadequacies.”
Eric Madfis, a criminal justice professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, talks about “White male grievance,” although he acknowledges that not all the shooters have been White. He suggests the perpetrators are trying to regain control through a “masculine” solution after a long period of frustration.
In the case of shooters, he added, often “we are talking about boys who have been emasculated over a period of time. They were bullied, or ignored, or didn’t have the dating life or popularity they wanted.”
Ramos, who killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde last month, was said to have been bullied over a lisp and stutter. Cruz, who murdered 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, had behavioral issues since middle school. Lanza, who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown in 2012, was a loner who spent much of his last few months locked in his bedroom, communicating with his mother via email even as they lived in the same house.
Robertz said another common thread among shooters is the connection between a disturbed adolescence and escapes into a fantasy world. Their manifestos and interviews offer evidence that these often-violent visions gradually take up more of their mindspace. When coupled with “low self-esteem, excessive anxiety, bleak life perspectives and most of all, a very deficient social bond to other people,” the visions get stronger, he said.
“They only realize these violent fantasies in our physical world if they do not get stopped, and if a certain trigger event happens, which usually resembles the destruction of their last subjective hope,” Robertz said.
In the aftermath of these shootings, a shocked and grieving public, along with law enforcement officials, invariably debate ways to predict and stop attackers. In the past, some police urged the use of artificial intelligence software to comb through school records, gun purchases and other data to flag youth who might have a propensity to commit violence. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center analyzed transcripts of psychiatric interviews of teens to try to pinpoint who might be at risk of school violence. On the day of the Uvalde shooting, Rahul Sood, a former Google employee who is now CEO of Irreverent Labs, a gaming company, took to Twitter to suggest government authorities monitor spikes in ammunition purchases, and social media conversations, especially of registered gun owners who might be potential threats.
“[U]sing machine learning you can make predictions of where the next mass shooting might occur, we can stop it before it happens,” Sood claimed.
Option 2: these can be predicted, using machine learning you can make predictions of where the next mass shooting might occur, we can stop it before it happens. (cont...)
— Rahul Sood 🐔🐴🦄∞/21m🚀 (@rahulsood) May 24, 2022
But so far, few of these proposals have gained traction.
At least one reason is it can be difficult, or even impossible at times, Metzl said, to tease apart ordinary adolescent rebellion from more serious signs of trouble. He and other experts point out that for every mass shooter who fits a certain profile, there are millions more like him who never act violently.
“I have always wondered who is in the demographic who doesn’t commit a crime? Are they representative of some larger whole of disaffected men?” Metzl said. | 2022-06-03T12:15:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why so many mass shooters are angry young men - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/03/why-so-many-mass-shooters-young-angry-men/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/03/why-so-many-mass-shooters-young-angry-men/ |
Law enforcement authorities say Gonzalo Artemio Lopez stole a white 1999 Chevrolet Silverado from a residence where he killed an adult and four minors. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
A Texas inmate who escaped from a prison bus last month died in a shootout with law enforcement officers Thursday night, hours after he is suspected of killing an adult and four minors at their weekend home, authorities said.
Last month, 46-year-old Gonzalo Artemio Lopez, who was serving a life sentence for a 2005 capital murder and a 2004 attempted capital murder, escaped from custody in Leon County, between Dallas and Houston. As Lopez was being transported to a medical appointment on May 12, authorities said he broke out of his restraints, stabbed the bus driver and ultimately drove off with the bus. He escaped after crashing in a cow pasture.
For weeks, law enforcement officials searched the area to no avail. Then, on Thursday, authorities discovered the bodies of an adult and four minors at a residence along Highway 7 in Leon County, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. A white 1999 Chevy Silverado was missing from the residence, and officials said they believed Lopez had killed the residents and fled the area in the truck.
Hours after the discovery, law enforcement officers spotted Lopez in the truck about 260 miles away in Atascosa County, south of San Antonio. After a chase of the vehicle, Lopez crashed, exited the truck and shot at the officers, TDCJ authorities said. He was killed when they returned fire, according to officials.
Lopez was armed with an AR-15 rifle and a handgun, according to the TDCJ.
TDCJ Chief of Staff Jason Clark told reporters Thursday night that “we are breathing a sigh of relief that Lopez will not be able to hurt anyone else.”
Authorities have not released the names or ages of the victims or said how they were killed. Clark said they were from the Houston area and had just arrived Thursday at the residence, which he described as a weekend home.
Officers had been combing the area for Lopez since he escaped, Clark said, and had “cleared” the home “multiple times” before finding the victims’ bodies there on Thursday around 6 p.m., leading authorities to believe that Lopez had entered the residence “recently.” There is no indication that Lopez and the victims knew each other, Clark said.
While he was on the run, Lopez was able to “stay within the woods, get into a residence to get water and food and possibly change his clothing,” Clark said.
He added at a separate briefing that it was unclear whether Lopez was already at the home where he allegedly killed the five victims or was “casing the structure and just waiting for someone to come in.”
It is likely the guns Lopez wielded during the shootout were from the residence, Clark said.
In 2006, Lopez was convicted of capital murder after kidnapping a man over a drug debt and killing him with a pickax, The Washington Post reported. He had also been convicted of attempted capital murder for firing gunshots at a sheriff’s deputy in Webb County in 2004. Lopez was serving a life sentence and was not eligible for parole until April 2045.
On May 12, while on a transport bus traveling 160 miles between Gatesville to Huntsville, Lopez somehow broke free from his restraints, cut his way into a metal cage-like area where the driver was located and stabbed the driver, according to the TDCJ. After driving off in the bus for a short distance, Lopez crashed in a cow pasture and ran away. The bus driver’s injuries were not life-threatening.
A sprawling manhunt involving around 300 law enforcement officers ensued, and a $50,000 reward was offered for information leading to Lopez’s capture. The search the TDCJ described as “exhaustive” turned up nothing until Thursday, when the bodies were found. Hours later, law enforcement officers spotted Lopez driving the white Silverado in Jourdanton, Tex.
On Thursday night, officers in Jourdanton started trailing Lopez in the pickup and spiked its tires, Clark said. After a short chase in a residential area, Clark said, Lopez crashed into a tree, got out of the truck and eventually fired “several rounds” at the officers while armed with an AR-15 and a pistol.
“And those officers very swiftly shot and killed Lopez, bringing this whole ordeal to an end,” Clark said, adding that none of the officers were injured. Clark said the TDCJ was notified that Lopez had been killed around 10:30 p.m.
Asked by a reporter whether the TDCJ had failed the five dead victims, Clark said the agency will conduct “a serious incident review to determine how exactly this escape took place.”
“Any time you have something serious like this, it’s incumbent upon us to go backwards to figure out, how did he escape? How did he beat our security protocols in order to leave that transport vehicle?” Clark added. “And so that’s something that we absolutely will be doing.”
Timothy Bella contributed to this report. | 2022-06-03T12:15:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas inmate Gonzalo Lopez, who escaped a prison bus, dies in shootout - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/gonzalo-lopez-dead-texas-escape/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/gonzalo-lopez-dead-texas-escape/ |
A book on leadership that offers real leaders, not abstract theories
Review by Jeremi Suri
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is among the past and present leaders David Gergen profiles in his new book. Rejecting a universal model of leadership, Gergen offers a variety of examples, including James Baker, John Lewis and Malala Yousafzai. (Markus Schreiber/AP)
From Plato to David Petraeus, distinguished writers have tried to uncover the essential principles and behaviors of successful leaders. They have emphasized toughness and sensitivity, thundering eloquence and quiet contemplation, and, most recently, devotion to a True North and “emotional intelligence.” Leadership often appears to be everything and nothing at the same time — a mix of trite advice, contradictory analysis and ponderously obvious observation. Has any successful leader ever used any of the books on leadership?
Most leaders pay more attention to experience — their own and that of others, learned from reading history. The founders of the United States thought deeply about their grievances with the British Empire, and they immersed themselves in the republican alternatives from ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy. They had rich historical inspirations but few theories. The same could be said for the leaders most venerated in the last century: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr., among others. Knowledge of their predecessors’ successes and failures, not abstract wisdom about leadership, drove them to new heights after many failures of their own.
David Gergen worked for four American presidents — Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — and he witnessed their struggles with leadership up close. In his remarkable new book, “Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders Are Made,” he rejects universal models for leadership. His heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and include John F. Kennedy, George H.W. Bush, John Lewis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg.
All of these figures followed their own paths, succeeding in very different environments. Gergen builds his narrative around their varied and trying experiences rather than abstract principles. He provides numerous stories, often mini-biographies, that can help an aspiring leader find her own relevant examples without requiring a perfect fit. The leadership espoused by Gergen is in the hands of the reader — young readers, he hopes — not a set of timeless lessons. His book is more of an alluring kaleidoscope than a sermon, research paper or how-to.
Gergen begins with what he calls the “inner journey.” This involves personal preparation to work with others to achieve what the author calls “stretch goals.” Individuals make themselves into leaders, as Gergen describes, by finding their passions and nurturing an “integrated life” that allows consistent pursuit of purpose within a sustainable setting. The inner journey necessarily involves setbacks and “crucibles” of challenge. Leaders never master themselves or their environment, but they learn to convert adversities into opportunities for self-improvement. Gergen is particularly compelling in his account of the inner journey of Katharine Graham, former publisher of The Washington Post, who painfully turned some of the most difficult days for herself and the newspaper into notable achievements covering Watergate, the Vietnam War and other consequential topics. The inner journey, as elucidated by Gergen, succeeds when the rising leader finds her balance — her sea legs — for rough waters.
The “outer journey” involves changing others, including bosses, voters and even adversaries. Leadership is always a team sport, even in dictatorships, because you need help from others to get things done. “In most organizations,” Gergen writes, “the hard part isn’t coming up with ideas but transforming those ideas into reality.” He showcases James Baker’s time as President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff (and Gergen’s boss). Baker quietly and consistently cultivated strong ties with members of Congress, especially powerful figures across the aisle. He also worked closely with reporters to help them get the facts and cover the administration fairly and fully. Baker built trust with diverse stakeholders and made himself indispensable; he did not bully, prevaricate or seek blind loyalty. He figured out how to collaborate with contradictory personalities in a highly politicized atmosphere. Gergen recounts Baker’s intense preparation, careful thinking and unbending determination to get the job done for the president and the country.
In some ways, Baker is the most important figure in Gergen’s fascinating, multilayered book. As other biographers — particularly Peter Baker and Susan Glasser — have recounted, Baker came to Washington as an elite Houston lawyer, with a distinguished family background, to help lead the country. He was initially a Democrat but devoted his prodigious energies to running campaigns, the White House and foreign policy for Republicans he believed in. He worked to solve difficult problems and get big things done: tax relief and economic growth, defending the world’s oil supply, and ending the Cold War peacefully. And he did all these things by building bridges across partisan divides. It is impossible to imagine Baker trolling his opponents on Twitter.
Gergen wrote “Hearts Touched With Fire” to bring figures like Baker to life for young men and women concerned about the future of the United States and the world. He does not want them to copy Baker, or any of the other subjects in the book, but to draw inspiration to solve difficult problems and get big things done again. He explains that much of the “death and destruction”of the last two decades “could have been avoided if we had paid attention and acted on early signs of trouble.” And he declares that young people must come together to do that.
They will obviously need new leaders, with different experiences and outlooks from their predecessors. That is the main point of this inspiring and useful book — to help a new generation reimagine leadership for our troubled times. Surveying how others have navigated the challenges of the past, young men and women can deepen their understanding of themselves, their world and their options. Few books have so much to offer readers contemplating whether to enter the arena. We should hope they heed Gergen’s compelling call to action.
Jeremi Suri is a professor of history and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His book “Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy” is forthcoming this fall. He hosts a weekly podcast, “This Is Democracy.”
Hearts Touched With Fire
How Great Leaders Are Made
By David Gergen
Simon & Schuster. 320 pp. $29. | 2022-06-03T12:15:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders Are Made," by David Gergen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/book-leadership-that-offers-real-leaders-not-abstract-theories/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/book-leadership-that-offers-real-leaders-not-abstract-theories/ |
The dynamo and the dreamer: Two men behind Apple’s recent boom
Review by Jon Gertner
Tim Cook took over as Apple’s chief executive after the death of Steve Jobs in 2011. He and Chief Design Officer Jony Ive propelled the company to new heights over the next decade. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
Eleven eventful years have passed since the death of Steve Jobs, the charismatic co-founder of Apple. Jobs, of course, helped introduce a succession of revolutionary products that almost single-handedly made consumer electronics more beautiful and less buggy. His gifts for packaging and persuasion, however, built on the work of his company’s design guru, Jony Ive, who had an exacting eye for detail and a knack for industrial production. Together, the duo put forward the idea that their company wasn’t just making innovative technologies. The magical, minimalist boxes they were selling — clad in white plastic or aluminum; beautiful, functional and delightfully futuristic — could actually change our lives.
No wonder Apple made money under Jobs — gobs of it. What seems surprising, at least in retrospect, is how that era was merely a prelude to the company’s recent, decade-long bull run. Upon Jobs’s death from cancer in 2011, his handpicked successor, chief executive Tim Cook, wrote all employees a note: “We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.” Wall Street had its doubts, but Cook was true to his word. In the years following, the company systematically rolled out improvements to phones and introduced new devices and services. By transforming itself into a global colossus — a “nation-state,” as Tripp Mickle, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who recently joined the New York Times, aptly calls it in his new book, “After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul” — Apple became one of the most successful business ventures in the history of the world.
Mickle’s exploration of the company’s last decade shows us what happened after Jobs’s demise, as Ive and Cook built on the iPhone’s success. An engrossing narrative that’s impressively reported — a true journalistic achievement in light of Apple’s culture of secrecy — “After Steve” takes readers deep inside the monolithic company. Mickle’s characterization of Apple’s evolution and its management sometimes seems oversimplified. Yet his book helps us see, in arresting detail, why Apple is Apple — that is, how the company mastered the process of making its devices so welcoming and accessible even as they contain the most complex modern technologies imaginable.
“After Steve” rests on the contention that Apple’s success is difficult to grasp without understanding the chemistry — and, frequently, the tension — between the two men who led the company after 2011. A native of small-town Alabama, Cook attended Auburn, and early in his career he excelled at running operations at IBM and Compaq before coming to Apple. Brilliant, aloof and unflappable, Cook was a kind of anti-Jobs. He was respectful in his bearing and modest in his tastes. For years Cook preferred living in a small apartment near Apple’s campus and using commercial rather than corporate jets. He dutifully woke up at 4 a.m. to check sales reports. He enjoyed going to the gym and taking nature hikes, sometimes alone. And apart from his courageous public declaration that he is gay — in Bloomberg Businessweek, in 2014 — he preferred not to call too much attention to himself.
And yet, in the office, Cook was a dynamo. He seemed capable of maintaining in his working memory a databank of the company’s vast operations and supply chains, and colleagues quaked in fear during his relentless interrogations at meetings. Nobody worked harder; nobody knew more about Apple’s corporate circuitry. Nobody understood better how to boost profits.
Ive lived a different life in the same building, floating amid a world of dreamy aesthetes. During Jobs’s reign, Ive established within the company an autonomous design unit that defined Apple’s aspirations and products. By the time of Jobs’s death, he was arguably among the most powerful executives at the company, and arousing his displeasure — by, say, talking about budgets — could result in dismissal. Some of the best passages in “After Steve” relate to Ive’s sleek and secretive design works, where his team, “a group of Renaissance men devoted to art and invention,” never compromised. That’s because, with soaring iPhone profits, they didn’t have to.
Apple designers set their own hours and sipped rare coffees. They lived “like rock stars,” Mickle explains — always drinking champagne and visiting the best restaurants. (They apparently cached a supply of drugs, too.) Ive maintained a serene exterior that belied a fierce and controlling nature. “He projected the outward persona of a genteel Brit,” Mickle tells us, “unassuming, gracious, and sensitive, but beneath it were the drive, ambition and resolve of a perfectionist who wanted to make products exactly as he imagined them.”
We sort of recall what happened next, don’t we? In 2015 Apple, under Ive’s meticulous direction, rolled out a risky new product called the Apple Watch, which aimed to bring the dazzle of fashion to the tech world. The reception for the watch was lukewarm, but over time, as the watch’s health apps and battery life improved, its sales did too. In the meantime, Cook was focused on developing huge markets in China and softening Donald Trump’s impulses to curtail the overseas manufacturing that Apple depends upon. Just as important, Cook began to see the potential for Apple in services — apps, streaming music and television shows — rather than new products. The gadget pipeline has not run dry (there are AirPods to sell, for instance), but increasingly it seems like the iPhone, with more than 1 billion sold by 2016, may be a once-in-a-generation product.
It’s here that the story becomes fraught. As Cook forged ahead, Ive struggled with burnout. And as Apple’s stock price drifted higher, Ive moved further from what he saw as an increasingly profit-driven company. Working part-time, he stopped coming to the office and focused instead on helping to design Apple’s new corporate headquarters. One of his tasks was a global search for a type of glass so clear it would have the effect, at least in Ive’s view, of bringing greater happiness to Apple employees. This project eventually cost as much as $1 billion, Mickle estimates, and constituted “perhaps the largest glass order in history.” Yet it seems to have been Ive’s last eccentric hurrah. In 2019, with the Apple HQ finished, he resigned. Mickle notes: “Cook, who lived to work, had asked Ive to do the same. He had squeezed more out of the artist than the artist had to give.”
You might wonder if Apple’s history is as tidy as this sounds. Even with its chief designer’s absence, Apple continued to sell more and more stuff. And to those of us on the outside, nothing much changed: The company’s product line remained elegant, alluring, reliable. The argument in “After Steve” is that Apple’s growth and Ive’s alienation are what caused this great American firm, once so creative and unusual, to lose its soul. But to buy into this idea one has to believe that a corporation has a soul — a dubious assumption, I think, that seems tantamount to accepting Jobs’s old pitch that suggested Apple was more than a company that sold things to make money. Rather, it was something closer to a spiritual ideal.
It’s never been true, of course. And toward the end of Mickle’s book this notion — Apple as a fallen company, and a fallen ideal — detracts from an otherwise compelling narrative. Moreover, while the differences between Ive, the creative thinker, and Cook, the profit-driven technocrat, are no doubt real, readers may find the lines Mickle draws to be conceptually problematic. The implication that Cook destroyed Apple’s start-up culture, for instance, may seem naive to business-savvy readers, who will view him — correctly, I believe — as a principled CEO who succeeded at a challenging job by respecting his company’s traditions and looking ahead to the demands of consumers, employees and Wall Street. And I suspect many readers will have difficulty sympathizing with Ive, who seems less the edgy artist and conscience of the company, as we are perhaps meant to think (a “latter-day Leonardo da Vinci,” as Mickle unfortunately describes him), than a gifted industrial designer with an intuitive feel for the mass market and a predilection for middlebrow culture, like the band Coldplay.
As the years roll by, moreover, it’s dismaying to watch Ive’s fixation on luxury grow. It’s not just the champagne and famous friends; it’s the custom house in Hawaii, the constant trips to Europe, the fatuous $300,000 chauffeur-driven Bentley. All too often Ive comes off less as a visionary than a sybarite. And sometimes his behavior is repugnant, as when he asks co-workers at Apple to fix the soap dispensers on the Gulfstream jet he bought from Laureen Powell-Jobs, Steve’s widow.
None of this really subtracts from this book’s immense readability. And Mickle’s thematic overreach doesn’t obscure the crisp and detailed view he offers us of Apple’s inner sanctums. Still, readers of “After Steve” would do well to remember that no matter the company, soul never figures into the equation: The balance in business between growth and creativity has always been exceedingly difficult to strike. Apple made selling beautiful things seem easy. But really, it only looked that way.
Jon Gertner is the author of “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation” and “The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future.”
After Steve
How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul
William Morrow. 512 pp. $29.99 | 2022-06-03T12:15:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of “After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul” by Tripp Mickle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/dynamo-dreamer-two-men-behind-apples-recent-boom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/dynamo-dreamer-two-men-behind-apples-recent-boom/ |
A French baron, a kidnapping and a severed finger
Review by Jonathan Kirsch
Baron Édouard-Jean Empain arrives at a Paris hospital after his kidnapping in 1978. His abductors initially considered two other wealthy targets but decided against capturing “elderly men who had been persecuted by the Nazis,” Tom Sancton writes. (Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma/Getty Images)
A chauffeur-driven Peugeot sedan was following a man on a scooter down Avenue Foch in Paris one day in 1978. The scooter started zigzagging before tipping over. “He’s completely crazy, this idiot,” the chauffeur muttered. And then four men with automatic weapons emerged from a nearby parked car, placed the Peugeot’s passenger in handcuffs, put a black hood over his head and injected a sedative into his arm. He ended up a prisoner in one of the abandoned quarries outside Paris where the Wehrmacht stored its arsenal of V-2 rockets during World War II.
“Do what we tell you,” one of them warned, “or we’ll blow your brains out.”
“The Last Baron: The Paris Kidnapping That Brought Down an Empire” by Tom Sancton may begin like a James Bond movie, but the book is a multi-generational history rather than a true-crime story. Sancton, a research professor at Tulane University and a veteran Paris bureau chief for Time, is the author of five previous works of nonfiction, including “The Bettencourt Affair.” As it happens, the author succeeds in telling his tale without artifice or invention because even the most exotic and breathtaking details are supplied in abundance by the case itself.
Thus, for example, after the kidnappers sent a ransom note with a threat to cut off one of the victim’s fingers, they drew lots to determine who would perform the surgery. All of the necessary equipment was at hand: “a guillotine-style paper cutter, a heavy mallet, cotton, bandages, alcohol and a small bottle.” Apropos of the locale, they provided the victim, 40-year-old Baron Édouard-Jean Empain, with a bowl of red wine and Valium before the procedure and a pátê sandwich when the amputation was completed.
The saga that Sancton tells with such panache harks back to a family dynasty that began with the making of money. Its founder was a Belgian entrepreneur who “built railroads, created banks, fathered the Paris Métro, dug mines in Africa, and raised a fantastic city on the sands of Egypt.” Thanks to his accumulation of new wealth, Édouard Louis Joseph Empain was raised to a barony by the Belgian king in 1907.
By 1978, however, the title belonged to his grandson, Édouard-Jean, known as Wado to his friends. As we discover in “The Last Baron,” Wado was a paradoxical figure who indulged in “fast cars, beautiful women, and gaming tables” and yet “bought his suits off the rack and cut his own hair.” He proudly wore the family crest on a signet ring, but he was also mindful that his father had been accused of collaboration with the Nazis and his mother was “a former American exotic dancer.” He was entitled to be addressed as Monsieur le Baron, but he was dubbed “Monsieur Nucléaire” after the French government granted him a lucrative monopoly to build 16 new atomic power plants.
Money and politics, in fact, both figure crucially throughout the “The Last Baron.” The kidnappers demanded 80 million francs as the price for Wado’s release, but they signed the ransom note as the “Red Liberation Army” to create the impression that their motives were ideological rather than mercenary. Mindful of other oligarchs who had been kidnapped in recent years, Wado had forbidden his wife to pay a ransom if he suffered the same fate: “We must set an example,” he told her. Yet the kidnappers warned the family that any failure to pay the price in full would result in the delivery of not another severed body part but a corpse.
“Shoot him in the head, take his picture, and leave him in the trunk of a car. The next time we kidnap someone, we show the picture, and they pay up immediately,” reasoned the kidnappers, when the police got involved and they thought they would not get the ransom.
Precisely because Empain’s business enterprises were so far-flung, crowned heads and heads of state across Europe were monitoring the work of the Judiciary Police, the French law enforcement agency charged with finding the kidnappers and their victim. Perhaps to underscore the filmic quality of the book he has authored — as if the point needed to be made at all — Sancton pauses to point out that its headquarters at 36 Quai des Orfévres “provided the setting for countless French films and crime stories,” including the 25 novels by Georges Simenon that feature the intrepid detective Jules Maigret.
Then, too, the kidnapping ignited a long-simmering crisis within Empain’s family. His own fortune, it turns out, was not sufficient to fund the ransom. His wife offered to sell her jewelry to raise money, but his mother refused to chip in. She did, however, make a provocative suggestion — why not ask Wado’s wealthy Iranian mistress to pay the ransom? “If she loves Wado, and she has money, let’s see what she can do,” said his mother. And the skulduggery soon spread beyond the family circle — Empain’s second-in-command in his business empire “suddenly saw his chance to seize the crown.”
No less fascinating is the parallel account of the gang that carried out the crime. Alan Caillol, for example, started out by stealing Vespas and escalated to valuable antiques and even a painting by Utrillo. Robbery of armored cars at gunpoint was the next step. Eventually, Caillol and his “brothers-in-crime” turned to kidnapping. “Instead of going after the money,” they decided, “why don’t we make the money come to us?” At first they considered kidnapping the banker Guy de Rothschild or the aviation mogul Marcel Dassault. Since Rothschild had escaped from France ahead of the Nazi invasion and Dassault was sent to Buchenwald, however, Caillol “recoiled at the idea of targeting two elderly men who had been persecuted by the Nazis.” They turned instead to Empain, “the rising star of French capitalism.”
“The Last Baron” is a book about the flash points in family, business, politics and diplomacy. At the same time, much of the narrative amounts to an expertly told and richly detailed police procedural. Above all, it is a wholly authentic thriller. For that reason, and out of deference to the author and his readers, the denouement cannot be revealed here.
Jonathan Kirsch, a publishing lawyer and book reviewer, is the author of “The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris.”
The Last Baron
The Paris Kidnapping That Brought Down an Empire
By Tom Sancton
Dutton. 368 pp. $28. | 2022-06-03T12:15:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "The Last Baron: The Paris Kidnapping That Brought Down an Empire," by Tom Sancton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/french-baron-kidnapping-severed-finger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/french-baron-kidnapping-severed-finger/ |
Psychiatry’s brutal history and unanswered questions
Review by Siri Hustvedt
A guard at the state prison hospital in Vacaville, Calif., prepares an inmate for a lobotomy in 1961. Under superintendent William Keating, a psychiatrist who was convinced that “criminality” was lodged in certain areas of the brain, lobotomies became routine at the facility. (Ted Streshinsky/Corbis/Getty Images)
Andrew Scull’s “Desperate Remedies” tells the story of psychiatry in the United States from the 19th-century asylum to 21st-century psychopharmacology. His lucid prose and urgent narrative style take the reader through psychiatry’s dubious characters, its shifting conceptions of mental illness and fluctuating diagnostic categories, the often gruesome treatments visited upon patients and their families, and the ultimate demise of public mental hospitals for “community care,” which, as he explains, meant no community and no care. Instead, severely ill patients were abandoned to fend for themselves, ending up on the streets or in prison, where many of them remain today.
Scull describes how doctors, driven by hubris, greed and flimsy theoretical assumptions, embraced invasive, brutal techniques as solutions to insanity and then summarily pronounced them effective, often protected by the profession as a whole. These purported “successes” depended not only on a gullible public but on a press eager to tout the most recent medical miracle.
Some of Scull’s horror stories are well known. From the late 19th and well into the 20th century, a host of conditions, which included lunacy but also feeblemindedness, epilepsy and pauperism, were believed to be caused by an inborn hereditary taint impervious to any and all treatment. Eugenic-genetic science fueled arguments for the isolation of “defectives” in institutions, for the highly restrictive 1924 immigration law and for the legalization in America of involuntary sterilization directed at “the unfit.” Induced coma, electroshock (in its earlier and often bone-breaking version) and lobotomies (the removal of portions of the brain’s frontal lobes with a modified version of an ice pick) as cures for mental illness all deserve their current status as grotesque violations of human rights. I knew nothing of Henry Cotton, however, whose career was founded on the conviction that low-grade bacterial infections lurked inside the bodies of mental patients and the affected parts required excision. Whole sets of teeth, tonsils, cervixes and colons were lost or mutilated in this pursuit. Almost half of Cotton’s patients died.
The victims of these ferocious remedies were far more often women than men. Scull cites research finding that female patients were also far more likely to be restrained, straitjacketed, and strapped to beds and chairs. Scull freely acknowledges the sexism at work in both treatment and ward discipline but leaves it to the reader to deduce the sadistic sexual misogyny that was played out on the bodies of unwilling patients.
“Desperate Remedies” documents the rise of psychoanalysis and its hold on psychiatrists for decades in the 20th century. Intellectuals, artists and Hollywood reinforced the fashion for the unconscious and sexual repression. Scull cites the dogmatic schisms inside psychoanalysis, the professional arrogance and the fact that psychoanalytic institutes were not associated with research universities (which would come to benefit from massive government science funding) as reasons for the demise of psychotherapeutic psychiatry, but most important, the talking cure lost its status as a science. It could provide no hard evidence for its efficacy.
Scull is well aware that psychiatry has vacillated between treating “the mind” with therapeutic dialogue and treating “the body” with surgery and psychotropic drugs. At the peak of its power, psychodynamic psychiatry, Scull writes, claimed “that psychological factors loomed large in the genesis of illnesses that had traditionally been seen as rooted in the body.” He mentions ulcers, asthma, autism and schizophrenia. Smothering mothering is not responsible for asthma, but strong emotions do trigger asthma attacks. Ulcers, as Scull points out, are now known to have a bacterial origin but were once ascribed to “Type A” personalities and stress.
What Scull misses is that recent research makes it clear that the immune system is highly sensitive to psychological stress and that a lowered immune response creates vulnerability to a host of illnesses, including those caused by bacteria. “Mental” stress also affects gene expression, as many recent epigenetic studies have shown. Despite the fact that it is an inert substance, a placebo has potent physical effects, and the more time a physician spends with a patient while delivering the innocuous sugar pill, the more robust the results. As the neuroscientist Fabrizio Benedetti has argued, placebo effects crucially involve the physiology of the doctor-patient relation. At the very least, these findings complicate Scull’s critique of psychodynamic thought.
By skirting the philosophical mind-body problem, Scull avoids psychiatry’s crucial dilemma. The medical discipline has never known and still does not know what it is treating. Can the mental be reduced to the physical? Are mind and brain identical, or is the reduction of feelings and thoughts to genes, brain regions and neurochemicals a mechanistic fantasy that has haunted science since the 17th century? If human development and its dynamic biological processes (including brain development) are at once genetically constrained and experience-dependent, then a new understanding of “the mental” in psychiatry and in popular culture is vital to negotiating the future.
As a sociologist, Scull is attuned to the broad upheavals that transform societies. He is also sensitive to cultural repetitions. He quotes William Laurence, a science reporter for the New York Times, who, in 1937, celebrated lobotomy as a procedure that “cuts away the sick parts of the human personality.” For readers who believe that such crude thinking belongs to a bygone era before neurobiology and genetics came along with answers, I recommend “Desperate Remedies” as a tonic for your optimism. Headlines declaring depression “a chemical imbalance,” announcing Prozac as its magical solution and touting the discovery of genes for schizophrenia are no more or less absurd than Laurence’s boosterism for lobotomy. Scull directs the reader’s attention to the fact that after decades of research and billions of dollars spent, not a single biomarker for psychiatric sickness has been discovered.
“The phenomenological and social dimensions of mental illness have all but disappeared as questions worthy of serious and sustained attention,” he writes. On the whole, this dismal assessment is accurate. I will add only that inside psychiatry, there are many people, and the numbers are growing, who like Scull believe that a complex biopsychosocial model is the only way forward. The suffering of millions of people depends upon it.
Siri Hustvedt is the author of 13 books, most recently “Mothers, Fathers, and Others.” She is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell medical college.
Desperate Remedies
Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness
By Andrew Scull
Belknap. 494 pp. $35 | 2022-06-03T12:15:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness by Andrew Scull - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/psychiatrys-brutal-history-unanswered-questions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/psychiatrys-brutal-history-unanswered-questions/ |
In undelivered speeches, history’s alternate paths
Review by Douglas Brinkley
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower gives orders to paratroopers in England about to board planes for the first assault of the Normandy invasion. In case the operation failed, Eisenhower had prepared an address apologizing and accepting responsibility. (U.S. Army Signal Corps/AP)
There’s an old joke in which a political speechwriter dies and goes before Saint Peter, who gives him a choice between heaven and hell. Keeping an open mind, the speechwriter asks to see both. Saint Peter takes him to hell first, showing him a room packed with exhausted-looking speechwriters, all typing away madly, racing to hit their deadlines. “That’s my worst nightmare!” says the speechwriter. “Please show me heaven.” So, Saint Peter takes him there and shows him another room, also full of frantically typing speechwriters. “But this is the same as hell!” the writer protests. “Not at all,” Saint Peter answers. “Up here, we use their stuff.”
That neatly sums up the strange world of professional speechwriting, a land of ghost drafts, scraps, rewrites, recycles, deep-dive research, retractions, excisions, cross-outs and hurry-ups. While there have been many books written about the art — Peggy Noonan’s “The Time of Our Lives: Collected Writings” (2015) and Ted Sorensen’s “Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History” (2008) jump to mind — Jeff Nussbaum’s delightful “Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History” stands alone in celebrating orphaned speeches that never made it to the podium, yet retain historical resonance.
Nussbaum is a veteran of the profession, possessing a witty, Art Buchwald-esque writing style. He produced superb work for Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore, co-wrote “Had Enough?: A Handbook for Fighting Back” (with James Carville) and “Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War on Terror” (with Bob Graham), and is a partner in the speechwriting and strategy firm West Wing Writers. Boldly, Nussbaum claims that speechwriting’s dirty secret is that most of what political, business and cultural leaders say is pablum. For every JFK “Ask not what your country can do for you” oration there are a dozen Gerald Ford clunkers and another dozen that never get delivered at all — and it’s the cream of those latter that “Undelivered” takes as its subject matter, giving Nussbaum fertile ground for rethinking how significant oration is made. Sometimes a speech will go undelivered because of something as simple as a snowstorm or a scheduling change, he says, but at other times “History — with a capital H — intervenes, when leaders are forced to choose, and the words they didn’t use tell us as much as the ones they did.”
Scavenging among the documents of unrealized futures, Nussbaum resurrects speeches such as Condoleezza Rice’s undelivered doctrine from Sept. 11, 2001, and Hillary Clinton’s aborted presidential victory speech of Nov. 5, 2016. Both lead Nussbaum, a Democratic strategist, to ponder how the 21st century would have been different had terrorists not brought down the World Trade Center towers or the electoral college delivered the presidency to Donald Trump — or, for that matter, had his old boss Al Gore been declared the 2000 presidential winner over George W. Bush and made climate change America’s top public policy issue.
Older speeches lay clear the perils of historic pivot-points. Dwight Eisenhower’s apology for the failure of the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, for example, is a seminal part of World War II history, standing out as the most riveting example that history isn’t preordained and leaders don’t have the luxury of hindsight. “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” Eisenhower would have said had the Allied invasion turned into a Dunkirk-like boondoggle. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
As Nussbaum points out, Eisenhower’s undelivered message has led great military historians like Stephen E. Ambrose and Dennis Showalter to ponder how an Allied loss at Normandy would have changed history for the worse. Luckily, Eisenhower never had to deliver the speech. In Nussbaum’s able hands, Ike’s filed-away draft serves as an object lesson in the language of leadership and responsibility.
Another of the book’s strong suits is its resurfacing of potentially incendiary speeches that were never set ablaze. I was particularly taken by the speech that anarchist Emma Goldman would have delivered at her sentencing for inciting a riot in 1893, had she decided to rile up her supporters. Nussbaum also includes a powerful speech Helen Keller planned to deliver at a suffrage parade in 1913, had she not become concerned for her personal safety.
Conversely, I’m baffled why Nussbaum included Mayor Abe Beame’s draft 1975 speech announcing that New York was teetering on bankruptcy — which is unreservedly dull. Sometimes, too, the book lurches into the quicksand of what former Atlantic Monthly managing editor Cullen Murphy once called “provisional history,” or seems to weave from port to port with no ultimate destination in mind. To some degree that’s to be expected, a lack of through-line being almost inevitable in a compendium of speeches that, for various reasons, went unspoken. But I did sometimes have the feeling of sifting through a Christie’s or Sotheby’s catalogue: its listings factually accurate, well curated, and interesting in and of themselves, but telling no overarching story.
Some chapters, however, hold up in dramatic ways, and the closing one is particularly strong, with Nussbaum reflecting on how great figures’ last words can live in immortality. Scholars debate, for instance, whether Thomas Jefferson’s final words were “No doctor, nothing more” or “Is it the Fourth yet?” — the latter the far more glorious option because, as Nussbaum puts it, “we want last words to be meaningful, lasting, and profound.” For prescient but undelivered last words by an American president, the award must go to John F. Kennedy, whose speech at the Dallas Trade Mart on the night of his assassination would have addressed “misinformation” that could undermine America’s standing in the world. “We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will ‘talk sense to the American people,’” the speech reads. “But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense.”
As Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote in his classic “Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History” (1992), a speech on a page is like a movie’s screenplay: of limited appeal when read as literature. “What makes a draft speech a real speech is the speaking of it,” he noted. That the speeches in “Undelivered” were never orated does take some of the helium out of their balloons, but in Nussbaum’s able hands, this cruise through what-might-have-been offers a hell of a fun ride.
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown chair in humanities and professor of history at Rice University and the author of “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race.”
Undelivered
The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History
Flatiron. 374 pp. $29.99 | 2022-06-03T12:15:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of “Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History” by Jeff Nussbaum - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/undelivered-speeches-historys-alternate-paths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/undelivered-speeches-historys-alternate-paths/ |
Friday briefing: Biden pleads with Congress to act on guns; vaccines for kids; summer blackouts; Spelling Bee drama; and more
President Biden urged Congress to act on guns in a rare prime-time address.
What he called for: A set of sweeping changes to U.S. gun laws, including banning assault weapons and limiting high-capacity magazines.
What else to know: The House will vote next week on legislation that would raise the age to buy a semiautomatic weapon from 18 to 21. But it’s unlikely to pass the Senate.
There have been more than 230 mass shootings so far this year.
That’s an average of more than one shooting a day in which four or more people were hurt or killed. You can see what that looks like here.
On the rise: The rate was high this year even before the recent string of high-profile shootings, including a racist massacre in Buffalo and the slaughter at a Texas elementary school.
The latest: The man who opened fire at a Tulsa hospital Wednesday killed a doctor he blamed for his back pain and three others, police said yesterday.
Ukraine and Russia have been at war for 100 days.
On the ground: Russia has control of about 20% of Ukrainian territory, President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday.
One key battle: Ukrainian troops are locked in brutal combat for the eastern city of Severodonetsk, which is now mostly controlled by Russian forces.
Kids under 5 could get a coronavirus vaccine within weeks.
What’s new? The long-awaited shots for young children could begin June 21, the White House said yesterday, depending on decisions by the FDA and public health officials.
Why it’s important: There are about 19 million children under 5 in the U.S. It’s the last age group without access to a vaccine.
What else to know: Low-income students were more likely to fall behind during remote learning, a new survey found, often because of a lack of technology at home.
Parts of the U.S. may have more blackouts than usual this summer.
Why? The nation’s power grid is under enormous stress because of extreme weather tied to climate change and some coal plants shutting down unexpectedly early.
The places at risk: Arkansas, California, southern Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin may not have enough energy during heat waves.
States and tribes could get back powers to block gas pipelines.
The Biden administration plan, announced yesterday, would allow local officials to scrutinize projects that threaten lakes, rivers and streams.
Why it matters: The plan, which could be in place by next spring, would reverse a Trump administration rule that ended a half-century of protection under the Clean Water Act.
The National Spelling Bee ended with its first-ever spell-off.
The finish: Two contestants went head-to-head late last night to spell as many words as they could in 90 seconds after several rounds didn’t separate them.
The winner: Harini Logan, a 14-year-old from Texas, correctly spelled 21 words in the rapid-fire ending. Runner-up Vikram Raju, 12, of Colorado, spelled 15.
And now … here’s what we’re reading this summer: 21 books to add to your list.
Tess Homan contributed to today’s briefing. | 2022-06-03T12:16:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Friday, June 3 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/06/03/what-to-know-for-june-3/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/06/03/what-to-know-for-june-3/ |
North Korea heads U.N.-linked disarmament group amid consternation
North Korean Ambassador Han Tae-song, shown on a TV screen, chairs on June 2 the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
SEOUL — North Korea, which has been developing nuclear weapons in defiance of sanctions imposed by the United Nations, has taken the helm of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament.
North Korea’s turn in the rotating presidency started on Thursday amid reports that the country is about to resume nuclear tests after a nearly five-year hiatus and amid its most active spate in years of test ballistic missile launches.
The forum’s presidency rotates among its 65 member states according to the English alphabetical order at a four-week interval.
A coalition of some 50 countries expressed concerns about North Korea chairing the world’s only permanent and multilateral forum for disarmament. Australian Ambassador Amanda Gorely, on behalf of the coalition, condemned the North’s “reckless actions which continue to seriously undermine the very value of the Conference on Disarmament,” according to the Associated Press.
North Korea’s presidency raised questions in Washington about the efficacy of the Geneva-based forum. “It certainly does call that into question when you have a regime like the DPRK in a senior leadership post, a regime that has done as much as any other government around the world to erode the nonproliferation norm,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price, referring to North Korea by its official name.
Pyongyang’s envoy to the forum, Han Tae-song, lashed out at what he called “threats” from the United States, saying that the two countries are “still at war.” Han told the forum’s meeting on Thursday that he “takes note” of the criticism from other member states and vowed to work toward “global peace and disarmament.”
Since the beginning of the year, North Korea has been conducting an unprecedented flurry of weapons tests. Recent launches from the North include intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. In response to the recent missile launches, the United States called for more sanctions against the regime at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council last week.
Officials in Seoul and Washington said North Korea appears to have restored a demolished nuclear test site in a bid to resume activities there. Amid signs of an imminent nuclear test explosion, U.S. nuclear envoy Sung Kim on Friday met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts to prepare for “all contingencies.”
“We want to make clear to the DPRK that its unlawful and destabilizing activities have consequences and that the international community will not accept these actions as normal,” he said.
Gorely, the Australian ambassador, said the coalition decided against boycotting North Korea’s presidency as requested by a group of nongovernmental organizations. She added the member states’ attendance does not give a “tacit consent” to the North’s aggressions that violate the U.N. sanctions. Some diplomatic missions lowered the level of their representation following North Korea’s accession.
Syria’s presidency of the same body in 2018 sparked stronger protests, including a walkout, from member states condemning the Arab state for using chemical weapons.
“North Korea’s presidency defeats the purpose of the conference, but it is inevitable as member states rotate at short intervals,” said Oh Joon, former South Korean ambassador to the United Nations. While North Korea could attempt to take advantage of the appointment, its role is largely limited to an administrative one that is insufficient to impact the conference, he said.
The Conference on Disarmament launched in the late 1970s as an international negotiating body for arms control, but it has failed to generate notable deals since 1996. Over the past decades, the forum has been reduced to a symbolic platform for member states to protest or defend military developments. | 2022-06-03T12:16:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korea heads U.N.-linked disarmament group amid consternation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/north-korea-un-disarmament/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/north-korea-un-disarmament/ |
Border guards who are colleagues of Andriy Samusenko and Anton Myahkyi come to lay flowers on their graves in the village of Tykhonovychi in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine on May 17. (Kasia Strek/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)
Friday marks 100 days since the first Russian troops invaded Ukraine and most Ukrainians’ world imploded — with untold numbers of civilians killed, some by torture, and thousands of homes, hospitals, schools and even entire communities destroyed. Though many Ukrainians resolved to stay and fight, several million men, women and children are now refugees in other countries.
Through it all, Washington Post photographers and reporters have captured the most telling moments of the war. The fighting has been defined by brutality, anguish and loss, yet even amid the suffering there have been flashes of normalcy and even revelry.
From the most recent moments of the war to the early days, the images and stories featured here show what the conflict has wrought during its first three months.
Russia made significant military gains in the eastern provinces as Ukrainian forces begged the West for more military aid. Civilians were evacuated from hospitals in the line of fire. Others were buried in cemeteries far from home.
The port city of Mariupol, under horrific siege since the early days of the war, finally fell to Russian forces — marking a strategic victory for an army initially hamstrung by logistical and tactical disorganization.
In the second full month of fighting, the scope of Russian atrocities started to emerge.
After troops retreated from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, The Washington Post documented more than 200 dead bodies. Many had been beheaded, burned, sexually abused or maimed.
Such findings intensified calls for war crimes investigations from U.S. and European officials.
Air raid sirens sounded daily as Russia’s bombings intensified. Ukrainians began to adjust to life under war, fleeing their homes, living in bunkers, burying their dead. Those escaping Mariupol told stories of a city being reduced to rubble, with residents cut off from food and water.
Still, some communities managed moments of celebration. In Pokrovske, a wedding postponed so that the groom-to-be could join in the fighting was held at last. The newlyweds and their guests danced around bunches of sunflowers, the national flower of Ukraine.
As its first tanks crossed the border into Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion after months of denying such plans. Early strikes on apartment buildings and hospitals foreshadowed the impact the fighting would have on civilians.
Families quickly began to take shelter in subway stations. A trickle of departures threatened to become a flood as Ukrainians left the first cities under attack, boarding trains and traveling westward with their children, pets and most-precious belongings. | 2022-06-03T13:19:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scenes of ruin and resilience from 100 days of war in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/scenes-ruin-resilience-100-days-war-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/scenes-ruin-resilience-100-days-war-ukraine/ |
U.S. employers added 390,000 jobs in May in yet another month of strong growth
The U.S. labor market remains tight, with job seekers outnumbering openings by nearly two to one. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
U.S. employers added 390,000 jobs in May, another month of blockbuster growth that points to sustained economic growth in the face of mounting headwinds.
The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.6 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.
“There are signs that the white-hot labor market is cooling," said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “But if you step back and look at the big picture, this is still an exceptionally strong pace of hiring.”
The burst of new jobs — which could contribute to heightened inflation — adds even more fuel to the Federal Reserve’s already-aggressive plan to raise interest rates.
The labor market has proven to be a surprisingly resilient pillar of the economy. The pace of growth eased slightly in May — following nearly 12 months of at least 400,000 new jobs — though economists were expecting a more marked slowdown.
In all, U.S. employers have added more than 6.5 million jobs in the past year, with many of those gains concentrated in industries such as manufacturing, hospitality and transportation that are racing to keep up with booming demand.
In Elysburg, Penn., Knoebels Amusement Resort is going to great lengths to recruit new employees. It has raised starting wages from $10 to $11, and begun offering hourly bonuses and subsidized bus rides to and from work. Last year, the park raffled off a Chevy Trailblazer to attract applicants.
“The overall job market is certainly tough and we’ve struggled,” said Jon Anderson, the park’s human resources director. “But this year, things are getting better: We’re on track to hire 1,900 team members, so we’ve already exceeded last year’s peak employment.”
Overall labor market conditions remain extremely tight even as the pace of growth slows. There are two open positions for every job seeker, with many businesses — particularly in lower-wage sectors like retail and hospitality — complaining of widespread labor shortages.
The strength of the job market has been a source of optimism for policymakers at a time when other parts of the economy are flashing warning signs. The U.S. economy unexpectedly shrank in the first three months of 2022, raising fears of an economic downturn. But Federal Reserve officials continue to point to the record-tight labor market as a reason they can raise interest rates without derailing the economic recovery.
“The labor market has continued to strengthen and is extremely tight,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said last month. “It doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to a downturn. Therefore, the economy is strong and is well positioned to handle tighter monetary policy.”
For workers, the strong job market translates to increased bargaining power. Millions of workers continue to quit or switch jobs each month in search of higher pay or more favorable conditions.
In Columbia, Mo., Isabelle Shannon recently quit her marketing job for a lower paying but more flexible position. The 27-year-old searched for more than a year before finding the right fit. And even though she took a 25 percent pay cut and gave up two months of paid maternity leave, she says she is much happier in her new role.
“I finally have a job where I feel heard and have more control over my day,” said Shannon, who is pregnant with her third child. “I had to take a step back and figure out what I value in an employer." | 2022-06-03T13:41:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Unemployment rate stays steady at pandemic low of 3.6% - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/jobs-report-may/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/jobs-report-may/ |
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 02: U.S. President Joe Biden walks to the podium to deliver remarks on the recent mass shootings from the White House on June 02, 2022 in Washington, DC. In a prime-time address Biden spoke on the need for Congress to pass gun control legislation following a wave of mass shootings including the killing of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and a racially-motivated shooting in Buffalo, New York that left 10 dead. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) (Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America)
President Joe Biden gave a prime-time speech Thursday about gun violence. It was carried by all three broadcast networks, as well as the cable stations. As presidential speeches go, it was fine; he mixed some aspirational policy goals with support for more modest objectives that may have a chance of passage, and added a little Republican-bashing to the mix.But why give such speeches?We don’t know what the White House staff thought it could accomplish, but we do know that high expectations would have been unrealistic. Presidential speeches are highly unlikely to change anyone’s mind about public policy. That’s been true throughout the polling era. It’s been true when presidents are popular. It’s been true for presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who were generally thought to be strong public speakers. Given that Biden is not currently popular and the straight-into-the-camera policy speech isn’t his strength, there’s really no reason to think that he’ll change minds. At the same time, these speeches generally don’t improve a president’s polling numbers or spark voters to go contact their members of Congress with demands to do what the president wants.One plausible goal is to inform party loyalists and supporters about a position they previously weren’t aware of. But gun safety isn’t that kind of issue; almost all solid Democrats already support the party’s position. Nor are such speeches going to have much effect on the other party’s adherents, who are much less likely to be watching. (In case anyone polls what speech-watchers thought, remember that there’s a strong selection effect at work, in which people from the president’s party are far more likely to watch, and therefore will make up the bulk of the respondents.)The one thing that presidents can potentially affect is agenda-setting; they can at times convince people that the topic of the speech is a very important issue. But that’s unlikely to happen here, given that gun violence is already dominating the headlines, news shows and social media.Perhaps White House staffers didn’t know any of this, and thought they could accomplish the impossible. But there are a few more reasonable goals that they might have had in mind.The first would be simply as a matter of representation. When something important is happening, politicians often feel obliged to let their constituents know what they’re doing in response. There are also media expectations, and while Biden had already spoken multiple times on the subject, it’s possible that the White House wanted to avoid having the press criticize him for failing to do whatever he could to fight for his proposed measures. Or it could be that Biden’s allies — in Congress, within the party, among activists — were pushing for him to say more. For example, some Democratic senators might want cover to support a compromise bill that they think can pass but that might disappoint activists. In such cases, the president’s ability to convey the party position might make it easier to sell a deal to constituents.One other possibility? Biden will be criticized if nothing passes regardless of what he does, but if something does pass he’ll want to take credit — and a high-profile speech before Congress votes probably deflects some critics who might question whether he had anything to do with it. That’s a pretty marginal reason for a speech, but it might seem important to those in the White House who have to deal with such things.Which gets to one very good reason to do these speeches: There’s often little or no downside. While presidential time (and staff support) is not exactly an infinite resource, giving this speech likely involved only minor trade-offs. It’s true that high-profile presidential involvement on such issues can be polarizing, but Biden was going to be pushing for his proposed measures one way or another, and it’s unlikely that this speech would trigger polarization on the issue that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.So even if the possible benefits are marginal at best, there’s no real reason not to go ahead with it.For weekend reading, here are some of the best items from political scientists this week:
• Matthew Green at Mischiefs of Faction on the outlook for a Republican landslide this November. Interesting. I’ll say again what I’ve said before: While I’m confident Democrats will take a beating if Biden stays unpopular, I’m not seeing signs that Republican wins are already built in.
• Also at Mischiefs: Seth Masket on the causes of gun violence.
• Alan I. Abramowitz on Senate elections in this and recent cycles.
• Matt Grossmann talks with Josh Clinton and Amnon Cavari about polling.
• Don Moynihan on how phony stories spread.
• And Lucy Britt at the Monkey Cage on Memorial Day. | 2022-06-03T13:41:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Did Biden’s Big Speech Change Anyone’s Mind? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/did-bidens-big-speech-change-anyones-mind/2022/06/03/b498938c-e339-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/did-bidens-big-speech-change-anyones-mind/2022/06/03/b498938c-e339-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Why SWIFT Ban Is Such a Potent Sanction on Russia
Analysis by Nicholas Comfort and Natalia Drozdiak | Bloomberg
One sanction that Western allies were hesitant to impose on Russia -- for fear of blowback to their own economies -- was called a “financial nuclear weapon” by France’s finance minister. That sanction is cutting off banks from SWIFT, the messaging system used by financial institutions globally to convey instructions to carry out tens of millions of transactions each day. Most major Russian banks did end up being cut off, underscoring Russia’s isolation as a global pariah and prompting its government to try to steer business with its remaining friends to its own, much smaller version of SWIFT. China, too, has been trying to develop a SWIFT alternative as part of its campaign to decrease its dependence on the Western financial system and use of the dollar.
1. What is SWIFT?
SWIFT -- the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication -- is a member-owned cooperative, based just outside Brussels, founded in 1973 to end reliance on the telex system for banking communications. As the Gmail of global banking, SWIFT delivers secure messages among more than 11,000 financial institutions and companies in over 200 countries and territories, directing trillions of dollars in transactions. The message traffic -- 42 million a day on average last year -- includes orders and confirmations for payments, trades and currency exchanges. SWIFT is overseen by the National Bank of Belgium and representatives from the U.S. Federal Reserve System, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and other major central banks.
2. Why is losing SWIFT access such a big deal?
A country whose banking system is cut off from SWIFT has a very difficult time moving money, and thus goods, in or out, and can thus suffer significant economic pain. When Western nations threatened Russia’s access to SWIFT in 2014, Alexei Kudrin, a onetime finance minister close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, estimated that it could reduce Russia’s gross domestic product by 5% in a year. Iran’s banks lost access to SWIFT in 2012 as part of European Union sanctions targeting the country’s nuclear program and its sources of finance. Many of the banks were reconnected in 2016 after the EU took them off its sanctions list.
3. Who’s been banned?
In March, the US and the EU cut off seven Russian banks from SWIFT. They included state-controlled VTB, Bank Rossiya and Bank Otkritie. Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank PJSC, was allowed to stay on SWIFT, as was Gazprombank JSC, a key bank for Russia’s energy conglomerates. On June 3, the EU added three more banks including Sberbank, which has twice as many assets as any other bank in Russia. Sberbank’s international operations were already heavily restricted after the U.S. and the U.K. froze its local assets and ordered their banks to stop working with it.
4. Why the reluctance to cut off all Russian banks from SWIFT?
Germany, which relies on Russia for more than half its gas supplies and more than a third of its oil, in particular resisted adding Sberbank to the list. Sberbank is a major conduit for EU-Russia trade, and if the Russians couldn’t get paid for their fuel, they could be counted on to stop providing it.
5. What was the impact of the SWIFT cutoffs?
Russia’s economy and society are being hit by so many different sanctions, and by the war itself, that it’s difficult to disentangle their effects. Adding to the challenge, Russian banks suspended monthly reporting of financial information when the war began. According to a March 31 report by independent Russian news agency Interfax, the central bank estimated that Russian banks may lose as much as 5.8 trillion rubles ($93.8 billion) in 2022 due to sanctions and from participating in measures to support the economy. Bloomberg News reported in May that an internal forecast by Russia’s Finance Ministry envisioned gross domestic product shrinking as much as 12% this year. The Finance Ministry called the report inaccurate.
6. Is there an alternative to SWIFT?
Not really, or at least not yet. Since 2014, the Bank of Russia has run its own financial messaging system for Russian and foreign banks, known by the acronym SPFS. Governor Elvira Nabiullina told parliament in April that 52 institutions from 12 countries were participating. In March, Moscow was said to be urging India, which had declined to impose sanctions on Russia, to use the system as a way to continue making payments for oil and weapons. Digital currencies and their underlying technology have been touted as a threat to SWIFT for several years, but first they’d need to prove they’re a credible and secure alternative. China has a payment system known as the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, or CIPS, but it’s mainly a settlement system for renminbi transactions that also offers some communication functions. Most banks that use CIPS still communicate via SWIFT. | 2022-06-03T13:42:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why SWIFT Ban Is Such a Potent Sanction on Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-swift-ban-is-such-a-potent-sanction-on-russia/2022/06/03/a6809b30-e340-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-swift-ban-is-such-a-potent-sanction-on-russia/2022/06/03/a6809b30-e340-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
China sees California as a climate leader, with some of the most advanced policies globally
Analysis by Jeremy Wallace
First Solar photovoltaic panels at the Desert Stateline Solar Facility in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, Calif., on Feb. 19. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg)
On May 26, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the Biden administration’s approach to China, in a speech with the slogan “invest, align, compete.” But can the two countries maintain their collaboration on climate issues? U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry shared a stage in Davos last week with Xie Zhenhua, China’s lead climate negotiator. And in April, California signed a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
To get a sense of the prospects for U.S.-China climate cooperation, I reached out to two leading experts, Joanna Lewis of Georgetown University and Michael Davidson of the University of California-San Diego. Their insights, lightly edited for length and style, follow:
Q: Given the overall tensions in the U.S.-China relationship, where might we see bilateral cooperation on climate policy?
Lewis: Policymakers face the all-important challenge of changing near-term emissions trajectories. China is still by far the largest national emitter — and continues to build out a coal-dominated energy system, even as it leads the world in renewable energy deployment. Working with China to build both technical expertise and political will can result in more ambitious decarbonization programs. Section II of the new MOU with California lays out the specifics, including focused efforts on CO2 and non-CO2 greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers like refrigerants, as well as activities to strengthen China’s institutions and governance structures.
Q: Could this collaboration potentially move the needle at the national level?
Lewis: Climate is one of a few areas where the U.S. is engaging cooperatively with China right now at the national level. However, that engagement has been downscaled dramatically from where it was during the Obama administration. State-level government agencies along with researchers at California-based universities have a unique pathway to work with China — and they’re somewhat insulated from the broader politics and tensions within the bilateral relationship.
Q: Why California? How connected are its efforts to China’s climate policies?
Davidson: California is unambiguously a climate leader within the U.S. and globally. Two-thirds of California’s electricity comes from low-carbon sources and a third from wind and solar alone. At one point in May, more than 100 percent of California’s electricity came from renewable energy. By contrast, nationwide U.S. electricity is around 40 percent low-carbon and just 13 percent wind and solar.
And California accounts for more than one-third of the country’s electric vehicle market. Decades of progressive state policies — from lightbulbs to fuel economy standards — have helped the “California effect” push the U.S. beyond the federal government’s median climate aspirations. China relies heavily on coal, making its grid dirtier than the U.S. electricity grid — but California shares similarities with China’s coastal provinces, in particular. California depends on imports for around a third of its electricity, comparable to Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong. This adds specific challenges when trying to transition to low-carbon sources. These areas have also historically pushed beyond central mandates in supporting low-carbon development, helping to bring China along in the process.
Q: Legislators in Washington show little interest in cooperation with China. What’s driving the collaboration from California?
Davidson: The MOU signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) renews a previous MOU signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in 2018 and builds on earlier cooperation between California and Chinese provinces. Thus, this cooperation crosses administrations and has been resilient even when federal climate efforts stall. In D.C., there are now two camps with respect to China: one crystallized by the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration that renews cooperation between the two countries on important near- and long-term climate actions; and another animated by trade, security and other tensions in the relationship. The two sides used to be able to compartmentalize environmental cooperation, but that appears to have broken down. It may now be up to California to demonstrate how to work with China to continue to make progress on climate change.
Q: What role do MOUs like this one play in U.S.-China climate cooperation?
Lewis: It’s not standard for a U.S. state to sign a MOU with China’s central government, rather than a provincial government, to be sure. But California has long been involved in U.S.-China climate cooperation — and was one of the few U.S. government entities to continue these efforts during the Trump years. And China sees California as a global climate leader, with some of the most advanced climate policies globally.
Q: How does this state-level MOU differ from other MOUs?
Lewis: In general, California’s work with China has focused more on technical issues related to clean energy deployment as well as carbon market design. California has unique experience with climate and clean energy policies and is home to top universities in the climate and energy space, along with national labs with long-standing collaborations with China. As a result, there’s more substance behind this new MOU than we see with other subnational partnerships.
Since leaving office, Brown has spent much of his time on U.S.-China climate collaboration and founded the California-China Climate Institute at U.C. Berkeley in 2019. This MOU designates the new institute, a nongovernmental organization, as the secretariat and primary center of coordination for California-China climate cooperation. The Chinese counterpart is based in the national-level Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s Foreign Environmental Cooperation Center. The arrangement highlights the unique relationship between Beijing and the former governor and his team.
Q: How does this MOU build on current energy and environment exchange programs?
Davidson: California has had robust government-to-government engagement with China on environmental issues going back two decades, and other exchanges for even longer. As Chinese officials drafted environmental policies — from air pollution laws to emissions trading — they consulted not only with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency experts but also state partners at the California Air Resources Board and other organizations. California’s nonprofit and philanthropic community has also actively engaged with China on these issues.
Academic exchanges have proliferated through individual collaborations as well as institutional partnerships — and the new California-China Climate Institute will broaden the engagement. The MOU hopes to stimulate further policy and academic exchanges on a wide range of climate and environment issues, with a particular focus on carbon neutrality. It’s a goal California hopes to reach in 2045, with China aiming for 2060.
Jeremy Wallace (@jerometenk) is an associate professor of government at Cornell University, where his research focuses on Chinese politics, authoritarianism and ideology. He is the author of “Cities and Stability: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China” (Oxford University Press, 2014). | 2022-06-03T13:42:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California and China have a long history of climate exchanges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/california-china-climate-agreement-mou/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/california-china-climate-agreement-mou/ |
A nugget made from lab-grown chicken meat in 2020. (Nicholas Yeo/AFP/Getty Images)
When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) used part of her Memorial Day weekend to insinuate that the government is monitoring your movements to make sure you’re eating “fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish,” and not a real cheeseburger, the Internet reacted as you’d expect. Jokes. Memes. Mockery of the congresswoman’s pronunciation of “Petri dish.”
But those in and around the world of “fake meat” — whether meats grown from stem cells in bioreactors or processed from plants to mimic meat — reacted much differently. Some suggested Greene was off in her own universe, disconnected from the bipartisan efforts to diversify the country’s meat supply for the potential benefit of the environment, animals, food security and human health.
Others, however, suggested Greene was expanding the culture wars into the esoteric world of alternative meats as a way to stoke fears about what the future might bring to conservative communities: a kind of “great replacement theory” but for beef, pork and chicken. Some say her baseless claims around the subject of alternative meats, like those around vaccines and the presidential election, will become talking points among mainstream conservatives, especially those from agricultural states.
“I think that her position on alternative proteins … is actually quickly becoming very standard, especially within the GOP,” said Jan Dutkiewicz, a policy fellow at the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School.
“There’s already this discourse around the fact that meat is all-American,” Dutkiewicz added. “It’s a sign of freedom. ... It’s related to supporting American farmers, American ranchers, American traditions. Where alternative protein seeks to disrupt that, it becomes a really easy target.”
Dutkiewicz, who studies both conventional meat production and the alt-meat industry, noted that politicians have already railed against efforts to cut back on meat consumption or reduce the impacts of animal agriculture. Such as when then-Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) held up a hamburger during a 2019 news conference, saying that if the Green New Deal went through, “this will be outlawed.” Or when Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced a bill in 2016 that would ban “Meatless Mondays” at military mess halls. Or when Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) proposed a “meat on the menu” day last year.
“While meat is one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat, there are radical anti-agriculture activists that are working to end meat production and our way of life here in Nebraska,” the governor said in a release.
Greene’s comments, part of a Facebook Live segment, were not far removed from Ricketts’s statement, at least in terms of bottom-line messaging: that someone wants to take away your traditional meats.
The U.S. government, the congresswoman said, wants “to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish. So you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body, and that says, ‘No, no, don’t eat a real cheeseburger,’ ” Greene said.
By invoking Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and an investor in alternative meat companies, Greene was relying on a well-worn political playbook, Dutkiewicz said.
She is “basically riding this wave of critique, which I think ultimately aims to appeal to a specific constituency that is conservative in the sense of being afraid of change,” he said. “Here you’ve got Silicon Valley or Bill Gates investing in these novel products which are somehow nefarious or worse for you or seek to undermine the American way of life or American agriculture.”
Greene’s office did not respond to a call seeking comment. But what she might not know is that America’s largest food and meat producers — companies such as Cargill, Tyson Foods and ADM — have invested heavily in alternative meats, said Bruce Friedrich, founder and chief executive of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that works to create a “world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative.”
“All of these companies are involved in both plant-based meat and cultivated meat, and it has everything to do with the bottom line,” Friedrich said. “So I think that the worst thing that can happen for alternative proteins is to have it conflated with anyone telling anyone else what to eat. It’s literally the opposite of that.”
Cultivated and plant-based meats, Friedrich said, are about giving consumers more choices, not less.
Andrew Noyes, head of global communications and public affairs for Eat Just, the company behind the plant-based Just Egg, suggested that politicians on both sides of the aisle see the potential of alternative proteins.
“When we talk to lawmakers and staffers about cultivated meat, issues like job creation, innovation and American competitiveness are top of mind, regardless of how red or blue the district is that they represent,” Noyes said in a statement.
Greene’s antipathy toward lab-grown meats can’t be attributed to campaign cash: Her coffers aren’t lined by Big Meat, although top donors to her 2022 campaign included Paul Hofer, an owner of Hofer Ranch in California, who gave $7,900, according to data from OpenSecrets.org. Tassos Paphites, chief executive of BurgerBusters — which owns 80 Taco Bell franchises around the country — was another big giver, with donations totaling $6,000.
Greene’s attempt to drag alternative meats into America’s culture wars comes at a sensitive time for the industry. Nine years after a lab-grown hamburger made its debut in London to lukewarm reviews, the cultured meat industry has made a lot of progress — including a taste test in which experts couldn’t tell lab-grown chicken from a conventional bird — but it’s still far from large-scale commercial viability.
In 2020, Singapore became the first government to grant regulatory approval to a lab-grown product, a chicken nugget that Good Meat, a division of Eat Just, grew from stem cells. The nugget was first served in December 2020 at a Singaporean restaurant.
Since then, China, the Netherlands, Qatar and other countries have started to lay the groundwork for a future of lab-grown meats. The United States, meanwhile, gives mixed signals about alternative proteins. State and federal lawmakers have proposed or passed laws to limit how companies can label and market their mock meats, potentially hurting the commercial viability of the products. At the same time, the U.S. Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration continue to work out rules on how to regulate the forthcoming multibillion-dollar industry.
News flash: Farmers don’t grow plant based meat; corporations make it in a factory.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 23, 2022
There’s a concern among insiders and advocates that without more government support, the U.S. alternative-protein industry, currently considered the world leader, could cede ground to companies in other countries where officials are pumping money into innovation. Pointed commentary from politicians such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greene might not help, as they steer the debate away from alternative protein’s potential merits and into a stultifying culture war.
But Dutkiewicz, the Harvard researcher, doesn’t think Greene and Massie are trying to influence legislation as much as they’re planting tribal flags.
“There’s sort of a conservative zeitgeist they’re tapping into,” he said. “They’re signaling a sort of an allegiance to American traditionalism and opposition to coastal elites and opposition to technological disruption of ways of life. It’s more signaling a worldview.”
Emily Heil contributed to this report. | 2022-06-03T14:20:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marjorie Taylor Greene pulls lab-grown meat into the culture wars - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/03/lab-meat-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/03/lab-meat-politics/ |
In Somerville, Mass., new Union Square stop is a go
By Liza Weisstuch
The Union Square T station, which opened March 21, is the first new stop of the Green Line Extension, which has brought a wave of development to the neighborhood. (Shutterstock)
Mark Bowers is the brewmaster at Aeronaut Brewing Co. in Somerville, Mass. On a Tuesday evening in May, as the brewery’s weekly session of high-intensity trivia wrapped up, he told me about the time he helped re-create a mid-19th-century beer based on yeast regrown from an antique bottle of brew produced in 1850 at Bunker Hill Breweries, a long-defunct facility once in historic Charlestown. He also provided what amounted to a mini-dissertation in the art of capturing wild yeast. Then he told me he has a PhD in chemistry and worked for a medical technology company for decades.
This seemed like the most appropriate way to drink beer in this precise location, about one mile northeast of Harvard Square and about one mile northwest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The brewery and taproom serve as the anchor for Aeronaut Brewing Co.’s Foods Hub, which also houses Carolicious, a small arepas purveyor, and Somerville Chocolate, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker. In the evenings, bars are sold by the honor system. (Take one, run your card, enjoy.) Some are made with hops from Aeronaut.
The building is an old envelope factory on the outskirts of Union Square, a longtime working-class neighborhood once home to large Portuguese and Italian immigrant communities. Today it sits at the center of the “brain triangle,” as the area is known because of the abundant surrounding universities and biotech companies. But when I lived in neighboring Cambridge in the early aughts, Union Square wasn’t quite so prestigious. The closest T station, as the subway system here is called, was 1.2 miles away. And to catch a bus there was an exercise in determination and luck.
But that all changed on March 21, when a Green Line trolley rolled into the new Union Square T station, marking it open for business, four years after the project broke ground. It’s the first new stop of the $2.29 billion Green Line Extension (GLX). Another five new stops are planned, which will extend the train further into public-transportation-starved neighborhoods in Somerville and into Medford, home of Tufts University.
With the shiny new Union Square station has come a wave of excitement around the neighborhood, which prides itself on its entrepreneurship, commitment to community and quirkiness. (How else to explain the Fluff Festival, an annual celebration of the marshmallow spread invented here that draws an astounding 20,000 or so people?) And considering that the extension has been a topic of discussion since the early 1990s, there’s been plenty of time to prepare.
Skip Cape Cod and head to Cape Ann for affordable lodging and a variety of towns and beaches
And it’s paid off. Union Square is already drawing traffic. I met an older Swedish couple at my hotel who had been to Boston many times, but didn’t even hear of the neighborhood until their niece, a Harvard student, recommended they stay across the Charles River in Somerville this trip. I also chatted with a leather-jacket-clad programmer at Backbar, a nationally recognized cocktail bar situated down a dark hallway in a circa-1920s Ford dealership. (A small engraved plaque by the door indicates that you’re in the right place.) As he nursed an elaborate rum drink, he told me that he’d lived near Fenway Park, about three miles away, for a decade and never visited. Now that it’s a train ride away, he anticipates being a regular.
There’s also a new hotel. Aeronaut Brewery is about a five-minute walk through a zigzag of short streets to Cambria Hotel Boston Somerville. The sleek new building, with a crenelated exterior and dark-wood-paneled, modern, minimalist lobby, opened in April and sits on a parcel that had long been an empty lot. It’s a beacon of modernism next to a little retail strip composed of a wings joint, a UPS store and a Dunkin’. Of course. (The Boston-accented Dunkin’ jokes that pervade pop culture are, in fact, not a joke. You can hardly walk 10 blocks in any direction without encountering one, which I report based on years of living in the area.)
The hotel is about a 15-minute amble along Somerville Avenue to the nucleus of Union Square. The stretch includes an outpost of the no-frills regional chain grocer Market Basket and a smattering of businesses that capture Union Square’s indie sensibility. There are also buildings that remind you that you’re in a global tech hub. See: Greentown Labs, North America’s biggest “climatetech” start-up incubator, as it dubs itself.
The beating core of Union Square is a starburst-shaped junction of five streets. (No discussion of Boston and its surrounds can be had without mentioning that the historic area was designed for horses and buggies. Grids were a nonstarter.) On a morning stroll through that heart of the square, I walked past the Independent, a tavern-like restaurant with a popular bar. Jess Willis, the owner, was tending to the flowers on the patio. She started as a server in 2001, the year it opened, and bought the place in 2019. She got the original job, she said, because she got lost on her way to a job interview elsewhere, a fitting story for a neighborhood easy to get turned around in.
Look north from the restaurant and you can spot the English-castle-style granite fort on Prospect Hill, a national historic park where George Washington is said to have raised the Grand Union flag for the first time, in 1776. Look east, out the front door, and you spot a cluster of cranes next to the new T station. It’s the site of 10-50 Prospect Street, which will be a 450-unit apartment and lab-space complex. It’s the first of many buildings that will make up USQ, a revitalization project that will extend over 15 acres and ultimately encompass about 1.2 million square feet of new lab and office space, 1,000 residences (20 percent of which are affordable units), retail, arts space, three parks and a hotel. As part of the project, US2, the development company, worked with the city of Somerville to create bike lanes and upgrade pedestrian paths.
That night, on a local friend’s recommendation, I had dinner at Juliet, a beautiful airy eatery that features an open kitchen. It debuted in 2016, funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised just over $40,000. The owners are planning a move to next door and raised $137,514 the same way. It will more than double the size. Will Deeks, the culinary director who was working the line the night I visited, suggested the pappardelle, a perennial favorite made with chuck roll, a lesser-known cut of beef that’s especially flavorful when braised.
Open kitchens are the norm around here, which makes sense, considering how many locals I chatted with who spoke of Union Square’s intense communal vibe. Why sequester chefs behind closed doors when you could get to know them as you would a bartender? At Celeste, I met Doña Yessi, who was preparing the house ceviche in front of me at the counter. She learned the piquant recipe from co-owner JuanMa Calderón, a Peruvian indie filmmaker who learned it from his mother. She traveled to Somerville to train the staff when the restaurant opened in 2018. The jewel box space can seat 24, which is the same number that JuanMa and his wife, co-owner Maria, could fit in their home when they threw dinner parties. Those events inspired this venture, Maria told me.
In Massachusetts, Newburyport is a seacoast city that feels like home
Another evening, at Field & Vine, a plate of grilled spiced carrots and local oysters arrived as Mark Holmes, chef de cuisine, told me how cooking in New England is radically different from cooking at his last restaurant in Texas, where seasonality is not a driving force. The restaurant, which shares a building with Backbar, has a fairy-tale-forest vibe to it, with bulky branches and vines wrapped around exposed pipework. Down a small alley from the center of Union Square, it is characteristic of the neighborhood, which contains many alleys and narrow pathways, which can deliver surprises.
Even Bow Market, a complex with a bustling courtyard dotted with firepits, kind of sneaks up on you. It’s down an alley, with discreet signage. Any evening, though, you can follow your ears to the lively buzz of chatter. The market, which opened in 2018 in a horseshoe-shaped complex built in the 1920s for car storage, is a hub of small businesses. There’s Remnant Brewing, a taproom by night and coffeehouse by day, a vegetarian takeout eatery called Saus, and Hot Box, which purveys North Shore roast beef sandwiches, a regional specialty. Shops offer a global assortment of goods, such as colorful arts and crafts from Adorn Me Africa, minimalist home goods from Crane & Turtle and natural wine and books from Wild Child.
But one place that is not hidden a bit is the Neighborhood Restaurant. The Portuguese eatery is a cornerstone of the neighborhood, with significant waits each weekend. The vast patio is covered by trellises that grow heavy with grapes in the warm weather. Sheila Borges-Foley’s late father, a Portuguese immigrant, used to tend to the vines and use the grapes to make wine that he served on the down-low to regulars. These days, she uses the fruit for jam.
Sheila’s brother opened the place in 1980 as a bakery, and her father, a career cook, joined him and transformed it into a restaurant in 1985. On a Sunday morning, picnic tables were jammed with groups of students, families with toddlers, and senior citizens, all chatting over big plates of pancakes, waffles and omelets.
And bowls of Cream of Wheat. Papas, as it’s known to Portuguese people, is an age-old tradition. Sheila regularly has to assure skeptics that there’s no butter in the recipe. It’s creamy because it’s slow-churned overnight, just as her father made it.
Sheila paused and looked around, a content hostess. She lives in her family home, over the restaurant. “No one lives in the building where their family lived for generations anymore. We have all that history, and it’s still here,” she told me. “It’s really nice when you open your door and there are people enjoying themselves in the backyard. I open the window and hear people chatting. The forks hitting the plates make that dinging sound, and up there, it sounds like music.”
Weisstuch is a writer based in New York City. Find her on Twitter and Instagram: @livingtheproof.
Cambria Hotel Boston Somerville
515 Somerville Ave.
cambriasomerville.com
Old books line the shelves in the airy, wood-paneled lobby of this stylish-yet-cozy hotel, which opened in April. The lobby’s minimalist market is stocked with locally made snacks. The 163 rooms include some suites, and there’s also a gym. Complimentary beer and wine offered daily, 5 to 10 p.m. Rooms from $199 per night.
21 Bow St.
celesteunionsquare.com
There’s only room for 24 diners, and that’s by design. Co-owner JuanMa Calderón developed the menu based on the food his mother cooked when he was growing up in Peru. The menu includes staples such as ceviche and carapulcra, an Incan stew. Open Tuesday to Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, 3 to 11 p.m. Entrees from $19.
21 Union Square
julietsomerville.com
A changing series of thematic prix fixe menus, typically focused on global cooking styles, has been the modus operandi here, but most menus will be a la carte in advance of the restaurant’s move next door. Open Wednesday to Friday, noon to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Mains from $13.
9 Sanborn Ct.
fieldandvinesomerville.com
In the open kitchen of this seasonally driven eatery, one chef might be topping off a crispy sunchoke hash with trout roe while another stokes the wood to roast the meat. Wines from small vineyards dominate the list. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 5 to 8:45 p.m. Mains from $23.
Aeronaut Brewing Co.
14 Tyler St.
aeronautbrewing.com
This lively taproom draws locals for frequent events, such as trivia, live music and drag shows, and, of course, beer. There are often several IPAs on tap, along with various styles of European brews. Open Monday, 5 to 11 p.m.; Tuesday to Thursday, 5 p.m. to midnight; Friday, 5 p.m. to 12.30 a.m.; Saturday, noon to 12.30 a.m.; and Sunday, noon to 9 p.m. Beers from $8 for 11 ounces.
The Neighborhood Restaurant & Bakery
theneighborhoodrestaurant.com
Crowds pack the patio of this Portuguese go-to, especially on the weekends, but the hearty diner-esque fare, such as omelets, wheat pancakes and grilled fish, is turned out daily. Open daily, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Breakfast dishes from $6.99, specials $16.99.
theindo.com
A tavern-esque vibe defines this sprawling hangout with a busy bar. The menu reads like a catalogue of global comfort food: mezze plates, bangers and mash, poutine, mushroom fricassee. Open Monday to Friday, 5 p.m. to midnight, and Saturday and Sunday, 4 p.m. to midnight. Starters from $7, mains from $16.
Bow Market
1 Bow Market Way
bowmarketsomerville.com
This complex showcases about 30 small businesses. The assortment of retailers makes up a veritable global marketplace and includes the Japanese home goods at Crane & Turtle, the curated collection of arts and crafts at Adorn Me Africa and the South American foodstuffs at Buenas. There’s also wine at Wild Child, stationery at Tiny Turns Paperie and music at Vinyl Index. A charming courtyard features firepits. Hours vary; check websites of individual businesses.
unionsquaremain.org | 2022-06-03T14:20:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Outside Boston, a new Union Square subway (a.k.a. T) station has the area bustling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/03/boston-area-somerville-union-square/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/03/boston-area-somerville-union-square/ |
People console each other after a shooting at Cornerstone Church on Thursday in Ames, Iowa. Two people and a shooter died, authorities said. (Nirmalendu Majumdar/AP)
A man shot and killed two women before killing himself in a deadly incident in Ames, Iowa, outside of Cornerstone Church, according to police. Authorities received multiple 911 calls shortly before 7 p.m. Thursday about how a man had shot two young members of the congregation while a program was going on inside the church, according to the Story County Sheriff’s Office. When police arrived, the alleged gunman appeared to have died of a self-inflicted wound, Story County Sheriff Capt. Nicholas Lennie told the Des Moines Register.
The names of the victims and alleged gunman were not immediately released by authorities, and the man’s motive and any possible connection to the church or victims remains unclear as of early Friday. Police are expected to give an update on the investigation on Friday regarding an attack that was denounced by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) as “senseless violence [that] took the lives of two innocent victims at their place of worship.”
“We can say, however, that we are more than saddened by the events that transpired,” he said. “Our hearts break for all involved, and we are praying for everyone affected, especially the family of the victims.”
“We were at the gravesite trying to get prepared to bury him, and bullets started flying everywhere,” Natasha Mullen, King’s sister, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Authorities have not released additional details, such as the motive or names of the suspected shooter or the victims, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries. One person was airlifted to a hospital and is in stable condition, while the other, a girl, was treated and released, WISN, a Milwaukee ABC affiliate, reported. The shooting led Racine Mayor Cory Mason (D) to call on police to enforce an 11 p.m. curfew for all people under the age of 18 through the weekend.
“The violence has got to stop!” Mason said in a statement posted by the Racine Police Department. “Revenge is not the answer.”
Thursday’s violence in the Midwest comes as President Biden called on Congress to take immediate action on gun control, seeking to transform emotion and anger into change. In a rare prime-time address, the president called for a set of sweeping changes to the country’s gun laws, including banning assault weapons and limiting high-capacity magazines, following the recent attacks at a grocery store in Buffalo, an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., and a hospital in Tulsa. The political dynamics in the evenly divided Senate make the odds on those proposals remote. Biden said that if it was politically impossible to ban assault weapons, Congress should at least raise the age when they can be legally purchased from 18 to 21.
“They stood in the way and he gunned them down,” Franklin said.
Tulsa gunman angry over pain after back surgery, police say
“For that to happen at Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa. If you would have told me that a bit ago, I probably wouldn’t have believed you,” Pierce said. “It’s unbelievable, honestly.”
Reynolds, who called for more mental health programs and school-security measures instead of stricter gun legislation following the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School, said she and her husband were grieving “for the families who have suffered an unfathomable loss” after Thursday’s church shooting.
“And while the investigation continues and we learn more, we ask that Iowans pray for the victims and their families, the members of Cornerstone Church, and the entire Ames community,” she wrote.
“It was terrifying,” Brantley, 19, said. “Within 30 seconds we were all running off the court. We didn’t stop to grab any of our stuff. We didn’t stop to talk about it.”
As law enforcement were interviewing witnesses near the white casket carrying King’s body, the man’s sister reflected on how she and others were almost killed in another act of gun violence in the United States.
“I was just trying to bury my brother and almost lost my life doing so,” Mullen told the Journal Sentinel.
Susan Berger, Tyler Pager, Seung Min Kim, Mike DeBonis, Júlia Ledur and Kate Rabinowitz contributed to this report. | 2022-06-03T15:16:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. shootings continue at Ames, Iowa, church and funeral in Racine, Wisconsin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/shootings-ames-church-racine-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/shootings-ames-church-racine-funeral/ |
By Denise Heinze
Jamestown, the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, sandwiched between the James River and a swamp, on April 29. (Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post)
The 400-year-old Jamestown fort, on the razor’s edge of the James River, is a little bit of nothing. A sandy triangular lot, its three acres inspire more yawns than gasps. The fort resembles a low-budget city park. It lacks the grandeur, panorama and spectacle one might expect of a vaunted historical site.
An archaearium is a museum of bones and belongings, the detritus of human life. As a rule, I love fusty collections and can spend hours lost in the curated past. In this place, I lasted all of 20 minutes. It wasn’t just me. My traveling companion hit the 15-minute mark and headed for the exits, but then she is not one for museums. I, on the other hand, was initially transfixed. Greeting me upon entry was a lifelike bust of my teenage protagonist, a lovely girl whose wistfulness and longing belie her horrific fate. I stayed with her a good while, saddened and buoyed at the same time by what she had sacrificed. I should have left then, after paying my respects. Instead, I turned to other bones and belongings, the full weight of them within minutes pressing down on me — the stone arrowpoint in the femur of the teenage boy, a tarnished coin trading hands in a game of chance, the thimble and needle of a deft seamstress. I struggled to breathe, felt dizzy and nauseated, had to get out of there.
The brief stay at the archaearium, though oddly stifling, provided context. It sent me right back to the fort for one last look. This time, I passed by and saluted the statue of Pocahontas, nee Matoaka. This time, I took in the dig sites in which centuries of exposed strata held the relics of the Powhatan, the English, and clues to the first enslaved Africans at Jamestown. This time, I noticed what I had inexplicably missed on my initial go — the modest graveyard where the majority of settlers, after a too-brief tenure, had ended up, sometimes buried in pairs so as not to risk burial outside the fort, a sure sign to the Virginia Indians that the settlers were down and possibly out.
The sodden island struggles to stay afloat. Five more years, the experts say, and, if nothing is done, the inhospitable spot — on which our forebears risked everything to conceive a country that eventually welcomed in the world — might be gone. | 2022-06-03T15:17:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Is Jamestown worth saving? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/is-jamestown-worth-saving/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/is-jamestown-worth-saving/ |
Metro has a chance to break out of its tailspin of turmoil
By Donavan Wilson
A passenger waits for a train on April 19 at the Metro Center in Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Donavan Wilson is a freelance writer based in Germantown.
Last month, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board announced the resignation of General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld. He had previously announced that he would retire on June 30, but his departure came earlier than planned. Good riddance. Metro’s new leader, Randy Clarke, can implement long-overdue modernization.
A blossoming scandal over rail operators accelerated Wiedefeld’s transition into retirement. Metro recently removed rail operators who lacked required retraining and testing for recertification. Seventy-two operators lacked the minimum requirements to operate trains efficiently and safely. According to a WMATA statement, it will take two to three months to recertify those rail operators.
Metro’s passengers continue to pay the price for WMATA’s incompetence, indifference and endless mismanagement.
Since the beginning of May, ridership has increased. That presents the perfect opportunity for improvement and reform. Metro needs to prove that the system is reliable, efficient and stable.
Yet, Metro mishaps hardly inspire the confidence necessary to prompt people to return to the rails in greater numbers. For example, the lack of operators will affect waiting times for trains. The waiting time for both the Green and Yellow lines increased from five minutes to 20 minutes. Commuters don’t want to spend time standing on the platform wondering whether they’re about to be late for work.
In September, WMATA shut down both the Shady Grove and Rockville Metro stations to replace the canopy at the Rockville station and make improvements at the Shady Grove station. The timing of the project was terrible for employers determined to have their workers return to the office. Shady Grove is a major station that serves as an essential starting point for the Red Line. Rockville is a hub for Metro, MARC and Amtrak.
In October, a Metro train derailed on the Blue Line near the Arlington Cemetery station. According to one commuter, there was a “fair amount" of smoke on the train as it ground to a stop. The incident took trains off the tracks and caused delays of 30 minutes or more. Since that derailment, Metro removed its 7000 series cars from the system. They have not returned, and they represent a large portion of Metro’s rail fleet.
Metro’s merry-go-round of agony continues to torment commuters. As more Washingtonians return to the office, they face deteriorating public transportation conditions and a significant increase in wait times for trains. In the past, people put up with the insanity because they held on to Metro’s past glory. Metro once was a defining feature of D.C. The opportunity to get to work on time without a car was tremendously enticing.
Of course, commuters also didn’t have many choices 20 years ago, and WMATA sat on its captive clientele. The system’s decline, therefore, caught an inattentive leadership off guard.
Today, individuals have other options. The federal workforce, which makes up the largest group of rush-hour commuters, can telework at least twice a week. Through ride-hailing apps (Uber or Lyft), drivers scoop up passengers quickly. Improved bicycle infrastructure provides a safe travel mode much of the year.
Public transportation advocates fight for additional funding for Metro that they say can boost safety and capability. However, political leadership and the private sector are reluctant to secure those funds while management problems continue to fester. Meanwhile, Metro’s budget is hemorrhaging. Federal subsidies have kept it afloat, but service cuts remain a possibility if government handouts dry up.
Metro’s failures are a disappointment to both tourists and residents who depend on the system to make their way around the Beltway. Simply put, Metro’s leadership has not risen to meet this moment.
Unreliable service will hardly entice commuters back. The next generation of employees will expect a greater amount of flexibility without wasting hours every week on Metro’s unreliable, unpleasant trains and buses. Wiedefeld’s departure and the rail-operator scandal are Molotov cocktails of commuting misery, but they clearly point the way to change. | 2022-06-03T15:17:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Metro has a chance to break out of its tailspin of turmoil - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/metro-has-chance-break-out-its-tailspin-turmoil/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/metro-has-chance-break-out-its-tailspin-turmoil/ |
The next step in a long march: Expanding mobile voting in D.C.
By Martin Luther King III
People wait in line to vote on June 2, 2020, in the D.C. primary election at Columbia Heights Community Center in Northwest Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Martin Luther King III is a global human rights activist and chairman of the Drum Major Institute.
Everything my father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., fought for is under attack. By some counts, things have gotten worse since my daughter was born than they were when Dad was alive. Rights that Americans hold dear are under assault across the country. Reproductive rights, the ability to be our full selves and the very pillars of our democracy are growing weaker every single day.
It’s no accident that the erosion of our civil liberties has coincided with the rolling back of voting rights in states across the country. When my father marched for equality decades ago, he understood that voting rights were a necessary part of the struggle for freedom and equality. Those on the other side know it, too, which is why they’ve systematically made it harder for Americans to vote. Eligibility requirements, polling locations and open hours at the polls have all been manipulated to keep too many Americans from being able to vote. In my home state of Georgia, they’ve even made it a crime to give water to people standing in line to vote.
Our democracy is in crisis. That’s why we mobilized this year to press for new federal voting rights legislation to ensure that the right to vote is not merely an aspiration but a reality, and to guarantee that every eligible voter, regardless of race, ethnicity or location, can access and cast a ballot knowing that it counts. But we don’t need to wait on Congress to take action. There are efforts across the country to expand access to the ballot, including in our nation’s capital.
The D.C. Council is considering legislation to make voting easier and more accessible by adding a mobile voting option for all voters. This bill would tear down barriers to access and make it dramatically easier for everyone to participate fully in our democratic process by allowing voting from smartphones, tablets or computers.
In a country that seems to be taking too many steps backward on civil liberties and voting rights, D.C. has the potential to take a massive leap forward. Mobile voting would make our nation’s capital a beacon of light and a shining city on a hill for voting rights. Those of us defending freedom have spent much of the past six years fighting back against assaults on our civil liberties. This bill offers us the opportunity to fight for something — an expansion of voting access that could be the model for the entire country.
Mobile voting could also eliminate a very real cancer that plagues our democracy: chronically low voter turnout, particularly among groups that are historically underrepresented in the halls of power. Mobile voting would mean no more long lines with people passing out in the heat or from exhaustion or lack of water. No harried parents carrying tired toddlers to the polls who would prefer to be at home. No hourly wage workers who struggle to get time off from their jobs or have to sacrifice income to go vote and make sure their vote is counted.
We already live so much of our daily lives on our smartphones, from paying our bills to accessing health care. Mobile voting would empower voters from every corner of D.C. to easily access and cast their ballot. It’s no surprise that the bill already has the deep support of many civil rights groups in D.C. and support from a majority of the D.C. Council.
Why wouldn’t we increase participation in elections to give everyone their chance to be heard? Why wouldn’t we ease barriers on low-income voters and help hourly workers? Why wouldn't we eliminate barriers encountered by voters with disabilities who find it incredibly challenging to get to polling places on Election Day? Shouldn’t they have the same right to cast a ballot as everyone else?
We need more cities and states across the country to follow D.C.’s lead and consider legislation to expand voting options and make it easier — not harder — to vote, including with mobile voting. Our democracy is too important to allow the forces seeking to strip us of our rights to win. We are fighting to protect voting rights and expand access to the ballot, and the D.C. Council should pass mobile voting as soon as possible to join that fight. | 2022-06-03T15:17:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The next step in a long march: Expanding mobile voting in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/next-step-long-march-expanding-mobile-voting-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/next-step-long-march-expanding-mobile-voting-dc/ |
The small-city voter fraud case that doesn’t prove Donald Trump right
A supporter expresses a baseless claim at a rally by former president Donald Trump in January in Florence, Ariz. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
A good way to tell when a news story is getting viral traction is when the ostensibly Congress-focused newspaper The Hill starts promoting it repeatedly. So, four times in the last 12 hours (as of writing), we note that The Hill has shared a story about a “coordinated Arizona ballot collection scheme” featuring a mug shot of a glum-looking older woman.
It’s not hard to figure out why this particular story is sparking interest in the moment. We’re less than a month since the premiere of Dinesh D’Souza’s film “2000 Mules” in which he alleges a massive ballot collection scheme in multiple states — including Arizona — that tipped the scales of the 2020 presidential contest. (The film entirely fails to provide credible evidence of this allegation as D’Souza suggested in a conversation with The Post.) D’Souza has repeatedly shared the story at the center of The Hill’s social strategy, arguing that it proves wrong detractors (like myself) who suggested that collecting ballots wasn’t necessarily illegal and, less directly, suggesting that it proves correct his general thesis.
Once again, what D’Souza claims to have isn’t what he suggests. Not only is the incident in Yuma City, Ariz., not evidence of any massive ballot-harvesting effort, and not only does it not prove that any ballot collection is illegal, but it’s also a case that is already included in D’Souza’s film.
At some point before the primary election in Arizona in 2020, a woman named Guillermina Fuentes was videotaped receiving four ballots from voters that were later submitted and counted. This practice of collecting ballots — a tactic at times used by voter-turnout groups to ensure that ballots are actually cast — was made illegal in Arizona under a 2016 law. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (who is now running for the state’s Republican Senate nomination) announced in December 2020 that Fuentes and a woman named Alma Juarez had been indicted on a charge of violating that law. In October 2021, Brnovich announced new charges suggesting that ballots had been altered.
Earlier this week, Fuentes (the woman in the mug shot) pleaded guilty to the ballot-collection charges. The more serious charges added later were dropped. The Associated Press reported that investigators believe Fuentes collected more than the handful of ballots she was videotaped with, but also that there was “no sign her illegal ballot collection went beyond the small-town politics Fuentes was involved in.”
This is, in fact, not much to hang a purported national voter-fraud effort on. If anything, it resembles other past small-scale efforts to violate election law, as in local or congressional elections in New Jersey and North Carolina.
Here we point out that Yuma County, Ariz., is also not a great example of how the presidential election might have been tainted by pro-Joe Biden fraud. In 2016, Donald Trump received about 25,000 votes and won the county by just over a percentage point. In 2020, Trump received 45 percent more votes — a bit under 37,000 — and improved to a six-point margin. If Yuma County was riddled with Democratic fraud, it’s hard to sniff out.
Yet Yuma County and its seat, Yuma City, are a subject of fascination for True the Vote, the group that provided D’Souza with the purported evidence of rampant ballot trafficking. At a hearing in Wisconsin in March, True the Vote’s Gregg Phillips claimed that the incidents in Yuma County (which he sort of implied* his group had helped uncover, for which there’s no evidence) had helped trigger their broader investigation. (“We understand that it doesn’t stop here,” he said of the Yuma investigation.)
The film itself includes an interview with a woman whose identity is obscured. She makes broad allegations about a rampant system of collecting fraudulent ballots — again in Yuma County. At a hearing on the purported harvesting scheme before an Arizona legislative committee in May, a True the Vote representative said this person was working with Brnovich’s investigators. She also said that True the Vote had begun focusing on Yuma in “late October 2020,” well after investigators had received the video showing Fuentes collecting ballots that apparently led to her indictment.
What “2000 Mules” has been good at is crystallizing the nebulous concerns many on the right have about the 2020 election around a purportedly data-driven example of electoral malfeasance. The film has given a polished example of something bad seeming to happen — enough, pointedly, to change the election outcome — and has become a sensation as a result. It offers a frame within which Republican officials are now expected to operate.
Once the film was released, the office of the sheriff of Yuma County issued a news release articulating its efforts to combat voter fraud. The sheriff, Leon Wilmot, told reporters he wasn’t investigating fraud in response to the film, but it seems clear that the news release was meant to show action on the subject.
In other words, the available evidence suggests that a local ballot-collection effort of unclear scale was interrupted by state authorities. It’s known that four ballots were collected (though not provably altered in any way) during the primary election in 2020. This appears to have then been used repeatedly as a peg for the film itself: that interview with the unnamed person and, abstractly, to validate a claim from Phillips that Fuentes’s arrest prompted ballot harvesters to start wearing gloves when dropping off ballots. (One person in Georgia is shown in the movie wearing gloves when depositing a run-off election ballot during a pandemic.) That Fuentes has pleaded guilty offers no advancement of D’Souza’s transparently thin case.
What D’Souza and his allies seem not to appreciate is that the fact that Fuentes’s ballot collection was detected and prosecuted undercuts the idea that thousands of people were involved in a multistate effort to collect ballots without detection. The argument here is like the argument in defense of Trump’s fraud claims more broadly: No one is investigating this easy-to-prove crime!
And, like Trump’s fraud claims, the reality is the inverse: People are looking very hard and finding very little that’s provably criminal.
* Phillips said: “We began to get reports that there were ballots being collected, meaning going out, knocking on doors, getting ballots from older people or getting ballots from people in certain specific communities. They were gathered in a particular location. The people that were doing the collections were being paid for the collection, and then one person was taking those big stacks of ballots to a particular drop box, of which there were two in San Luis, and dropping them off. There have since been several arrests related to this. There’s been one conviction; there’s another conviction soon to be revealed.” | 2022-06-03T15:18:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The small-city Arizona voter fraud case that doesn’t prove Donald Trump or "2000 Mules" right - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/small-city-voter-fraud-case-that-doesnt-prove-donald-trump-right/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/small-city-voter-fraud-case-that-doesnt-prove-donald-trump-right/ |
Tropical storm warnings issued in Florida ahead of soon-to-be Alex
More than 10 inches of rain will fall in some areas, spurring flood concerns.
The National Hurricane Center's estimate for how much rain may fall. (NOAA/NHC) (NOAA/NHC)
Tropical storm warnings have been hoisted across the entirety of South Florida ahead of what meteorologists will probably soon name Tropical Storm Alex. The developing tropical system, will bring flooding rains to millions in the Sunshine State, with double-digit totals possible amid torrential tropical downpours.
“Considerable flash and urban flooding is possible in south Florida and the Keys,” wrote the National Hurricane Center. The organizing storm could have an even greater impact in the high terrain of Cuba, where “life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides are possible,” it said.
A flood watch was in effect for all of South Florida.
Rain, some heavy, had spread over much of South Florida and western Cuba Friday. “Soils are already saturated and there has already been ponding on area roadways. The potential for flooding is increasing,” the National Weather Service in Miami tweeted Friday morning.
Tropical storm warnings are in effect for the Florida Keys and most of the state south of a line from Tampa Bay to Port Canaveral, including Lake Okeechobee and the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. The northwestern Bahamas and western Cuba are also under a tropical storm warning, while the Cuban provinces of Matanzas and the Isle of Youth are under a tropical storm watch.
Gusty winds, some minor coastal surge and even a few tornadoes can be expected as well, marking the first taste of what’s anticipated to be a long and active hurricane season in the Atlantic. The past six seasons have all gone down in the books as anomalously active or hyperactive, and experts at Colorado State University estimate a 76 percent chance the Lower 48 get slammed by a major hurricane in 2022.
The tropical swirl that will become Alex is partially the result of the remnants of Hurricane Agatha, which made landfall on the western coast of southern Mexico as a Category 2 hurricane on Monday. It proved the strongest storm to ever impact Mexico during the month of May, killing at least nine people.
The system now
On Friday morning, the center of the tropical disturbance was located 125 miles northeast of Cozumel, Mexico, moving northeast at 6 mph. Winds already had met the 39 mph threshold for classification as a tropical storm, but the clumping of thunderstorms was struggling against wind shear — or a change of wind speed and/or direction with height — and lacked a well-defined center.
Satellite imagery revealed robust thunderstorm activity with the system, and assuming a near-surface circulation can become established in the hours ahead, any one of these thunderstorm updrafts could vertically stretch the swirl. The storm will be named Alex as soon as a cohesive vortex forms.
Most of the precipitation will precede the actual storm’s center, for which reason focusing on the system’s impacts, rather than the location of the storm center, is more prudent.
Rain underway in Florida
Rain began in South Florida early Friday. That will gradually increase in intensity through early Saturday morning, when the heaviest rain bands, within which rainfall rates could approach a blinding 3 inches per hour, should rotate ashore.
There will be a brief lull in the intensity of precipitation, or even a total shut off, as the center passes north of the Keys and traverses south central Florida, with perhaps a more lackluster back side to the precipitation.
Across most of South Florida, a widespread 4 to 8 inches is likely with some one foot totals not improbable. North of Tampa Bay to Orlando, rainfall amounts will decrease quickly.
The precipitation should end during the day on Saturday from west to east before what will then likely be Alex emerges over the open Atlantic north of the Bahamas and cruises parallel to the Gulf Stream. It may strengthen some as it harmlessly drifts out to sea, although Bermuda has an outside chance to get brushed and should monitor the system.
Secondary hazards
Wind: Maximum sustained winds may reach 40 to 45 mph, with some gusts over 50 mph, but only over a very small region near the Gulf Coast of South Florida. Many residents will see gusts between 35 and 45 mph. Power outages should be isolated to widely scattered.
Surge: The Keys and southwest Florida could see a surge, or rise in ocean water above normally dry land, on the order of 1 to 2 feet due to the onshore winds pushing water against the coast, mainly around high tide. Minor coastal flooding is possible.
Tornadoes: The change of wind speed and/or direction with height associated with the landfalling tropical storm, particularly to the right, or south, of the center could enhance rotation within a couple thunderstorm cells in the inner spiral rain bands. That will foster the chance of a couple tornadoes or tornadic waterspouts.
For latest on Potential Tropical Cyclone One Impacts Across South Florida visit our tropical page at: https://t.co/iKqpOsovSd #flwx pic.twitter.com/U3CWBPdC7M | 2022-06-03T15:19:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tropical storm warnings issued in Florida ahead of soon-to-be Alex - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/03/tropical-storm-warning-alex-florida/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/03/tropical-storm-warning-alex-florida/ |
In this photo taken from video released by the Roscosmos Space Agency, the Soyuz-2.1a rocket booster with cargo transportation spacecraft Progress МS-20 blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Friday, June 3, 2022. The second stage of the rocket bears the inscription “Donbass” and its nose cone has the flags of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics painted on it. (Roscosmos Space Agency via AP) (Uncredited/Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service) | 2022-06-03T15:19:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia's supply ship arrives at International Space Station - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russias-supply-ship-arrives-at-international-space-station/2022/06/03/1331477c-e344-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russias-supply-ship-arrives-at-international-space-station/2022/06/03/1331477c-e344-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Japan records its largest natural population decline, as births fall
An intersection in Tokyo’s Akihabara district on June 3, 2022. (Hiro Komae/AP)
The country recorded 811,604 births and 1,439,809 deaths last year — meaning the population dropped by 628,205, the biggest natural decline since data became available, Reuters reported. The decline in births marks a 3.5 percent decrease from the previous year.
The fertility rate — the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime — decreased for the sixth year in a row, to 1.3. The rate is the fourth lowest on record, according to the Japanese news agency Jiji Press.
Long closed to most immigration, Japan looks to open up amid labor shortage
An official with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare told Jiji Press that the decline in the fertility rate last year was due to decreases in the number of women of childbearing age as well as the fertility rate of women in their 20s.
The data is bad news for those in Japan who worry about the societal effects of the country’s aging and shrinking population. Nearly 30 percent of the population is over 65 years old. The decline in the working-age population has contributed to a labor shortage, which the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated, and raised concerns about a worse labor crunch to come.
Experts attribute falling birthrates to a constellation of factors. Men struggle to get good jobs, causing them to forgo marriage — and people in Japan rarely have children outside of marriage. The number of marriages fell for the second year in a row in 2021, to 501,116, according to the Asahi Shimbun, a leading Japanese newspaper.
Meanwhile, the proportion of women receiving higher education has risen in the past half-century, as has their employment rate. In a society where women are still expected to take on significantly more domestic labor than male partners, many women are opting out of motherhood to focus on their careers instead.
Tokyo recorded the lowest fertility rate, at 1.08, Asahi reported. The latest countrywide figure falls below the government’s target rate of 1.8. And the tally of deaths in 2021 is the country’s highest since World War II, according to Asahi, with cancer as the leading cause.
Postcards from Kamikatsu, Japan’s ‘zero-waste’ town
But Japan is not the only East Asian country to see a decline in fertility. China released census results last year that showed the country’s population is continuing to grow, albeit only slightly. But the country’s 2020 fertility rate, 1.3 children per woman, was below Japan’s that year.
Births in China fell to a record low in 2021, part of a downward trend that has prompted authorities in Beijing to allow women to have more children and offer families cash subsidies. Hospitals, meanwhile, are turning away men seeking vasectomies.
In 2020, fertility rates in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan were below Japan’s, attributable in part to a trend in wealthy East Asian countries of people delaying marriage and rarely having children out of wedlock. Schooling is also pricey in these countries. It is also difficult for young people across the region to buy homes, according to the Economist — although less so in Japan than in China and South Korea.
But Japan has long been seen as a laboratory for what happens as a population ages. The Japanese government has introduced policies in recent decades to incentivize people to have more children, including cash incentives and free preschool, with mixed results.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire chief executive, stirred controversy last month when he said on Twitter that Japan would “eventually cease to exist” unless the demographic trends changed.
Commentators responded that Japan is not at risk of disappearing but that its future depends on immigration.
Demographic anxieties have spurred reconsideration of the country’s immigration policy, long one of the most restrictive among industrialized nations. The country rarely grants refugee status. Blue-collar foreign workers, such as the Vietnamese who staff Japan’s restaurants, can remain in the country for only five years and cannot bring their families into the country.
Immigration was a political taboo for decades, with Japan’s right wing airing concerns that an influx of foreigners would dilute the country’s ethnic homogeneity and culture.
The Japanese government has taken some steps to ease restrictions. A construction worker from China in April became the first foreign worker to be recognized under a new “specified skills” visa system created in 2019, meaning that his wife and son can come to live with him in Japan, Asahi reported.
Officials in November indicated that the government planned to expand the looser rules to other understaffed sectors beyond construction and shipbuilding, which could open up residency to a larger number of foreigners. | 2022-06-03T16:09:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Japan birthrate: Country records largest-ever natural population decline, as births drops - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/japan-low-births-population-decline-2021/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/japan-low-births-population-decline-2021/ |
Zelinsky shares defiant video after 100 days of war in Ukraine
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Ukraine marks 100 days of war as battle fo...
In a nod to one of the first videos Volodymyr Zelensky filmed at the start of the war, the Ukrainian president told the country that Russia would be defeated. (Video: The Washington Post)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared a video on social media Friday offering a message of resilience 100 days into the Russian invasion and proclaiming that “victory” will belong to Ukraine.
The video directly echoes a clip released by the Ukrainian leader on the second day of the war, in which Zelensky appears alongside his prime minister and other members of core team, walking the streets of Kyiv, in defiance of rumors that the city was about to fall, or that he might flee the country.
Back then, the aim of his message was clear: to show beyond all fear or doubt that he was committed to stay and fight. This time, Zelensky’s video serves as a reminder that Russia’s early objectives had failed and that, even with Russia occupying as much as a third of the country, Ukrainians would continue to fight.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video Feb. 25 in which the leader said he was among those continuing to defend Kyiv. (Video: The Washington Post)
“The leader of [our parliamentary] faction is here, the head of the president’s office is here, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Smyhal is here, [presidential adviser] Podolyak is here, the president is here,” he says, with his team standing behind him in the same position as in the Feb. 25 video. “Ukraine’s armed forces are here. The most important thing is our people; the people of our state are here.”
“We have been defending Ukraine for 100 days already," he says. “Victory will be ours.”
Though the new video mirrors the old one, notable differences show how the war has progressed. The first was recorded in the twilight hours on the deserted Kyiv streets, with the president and his staff bathed in the soft yellow glow of street lamps, wearing the military-style outfits that befitted a wartime leader.
In the new video, Zelensky and his top officials are dressed more casually, on a bright, early summer day. The Ukrainian president looks less tired than he did on Feb. 24, though perhaps older than the gap of 98 days would allow.
At the end of the video released on Friday, Zelensky repeats a patriotic rallying cry.
"Glory to Ukraine!” he says. | 2022-06-03T16:09:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zelinsky video: Ukraine's president shares defiant video after 100 days of war in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/zelensky-video-100-days/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/03/zelensky-video-100-days/ |
Former Va. first lady Dorothy McAuliffe named to State Department post
Former Virginia first lady Dorothy McAuliffe. (Julia Rendleman for the Washington Post)
RICHMOND — Former Virginia first lady Dorothy McAuliffe will serve as the State Department’s new special representative for global partnerships, a post focused on fostering collaboration between the department and nonprofits, businesses and other organizations in the United States and abroad.
Two State Department officials confirmed McAuliffe’s appointment Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because it had not yet been formally announced.
McAuliffe, whose position will be based in Washington, declined to comment through a spokesman.
Dorothy McAuliffe put aside pomp as hard-lobbying Virginia first lady
In her new role, McAuliffe will lead a team to identify areas of potential collaboration with a host of U.S.- and foreign-based organizations — ranging from businesses and nonprofits to state, municipal and tribal governments, and civil society, faith-based and academic entities, according to the two State Department officials.
Her goal will be to rally those organizations to support the Biden administration’s foreign policy objectives on matters such as combating climate change and corruption, addressing global migration and strengthening global supply chains, the two said.
McAuliffe was a trailblazing first lady of Virginia while her husband, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, served as governor from 2014 to 2018. Terry McAuliffe, prevented by Virginia’s constitutional ban on back-to-back gubernatorial terms from immediately running for reelection, sought a comeback last year but lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin.
While fulfilling the traditional, largely ceremonial role of first lady — hosting receptions and making improvements to the historic Executive Mansion — McAuliffe was the first to lobby heavily for legislation and to work out of the Patrick Henry Building, alongside the governor and cabinet secretaries.
Making childhood nutrition a top priority, she led a successful push for Virginia schools to serve 13 million more breakfasts a year. She also helped persuade the legislature to establish a system to provide more funding to school districts serving children of military personnel, served on a task force that tackled a backlog of untested rape kits and helped hash out a last-minute compromise between the governor and Republicans on firearms legislation. | 2022-06-03T16:35:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Va. first lady Dorothy McAuliffe named to State Department post - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/dorothy-mcauliffe-state-department-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/dorothy-mcauliffe-state-department-virginia/ |
Trump can’t blame Democratic crossover voters for his failures in Georgia
Lenny Bronner
Georgia Secretary of State Jay Raffensperger (R) speaks at a news conference in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)
In the aftermath of the Georgia primaries last week, an intriguing question arose. Former president Donald Trump’s endorsed candidates for governor and secretary state were beaten handily — surprisingly badly, in fact. In the secretary of state race, incumbent Brad Raffensperger (R) was able to eke past the 50 percent margin needed to avoid a runoff despite having run fairly close in polling with Trump’s pick for the job.
Take away a bit over 55,000 votes and Raffensperger drops below 50 percent of the cast votes. As we pointed out, far more than 55,000 2022 Republican primary voters had voted in the Democratic primary in 2020. Did Raffensperger avoid a runoff election thanks to Democrats showing up to support him?
Trump, never one to miss an opportunity to deflect blame, suggested at a rally in Wyoming that this is precisely what happened. It’s an appealing frame for him, certainly. But data released this week from the state (from Raffensperger’s own office, as it happens) shows that it’s not actually what happened.
The most recent data suggest that nearly 67,000 people who cast ballots in the Republican primary last month had voted in the Democratic primary in 2020. But we can break out those numbers further, looking at how those 67,000 voters had voted in prior party primaries. And when we do that, we get a better answer to our original question.
There are essentially four groups of voters here. They are voters who voted in the Republican primary in 2022, the Democratic primary in 2020 and:
No other primaries (about 19,300 of the total),
At least one Democratic primary and no Republican primaries from 2014 to 2018 (about 17,400 voters),
At least one Republican primary and no Democratic primaries (about 17,000 voters), or
At least one Republican and one Democratic primary over those three cycles (about 12,900 voters).
Now, everyone we’re talking about here is a “swing voter” in the sense that they have voted in one primary from each party over the past three years. But within that group, we have two groups that only deviated from their partisan norm once. Those are the “consistent” partisans identified on the chart above. (Those are meant to be scare quotes.)
This includes the “consistent” Democrats, people who voted in two or more Democratic primaries from 2014 to 2020 and the Republican primary this year. This is the group that we can comfortably describe as Democrats who switched over just for this cycle.
Many of the group that voted in no primaries from 2014 to 2018 might also be Democrats who wanted to influence the Republican primary. They have no prior record, perhaps because they are new voters. But as you’ll see, the uncertainty of this group doesn’t really matter.
After all, Raffensperger avoided a runoff by a bit more than 55,000 votes. If we assume that all of those who didn’t vote in any primary before 2020 were Democrats and add-in the “consistent” Democrats and we land at fewer than 37,000 votes in total. Even if all of those people voted for secretary of state (which is itself unlikely), removing them isn’t enough to push Raffensperger below 50 percent.
All of the other 30,000 voters who voted in the Democratic primary in 2020 and the Republican one in 2022 (the “consistent” Republicans and the swing voters) voted in at least one Republican primary from 2014 to 2018. These are not well-described as Democrats hoping to influence the other party’s primary. Even if you count anyone who voted in a Democratic primary over that period alongside the “consistent” Democrats and those without a prior primary vote, you still end up short of 55,100.
(A procedural point: some analyses have considered the important figure here to be a bit under 28,000 — about half of 55,100. If votes flipped from Raffensperger to Trump’s endorsed candidate, Rep. Jody Hice, that would make sense. But the question here is turnout, people voting at all. Not how they voted.)
There were clearly some Democrats who voted in the Republican primary, perhaps to hand Trump a loss. But the available data suggest that they were not the difference maker in Raffensperger’s race.
Just to be completist about it, they were not the difference in Gov. Brian Kemp’s reelection bid, either. He won by more than 625,000 votes. | 2022-06-03T16:48:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump can’t blame Democratic crossover voters for his failures in Georgia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/trump-cant-blame-democratic-crossover-voters-his-failures-georgia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/trump-cant-blame-democratic-crossover-voters-his-failures-georgia/ |
What are War Crimes? Could Putin Be Prosecuted for Them?
Analysis by Erik Larson | Bloomberg
Usually, it’s only after fighting ends that prosecutions begin for breaking the rules of war. Ukraine isn’t waiting. It began putting captured Russian soldiers on trial in May. But what about the political and military leaders higher up the chain of command? Widespread attacks on Ukrainian civilians and non-military targets such as schools and hospitals have led to calls in the US, UK and Europe to hold not just Russian troops but President Vladimir Putin and his subordinates accountable for war crimes. An international tribunal is investigating such offenses and other potential atrocities. However, it’s far from certain that senior Russian leaders will be brought to justice under international law.
1. What are war crimes?
They are violations of the rules of warfare as set out in various treaties, notably the Geneva Conventions, a series of agreements concluded between 1864 and 1949. War crimes include willful killing, torture, rape, using starvation as a weapon, shooting combatants who have surrendered, deploying banned weapons such as chemical and biological arms, and deliberately attacking civilian targets. The Kremlin has rejected allegations that its troops have committed such transgressions in Ukraine.
2. How have these crimes been prosecuted in the past?
In an early exercise of international criminal justice, Allied powers tried and punished German and Japanese leaders after World War II, sentencing some to death. Because the Allies granted themselves immunity from war crimes charges, the tribunals were criticized as victors’ justice. To avoid that conflict of interest, the United Nations Security Council created independent, international tribunals to prosecute atrocities in the Balkans and Rwanda in the 1990s. Those horrors revived a 19th-century idea of establishing a permanent world court to hold people accountable for acts of mass inhumanity. The Hague-based International Criminal Court was born in 2002 out of a treaty called the Rome Statute; 123 states have ratified it to become ICC members. Notable holdouts include Russia, China, India and the US, which says putting its citizens under the court’s jurisdiction would violate their constitutional rights.
3. What’s Ukraine’s approach?
With the help of a number of countries, including the US, Ukrainian officials began collecting evidence of war crimes early in the conflict. As of mid-May, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said her office had opened more than 11,000 cases. In the first trial, a Ukrainian court sentenced a Russian soldier to life imprisonment for killing an unarmed civilian. In the second, two soldiers got 11.5 years for shelling an educational facility. In a commentary published in The Conversation, Robert Goldman, president of the International Commissions of Jurists, said that Ukraine’s approach was permissible under international law but arguably not wise. He noted that the International Committee of the Red Cross has cautioned against holding such trials during hostilities because of the improbability that the accused could properly prepare a defense in that setting.
4. What’s the ICC doing?
It sent a team of 42 people -- its largest such deployment -- to Ukraine to investigate crimes that fall within the court’s jurisdiction. Although Ukraine is not an ICC member, it accepted the court’s jurisdiction for incidents on its territory starting months before Russia seized the country’s Crimea peninsula in 2014. In addition to war crimes, the ICC is investigating crimes against humanity and genocide. The former are defined as acts such as murder, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, rape and apartheid when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population. Genocide is defined in a 1948 UN convention as specific acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of genocide, saying Putin intends to end Ukraine’s existence as a nation.
5. What are the prospects of trying Russian officials?
Barring a change of regime in Moscow, not good. The ICC doesn’t permit trials in absentia, and the court is unlikely to gets its hands on Putin or his lieutenants. It relies on its member states to make arrests, and accused Russian officials could always avoid traveling to a country that might turn them over. Of the two dozen people against whom the ICC has pursued war crimes cases, about a third remain at large. Those charged have been members of armed groups rather than political or state military leaders, with four exceptions -- a Libyan general, Sudan’s ex-president, Omar al-Bashir, and two of his ministers -- none of whom have been turned over to the ICC. Numerous political leaders were prosecuted for barbarities in the Balkans and Rwanda, but those tribunals were established by the Security Council, where Russia has a veto. | 2022-06-03T16:48:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What are War Crimes? Could Putin Be Prosecuted for Them? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-are-war-crimes-could-putin-be-prosecuted-for-them/2022/06/03/1cc246d4-e352-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-are-war-crimes-could-putin-be-prosecuted-for-them/2022/06/03/1cc246d4-e352-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Settlement reached in suit alleging excessive force by Va. officer
A $150,000 settlement has been reached in a lawsuit in federal court alleging that a police officer in Fairfax County, Va., used a Taser on a Black man and punched him without provocation during a 2020 encounter that was captured on video, according to court documents.
The defendants, Fairfax County and Officer Tyler Timberlake, admit no wrongdoing under the terms of the deal with Lamonta Gladney, according to court documents.
Video of the incident shows Timberlake shocking and punching Gladney less than 10 seconds after arriving on the scene of a call in June 2020 in the Mount Vernon area. Gladney had been talking incoherently and pacing in circles on a street before Timberlake showed up.
A Fairfax County jury acquitted Timberlake this year on misdemeanor assault charges related to the incident.
Timberlake testified in court that his use of force was appropriate because Gladney appeared to be under the influence of the drug PCP and posed a threat to first responders and the public. Timberlake also said he mistook Gladney for a man wanted on charges of felony violence.
Fairfax County police officer acquitted of assault on Black man
Timberlake’s attorney and Fairfax County officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the settlement.
Thomas F. Hennessy, an attorney for Gladney, said in a statement that Timberlake’s use of force was excessive and that Gladney had posed no threat. He said he was pleased with the settlement.
“When Officer Timberlake shot Mr. Gladney with his TASER there was no immediate safety risk, any offense being committed by Mr. Gladney was nonviolent, and Mr. Gladney was neither resisting nor attempting to flee,” Hennessy’s statement said. | 2022-06-03T17:05:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Settlement reached in suit alleging excessive force by Va. officer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/timberlake-gladney-lawsuit-setlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/timberlake-gladney-lawsuit-setlement/ |
New York Mayor Eric Adams, left, speaks during an event where he announced the city's new Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, which will be co-chaired by Andre T. Mitchell, right, founder of the Brooklyn anti-violence group Man Up!, and Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Sheena Wright, at City Hall in New York on June 2. (Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) had promised swift action after a gunman killed 10 people last month in a racist attack on a supermarket in her hometown of Buffalo. Ten days later, a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex.
Authorities said the perpetrators in the both shootings were 18 years old and purchased their military-style semiautomatic rifles legally.
“We cannot keep living like this,” said Hochul in a statement late Thursday. “Even as we take steps to protect New Yorkers, we recognize this is nationwide problem.” She called on Congress to seize the moment and enact substantive measures at the federal level to prevent gun violence. “We have no time to waste,” she said.
That will make New York only the seventh state in the nation to raise the minimum age for buying such weapons: California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Vermont and Washington already have similar restrictions, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
One of the bills passed Thursday by New York’s Democratic-controlled legislature will restrict the sale of bulletproof vests to people in authorized professions such as law enforcement. Another measure expands the situations in which people considered likely to harm others can be prevented from buying a weapon. Health-care professionals will be permitted to file such risk orders, while police will be required to do so when they receive a credible threat.
Only by acknowledging the “underlying issues which lead people to commit crime and violence can we make a difference,” said Republican state Sen. Andrew Lanza in a statement. “New Yorkers need solutions like these instead of political grandstanding from the left.”
New York’s move to raise the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic rifle could be subject to legal challenge. Last month, a U.S. appeals court in California ruled that the state’s prohibition on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21 was unconstitutional. | 2022-06-03T17:14:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York lawmakers raise the minimum age to buy a semiautomatic rifle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/new-york-tighter-gun-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/03/new-york-tighter-gun-laws/ |
Chris Murphy’s gun-control crusade has arrived back where it began
Ten years after Sandy Hook, the senator is pushing for new gun laws after a school massacre in Uvalde. Will this time be different?
By Ellen McCarthy
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) speaks during a 2013 news conference at the Capitol calling for gun reform legislation. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
A young man had acquired a semiautomatic rifle and used it to massacre children, again, which meant that an onerous clock had begun ticking for Sen. Chris Murphy, again.
The challenge was the same as ever: turn a moment of national grief and introspection into new laws that could reduce the number of lives claimed by gun violence. Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, conferred with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) who wanted to immediately call a vote on background-checks legislation that had passed in the House a year ago, knowing it would probably fail, to force Republicans to show Americans where they stood on the issue. Murphy says he implored Schumer to hold off, to give him time to attempt to broker a deal on legislation that might actually pass. “Give us some room,” Murphy remembers saying. “We’ll get a compromise.” Schumer agreed to give him 10 days to try.
If Murphy wanted to get something done this time, he knew he had to move quickly. “I know how this works,” he said. “I know that often the partners who show up on Day 1 are only interested so long as this is in the headlines.”
The headlines were particularly gruesome this time — 19 fourth-graders dead, some maimed beyond recognition, just 10 days after a different shooter killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo — which meant an avalanche of grief for the nation and, possibly, an opening for Murphy and his allies.
He was sitting in an armchair in his Capitol office, which is decorated with photos of his two young sons, including a fourth-grader who had told his dad, on the drive to school that morning, that he and his friends spent the previous day making plans on where to hide if an active shooter were to enter their classroom. In the outer office, a photo of Fred Rogers greets visitors. “Look for the helpers,” it says, quoting the avuncular television icon.
Murphy has spent nearly a decade looking for people around here who might help him pass new, meaningful gun-control legislation, and he never seems to find enough of them.
Could this time be different? Senators on both sides of the aisle say there is fresh optimism that they can reach an agreement that would lead to new legislation.
“I think this has happened recently enough and given us a sense of urgency that maybe we haven’t had in the past,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) in a phone interview Thursday.
Resistance to federal gun laws from Republicans — who tend to argue that gun control measures are ineffective and infringe on gun owners’ Second Amendment rights — has long been Murphy’s biggest obstacle, and Cornyn has been more open to the Democrat’s overtures than many others in his party. He is head of the Republican delegation in a bipartisan group of senators, led by Murphy, that is trying to hammer out a piece of legislation both parties could agree on.
“One of the ideas that makes sense to me is to find some way to give some sort of limited, careful, confidential look back to make sure that somebody can’t show up at 18 years old [and] claim to be legally qualified to purchase a firearm when, if they had been an adult with this same record, they would have been disqualified by the background check system,” Cornyn told The Washington Post. “I’ve been spending a lot of time on the phone and Zooming and that sort of thing, and that seems to jump out as one aspect of this where people say, ‘Yeah, that’s a problem.’”
The Texas Republican said that he is hopeful that there might be some common ground there. “Not naive,” he said, “but hopeful.”
Perhaps more than anyone else on the Hill, Murphy personifies the hope and disappointment of Americans who believe the answer to stemming mass shootings lies in tightening federal gun laws.
His quest began in 2012 after a 20-year-old resident of Newtown, Conn., shot and killed 20 kids and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. At the time, Murphy was a 39-year-old congressman who had just been elected to the Senate. He was young and principled and uber-ambitious, following a path to the Senate he’d charted out as a freshman in high school. He spent that December day at a firehouse in Newtown, feeling “powerless, extraneous, impotent” as he watched hundreds of frantic parents search for their children. Eventually, there were 40 parents left and no more survivors. Murphy stood outside as those parents were taken into a private room and told that their kids had been gunned down inside their first-grade classroom.
Later, as the firehouse emptied out, Murphy spotted a man sitting alone. Neil Heslin had been told hours earlier that his 6-year-old son, Jesse, was among the dead, “But he didn’t believe it,” says Murphy. “So he decided to stay, in case Jesse came back. And I will never forget that scene. I’ll never forget Neil sitting in the middle of that room refusing to believe that his son was lying on the floor of that classroom.”
That holiday season became an epoch of sorrow, and Murphy discovered a new sense of purpose as he prepared to join Congress’s upper chamber. Erica Lafferty, daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, can remember first encountering Murphy at an event that December. “He just looked at this room full of sobbing families and he said, ‘I promise I’m not going to give up.’”
What’s wrong with politicizing a tragedy? For Sen. Chris Murphy, nothing at all. (From 2016)
Murphy’s first speech on the Senate floor in 2013 was a call to action on gun control. Over the following two years he gave speeches every week, telling colleagues about the victims of gun violence, so they’d “understand who these people were.” He began to sleep and breathe gun violence, digging into the impact on communities that rarely control a news cycle. “I have come to care about the victims in Hartford and New Haven and Baltimore as much as I care about the victims in Newtown and Uvalde,” he says. In 2020, he published a book called “The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy.”
“If America doesn’t have more men than other countries and doesn’t have more mentally ill people than other nations, then what is different about us that causes this almost exclusively American epidemic?” Murphy writes in the book.
“Well, here is the simplest and perhaps most important truth,” he continues. “It’s just much easier to commit mass murder in America … It’s easier in general to get a gun here than anywhere else. And it’s much easier to get your hands on a gun that will kill many people very quickly.”
Murphy is the type of guy who probably gets mistaken for other guys — tall and thin, with dark hair combed stick-straight. But among gun-control activists, he enjoys a vaunted status. When Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a grass roots gun-safety group, introduced him at a rally in D.C. two years ago, she says it was as if she were bringing on a rock star. “I had to tell the audience to calm down,” Watts recalls. “Like, is it Tom Cruise? No. It’s Chris Murphy, people. I mean, they went insane.”
For all the gratitude that Murphy, who is now pushing 50, has earned among activists for his persistence, his labors on the issue have resulted in few legislative victories. The biggest success came in 2017 when Murphy and Cornyn teamed up on a measure that strengthens requirements for federal and state authorities to report criminal history records to a national background check database.
“I credit Chris with realizing that we weren’t going to be able to do everything he wanted to do, but we could do this and this would be something that would be progress and, in the end, save lives,” Cornyn said. “I give him a lot of credit for recognizing the hand we’ve all been dealt and trying to use that for good.”
In general, though, Washington has been a graveyard of gun-control bills. In April 2013, four months after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a bipartisan bill led by Sens. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) was defeated. In the years that followed, talks on gun reform bills — often led by Murphy — have repeatedly collapsed in the Senate. In 2016, after a man killed 49 people and injured 53 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Murphy filibustered on the Senate floor for nearly 15 hours to force a vote on a pair of measures: expanding background checks for buyers at gun shows and online, and blocking gun sales to people on terrorism watch lists. He secured an agreement to vote on the measures. Both measures, and two counter proposals from Republicans, were voted down largely along party lines. More negotiations on background checks stalled out in 2019. Last year, an effort to expand the definition of a commercial gun dealer went nowhere after Murphy and Cornyn failed to strike a deal.
With tangible victories constantly slipping out of reach in Washington, Murphy has come to see his most important role as a someone who fans the movement’s flame. “At these moments I feel like I need to convey my sense of outrage,” said the senator, “so that other people realize it’s okay to continue to be outraged at this.” Meaningful change in gun laws will come, he said, only when voters put more pressure on his Republican colleagues than the National Rifle Association.
His signature issue has given Murphy purpose as a senator, but it has also mired him in one of America’s more grief-soaked and intractable problems. On Murphy’s desk, a faded paper heart is taped to the back of his computer monitor. He was given the Valentine by gun control activists two months after the massacre at Sandy Hook. In an adult’s neat handwriting it says “Invest in the future.” Beneath that, in a child’s messy scribble, it reads, “Me.”
“I never had an issue like this where I would wake up every single day with a sense of emotional mission,” said Murphy, adding: “It also means I’m petrified that I’m going to end up a failure because I’m not going to succeed on this issue.”
His closest friend in the Senate, Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), said that is the reason Murphy never publicly shows the toll the issue takes on him. “There’s an old saying among coaches. They say ‘Be tired, don’t look tired,’” says Schatz. “If you’re in the United States Senate, you don’t get to outwardly express despondence because you have a unique responsibility to maintain, on behalf of people who care about these issues, some degree of focus and optimism.”
Lafferty, daughter of the Sandy Hook principal, is a gun control advocate now. Sometimes she refers to Murphy as an angel. “He’s the light in my dark,” she said after a rally on Capitol Hill last week. “He allows me to keep going when I can’t.”
But 48 hours had already passed since the most recent awful thing had happened, in Uvalde, Tex., and failure was most definitely a possibility.
“There is a bit of a script that plays out in these tragedies,” Murphy said.
Since the Uvalde news broke, he had been doing his best to recruit a promising cast and rewrite familiar scenes in the hope of giving that script a new ending.
“I’m here on this floor to beg,” he beseeched his Senate colleagues in a speech that went viral in those crucial early days after the shooting, “to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here.”
In the hours that followed he raced through a gantlet of television interviews. He spoke at a hastily organized gun control rally. He texted his two Texas colleagues messages of condolence, then started reaching out to other Republicans to see if any of them, having seen smiling photos of 19 schoolchildren taken before they were killed, might be in the mood to help pass some gun safety legislation.
He says the days that followed the Uvalde shooting felt different, with more Republicans reaching out to work with him, but he knows a deal is still a long shot. Murphy says he will support “anything that saves lives” including red-flag laws and background checks. A decade ago he wanted sweeping reform; now he will settle for incremental changes.
Until a new law is inked, though, optimism is just another element of a tired script.
Cornyn, for his part, set a high bar for what he would consider an ideal compromise. “I’m not interested in getting 50 Democrats and 10 Republicans,” he told The Post. “I want to see substantial majorities of both political parties vote for the eventual product. That means it’s hard, but I think it’s certainly going to be worth the effort.”
Over the course of his crusade to get gun control legislation passed, Murphy acknowledged that he has occasionally felt like Charlie Brown, attempting to kick a football only to have Lucy pull it away again and again. Still, he said, “I’m never, ever scared to run up to the football.” He added: “I think there’s one cartoon in which Lucy keeps the football down.” Which is true, although, Charlie still missed the ball.
For Murphy, even a decent shot at connecting on a bipartisan gun bill is enough to be hopeful. Not naive, but hopeful.
“I feel like I failed a million times,” he said in his office last week. “But, you know, in order to get anything done, you have to fail first.”
Staff writer Mike DeBonis contributed to this report. | 2022-06-03T17:19:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Senator Chris Murphy is once again fighting for gun control after a school massacre - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/03/chris-murphy-gun-control-uvalde/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/03/chris-murphy-gun-control-uvalde/ |
After Rays decry shootings, Florida governor vetoes funding for possible team facility
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed $35 million in funding that could have gone toward a new spring training site for the Tampa Bay Rays. (Stephen M. Dowell/AP)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday vetoed $35 million in state spending for a youth sports complex in Pasco County, a project that had been pitched as a potential spring training site for the Tampa Bay Rays.
The money was included in the $112 billion budget plan sent to DeSantis by state legislators earlier this year. DeSantis, however, has line-item authority to veto specific expenditures, and he used that to cut a record $3.1 billion out of the initial budget proposal.
On May 26, the Rays issued a statement decrying the recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, and said the franchise would be making a $50,000 donation to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-violence prevention organization.
“This cannot become normal,” the team statement read. “We cannot become numb. We cannot look the other way. We all know, if nothing changes, nothing changes.”
At a public speaking engagement Friday, DeSantis said he doesn’t “support giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports stadiums, period.” But DeSantis, a gun-rights supporter who is pushing the state to allow residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit, also suggested that the Rays’ support of a gun-control organization also factored into his decision.
“Companies are free to engage or not engage in whatever discourse they want, but clearly it’s inappropriate to be doing tax dollars for professional sports stadiums,” he said. “It’s also inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation. Either way, it’s not appropriate. But we were not in a situation where use of tax dollars for a professional stadium would have been a prudent use.”
In December, State Sen. President Wilton Simpson, who hails from Pasco County, and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told the Tampa Bay Times that the Rays were interested in Pasco County, north of Tampa, as a site for a training complex and spring training facility as part of the team’s plan to build a new stadium in Tampa.
At that time, the team still had hopes of splitting its home games between Tampa and Montreal. But about a month later, Major League Baseball’s executive council rejected that plan, forcing the Rays to start anew in their decades-long quest to leave Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, where their use agreement ends in 2027.
The team reportedly is looking at both Tampa and the Tropicana Field site in St. Petersburg as possible locations for a new stadium, and owner Stu Sternberg and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred have both expressed their desire that the team remain in the Gulf Coast area.
The youth sports complex in Odessa, Fla., was not specifically linked to the Rays in the state budget proposal, but Pasco County officials had suggested it could also serve as the team’s spring training complex. The team conducts spring training in Port Charlotte, Fla., about 80 miles southeast of St. Petersburg.
“Not unexpected, but it was disappointing that our youth sports complex was vetoed,” Pasco County Commission chairwoman Kathryn Starkey said Thursday.
The Rays did not respond to a request for comment about DeSantis’s veto. | 2022-06-03T17:58:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoes funding for possible Tampa Bay Rays facility - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/desantis-rays-practice-facility/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/03/desantis-rays-practice-facility/ |
Ontario Premier Doug Ford at his party's election night watch party at the Toronto Congress Centre in Toronto on June 2. (Carlos Osorio/Reuters)
Many Republicans dream of making the GOP a multiracial, working-class party. Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s smashing reelection victory Thursday gives them a great model to examine.
Ford is leader of the province’s main center-right party, the Progressive Conservatives. He has often been derided by his left-leaning foes as a bumbling populist or a “tin-pot Northern Trump.” He has also sparked criticism on the right for embracing lockdowns and vaccine passports as part of the province’s efforts to control covid-19. If these charges had merit, Ontario’s suburbanites and the hard right would have abandoned him in droves.
Instead, Ford swamped his foes left and right. The PCs won 83 of the province’s 124 seats, a seven-seat gain from his 2018 landslide. His party carried virtually every seat in its rural southern Ontario heartland, losing only one riding to an independent running with the outgoing PC member’s endorsement. The PCs also dominated suburban Toronto and won two seats in suburban Ottawa. Republicans would love to emulate this level of success in uniting rural and suburban voters in this year’s midterm elections.
Ford’s success with ethnic minorities and working-class voters is even more important to understand. A pre-election poll found the PCs winning among the province’s “visible minorities,” a Canadian term that covers “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.” The PCs carried every seat in minority-dominated Brampton and Mississauga, gaining three seats from the center-left New Democratic Party, and won four seats in Scarborough, a district of Toronto where minorities make up nearly 75 percent of the population. The PCs also carried union-heavy areas, such as Windsor-Tecumseh and Timmins, which the New Democratic Party had long dominated. The PCs won the endorsement of eight traditionally anti-PC trade unions in the process.
“Ford Nation,” it seems, is a very inclusive movement.
Ford’s success isn’t hard to break down. He governs from the center-right, not the hard right. He expelled three members from the PC caucus who refused to support covid lockdowns or be vaccinated, as per party policy. Two formed new parties — the New Blue and Ontario parties — but those protests fizzled, winning only 4.5 percent of the vote and no seats. Ford eschewed supply-side ideology and adopted targeted tax cuts for the working class instead. He pushed back against a carbon tax and a Liberal Party-backed plan to implement a school curriculum that discussed topics such as gender identity in early grades.
Ford has also not been afraid to spend money. His latest budget envisions large capital expenditures for infrastructure projects, such as widening and building roads and expanding the region’s extensive rail and subway network. That has produced large deficits, although those will likely be smaller than projected as the provincial economy roars back from the pandemic. The upshot, as conservative commentator Sean Speer told me, is that Ford’s success shows “there is a political market for his mix of economic populism and cultural conservatism.”
Ford’s personal touch also cannot be overlooked. “He’s the sort of guy you might want to have a beer with,” Speer says. “God, you might have actually had a beer with him!”
That’s not surprising for a man whose 2018 campaign featured a pledge to reduce minimum prices at the provincial-owned liquor stores and bring back “a buck a beer.” When Toronto was hit by a large snowstorm in January, Ford drove around his neighborhood personally helping stranded motorists dig out their cars and ferry them to appointments.
An American version of “Ford Nation” would likely govern considerably to the right. Ontario does not have a long southern border that hundreds of thousands of people try to cross illegally each month. The United States also has cultural conflicts over Big Tech and abortion that are not as pressing in Canada, and the stronger anti-government tradition among American conservatives would also have an effect. Those factors would make a U.S. version of Ford’s campaign more confrontational in tone. And it would offer more red meat to the right, much as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has done.
But American conservatives can learn from Ford’s willingness to shed conservative dogma to bring in new converts. Suburbanites tend to shy away from harsh religious rhetoric. And minorities and working-class voters tend to favor larger levels of government spending than traditional conservatives do. The GOP is sorely mistaken if it thinks it can take these people’s votes and discard their sentiments after the midterms.
Ford’s two landslide victories show it is possible to build a new, broad-based conservative majority. Anyone who wants to be the next Republican presidential nominee should take notes.
When will Canada’s Conservatives take climate change seriously? | 2022-06-03T18:15:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Doug Ford’s sweeping win in Ontario is a model for populist Republicans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/doug-fords-sweeping-win-ontario-is-model-populist-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/doug-fords-sweeping-win-ontario-is-model-populist-republicans/ |
Among the offices that will be on the ballot in Maryland’s upcoming primaries are contests for the circuit courts. The races don’t get the attention afforded to the gubernatorial, congressional and county executive contests set for July 19, but voters would do well to pay attention. These are key positions that directly touch people’s lives.
At stake are 15-year terms on courts that handle not only serious criminal and major civil cases but also sensitive juvenile and family law matters. We wish we didn’t need to make endorsements in these races, because it has long been our opinion that elections, with their emphasis on messaging, political popularity and campaign dollars, are not the best way to select judges. We have urged Maryland lawmakers to change the state’s constitutional requirement that judicial appointees to the circuit courts run in the election immediately following their appointment. No other judgeships in the state operate this way.
Six counties in the state — including Montgomery, Prince George’s and Charles — have contested judicial elections in which sitting judges who underwent a vigorous vetting process before their appointment by Gov. Larry Hogan (R) face challengers who bypassed similar scrutiny about their experience, temperament and legal ability. The circuit court candidates are supposedly “nonpartisan,” but they cross-file to run in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, a quirk of the system that denies independent voters any say in the primaries.
Judges appointed to the bench after a selection process that includes multiple layers of review and who have served honorably should be elected to full 15-year terms. Here are the candidates who have met those requirements and who we encourage voters to choose:
In Montgomery County, the sitting judges are Carlos Acosta, Theresa Chernosky, Kathleen Dumais and Rachel McGuckian. Judge Acosta has more than 30 years of legal experience, including four years as a district court judge and several years as a local and federal prosecutor. Judge Chernosky was a career public defender for 27 years before being appointed to the court. Judge Dumais practiced family law for 32 years, handling complex divorce and custody matters, and served as a member of the House of Delegates for 18 years. Judge McGuckian was in private practice for 29 years, dealing with cases that ran the gamut from large civil matters to divorce and custody cases to pro bono work for the Office of the Public Defender.
In Prince George’s County, the sitting judge is Carole Coderre. Judge Coderre has more than two decades of experience litigating both criminal and civil matters, and served as both a prosecutor and county attorney.
In Charles County, the sitting judge is Monise Brown. After graduating from law school in 2004, she was a judicial clerk in Prince George’s County Circuit Court. She had her own law practice before joining the state’s attorney’s office in Charles County and serving as a family magistrate, handling juvenile cases and domestic relations actions.
Voters should return these judges to the bench — and Maryland lawmakers should do away with contested judicial elections. | 2022-06-03T18:15:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Sitting Maryland judges are up for election. Voters should confirm them. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/these-are-the-maryland-judges-voters-should-confirm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/these-are-the-maryland-judges-voters-should-confirm/ |
Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino, former trade adviser Peter Navarro and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon refused to comply with subpoenas seeking their testimony. So did Meadows, even as he initially complied with the committee’s request for text messages. Their matters were referred to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution. Bannon and Navarro have been indicted; Bannon is set to go on trial in July on two counts of contempt, which can potentially carry a penalty of up to a year in jail plus a fine. The committee says it has subpoenaed five Republican House members, including the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, who spoke to Trump by phone during the Capitol riot. McCarthy resisted complying with his subpoena, challenging the committee’s legal standing. Trying to compel testimony from sitting members of Congress is legally complicated and underscores a key facet of the case: Lawmakers were participants in some of the events on Jan. 6 and have information germane to the probe. | 2022-06-03T18:20:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the Jan. 6 Committee Has Done, and What’s Next - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-jan-6-committee-has-done-and-whats-next/2022/06/03/62b79c40-e35f-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-jan-6-committee-has-done-and-whats-next/2022/06/03/62b79c40-e35f-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Maryland State Police became aware of the coin in January and the agency is investigating its creation, including whether someone in the agency was involved with the coins’ “design, manufacturing/purchase or sale,” spokeswoman Elena Russo said in an email. Russo said the agency hasn’t identified the person “responsible for this violation of Department policy” and urged anyone with information on who created it to contact internal affairs. Investigations of other coins have led to disciplinary or administrative actions, she said. | 2022-06-03T18:20:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Explicit coin with police logo concerns Black troopers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/explicit-coin-with-police-logo-concerns-black-troopers/2022/06/03/676b6bf6-e35d-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/explicit-coin-with-police-logo-concerns-black-troopers/2022/06/03/676b6bf6-e35d-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Ben Sasse wants an optimistic GOP. He’s going to be disappointed.
(Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/POOL)
Back when politics seemed a bit less apocalyptic and unpredictable than it is today, people would say that in a presidential race, the more optimistic candidate usually wins. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy — all different but extremely optimistic in their own ways — were offered as proof.
Today, optimists are in short supply in both parties, but particularly in the GOP. Can you think of any Republican who offers a sunny vision of the future?
Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska — who may or may not want to run for president, but has long had the look of someone who does — wants to be that optimist. On Thursday, he gave a speech to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute that in a different time might have been seen as standard fare for someone laying the ground for a run for the White House. But today, it stands in stark contrast with where his party is going.
That contrast is so vivid that when it’s laid out, it reveals as much about the dark vision of the GOP as any speech by one of the people far more likely to lead the party in the near future.
Sasse has some policy recommendations, most of which are ordinary conservative ideas, such as more military spending. But the meat of his speech is a critique of Republican politics. He can’t frame it entirely that way, so he casts blame on both parties for what are primarily Republican sins, and tosses some arrows at Democrats for being too far left.
He does offer an honest assessment of what his party has become, arguing “What this party cannot be is a cult of personality and grievance.” He goes on:
American conservatives don’t traffic in grievance. Our party must reject politicians who tell the American people that we’re victims. We embrace leaders who tell the American people that we can write our own destiny. Americans have never wallowed in self-pity. The people who built this country and passed it on to us sought to make it better and more expansive and more inclusive. They weren’t whining.
As a description of the Republican Party in 2020, it’s hard to come up with something more concise than “a cult of personality and grievance.” But when Sasse says American conservatives "don’t traffic in grievance,” you have to ask what planet he’s on. Grievance has certainly been at the heart of conservatism for the last decade and a half at a minimum, and probably much longer.
Here’s the biggest problem with Sasse’s case right now: Grievance is working for Republicans.
That isn’t always the case; in 2018 and 2020 they ran on the same old things — immigrants are destroying your country, liberals are destroying your country, crime is destroying your country — and they lost badly. Circumstances make all the difference.
But at the moment, things seem to be going quite well for them. They’re likely to take back at least one chamber of Congress, and their grip on the courts will enable them to roll back decades of social and political advancement. Some of their most popular politicians, especially Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are building something like a fascism for the 21st century, in which state power is a weapon to scapegoat minorities and punish enemies. And Republicans love it.
Sasse decries the “rage peddlers who want just this dysfunction, who lust only for performative shouting” — like Donald Trump, whose name he never mentions — but argues that we’re suffering from an optimism deficit:
Think how long it’s been since the American people have heard a big, optimistic, Reagan-like aspirational message. A 33-year-old American has seen a Republican president win the popular vote only once in her entire lifetime (and that was in the aftermath of 9/11, when the Dems decided to run an heiress-marrying, throwback anti-war candidate from the ‘60s). That is the only time a Republican has won the vote in the lifetime of anyone 33 and under in this country.
Put aside the snide little dig at John Kerry (it’s hard not to think that Sasse is trying to show that he can be a jerk, too), and you get to the heart of his problem. Most Republicans see the fact that they can take power without winning the support of a majority of the public as a cause for celebration, not evidence of a problem.
From where they sit, minority rule is positively glorious. To take just one example: The last two Republican presidents (George W. Bush and Donald Trump) took office despite the fact that more voters chose their opponents. They built a Supreme Court supermajority in part because the design of the Senate gives Republicans obscenely disproportionate power. And that Supreme Court is giving them victories such as the upcoming demise of Roe v. Wade while validating their efforts to undermine democracy and entrench that minority rule.
What’s for a Republican not to like?
Meanwhile, rage and resentment work, especially in Republican primaries. They attract people, they motivate people, and they resonate with everything Republican politicians and media figures have been convincing their base to believe for years. And whining? Trump is without doubt the whiniest politician in American history, and his command of the GOP is unchallenged.
I have some problems with Sasse (he’s never been above promoting simple-minded populism), but he’s less repugnant than many of his Republican colleagues. If he wants to keep making the case to Republicans that they should cast off their noxious politics of grievance and find a more optimistic path, more power to him. Unfortunately, there’s little reason to think many Republicans will show any interest. | 2022-06-03T18:21:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ben Sasse wants an optimistic GOP. He's going to be disappointed. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/ben-sasse-optimistic-republican-party/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/ben-sasse-optimistic-republican-party/ |
In 1966, we had no idea this school massacre would be just the first
Perspective by Brenda Bell
Brenda Bell is a former reporter and editor at the Austin American-Statesman.
A puff of smoke from sniper Charles Whitman's rifle emerges from the observation deck of the Tower at the University of Texas at Austin on Aug. 1, 1966. Whitman killed 16 people and wounded 31 before being fatally shot by police. (AP)
Raised by a brutal, damaged father who taught him to shoot — and shoot well — before he was school age, Charlie did not “depart from it.” I was in a Shakespeare class at the University of Texas in Austin on Aug. 1, 1966, when Whitman, by then 25, took his weapons and his torments to the top of the university’s Main Building and from its clock tower became the first modern entry on a uniquely American timeline of what we now call mass shooters. All together, he killed 15 people and wounded 31, many grievously, including a man who died decades later of the injuries he suffered.
Those of us forced to witness the carnage, who hid from the crosshairs of Whitman’s sniper scope and stepped around puddles of blood that darkened in the hot sun before it was finally over, cannot forget even if we wanted to. The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde is both its own distinct nightmare and simply the latest reminder.
“Tell me, hon,” Whitman’s father, also Charles, said to me in 1976, when I interviewed him for a story on the anniversary of the shootings. “How do they feel about this in Austin 10 years later? Do they blame the family? Or do they think Charlie was just sick?”
Here’s one thing nobody was thinking back then — that we would still be having these conversations 56 years later. The Vietnam War was barely underway in 1966. We’d never heard of military-style weapons in the hands of civilians. We thought Whitman was an aberration. But “what began on the UT campus two generations ago has never ended,” as a recent essay in the Texas Tribune put it. “It’s been repeated again and again.”
Yet mass shootings did pause, in Texas and elsewhere, for many years. One thing that changed was the weaponry. In 1989, a suicidal angry drifter with an AK-47-style rifle killed five and wounded 32 at an elementary school in Stockton, Calif. The outcry prompted California and later Congress to ban such weapons. The federal ban ended in 2004.
In a way Whitman was an anomaly compared to later shooters — an older, former Marine sharpshooter who picked off his victims one by one with a Remington 700 bolt-action rifle, a classic hunting (and sniper) weapon that in skilled hands can fire up to 10 rounds a minute. For boys taught to hunt like he was, skill was key. It was a point of pride to make the first shot the killing shot, so the animal wouldn’t get far or needlessly suffer.
My cousin Blaine Bennett, who grew up in Uvalde and still lives there, remembers once asking his father for more capacity for his deer rifle. It held three bullets, and he wanted five. My uncle refused. “His reasoning was if I hadn’t dropped that deer in three shots, then I was just a bad shot,” Blaine recalled. “In fact, his expectation for me was one shot.” My cousin was 8 at the time.
Old-school Texans like him are repelled by the idea that anyone, much less teenagers, as the shooters in Uvalde and Buffalo and Parkland were, can easily buy and wreak havoc with weapons that are designed to tear apart scores of human bodies within seconds and cause maximum suffering. Gun advocates deride the “spray and pray” reputation of the AR-15 as a myth but it’s capable of firing 10 times as many rounds a minute as a bolt-action rifle.
However, if the Tower shootings were an aberration, they were also a template for the mass slayings that followed. We know the script by heart. There will be shock and horror and mourning of senseless deaths. Interviews with survivors and relatives of victims and shooters. Photographs of those who were slain and their funerals. GoFundMe pages. Gun debates. Much talk about a mental health crisis. Explosive news conferences about what went wrong, because something always goes wrong, whether it’s before, during or after the shooting or all three.
When I dragged my two dusty boxes of Whitman sniper files from my garage and paged through the yellowed copies of the Aug. 1 police reports, I was struck by the echoes of Uvalde in the chaos and terror of that afternoon in Austin. In a way mass shootings are like war, difficult even for cops to comprehend unless they’ve been there.
Houston McCoy was a military veteran, perhaps the first police officer to arrive at the Tower after the shooting began. His handwritten account of that afternoon, the adrenaline and confusion and fear, is remarkable for its plain-spoken honesty. “Grab my shotgun, look for an entrance. Don’t see one, look toward the top and see all the windows. Feel like there is somebody with a gun behind each window, get scared, run back to my (police car).”
The endless hash and rehash of what the “good guys” did or didn’t do in Uvalde is an old story. There will always be lapses and mistakes and missed warning signs, despite the shooter drills and training and fancy equipment that are supposed to avoid them. When Whitman told a doctor at the student health center about his urge to take a deer rifle to the top of UT’s Main Building and shoot people, the doctor took notes but did nothing except schedule him for another appointment. Whitman never showed. The unarmed campus cop on guard duty when Whitman drove on campus could have checked his claim that the footlocker in his back seat contained equipment for the science building. It actually contained his arsenal. But there was no reason in 1966 to be suspicious of this young man.
The rapid shots from the observation deck were ringing above their heads as McCoy and other officers got the word to converge near the Tower. McCoy thought, “Oh boy, someone has finally come up with a plan,” he later recounted. But there was no plan. Almost an hour would pass before he and Officer Ramiro Martinez felled Whitman in a helter-skelter rush to the observation deck, an hour in which the body count rose. Though he was a hero that day, McCoy blamed himself for those bodies for the rest of his life.
That’s the trouble with trauma, as the survivors and the bereaved in Uvalde are learning, like all the others who came before. It ripples through people and communities and even generations endlessly, never reaching the shore where it can spend itself for good. Losing any loved one is hard, but losing your child is particularly devastating. As I learned when talking to survivors of the Tower shootings many years later, those traumas can upend lives, destroy marriages, rip apart families.
Those of us who were there in 1966 are in our 70s and 80s now. We've lived long enough to die of natural causes. It’s our grandchildren who are having shooting drills in school. Grandchildren who were shot to pieces in Uvalde, who will be shot to pieces somewhere else. There have been worse mass shootings in terms of numbers, but there’s something unbearable about those young faces, row upon row of them, looking so hopefully at the camera when they were alive.
What was an unprecedented massacre on a placid college campus has repeated itself for two generations and counting. An endless loop, therefore a predictable one, abetted by unspeakably deadly weapons that almost anyone can buy, anywhere. We didn’t know that going in, in 1966. But every decade since, we’ve learned. We’ve learned. | 2022-06-03T18:21:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I hid from the Texas Tower sniper. His successors have found us all. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/university-texas-tower-charles-whitman-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/03/university-texas-tower-charles-whitman-shooting/ |
Amazon’s consumer CEO Dave Clark resigns
Dave Clark, the head of Amazon's consumer business, announced his resignation Friday. (Steven Senne/AP)
The chief executive of Amazon’s consumer business will step down next month after more than two decades, the e-commerce giant announced in a blog post Friday and reflected in a regulatory filing.
“I’ve had an incredible time at Amazon but it’s time for me to build again,” David Clark said in a tweet Friday, where he shared a screenshot of an email he sent to his team. “For some time, I have discussed my intent to transition out of Amazon with my family and others close to me, but I wanted to ensure the teams were setup for success,” he wrote in the farewell email.
The announcement marks the second high-profile departure in as many days in the tech world. On Wednesday, Sheryl Sandberg — one of the highest-ranking women in corporate America — announced she was stepping down as chief operating officer of Facebook, the company she helped transform into a digital-advertising behemoth.
Clark’s ascending career at Amazon mirrored the company’s sprawling growth; he began as an operations manager, then moved up to a regional general manager position, and eventually oversaw the tech giant’s entire worldwide consumer business. When he first joined the company, Amazon had just six fulfillment centers. It has since swelled into a corporate behemoth, raking in $470 billion in sales last year and and is valued among the elite club of trillion dollar companies. Its operations now span online shopping, groceries, streaming, gadgets and web services. | 2022-06-03T18:21:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dave Clark, Amazon’s consumer CEO, resigns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/03/amazon-dave-clark-resigns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/03/amazon-dave-clark-resigns/ |
Members of the Golden State Warriors stand for a moment of silence for the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., prior to Game Four of the Western Conference Finals against the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center on May 24 in Dallas. (Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO — For the sixth time in eight seasons, the Golden State Warriors are appearing in the NBA finals. They’ve won three championships in that time. That alone would qualify them as a sporting dynasty, but the team’s collective display of character and intentional use of platforms are what truly make it the defining team for a heartsick nation.
That has never been more clear than in this current moment. Last month, following the mass shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 children, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., Warriors head coach Steve Kerr used a pregame news conference to make an impassioned challenge to the Senate to enact gun control laws. In 1984, Kerr’s father, Malcolm, who was president of the American University of Beirut, was murdered by a militant group supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. So when Kerr speaks about the horrors of gun violence, it’s from a place of experience.
The Warriors, along with the Dallas Mavericks, had a moment of silence before their next game to honor the victims. “It was, since I became coach in 2014, I’m guessing the 15th moment of silence before a game for the victims of mass shooters,” Kerr told me, explaining his call to action in an exclusive interview at the Chase Center in San Francisco on Wednesday. “And it’s maddening, honestly, because I know that when my dad was killed through gun violence, if someone had a moment of silence, I would have appreciated it, but it wouldn’t have done much. … What would actually be meaningful is if we could take steps to try to limit this from happening.”
Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr spoke about the Texas elementary school shooting from Dallas on May 24, calling on senators to take action. (Video: NBA)
For me, a lifelong Golden State Warriors fan, Kerr’s outspoken news conference was something to feel proud of. And instead of shying away from a highly charged issue, the Warriors organization signaled its support by amplifying Kerr’s words across social media. That decision was admittedly not a huge risk, since most Americans favor background checks to purchase guns. But it demonstrated a commitment to values — something that sports leagues, including the National Basketball Association, have been criticized for not always upholding.
The conviction to take on potentially divisive issues is part of the culture Kerr has helped cultivate in the team.
In the past, celebrities rarely stepped out of their arenas into politics and activism. Today, public figures have resources and responsibilities previous generations did not. This Warriors team is built around a core of three superstars — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — who have played together for a decade, something virtually unheard of in modern sports.
Always opinionated, Green — who has written an op-ed for The Post — hosts a popular podcast and has signed a contract to join the TNT network as a contributor, a first for an active player. Curry has a series of business and social justice ventures that reflect his personal values. And, though long known for his quiet demeanor, Thompson is now also taking a more public stance on racial injustice.
When the Warriors won the NBA title in 2018, instead of visiting President Donald Trump at the White House as is customary for championship teams, they went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture with kids from then-Warriors player Kevin Durant’s hometown.
“Our players all have pet projects, community service stuff that they do,” Kerr told me. “We’re very proud of the work that the whole organization does.”
This history of activism and bridge-building is not new. The Warriors were the first NBA team to sign a player from the Soviet Union. Lithuanian star Sarunas Marciulionis paved the way for dozens of others, helping transform the NBA into a truly international enterprise. The first openly gay high-level executive in the NBA spent his most productive years with the Warriors, and by all accounts his sexuality was never an issue.
“There’s a lot of pride that’s taken here in speaking and marching and being lockstep with our brothers and sisters in the community,” Kerr told me. “There’s definitely a feeling in this community, in the Bay Area, that we can make an impact. And I think our team represents that.”
Like other teams, the Warriors haven’t been perfect: Kerr has said he regrets past comments on China, and has distanced the organization from one of its co-owners’ dismissive remarks on repression of the Uyghurs this year. That gives me hope the Warriors will bring the same moral clarity to this issue that they have to other sensitive ones.
The Golden State Warriors won their first NBA championship in 1975, the year before I was born. They didn’t win one again until 2015 — a year I spent entirely as a hostage in Iranian prison. After devotedly following a team that was abysmal for most of my life, I felt the irony of being locked up when they finally reached the promised land. Sporadically, I would receive news from the outside world, so I knew the Warriors began the following season by winning an incredible 24 consecutive games. Surprisingly, even Iran’s state television was carrying highlights of this epic run.
When I was finally released in January 2016, one of the first things I wanted to do was watch Warriors basketball. In the years since, the joy and excitement of going to games or watching them late into the night have been an important part of my recovery. And I’m not alone in that.
“Our players are incredibly kind to people. I can’t tell you how many smiles I’ve seen our players elicit from people visiting practice, kids who maybe have been through a lot health-wise. So many things behind the scenes,” Kerr told me.
The National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys have long been unofficially dubbed “America’s Team.” But, with the way they have used their platforms to make America better while also achieving historic success, the Golden State Warriors are proving that title now belongs to them. | 2022-06-03T19:11:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why the Golden State Warriors are really ‘America’s Team’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/golden-state-warriors-nba-finals-americas-team/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/golden-state-warriors-nba-finals-americas-team/ |
The Goldilocks economy: Trying to get it ‘just right’
A "now hiring" sign is seen outside a restaurant in Arlington, Va., on June 3. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)
As anyone who has ever pigged out on chocolate fudge can attest, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
That’s true for a really rich dessert — and also a really strong (or hot) labor market.
When it comes to hiring, it’s a good thing for there to be lots of job opportunities for workers — particularly workers who usually don’t have much bargaining power. It’s a good thing for employers to be offering higher wages, especially for the lowest-paid, least-desirable jobs. It’s a good thing for businesses to be posting tons of job openings, especially when roughly 22 million jobs were destroyed very early in the pandemic.
Lately, as the May jobs report released on Friday shows, we’ve had these good things in spades.
We have now nearly filled in the deep jobs hole created by the pandemic. If May’s pace of employment growth (390,000 jobs added) continues, we’ll be back to the pre-pandemic level of employment in another two months or so. That would be much sooner than (nearly) anyone predicted.
Again, a good thing! Especially compared to the painfully slow recovery after the Great Recession.
While we want a hot economy, and a hot labor market, there is also such a thing as “overheating."
This could happen, say, because consumers have tons of cash to spend, and want to spend it (again, usually good things) — but suppliers can’t keep pace with customers’ super-strong demand for goods and services. They don’t have the capacity to scale up quickly enough. That mismatch can lead to rapidly rising prices and shortages of products. It can also manifest through shortages of workers, if businesses are trying so hard to scale up that they want to hire more people than are able or willing to work.
That has been the case for about the past year: Since May 2021, there have been more job vacancies posted at the end of each month than there were idle workers actively looking for jobs. In April 2022, the most recent month of data, there were about twice as many job openings as there were unemployed workers.
So even if every single unemployed worker suddenly got a job, there would still be tons of positions going begging.
One risk in a situation like this is a wage-price spiral. This occurs when companies chasing scarce workers decide to raise wages (again, usually good), but the resulting higher labor costs cause the companies to raise the prices they charge their customers. That, in turn, prompts workers — who, of course, are also consumers — to demand even bigger raises, which causes more price increases, and so on.
There has been some debate about whether we could be headed toward (or are already in) one of these dreaded spirals. There has also been debate over whether the Federal Reserve needs to act more aggressively to break or prevent such a cycle — specifically, by raising interest rates much more sharply than it already is doing.
That would have the effect of making it more expensive to borrow, which puts a damper on spending; but, historically, it has also usually led to a recession.
In April, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell referred to the labor market as “too hot. It’s unsustainably hot.” He added that “It’s our job to get it to a better place where supply and demand are closer together.”
But that doesn’t mean he wants hiring or economic growth to come to a halt, obviously, or for the economy to crash. What he and other policymakers have been looking for — what could help them avoid having to raise interest rates more drastically — is sometimes called the “Goldilocks" economy: not too hot, not too cold. Just warm enough. Just right.
Powell and others have acknowledged that getting and staying on that “just right" path would be challenging. But at least based on the jobs report released on Friday, there is reason for optimism.
The report showed that job growth was strong, but a little bit slower than it was in April. Wages (at least in nominal, pre-inflation terms) are growing, but they’re not accelerating — if anything, they have slowed a touch. The report was “good but not gangbusters,” as Politico aptly put it.
Even more encouraging, more Americans who had previously been sitting on the sidelines entered the labor force in May.
This hopefully means that vacancies can get filled more quickly. Which, in turn, means companies can scale up production — whether of household appliances, construction materials, restaurant meals or anything else — to accommodate continued demand from customers.
To be sure, this is one month of data. There are still a lot of risks for the economy in the year or so ahead. These are driven by a combination of unlucky shocks (war and its resulting disruptions to energy and food markets; pandemic variants and related factory lockdowns; avian flu; drought; who knows what else) — as well as the (still unknown) ability of the central bank to nimbly calibrate its response. Raising rates just enough, but not too much.
A few more Goldilocks reports like May’s would certainly be welcome. | 2022-06-03T19:11:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Goldilocks economy: Trying to get it ‘just right’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/goldilocks-economy-trying-get-it-just-right/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/goldilocks-economy-trying-get-it-just-right/ |
Man with fake badge, BB gun and ammunition is arrested outside Capitol
Jerome Felipe, a retired police officer from Flint, Mich., is facing charges in the incident
The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
A man with a fake badge, BB gun, body armor and high-capacity magazines was arrested outside of the U.S. Capitol on Friday morning, police said.
Jerome Felipe, a retired police officer from Flint, Mich., is facing charges of unlawful possession of high-capacity magazines and unregistered ammunition, police said. He is 53 years old.
His family could not be reached for comment.
Just after 5 a.m. Friday, a U.S. Capitol Police patrol officer spoke with a man who had parked his car near the west side of the Capitol, authorities said. Felipe presented the officer a fake badge that had “Department of the INTERPOL” printed on it and said that he was a criminal investigator with the agency, according to U.S. Capitol Police. Interpol could not immediately be reached for comment.
Police said Felipe gave officers permission to search his car. Inside, they discovered a BB gun, ballistic vests and other ammunition. They did not find any firearms beyond the BB gun, the agency said.
By Friday afternoon, law enforcement was still working to determine why Felipe was parked near the Capitol. | 2022-06-03T19:25:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man with fake badge, BB gun arrested outside U.S. Capitol Friday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/arrest-capitol-fakebadge-michigan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/arrest-capitol-fakebadge-michigan/ |
Former Whitman High rowing coach pleads guilty to sex abuse charges
Former Walt Whitman High School rowing coach Kirk Shipley during a team workout in 2019. (Laura Chase de Formigny/© Laura Chase de Formigny)
Former Walt Whitman High School rowing coach Kirk Shipley pleaded guilty Friday to sexually abusing two girls, accepting a deal that will require him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and could lead to up 20 years in prison.
Shipley, 48, was charged in August with abusing two former rowers at the Bethesda, Md., public high school, where he coached and taught social studies for two decades. The nature of the charges stunned the affluent rowing community where he’d long been a fixture.
They trusted a coach with their girls and Ivy League ambitions. Now he’s accused of sex abuse.
On Friday, after months of negotiations and delays, Shipley appeared virtually before a D.C. judge and acknowledged he was guilty of first-degree abuse of a high school student and possession of a sexual performance by a minor.
The two felonies each carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and/or a $25,000 fine. A judge will decide how much time he will serve at his sentencing on Sept. 9.
Dressed in a suit and a plaid tie, Shipley — who’d kept his camera turned off at a March hearing — peered into his computer screen as he answered the judge’s questions.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Burrell told D.C. Superior Court Judge Maribeth Raffinan that, if the case went to trial, she would be able to prove that Shipley had had oral sex with an 18-year-old student who graduated in 2018. Shipley, who was 44 at the time and the student’s coach as well as her history and geography teacher, exchanged 4,000 text messages with her between February and June 2018, Burrell said.
“Are those facts true and correct?” Raffinan asked Shipley.
“Yes, they are are,” he said.
Burrell also said she could prove Shipley had had sex with a student who graduated in 2013. He had also been her rowing coach and history teacher. At the time, she was 17 and he was 39. Burrell said a forensic review of Shipley’s devices had found multiple explicit images and videos of the student.
“Are those facts true and correct?" Raffinan asked Shipley.
“Yes, they are,” he said.
Raffinan then said she would find Shipley guilty based on his plea. By accepting the deal, he waived his right to a trial.
Shipley was not incarcerated after the hearing. Prosecutors asked that Shipley physically be in attendance at his sentencing in September, when victim impact statements from the community and a former rower will be read.
A three-time All-Met Coach of the Year, Shipley had led Whitman’s club crew team for almost 20 years, winning regattas and sending girls on to Ivy League colleges. He earned $101,656 from Montgomery County for teaching and another $34,500 from the parent-funded and parent-run crew program.
Shipley had weathered two investigations into complaints about his toxic behavior, including a 2018 rumor that he was having a sexual relationship with a girl on the team. But he had managed to hold onto his job, even after seven senior girls wrote a scathing letter to the parent board last year that they hoped would get him fired.
A high school coach is accused of abusing two teens. More feel victimized.
Shipley’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Matthew Ornstein, an attorney for the Network for Victim Recovery of D.C. who represents the Shipley’s victims, said the women are relieved.
“Our clients are glad that ... Shipley accepted responsibility for the abuse he inflicted,” he said. “And we will be spending the next few months preparing for the sentencing phase.”
Terri Ravick, who teaches science at a neighboring high school and whose daughter rowed for Whitman until 2018, was the first to sound the alarm about his behavior in 2018. On Friday, she was at school when Shipley was in court. For her, closure will come down to the sentencing.
“For the victims’ sake, I’m glad that they didn’t have to endure the spectacle of open court,” Ravick said. “I will be at the sentencing hearing and hope that his sentence is commensurate with the lasting damage that he has inflicted on these girls."
As Colleen Parent — whose daughter rowed for Whitman and graduated in 2018 — watched the court hearing online, she offered to text updates to her daughter. Like many other rowers, the betrayal of a trusted adult still stung. It was difficult for Parent to see Shipley’s face again and hear again the details of the charges against him — particularly because so many adults had ignored warning signs over the years, she said.
But she was reassured that he was being held accountable for his actions.
“The U.S. Attorney has done a really good job here and brought this case to what I think is a fair and quick resolution,” Parent said. “I just really thank the women for coming forward and being known. That must have been incredibly hard. I hope this brings them some sense of relief.” | 2022-06-03T19:25:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kirk Shipley, former Whitman High rowing coach, pleads guilty to sex abuse charges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/kirk-shipley-guilty-sex-abuse-whitman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/kirk-shipley-guilty-sex-abuse-whitman/ |
More than 46,000 Americans have been taken in, a new FTC report finds
A cryptocurrency ATM setup in a convenience store in Miami. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Americans have lost more than $1 billion to cryptocurrency scams since the start of last year, as criminals exploit rising popular interest in scoring quick digital riches, according to a new analysis by the Federal Trade Commission.
Crypto-based con jobs now account for a fourth of all dollars lost to such fraud, taking in more than 46,000 people from the beginning of 2021 through March, the report found. The losses in crypto last year were almost 60 times what they were in 2018.
And those numbers likely represent a small fraction of the total losses, since most of the crimes go unreported, according to Emma Fletcher, the FTC senior data researcher who wrote the report.
Investment scams promising swift and easy paydays account for the bulk of the crypto fraud, totaling $575 million in losses. Fraudsters frequently lure victims on social media, then show their investments making fake gains. In some cases, the FTC found, investors successfully complete “test” withdrawals, convincing them the arrangement is sound and encouraging them to plow in more money that they are then unable to recover.
“Given that investment scams are really driving this, it’s very important for people to understand that any promises of huge returns, or that your investments can be quickly multiplied, are obviously a scam,” Fletcher said. “No return on a crypto investment is guaranteed.”
So-called romance scams — in which thieves posing as potential love interests ensnare people on dating apps or social networks, then persuade them to invest in fraudulent crypto schemes — cost victims $185 million, according to the report. A single such scam last year probably took in more than 5,000 victims and made off with more than $66 million, a Washington Post investigation found.
People between 20 and 49 were more than three times as likely as older cohorts to be taken in by crypto grift, the FTC found. And crypto scams made up 35 percent of the fraud suffered by people in their 30s.
Crypto’s lack of federal oversight has helped make it a magnet for criminals. “There’s no bank or other centralized authority to flag suspicious transactions and attempt to stop fraud before it happens,” the FTC’s report said. Plus, “crypto transfers can’t be reversed — once the money’s gone, there’s no getting it back.”
Fletcher said potential crypto investors, in addition to being wary of promises of big returns or enticements from dating app matches, should steer clear of pitches on social media. “Even when it’s somebody who may very well be their friend, the account could have been hacked,” she said. | 2022-06-03T19:29:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crypto scams cost Americans more than $1 billion in last year, FTC reports - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/crypto-scams-ftc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/03/crypto-scams-ftc/ |
Paul Vance, who wrote hit song about an ‘Itsy Bitsy’ bikini, dies at 92
He also co-wrote “Catch a Falling a Star” and one pop music’s strangest parodies, “Leader of the Laundromat.”
Songwriter Paul Vance at his home in Delray Beach, Fla., in 2014. (Bruce R. Bennett/Palm Beach Post/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Stock Photo)
In 1960, songwriter Paul Vance took his family to a beach near their home on New York’s Long Island. His 2-year-old daughter, Paula, was wearing a two-piece swimsuit for the first time and was shy about being seen when she emerged from a dressing room. She covered up in a towel before going in the water.
Mr. Vance, who had already co-written “Catch a Falling Star,” a Grammy-winning hit single for Perry Como, was always alert for new song ideas. On the way home from the beach, he jotted down the first draft of what became his best-known tune:
It was an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini
That she wore for the first time today
An itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini
So in the locker, she wanted to stay
The lyrics reflected Mr. Vance’s (and his daughter’s) experiences. When she ventured into the surf, Mr. Vance later said, the bottom half of her swimsuit came off, leading him to write, “Now she’s afraid to come out of the water / And the poor little girl’s turning blue.”
When Mr. Vance got home, he called his songwriting partner, Lee Pockriss, to tell him about his idea.
“I sang the lyric on the phone,” Mr. Vance later said, “and by the time he got to my office a couple of hours later, he had 90 percent of the tune written.”
The novelty song was recorded by 16-year-old Brian Hyland and spent 13 weeks on Billboard magazine’s Top 40 chart, including one week at No. 1 in 1960. Since then, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” has become a pop-culture staple, frequently appearing in films and TV commercials through the decades. Mr. Vance called it a "money machine,” which brought him millions of dollars in royalties.
Mr. Vance was 92 when he died on May 30 at a nursing facility in West Palm Beach, Fla. His death was confirmed by his children Joseph Vance and Paula Vance — the girl in the polka dot bikini. They said he had been in declining health for more than a year but did not specify a cause.
Mr. Vance had been writing song lyrics since his early teens, but through most of the 1950s he had an auto wrecking and salvage business in New York as he tried to catch a break as songwriter. By 1966, according to Billboard magazine, songs he had written with Pockriss had sold more than 50 million copies.
“Everybody knows my songs, but they don’t know me,” Mr. Vance told the Palm Beach Post in 2015. “Being a writer is not like being a performer. I can walk anywhere, with ordinary people, and they don’t know me. If you told them the songs I wrote, they’d say ‘Get outta here!’ I look like a regular truck driver.”
He gave up the trucks and junkyards after finding success with “Catch a Falling Star,” written with Pockriss and recorded in 1957 by Como. The song has a lilting, almost childlike quality:
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Never let it fade away
It became a Top 10 hit in the United States and sold more than 1 million copies, making it the first single to be designated a gold record by the Recording Industry Association of America. It also earned Como a Grammy Award for best male vocal performance in 1959, the first year the Grammys were presented.
“Catch a Falling Star” allowed Mr. Vance to become a full-time songwriter, working with Pockriss at New York’s Brill Building, then the center of the songwriting trade.
“He was a very talented composer, a great composer, the opposite of me,” Mr. Vance once said of Pockriss, who died in 2011. “He knew music inside out. I don’t know one note of music.”
With various collaborators, Mr. Vance also wrote several hit songs for Johnny Mathis, including “Starbright” and “What Will Mary Say.” He and Pockriss composed the bittersweet ballad “I Haven’t Got Anything Better to Do,” which has been recorded by Astrud Gilberto, Eddie Fisher, Carmen McRae and Natalie Cole, and “Playground in My Mind,” which became a No. 2 hit for Clint Holmes in 1973. The song features a children’s chorus (with two Mr. Vance’s own children) singing, “My name is Michael. I got a nickel, I got a nickel, shiny and new.”
Mr. Vance’s last major hit (written with Perry Cone) was “Run Joey Run,” a teen tragedy song with the intertwined themes of young love and domestic abuse, which topped out at No. 5 for David Geddes in 1975.
In 1964, Mr. Vance and Pockriss wrote one of the strangest and most comical parodies in pop history, “Leader of the Laundromat.” A none-too-subtle knockoff of the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack,” it was a minor hit for a trio of male studio singers dubbed — what else? — the Detergents.
My folks were always putting her down (down, down)
Because her laundry came back brown (brown, brown)
I don't care if they think she's bad
I fell in love 'cause she looked so sad
“Leader of the Pack,” about a girl’s crush on a member of a motorcycle gang, ends in tragedy, and so does “Leader of the Laundromat”: “She grabbed my laundry and ran into the street, directly into the path of a runaway garbage truck. I yelled ‘Watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out!’ ”
After the clanging sound of a crash, the Detergents reach the final spin cycle:
I felt so messy standing there (messy standing there)
My daddy’s shorts were everywhere (daddy’s shorts were everywhere)
Tenderly I kissed her goodbye
Picked up my clothes, they were finally dry
Joseph Philip Florio was born Nov. 4, 1929, in Brooklyn. His father delivered ice in a horse-drawn wagon, and his mother was a homemaker.
In 2015, he described himself as “a 'dese, dem, and dose’ guy. I wasn’t even a street guy. I was a gutter guy. I was supposed to have become a Mafioso.”
After serving in the Army, he returned to New York and ran his auto salvage business. He eventually connected with a music publishing company and became Paul Vance — “a made-up name,” he said.
He wrote more than 300 songs in all, dabbled in singing in the 1960s and produced a few recordings by other artists. His songs were recorded by Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Julie London and Robert Goulet, among others.
In 1964, Mr. Vance took up an interest in harness racing and became a horse owner and breeder. He had a farm in Westbury, N.Y., and in the early 1980s owned a champion pacer named Secret Service, which was trained by his son Joseph. He retired to South Florida.
His wife of more than 60 years, Margaret Curte Vance, died in 2012. A son, Philip Vance, died in 2009. Survivors include three children, Joseph Vance of Westbury, N.Y., Paula Vance of Kings Park, N.Y., and Connie Cohen of Plainview, N.Y.; a sister; nine grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.
In 2006, obituaries of Mr. Vance were published after the death of a Florida man named Paul Van Valkenburgh who claimed to have written “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” under the pseudonym of Paul Vance.
“Do you know what it’s like to have grandchildren calling you and say, ‘Grandpa, you’re still alive?’ ” the real Mr. Vance said at the time.
Van Valkenburgh was exposed as an impostor after Mr. Vance produced his royalty checks to prove his identity.
''Believe me,” he said, “if they think you’re dead, they ain’t going to send the money.” | 2022-06-03T19:46:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Vance, "Itsy Bitsy" songwriter, dies at 92 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/03/songwriter-paul-vance-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/03/songwriter-paul-vance-dies/ |
State laws on concealed-carry fall into three categories. In states with “permitless carry” laws, individuals need no prior approval or permit to carry a concealed firearm in public. States with “shall issue” laws grant a permit to any applicant who meets minimum legal requirements, such as being at least 21 years old and having no felony convictions. States with “may issue” laws, the most stringent type, give officials some discretion to reject people seeking a permit.
2. Are there any limits to carrying a gun in public?
Yes. Many states -- even some with the most permissive concealed-carry laws -- do require permits to carry guns in certain places, such as schools.
Eight states have the most stringent “may issue” laws, including New York, the site of a mass shooting in May at a Buffalo grocery store. Seventeen others have some kind of “shall issue” law, offering state officials a degree of discretion in approving or denying applications. The other 25 states -- half of the US, in other words -- allow concealed carry with no permit. Those states include Texas, where 21 people died in an elementary school shooting in May. Texas enacted its no-permit-needed carry law in June 2021. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a similar bill into law in 2019. Permitless carry laws haven’t taken effect yet in states that recently passed them, such as Indiana and Alabama.
Gun-rights activists and the conservative political leaders who generally side with them argue that requiring permits violates their constitutional rights. They say applying for a permit can be a tedious obstacle in the way of taking steps to defend oneself. The National Rifle Association, whose affiliate is challenging New York’s concealed carry permit laws in the Supreme Court, has been pushing to weaken permit laws since the mid-1980s. | 2022-06-03T19:51:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s How US States Differ on Carrying Guns in Public - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-how-us-states-differ-on-carrying-guns-in-public/2022/06/03/1160540e-e36e-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-how-us-states-differ-on-carrying-guns-in-public/2022/06/03/1160540e-e36e-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Doug Ford, Ontario's premier, during an election night event in Toronto on June 2. (Cole Burston/Bloomberg News)
After four years of provincial mismanagement and more than two years of inadequate pandemic measures, roughly 17 percent of eligible voters in Ontario reelected incumbent Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford with a majority government.
Final results are pending, but, according to early data, about 43 percent of Ontarians cast a ballot in the province’s 43rd general election — the lowest turnout in Ontario’s history. The governing PCs won 40.8 percent of the meager lot and 83 seats. The New Democrats and Liberals nearly tied in popular vote for second place at 23.7 percent and 23.8 percent respectively. With that, the New Democratic Party took 31 seats and the Liberals took 8 — a reminder of how fickle the province’s electoral system is. Both opposition leaders immediately resigned. If only they’d done so before the election started.
So what went wrong? It’s easier to ask what went right, because the answer is nothing, unless you’re Ford. In that case, the answer is two terrible opposition parties that spent the election fighting one another for second place; an antidemocratic and unconstitutional law passed by the premier to silence his critics by limiting third-party advertising and advocacy (and kept in place by a constitutional override); and a PC campaign that got away with shoving protesters and hiding from the public and media.
Ford met the material and class interests of many voters, with low taxes and an emphasis on small government and being “open for business.” For others, Ford satisfied their misguided symbolic and cultural needs. As Clifton van der Linden, assistant professor of political science at McMaster University and creator of the Vote Compass tool noted, Ford capitalized on opposing issues including statue removal, diversity and inclusion policies, anti-racism and colonialism education policy, medical treatment related to gender transition and supervised injection sites. The culture war in Ontario played a notable role in returning Ford, a fact that went unnoticed by many. In truth, this election was a battle over a dangerous and growing politics of race, class and gender grievance.
The polls barely moved throughout the campaign, save for a PC surge at the end and a Liberal dip. More than two years into the pandemic — with the country sliding deeper into an affordability crisis, weathering the increasingly heavy effects of climate change and witnessing an uncertain geopolitical realignment — people are scared, anxious and angry. The opposition parties failed to speak to and mobilize them — hence the low turnout that was central to the Ford win. The failure to capitalize on Ford’s missteps and get voters to the polls is especially damning for the NDP, who dropped 800,000 votes from its 2018 tally and lost 9 seats. The ostensible party of the workers didn’t show up for the class they’re meant to represent above all.
The electoral system in the province didn’t help matters. A majority of voters preferred a government not run by Ford. While the PCs won 40.8 percent of the popular vote, that was good enough for 83 of the legislature’s 124 seats — a rare second majority that was actually bigger than the first. The New Democrats and Liberals managed just 39 seats combined with their shared total of 47.5 percent of the votes. The PCs understood the assignment: to win more with less. Call it vote efficiency if you like. It’s cynical but, in a world where strategy and results trump what’s best for democracy, you get what you get.
Where does the opposition movement go from here? The future leaders of the NDP and Liberals should be furious. They ought to be angry about workers getting a raw deal, people not being able to afford to live, disabled folks living in legislated poverty. Angry about a crumbling health-care system. Angry about overstuffed schools. Angry about climate inaction. They must be capable of connecting with Ontarians and providing leadership that recognizes public suffering — and must commit to structural change.
The NDP in particular should be attentive to this anger and should make it their core mission to empower the party’s grass roots to build a pan-province movement of unabashedly leftist politics. They ought to move like lives depend upon it — because lives do depend upon it. There’s no time left for waiting.
This election must be a wake-up call for a complacent province and the uninspired opposition parties who have done nothing to break that complacency. The status quo cannot be allowed to hold. But that change is a way off, if it is to arrive at all.
For now, Ford and his government will have the run of the legislature with a huge majority and effectively no opposition to keep them in check. Maybe that will lead Ford toward defeating himself with hubris. But it’s best not to count on that. Instead, Ontarians should get organized, choose better leaders and commit to grass roots, barnstorming politics aimed at transforming the province. And that work must start today. | 2022-06-03T19:51:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Doug Ford’s win in Ontario must be a wake-up call against complacency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/ontario-doug-ford-election-wake-up-call/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/ontario-doug-ford-election-wake-up-call/ |
Elizabeth’s sheer persistence has saved the monarchy
Queen Elizabeth II on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London on June 2. The 96-year-old queen is marking her 70th year on the British throne. (Alastair Grant/Pool/AP)
Every morning that she wakes up, Elizabeth Windsor, elderly widow of the late Philip Mountbatten, sets a record as the longest-reigning monarch in the history of England. At 96, she gets around only with considerable pain, we’re told — or as her palace press office puts it, “discomfort.” Stiff upper lip, eh?
The discomfort was enough to keep her away from the formal Church of England celebration of her Platinum Jubilee. The sequence of jubilees begins with silver, marking 25 years on the throne. What with all the wars and murderous intrigues and dissolute living in royal history, a relative few of the monarchs who reigned before her survived even that long. At 50 years on the job, she had a golden jubilee and at 60 years came the diamond.
Opinion: Elizabeth’s last big party
Then she broke her great-great-grandmother Victoria’s record and has been breaking her own mark every day since. What comes after platinum, the 70-year celebration that belongs to her alone? Elizabeth II will find out, if anyone can.
No amount of discomfort could keep the queen from rising on June 2 to have her halo of white curls perfectly coiffed and her face modestly but flawlessly made up; a robin’s-egg suit trimmed in white awaited her, with matching hat and snug white gloves. No pain showed through her beaming (but not raucous — heaven’s, no!) grin as she greeted her subjects from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. This is her job: to be queenly, regal; to be an elegant blank book on which other people, millions of them, write their own feelings.
Because this grandest of dames somehow defies time, we instead read the calendar in the person of her eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales. On Thursday, he stood next to his mother just as he did in 1953, when she greeted the huge crowd that hailed her coronation. He was a small boy then; now, he is a gray-haired old man. He has the look of a slightly dotty fellow who might collect twine or speak to the wisteria. The bright red uniform he wore, laden with medals for god knows what and crossed with a sash, did not dispel the air of eccentricity. Indeed, the fact that his oldest son, William, Duke of Cambridge, wore a nearly identical get-up made both men seem a bit daft.
You can count the years of his mother’s reign in the wrinkles and crags of Charles’s face, or the wispy hairs of his gray head. But all those years are, when you come right down to it, the best measure of the queen’s achievement. With coolheaded strategy, sphinx-like silence and inestimable self-control, Elizabeth has kept her odd family business going into a future that seemingly has no place for it.
Why was it suddenly plausible — more than that, why did it seem to make sense — that the aging man in the red, festooned suit would wear the crown after waiting a lifetime? In this age of diversity, equity and inclusion, why were millions cheerfully celebrating the permanence of a monarch whose crown will next pass from one red-suited man to another, and thence to the handsome boy also standing there, a lad of 8, who looked positively normal in his smart little suit and tie?
Elizabeth has so managed and adapted to changing times that it seems she has actually saved the monarchy, despite everything. The British Empire is gone. The aristocracy is largely gone. But the Windsor family business goes on, thanks to her.
Opinion: Three steps Queen Elizabeth should take after 70 years on Britain’s throne
It is as though a maker of hoop skirts or milkmaid pails had refreshed the enterprise for the 21st century. Royalty belongs to another era — and, thanks to Elizabeth, still belongs to Britain and the Commonwealth. She has achieved this in part by efficiency. All the extra kids found themselves on the periphery of photos, or not in the picture at all. Only the most dedicated fans of the Windsors can easily recall the names and faces of Charles’s three siblings, much less their children.
She has done it by accommodating some scandals — the unavoidable ones, such as Charles’s marriage to his longtime mistress — and punishing others, such as Prince Andrew’s ill-considered friendship with the free-spending sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Most of all, she has done it by lasting so long and serving so reliably that she remade the monarchy into something contemporary. She is a brand, a sort of living trademark, a variety of intellectual property. The New Yorker magazine had a recurring headline for many years: “There will always be an England.” It ran above charming anecdotes of barminess and quirk that suggested the human condition is survivable.
There will always be an England, and Elizabeth will always be her queen. | 2022-06-03T19:51:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Queen Elizabeth’s sheer persistence has saved the monarchy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/queen-elizabeth-longevity-persistence-saves-monarchy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/queen-elizabeth-longevity-persistence-saves-monarchy/ |
Readers critique The Post: Sexism in soccer coverage crops up again
Sexism crops up again
The photograph that accompanied the May 19 Sports article on the World Cup U.S. women’s soccer team, “U.S. women secure historic pay deal,” inadvertently cut off the background to read “men’s World Cup” instead of “Women’s World Cup.”
Sheesh. Despite the historic pay deal to equalize salaries and bonuses, women are still being shortchanged.
Dale Barnhard, Silver Spring
It was disappointing to see the May 22 soccer coverage, “Roundup: Lyon women take back their Champions trophy,” with a simple early-season Major League Soccer match article and photograph taking up most of the page. The second-largest article, again accompanied by a large photo, was about the men’s Champions League semifinal. The last and smallest article, sans photo, was about an actual championship match — the Women’s Champions League final — in which Lyon, whose roster boasts two U.S. national women’s team members, beat the defending champion and favorite, Barcelona.
This was particularly egregious coming on the heels of the U.S. women’s national team finally reaching a deal to be paid the same as the men’s team. When it comes to equal sports coverage, it seems women still have a long fight ahead.
Pamela Lessard, Arlington
We found it odd the “Election 2022” supplement focused almost exclusively on the general elections being held almost half a year from now while devoting little attention to the primary elections ongoing in most of the country or, as in the D.C. area, the next few weeks. This prioritization sends the public the message that the general elections are far more important than the primary elections, when the opposite is now often the case.
Most voters have little influence on the outcome of general elections. With voters increasingly segregated politically in recent decades, most states and voting districts are “safe” for either the Democratic or the Republican candidate. In the past two presidential elections, for instance, approximately 60 percent of counties (vs. only about 27 percent in 1976) went for either the Democratic or Republican candidate by a landslide of 20 percent or more. While redistricting maps continue to be drawn and redrawn, it is fair to say that about 94 percent of House seats will be safe for one party or the other.
We are left with the situation in which most voters’ power lies entirely in the primary elections. But sadly, most voters don’t vote in the primaries. Typically, fewer than 20 percent of eligible voters turn out for the primary elections. As a result, the outcome of the primary — which in most cases dictates the result of the general election — is determined by the small number of voters who vote for the winner in the primary election of the dominant party of their state or district. Where a candidate wins with only a plurality of votes, this number can represent only a few percent of the electorate. This is certainly not what most of us think of as democracy.
Further, this situation exacerbates the partisan gridlock plaguing our government. Incumbents are now more often unseated by a challenger from their own party in the primary than by one from the other party in general elections. As a result, incumbents are reluctant to be seen as working across the aisle to solve problems for fear of being “primaried.”
Reforms, such as open primaries, have been enacted to allow unaffiliated voters to participate in primaries, though, sadly, not in Maryland. But the main solution lies in the citizens’ hands: More people have to get out to vote in the primaries. But importantly, the media, including The Post, could do much to revive our democracy by informing the public that their power lies mostly in the primary elections and urging them editorially to exercise that power by voting in primary elections.
Len Breslow, Chevy Chase
Reed Harrison, Baltimore
Again, The Post seems not to take seriously its below-the-banner motto of “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” I might have missed it in the May 22 “Election 2022” special section, but I did not see the word “Libertarian” anywhere. I am confident that The Post’s writers can spell the word and have some minimal familiarity with the only political party other than the Democrats and Republicans being on multiple ballots across the country.
The article “The forces steering these midterm elections” even quoted a political analyst as saying “Independent voters decide elections” but did not mention the numerous registered Libertarians who vote in elections at all levels.
The Post seems to have no interest in informing voters of alternatives outside the political status quo. Too bad The Post does not have a more inclusive view of our political system.
David Griggs, Columbia
The writer was the Libertarian candidate for Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in 2018.
IDs, please
The May 20 news article “After months spent focusing on Ukraine, Biden makes first visit to Asia,” on President Biden’s Asia trip, featured a group photo of 10 Asian leaders Biden greeted at a U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations Special Summit on May 12 at the White House. None of the leaders was identified. If the administration intends to make a new “framework” of commitment to Asia, The Post ought at least to alert us to the identity of our potential partners.
Robert Huberty, Washington
The guilty party
Why does The Post persist in giving a false narrative about Congress? The May 26 editorial on the mass shooting in Uvalde, Tex., “The same haunting questions,” stated, “Yet Congress does nothing.” Not true. The House has passed — over virtually unanimous Republican opposition — two bills pertaining to gun violence; and most Democrats in the Senate stand ready to act as well. But the Senate can’t, again largely because of Republican intransigence.
On issue after issue — climate change, income inequality, gun violence, etc. — it’s the same: Republican obstructionism prevents Congress (most often the Senate) from acting. A narrative that says “Republicans prevent Congress from acting” is very different from one that says “Congress does nothing.” The first illuminates; the second adds to the darkness threatening our democracy.
Dave Ackerman, Silver Spring
A harvest of joyful memories
Courtland Milloy’s May 18 Metro column, “In D.C. ‘food desert,’ one school finds a recipe for healthy students: Cooking and gardening,” and the accompanying pictures were very joyful. The positive vibe awakened in me happy childhood memories of shelling peas and picking green beans in our garden. Even the yucky aphids that inhabited the garden didn’t spoil the memory.
I wasn’t living in a “food desert,” as are the young folks featured in Milloy’s column. However, I was 5 years old and living in a small town in Pennsylvania when Pearl Harbor was bombed, so my early memories are of shortages on grocery shelves and ration books needed to buy certain foods and, of course, gas for our cars. Consequently, we were rather “planted” in our little town. We planted a “victory garden” in our backyard and had an abundance of vegetables that we ate fresh during the summertime and canned for the winter. I remember having fun shelling peas, picking raspberries among the thorns at a nearby farm and enjoying my mom’s mouthwatering cherry pie from the fruit picked from our backyard cherry tree. Mom loved celery, and we were able to get what we all thought was the world’s best celery from a celery farm just a few miles down the road. Mom was also a good cook and taught me to enjoy working in the kitchen. To this day, I love to cook, and fresh produce is always a big part of our meals.
The joy the children felt at Kimball Elementary School and the lessons learned from the SodexoMagic partnership with the school are a wonderful example of creative learning that I hope can be duplicated at more and more schools all around the country. Bravo!
Patricia A. Nau, Fairfax
Not just a Hotmail account
The May 20 news article “Key witness in Sussmann trial recounts 2016 meeting” reported that “the FBI . . . had just resolved its investigation of [Hillary] Clinton’s use of nongovernment email.”
This is misleading; millions of grandmothers use “nongovernment email” with no need for investigation by anyone.
The FBI investigated Clinton’s use of several privately owned email servers for her official correspondence as secretary of state.
Her servers had about 30,000 emails, of which about 110 had information that was classified up to the level of “Top Secret/Special Access Program.” The classified material was not protected by the government’s cybersecurity methods.
“Democracy Dies in Darkness” benefits by discernment between sunlight and gaslighting.
Hampton DeJarnette, Silver Spring
Crossing our exes
A May 15 news article was headlined “Ex-Colombian colonel confronts killing of innocents.” Unless the officer had changed his nationality, shouldn’t he have been identified as a “Colombian ex-colonel”?
Richard Kahane, McLean
Guilt by visual association
I’m the father of a former St. Albans rower, so the photo of the St. Albans crew team members carrying their boat in the May 20 Sports section caught my eye. A pleasant way to start my day. To my surprise, though, the accompanying article was about a sex abuse scandal involving the coach of a different team at a different school [“Rowing coach’s arrest stirs questions”]. St. Albans wasn’t even mentioned in the article — thankfully, given the content. Just to make the cognitive dissonance a bit more piquant, the article below the rowing article was a nice piece on the St. Albans tennis team’s D.C. State Athletic Association championship. But no photo was there to showcase that accomplishment. No big deal, perhaps you say; it was just a photo of a crew team. But be honest with yourself. How would you feel if your child were the featured photo for an article about a sex scandal that had absolutely nothing to do with them? Journalistic integrity, not to mention common decency, requires better.
Alex Ward, Bethesda
A republic, if KidsPost can keep it
The May 23 KidsPost, in directing readers to an online quiz, said, “You probably know that the United States is a democracy. Take our quiz to see how much you know about other countries’ governments.”
Most students in kindergarten through 12th grade recite the Pledge of Allegiance “to the flag . . . and to the republic for which it stands.” I realize that they are never taught the meaning of the pledge, allegiance or that the founders never wanted a democracy.
Don’t the editors of KidsPost know that we live in a republic, not a democracy?
Jack Crawford, Silver Spring
A healthy distance
As a cancer physician, I was struck by authors Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa’s struggle to preserve their professional distance (“we’re journalists, we’re fine”) in comments about their new book reporting the tragedy of George Floyd’s life and death [“Telling George Floyd’s story gave us a deeper understanding of racism,” Outlook, May 22]. It’s not unlike my own struggle when I have encountered patients with deadly illness. The courage of the two reporters is evident in their resistance of an empathy so deep as to destroy their effectiveness. They are driven by the necessity to tell a story of the depressing corrosion of American life by the deceit of racism.
After all the horror that Samuels and Olorunnipa have witnessed and reported, their commentary ended with a wish of optimism for the future of racial justice in the United States. One can only hope that such a future can come true.
Geoffrey R. Weiss, Charlottesville
War isn’t over
Based on The Post’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one must conclude that the war is over. Recent front pages have not included updates. Those articles have been relegated to pages farther into the paper.
The front page is still available for news of the former president, which should make his supporters happy. Other tragedies, which occur weekly from Buffalo to Sacramento, are offered significant real estate. Though Ukraine is geographically distant, the ramifications for the public are increasingly threatening our American way of life, including through higher gas prices, inflation aggravation, more stress from refugees and the omnipresent threat of nuclear war.
It appears The Post is tired of war. This is sad for our quest to promote democracy and peace for the planet.
Tim Foresman, Elkridge
Who pays tariffs
Though I agree with almost everything Fareed Zakaria wrote in his May 20 Friday Opinion column, “President Biden has the means to reduce inflation. Why isn’t he acting?,” one statement was very misleading.
Zakaria wrote that “a tariff is a tax on goods paid by the U.S. consumer who buys those goods.” That is not quite correct. Unless the demand for that good is perfectly inelastic, such as the demand for a lifesaving medication with no substitutes, the company will be forced to share the tax burden. This is basic economics. Thus, it is very misleading to say the consumer will pay the tariff. In most cases, the consumer will pay only some of the tariff; the company will pay the rest. The more elastic the demand for the good, the more of the tariff the company will pay. Indeed, if the demand is perfectly elastic, as it might be if there were a lot of substitutes and the good was not essential, the company would have to pay all of the tariff.
Philip Young, Somerset
What Biden should read about abortion
Monica Hesse’s May 23 Style column, “What Biden should say about abortion,” was brilliant. It was the most concise, inclusive, reasonable and meticulously crafted writing on abortion I have ever seen.
I think President Biden should read it, verbatim, in Congress so it will be seen, heard, entered into the Congressional Record and discussed.
Gene Glucksman, Rockville
Abandoning the truth
In his May 20 op-ed, “Biden’s Asia roadshow begins,” David Ignatius wrote, “Biden plans to announce a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which will seek to establish common digital standards, supply-chain cooperation and other shared norms. It’s not a ‘trade agreement’ like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Democrats abandoned in 2016, ceding the field to China, which quickly created its own multilateral group. But the IPEF, as the administration has dubbed it, provides what one official calls ‘an affirmative, positive economic vision for the most strategically consequential region of the world.’ ”
The TPP was an initiative spearheaded by the Obama administration. It was the Trump administration that pulled the United States from the agreement in January 2017. In fact, it was an early and central piece of branding used to bolster President Donald Trump’s “America First” credo.
Daniel Barnhill, Los Angeles | 2022-06-03T19:51:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Readers critique The Post: Sexism in soccer coverage crops up again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/readers-critique-post-sexism-soccer-coverage-crops-up-again/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/readers-critique-post-sexism-soccer-coverage-crops-up-again/ |
Is America ready for a really hulky She-Hulk?
For certain comics fans, it was exciting to hear about Marvel’s forthcoming TV series about Jennifer Walters, a.k.a. She-Hulk, the cousin of Bruce Banner who gains superhuman strength and size after a blood transfusion. Finally! We would see a woman get to represent something other than the svelte superheroines we were used to.
But when the trailer was released, She-Hulk’s physique left a lot of mass to be desired. The Disney Plus trailer revealed a protagonist, played by Tatiana Maslany with a CGI assist, who looked more like an extra-tall yoga teacher than a woman who could fold a car in half. Rumors circulated that the filmmakers had originally conceived She-Hulk as much more muscular than the character who appeared in the trailer.
It’s true that since the character was first introduced in a 1980 comic book, She-Hulk’s physical form has ranged in muscularity. Most of the comic renderings make her look more like a fitness model than a CrossFit competitor. Even so, after the trailer was released, plenty of commenters were angry at Marvel for not making her hulkier. “Let She-Hulk be Huge,” argued one article in the Ringer.
The whole thing is a reminder that despite strides in the “body positivity” movement and the push for representation of various body shapes, a society dominated by the male gaze still tends to react to muscular women with ambivalence at best and hostility at worst.
Hostile case in point: In 2020, a playable video game character called Abby in “The Last of Us Part II” caused a huge backlash among mostly male gamers. A large part of their problem? Abby was visibly muscular, with smaller breasts. Her character worked hard to build her physique — something not often seen in video games or shows. She was accused of being on steroids, or a trans man. Men went so far as to trawl the game for evidence that she couldn’t be that buff in real life, and then to make videos saying that her physique was “impossible.”
We are raised to believe that men are not only naturally stronger and more muscular than women but also that they are entitled to force and power. And it shows in how many superheroes are rendered. I mean, why should X-Men’s Cyclops, a guy who shoots lasers out of his eyes, be jacked? Meanwhile, female figures aren’t usually given that visual power. Even X-Men’s Rogue or DC’s Wonder Woman — both superheroines who are supposed to have superhuman strength — are rendered as slim, with hourglass figures and heart-shaped faces. It’s no wonder we have restrictive ideas of what “normal” super women should look like.
Big, buff women exist! In her book “The Frailty Myth: Redefining the Physical Potential of Women and Girls,” Colette Dowling argues that girls and women are not necessarily biologically weaker than men, but that for generations, girls and women have been socially engineered to not develop their physical potential, lest they become less attractive to male mates. Young girls are discouraged from active play, and from training in sports, lifting and martial arts. According to Dowling, some studies suggest that girls who begin training at an earlier age are able to close the strength gap and even outperform boys in certain tests. Those that don’t are conditioned to accept themselves as just naturally weaker — and more defenseless.
This ambivalence about women’s strength and muscularity hits home. I was 13 in 1999 when Brandi Chastain, a soccer player on the women’s U.S. national team, stripped to her sports bra to celebrate scoring the winning penalty shot against China. Everyone was in awe of her ripped physique; I remember wanting to play soccer and train because I thought she was just so cool. To me, hers was the ideal body.
But as the years went on, it seemed the Chastain effect wore off. In a controversial 2015 article, the New York Times detailed how many elite female tennis players were afraid to bulk up, lest they feel “unfeminine.” In the piece, the famously buff Serena Williams spoke about how she struggled with her body image and public shaming, wearing long sleeves and refusing to work out with weights. At the time, she said it was “uncomfortable for someone like me to be in my body.”
For those women and girls who wish to see bigger women on screen, all hope is not lost. A supporting character, Luisa from Disney’s recent animated movie “Encanto,” is an example: She is not just physically but visibly strong. The Internet fell in love with her, as did little girls — with parents taking to Twitter to say their daughters were asking for Luisa merchandise.
So, count me in with the crowd that wishes She-Hulk could have been a wee bit bulkier. Obviously, we have to wait for the series to see how her story will play out. But may it be a reminder to Hollywood and game makers that for all the pushback, there are plenty of people out there looking for a bigger, buffer heroine. | 2022-06-03T19:51:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | As a new She-Hulk rises, is America ready for a superheroine with real muscle? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/she-hulk-disney-strong-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/she-hulk-disney-strong-women/ |
Biden’s flip-flop on Saudi Arabia
In this 2011 photo, then Vice President Joe Biden, right, offers his condolences to then Prince Salman bin Abdel-Aziz upon the death of his brother, Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Say what you will about former president Donald Trump: When he was flip-flopping on Saudi Arabia, at least he acknowledged the utterly transactional nature of it.
President Biden is now apparently about to complete his own thoroughly convenient evolution on the Saudis. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s plenty striking as well.
Administration officials confirmed Thursday that Biden plans to make a trip to Saudi Arabia later this month. The addition of the stop on Biden’s trip comes in an apparent effort to seek help from the oil-rich nation, among others, to lower the record-high gas prices that have hampered the American economy and dogged Biden’s political fortunes.
But it also comes less than three years after Biden pledged to turn the kingdom into a “pariah” for the gruesome assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden is expected to meet with the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite U.S. intelligence having said Mohammed ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.
Needless to say, this not a treatment generally reserved for pariahs.
It’s a remarkable turnabout for Biden. At a late 2019 Democratic presidential debate, he not only promised to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah,” but he added that there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”
Biden did little to follow up on that promise after assuming the presidency, though he did release intelligence related to the sordid affair. As early as a March 2021 interview with ABC News, he signaled the coming retreat from his campaign promise.
“We held accountable all the people in that organization, but not the crown prince,” Biden said. “Because we have never — that I’m aware of, when we have an alliance with a country — gone to the acting head of state and punished that person and ostracized him.”
Biden, it seems, has now recognized the value in the present government of Saudi Arabia — the economic and geopolitical value, if not social. While he said Friday that there were no firm plans to travel there, he did seem to pre-spin it as being geared more toward Middle East peace than oil, and he reasserted his emphasis on human rights.
“I’m not going to change my view on human rights,” he assured. “But it’s my job as president to try to bring about peace, if I can. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
Certainly, if this were truly all about peace, that would be an easier argument to make for engaging with a “pariah” state. But early indications are that this is likely to be plenty geared toward domestic economic and political considerations.
And if that is indeed a big part of the aim, it would be merely the latest example of the Saudis capitalizing on their leverage and usefulness to escape accountability — in spite of high-minded promises by our presidents and would-be presidents.
If there’s one recent president who talked the toughest on Saudi Arabia before coming to power, it was Trump. He had spent decades holding up the Saudis as the embodiment of the U.S. cozying up to ne’er-do-well allies of convenience rather than standing on our principles. But he quickly reversed course early in his presidency, turning solicitous of the Saudis in the name of forging deals. Then, upon Khashoggi’s assassination in 2018, he offered a string of bizarre comments lending credence to Saudi denials (despite the U.S. intelligence) and essentially acknowledging the real reason for not holding the kingdom fully to account: that what was on the table in terms of the alliance and weapons deals was simply more important to him. Now Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secured $2 billion in investment from the Saudis for his private equity firm.
Which, points for honesty. At least Trump was effectively willing to concede he valued those things more than human rights — that the balancing act tilted in that direction, despite the gruesome killing of someone who resided in his own country.
President Barack Obama, too, had to strike this balance. He generally held a harder line on the Saudis than other recent presidents. He called them “so-called” allies and alienated them by trying to work with Iran. But even he saw himself forced to compromise somewhat, especially late in his presidency with a trip to shore up relations and his veto of a bill that would have allowed the families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudis.
Then there was John F. Kerry, who unsuccessfully sought the presidency as a Democrat in 2004. While doing so, he too tried to make getting tough on the Saudis a wedge issue against George W. Bush.
And in a sign of how little the fundamentals of our relationship have changed, the crux of the matter was a deal with the Saudis to lower oil prices.
“If we are serious about energy independence, then we can finally be serious about confronting the role of Saudi Arabia in financing and providing ideological support of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups,” Kerry said.
Kerry added: “To put it simply: We will not do business as usual with Saudi Arabia.”
But the Saudis weren’t worried. As one high-ranking Saudi diplomat told The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in response to Kerry’s threats, “That ends as soon as the new president gets his first security briefing.”
Nearly two decades later, despite even more high-minded promises to truly cease relying upon the Saudis, it appears it’s going nowhere. Yes, geopolitical realities make that difficult. But those are realities that a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee like Biden would have been well familiar with in 2019. | 2022-06-03T19:52:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s flip-flop on Saudi Arabia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/bidens-flip-flop-saudi-arabia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/bidens-flip-flop-saudi-arabia/ |
Chicago church embraces ‘The Gospel According to Dolly Parton’
Host Dolly Parton speaks at the 57th Academy of Country Music Awards on Monday, March 7, 2022, at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. (John Locher/AP)
CHICAGO (RNS) — She’s been hailed as a “secular country-pop saint” and the “Jesus of Appalachia.”
Her ability to bridge divides has made her the subject of many a recent think piece, a popular podcast series and even proposals to replace statues of Confederate figures with her image.
And over the past few weeks, Dolly Parton has been the subject of a five-part sermon series at Church of the Three Crosses in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.
The Rev. Britt Cox wrapped up her sermon series “The Gospel According to Dolly” on May 29 at the church, which describes itself as an “ever-widening inclusive Christian community” belonging to both the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ.
“We’ve been using Dolly as a way to talk about story and our larger story of faith and that all of our stories matter and that God’s story is continuing on in us,” Cox told the congregation, accompanied by a flourish from the church’s pianist.
Church of the Three Crosses has been focusing on sharing personal stories since returning to in-person services during the covid-19 pandemic, Cox told Religion News Service. New members began attending while the church was meeting online. Longtime members hadn’t seen each other face-to-face or caught up in months.
Parton’s ability to connect with many different people — young and old, religious and nonreligious, from red states and blue — through story felt instructive as the congregation got to know each other again.
Plus, Cox said, “She’s really a person who walks her talk.”
Growing up in Texas — where, the pastor said, country music is woven into the church — she admired Parton’s music and subversive sense of humor. Later, she realized the singer-songwriter, who is a Christian, also shares beautiful messages in her songs — some overtly religious, like her 2019 song “God Only Knows” with Christian musical duo For King & Country.
Parton also invests the money she’s made into causes she cares about, like child literacy. Most recently, she’s earned praise for her $1 million donation to covid-19 research, which was partly used to fund Moderna’s vaccine.
Parton has said she thinks it’s great if she can set a good example.
“But,” she told People Magazine in December, “I don’t want to be worshiped, because there’s a scripture in my Bible that talks about idol worship. And I see that happening all the time with movie stars and these celebrities. People literally worship them more than they worship God. And I just — I cringe at it sometimes.”
Each Sunday’s sermon at Church of the Three Crosses has focused on a different song by Parton, all but one performed by a member of the congregation.
Cox drew inspiration from a sermon series called “The Gospel According to Dolly Parton” at Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, from the WNYC podcast “Dolly Parton’s America” and from current events.
A planned sermon on Parton’s song “Coat of Many Colors” — a natural choice, since the lyrics draw upon the biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors — was scrapped the weekend after the Supreme Court’s draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.
Instead, Cox preached on “19th Amendment,” Parton’s contribution to a WNYC project collecting songs inspired by each of the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. She wove together the song about women fighting for the right to vote with the biblical story of a Canaanite woman arguing with Jesus to heal her daughter.
Other sermons expounded on “9 to 5,” “Jolene” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home.”
At Sunday’s service — held in the church’s grassy side yard on a warm, if windy, almost-summer day — life was as peaceful as a baby’s sigh, as the song goes.
Cox played a recording a church member had made of an upbeat rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” Parton’s 1974 song made most famous by Whitney Houston in the 1990s, and used it as a jumping off point to talk about Jesus’ command in the Gospels to forgive “not seven times, but, I tell you, 77 times.”
“I Will Always Love You” is not a love song, but a goodbye song, the pastor explained. Parton had written the song partly as a farewell to her music partner Porter Wagoner when she struck out to pursue a solo career, she said.
“It’s a song about goodbyes, about endings, about forgiveness on both their parts in order for them to be able to move into a new beginning,” she said.
It was a fitting song to end the series as Cox prepares to say her own goodbyes to the congregation, leaving on a proverbial high note as she takes a new appointment.
“Why not Dolly Parton?” longtime Church of the Three Crosses member Dana McKinney said over coffee and cookies after the service.
McKinney isn’t sure she believes “all of the dogmas.” But, she said, “coming to worship is about changing perspectives, being able to look at something in a way that’s going to help me go out into the world and just be a better person.”
She’ll never hear “I Will Always Love You” again without thinking of forgiveness, she said. | 2022-06-03T19:52:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chicago church embraces ‘The Gospel According to Dolly Parton’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/03/chicago-church-embraces-gospel-according-dolly-parton/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/03/chicago-church-embraces-gospel-according-dolly-parton/ |
Actor Amber Heard hugs her lawyer Elaine Bredehoft after the verdict was read at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Va, on June 1. The jury awarded Johnny Depp more than $10 million in his libel lawsuit against his ex-wife, but the jury also found in favor of Heard, who said she was defamed by a lawyer for Depp. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)
In her now-famous Washington Post op-ed in December 2018, actress Amber Heard wrote, “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” Casual readers may well have wondered: What on earth is a “public figure representing domestic abuse”?
A more elliptical, less clear formulation would have been tough to conceive.
Yet a jury at the Fairfax County, Va., circuit court came away from a six-week trial convinced that this particular passage — along with two others in the same op-ed — was pointed enough to defame actor Johnny Depp, Heard’s former husband and a man she’d previously accused of multiple instances of domestic abuse. It awarded Depp $15 million in total damages, and it also awarded Heard $2 million for a claim in her countersuit that Depp, via an attorney, had defamed her. (The monetary award for Depp includes punitive damages of $5 million that will be cut to $350,000 under a Virginia cap on such damages.)
There was a lot of ugly in the whole affair: ugly fights, ugly rampages, ugly text messages, ugly — and inevitably fleeting — reconciliations. Depp said on the stand, “It was rapid fire, an endless parade of insults, and you know, looking at me like I was a fool.” Heard claimed more than a dozen instances of alleged abuse by Depp. “Johnny promised me — promised me — that he’d ruin my life, that he’d ruin my career. He’d take my life from me,” she said in her testimony.
A British judge in 2020 tossed Depp’s libel action against the Sun newspaper, which had called him a “wife beater” based on Heard’s allegations; that judge’s 129-page ruling, which survived an appeal from Depp and features a microscopic distillation of the evidence, found that “the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard.” Depp has consistently denied these claims of assault.
The op-ed underlying all this madness was an assault, too — against journalism. It embraced a cliched op-ed design, that of deploying public figures to braid their personal experiences with policy prescriptions. “I was exposed to abuse at a very young age,” reads the piece’s opening. “I knew certain things early on, without ever having to be told.”
At a certain point in her adult life, the op-ed states, Heard’s familiarity with these things deepened. Not only did she become a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” she “had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse” — another of the statements determined to be defamatory by the Virginia jury.
Not once did the op-ed mention Depp’s name. The Post was not a defendant in Depp’s libel suit.
Those who start their days with TMZ knew that Heard was referring to Depp with her cryptic references. The tabloids and Hollywood media, after all, had covered the couple’s high-profile breakup, which was finalized in 2017 and included Heard’s pursuit of a domestic abuse restraining order against Depp, who has denied ever assaulting Heard.
For everyone else, however, the Heard op-ed raised questions that it never answered. In what way did she “represent” domestic abuse? What were the specifics of the backlash to which she refers? What did it mean to see “in real time” how institutions rally around accused men? The Post didn’t even include a link in the piece to fill in the context for readers.
Perhaps that was the author’s strategy all along, as suggested in trial testimony and exhibits. Having secured a $7 million divorce settlement, Heard pledged $3.5 million to the ACLU over 10 years. Just months before her op-ed appeared in The Post, Heard became an ACLU ambassador “for women’s rights, with a focus on gender-based violence.” It was a staffer at the ACLU, according to testimony from ACLU general counsel Terence Dougherty, who approached The Post’s Opinions section about publishing an op-ed bearing Heard’s byline.
The first draft came off the keyboards of the ACLU, via consultation with Heard. Four lawyers at the ACLU reviewed it to ensure that it aligned with the organization’s policy positions. Heard’s lawyers separately scrubbed it for compliance with a nondisclosure provision of her divorce settlement, according to an ACLU spokesperson.
So Heard’s celebrity conferred standing at the ACLU, which then leveraged her name into a Post op-ed. The byline was accurate only to the extent that the ACLU tried to craft a piece consistent with Heard’s spoken views. Which is to say, not very accurate. Kris Coratti, a Post spokeswoman, says that the opinions section has a standard form seeking attestation from op-ed writers that they actually wrote the work under their bylines, though it’s uncertain whether it was requested in this case. “We recognize that many writers receive help with their pieces at various stages along the way,” notes Coratti in an email, “and the involvement of the ACLU in the piece was disclosed to us. We also disclosed to our readers Heard’s relationship with the ACLU, as she did in the body of the piece.”
An ACLU spokeswoman offered this statement: “As with many advocacy organizations, the ACLU often submits pieces written by a range of external advocates and leaders in support of urgent policy priorities. It is routine for the ACLU to submit written pieces in collaboration with our Artist Ambassadors, and other high profile individuals who support our work.”
People who feel wronged by published work commonly request retractions from the originating outlet, in many cases via threatening letters from their lawyers. In this case, Depp’s team chose not to, according to a Depp spokeswoman, because the language came in an op-ed, not a conventional news story. As to why the actor didn’t name The Post as a defendant in the case, a source close to Depp notes that “Johnny felt that the foremost responsibility for the content of the article was Ms. Heard herself.” That decision also saved Depp from confronting what would have been a ferocious legal defense from an organization whose livelihood rides on the First Amendment.
The Post on Thursday appended to Heard’s op-ed an editor’s note apprising readers of this week’s developments. It was a neutral passage that avoided taking a position on the Virginia jury’s verdict, and amplified the weakness of the piece itself — which was that The Post was taking a shortcut to this controversy, forgoing the journalistic effort required to piece together a bona fide #MeToo story.
A jury has made its decision on the merits of the case. Does The Post stand by the op-ed? “We do not take stands on the opinions shared in our op-eds,” replies Coratti. | 2022-06-03T20:04:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Depp-Heard verdict hinged on the world’s worst #MeToo op-ed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/depp-heard-verdict-washington-post-op-ed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/depp-heard-verdict-washington-post-op-ed/ |
Fetterman says he ‘almost died’ for ignoring a heart condition diagnosed in 2017
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) fills out his emergency absentee ballot at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital in Lancaster, Pa, on May 17, 2022. (Bobby Maggio/AP)
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee in that state’s Senate contest, said Friday that he “almost died” after suffering a stroke last month, in a statement revealing that his condition was far more serious than his campaign had previously indicated.
Fetterman, 52, suffered a stroke May 13 and later had a pacemaker implanted. In a statement Friday, he said he should have taken his health more seriously, including taking medication that a doctor prescribed for him in 2017.
“The stroke I suffered on May 13 didn’t come out of nowhere,” Fetterman said. “Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn’t feel well. As a result, I almost died.”
Fetterman did not offer a date on which he plans to return to the campaign trail. | 2022-06-03T20:08:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fetterman says he ‘almost died’ for ignoring a heart condition diagnosed in 2017 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/fetterman-heart-condition-almost-died-pennsylvania/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/03/fetterman-heart-condition-almost-died-pennsylvania/ |
Two women walk past a "now hiring" sign outside a Chipotle restaurant in Arlington on June 3. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)
The biggest vote of confidence in the U.S. economy is business continuing to hire at a strong rate and Americans continuing to return to work. The United States added back 390,000 jobs in May, once again beating expectations. Nearly every industry saw net employment gains, except for the retail sector. And more and more Americans are looking for jobs again — and getting them.
More than 6.5 million jobs have come back in the past year, one of the greatest employment rebounds in U.S. history. Women and minorities have made especially large gains. For all the concerns about the "She-cession" early in the pandemic, women have come surging back into the workforce in recent months, especially as schools and day cares have reopened. Women’s labor force participation, especially for ages 25 to 54, has now recovered as much as men’s. And the share of African Americans working is almost back at a two-decade high.
The massive return to work was somewhat predictable as the economy reopened and many Americans were vaccinated against the coronavirus. As the risks receded, people felt safer to venture out again for work and fun activities. But the pace of the job recovery — and its enduring strength — have exceeded many forecasters’ expectations. Nearly every town has visible “we’re hiring” signs, and there are nearly two job openings for every unemployed American. This is largely due to the historic $5 trillion in aid the federal government sent out during the crisis. All that extra cash fueled buying sprees that led to record corporate profits and record numbers of job openings.
There have been clear problems with all the aid payments. The most obvious is inflation at a 40-year high as the spending boom has far outpaced supply. The pandemic also caused a lot of Americans to retire early, a big reason the size of the labor force is still well below where it was before the crisis. President Biden would be wise to keep pushing for faster processing of legal immigrants to help expand the pool of workers.
The reality is that 96 percent of the jobs lost in the 2020 recession are back and many companies no longer see as much urgency to hire. But the past year has made a huge difference to millions of families that now have higher incomes and renewed careers. This jobs recovery is on track to take about 2.5 years. By comparison, it took more than six years to recover from the Great Recession. That’s worth celebrating.
Opinions on covid and work
Satire | Only the least tasty employees work from home!
We’re making the wrong argument for a four-day workweek
A seismic standoff over remote work is building | 2022-06-03T20:12:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We’re in the midst of a ‘great return to work.’ It’s worth celebrating. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/may-jobs-report-return-to-work/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/may-jobs-report-return-to-work/ |
D.C.'s encampments are not the problem. Homelessness is.
An encampment for people experiencing homelessness in D.C. is pictured on April 14, 2021. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The May 27 editorial about homelessness encampments, “Unacceptable treatment,” oversimplified the ongoing discussion regarding their existence. It isn’t encampments that “have no place in America”; it’s homelessness that doesn’t. Because of historic underinvestment in homeless services and a lack of low-income housing, D.C. has the highest per capita rate of homelessness in the United States. When we consider this prolonged homelessness crisis, overcrowded and under-resourced shelters, and a pandemic, the existence of tent encampments is not surprising.
Though health and safety concerns within encampments arise periodically, they should never be addressed with bulldozers, displacement or police intimidation. The racialized criminal justice system in the United States already fuels a cycle between prison and homelessness. Further criminalizing homelessness by making tents illegal is not the answer. Similarly, forcing people who have nowhere to go from neighborhood to neighborhood doesn’t end homelessness; only housing does.
Thanks to our collective advocacy, which resulted in historic funding from the Bowser administration and the D.C. Council, we are now on the cusp of ending long-term homelessness in D.C. However, by destroying trust, displacing residents and wasting resources, clearing encampments makes ending homelessness even harder and puts our once-in-a-generation opportunity to end chronic homelessness at risk.
If we remain focused on our goal of ending homelessness, D.C. can ensure that everyone — including encampment residents — has a safe place to call home.
Jesse Rabinowitz, Washington
The writer is senior manager for policy and advocacy at Miriam’s Kitchen. | 2022-06-03T20:43:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | D.C.'s encampments are not the problem. Homelessness is. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/dc-encampments-are-not-problem-homelessness-is/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/dc-encampments-are-not-problem-homelessness-is/ |
The decommissioning of nuclear reactors
The North Anna Nuclear power plant in Mineral, Va., in August 2011. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The apparent thrust of the May 29 Business article “A big, dangerous job” is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission might be lax in overseeing the dismantling of America’s aging nuclear plants. I spent 23 years as a lawyer representing electric utilities before the NRC on regulatory matters, including decommissioning reactors and the disposal of nuclear waste. I always found the NRC to be very efficient and thorough, and I admired it as an exemplary federal agency.
After a detailed discussion of problems at the sites of nuclear reactors being decommissioned under NRC licenses, the article stated that, “while rare, major accidents have occurred at nuclear waste sites with no operational reactor.” The only such accident mentioned is a 2014 underground explosion at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The inference any reasonable reader would draw is that this was another example of alleged lax oversight by the NRC. But the plant is a federal facility operated by a federal agency, not licensed by the NRC. Thus, this incident should either not have been included or the article should have made clear that it was included only to reflect the hazards of waste disposal.
Maurice Axelrad, Bethesda | 2022-06-03T20:43:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The decommissioning of nuclear reactors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/decommissioning-nuclear-reactors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/decommissioning-nuclear-reactors/ |
Words are not working
Pallbearers carry a casket from a church in Uvalde, Tex., on June 1. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
In her June 1 news column, “Maybe seeing what guns do to kids will incite action,” Robin Givhan suggested that it might be time to let the public see for itself the horrific damage that assault rifles do. I agree.
The children who survived the massacre did not have the luxury of looking away, nor will they ever be able to erase those images from their memories. Republicans who continue to block gun-control legislation must be confronted with the gruesome reality of what happened until they finally manage to consider how many families have been traumatized by their inaction.
Release the photos and force them to look.
Jane Rooney, Oakton
Though, no doubt, there would be outraged letters to the editor from readers claiming that their breakfast was ruined or that their child saw the photograph, The Post should publish — on the front page, please — a picture of a murdered child.
We see pictures of dead bodies on foreign soil, but not on ours. We read of a child saying to his father that “we train for this.” We hear of a little girl covering herself in the blood of a slain classmate and playing dead. The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and clearly words are not working.
Though I am pretty sure it wouldn’t happen, and I understand why, of course, I do wish that a few of the Uvalde, Tex., parents would mail a photo not of their smiling child but of the dead body to every member of Congress. Maybe that would let at least one or two of them grasp the horror of the situation.
Pen Suritz, Ocean View, Del.
Would realistic pictures of children murdered in Uvalde, Tex., move Americans to act on gun control? Absolutely. The closest analog is the picture of 14-year-old Emmett Till in his casket, which forever changed the fight for civil rights.
When authorities in Mississippi attempted to bury him as quickly as possible, his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on a funeral and an open casket, saying, “Let the world see what I have seen.” Actor and activist Billy Porter echoed this sentiment when he chose to keep a performance commitment the morning after being beaten up for his homosexuality: “I performed in front of hundreds of schoolchildren that afternoon with a black eye, a bruised face, and a fractured jaw. … I wanted everyone to see my face. To take in the blood and the bruises. Bear witness to the hate and the cruelty. See what the world does to a person who is different. Look at it. Own it. And, y’all, fix that!”
If you don’t let us see the reality of gun violence, how can we care enough to fix it?
Linda P. Falcao, North Wales, Pa.
No, a hero was not needed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex. What was needed was action by one or more of those dozens of police officers from multiple departments who stood outside for an hour while the killer rampaged inside.
In his May 29 op-ed, “Guns kill people. They don’t turn people into heroes.,” David Von Drehle posited that all people are mortal and no one is certain of what he or she would do in the face of a crisis until faced with that crisis. In this instance, none of those present, when confronted with the crisis, acted quickly. If those trained and paid would not respond, what is the expectation that anyone else would?
I do not see this as an aberration. This is now the norm in this country. We can continue to delude ourselves that we are a responsible and responsive society in the face of gun violence, but we are not. The massacre of children at Robb Elementary, exacerbated by the delayed police response, will be further reflected in the abdication of duty by Congress.
For sure, there will be the usual calls for background checks, double-locked doors, red-flag laws, good guys with guns, ad nauseam. None of which addresses the problem. Unless assault rifles are taken off the streets, this scenario will be repeated.
Because my expectation for any meaningful action by Congress is zero, I will eagerly await the largest liability damage settlement ever awarded, to be assessed against the Uvalde police and Texas public safety authorities. There must be some accountability.
If the conscience doesn't hurt, maybe the wallet will.
William A. McCollam, Chantilly
In her May 29 op-ed, “An AR-15 is not a colonial musket,” Kathleen Parker asked a profound question that should be etched onto a large banner and flown high above the U.S. Capitol: “When grade-school children are vulnerable to mass murderers, what’s the point of government?”
Elizabeth Jordan, Greenbelt
It is time for us to face the truth. We are all moral cowards. We are cowards because we continue to let power intimidate us and keep us from voting people such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and all of those greedy powermongers out of office so we can begin to be the proud nation we once were.
I am ashamed of us. Our children and other innocent people are being destroyed because we let them be. We are outraged and saddened and then we look the other way. We give $5 and then we think we have done our share. But we have not.
Not until we have the courage and the tenacity to get rid of these disgraceful, immoral, power-hungry elected officials who do not care about us (only themselves) will we be able to sleep knowing we have put our love of integrity and compassion for our fellow human beings above all else.
Carolyn Drake Compton, Silver Spring | 2022-06-03T20:43:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Words are not working - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/words-are-not-working/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/words-are-not-working/ |
D.C. Proud Boy and bartender pleads guilty to felony in Capitol riot
Protesters gain access to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Amanda Voisard/Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)
A D.C. bartender who stormed the U.S. Capitol with fellow members of the Proud Boys on Jan. 6, 2021, has pleaded guilty to obstructing the congressional vote count certifying President Biden’s victory.
Joshua Pruitt, 39, will be sentenced on the felony charge on August 26. He faces up to 20 years in prison, but prosecutors estimate guidelines will recommend a sentence of 51 to 63 months.
“Mr. Pruitt accepts responsibility,” his attorney, Robert Jenkins, said. “His original intent on that day was to simply exercise his constitutional rights. However, he realizes that his actions went beyond a peaceful demonstration.”
Dozens of members or affiliates of the Proud Boys have been charged with crimes for their actions on Jan. 6, including being among the first to engage with police and break down barriers to the Capitol building. Pruitt marched to the Capitol with Proud Boys from Maryland and entered the building not long after the initial breach, according to his plea. But he is not accused of engaging in a seditious conspiracy against the United States, as longtime chairman Enrique Tarrio and other senior Proud Boys are. That group is set to go to trial on August 8. The Proud Boys are also being sued by D.C.'s attorney general under a law originally written to cripple the Ku Klux Klan.
Tarrio was arrested on Jan. 4 for burning a Black Lives Matter flag during another violent protest in December 2020. He left D.C. before the Capitol riot, but prosecutors say he continued to direct his most trusted associates to attack Congress. Tarrio has denied that he or his group planned to commit violence
After Tarrio’s arrest, Pruitt filmed a social media video in which he said, “Y’all … just started a war,” he admitted in plea papers. On the morning of the riot he posted a photo of himself posing with an assault rifle while standing on a Black Lives Matter flag, according to court records. He wore to the Capitol a tank top with the logo of comic book vigilante “Punisher,” along with a tactical glove on one hand.
According to footage from inside the building, Pruitt threw a “Quiet Please” sign across an atrium inside the Capitol and a chair across a room in the Capitol Visitors’ Center. He was present for confrontations with Capitol Police, although he maintains he was trying to protect them and only became angry after getting hit with tear gas. He admits he came close enough to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer that the New York Democrat and his security detail ran in the other direction.
“I regret going inside,” Pruitt said at a detention hearing in January 2022. “I was disgusted with what I saw.”
Six months earlier, he had posted online, “Do I regret Jan 6? Not even a little!!! Patriots rise!!!”
At the time of the riot, Pruitt was on probation for drunken driving convictions in Maryland and Georgia and on supervision in D.C. for violating a protective order filed by an ex-girlfriend. He also has convictions on his record for theft, harassment and drug possession.
Pruitt has said in interviews that he joined the Proud Boys in late 2020, when the far-right group repeatedly brawled with counterprotesters after pro-Trump rallies in D.C. He said he attended one such rally in November, got in a fight with counterprotesters outside a bar, and found himself protected by a group of Proud Boys. One of them was Tarrio, who inducted Pruitt into the group on the street. He was living in D.C. and working as a bartender, but has said that after video of his induction into the Proud Boys went viral he lost work.
“Hate and discrimination have no place in our craft,” a D.C. bartender and Advisory Neighborhood Commission member wrote on Twitter in response to the video.
Pruitt was initially arrested the evening of the riot for violating a citywide curfew, and during booking a police officer recognized him from a Washington Post photograph of people entering the Capitol, according to court documents. He was initially released but then ordered to jail after repeated violations. He will be detained until sentencing. | 2022-06-03T21:09:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Proud Boy Joshua Pruitt pleads guilty to felony in Capitol riot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/proud-boy-pruitt-pleads-guilty-jan6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/proud-boy-pruitt-pleads-guilty-jan6/ |
Capitol police officer charged with covering up improper chase
After an unauthorized pursuit caused a crash and injury, the officer lied about his involvement, according to an indictment
A large group of police arrive on a bus at the Capitol. Thomas Smith, a U.S. Capitol Police officer, was accused in a federal indictment of taking part in an unauthorized vehicle chase two years ago and trying to conceal his involvement in the incident. (Julio Cortez/AP)
A U.S. Capitol Police officer was accused in a federal indictment of taking part in an unauthorized vehicle chase two years ago and trying to conceal his involvement in the incident, in which a motorist was injured, authorities said Friday.
Thomas Smith, 44, a member of the force for 10 years, pleaded not guilty Friday to an indictment that describes an improper chase in Northwest Washington on June 20, 2020, and a subsequent coverup. He is accused of violating the civil rights of the person he pursued, making false statements to authorities, falsifying police records and obstructing justice.
Smith’s attorney, J. Michael Hannon, did not return a phone message seeking comment after Smith made his initial appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington. A Capitol Police spokesman said Smith has been suspended without pay pending the outcome of the criminal case and an administrative investigation.
On the night of the incident, Smith, in uniform and driving a marked sedan, was assigned to ride past the Washington-area homes of members of Congress, making “dignitary checks,” the indictment says. It says that shortly after 11:30 p.m., he began pursuing “two motorized cycles” at high speed southbound on Wisconsin Avenue NW, between Reservoir Road and M Street, in the Georgetown area. The indictment does not cite a reason for the chase.
Capitol police policies “prohibit police vehicular pursuits outside the Capitol grounds, except in emergencies and only upon supervisory approval,” according to the indictment. It says Smith did not seek approval or notify a dispatcher that he was involved in a chase.
The police car collided with one of the cycles, the indictment says, and the person riding the cycle, identified only as “W.W.,” was hurled into the air “before he hit the asphalt roadway,” suffering cuts and abrasions. The indictment says Smith drove away, taking “no action to seek any medical assistance for W.W. and to ensure no further harm came to him as he lay in the roadway.”
After returning to a police garage with the damaged sedan, the indictment says, Smith attempted an elaborate ruse to make it appear that he had been driving a Capitol police SUV that night, not the sedan. The coverup involved surreptitiously switching vehicle keys in a supervisor’s office and making false entries in computerized logs, according to the indictment.
Before the end of Smith’s overnight shift, D.C. police notified Capitol police of the crash in Georgetown. When Smith’s sergeant asked “whether Smith had any knowledge of the collision,” the indictment says, “Smith made false statements to … conceal his responsibility for the collision,” telling the sergeant that he had been driving an SUV “throughout his entire shift.” | 2022-06-03T21:18:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitol Police Officer Thomas Smith charged with covering up improper chase - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/capitol-police-charge-coverup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/capitol-police-charge-coverup/ |
Mom of 11-year-old killed by stray bullet confronts men convicted in son’s death
At the men’s sentencing hearing, Crystal McNeal, the mother of Davon McNeal, said her son looked up to the group responsible for his killing.
Crystal McNeal before a parade during a birthday celebration in 2021 for her son, 11-year-old Davon McNeal, who was killed by a stray bullet the year before. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Crystal McNeal hoped to bring her Southeast Washington neighborhood together in the name of curbing crime when she organized the July 4 anti-violence themed barbecue two years ago. But as red, green and blue fireworks filled the night sky, gunfire rang out.
McNeal’s son, 11-year-old son Davon McNeal, was struck and killed by what prosecutors believe was a stray bullet, fired by a group of men who thought — wrongly — someone else was firing at them. On Friday, for the first time since her son was killed, McNeal and about 20 members of Davon’s family confronted the four men in D.C. Superior Court during a sentencing hearing.
“Davon looked up to all of you guys. He called you uncle. I called you my family. You have no idea what kind of pain my family is going through,” McNeal yelled from the well of the courtroom. “My son is gone.”
The four D.C. men charged in Davon’s killing — Carlo General, 21, Marcel Gordon, 27, Christen Wingfield, 24 and Daryle Bond, 20 — all pleaded guilty earlier this year to voluntary manslaughter while armed. On Friday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Rainey R. Brandt sentenced General to 16 years in prison, Gordon to 10 years and Wingfield to 9.5 years. Bond’s sentencing was rescheduled for August.
McNeal’s barbecue was held in the cul-de-sac near an apartment building in the 1400 block of Cedar Street SE. Davon — a sixth-grader who had skipped a grade in school and had dreams of going pro in football — was headed toward his aunt’s apartment when he was struck by a bullet, authorities said.
McNeal said that now, instead of making plans to watch her son strut across the stage to accept a diploma, she visits his grave twice a day.
“I cry every day. I’m shaking. I’m nervous. I’m hurting. I feel like I want to give up. I miss my son so bad,” said McNeal, who worked as a violence interrupter in Ward 8 — which meant she often tried to mediate disputes on the street. “I’m supposed to be a violence interrupter, but I couldn’t even protect my baby.”
Police say D.C. boy killed at cookout was hit by stray bullet from street gang
She alleged that family and friends of the men charged in her son’s death threatened her and her family on social media.
“Y’all took my child from me, but you can still go see your son. You can still hear your son’s voice from jail. You can still visit him,” McNeal said, briefly turning around to face the audience. “I have to visit my son in the graveyard.”
Before they were sentenced, each of the men apologized to Davon’s family, as well as their own families. General said he “loved that little boy myself. I just wish I could have saved him.”
Seemingly aware of tensions, eight deputy marshals were positioned throughout the room, watching over about 50 people who had come for the hearing.
As she finished addressing the men, McNeal stormed out sobbing and pushed a hand-sanitizer station to the floor. Several family members ran behind her.
“Let’s everybody breathe. Take a minute and breathe. Her family will calm her down some,” the judge said. “She lost her baby. She has every right in the world to grieve.”
During the nearly two-hour sentencing hearing, prosecutors revealed vivid details of the case. Several in the audience gasped as Assistant U.S. Attorney Shehzad Akhtar said the four men began shooting wildly “at a phantom shooter,” wrongly believing someone had come into the neighborhood and started firing.
“There was no such shooter,” Akhtar said.
With Davon’s family out of the courtroom, Akhtar played a half dozen video clips from various security cameras, which captured the shooting from various angles.
The videos showed Davon jumping out of the back seat of a car that dropped him off so he could join his mother at the barbecue as it was winding down around 9:15 p.m. Davon and others had spent the day in Ocean City, Md., his mother said.
As Davon rushed toward his aunt’s apartment, the video showed General running toward Davon and firing his gun. Davon fell to the ground; authorities said a bullet from General’s gun struck Davon in his head.
The videos also captured General’s three friends running behind him, shooting wildly toward a nearby alley, according to prosecutors. While there was no audio, bright fireworks danced across the sky as the men were running and shooting through the street and across a playground. One of the four ran past Davon’s body, the video showed.
After his arrest, General told authorities he believed he was “protecting” his neighborhood from a shooter. As he prepared for his sentencing, General told officials he had been smoking marijuana the evening of the shooting while also taking Percocet, the prosecutor alleged.
“We are here today because of General’s careless actions,” Akhtar said.
Kevin McGill, Davon’s football coach, who is known in Southeast Washington as Coach Kevin, encouraged the four men at the hearing to focus on changing their lives and using Davon’s death as motivation. He noted that, as a youth, he sold drugs and ran and shot guns in his Southeast neighborhood, but changed the trajectory of his life.
“I have a forgiving heart. It’s what God wants,” he told the men. “I came from the same background. I just changed my mind-set. I put the gun down and asked God for forgiveness. That is what you have to do.”
A slain boy, his grieving teammates and a football coach’s rush to save them
McGill said he saw Davon every day, and he reminded the men that Davon had great respect for them in the neighborhood. “I know he looked up to you,” the coach said. “I just pray for this family that God brings us peace and provides a calming salve for the family.”
The judge said she was surprised by the dozens of letters written by family, friends, former schoolteachers, pastors and deacons on behalf of two of those convicted in the case — Wingfield and General — and noted how different the descriptions of the men in the letters were to the description of those that would kill a child. She ordered all four men to obtain their GEDs while in prison.
After Friday’s hearing, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) opened a news conference on National Gun Violence Awareness Day with a moment of silence for the slain youth.
“We know today that the people responsible for Davon’s death were held accountable in our courts,” Bowser said. “We know that doesn’t bring him back. It is a painful, tragic, flesh and blood reminder of the cost of gun violence … There are real people, real children, real futures that end when people recklessly use guns in our community.” | 2022-06-03T21:18:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. men sentenced in 2020 fatal shooting of 11-year-old Davon McNeal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/davon-mcneal-sentencing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/03/davon-mcneal-sentencing/ |
Izzy Bradford has a rare inherited nutritional disorder that forces her to need special formula to function properly. (Family Photo)
That changed after Abbott Nutrition recalled formula and closed a plant. Now Chamberlin, whose daughter needs a low-protein diet, has found herself counting cans, experimenting with small quantities of potential substitutes and reassuring eight-year-old Izzy. “We’re going to be able to get my milk, right?” Izzy sometimes asks. “And I say yeah,” Chamberlin said. “Because it’s kind of all I can say right now.”
The nationwide formula shortage has focused on the plight of infants. But some older children and adults depend on specially formulated powders, much of it made by Abbott, to compensate for a variety of ailments, from malformed bowels and allergies to problems processing nutrients like protein. While most healthy babies can switch easily from brand to brand, for these people, a poorly chosen substitute can either taste intolerable or prompt dehydration, seizures and even death.
“It’s a cautionary tale of allowing a company to monopolize the marketplace when it’s a very sensitive population of clients,” said Tiffani Hays, the director of pediatric clinical nutrition education and practice at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The shortage began in February after revelations of bacterial contamination at the Abbott plant in Sturgis, Mich., which the company closed. Four children were sickened, and two died.
The shutdown stopped production of specialized products like the one that Izzy relies on. Izzy, who has the rare inherited disorder phenylketonuria, or PKU, is an energetic tree climber when fortified with Abbott’s Phenex. Without it, her mood quickly changes, and she loses focus. If she were deprived of it for longer periods, she would likely develop intellectual disabilities and other major health problems. Amino acid-modified formula remains crucial into adulthood, particularly for anyone considering becoming pregnant, when uncontrolled PKU can wreak havoc with a baby’s development.
Abbott announced on April 29 that it would begin releasing limited quantities of the metabolic formulas that had been on hold, including Phenex. Last week, the company said it would release another commonly used product, EleCare. The Sturgis plant is scheduled to reopen Saturday, prioritizing the production of these and other specialty products, but it will take six to eight weeks before they get to the people who depend on them. “Our number one priority is getting infants and families the high-quality formulas they need,” an Abbott spokesperson said.
How has the national baby formula shortage affected you?
The mix of nutrition Dolins takes, including Abbott’s Ketonex, an amino acid-modified formula, is administered under the care of a physician, making it hard to stock up on supplies in preparation for emergencies. “I don’t know why we can’t have a little stockpile just in case something like this ever happened again,” she said. “Just to make sure we can survive.”
Dolins said she wasn’t too worried when the Abbott factory closed. She had already received her month’s supply, and she didn’t imagine the shutdown would last long. But gradually, as the plant remained shuttered, she began getting more and more scared.
“I was terrified. If this doesn’t open up and I run out of formula, I would die. I would literally die,” said Dolins, who said 85 percent of her daily nutrients come from formula. She has been rationing the powder, supplementing it with a cooler made by Nestlé that she can tolerate in small quantities. She also plays through worst-case scenarios in head. “I can be hospitalized for a little while. IV nutrition will sustain me for a little while,” Dolins said. “But ultimately I need my formula.”
Mark Corkins, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics nutrition committee, said that four children suffering from medical complications resulting from the formula shortage have been temporarily admitted to Le Bonheur.
The Abbott plant closing is not the first time patients have worried about shortages, according to Chester Brown and Joel Mroczkowski, clinical geneticists at the same hospital. Tornadoes and other natural disasters have interrupted the supply chain. And just as during natural disasters, keeping patients supplied has been a “community effort,” Brown said, relying on providers and dietitians to coordinate with insurance companies to allow for substitutions in a time of crisis.
Most of the patients he and Mroczkowski see are children, often spared from what used to be fatal diseases by routine infant screenings. Some patients with PKU stop taking formula once they have passed the critical point of brain development. But those who are thinking about becoming pregnant need to eliminate high-protein food from their diets, monitor their intake of fruits, vegetables and pasta, and revert to drinking a medical formula. If not, the baby may suffer developmental delays or have heart and other birth defects. “That is what we worry about,” Brown said.
Parents face long drives and empty shelves for baby formula
Adonis, now almost 4, was relying on Abbott’s EleCare Junior. After that was no longer available, Perkins switched to Neocate Junior, made by Nutricia, not realizing that the sudden high demand for that product would quickly put it on backorder.
That was when things got trickier still, as Perkins said her insurance pays only for formula that comes directly from the company. “I was frantically trying to find it online,” Perkins said, only to discover that the powder, which usually costs about $30 a can, had shot up to about $80. Adonis now gets 40 ounces of formula a day, in four separate feedings. A week’s supply would suddenly cost more than $300.
The Perkins family cobbled a strategy together, switching to an unpopular flavor, fruit punch, of another Neocate product. “Nobody wanted it,” Perkins said. “But since it goes through a tube, Adonis doesn’t taste it.” At one point, Perkins said, they were down to a day or two of formula. She felt her fears rise as she wondered how she was going to feed her child and what might happen if she switched to a brand Adonis could not tolerate, potentially sending him into hospital for IV nutritional support.
People who heard the story connected on social media, offering unused cans and even financial support. “We have three weeks worth,” Perkins said. “We don’t know after that. Nobody wants their child to starve.”
The predicament has resonated far beyond Collierville, Perkins said, revealing how many people have been affected by the shortage. “Everyone is thinking babies,” Perkins said. “But there is a whole community of special needs kids to teens and adults that require formula.”
The crisis, Chamberlin and other advocates say, has put a focus on broader questions of affordability and access for people with metabolic and digestive disorders. They are pushing to pass the Medical Nutrition Equity Act, which would broaden coverage under both public and private health insurance programs for specialized nutrition. Right now, advocates say, insurance companies can deny coverage for medical foods like Izzy’s low-protein pasta and limit reimbursement for formula depending on state policy, which Chamberlin likens to denying a diabetic their insulin.
“I have known families who have left relatives and jobs to go to a state with better coverage,” said Alison Reynolds, a District resident whose 19-year-old daughter has PKU.
Recognizing that many specialized products were manufactured only at Abbott’s Sturgis plant, the Food and Drug Administration a month ago called for formula to be released on a case-by-case basis, arguing that “the benefit of allowing caregivers, in consultation with their health care providers, to access these products may outweigh the potential risk of bacterial infection.” The Biden administration is working to secure formula from other countries, prioritizing specialty formula for people with rare metabolic disorders.
Nearly 200 Republicans vote against bill to ease baby formula shortage | 2022-06-03T21:22:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baby formula shortage life-threatening for some older kids and adults - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/03/baby-formula-shortage-metabolic-disorder/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/03/baby-formula-shortage-metabolic-disorder/ |
4 dead, 30 injured in train derailment
Report: New aircraft carrier near complete
CSIS suggested that the vessel could be launched as soon as Friday to coincide with the national Dragon Boat Festival, as well as the 157th anniversary of the founding of the Jiangnan Shipyard.
2 U.N. peacekeepers killed in blast
Two United Nations peacekeepers were killed and two more injured in Mali on Friday when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
“This is the sixth incident in which a U.N. peacekeeping convoy was hit since May 22,” Dujarric said.
Virtual Cosquer Cave to open to visitors: A permanent virtual exhibit of one of France’s most famous prehistoric sites, the undersea Cosquer Cave, is set to open its doors as concerns grow that it could be completely inundated as a result of rising tides driven by climate change. As of Saturday, visitors to Marseille will be able to see the Cosquer Mediterranee, a replica of the over 30,000-year-old site. The visual and audio “experience” features copies of the prehistoric paintings that made the cave internationally famous.
One dead in protest in Sudan: A protester has died from a gunshot wound in the chest sustained during demonstrations on Friday in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum, the Central Committee of Sudanese doctors said in a statement on Facebook. Friday’s demonstrations come after Sudan’s military ruler announced on May 29 the lifting of the state of emergency imposed after an October coup. | 2022-06-03T21:23:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WORLD DIGEST: June 4, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-4-2022/2022/06/03/4c6d2282-e33e-11ec-9611-6f35e4fddfc3_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-4-2022/2022/06/03/4c6d2282-e33e-11ec-9611-6f35e4fddfc3_story.html |
Ingram Marshall, composer who used electronics, natural sounds, dies at 80
By Allan Kozinn
Ingram Marshall working on composition with electronic keyboards at his home studio in Hamden, Conn., in 2003. (Cameron Bloch/AP)
Ingram Marshall, an influential American composer who used combinations of electronic sound and standard orchestral instruments to create deeply moving, atmospheric and often melancholic soundscapes, died May 31 at a hospital in New Haven, Conn. He was 80.
He had complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Veronica Tomasic.
Mr. Marshall’s music drew on a wealth of styles, from 18th-century hymnody and lush Romanticism to mid-20th century electronic composition and minimalism — a breadth of influences that made his music almost impossible to classify. He was sometimes called a post-minimalist, but he disliked the term, suggesting postmodernist as an alternative. But his music also embraced a time-expanding element — a sense of slowly unfolding — born of his fascination with the Indonesian gamelan, a traditional percussion ensemble that he discovered as a college student in the late 1960s.
Trained in the use of computers to produce musical sounds, first at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and later at the California Institute of the Arts, he created some pieces with purely electronic timbres — “blip and bloop and bleep” textures, as he once called them — but generally preferred collecting the sounds of the real world and modifying them with digital delays, looping and other techniques, often adding live instruments or vocals, which would be electronically processed as well.
His best-known work, “Fog Tropes” (1981), used sounds he recorded near San Francisco Bay, including fog horns at different pitches, ringing buoys, seagulls and wind. Looped and processed, the recordings became a dark-hued, hauntingly atmospheric score, to which he added music for a live brass sextet. In 2010, director Martin Scorsese used a section of the piece in his film “Shutter Island.”
“I never worship technology for itself,” Mr. Marshall told the online music website Perfect Sound Forever in 2003. “It’s only a tool and one must avoid the pitfall of always wanting the newest, most up to date technology in order to realize one’s music, because that perfect technology will never exist. It is better to use what you have, what you find at your disposal and make the best of it — then you are in charge.”
Another of Mr. Marshall’s most admired scores, “Kingdom Come” (1997) — a meditation on the Yugoslavian wars of the mid-1990s — uses heavily processed recordings of Christian and Muslim sacred music recorded in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, wrapped within a rich orchestral and choral fabric. Mr. Marshall had collected the music during a visit to the former Yugoslavia in 1985. When his brother-in-law, journalist Francis Tomasic, was killed in Bosnia in 1994, Mr. Marshall wrote the work as a kind of requiem for victims of the conflict.
“'Composers, poets and artists always feel useless in the wake of calamity,” he told the New York Times in 2001. “We are not firemen; we are not philanthropists or inspirational speakers. But I think it is the tragic and calamitous in life that we try to make sense of, and this is the stuff of our lives as artists.”
Other works, including “Gradual Requiem” (1978), “Hymnodic Delays” (1997), “Psalmbook” (2011) and “Magnificat Strophes” (2014), also draw on an innate spirituality.
Mr. Marshall sometimes used repetition and other minimalist techniques, but he rejected the dogma that drove the style, telling the New York Times in 2007 that where minimalism was concerned, “what was important was not the process as much as the expressive use of it.”
And although his music embraced dissonance when he needed it to communicate an idea or a particular atmosphere, he was as apt to write a graceful melody supported with a lush Romantic texture, as he did in “Authentic Presence” (2002), for solo piano, or “Dark Waters” (1995), for English horn and tape.
“Ingram Marshall is the great poet of the indistinct,” Village Voice critic Kyle Gann wrote in 2002. “His music is filmy, nebulous. It melts. It enters unobtrusively and dies by slowly slipping away. In between the drama can be gripping, but it sneaks up on you.”
Ingram Douglass Marshall was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on May 10, 1942. His father was a banker, and his mother was a homemaker who was also a talented amateur pianist and singer and encouraged her son’s interest in music.
Mr. Marshall pursued his musical studies at Lake Forest College in Illinois, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1964, and at Columbia University, where he studied musicology with Paul Henry Lang and composition with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Mario Davidovsky, two pioneers of electronic composition.
In 1966, Mr. Marshall continued his work in electronic music at the California Institute of the Arts, where he was a graduate assistant to the composer Morton Subotnick. In addition to studies of electronic music, Mr. Marshall discovered the Indonesian gamelan at Cal Arts and studied with K.R.T. Wasitodipura before traveling to Indonesia and Bali on a Fulbright fellowship to investigate further. He completed his master of fine arts degree in 1971 and remained at Cal Arts to teach.
Mr. Marshall was in the San Francisco area from 1973 until 1985, composing works such as “Fragility Cycles” (1978) for gambuh (a Balinese bamboo flute) and synthesizer, and “Fog Tropes,” which began as a contribution to another composer’s evening-long work about San Francisco’s weather. For a while, Mr. Marshall used the electronic component of the piece, then called “Fog,” as a prelude to performances of his “Fragility Cycles” (1978). But in 1981, John Adams — then the composer-in-residence at the San Francisco Symphony — invited Mr. Marshall to present a concert of his music and suggested he add brass to “Fog,” an idea that yielded “Fog Tropes” in its final form.
In 1985, Mr. Marshall married Veronica Tomasic, who survives him, along with their son, Dominic Marshall; a daughter from an earlier relationship, Juliet Simon; and four grandchildren.
After teaching at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., Mr. Marshall joined the faculty at Yale University in 1989 and settled in Hamden, Conn. He was a visiting professor and senior fellow at the Brooklyn College Institute for Studies in American Music in 1990 and 1991.
Several of Mr. Marshall’s students — including Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Armando Bayolo and Tyondai Braxton — became respected composers.
Among the musicians who commissioned and performed Mr. Marshall’s music were the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the guitarist Benjamin Verdery and the pianist Sarah Cahill. He composed a concerto for classical and electric guitars, “Dark Florescence” (2004) that was given its premiere at Carnegie Hall by Verdery and Andy Summers, the guitarist for the Police. He also collaborated with the photographer Jim Bengston on the multimedia works, “Alcatraz” (1982), about the California prison, and “Eberbach” (1985), about a German monastery.
“I have to confess,” Mr. Marshall told the online New Music Box in 2001, “I’m not prolific. I don’t write a lot of music and it takes me a long time to finish things and it used to worry me. I used to think ‘Oh, God, my career, it’s not gonna go anywhere unless I have four or five symphonies,’ you know, and more of this and more of that. But I always think of poets who maybe every five years publish a very slim volume of poetry …. I think of my work as a little like that, you know there’s a certain essence, there’s a certain concentrated quality to my work and that well, it’s the old thing quality versus quantity. I just try to focus on doing what I do well. It’s not a lot, but you get a lot more out of what I’ve done hopefully.” | 2022-06-03T21:23:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ingram Marshall, composer, dies at 80 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/03/ingram-marshall-dies-composer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/03/ingram-marshall-dies-composer/ |
Bill Barr’s reign of innuendo — unmasked
Attorney General William P. Barr at the White House in April 2019. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
This week saw the unmasking of former Trump administration attorney general Bill Barr, and it wasn’t pretty.
Hours after the jury dismissed Durham’s bull, BuzzFeed published a previously secret Justice Department report, also ordered by Barr, in which Barr’s own DOJ concluded that the Obama administration didn’t intend to expose the identity of Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn “for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons.” It was further evidence that another favorite Trump claim enabled by Barr — that Obama officials engaged in illegal “unmasking” — was bunk.
The day after these twin repudiations of Barr’s fantasies, the hoaxster explained himself on Fox News — by arguing that Durham’s failure in court was in fact a triumph. “While he did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury,” Barr said, “I think he accomplished something far more important.”
This is about as convincing as the Washington Nationals saying, “While we did not succeed in scoring a run for 27 innings, we think we accomplished something far more important.” In a courtroom, a prosecutor either wins or loses.
So what did Barr think was more important than Durham actually winning his case? “He crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative,” Barr said, and “he exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI.”
Durham didn’t “crystallize” or “expose” anything. He packed his court filings with innuendo, and the jury decided he hadn’t made his case. The only conviction Durham has earned to date was a plea deal with an FBI lawyer over a doctored email — and that wrongdoing was uncovered by the Justice Department’s inspector general, not Durham.
But Barr’s argument, that the innuendo Durham spread is “far more important” than proving actual wrongdoing, unmasks Barr’s perverted view of justice. He didn’t tap Durham (or John Bash, who handled the unmasking probe) primarily to prosecute criminal behavior. He launched the inquiries to tell a political “story.”
“Part of this operation is to try to get the real story out,” Barr told Fox News. “And I have said from the beginning, you know, if we can get convictions, if they are achievable, then John Durham will achieve them. But, the other aspect of this is to get the story out.” Bringing a case for such a purpose violates Justice Department policy.
Barr made space for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to predict “one of the biggest political scandals in American history”; for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) to proclaim a scandal “bigger than Watergate”; for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to claim there was a “smoking gun found”; for Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) to declare “a threat to democracy itself”; and for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to allege that Obama officials “were unmasking anyone and everyone so that they could leak information to a press that was willing to take that illegal information.”
Barr, unmasked, now claims the federal jurors in Durham’s failed case violated their oaths by following political biases. “A D.C. jury,” he said, “is a very favorable jury for anyone named Clinton and the Clinton campaign. Those are the facts of life. … There are two standards of the law, and we have had to struggle with that.”
So, now, Barr is trying to discredit the centuries-old American jury system. It’s just one more “story” he tells to replace the rule of law with the reign of innuendo. | 2022-06-03T21:23:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The end of 'unmasking' and Durham probes reveals Bill Barr's reign of innuendo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/barr-unmasking-durham-probes-bogus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/03/barr-unmasking-durham-probes-bogus/ |
Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren to retire in September
Saddleback Church's founder and senior pastor, Rick Warren, in February 2014. (Nick Ut/AP)
(RNS) — After more than four decades, the pastor of one of the nation’s largest and most influential churches is ready to step down.
“This afternoon, at our all-staff meeting held at the Lake Forest campus, I was finally able to publicly announce that we have found God’s couple to lead our congregation, and that they have agreed to come!” Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren told his Orange County, Calif., congregation in an email on Thursday.
The email included a link to a video featuring Warren and his wife, Kay, along with Andy and Stacie Wood of Echo Church in San Jose. Andy Wood, 40, is currently Echo’s lead pastor, while Stacie Wood is a teaching pastor. They will have the same roles at Saddleback.
Saddleback leaders spoke with about 100 potential candidates before settling on Wood, who preached at the church this year.
Wood plans to step down as pastor of Echo Church at the end of June and will move to Orange County to begin the transition. The first step will be a conversation between the Warrens and the Woods during services over Father’s Day weekend. In August, the couple will begin attending Saddleback.
The church will celebrate Warren’s ministry during the first few weekends in September. Wood’s first official day as pastor will be Sept. 12.
In May 2021, Saddleback made headlines after ordaining three female staffers as pastors — a controversial step for Southern Baptists. The SBC’s statement of faith limits the office of pastor “to men as qualified by Scripture.” But Southern Baptists disagree over whether that applies only to the church’s senior pastor or whether it bars any women from having the title of pastor. They also disagree over whether women can preach in a Sunday service.
At the SBC’s annual meeting, Saddleback was reported to the Credentials Committee, which is charged with deciding whether a church is in “friendly cooperation” with the denomination. Though some churches have left the SBC after naming women as pastor, the denomination has never officially removed any church for having a woman pastor.
Filling Warren’s shoes will be a challenging task, as the current Saddleback pastor has long been one of the most influential Christian leaders in the country, shaping everything including how pastors dress as well as how they organize and start new churches.
After graduating from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in December 1979, Warren and his wife, along with a 4-month old baby, packed up their belongings and moved to the Saddleback Valley in Orange County, then one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States.
In his 1995 book, “The Purpose Driven Church,” Warren described poring over demographic and census data in the summer of 1979, searching for the right place to start a new church — stopping only to call his wife a few times a day to see if she had gone into labor.
The church launched on Easter Sunday in 1980, with a crowd of about 200 people in a rented space at the Laguna Hills High School in Orange County, and never looked back.
By 1992, the church had grown to 6,000 and bought a 74-acre site the church still calls home. The church is now one of the largest congregations in the country, drawing more than 23,000 worshipers, meeting in more than a dozen locations.
The church, though Southern Baptist, downplayed culture war battles and eschewed traditional church culture for a more casual, come-as-you-are approach to worship, one newcomers could easily embrace. In the early days, Warren was known for preaching in a Hawaiian shirt — prompting a new fashion trend among pastors.
From his early days of starting Saddleback, Warren hoped to spend his entire ministry at the church. One of his heroes as a young pastor was W.A. Criswell, who spent five decades as pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, and Warren hoped to emulate Criswell’s tenure. | 2022-06-03T21:23:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren to retire in September - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/03/saddleback-pastor-rick-warren-retire-september/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/03/saddleback-pastor-rick-warren-retire-september/ |
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