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By Julie E. Greene | AP
Tolson’s Chapel is pictured on May 31, 2022, in Sharpsburg, Md. The chapel was designated a National Historic Landmark in January 2021. A dedication ceremony for its landmark plaque will be held June 11, 2022. (Colleen McGrath/The Herald-Mail via AP)
SHARPSBURG, Md. — For most of the American Reconstruction period following the Civil War, a one-room chapel on Sharpsburg’s East High Street served as church and school for the local African American community.
The timing of the chapel’s National Historic Landmark application was fortuitous as the National Park Service, which oversees the national landmark program, was looking for buildings or sites representative of the Black experience during Reconstruction, Wallace said.
The only other place in Washington County that is designated a National Historic Landmark is Fort Frederick, which received the honor in 1973, according to the historic landmarks’ website. A state park, the stone fort near Big Pool was built to be part of the state’s frontier defense during the French and Indian War.
The landmark designation opens the Tolson’s nonprofit up to more grant opportunities and has already led to more visitors for the historic chapel, Wallace said.
A Montessori high school class from Kensington, Md., visited the chapel last year and several younger home-school classes have visited. Wallace said the Montessori educator, looking for buildings representative of the Black experience during Reconstruction, learned about Tolson’s through a new website the National Park Service created about the chapel.
Edie Wallace, a past president of The Friends of Tolson’s Chapel, said the person who donated the pot-belly stove recounted buying it from Virginia Cook and Frances Monroe, among the chapel’s last members, when the stove was sitting in front of the chapel on sale. Wallace said the stove looked to be from around 1900 to 1920 and would have been used to provide heat.
The chapel is named for its first pastor, John Tolson, a Black man assigned to the Hagerstown circuit by the Methodist Church’s Washington Conference — its Black conference, Wallace said. The congregation was established in 1865, a year after the state of Maryland abolished slavery.
“It gave them independence. A space where they were free to be themselves. That they weren’t being watched,” Wallace said.
As of 1860, a year before the start of the Civil War, 1,435 free Blacks lived in Washington County, according to the chapel’s application to become a National Historic Landmark. That population included Blacks who were born free and former slaves who were set free or who bought their freedom. Census data indicates, per the application, that “most free Blacks in the Sharpsburg area worked as servants, housekeepers, farm hands or ‘laborers.’”
Wallace said, to her, the church’s association with the Freedmen’s Bureau is nationally significant. Congress established the bureau in 1865 to guide the South from a slave society to a free-labor society, according to the chapel’s register application. The bureau’s duties included helping freed people establish schools.
The bureau assigned Ezra Johnson, a white man, to be the first teacher at the “American Union School” in Tolson’s Chapel in April 1868, according to the application and brochure. Later teachers would be Black, including John J. Carter and James Simons. Simons’s father, David, was one of the chapel’s first trustees and who became the school’s first teacher during its tenure as a county school, Wallace said.
The Sharpsburg Colored School operated in Tolson’s until 1899, when a frame schoolhouse was built in the area, according to the chapel’s brochure.
With The Friends of Tolson’s Chapel working to become a nonprofit, the Save Historic Antietam Foundation acquired the church in 2002, according to Wallace and the brochure. The Friends became a nonprofit in 2006 and took over ownership two years later, according to the brochure.
The cemetery has 36 marked burials with death dates, according to a 2013 preservation assessment of the cemetery. Cook and the Simonses are among those buried in the chapel’s cemetery. Others buried there include Wilson Middleton, a church trustee and member of the U.S. Colored Infantry; Hilary Watson, who was enslaved at the Otto Farm; and Jeremiah Summers, who was enslaved at the Piper Farm. Both farms are part of Antietam National Battlefield.
Camel, 40 years old in 1860, was “employed as a servant on the William Roulette farm,” according to the chapel nonprofit’s website. She had been enslaved by Peter Miller, a Roulette family member by marriage, and freed by Andrew Miller in June 1859. It appears Camel immediately took a job at the Roulette home where she stayed the rest of her life, the website states.
Camel was a member of both Tolson’s Chapel, to which she donated a large Bible, and to Manor Church, a Dunker church north of Sharpsburg in whose cemetery she was buried, the website states. | 2022-06-11T13:41:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Historic chapel, school designated historic landmark - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/historic-chapel-school-designated-historic-landmark/2022/06/11/ae379dd2-e986-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/historic-chapel-school-designated-historic-landmark/2022/06/11/ae379dd2-e986-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html |
Man arrested for planting flowers on fiancee’s grave found guilty of littering
A planter box built by Winston “Winchester” Hagans at the gravesite of his fiancee, Hannah Ford. Hagans was arrested and found guilty of littering this week. (Courtesy: Winchester Hagans)
An Alabama man who planted flowers on the gravesite of his fiancee and was arrested at the direction of the woman’s disapproving father was found guilty of littering this week.
About a month after Winston “Winchester” Hagans got engaged, his fiancee, Hannah Ford, was killed in a three-car crash in January 2021 that shattered what was supposed to be the happiest time of their lives. To honor the 27-year-old, Hagans placed a planter box full of fresh flowers and photos of the two of them on her grave in Auburn, Ala.
But earlier this year, Hagans was arrested on a charge of criminal littering. City officials had reassured him that he could put the planter at Ford’s gravesite unless there was a complaint. Then he discovered that a complaint had been filed — by the Rev. Tom Ford, his fiancee’s father.
“The police don’t enforce the law unless the owner of the plot tries to do something about it,” Hagans told The Washington Post earlier this year, adding that his late fiancee’s father did not approve of their relationship.
Hagans was convicted Thursday on one count of criminal littering and ordered to pay about $300 in fines and court costs, the Opelika-Auburn News reported. The 32-year-old man was also given a suspended jail sentence of 30 days that will remain suspended as long as Hagans does not place any more flowers or planter boxes on his fiancee’s grave.
He put flowers on his fiancee’s grave. Her father had him arrested on a charge of littering.
Hagans and Hannah Ford met at a coffee shop in Montgomery, Ala., and bonded over their faith, he wrote on his website. Ford’s father was pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Montgomery, and Hagans’s father is an evangelist in Opelika, Ala. As the couple kept running into each other at the coffee shop, Hagans said he made sure to bring a deck of cards with him so they could play games of “nines” with each other.
Hannah Ford was a rising star in Republican politics in Alabama. She worked on several political campaigns, including Roy Moore’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2017. Moore lost the race to Democrat Doug Jones after a woman accused the Republican of initiating a sexual encounter when she was 14.
Ford, who went on to lobby for conservative issues in Alabama and work for evangelist Scott Dawson’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign, had “a kind heart, happy attitude, great wisdom and many talents,” her family wrote in her obituary.
“She may have been small in stature, but she was a giant when she walked in a room,” Dawson told AL.com last year. “She knew how to deal with senators, members of the House, judicial candidates.”
Her father, however, did not approve of the couple’s relationship, Hagans said. At one point, the pastor demanded that the couple not communicate with each other for 30 days, Hagans said. When they decided to keep dating, the decision fractured the relationship between Hannah Ford and her father.
“We jumped through all of his hoops to be together,” Hagans previously told The Post. “We had to figure out if going through the craziness was worth it. She told me, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t just stop. You had every reason to stop. Why didn’t you just move on?’ And I was like, ‘You’re worth it; you’re an amazing person.’ ”
When Hagans and Ford got engaged on Dec. 5, 2020, she shared on Facebook how she had cried her eyes out with “happy tears.”
“I still can’t believe I actually got to say YES to you!!!” she wrote. “I LOVE YOU and I simply can’t wait to be your WIFE!!!!!”
The couple’s wedding date was fast approaching, and they began to look at venues. As they were leaving a barn venue, they recounted how they still had much planning to do. She leaned over, kissed Hagans on the cheek and told him she was looking forward to seeing him in a couple days.
“I love you so much. I hate leaving you,” he recalled her saying. “I just can’t wait until we don’t have to be apart.”
It was about 7 p.m. on Jan. 16, 2021, and Ford was driving from the venue to her home in Montgomery. But as she was traveling on Narrow Lane Road, the driver of a sedan lost control and collided with another car, which rammed into Ford’s SUV, according to police.
When she didn’t respond to his texts or voice mails, Hagans contacted her roommate and learned she had not reached home. He knew something was wrong and raced about 60 miles from his home in Opelika to Montgomery.
When he approached the intersection of the crash, he asked whether anyone involved in the wreck matched Ford’s description. Paramedics took him to see the crushed car, which caused him to collapse in the middle of the street.
“I was thinking, ‘There’s no way she could be gone,’ ” Hagans said. “She was the most loving and kind and hopeful and generous person I ever met.”
“She was one mile away from her home,” Dawson told AL.com.
The sadness of losing his fiancee deepened, Hagans said, when her family made it clear to him that he wasn’t welcome at her funeral.
Hagans was pulled over by police in Opelika in January. By the time he had gathered his license and registration, he said there were three police cars. Authorities told him there was an arrest warrant for him in Auburn — something Hagans said was “impossible.”
“The cop said, ‘I’ve never seen this before, but the warrant is for littering,’ ” Hagans said. “When I was sitting in the back seat of the police car, I saw that [Tom Ford’s] name was on there.”
Certain burial plots in the state are owned and controlled by the family of the deceased and are considered private property. David Dorton, a spokesman for the city of Auburn, confirmed to The Post that Hagans was arrested Jan. 24 “after a warrant was signed by another citizen.”
“Any citizen has the right to pursue a criminal charge against another upon showing that sufficient probable cause exists to believe that a crime has been committed,” Dorton said in a statement.
On Thursday, Tom Ford testified in the nonjury trial at Auburn Municipal Court that Hagans had placed a total of 10 planter boxes on the grave since May 2021, which the father either discarded or sent back to the man that would have been his son-in-law.
“The first box, when I saw where it was, I picked it up and it fell apart,” Ford said, according to the News. “It was a rotten piece of wood with some pictures on it, so I discarded it.”
Ford testified that the cemetery has regulations on what can be placed at a gravesite. City Prosecutor Justin Clark noted that these regulations outline how “benches, urns, boxes, shells, toys and other similar articles are not permitted to be placed or maintained on any lot of grave in said cemetery.”
Ford acknowledged in court that he “certainly did not” approve of the relationship between his daughter and Hagans, adding that he only found out about their engagement from other people. He said he had asked a friend to tell Hagans to “please not put [planter boxes] there anymore, that they weren’t wanted, and that they weren’t allowed by the city.” When the seventh, eighth and ninth planter boxes were removed, Ford filed a criminal complaint to the Auburn Police Department. A 10th planter box was found after the complaint was filed, he said.
“I find no joy to be here, and I did everything I could not to be here,” Ford said this week, according to the News.
Before he was convicted, Hagans expressed his gratitude on Facebook to the friends and family who have supported him, “or just let me vent,” about not just losing his fiancee but also being tried for putting a planter box of flowers on her grave.
“It means more to me than you will ever know,” he wrote. “It has honestly saved my life.” | 2022-06-11T14:06:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alabama man Winston Hagans convicted of littering after planting flowers on fiancee’s grave - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/11/alabama-flowers-fiancee-grave-littering-hagans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/11/alabama-flowers-fiancee-grave-littering-hagans/ |
The only truthful assurance we can offer our children about gun violence: There are people who are trying to reduce the number of victims
One of Theresa Vargas's sons stands in front of a gun violence memorial on the National Mall. (Theresa Vargas /The Washington Post)
The thing about fourth-graders is …
Fourth-graders are old enough to present reasoned arguments and young enough to wear cartoons on their pajamas.
Fourth-graders still get excited about Happy Meals even as their appetites outgrow those kid-size portions.
Fourth-graders, unlike babies, don’t leave you wondering who they might become; they offer constant glimpses.
“If given the opportunity, Lexi would have made a positive change in this world,” Kimberly Rubio said Wednesday during emotional testimony about her daughter, who was one of the children killed by a gunman who terrorized two fourth-grade classrooms in Uvalde, Tex., killing 19 students and two teachers. “She wanted to attend St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, on a softball scholarship. She wanted to major in math and go on to attend law school. That opportunity was taken from her. She was taken from us.”
I am a mom of a fourth-grader and a second-grader, and she’s right — I can’t imagine her pain. But I have spent the days since the Uvalde shooting knowing her reality could easily be mine. Many parents I know have. We have been wrapping our arms around our kids tighter. We have been dropping them off at school and feeling uneasy at the sight of police cars that are suddenly parked outside. We have talked to them about what happened in Texas, trying to divulge brutal facts in gentle ways, before they find out elsewhere.
Recently, my family was walking along the National Mall when we came to a display of flowers representing lives cut short by gun violence in the country. I started to lead my sons past it quickly, but they pulled me toward it, and I let them. Between them and the Washington Monument stood more than 45,000 flowers, creating a visual reminder of the number of Americans who die annually from gun violence. I later talked to my sons about what they saw and realized the only truthful assurance I could offer them was this: There are people right now who are trying to reduce that number.
On Saturday, thousands of people are expected to gather in D.C. to march in support of ending gun violence. The event, which was put together by leaders of March for Our Lives, the organization founded by student survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., comes weeks after the Uvalde school shooting and the Buffalo grocery store shooting that left 10 dead.
This time needs to be different because we know too well what will happen if it’s not. Surrounding that march, throughout Washington, are plenty of reminders of that: Murals of the lost. Grief-gutted parents. Traumatized children. People paralyzed by bullets. And constant threats of school violence, some that make the news and many that don’t.
RuQuan Brown, a 20-year-old Harvard University student who attended Benjamin Banneker Academic High in D.C., was among the scheduled speakers for the march. He has been personally affected by gun violence. It took from him a football teammate in 2017 and his stepfather in 2018.
“We, in this city, experience this bologna every day,” Brown said of District residents.
An 11-year-old boy’s killing isn’t proof black lives don’t matter to black people. It’s proof of our collective failure.
Brown said he planned to speak about “love” at the march.
“The truth of the matter is that it isn’t going to get better until Americans care more about love,” said Brown who created a nonprofit called Love100 and a company called Love1. “Gun violence is a symptom of a broken nation … Love is going to address, ‘Why did I pick up this gun?’ Love is going to address, ‘Why have Black people been suffering from violence again and again?’ Love is going to hold and heal people through their brokenness.”
In the days since the Uvalde shooting, schools across the country have experienced a wave of violent threats. One of those threats occurred at my children’s elementary school and directly involved my fourth-grader’s class. | 2022-06-11T15:03:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | March for Our Lives rally brings hope this time is different - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/11/march-guns-this-time-different/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/11/march-guns-this-time-different/ |
Activists say this holiday is important for everyone to acknowledge and support
By Janay Kingsberry
Groups gather in D.C.’s Black Lives Matter Plaza in 2021. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post; Washington Post illustration)
Since 2016, Lee has trekked the country in those laced-up sneakers to push for national recognition of Juneteenth, which commemorates June 19, 1865. On that day, Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Tex. — more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Meet Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist who marched for miles to make Juneteenth a federal holiday
Last year, Lee’s efforts finally succeeded when President Biden signed legislation establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
Among the most common ways to recognize Juneteenth are celebrations and festivities, said Austion, whose D.C.-based foundation organizes an annual festival around the holiday. This year’s event spans four days and includes a block party, golf tournament, virtual career fair and Father’s Day reception. “We were really founded on the purpose of recognizing Juneteenth,” Austion said, “but [also] really celebrating more Black excellence, Black culture, freedom overall for all people.”
Laws don’t truly make holidays. We have to learn how to celebrate them together. | 2022-06-11T15:12:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 meaningful ways to observe Juneteenth this year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/11/juneteenth-how-to-celebrate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/11/juneteenth-how-to-celebrate/ |
At least 15 potential 2024 candidates are traveling the country, huddling with donors or testing out messages — even if Trump runs
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) speaks during the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
At least six senators have made appearances in Iowa or New Hampshire already, joining former Trump advisers and appointees like Pence, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former ambassador to the U.N. Nicki Haley. Nine potential candidates, including former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, have spoken at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, laying out their vision for the future of the party, with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a prominent Trump critic with a national profile, scheduled to speak there on June 29. Pompeo in particular has been aggressive at working donors and operatives, asking many what he needs to do to win the nomination. Pompeo has told others he would run against Trump, though he has not made a final decision, people who have spoken to him say.
Internal polling by Club for Growth and other private show Trump easily winning primaries at the moment in many early states, though such polls are historically a poor predictor of the outcome two years out.
“I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t run. All the polling shows he would be the front-runner by a country mile. The day that Trump makes it clear he’s going to run — it would be a mountain to climb to beat him,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a frequent confidant. “If it’s a policy election, he’s in good shape. It’s his primary to lose.”
Many potential candidates disagree, pointing to a long history of early front-runners for presidential nominations falling out of favor. Former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was not a contender in some 1990 polling for the Democratic nomination. In June of 2006, Gallup found that 36 percent of Democratic-leaning voters supported then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for the 2008 nomination, followed by 16 percent for former vice president Al Gore. The eventual winner of both the nomination and the presidency, Barack Obama, did not yet rate.
The same pattern has haunted Republicans. In June of 2006, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani led the Republican field in Gallup with 29 percent support among Republican-leaning voters. He would finish the primaries two years later without winning a single delegate. Then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who had polled hear the top of the pack in 2015, dropped out two months after declaring his candidacy.
The political team of Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has been seeking to expand his donor base, reaching out to major contributors far from South Carolina with what one recipient described as “highly sophisticated and personalized communications.” He recently spoke at the Reagan library and has appeared in both New Hampshire and Iowa since 2020.
“There are going to be very few people standing on the stage that have the breath of national security experience that he has,” said one Arkansas Republican operative who has tracked Hutchinson’s activities. “He is a party guy, he spoke at the convention in 2016. He is also the first to say it is time to move on.”
Hogan and Christie are also aiming to test the party’s appetite for moving on from Trump, as they have both become frequent critics of his behavior. A Post-ABC News poll released in May found that 6 in 10 Republican and Republican-leaning voters said party leaders should follow Trump’s leadership, compared with 34 percent who wanted to take the party in a different direction. | 2022-06-11T15:12:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The shadow race is underway for the Republican presidential nomination - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/11/republican-president-2024-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/11/republican-president-2024-trump/ |
Emmer tries to temper GOP confidence in a House rout in the midterms
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks during a news conference on May 11 in Washington, D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) knew he had a problem when Newt Gingrich showed up at the House GOP retreat in Florida in March.
Gingrich led the 1994 midterm blowout that helped Republicans gain 54 seats and their first majority in 40 years, the type of midterm result that today’s GOP lawmakers seemed to think is possible, given President Biden’s miserable job approval and inflation’s continuing to soar.
As chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Emmer needed to set expectations right. “I’m confident that we’re going to end up in the majority. But what that number is, we’ll let the voters tell us,” he recalled telling colleagues.
He was also trying to explain a bit of modern political science, tamping down a building sense of irrational exuberance among some Republicans and utter despair among some Democrats. There are many more less-competitive seats now than there were in the 1990s, before redistricting turned into a science.
Plus, voters have grown so polarized that straight-party voting has become the norm, leading to fewer seats that swing back and forth, according to Charlie Cook, an independent election analyst. Republicans gained more than 10 House seats in the 2020 elections even as Joe Biden won the presidential popular vote by more than 7 million. That historic anomaly left Emmer on the precipice of the majority, needing a net gain of five seats, but it also means there are few seats for Republicans to win.
“Just as the ‘A’ seat on an airliner is always a window seat, a party cannot lose a seat they don’t have. In modern times, big wave elections have tended to come from a party well behind in seats,” Cook wrote in National Journal.
Emmer blanched in November when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), after big GOP gains in Virginia and New Jersey’s off-year elections, predicted that this year’s midterms could be “more competitive” than the 2010 blowout in which Republicans flipped 63 seats.
“He walked it back pretty fast,” Emmer said, declining to say whether he asked McCarthy to dial back his predictions.
Aside from his thick head of white hair, Emmer couldn’t be more different from the professorial Gingrich. Emmer, 61, in his fourth term representing suburbs northwest of Minneapolis, presents as a classic Midwestern backslapping politician.
His hockey gear from a recent charity game is splayed all over his corner office at the NRCC. He wears a St. Cloud State University golf shirt and can rattle off the hockey’s teams recent history in the NCAA hockey tournament.
Emmer, in his second term running the campaign arm, doesn’t have every name of his top candidates memorized — “I forget her name,” he said of one favored candidate, “what’s her name?” — and cannot rattle off every district in contention. He is not a data maven, a contrast to his counterpart, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who once built a database analyzing 350 unique characteristics of House races.
Emmer is conservative but not flamboyant, different from his predecessor, former representative Michelle Bachmann (R), who favored the ideological warfare of cable news. After supporting an early lawsuit contesting the 2020 presidential election, Emmer voted to certify Biden’s victory.
But his demeanor belies a sharp study of history. He understands how today’s political battles mostly take shape close to the middle of the field, between the two parties’ 40-yard lines, maybe even their 45-yard lines.
“The big majorities of the past, now the next 10 years, they’re going to be adjusted, probably be smaller,” Emmer said.
While he wants to set expectations properly, Emmer is still trying to build an operation that can maximize every GOP opportunity possible.
Yet Emmer touts them as possible gains, noting that four years ago they were held by longtime GOP incumbents. “These are seats that were held by Republicans until recently. These are seats that both candidates ran as moderate problem solvers who were going to come to Washington, D.C., and actually get something done with Republicans,” he said, noting that Porter’s staunch liberal voting record is out of step with Orange County.
In the most recent House wave election, 2018, Democrats gained more than 40 seats and took the majority as the independent voters in the suburbs recoiled from Donald Trump’s erratic style in the White House.
According to Cook’s analysis, Democrats won seven seats in districts where Trump two years earlier had won by at least 10 points — five of which Republicans claimed in 2020.
Republicans believe that they will win some of these big Biden-margin seats. According to Emmer, the NRCC has run seven polls of the most competitive districts and found that independent voters and GOP voters have the same priorities: inflation, the economy and crime.
Democratic voters, he said, have focused on climate change and the coronavirus pandemic as their top issues.
“The voters are not that polarized. In fact, Republicans and independents are almost — well not almost — Republicans and independents, the independents that will determine who controls the House, are perfectly aligned,” he said.
Emmer takes a stronger line against the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, than most GOP leaders take, but he believes the ongoing select committee investigation is not moving middle-of-the-road voters who will decide most close races.
“I will tell you from a political standpoint, we’ve looked at this across the country. The issues that matter most to the people out there are inflation and the economy,” he said.
It’s clear that Trump remains such a wild card that many Republican candidates would prefer that the ex-president stay away from their races, particularly those in the suburbs.
Yet Republicans still can’t say that out loud.
“He makes his own decisions. He does his own thing when it comes to different candidates and incumbents,” Emmer said of Trump.
Emmer still remembers the bitter feeling he had at the first GOP caucus meeting after the 2020 elections, when, against the odds, his side gained seats.
If about 35,000 votes had broken the other way in five races, Emmer would have delivered the majority. He didn’t understand the standing ovation his colleagues gave him, likening it to being happy with just getting to the Super Bowl, like his beloved Minnesota Vikings, who lost the big game four times.
“Are they all Vikings fans just happy to be in the big game? You lost, you finished second. So the goal here is to finish it,” Emmer said. | 2022-06-11T16:43:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tom Emmer tries to temper Republican optimism at House rout - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/11/tom-emmer-republican-house-majority/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/11/tom-emmer-republican-house-majority/ |
For more than 200 years, the justices have mostly lived charmed lives, at least from the standpoint of high government officials. From John Marshall through Thurgood Marshall and up to the present day, there has been only one recorded attempt to kill a justice, in 1889 (Justice Stephen Johnson Field’s bodyguard, a U.S. marshal, killed the assailant). Someone shot a bullet through Justice Harry Blackmun’s apartment window in 1985, but police determined that the incident was probably random.
(In the fifth paragraph, corrected to say that a bullet went through Justice Harry Blackmun’s apartment window, not through the window of his Supreme Court chambers. The police determined that the attack was probably random.) | 2022-06-11T18:15:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Threat to Kavanaugh Will Irrevocably Change Justices’ Lives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/threat-to-kavanaugh-will-irrevocably-change-justices-lives/2022/06/11/769e440c-e9a9-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/threat-to-kavanaugh-will-irrevocably-change-justices-lives/2022/06/11/769e440c-e9a9-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html |
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland’s highest court has upheld the murder conviction and life sentence for a man who was 16 years old when he fatally struck a Baltimore County police officer with a vehicle.
The Maryland Court of Appeals rejected defense attorneys’ argument that it was unconstitutional to sentence Dawnta Harris to life in prison because he was a minor when he killed the officer in 2018. The court ruled on Wednesday that Harris’ age was properly considered when a judge sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences without parole were unconstitutional for children convicted of homicides The Maryland appeals court said that ruling didn’t apply in Harris’ case since he will be eligible for parole after 15 years. | 2022-06-11T18:15:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland high court upholds conviction in officer's killing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-high-court-upholds-conviction-in-officers-killing/2022/06/11/2dd2891c-e9a5-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-high-court-upholds-conviction-in-officers-killing/2022/06/11/2dd2891c-e9a5-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html |
Motorcyclist killed in crash in Woodbridge
A motorcycle driver was killed Friday night in a collision with an SUV at an intersection in Woodbridge in Prince William County, according to police.
The crash occurred shortly before 9:30 p.m. at Neabsco Mills Road and Smoke Court, north of Northern Virginia Community College.
Prince William County police identified the driver of the 2016 Honda motorcycle as Ricky Raiseem Whittington, 40, of Woodbridge. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities said he was wearing a helmet.
Police said Whittington was driving west on Neabsco Mills Road and struck a 2004 Lexus crossover SUV whose driver was turning off Neabsco Mills onto Smoke Court. Police said the speed of the motorcycle contributed to the crash.
The 31-year-old driver of the Lexus suffered minor injuries and was treated at the scene, police said.
Officials said the investigation is continuing. | 2022-06-11T18:28:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Motorcyclist killed in crash in Woodbridge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/11/crash-fatal-woodbridge-va/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/11/crash-fatal-woodbridge-va/ |
Julee Cruise, the whispery voice of David Lynch films, dies at 65
Julee Cruise sings "Falling" from the pilot episode of David Lynch's television series "Twin Peaks" in 1990. (CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)
Julee Cruise, a singer known for her breathy, dream pop collaborations with director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti on the soundtracks for “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks,” died June 9 in Pittsfield, Mass. She was 65.
The cause was suicide, according to her husband Edward Grinnan, who first posted the news on Facebook.
Ms. Cruise’s whispery “white angel” voice was, in essence, a character she created for Lynch and Badalamenti for the song “Mysteries of Love.” When the director couldn’t license “Song to the Siren” by This Mortal Coil for his 1986 film “Blue Velvet,” he jotted down his own ethereal lyrics on a napkin and charged Badalamenti with finding a vocalist.
Badalamenti and Ms. Cruise had met years earlier in a country-themed musical he wrote for a production in the East Village.
He asked her for referrals, “but he didn’t like any of the singers I recommended. He wanted dreamy and romantic. I said, ‘Let me do it.’ ”
“Mysteries of Love” accompanied the innocent courtship between Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sandy (Laura Dern) amid the dark depravity of “Blue Velvet,” and it crystallized a musical aesthetic that Lynch would maintain for years. He liked Ms. Cruise’s voice so much that he signed a record contract with her and produced her 1989 album “Floating Into the Night.”
“David doesn’t know how to talk in musical terms, so he talked to me like he was directing a film,” Ms. Cruise told the Los Angeles Times when the album came out. “He’d say things like, ‘Really sad, Julee, make it just rip your heart out!’ Or, ‘You’re singing into a void and feel sad but not hopeless.’ His music is different from his films. He’s much more tender and intimate in his music — it’s as if he’s whispering a secret to you in his songs.”
Clare Nina Norelli, author of the book “Soundtrack From Twin Peaks," told the Guardian in 2017, “Julee Cruise was a muse figure in that collaboration. There’s always a duality in [Lynch’s] films and she was a living embodiment of that Lynchian innocence.”
Ms. Cruise was, by nature, a Broadway belter. But she took Lynch’s lyrics and direction and, carried by the gentle synthesizer rivers and doo-wop aesthetic of Badalamenti’s music, became an uber-earnest pixie who symbolized Lynch’s obsession with the pop art from his childhood.
“Floating Into the Night” mostly evaporated upon release in 1989, and Ms. Cruise resumed waiting tables. Then Lynch used an instrumental of the song “Falling” as the theme for “Twin Peaks” in 1990 and cast her in the pilot as a singer in the central roadhouse bar — and she became famous. “Falling” went to No. 11 on the Billboard chart, and the album penetrated the Top 100.
Among the many fans was David Bowie, who “would put ‘Floating Into the Night’ on almost every night as ‘dinner music,’” Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, tweeted this week. “A staple.”
Three songs featuring Ms. Cruise were included on the 1990 “Twin Peaks” soundtrack album, which went to No. 22 on the Billboard chart and was a hit around the world. When Sinead O’Connor dropped out of “Saturday Night Live” in May 1990 because of opposition to the episode’s host — Andrew Dice Clay — Ms. Cruise was invited to sub and performed “Falling.”
“The music was strange,” Ms. Cruise said on The Red Room Podcast in 2018. “It wasn’t ’50s, and it wasn’t ’90s. And what was it? You know, it was something really cool and different.”
“Second album syndrome is the worst,” Ms. Cruise said in 2018. “L.A. is a lot like London. You know, they get sick of things real quick, and they got sick of ‘Twin Peaks’ real quick. And everyone ran.”
She joined the B52s, replacing Cindy Wilson as lead singer in 1992 and 1993. Twenty years later she released a new album, “The Art of Being a Girl,” which departed from the dream pop sound and showcased her more full-bodied warble, as did “My Secret Life” in 2011.
A trained actress, she played Petra in Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” in Wichita in the early 1980s, and Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical “Beehive.” In 2003, she played Andy Warhol and several other characters in the musical “Radiant Baby” in New York.
Her fame was forever confined to the Lynch projects, but those wispy songs had a major effect on several artists. Ms. Cruise could hear her influence reflected in Lana Del Rey and other singers, telling Rolling Stone in 2014: “They sing like sexy baby girls.”
Julee Ann Cruise was born Dec. 1, 1956, in Creston, Iowa. Her father was a dentist and an amateur pilot.
She majored in French horn performance at Drake University in Des Moines. After graduating, she acted in children’s theater in Minneapolis. She moved to New York around 1983 and studied acting with William H. Macy.
Ms. Cruise said her Lynch angel character was all musical theater. Her true personality was spunky, earthy and self-deprecating. She had doubts about the first album, “Floating in the Night,” and remembered taking it home for Christmas “and everyone in my family hated it,” she said in 2014. “They were like, ‘What are you singing about?’ One of my lawyers at the time said, ‘This is a novelty.’ I said, ‘Like Tiny Tim?’”
She suffered from lupus for decades, and consequently lost her hair and “had the bones of an 85-year-old woman at 33,” she said. She also battled “depression and alcohol and drug addiction,” her husband told NPR.
Survivors include Grinnan, her husband since 1988 and editor in chief of the nonprofit Guideposts; and a sister.
Like her father, Ms. Cruise had a pilot’s license. | 2022-06-11T19:46:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Julee Cruise, the whispery voice of David Lynch films, dies at 65 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/11/julee-cruise-david-lynch-singer-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/11/julee-cruise-david-lynch-singer-dies/ |
In the sixth and final episode of this series, a man accused of killing an officer during a no-knock raid speaks from jail about the risks to people on both sides of the door. As we investigate the history of these raids, we also hear from the mother of Breonna Taylor, who is pushing for an end to no-knocks. We’ll also hear from people who say this tactic is necessary. How did we get here – and what does the future look like?
The full series is out now wherever you get your podcasts. You can email the “Broken Doors” team with any tips or feedback at brokendoors@washpost.com. | 2022-06-11T19:46:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Broken Doors,' Episode 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/broken-doors-episode-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/broken-doors-episode-6/ |
At the Kennedy Center, Hancock’s well-worn tricks still surprise
The pianist kicked off his tour and gave funky, experimental character to jazz standards and his own tunes
Review by Michael J. West
Herbie Hancock, at the piano, performs at the Kennedy Center on June 10 with guitarist Lionel Loueke and drummer Justin Tyson. (Kyle Gustafson for The Washington Post)
At the top of his Friday night concert at the Kennedy Center, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock readied the crowd for an unconventional performance. “This is the beginning of a two-and-a-half month tour that we’re starting right here. That means you’re the guinea pigs,” he said. “We’re going to try out very strange, weird stuff, and let the chips fall where they may.”
Well, that’s the essence of improvised music, isn’t it? But the set wasn’t really that weird — not by Hancock’s standards, anyway. The lively, riveting performance leaned hard toward Hancock’s electronic jazz-funk experiments of the 1970s and ‘80s. Perhaps it wasn’t the stuff for jazz purists, but then again, purists buy tickets to a Hancock show knowing that they’re taking their chances.
Herbie Hancock stretches out and enjoys the jams at Kennedy Center
It did begin weirdly, though, with a whirlwind of sci-fi synth effects that took a few minutes to give way. Then trumpeter Terence Blanchard entered, surprising us with a chorus effect that made his horn sound like two but otherwise firmly in character. He kicked off a medley that included elements of “Speak Like A Child,” “Butterfly,” and — in a truly unexpected moment led by guitarist Lionel Loueke —the 1983 pop hit “Rockit,” which the keyboardist rarely plays live. “Was that fun?” Hancock asked at its conclusion.
Oh, boy, it was.
The funky vibe continued with thumping performances of “Actual Proof” and “Come Running to Me,” with Hancock donning a vocoder to sing the latter (in the spirit of the original 1977 recording). The former, though, was the one that best captured the musical spirit of the night. It became a long jam with aggressive rhythms from bassist James Genus and drummer Justin Tyson. Loueke led the charge, with Blanchard curiously laying out until late in the tune when he mellowly slipped in.
Hancock also applied that funky character to jazz standards like Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” which included a certified James Brown groove from Genus and Tyson, and to his own theme “Cantaloupe Island” (which the band played in a fairly straightforward fashion, save for a special zing from Genus and a loose piano solo from Hancock.) Hancock has played both hundreds of times.
Book review: Herbie Hancock’s ‘Possibilities’
Even so, the performance didn’t really become a “classic” Herbie show until the leader strapped on his keytar. He is one of the best-known players of the guitar-synthesizer hybrid, and its appearance alone caused a ripple of applause. Hancock played it briefly during one song in the evening’s set, but it was during the encore, “Chameleon,” that he really turned the instrument loose. First he moved to the front of the stage for a long solo, then turned around to face off with Genus, Loueke and Blanchard. The duel with the guitarist was remarkable, with the two of them first trading, then meshing into some dissonances that were downright avant-garde.
At age 82, Hancock is relying on an established set of tricks. But they retained their ability to surprise and delight. | 2022-06-11T20:38:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At the Kennedy Center, Herbie Hancock’s well-worn tricks still surprise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/11/herbie-hancock-kennedy-center/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/11/herbie-hancock-kennedy-center/ |
Gov. Youngkin, who ran on culture wars, takes cautious approach to Pride
Nat McKeller Crosby, left, greets Virginia LGBTQ+ Advisory Board Chairwoman Lisa A. Turner in front of the Capitol in Richmond on June 8. The two decided not to attend a reception at the Capitol given by Gov. Glenn Youngkin for Pride Month. (Steve Helber/AP)
VIRGINIA BEACH — Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who ran for office last year as a sunny but deeply conservative culture warrior, traveled to this gay-friendly city this week to meet with Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ group — chatting amicably with them for more than an hour without uttering a word about LGBTQ rights.
A day earlier, the Republican hosted a private Pride reception at the Capitol without inviting any of Virginia’s openly gay, lesbian or transgender state legislators.
More than a week into Pride Month, the new governor has not issued a proclamation but has made some deliberate — if highly cautious — outreach to a community that he once embraced as a private equity executive but hardly courted in last year’s gubernatorial campaign. Youngkin’s limited overtures are an extension of the balancing act he pulled off in the campaign — and, at a time when he’s often mentioned as a potential 2024 presidential contender, could set him apart on LGBTQ issues from likely contenders known for taking a harder line.
As co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, Youngkin celebrated on Twitter in 2019 when the Human Rights Campaign lauded the company as one of the nation’s “best places to work for LGBTQ equality.” But on his way to the governor’s mansion, he campaigned against certain trans-rights measures, such as opposing the participation of trans girls on teams that align with their gender identity. And while saying he accepts same-sex marriage as a matter of law, he also indicated he personally opposes such unions.
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said the governor’s recent overtures, such as the Pride reception, are consistent with his promise to be a governor for all Virginians.
“The Governor is committed to leading on behalf of all Virginians and events like this help strengthen our communities and the spirit of Virginia,” she said in a written statement.
Youngkin’s outreach, however limited, has surprised some political observers in a state where LGBTQ rights have not been widely championed by Republican leaders. Just two years ago, Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) got the boot from fellow Republicans after presiding over a same-sex wedding. Last year, a candidate for the GOP lieutenant governor’s nomination endured attacks from at least one Republican rival for supporting LGBTQ rights and attending a local Pride event. And this year, a Republican-led state House subcommittee killed a bipartisan effort to strip a defunct ban on same-sex marriage from the state constitution.
Youngkin’s overtures also run counter to the culture fights he has continued since taking office — and to the approach that two of his potential rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination have taken toward LGBTQ issues. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in March signed a law that bans discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in early elementary grades, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has directed his state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse for allowing their trans children to receive puberty blockers or gender reassignment surgery.
The two sides of Youngkin: Virginia’s new governor calls for unity but keeps stoking volatile issues
Just last month, Youngkin seemed to flirt with a policy similar to DeSantis’s as he sounded the alarm over age-inappropriate teaching.
“I think one of the biggest challenges that we have is that we aren’t allowing our children to, in fact, be children,” Youngkin said at a news conference called to release a report on the state’s K-12 schools. “And they’re being forced into discussions that, in all candor, they’re not ready to be — they’re not ready to have, all in the name of wanting to enlighten them.”
Youngkin declined to explain what he meant at the time and has announced no policy on that front.
“He’s dancing on the edge of a tightrope, not wanting to offend either side,” said conservative radio host John Fredericks, who has been supportive of Youngkin but thinks his have-it-both-ways approach to the issue “comes off as consultant-driven and swampy.” “If he’s supportive of the Log Cabin Republicans, as I am, and the LGBT community, as I am, then say it. It is what it is. But … he doesn’t want to end up as the next Denver Riggleman.”
Youngkin’s recent outreach includes a private lunch at the Executive Mansion with a group of Log Cabin Republicans earlier this month and his appearance Wednesday before the Virginia LGBTQ+ Advisory Board to condemn a hate-fueled disruption at a previous meeting. His efforts have drawn mixed reviews, with more liberal LGBTQ leaders highly skeptical of Youngkin’s motives and more conservative Log Cabin leaders happy for the outreach.
All but one member of the advisory board boycotted his Pride reception despite its convenient timing and location. (The event kicked off early Wednesday evening as the board wrapped up a meeting just steps from the Capitol.) Some board members warned during the meeting that their attendance would help the governor “gaslight” the public on his social views.
Chairwoman Lisa A. Turner also said it was “ridiculous” that some invitations had been extended with just two days’ notice and that the state’s four LGBTQ legislators — all Democrats — were not on the guest list.
“I appreciate the Governor’s invitation, but I think it is premature for this administration to celebrate LGBTQ+ equality when it has yet to take any meaningful steps to advance it,” James Millner, director of Virginia Pride, said in a written statement issued to the public.
But Michael Berlucchi, the one advisory board member to attend, said the event allowed him to engage with a governor he described as “still learning about our community.”
“I accepted his invitation because I perceived it to be a good-faith, honest attempt to engage all Virginians,” said Berlucchi, a Republican who is a member of the Virginia Beach City Council. “There’s obviously a gap there. … My attendance does not convey a total endorsement of the governor’s policies. Of course we have more work to do, and that’s why dialogue and learning are essential.”
Two years ago, when Democrats won full control of state government, Virginia passed sweeping LGBTQ-rights legislation that bans discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.
Some activists fear those gains could be reversed if Republicans, who flipped the House on Youngkin’s coattails and will get a shot at the state Senate next year, win full control of the legislature with a Republican chief executive. Adding to their anxiety is concern that the U.S. Supreme Court could reverse itself on same-sex marriage, which could have the effect of reviving Virginia’s defunct constitutional ban.
Holding a Pride reception two months after House Republicans killed an effort to repeal the state ban and replace it with an “affirmative right to marry is the equivalent of ‘thoughts and prayers’ without action,” said Del. Danica A. Roem (D-Prince William), who in 2017 became the first openly transgender person to be elected to any U.S. statehouse.
But some Log Cabin Republicans, who only recently established their three chapters in Virginia, said those fears are overblown.
Casey Flores, president of Log Cabin Republicans of Richmond, differs philosophically with some more-left-leaning members of the LGBTQ community on certain issues, including whether a business such as a wedding-cake bakery should be allowed to turn away gay customers on religious grounds. (“We don’t want you to have to bake the cake,” he said.)
But Flores said he feels confident that certain basic rights, such as the right to marry and adopt children, are secure in the commonwealth under Youngkin. Flores attended the mansion lunch and said while Youngkin made no policy statements or promises, the governor seemed to listen as some guests said they would continue to push for the same-sex marriage ban’s repeal.
“I thanked the governor for having the event,” Flores said. “This wouldn’t have been popular among Republicans even a decade ago. … I think it’s a little bit silly, the reaction from the left. They lambaste Republicans, very often calling them anti-gay, and then as soon as a Republican takes a step toward the gay community, they go crazy over it.”
While Youngkin took some skewering on Twitter for closing the Capitol reception to the press — “In Virginia we celebrate pride behind closed doors,” a columnist for the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press tweeted — some LGBTQ-rights activists acknowledged that Democratic governors Ralph Northam and Terry McAuliffe also held private Pride receptions at the Executive Mansion.
Youngkin’s appearance Thursday evening in Virginia Beach was open to the press but was billed on his public schedule in a way that included no tie to LGBTQ causes: “Governor Glenn Youngkin meets with business and community leaders.” An advisory issued to reporters a few hours beforehand noted that the event, at Town Center City Club, would be hosted by the Log Cabin Republicans of Hampton Roads.
Youngkin opened with a well-practiced spiel about his work to slash taxes, improve schools and wrestle the best budget possible out of a divided General Assembly. He threw out stats about higher workforce participation rates and shorter wait times at the Department of Motor Vehicles, which he said averaged 35 minutes when he took office in January.
“Today, the average wait time in the Commonwealth of Virginia is 11 minutes,” he said.
From there, Youngkin opened the floor to questions for 40 minutes — a risky proposition for a politician at any public forum, especially one hosted by a group whose cause he has not embraced.
But the crowd of about 60 LGBTQ leaders, business owners and members of the general public, who’d applauded heartily at the notion of 11-minute DMV wait times, stuck to kitchen-table fare. A massage therapist wanted help with licensing issues. Home builders and a nursing agency owner sought a fix for scarce skilled labor. A couple of moms wanted more career opportunities in the region so their kids won’t move away when they’re grown.
Had Log Cabin President Phil Kazmierczak not made a passing reference to his husband, or Virginia Beach Mayor Robert M. Dyer not referred to “the politics of inclusion” in his “welcoming city,” the event would have been ordinary Youngkin fare.
Kazmierczak said Youngkin is finding common ground with LGBTQ conservatives by speaking to issues they already agree on — lower taxes, for instance, or business-friendly policies. He does not expect Youngkin to champion LGBTQ rights, but also feels confident that the governor will not try to roll them back.
“He’s not going out of his way to create a show or a performance,” Kazmierczak said. “This is who he is. … I’ve had the opportunity to talk to him in private. He’s loving, he is welcoming, he is tolerant. ... He’s not going to try and roll [LGBTQ rights] back. … We are coexisting.” | 2022-06-11T21:13:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who ran on culture wars, takes cautious approach to Pride - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/11/youngkin-lgbt-pride-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/11/youngkin-lgbt-pride-virginia/ |
State report on Baltimore wastewater treatment plant details ‘failures at nearly every level’
The report was produced by the Maryland Environmental Service, which took over the plant in late March. It laid out a variety of infrastructure problems that have caused solid waste to build up in various parts of the sewage treatment process at the plant, leading to excessive releases of harmful bacteria and nutrients.
But it also dove into problems with management, safety and staffing, blasting Baltimore Department of Public Works officials for a “lack of leadership” and providing a first look at a failing culture inside the facility, where problems first became public last summer.
In addition to a litany of mechanical fixes, the report recommended the hiring of several new employees, including an on-site safety manager, a training and certification manager, and a biosolids manager with two supporting staff members, focused on processing solid waste.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Public Works emphasized that the issues at the plant predate public works director Jason Mitchell, who started in 2021, adding that the department has a “renewed commitment to continuing to address these challenges, including governance, operations, and employee safety” under his leadership.
“We fully recognize the long-standing challenges impacting the treatment plant and implementation of solutions to remedy these issues are already underway,” spokeswoman Yolanda Winkler wrote in an email. “Several of them have already been addressed.”
Meanwhile, recent reports from the city’s second wastewater plant — the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant — indicate mechanical issues there are continuing to worsen, resulting in pollution overflows and calls from environmental groups for that plant to come under state control as well.
In its report about the Back River plant, the Environmental Service found that all of the various shops in the facility were understaffed by 25 percent to 50 percent, with 50 vacancies in operations staff (about half of the team) and 44 vacancies across its other departments.
Its report described a lack of succession planning and training for new managers, adding that “most managers at the facility have only been in their current positions a few years due to turnover.”
The plant has endured years of neglect, in part because of a failure to track the life cycle of equipment in a centralized way, according to the report. The facility largely scorned preventive maintenance, perhaps due to understaffing, instead repairing machinery only after it broke.
The plant’s automation also does not work, meaning that most equipment runs on manual mode and controls rigged to keep them from “tripping out.”
The Environmental Service report catalogued dangerous conditions at the plant, such as pervasive sludge spills, broken doors leading to birds and other wildlife “taking up residency” in buildings, electrical panels “left open and exposed,” insufficient lighting and rusting catwalks — even after an employee fell to her death through a deteriorating catwalk in Baltimore’s other wastewater treatment plant in 2019.
“Most of the facility’s valves, pumps, blowers, mixers, and controls are not functional. Pumps are plugged with trash, drains are clogged, and floors are covered with water or sludge,” read the report. “The lack of maintenance activities or funding for repairs has caused the staff to find many unnecessary workarounds to keep the plant operating.”
But the plant has received millions of dollars in investments in recent years, including nearly a half-billion dollars for the Headworks Project, which made improvements at the beginning of the plant’s wastewater treatment process, including addressing a sewage bottleneck at the plant entrance. But even as the project was being unveiled, mechanical problems later in the process were becoming more dire. Eventually solid waste began to overwhelm various parts of the system, leading to the state takeover.
The report described a frustrated workforce with little supervision from plant management — and inadequate training.
Staffers from the Maryland Environmental Service observed plant employees sleeping in their cars during the work day and washing each other’s personal vehicles in exchange for “payment or free lunch.” They also observed apprentices at the plant training other apprentices, which the report dubbed a “recipe for failure.”
The report also described infighting between different groups of employees, including the maintenance and operations staffs, adding that verbal and physical altercations between employees “have been observed on both the supervisory and subordinate level.”
When a team of about a dozen workers from MES arrived at the plant, following an emergency order from then-Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles, they encountered a persistent lack of urgency among staff, according to Thursday’s report.
“The MDE representative at the meeting reminded DPW that it had actually been 7 months of noncompliance,” the report stated.
When the issue came up again at a May 16 meeting, a DPW official said it “would get something started soon.” Discussions about how to streamline the city’s procurement process for Back River also appeared slow-moving, the report noted.
Problems at the plant first came to light in August, when water-quality monitoring from local nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore flagged high bacteria levels outside Baltimore City’s second plant along the Patapsco River. After the group’s findings, state environmental regulators conducted increasingly frequent inspections at both plants and sued the city over the plants’ environmental woes in January.
The city also faces a suit from Blue Water Baltimore.
In March, after a fish kill in Back River, inspectors returned to the plant again and issued a report that Grumbles deemed evidence of the potential for “catastrophic failure” at the facility. If the city couldn’t bring Back River into compliance in 48 hours, the state would be taking charge of the effort, Grumbles said. | 2022-06-11T21:56:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | State report on Baltimore wastewater treatment plant details ‘failures at nearly every level’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/state-report-on-baltimore-wastewater-treatment-plant-details-failures-at-nearly-every-level/2022/06/11/8208f17a-e8f5-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/state-report-on-baltimore-wastewater-treatment-plant-details-failures-at-nearly-every-level/2022/06/11/8208f17a-e8f5-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html |
Class 4 girls’ soccer: Broad Run 3, Tuscarora 1
The Spartans captured the seventh state title in program history. (Courtesy photo/Broad Run Athletics)
The Tuscarora and Broad Run girls’ soccer teams have been on a collision course this spring. First they faced off in mid-May with a regular season championship on the line: Tuscarora won. Next, they met in the district tournament: That game went to Broad Run. Then, they met in the region championship: Tuscarora got its revenge.
So, neither program was surprised to see the other advance to Saturday’s Class 4 championship. It was the logical conclusion to an epic series: a fourth and final meeting, this time on the biggest of stages.
“And I guess if you’re looking at the cycle of things, this was our turn again,” Broad Run Coach Lauren Brewer said.
Indeed, it was. The Spartans blitzed the Huskies from the start Saturday in Spotsylvania, earning a 3-1 victory and the Class 4 crown. This is the seventh state title for the Broad Run program and first since 2015.
The Spartans (19-4) made it clear early that this game would not be like the others. Whereas the previous two championship meetings finished 1-0, Broad Run cracked Saturday’s game wide open by scoring three goals in the first 25 minutes. Morgan Adams, Taylor Reyes and Lauren Cornfeld found the back of the net in that order.
“We just wanted it a little more than them,” Cornfeld said. “We we were hungry, we knew what to do and we just shut down the game with three goals.”
The Huskies got one back just before the break, and the second half became about defense for the Spartans. With their offensive work done, the only thing between them and a championship was shutting down a familiar opponent.
“Today, we just had a different feeling,” junior defender Bella DiTommaso said. “I came into the game more confident than I ever had against [Tuscarora]. They beat us in regionals, so we were out for revenge. They can take regionals, but we’ll take states.”
Meridian falls short of title No. 12
In the moments after his team fell to Tabb, 1-0, in the Class 3 championship, outgoing Meridian boys’ soccer coach Frank Spinello asked his players not to hang their heads about the end of the season or the end of his tenure.
“You guys will be in the championship next year, and I’ll be right there in the crowd watching,” he said.
Spinello, who is retiring after 22 years with the program, said this was one of the most skilled and deepest teams he has ever coached. That says a lot considering the success he has had at the Falls Church school. He served as an assistant coach for 11 years and head coach for 11 years, helping the Mustangs win 11 titles in that time.
“The thing I hope to leave here is a value of work ethic,” Spinello said. “I know they will continue to come to play every day.”
The quest for No. 12 ended just short at Courtland High School in Spotsylvania on Saturday, as Tabb scored with 27 minutes remaining and the Mustangs couldn’t find a late equalizer.
“I told them afterward that this was going to sting and it was supposed to,” Spinello said. “Because that meant they gave everything that they had.” | 2022-06-12T00:16:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Broad Run girls’ soccer tops a familiar foe in Class 4 championship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/broad-run-girls-soccer-tops-familiar-foe-class-4-championship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/broad-run-girls-soccer-tops-familiar-foe-class-4-championship/ |
Matthew Staton, left, poses with opponent Vincent Truong after winning a second consecutive VHSL singles title. (Jasen Viggiani)
When Colgan’s Matthew Staton won the Virginia Class 6 singles title as a freshman last year, he knew it would be an even greater challenge to defend his spot on top.
Facing increased competition as programs rebooted once pandemic restrictions were lifted, Staton had to raise his game for his sophomore season. On Saturday, he made it clear 2021 was no fluke: Staton again donned the gold medal after the singles finals at Huntington Park in Newport News, where he swept W.T. Woodson senior Vincent Truong, 6-0, 6-2.
“I think the biggest challenge that I overcame was trying to get myself back up from last year and kind of keep the momentum going even after winning states last year,” Staton said. “I had to really lock in again, even after a lot of congratulations, a lot of happy moments, getting back into it and being like, ‘Okay, here we go again. … It’s only the beginning.’ ”
The doubles finals on Friday also featured Staton versus Truong, but in that match, Truong and his partner, Ansh Pathapadu, came out on top. It was a drawn-out battle, ending 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, but Staton said the loss motivated him to win the singles title, redeeming himself and doubles partner Rebhi Villasmil.
Staton was happy to see his young school’s tennis program continue to expand this season, particularly now that high school sports were mostly back to normal.
“It was kind of like a rebirth moment for high school tennis, especially compared to the two years before,” Staton said. “So it was really great to see, especially for me. Since I’m a sophomore, I haven’t been able to experience something like this before until now.”
The Class 6 girls’ finals were a story of nerves and revenge.
Madison junior Simone Bergeron knew she’d be in for a tough match against South County’s Kaitlin Nguyen, who beat Bergeron in the semifinals last year and just won this year’s doubles tournament with teammate Maya Wilson.
After losing the first few points during Saturday’s rematch, Bergeron had to mentally reset.
“I went down in the beginning just because of how nervous I was,” said Bergeron, who pulled it together in plenty of time to win, 6-4, 6-2. “But I took a couple of deep breaths before starting the next game, and I just focused more on every shot rather than the overall outcome of the match. … So it was super satisfying to win at the end. I was super happy, especially getting her back after the last one.”
In the Class 5 singles final, Bella De Luise of Independence defeated Sia Chaudry of Clover Hill, 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (8-6), in a match that was as close as a two-setter can be.
“It was a super tight match,” De Luise said. “I just wanted to stay confident and stay aggressive in my game because I didn’t really want to give her a ball she could take advantage of. … It’s just an honor to be able to be in states and play against some really good opponents.” | 2022-06-12T00:16:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Colgan sophomore Matthew Staton repeats as Class 6 tennis champion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/colgan-sophomore-matthew-staton-repeats-class-6-tennis-champion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/colgan-sophomore-matthew-staton-repeats-class-6-tennis-champion/ |
Lawsuit against Cristiano Ronaldo tossed over lawyer’s ‘bad-faith conduct’
Cristiano Ronaldo applauds fans at the end of Portugal's 2-0 win over the Czech Republic on Thursday in Lisbon. (Armando Franca/AP)
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo brought by a woman who accused him of sexual assault because her lawyer’s “bad-faith conduct” and use of “purloined” documents tainted the case.
Kathryn Mayorga alleged in a 2018 lawsuit that Ronaldo sexually assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009, and that his legal team coerced her into signing a 2010 nondisclosure agreement in an out-of-court settlement for $375,000. Ronaldo denied the allegations and claimed the encounter was consensual. (The Washington Post does not generally name alleged victims of sexual assault, but previously received permission from Mayorga’s attorney allowing her identity to be revealed.)
Leslie Mark Stovall, Mayorga’s attorney, sought to challenge that settlement on the grounds that Mayorga was not sound of mind when she consented to the deal, and the case was moved from state to federal court in 2019. But Stovall’s case relied upon “leaked and stolen documents detailing attorney-client discussions between Ronaldo and his lawyers,” according to the Associated Press.
Federal judge Jennifer Dorsey wrote in her ruling Friday that “the procurement and continued use of these documents was bad faith,” denying Stovall’s bid to force Ronaldo to pay more than $25 million in damages based on allegations that Ronaldo or his associates violated a nondisclosure agreement by allowing news about it to appear in European media.
Those allegations stem from the 2017 publication of an article by German news outlet Der Spiegel that detailed the sexual assault allegations and settlement. Der Spiegel said it acquired documents from the case through the website Football Leaks, which has been described as the “WikiLeaks of football.” Before filing the complaint, Stovall reached out to Football Leaks creator Rui Pinto seeking documents related to the accusation against Ronaldo, according to the Athletic. Months later, Stovall received the confidential documents.
Ronaldo’s attorney in Las Vegas, Peter Christiansen, addressed the decision to AP, saying, “We have maintained the action was brought in bad faith. The outright dismissal of [Mayorga]’s case should give all who follow this matter renewed confidence in the judicial process in this country while dissuading those who seek to undermine it.” | 2022-06-12T00:16:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge tosses lawsuit accusing Cristiano Ronaldo of sexual assault - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/cristiano-ronaldo-lawsuit-tossed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/cristiano-ronaldo-lawsuit-tossed/ |
Nats roll Brewers, and Juan Soto is starting to look like ... Juan Soto
Juan Soto embraces teammate Luis García after Soto's two-run homer in the fifth inning of Saturday's 8-6 win over Milwaukee. (Nick Wass/AP)
While there was no way of knowing Juan Soto would hit the first of back-to-back-to-back home runs Saturday at Nationals Park — teaming with Nelson Cruz and Josh Bell — there were clear indications he was seeing pitches in a way only Juan Soto can.
Go back to the first inning of the Washington Nationals’ 8-6 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. Facing lefty Eric Lauer, Soto fell behind 0-2; fouled off two pitches; then took a slider just off the plate, a fastball just off the plate, a curve just off the plate; then fouled away another slider before drawing a walk. Throughout the nine-pitch battle, Soto smiled and nodded, his chin almost touching his chest. He shuffled a bit, kicking dirt around the freshly lined batter’s box.
Really, he looked like himself, a welcome sign for the Nationals (23-38). If they hand the Brewers (33-28) their ninth consecutive loss Sunday, they will have their first sweep of the season. Washington has scored 19 runs through the first two games of the series.
“He’s definitely seeing the ball a lot better,” Manager Dave Martinez said before focusing on Soto’s first-inning walk: “That was a good at-bat. That lefty today, he’s got good stuff. And when [Soto] worked those nine pitches like that, I thought, ‘Yeah, he’s seeing the ball really well.’ ”
Soto entered Saturday with an uncharacteristic batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage slash line of .226/.368/.447. His chase rate of 21.6 percent, the fifth-lowest in the majors, was more than six points higher than where he finished last season. The chases and weak grounders, and the .125 average with runners in scoring position, have often made Soto seem like a shell of a 23-year-old superstar.
So maybe, just maybe, recent games mark a course correction. Soto has four homers, a double and six walks in Washington’s past eight contests. With the bases loaded in the third Saturday, he walked against Lauer before Cruz scorched a two-run, 113-mph double to left. And with Lane Thomas on first in the fifth, Soto got a high fastball from Lauer and crushed it 406 feet to right-center. Cruz, the next batter, hammered a low cutter 416 feet in the same direction. Then Bell lined a 3-1 curve 376 feet to left, a fitting tribute to the bobblehead giveaway depicting him as the Incredible Hulk.
That totaled 1,198 feet of home runs in the span of eight pitches. Lauer, who entered with a 2.38 ERA, was tagged with eight runs on seven hits. Both were season highs.
“When you see the line drives low and hard the other way with runners in scoring position, that’s who I’ve seen the last four years he’s been in the show,” Bell said of Soto. “So it’s definitely fun to watch, and I know there’s a lot more coming.”
This was the fifth time the Nationals have hit three straight homers since coming to D.C. in 2005. The latest accounted for Soto’s 13th of the season, Cruz’s seventh and Bell’s seventh. Cruz and Bell homered Friday, too, while Soto brought in runs with a single and a fielder’s choice. Martinez felt Soto was on the edge of breaking out, though he has filled the year with such predictions.
This time he might be right.
“It was just a different vibe today,” Soto said. “I felt way better at the plate and even in the outfield and everything.”
What does that vibe feel like in the box?
“It feels like a lot is coming,” he answered, grinning and echoing Bell. “A lot is coming soon. There are a lot of good at-bats coming in.”
How did Patrick Corbin’s start play out? Rough at the beginning and end. Sharp in the middle. Corbin was greeted by a leadoff homer for Christian Yelich in the top of the first. From there, he retired 14 of the next 19 batters he faced. Those Brewers reached on two singles, two walks and an error for shortstop Luis García, allowing Corbin to hold them to one run while the Nationals’ bats clicked. But after entering the seventh at 88 pitches, Corbin was crushed by a double for Victor Caratini, a double for Lorenzo Cain and a two-run homer for ninth hitter Mark Mathias, the first of his career.
Can the Nats fix Patrick Corbin? It's a question with no easy answer.
Corbin recorded one more out and was pulled for Erasmo Ramírez, who induced a double play before yielding back-to-back singles. Kyle Finnegan then came in to quiet the noise. He and Tanner Rainey combined for the final seven outs. The gap was halved when Luis Urías took Rainey deep for a two-out, two-run homer in the ninth.
Who will start for the Nationals on Sunday? Right-hander Paolo Espino. The options were Espino or rookie Evan Lee, and Martinez has suggested that both will stay stretched out ahead of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday. But Espino, 35, gets the nod in the Nationals’ sixth and final matchup with the Brewers. Espino has 2.03 ERA in 26⅔ innings, all in relief. He has not, however, pitched when the margin is less than three runs (with Washington either winning or losing). The Nationals are 5-15 when he has appeared, showing how much of his work has come in a true mop-up role.
Martinez told reporters Saturday that Espino could go up to five innings. Espino made 19 starts in 2021 but has not recorded more than nine outs this year. | 2022-06-12T00:59:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nats lumber up against Brewers, with Juan Soto leading parade of homers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/nationals-brewers-juan-soto-homers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/11/nationals-brewers-juan-soto-homers/ |
DNC: New York and Nebraska Democrats won’t go early in 2024 primaries
Delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 26, 2016. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
The announcement, by the co-chairs of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee in a letter to members, is the first winnowing in a process established this year that aims to shake up the Democratic nominating contest order, which has been controlled in recent decades by Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
Democrats circulate plan for changing 2024 nomination calendar, moving against Iowa and welcoming new early states
The party has said that the 2024 starting states will be selected based on the diversity of their electorates, “including ethnic, geographic, union representation, economic, etc.”; the competitiveness of the state in a general election; and the ability of the state to administer a “fair, transparent and inclusive” process.
The letter, sent Saturday by co-chairs Jim Roosevelt and Minyon Moore, said New York was cut because it was a large, solidly blue state where it is expensive to campaign. It also said it would be “impossible to counterbalance the disproportionate number of urban voters.”
Nebraska was cut because the state party’s proposal envisioned a party-run selection process, separate from the current state-run primary. The letter said that “could create confusion by rendering the state-run process meaningless despite Democrats being on the ballot.”
Analysis: Democrats take aim at Iowa as they seek to change their nominating system
In an effort to keep Iowa’s position as the first-in-the-nation caucus, Democrats in that state have proposed drastically revamping how voters there show preferences for their candidates. Instead of a traditional caucus, Iowa Democrats in 2024 would cast written preference cards in the weeks leading up to the event, either by mail or at drop-off locations. The results would be announced at the caucus meetings.
“We intend to present a very vigorous non-present participation aspect,” said Scott Brennan, Iowa’s representative on the Rules and Bylaws Committee. “The proposal that we sent to the RBC has it all done in advance” of the caucus meetings. | 2022-06-12T01:52:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DNC: New York and Nebraska Democrats won’t go early in 2024 primaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/11/dnc-primary-early-states/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/11/dnc-primary-early-states/ |
FILE - San Diego Padres manager Bob Melvin stands in the dugout during the first inning of a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Pittsburgh, May 1, 2022. Melvin says he’ll have prostate surgery on Wednesday, May 11, 2022, and hopes he misses only part of a forthcoming road trip. He doesn’t think he has cancer “but they won’t know until they get in there.” (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File) | 2022-06-12T03:23:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pads manager Melvin, coach into COVID protocol after opener - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/pads-manager-melvin-coach-into-covid-protocol-after-opener/2022/06/11/626e177e-e9f3-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/pads-manager-melvin-coach-into-covid-protocol-after-opener/2022/06/11/626e177e-e9f3-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html |
Ask Amy: I’m worried my daughter’s disordered eating habits have returned
Her brother told me that he is very concerned, but he doesn’t feel she would be open to any concerns/suggestions he may have. She is ultrasensitive when I question anything about her eating.
I fear she’s dealing with her current stress in a way that is unhealthy. How do you suggest I best help without alienating her?
Concerned: As with some other diseases, eating disorders can flare — even many years after successful treatment. Stress is a definite risk factor, and can lead to a relapse.
Talk to her: “This is such a stressful time for you. I'm worried that your eating disorder could flare. How are you managing your health right now? Can I help you in any way?”
She may respond, “Mom — stop.” And that’s okay. You can respond: “Honey — I do worry, but I can handle my own anxieties. I just want you to know that I’ve got your back. Always.”
Recently, a close family friend went to visit our gravesite and place flowers there. Our plaque has his date of birth and date of death.
She then posted a photo of this to Facebook and shared it with her entire “friends” list, some of whom I do not know. I was a bit shocked to see the picture, which I found because I was scrolling on my own Facebook page.
Am I a relic? I found this to be disrespectful.
Upset: I can well imagine how you must have felt to see a photo of this memorial marker on social media.
I ask (rhetorically): Can we eat a meal, have an argument, do a good deed or visit a friend’s gravesite without posting an update about it?
You could contact your friend and say: “I’m so grateful that you visited my husband’s grave. Thank you so much for honoring us with the visit and flowers. However, I was sad to see that you posted a photo of it on Facebook. Seeing the photo without knowing it would be there was a shock for me. I wish you had asked me first.”
Bartender: Thank you very sincerely for your service. | 2022-06-12T04:54:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I'm worried my daughter's disordered eating habits have returned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/12/ask-amy-daughter-eating-disorder/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/12/ask-amy-daughter-eating-disorder/ |
Trust in government was shattered and never recovered. Efforts at reform were successful and unsuccessful. Both political parties were affected, as was the practice of journalism. And then there was Trump.
On Friday, America will mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. The scandal that riveted the nation and forced the resignation of a president is taught in schools as a dark chapter in history. It is more than that, however. Its legacies have shaped the conduct of politics and public attitudes toward government ever since.
Watergate, along with the Vietnam War, marked a dividing line between old and new, ushering in a changed landscape for politics and public life — from a period in which Americans trusted their government to a period in which that trust was broken and never truly restored. “It’s a hugely important historic moment,” said Julian Zelizer, a historian and professor at Princeton University. “And we entered a new era when it was over.”
Though not a straight line by any means, the links between former president Richard M. Nixon and former president Donald Trump also are clearly identifiable, from their ruthlessness to the win-at-any-cost calculus of their politics. That their presidencies played out differently — Nixon resigned amid impeachment proceedings; Trump served his entire term and may seek another despite twice being impeached, although not convicted — is testament to a more deeply polarized electorate, the erosion in the strength of democratic institutions and the transformation and radicalization of the Republican Party.
The aftermath of the Watergate scandal opened up the operations of Congress but also contributed to making the legislative body less manageable. The scandal helped change the way reporters and government officials interacted with one another. A more adversarial relationship has existed ever since. The era spawned reforms that worked and some that did not, from campaign finance to intelligence.
Politically, both major parties were affected. A seemingly broken Republican Party reconstituted itself with a more anti-government ideology. Democrats, led by the big class of 1974, slowly began a transformation away from the lunch-pail coalition of White working-class voters and toward a more diverse coalition that now includes highly educated coastal elites.
Not everything that has happened since Watergate is directly attributable to the scandal itself. Some changes in society and politics were already beginning to be felt before burglars were arrested early on the morning of June 17, 1972, after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building. But subsequent investigations; the indictments and convictions of Nixon administration officials; the impeachment articles passed in the House Judiciary Committee; and Nixon’s resignation combined into an event that shattered the confidence and idealism of previous decades.
Garrett M. Graff, author of the book “Watergate: A New History,” describes Watergate as a dividing line in history — the event that moved Washington from a sleepy capital dominated by segregationists, veterans of World War I and print newspaper deadlines to a capital ruled by a new breed of politicians, a more adversarial media now in the digital age and a country deeply skeptical of government and politicians.
“The Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate … fundamentally rewrote the relationship between the American people and their government,” Graff said, “and caused a collapse in the public’s faith in those institutions that our nation’s leaders are still struggling with today.”
As William Galston of the Brookings Institution put it, “We have been living for nearly half a century in the world that Watergate made.”
The shattering of trust in government
The Pew Research Center has a graphic on its website that charts the decline of trust between citizens and government. It is a vivid illustration of the world that Watergate helped to make.
The graphic begins in 1958, near the end of the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, when 73 percent of Americans — majorities of both Democrats and Republicans — said they trusted the government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.” In the fall of 1964, despite the assassination of President John F. Kennedy a year earlier, which some people see as the moment when the idealism of the period was broken, trust peaks at 77 percent.
By 1968 and the end of the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, with Americans violently divided over Vietnam and shaken by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the line on the chart heads downward, but still with a majority expressing trust. From there, it begins to fall farther. By late 1974, after Nixon left office, just 36 percent of Americans say they trust their government.
“The trust has never really rebounded to the pre-Watergate levels,” said Joycelyn Kiley, Pew’s associate director of research.
The decline in trust affected virtually every institution over time. “One way of thinking about it is that Americans ceased to trust the men in suits — whether those men in suits were lawyers, university professors, the press and especially, especially, the government,” said Bruce Schulman, a professor of history at Boston University.
Kiley said more than just the Watergate scandal has caused all this. But her point about the lack of a rebound was underscored by Pew’s latest measurement, released last week, which found that today, just 20 percent of Americans say they trust their government to do the right thing all or most of the time. At the same time, Americans see a continued role for government and say that government is not doing enough for several groups of people.
One irony of the decline at the time of Watergate is that democracy had worked, from the actions of government institutions to the public’s response. “It’s really important to understand that the process that took down Nixon was driven by an extraordinary level of civic engagement,” said Rick Perlstein, a historian who has written multiple volumes about the history of the 1960s and 1970s. “The response was not this kind of nihilistic response we would see now.”
But while the institutions worked, the revelations about the vastness of the Watergate conspiracy painted an ugly portrait of the use and abuse of power during Nixon’s presidency. “The courts, the Senate, the Congress, the House Judiciary Committee, the press. Everything worked the way it’s supposed to. But people ended up with a very bad taste in their mouth,” said Jim Blanchard, who was elected to the House in 1974 as a Democrat from Michigan and later served as governor.
Coupled with the governmental lying about Vietnam, exposed most vividly with the publication of the Pentagon Papers first by the New York Times and later by The Washington Post, government was under attack from both the left and the right, though for different reasons.
“It’s amazing how fast we shifted from the post-World War II trust mode, which lasted for about 20 years, into the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mistrust mode,” Galston said. “Once we lost that trust, we never regained it.”
The ‘Watergate babies’ come to Washington
Three months after Nixon resigned and two months after he was pardoned by President Gerald Ford, the 1974 midterm elections dealt a seemingly devastating blow to the Republican Party. The election produced a huge new class of lawmakers, more than 90 in all, including 76 Democrats in the House who became known as the Watergate babies.
These Democrats were diverse in their ideologies — some moderates and conservatives but many liberals. They shared a passion for reform. “The collective sense was that it was time to change the seniority system,” said Tom Downey, who was elected to the House as a Democrat from New York at age 25. “We wanted this to be a more accountable institution.”
Leon Panetta, who had come to Capitol Hill in 1966 as a staffer and was elected as a Democrat to the House in 1976 representing California, said, “You really had a sense that you had been empowered by the American people to straighten out Washington and to implement reforms and to really do things different in a way that would hopefully restore trust.”
“There were so many new members that the old guys couldn’t come and encircle them and try to convince them that they should be quiet for the first 10 years and stay out the way,” said former congresswoman Pat Schroeder, a Democrat from Colorado who was elected in 1972.
The new class helped oust three powerful committee chairmen, something unheard of at the time. Other reforms redistributed power in the House. “We had opportunities that no new members had historically — to speak, to negotiate, to assert our power,” said Phil Sharp, elected to the House as a Democrat from Indiana in 1974. He added, “It really meant we had more influence in the subcommittee, we had more influence on the House floor, we had more influence in the conference committees.”
The result was a more open and transparent House, but also a more cumbersome legislative body. Today, every member of Congress is an independent actor with access to the media and many to big money and, if motivated to do so, the ability to frustrate leadership. That is an offshoot of what started in the 1970s.
“I believe that over time, it reduced the ability to get to a decision, which I would argue is one of the compelling issues in government today,” Sharp said. “Ultimately, democracy must prove not that it’s open, it has to prove that … it can actually make a decision on something of significance.”
“For a legislator and particularly for a leader, your goal is to pass legislation,” said John A. Lawrence, author of the book, “The Class of ’74: Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship” and a former chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “And it becomes harder when you honor transparency over effectiveness.”
Then-House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), among others, had worried about too much openness, especially the decision that would allow C-SPAN to begin to televise House floor proceedings in 1979. “They understood that the more public the system was, the less power the old order would have,” said former speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
Elected in 1978, Gingrich said he found the institution “astonishingly open” to newcomers on a mission, like himself. He used the levers available in a more open institution — from television in the House to new ethics rules — to chart a rise to power that in 1994 would drive Democrats from control in the House for the first time in 40 years.
The explosion of reform
The post-Watergate years of the 1970s saw a flurry of new laws designed to address issues raised by the scandal.
In 1974, Congress amended campaign finance laws after revelations about the abuses of money by Nixon’s reelection committee — thousands of dollars stuffed in safes and used for hush money, and illegal contributions solicited from major corporations. The new law put caps on how much people could contribute to candidates and how much federal candidates could spend, created partial public financing through matching funds in presidential campaigns and established the Federal Election Commission.
Over time, the reforms were weakened both by Supreme Court rulings and by workarounds campaign lawyers devised. A major change came in 2010, when the high court gave corporations and other outside groups the authority to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence campaigns. The Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision resulted in a proliferation of so-called super PACs and independent committees and the use of “dark money” (funds in which donors are not disclosed), leading advocates to say that a decades-long effort to reform campaign finance had failed.
Watergate set off fresh discussion about the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch amid concerns about an imperial presidency. This led to new laws designed to whittle away at the powers of the president.
In 1974, Congress approved the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which established a new process for federal budgeting by lawmakers, created the Congressional Budget Office and sought to limit the power of the president to override decisions made by lawmakers on how to spend the government’s money. The 1973 War Powers Resolution, a response to Vietnam, was designed to prevent future presidents from engaging in military conflicts without having consulted Congress in advance.
But these, too, have proved ineffective. Presidents have routinely ignored these requirements, and a compliant Congress has offered minimal resistance. “Too often, Congress was willing to basically allow presidents to do what they have to do in order to deal with the challenges that are out there,” Panetta said.
The 1978 Ethics in Government Act set new financial disclosure requirements for public officials and put restrictions on lobbying by former officials. The act’s Title VI created the system for the appointment of special prosecutors by the attorney general to investigate allegations against executive branch officials.
More broadly, the combination of the ethics legislation, calls for more rigorous congressional oversight and the work of independent counsels has carried forward to the present day. “Watergate had inaugurated an era of politics by other means, where political opponents attempted, instead of defeating one another’s arguments, or winning elections, to oust each other from office by way of ethics investigations,” historian Jill Lepore wrote in “These Truths.”
Between 1970 and 1994, according to Lepore, federal indictments of public officials went from “virtually zero to more than thirteen hundred.” The effect of all this “also eroded the public’s faith in the institutions to which those politicians belonged.”
Of all the efforts to clean up after Vietnam and Watergate, reforms of U.S. intelligence agencies have been generally the most successful and long-lasting. The reforms grew in part out of hearings by a select Senate committee headed by then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), which investigated questionable and illegal covert actions aimed at foreign leaders and U.S. citizens by the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency.
Then-Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) was a member of the committee and remembers vividly the day when CIA Director William Colby came to testify and delivered to the committee what were known as the “family jewels,” a compendium of egregious actions by the agency, including attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Out of the committee’s findings, Congress established congressional oversight committees with prescribed rules for consultation for any covert activities and requirements for presidents to sign official findings to authorize covert activities. “We saved the CIA,” Hart recalled. “If nothing had been done to rehabilitate the agency, it would have very seriously undercut their credibility.”
John McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director and for a brief time acting director, was a recruit in training during this period in the 1970s and described these changes as appropriately intrusive.
“I'm a big supporter of oversight,” he said, “because without it, you cannot count on the trust of the American people for an institution that has great power and is asked to do difficult things by the president. Even at that, it doesn't assure that trust or that confidence, but it's the closest thing we have.”
Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history at the University of California at Davis and author of the 1996 book “Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI,” said that the reforms “fell short of what Senator Church wanted.”
“Church thought exposing all these abuses would restore Americans’ faith in government,” she added. Instead, the committee’s revelations gave rise to more anti-government conspiracy theories.
The impact on the political parties
Watergate left the Republican Party decimated, or so it seemed.
“The conventional wisdom was, oh, the Republicans are done for a generation,” said Beverly Gage, a professor of history at Yale University. “That’s not what happened. But it is more true if you said it’s the Nixon wing of the Republican Party [that is dead]. Watergate was much more devastating to that part of the Republican Party.”
A Republican Party personified by politicians like Ford, Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney was taken over by a new, Southern and Sun Belt-based conservative movement that viewed government with considerably more hostility. In 1964, this brand of conservatism, led by Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, went down in defeat to Johnson. By 1980, with the election of Ronald Reagan, the era of New Deal liberalism had been blunted by a conservatism that would hold sway in the party and the country for decades.
Schulman, who wrote “The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics,” said that, while it is an oversimplification to say that Reagan’s election was a response to Watergate, the reaction to the scandal nonetheless provided fertile ground for the conservative, anti-government ideology Reagan championed.
“You have to remember that for most of the post-World War II period, liberalism, for better and worse, had really been the reigning public philosophy in the United States,” Schulman said. “One of the ways that Watergate is very important is in the transformation of the Republican Party into a conservative party. … And after 1980, it was, by all effects, really a conservative party.”
Zelizer noted, “When Reagan in 1980 is lashing out against government, I just think there’s more support at some level for the kind of arguments he’s making, because people have a Richard M. Nixon, even though he is a Republican, they have a Richard M. Nixon in their mind.”
Reagan was one of Nixon’s staunchest defenders. He described the hearings before the Senate Watergate committee chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) in the summer of 1973 as a “lynching” and praised the president so consistently that, according to Perlstein, the columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that some Reagan advisers worried that his support for Nixon had the potential to hurt him politically.
“They say [in the column] the people who want to make Ronald Reagan president are terrified that he won't let go of his support for Richard M. Nixon and this is going to destroy his career,” Perlstein said. “And of course, the irony is, and this is kind of my argument, that it didn't destroy his career. It was the foundation for his political rise.”
Meanwhile, the Democrats were to undergo their own transformation, thanks in part to the infusion of new members of Congress beginning with the 1974 election. “They tended to be more educated, more professional than previous tranches of Democrats, less connected to the working class, more interested in issues that weren’t within the four corners of meat and potatoes,” Galston said.
As Perlstein said, “It’s not the beer-and-a-shot, lunch-pail Democratic Party anymore.”
No one more typified the new breed than Hart, who was elected to the Senate after managing George McGovern’s 1972 president campaign that ended in a landslide loss to Nixon. “I was so angry at Watergate and the fact that it had not had the impact on the ‘72 campaign that it should have had and eventually did have,” Hart said in explaining why he ran in 1974.
Hart helped lead the party in new directions, and his eventual challenge to — and near-victory over — former vice president Walter Mondale in the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination contest pitted the old Democratic Party, tied to powerful labor unions, against a newer Democratic Party more oriented to rising forces of technology and to issues such as the environment and globalization.
The debate over what kind of party the Democrats should be, which was aired out that year, continues to echo today, as the Democrats wrestle with the demands of a more vigorous liberal wing and the desire to win back some of the White working-class voters who defected to the Republicans starting in the Reagan years.
The adversarial press
Watergate didn’t just change politics; it also changed journalism. Watergate made journalism glamorous. Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became celebrities. Investigative journalism expanded into all corners of the news media.
In the same way that the public was losing trust in institutions, journalists were losing trust in government officials. After the lies about progress in Vietnam and the lies from the Nixon White House, reporters brought a more skeptical eye to the statements of government officials.
Gone were the cozy days when a reporter could play poker in the Oval Office with a president or when the private lives of politicians were considered off-limits to reporting (as reporters did in turning a blind eye to John F. Kennedy’s philandering) unless it affected public responsibilities.
“A lot of journalism prior to that time was very deferential to political leaders,” Lawrence said. “You didn’t say certain things, and that wasn’t so good either. But I think a lot of younger people learned that the way you get ahead, just like members [of Congress] learned through oversight, that the way you get your name in the papers is by making a splash and by making accusations of wrongdoing or corruption. That culture … became very, very powerful.”
Critics of the press believe that this has helped to color and coarsen political discourse ever since, that the DNA of journalism became strictly adversarial and that, despite the societal value of accountability reporting, it has had deleterious side effects on politics and governance.
“Everyone wanted to kind of have a pelt on the wall,” Perlstein said. “Every reporter wanted their own kind of scandal. And one of the consequences was a tendency to elevate peccadilloes to the status of scandals.”
The counter to this is that, by holding government officials accountable, vigorous and intrusive journalism leads to more effective and responsive government. Without the probing eye of journalists, corruption and malfeasance would be even greater than it otherwise would be. The decline of local newspapers, caused by the technological disruptions of the past few decades, has provided real-time examples of the absence of accountability journalism in cities and state capitals.
Leonard Downie Jr., who edited many of the Watergate stories at The Post in the 1970s and later succeeded Benjamin C. Bradlee as executive editor, acknowledged that as investigative reporting spread throughout the industry, “some corners were cut” by some investigative reporters. “Not everybody could bring down a president,” he said. “Not everybody could get somebody to resign or go to prison.”
That, he said, does not outweigh the fact that investigative journalism is now one of the most important roles of the American news media. “Holding power — all forms of power — accountable to American citizens is a good thing. And I just don’t worry about this adversarial aspect. I think that’s fine. I do not see a downside.”
The rise of polarization
Scholars and politicians debate when the extreme partisanship and polarization that defines today’s political climate really took root.
Though there was partisanship around the Watergate investigation, in the end, the conclusions were bipartisan, with a handful of Republicans joining Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to vote for articles of impeachment and Republican elders going to the White House in the final days to tell Nixon it was time to go.
The 1976 presidential race between Ford and Jimmy Carter featured two relatively moderate politicians. In Congress, with the parties far less homogenized than today, Democrats and Republicans did work together on issues. By today’s standards, it was a far more genteel era.
Many analysts point to the Republican victories in 1994 and the elevation of Gingrich to the speakership as the moment when the current era of polarization and partisanship took hold. Others say the partisanship was building during the 1980s, with Gingrich and GOP backbenchers using different tactics to attack the entrenched Democrats, even as Reagan and O’Neill enjoyed a cordial relationship despite their ideological differences.
Lawrence, the historian of the class of 1974, believes the reforms those freshman members of Congress helped to force through the legislative branch were responsible. “Some of these reforms actually facilitated a rise in partisanship,” he said, “because they enabled people who otherwise might have been blocked from playing a more political or more public role in the more traditional management of the House — they gave them platforms to do so.”
Nixon also shares in the blame. Though on domestic issues he was, by today’s standards, relatively liberal, his campaign style in 1968 and 1972 was divisive and polarizing, using race, law and order, and cultural wedge issues to create cleavages in the electorate.
Gingrich believes the polarization was building even before Watergate and points to Reagan as evidence, describing Reagan, for all his geniality, as a polarizing politician. Speaking of Reagan’s emergence as a national figure in the 1960s, he said, “You had a polarization that was beginning to grow, and Reagan understood and knew how to deal with it pleasantly. But he was clearly a polarizer.”
Gage noted that even before Watergate, there were many people who were arguing that the country would be better off with more tightly organized political parties that would provide clearer ideological choices for the voters. “That’s where we’ve ended up half a century after Watergate,” she said. “And it’s turning out to be a real problem.”
The road from Watergate to Donald Trump
Those who have studied Watergate see a line that travels from that scandal to the Trump presidency. Part of this is because of the similarities between Nixon and Trump — the self-pitying nature of their personalities, the venality exhibited during their presidencies, the demonization of their opponents.
Nixon sought to undermine the Constitution to assure that he would win the 1972 election and then covered it up, for which he paid the price of forced resignation. Trump sought to undermine the Constitution to overturn an election he had lost in 2020. He didn’t cover up his efforts, though exactly what was going on still hasn’t been told in full. Instead, he attempted to build his case on a foundation of lies.
But the parallels are limited in part because the two presidents governed in two different eras. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) was a law student and legislative staffer to a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate. Today she is a member of the Jan. 6 House panel that is investigating not just the attack on the Capitol but the broader effort to subvert the 2020 vote.
“We are in a political environment that is more sharply partisan than was the case during the Watergate era,” she said. “And you’ve also got people who lie with impunity and feel that there’s no downside to it. I mean, when Nixon was caught in lies, he resigned.”
There was a moment early in the work of the Ervin committee, cited in Graff’s history of the scandal, when White House lawyers were warning that any officials called to testify would decline to answer the panel’s questions. The response from one committee attorney was to say that anyone who did that in a public forum would be ruined. Trump’s White House routinely refused to cooperate with congressional investigations and did so without being held to account and with the support of Republican lawmakers.
Graff highlighted the consequences of the differences between the Watergate period and today. “You see, over the course of the two years that Watergate takes to play out, the delicate ballet and dance of how our system of checks and balances works,” he said. “Watergate requires every institution in Washington to play a specific role and to do it successfully.”
In the Trump years, that system of checks and balances broke down. “The media played their role,” Graff said. “The Justice Department, you know, arguably played their role. The FBI arguably played their role. But then when it came to Capitol Hill, the House and the Senate fell short. Looking back at Watergate, the members of Congress in the House and the Senate on the Republican side acted first as members of the coequal legislative branch. … What we saw in the Trump years was the opposite, which is Republicans on the Hill acted first as Republicans and second as members of Congress.”
Trump’s presidency can be seen as the culmination of what began with Watergate. Today is a time of heightened distrust in government, weakened institutions, a more polarized electorate, greater partisanship, a fractured and more politicized media, and a Republican Party with a stronger anti-government ideology and more ruthless in its approach.
Trump seized on all of this, and more, to become president, to exercise his powers in office and to try to stay in office after he had lost to Joe Biden. “I think it’s pretty clear that he exposed as president some of the real weaknesses and dysfunction of all these institutions,” Zelizer said, “from Congress to the media to other elements of administrative and executive power. And I think it’s true that they’re just not working as well right now as they had when this whole story started.” | 2022-06-12T04:54:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Watergate weakened trust in government - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/12/watergate-trust-government-reforms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/12/watergate-trust-government-reforms/ |
Storm lashed. (Bloomberg)
And it’s not just offshore production and the refineries in Louisiana and Texas that would be affected. Oil supply is already being topped up with the biggest ever withdrawal of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, located in four sites — you’ve guessed it — along the Gulf of Mexico coast.
A major storm would also disrupt the US’s ability to make the refined products that are in short supply almost everywhere. While the country has large emergency stores of crude, it has virtually none of refined products. With a big refining sector, commercial inventories have historically done the job of ensuring an uninterrupted supply of products to consumers. But stockpiles of key products, like gasoline and diesel, are close to multi-year lows for the time of year.
At the start of June, for example, the volume of gasoline stored was the lowest since 2014. And although distillate fuel inventories are starting to rise in line with their normal seasonal pattern, they are still the lowest for this time of year since 2005. The country isn’t well placed to deal with disruptions.
This year, it’s not just going to be Gulf coast residents and US consumers that will worry about hurricanes. The impact of a major storm is going to be felt around the world. | 2022-06-12T06:25:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US Hurricane Season Will Be Felt Around the World This Year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/us-hurricane-season-will-be-felt-around-the-world-this-year/2022/06/12/b642afdc-ea15-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/us-hurricane-season-will-be-felt-around-the-world-this-year/2022/06/12/b642afdc-ea15-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html |
By Isabelle Khurshudyan
Russian soldiers guard the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station, on the Dnieper River in the Kherson region, during a May 20 media trip organized by the Russian Defense Ministry. (AP)
KYIV, Ukraine — More than three months of occupation by Russian soldiers has left much of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region isolated, without access to basic medicines and cut off from Ukrainian cellphone and internet service.
The Russian tricolor flag is displayed at most of the main government buildings. There are whispers of a coming referendum that would formally make Kherson part of Russia, at least in the Kremlin’s eyes. The armed occupying forces patrol the streets, while the blasts of artillery shells crashing in the distance can be heard daily — signs of the ongoing fight between the Russian and Ukrainian militaries for control of the area.
Stores and pharmacies have been closed during that time, and people don’t have access to money while their local Ukrainian banks and ATMs are not operating. There are markets with goods sold out of the trunks of cars — a scene one woman likened to the days after the fall of the Soviet Union. Supplies of medicines such as insulin and saline solution, which is used in everything from cleaning wounds to storing contact lenses, are critically low, she and others said.
In Ukraine, a perilous journey to bury a 13-year-old girl
Tatyana said she rarely leaves her home because the sounds of explosions have become louder and more frequent lately. If she does go out, it’s because she’s desperate to get some bread and vegetables — foods still readily available in the farming region. She tries to make her grocery runs at 10 a.m., when it tends to be quieter. Otherwise, “we live in constant fear,” she said.
There are indications of resistance from inside the occupation, too — an explosion this week at a cafe near the headquarters of the new Moscow-installed government. Kherson Mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev, who has stayed in the city but no longer has full governing authority under the Russians, said agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, drive cars with Ukrainian license plates and walk around in plainclothes, listening to locals’ conversations. Many pro-Ukraine activists have disappeared, he and others said, adding to the fear among the population.
Making matters worse is a news blackout due to the lack of cellphone and internet service for the past week, he said. People in Kherson can connect to the Crimea network provider, but it’s blocked by Ukrainian news sites. That means the only news accessible for most is Russian state-owned media — a propaganda vehicle for the Kremlin that highly censors news of the war.
Stern reported from Mukachevo, Ukraine. Paul Sonne and Serhiy Morgunov in Kyiv contributed to this report. | 2022-06-12T06:26:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Kherson, life under Russian occupation and Ukrainian counteroffensive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/12/ukraine-kherson-counteroffensive-russian-occupation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/12/ukraine-kherson-counteroffensive-russian-occupation/ |
FILE - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin addresses supporters at the opening of her new campaign headquarters in Anchorage, Alaska, on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. Voters are whittling down the list of 48 candidates running for Alaska’s only U.S. House seat, with the top four vote-getters in a special primary on Saturday, June 11, advancing to an August special election. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen,File) (Mark Thiesssen/AP) | 2022-06-12T07:57:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alaska tallies US House primary after ballot access fight - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/alaska-tallies-us-house-primary-after-ballot-access-fight/2022/06/12/2c5654fc-ea1c-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/alaska-tallies-us-house-primary-after-ballot-access-fight/2022/06/12/2c5654fc-ea1c-11ec-a422-11bbb91db30b_story.html |
China calls U.S. a ‘bully,’ vows to ‘fight to the end’ for Taiwan
Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe heads to a plenary session during the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, June 12, 2022. (REUTERS/Caroline Chia)
TAIPEI, Taiwan — China’s defense minister called Washington a “bully” and vowed to “fight to the end” to take over Taiwan, ramping up a war of words with his U.S. counterpart.
Gen. Wei Fenghe, in a combative and wide-ranging speech Sunday at an annual defense conference in Singapore, repeatedly accused Washington of what he described as “interference” in his country’s internal affairs, including over the issue of Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
“Some people in the U.S. try to suppress China on all fronts. If you want confrontation, we will fight to the end,” Wei said at the Shangri-La Dialogue. “If someone forces a war on China, the military will not flinch.”
The Chinese official’s comments were part of a broader rebuttal to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who said in a speech at the conference a day earlier that Washington would counter Beijing’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.
Wei’s sharply worded remarks, meant to be an outline of Beijing’s vision for regional order, took direct aim at the United States.
“The People’s Liberation Army has fought many powerful adversaries and won many victories. We do not provoke trouble, but we will not flinch in the face of provocation. We will not bully others, but we will not allow others to bully us.” Claiming that Beijing promotes cooperation and that its military development is only for defensive capabilities, Wei said: “China will not be the bully. We are all clear-eyed who is the bully.”
Beijing claims Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy it regards as a province of China. For years, Beijing has vowed to achieve what it calls “reunification” and has threatened a takeover with military force if necessary.
“Let me be clear: If anyone dares to secede Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs, and we will fight to the very end,” he said.
Wei said China’s role as an emerging power should not be seen as a threat. “China’s development is a historical trend. It is neither possible nor sensible to try to stop it.” he said.
Austin and his Chinese counterpart met for the first time Friday in Singapore, and both military leaders agreed on the importance of communication and reducing risk — which was seen as an indication that the temperature of the rivalry had been dialed down a few notches.
Wei, calling for a “healthy and stable major-country relationship,” told Austin that the two countries should not allow their differences to escalate, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. And the Defense Department said Austin “discussed the need to responsibly manage competition and maintain open lines of communication.”
Eva Dou and Michelle Ye Hee Lee in Shenzhen, China, contributed to this report. | 2022-06-12T10:16:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China will ‘fight to the end’ for Taiwan, defense minister says, calling U.S. a ‘bully’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/12/china-taiwan-us-defense-minister/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/12/china-taiwan-us-defense-minister/ |
Virginia House Minority Leader Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) gets out of his car, a baby blue electric Porsche Taycan, in Portsmouth, Va., on June 6. (Kristen Zeis/For The Washington Post)
PORTSMOUTH, Va. — The all-electric, baby blue Porsche Taycan 4S glides into a parking spot, as silent as a dream, as costly as some of the houses in this scrappy port city. The door opens, alligator-skin cowboy boots swing onto the pavement and out comes a man in a royal blue suit with a cellphone pressed to his ear.
Don L. Scott Jr. has arrived.
It was a short trip here from his other law office, in Virginia Beach, but a wild journey to this point in his life. Scott, 57, got his law license just seven years ago. In 2019, he won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates as a Democrat representing Portsmouth. Now, with only three legislative sessions under his belt, Scott has ousted former Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) as the chamber’s top Democrat and was elected by his caucus as House minority leader.
If that turbocharged rise wasn’t remarkable enough, Scott did it all while carrying what many would consider a handicap: He spent seven years in federal prison on a drug-related felony conviction. Scott credits then-Gov. Robert McDonnell, a Republican, with restoring his voting rights about a decade ago.
“The Republicans caused me to be here,” Scott likes to say with a chuckle.
Some Republicans have had a field day with Scott’s ascent, using his background to hammer Democrats. “Now we know why @vademocrats want to so badly end mandatory minimum prison terms for drug dealing … so they can elect them to leadership in the state legislature!” GOP strategist Chris LaCivita tweeted this month, after referring to Scott in other posts as “the felon.”
Within his own party, Scott has stirred concern with his aggressive moves. Filler-Corn is a veteran lawmaker who raised millions for her party’s candidates, became the first woman to serve as speaker and leads a powerful delegation from vote-rich Northern Virginia.
But the House Democratic caucus is in flux. Half of its 48 members have been elected since Donald Trump won the White House in 2016. Two years in power as the majority whetted the appetites of the new delegates, and Filler-Corn took the fall when Republicans wrested back control of the chamber after last November’s elections. Many turned to Scott in hopes that he can help them regain power.
Supporters see his unusual background — up from poverty, Navy veteran, life-changing mistake — as an asset in connecting with issues that appeal to voters. “He shares the experiences of Virginians,” Del. Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax) said.
Then there’s Scott’s prowess as a floor debater. Only a few days into this year’s legislative session, Scott, who is Black, accused new Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) of sowing racial division by crusading against “critical race theory” in schools, saying the tactic made him question the governor’s oft-touted religious faith.
The line drew gasps on the House floor and provoked Youngkin to pay a highly unusual personal visit to Scott’s legislative office — after Scott declined an invitation to the Executive Mansion. The two men met privately and have continued to stay in contact. When Scott became minority leader, Youngkin sent a letter of congratulations.
The clash gave Scott the aura of power that comes with a reputation for fearlessness — another byproduct, supporters say, of his difficult life experience.
“He doesn’t rattle easily,” Del. Sally L. Hudson (D-Charlottesville) said, “because losing an election will never have been the worst thing that happens to him.”
Scott was born to a single mother in a small town in East Texas — coincidentally, just a few miles from the town where Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) was born. Both are lifelong Dallas Cowboys fans.
Growing up with five siblings, Scott accepted mayonnaise sandwiches and occasional electricity shut-offs as ordinary aspects of life. He never realized how much his mother struggled until, as an adult, he saw a Social Security document that suggested she never earned more than $13,000 a year.
She was strict, Scott said — not afraid to use the belt to keep kids in line. When she went to work, his mother often parked him and his younger brother at the library, where they’d read until it closed and then wait outside for her to pick them up.
Scott said he had a debilitating stutter as a child, and spoke so seldom in class that teachers thought he was a slow learner. But standardized tests put the lie to that, he said. Scott wound up bused across town to gifted programs in predominantly White schools in Houston.
Racism was similar to poverty — casual, pervasive and just the way things were, he said. Scott wound up working his way through Texas A&M with a major in agriculture. When an internship sent him out to give farmers advice on pesticides and crop rotation, White friends warned Scott to be on guard — that he might even be in danger.
“But I’d go knock on the door and you’d be surprised,” Scott said in an interview. “When you just go talk to people, if you’re coming to help them, they’re gonna listen.”
After college, Scott served a stint in the Navy, then opted for law school at Louisiana State University. He was getting his life on track. But just a few months shy of finishing his law degree, Scott ruined everything.
In April 1994, federal agents came looking for him at a Denny’s restaurant in Mobile, Ala. According to court documents, Scott ran into the men’s room and tried to dispose of several thousand dollars in drug money. Agents had been tipped off by an informant in a crack cocaine distribution ring.
Released that night, Scott returned to LSU and was wrapping up his law degree when agents showed up several weeks later and handcuffed him in the library, marching him out in front of fellow students. He graduated, but wound up pleading no contest to a single charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine.
Scott still denies that he ever handled any drugs, but acknowledges that he agreed to transport the money for a close acquaintance. “Bad decision,” he said. “Terrible choice.” He says he pleaded no contest on the advice of his lawyer in hopes of getting favorable treatment as a first-time offender. Instead, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
It was a devastating blow. Scott recalls two moments of prayer that fortified him for the challenge. The first was just before sentencing, when a friend of his mother’s poured oil over his head and told him the story of Jesus in the garden, struggling to face the reality of his coming crucifixion.
“She said, ‘You gonna be all right. You gonna be protected,’ ” Scott said. “She said, ‘You got to go through this. You’re gonna be great.’ I believed her.”
The day he was sentenced, Scott clung to the woman’s words. As a guard led him to a backroom to be fingerprinted, “I asked, can I kneel down and pray,” he said, the memory bringing him to tears. “I’ve always been thankful to that guard, for letting me pray. It brought me peace. And I knew I was gonna be OK.”
He will say little about the experience of being behind bars, other than he felt fear and “saw some crazy stuff.” It made him stronger, he said, and gave him the mantra: “Pain into purpose.”
Scott used his legal skills to help other inmates with their cases, his education to teach them to read. An enthusiastic chess and bridge player, Scott encountered inmates who could beat him at both but were illiterate. “It just tells me the type of talent that we have behind those walls,” he said.
Released in 2002 after seven and a half years, Scott went to live with an uncle in Delaware who was committed to helping him rebuild his life. Through tough jobs — including being an ironworker and keeping the books at a used car dealership — Scott wound up in a company that won contracts with local governments to help welfare recipients train for work.
He met the woman he would marry — Mellanda Colson, a dentist — and began climbing the corporate ladder, landing in Portsmouth more than a dozen years ago as an executive vice president.
Active in his church and community, and with a young daughter, Scott began to chafe at the constant travel that his job demanded. Once he got his rights restored, his wife pointed out that he still had that law degree.
So in 2014, 20 years after finishing law school, Scott decided to take a swing at the Virginia bar exam. He spent six months studying and passed it on his first try.
After opening a shoestring law office in downtown Portsmouth in 2016, Scott turned out to have a natural talent in the courtroom. He built a reputation as a tough defense lawyer, taking on indigent clients as well as high-profile, high-payoff cases. Earlier this year, he won an $11 million settlement for the family of a man killed during a high-speed police chase in Portsmouth.
Scott is effective because he has “a natural, given talent … to be able to synthesize a lot of different things and simplify it into a story that somebody else will understand,” said Jeffrey Breit, a prominent Hampton Roads lawyer who recently asked Scott to become a partner in his firm.
In 2018, a year after reaction to Trump had propelled Democrats to big gains in the General Assembly, Scott began thinking of running for office. He was friends with judges and political leaders throughout Portsmouth, and a seat was coming open.
But first Scott had to confront his past. He gave an interview in the Virginian-Pilot newspaper that revealed the story for the first time to a wide audience, and he met with several influential friends to get their advice.
Top among them was Portsmouth Circuit Court Judge Johnny E. Morrison, Scott’s next-door neighbor and something of a father figure to him.
“I told him just tell the truth, be honest, get in front of it and you’ll be fine,” Morrison said in an interview. “I’m very proud of him.”
Last year, as Scott ran for reelection, he quietly stepped aside for a few days to donate a kidney to Morrison, who had been in declining health. Morrison said his only regret now is that the relationship means he can no longer preside over Scott’s cases. “To a certain extent,” Morrison said, “he laid down his life for me. I will be forever grateful.”
House Clerk G. Paul Nardo said Scott appears to be the first person to win election to the House after being convicted of a felony, though he cautioned that the 403-year-old body doesn’t officially track such things.
While the distinction might make some people cautious about sticking their neck out, it has had no such effect on Scott, who said he has more than 20 pairs of cowboy boots and doesn’t mind a little flash.
“The guy attracts attention, right?” said Portsmouth Mayor Shannon Glover. “He says he doesn’t, but I mean, who drives a car like that?”
But Glover credited Scott with working hard to contribute to the community. “He could’ve quit at any point in his life. He could’ve said, ‘Lord, I’m not built for this. I made some mistakes, and now I’m just going to let the world define me.’ But he didn’t do that. He defined himself.”
During the height of the social justice protests of 2020, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) turned to him for help when she was charged with two felonies after appearing at a Portsmouth demonstration in which a Confederate statue was later pulled down and fell on a man, seriously injuring him.
Scott waged a high-profile effort to defend the right of Black people to protest racism, and came up with a “Not This Time” slogan that he emblazoned on T-shirts and handed out to hundreds of people for a rally.
Lawyer Tim Anderson, who is now a Republican delegate representing Virginia Beach, pounced on the situation to launch a campaign to have Lucas recalled from office.
Scott was the perfect person to defend her, Lucas said. “Once he sticks his teeth into something, he’s not going to let it go until he gets all he can get out of it. I knew with him I was going to win,” she said.
The charges were dismissed, the campaign abandoned, and Scott punched back at Anderson with a $20 million civil suit on Lucas’s behalf, charging that he defamed her character.
That was eventually dismissed, as well, and today Anderson has nothing but praise for Scott as an adversary. “You would think that somebody would take that personally, but I’m a lawyer, he’s a lawyer doing his job. He was doing it professionally, and I have no heartburn with that,” Anderson said.
In the protocol-laden world of the General Assembly, though, Scott’s aggressive move to unseat Filler-Corn caught some fellow Democrats off guard. While Scott said he only made the effort after other delegates asked him to do it, his move left bruises. And some Democrats worry about how opponents will target his background, though they won’t talk about it publicly.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, a Democrat who keeps close tabs on party affairs and counts friends in both old guard and new, conceded that “it was hard to watch that situation with him and Eileen.” But change happens, he said, and Scott could be a welcome jolt.
“I see Don Scott as inspirational,” Stoney said, adding that his own father had a felony record.
McDonnell, the former Republican governor who had a federal corruption conviction overturned on appeal, doesn’t specifically remember restoring Scott’s rights among the thousands of cases he reviewed. But he said he finds Scott to be “a great American story of redemption. … I don’t care what party you’re in, this is the kind of story we really should salute and raise up.”
Scott said he knows he’ll be judged now for what he does with his newfound status. He wants to help Democrats connect with the real, everyday concerns of ordinary people, he said, and do a better job telling the story of how policies can help everyone have a fair chance.
For all his swagger, Scott said he approaches the task with the humility that comes from having hit bottom and climbed back up. He knows that people will call him “a crook,” he said, but he has faith that the word doesn’t express who he is. And that, he added, enables him to stand up to someone like the wealthy and powerful Youngkin.
“I know how God sees me,” Scott said. “And so it empowers me to walk with fearlessness. And to speak with fearlessness to people that I should not be speaking to. From where I’m from, I should not be speaking to a 400-million-dollar man that’s the governor …[But] what I’m doing, everybody can do, if they choose. If they believe. So I walk in that belief without fear.” | 2022-06-12T10:16:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Portsmouth Del. Don Scott overcame a troubled past to rise to power in Virginia's House of Delegates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/12/virginia-house-democrats-don-scott/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/12/virginia-house-democrats-don-scott/ |
Smalls and his unlikely movement grapple with sudden fame, a demoralized workforce and a $1 trillion behemoth
By Greg Jaffe
Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, stands outside one of the retailer's warehouses on Staten Island. (Calla Kessler for The Washington Post)
He read an email from a worker in Sacramento who was complaining about the abuse she was suffering on the job. “No one here gives a flying fudge about my wellbeing,” she wrote. The Staten Island win, she continued, had “sparked a fire” and a “hunger” in her.
“We just made unionizing cool as f---,” he said.
“F--- Jeff Bezos!” he yelled and the crowd repeated in kind.
Smalls was starting with almost nothing. Via a tweet, he found a lawyer willing to help for free.
“There’s no culture here. You just produce, produce, produce.”
— Michelle Valentin Nieves
To trigger an election, Smalls and his team needed to persuade at least 30 percent of the workers at an Amazon building to sign authorization cards. By early 2022, the union had collected enough signatures for votes at two Staten Island warehouses — known as JFK8 and LDJ5. The JFK8 warehouse was set to go first.
The lead organizer for the next vote was Maddie Wesley, 23, whose pathway to Amazon was in so many ways the opposite of Smalls’s. She had graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 2020 and was living in Florida last summer when Seth Goldstein, the labor lawyer who had responded to Smalls’s tweet asking for help, called her. The two had worked together organizing campus custodial workers when Wesley was a student.
Wesley had tentatively signed on to work with Unite Here, a big union with 300,000 members that was organizing hotel workers in South Florida. Goldstein urged her to drop the job. “This is the kind of stuff you and I dream about,” he told her of Smalls’s effort. “This is a chance to make history.”
“I’m going to catch all your stragglers … day and night. I got you. I’ll be there.”
— Chris Smalls
He and his team visited Albany, where they were the guests of honor at a luncheon hosted by a coalition of minority lawmakers and sponsored, in part, by Amazon. “It just goes to show how they try to control everything,” Smalls said.
The day before the voting at LDJ5, Smalls and the rest of the Amazon Labor Union held a news conference and rally on a patch of grass halfway between the bus stop and the warehouse. The initial win and Smalls’s rising profile helped attract some heavy hitters who hadn’t been willing to make the trek to Staten Island for the first campaign.
Next up was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “Let’s just give a big shout-out to the workers who did the damn thing!” she shouted in praise of Smalls and his team. | 2022-06-12T10:55:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chris Smalls’s Amazon uprising and the fight for a second warehouse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/12/chris-smallss-amazon-uprising-fight-second-warehouse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/12/chris-smallss-amazon-uprising-fight-second-warehouse/ |
An F/A-18E Super Hornet on the flight deck of the USS Nimitz in 2020. (Cheyenne Geletka/U.S. Navy/AP)
A Navy pilot was killed on June 3 when the fighter jet he was flying as part of a routine training mission crashed in a remote, unpopulated area of the Mojave Desert in Southern California, the Navy said. The incident was being investigated as of last Sunday, it added.
And on Thursday, a Navy helicopter — an MH-60S Seahawk — that was carrying four crew members “crashed near El Centro, Calif. while conducting a routine training flight,” the Naval Air Forces said. All those onboard survived, but one crew member was injured and taken to a hospital. The Navy said it was investigating the incident.
Four U.S. service members killed in Norway aircraft crash during NATO exercise
Andrew Jeong in Seoul and Alex Horton contributed to this report. | 2022-06-12T11:00:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. Navy orders safety pause for aircraft after California crashes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/12/us-navy-aircraft-california-crashes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/12/us-navy-aircraft-california-crashes/ |
The forgotten impact of Harvard’s first Black graduate
Richard T. Greener is finally getting recognized as we tell a more complete version of American history
Perspective by Christian K. Anderson
Christian K. Anderson is a historian of higher education at the University of South Carolina.
A tour group walks through the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Aug. 30, 2012. (Elise Amendola/AP)
A century ago, Richard T. Greener died in Chicago. Despite his many accomplishments, his death on May 2, 1922, went almost unnoticed. The Chicago Tribune published a basic notice May 4, marking the date of his death and his address, and noting that a private funeral would be held May 5 and that he’d be buried in the city’s Graceland Cemetery, but nothing more.
Greener was Harvard’s first Black graduate in 1870 — but neither the Boston Globe nor the Harvard Crimson took note of his death. He was the first Black professor at the University of South Carolina, where he served from 1873 to 1877 — but neither the student newspaper nor any local newspapers in Columbia published a word about his passing. His death was not noted in the Washington papers even though he served as dean of the Howard University School of Law, lobbied Congress and presidents for civil rights legislation and served as a diplomat for the United States to Russia. Greener was also a member of academic societies and civic and literary groups, and they seem not to have eulogized him either.
Why was Greener forgotten in 1922?
Despite his accomplishments in the era just after the Civil War, by the time of his death much of the country was eager to ignore and erase the contributions of Black men and women. Downplaying the work of people such as Greener helped portray the Reconstruction era as a failure, and it papered over the violence of anti-Black racism in the early 20th century. But by restoring the story of his remarkable life, we can challenge those false narratives and uncover paths untaken.
Though born free in Philadelphia in 1844, Greener grew up in an America where most who looked like him were enslaved. His family moved to Boston when he was a boy, and he had intermittent access to education, eventually making his way to preparatory programs at Oberlin and then Phillips Academy at Andover, where he was their first Black graduate in 1865, the year the Civil War ended. He entered Harvard and in 1870 became the institution’s first Black graduate.
Greener distinguished himself at Harvard, winning oratory and writing prizes, and he sometimes contributed to the Advocate, a student publication. When Charles Sumner, the most outspoken abolitionist in the U.S. Senate, read an article Greener had written, he became a mentor and friend.
In 1873, Greener was recruited to teach philosophy at the University of South Carolina. During Reconstruction, a new state constitution gave Black men the vote and broadened educational opportunities. Thanks to Black voters, South Carolina, for the first time, had a majority-Black state legislature. The legislature then elected Black trustees to the university’s board who desegregated the student body. Upon hiring Greener, the board desegregated the faculty as well.
While at the University of South Carolina, Greener was a busy man. In addition to teaching, he served for a time as a librarian, reorganizing the library, based in part on his experience with the catalogue and circulation system at Harvard and aided by his knowledge of Latin, Greek and French. He attended the law school, graduating in 1876. Informed by his own experience of repeating his freshman year, Greener helped create a preparatory program for incoming students, a “sub-freshman class.” He also taught in the state-operated normal school on campus that trained teachers, the vast majority of them Black women.
That this integrated university existed in South Carolina less than a decade after the end of the Civil War is nothing short of remarkable. Greener, his colleagues and his students taught and learned in buildings named for former enslavers where their antebellum predecessors had preached states’ rights and nullification. Greener delivered a eulogy to Sumner in 1874 in one of those buildings, on the dais of Rutledge Chapel, the same place where Preston Brooks, Sumner’s attacker on the floor of the Senate in 1856, delivered his recitations and disputations as a student.
While in South Carolina, Greener put his eloquence as a speaker to good use by advocating for civil rights, often putting his life in danger. At one speaking engagement he had a gun pointed at him, only to be pulled to safety by a state senator. On Election Day in 1876 he was attacked twice while working at the polls.
The integrated university was not to last. With the end of Reconstruction, the University of South Carolina closed its doors to African Americans in 1877, and wouldn’t open them again until 1963.
Greener had a varied career after his time in South Carolina, at times experiencing great success and at others, distressing failure. He served as dean of the Howard University law school, as the administrator for the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial and as a diplomat in Vladivostok, Russia.
But Greener struggled to find his place. He was an associate of both Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois but also tried to curry favor with Booker T. Washington. He had a hard time maintaining sure footing. His final years were spent mostly in obscurity, perhaps in part because his advocacy for intellectual individualism meant he didn’t fit easily into a camp that would make him a recognizable Black leader. Also, his seven years in Russia diminished his visibility at home.
Although forgotten for most of the 20th century, he has been rediscovered in recent years thanks in part to social awakenings and increased access to newly discovered archival sources. While some may still wish to ignore this history, that is no longer possible. These stories, brought to light, are potent examples of parts of our history we still don’t fully understand.
In 2010, my colleague Katherine Chaddock and I attended a historical conference in Cambridge, where she happened upon a plaque about Greener placed by the Cambridge Historical Commission in an alcove of a building near Harvard Square. Once back in Columbia, she showed it to students who asked why the University of South Carolina didn’t have something honoring Greener. That question provided the spark for us and another colleague, Lydia Brandt, to bring Greener’s story to life. (As the University of South Carolina celebrated its bicentennial in 2001, a play about Greener entitled “The White Problem,” the name of one of his essays, was commissioned and performed. There is a scholarship in his name, but his name and story were still largely unknown on campus.)
Meanwhile, Greener’s Harvard undergraduate and University of South Carolina School of Law diplomas were discovered in Chicago in 2012 and Harvard unveiled a portrait of Greener in 2016. Chaddock published a biography in 2017. And on Feb. 21, 2018, a nine-foot statue of Greener was unveiled in the center of the University of South Carolina campus.
Harvard recently released a report, “Harvard & The Legacy of Slavery,” and held a one-day symposium about reckoning with this history. Greener is mentioned in the report as an example of Black resistance to racism. Greener wrote in his essay “The White Problem” in 1894, that “Slavery has been abolished in America; the trail of the serpent, however, yet marks the ground.” That trail helps explain the erasure of figures such as Greener.
Although it comes a century too late, this much-delayed eulogy reminds us of Greener’s remarkable and complicated life and makes clear how important it is to remember. He stands as an important symbol of the unfulfilled promises of the Reconstruction era. His story teaches us what he and others accomplished during a volatile and crucial part of our history. And it reminds of how the course of history might have been different and how understanding this history can inform our future as a nation. | 2022-06-12T11:00:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The forgotten impact of Harvard’s first Black graduate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/12/forgotten-impact-harvards-first-black-graduate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/12/forgotten-impact-harvards-first-black-graduate/ |
When Stephen Curry puts on his Golden State jersey, he’s the best shooter on the planet, the hands-down 2022 Finals MVP and the reason the Warriors will win another championship. (Steven Senne/AP Photo)
BOSTON — Wardell.
We can stop there. No need to further discuss the ins and outs, X’s and O’s of these NBA Finals. Those mundane details just get in the way of the fun part. Instead, go back and re-watch the highlights of one player carrying an entire team on his slight shoulders over the past four games.
Just marvel at the man who wears the No. 30 Golden State Warriors jersey. Outside of it, he looks as if he could be any guy you walk past in the grocery store. Quite possibly someone who might actually need to shop for used cars online instead of getting paid handsomely as a pitchman to do so. But when Wardell Stephen Curry puts on that jersey, he’s the best shooter on the planet, the hands-down 2022 Finals MVP and the reason the Warriors will win another championship.
Now, the Boston Celtics should win. If basketball was a meritocracy, in which the better team always reaped the rewards, then the Celtics would take Game 5 and a 3-2 series lead Monday night. Then they would return home, and late in Game 6, somewhere in the bowels of TD Garden, a gloved handler cradling the oversized, robin’s-egg blue bag that protects the golden Larry O’Brien Trophy would prepare it for presentation. For its rightful owners: the 2021-22 Boston Celtics.
The Celtics have been the better team in three of the four games in this series. They have the better defense, a clamping, physical brand that encourages well-intentioned shooters to become over-dribblers. With center Robert Williams III lording over the paint and four lanky defenders in front of him, Boston has forced Golden State to roam for vacant spots and find little hope around the perimeter.
The Celtics’ overall depth is better, and they’re getting consistent contributions from their best players. Even when first-team all-NBA player Jayson Tatum struggles through shooting lows, he’s not above breaking into a full sprint, as he did in Game 4, to save a loose ball and sliding into the sneakers of his teammates on the sideline. Point guard Marcus Smart also showed his willingness to nearly break his back Friday night, going all-in to sell a flop, just to get a whistle.
These are the winning plays that should be rewarded with a promotion, elevating the young Celtics as a start-up from Suffolk County to a basketball empire that’s primed to secure the franchise’s 18th banner sooner rather than later. The better team should prevail in this series.
But again, Wardell.
Curry is disrupting the logic that a seven-game series favors the more complete team, that a singular star can’t win it all by himself. While he may not be LeBron James in 2007, dragging guys such as Daniel Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic to the Finals, Curry has made it seem as if his team will win the title if he can keep up playing solitaire for a few more games.
“Came out and showed why he’s one of the best players who’s ever played,” teammate Draymond Green said after watching Curry’s performance in Game 4, “and why this organization has been able to ride him to so much success. It’s absolutely incredible.”
Only two other point guards in the history of the league had recorded 40 points and 10 rebounds in a Finals game. One has his silhouette as the NBA’s logo, and the other simply goes by his nickname — Magic.
Curry joined that list with his 43 points (on 14-for-26 shooting, which included seven three-pointers) and 10 rebounds in the Warriors’ series-tying victory in Game 4. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, one voice after another joined the hallelujah chorale in praise of him. And the truth in their words seemed to suggest their dependence in one man — something the Warriors, once defined by their “strength in numbers,” never had to do before during a Finals run.
“We wouldn’t have won without him,” Jordan Poole said.
“All you can do is watch. When Steph has the ball sometimes, you just watch and see what he does,” Andrew Wiggins confessed.
“To go out there and put us on his back, I mean, we got to help him out on Monday,” Klay Thompson observed.
The Warriors all seem to trust in their championship DNA — which they bring up even without being asked — but know deep down that this team isn’t the same as those in 2015, 2017 or 2018. Thompson, in his post-injury recovery, hasn’t rediscovered the marksman touch that once made the Golden State backcourt the most feared from 23 feet 9 inches and beyond. Even more troubling for the Warriors, the final piece to their Big Three, Green, has been unplayable on the offensive end.
When Marcus Thompson II, the venerable Bay Area columnist, asked Warriors Coach Steve Kerr about his substitution pattern (“How much gangsta did you have to summon to sit him?”), the question was about not playing Curry at the beginning of the fourth quarter. But Kerr also needed a certain amount of gangsta — or just eyesight — to send Green to the bench way before the midway point of the fourth. Kerr kept Green there until the 3:41 mark in favor of offense-for-defense substitutions with Poole, the 22-year-old guard.
“This is a tough series for him to score because of Boston’s size and athleticism,” Kerr explained about Green, who has averaged 4.3 points and has missed all nine of his three-point attempts. “But he’s still impacting the game at a huge level.”
Green finished with nine rebounds and eight assists, and Thompson drilled a pair of timely three-pointers in the final quarter. They did just enough to propel the Warriors to a win and possibly secure the momentum ahead of what could be the series-defining Game 5 in San Francisco. Curry did everything else.
“Proud of everybody in terms of our physicality, our focus, perseverance throughout the game,” Curry said in complimenting the team when it would have been appropriate to break his hand by patting himself on the back.
“Two and two is way better than 3-1 going home.”
And in this series, one Wardell Stephen Curry is greater than all. | 2022-06-12T11:00:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Curry dominates for Warriors in NBA Finals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/steph-curry-nba-finals-game-4/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/steph-curry-nba-finals-game-4/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Moscow likely to seize Luhansk in weeks, U...
Facing shortages on the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers are getting supplies they need from those with the printers
Ukrainian military medics with a wounded soldier after treatment at a field hospital in Popasna, Ukraine, on May 8. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Now, they’ve uploaded their best design to the internet. Around 120 individuals and companies worldwide with 3D printers have accessed the design. Together, they have made roughly 5,000 reusable tourniquets that are bound for Ukraine, where they will be stitched and sent off to the battlefield, Kaminski said.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “If you make people in Ukraine feel better, and enable people to help. … This is something really special.”
Inside Ukraine’s new start-up life: Hallways, closets, bunkers
Nearly four months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, critical shortages of medical supplies and weapons accessories persist. But help has come from an unlikely source: Those with 3D printers. Using digital files, people are designing supplies such as bandages, tourniquets, splints and add-ons to AK-47 guns. Using computer-aided design software, special printers create three-dimensional objects with plastics or biomaterials, enabling a large crowdsourced effort to produce supplies and ship them to the battlefield.
And though the fighting in Ukraine has declined from its peak, the community is continuing to create needed items as the war continues to drag on.
“No one believes [the war] will end very quickly,” Kaminski said. “We want to be ready … for the future.”
The history of 3D printing traces back to the 1980s, when American engineer Charles Hull patented a process called stereolithography, which uses ultraviolet light to shape objects. Over the years, that process was refined and became cheaper and quicker, and machines were able to use software-created designs to print out objects such as medical devices, spare parts, toys and jewelry.
3D-printed supplies often help in times of crisis. They provide medical workers, military personnel and aid organizations the ability to design what they need and print the items quickly, removing the difficulties that come with international shipping and manufacturing delays. But the quality of printed goods can be poor, and creating supplies with a 3D printer often takes more time than other methods, such as manufacturing with injection molds.
In 2010, during the devastating earthquake in Haiti, medical devices were printed quickly, allowing doctors to provide health care without waiting for equipment to ship from abroad. In 2018, an organization called the Glia Project came to the aid of Palestinian civilians injured in the Gaza Strip while protesting against Israel, creating and shipping them a 3D-printed “Gaza tourniquet.”
But in February, as Russia invaded Ukraine, the 3D-printing community was put to the test. The fighting in Ukraine was fierce, many were injured, and the country’s stores of basic medical supplies were dwindling. People in the 3D-printing community talked with Ukrainian military officials, hospital administrators and charity organizations, trying to gauge what they could print quickly that would be most helpful. Tourniquets and bandages were repeated requests.
Meet the 1,300 librarians racing to back up Ukraine’s digital archives
Mykhailo Shulhan, the chief operating officer of a Ukrainian 3D-printing company in Lviv, said that as soon as the invasion began, he started researching how 3D printers helped in other conflicts. His company settled on providing trauma bandages — pieces of wide cloth that cover large wounds — and churned out roughly 2,000 per month.
These days, his company, 3D Tech Addtive, develops and prints an array of weapons accessories: AK-47 holsters so soldiers have a way to rest their guns; bullet magazines since empty cartridges often get thrown away instead of reused; carrying bags for grenades; and most recently, anti-reflective lenses for sniper scopes to reduce glare and prevent Ukrainian snipers from being seen. (All together, they have provided over 5,000 components to the front lines, Shulhan estimated.)
Meanwhile, the pace of production exacted a toll. In the early days of the invasion, there were large shortages in printing filament, mostly because local suppliers were in war ravaged areas. Those suppliers have since shifted to Western Ukraine and have resumed supply.
Carey has created two digital designs for splints that have been uploaded online and 3D printed over 1,500 times. If injuries are advanced, he has people send him images of their injuries using EM3D — a 3D imaging app — which allows him to make a custom made splint which is then shipped to Ukraine. And going forward, he said, supplies that improve long-term medical outcomes will be likely be needed.
The rise of the Twitter spies
Kaminski filmed the device being rolled over by a firetruck to show durability. Volunteers at laboratories in Poland stress tested the 3D printed tourniquet to prove it could withstand over 150 pounds of pulling pressure. Ultrasound testing was done at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to show the tourniquet could completely stop blood flow. Now, Kaminski has sent a batch to a volunteer at Johns Hopkins University for testing. | 2022-06-12T11:00:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How a global network of 3D printers is aiding Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/12/3d-printers-ukraine-war-supplies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/12/3d-printers-ukraine-war-supplies/ |
Video of then-President Donald Trump is seen as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds its first public hearing on June 9. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
As important as it is for the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to make the nation understand what really happened on that horrific day, the panel has a more crucial mission: making sure that such an effort to overturn the result of a legitimate election does not happen again.
The potential is there, because the sedition continues. That should not be lost as the bipartisan House panel lays its case before the American people. Jan. 6 was not just a day; it was the opening salvo of a movement to undermine democracy.
Their rage channeled that of then-President Donald Trump. One of the more jolting claims Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) made during the Jan. 6 committee’s opening hearing on Thursday night was that when Trump learned how the insurrectionists were threatening his vice president, he expressed sympathy … for the murderous mob. “The president responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea,’ ” Cheney said. “Mike Pence ‘deserves’ it.”
Many of them are vying for offices that would put them in position to oversee the election machinery in their states. According to a running tally being kept by States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, at least 35 candidates who have denied the validity of the 2020 election results are running for governor in 20 states; at least 15 for attorney general in 13 states; and nearly two dozen for secretary of state — the chief election officer — in 17 states.
Also at the Capitol that day was Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan D. Kelley, who was arrested Thursday on federal charges that included four counts punishable by up to a year in prison for each charge. Among them: trespassing, disorderly conduct, committing an act of violence against a person or property on restricted grounds, and depredation of federal property. Kelley has yet to comment on the charges, but he has called the riot an “energizing event.”
Colorado Republicans have put Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters on the ballot as a candidate for secretary of state — despite the fact that she was indicted in March on criminal charges related to baseless conspiracy theories of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. She is accused of smuggling someone who was not an employee of the county into its offices to illicitly copy election machine hard drives, charges she claims are politically motivated. And in Michigan, the GOP endorsed as its candidate for secretary of state Kristina Karamo, a part-time community college professor and proponent of Trump’s election lies who made debunked claims of having witnessed election fraud as a “poll challenger” in 2020.
It is easy to imagine the stunts that people like this will pull if they are in positions of power come 2024. That is why it is imperative for voters to defeat them all — resoundingly, and across the board. They should take their lead from Georgia Republican voters, who in their May 24 primary defied Trump’s efforts to exact revenge on Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for upholding democracy in 2020 and rejected Trump’s anointed, 2020-election-denying challengers. | 2022-06-12T11:43:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The sedition didn’t stop on Jan. 6. It must be stopped. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/sedition-didnt-stop-jan-6-it-must-be-stopped/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/sedition-didnt-stop-jan-6-it-must-be-stopped/ |
Personal finance class should be required in high school
A woman walks past a loan office in Franklin, Tenn, on Oct. 1, 2020. (Mark Humphrey/AP)
One of the best gifts state and local lawmakers and teachers can give graduating high school students is a solid financial education. Michigan is poised to become the 14th state to mandate a personal finance course before students graduate high school. This should be a requirement around the country. Every student graduating from a public high school should have to take at least one semester of basic personal finance.
High school graduates will soon face the challenges of finding a job, paying bills and taxes, finding a place to live and navigating credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages, student loans and more. Some teenagers face these burdens even before they graduate because they have to help provide for their families. Managing money is daunting at any age, but it’s especially difficult when one is starting out. Losing even a little money early on to fees, fines or bad investments can be crippling, and a poor credit rating can stick around and hurt a young person for years.
Fewer than 1 in 4 high school students are required to take a personal finance course before graduation, according to Next Gen Personal Finance, which assesses high school curriculums and advocates for all students to have access to basic money education by 2025. The situation is even worse in many schools that are predominantly non-White and lower-income. Only about 1 in 20 Black and Brown students have a chance to take a personal finance class before graduation unless they live in a state that offers it to everyone, the organization found.
Critics of these types of programs argue they are a Band-Aid that hides the deeper problems in the U.S. financial industry where lower-income families and people of color are often preyed upon with high-fee products and, in some cases, face outright discrimination in accessing loans and other basic services. Personal finance classes are not a magic cure. But they should go hand in hand with efforts to reform the banking system to make it fairer for all. Giving young people a basic education in how the financial system works isn’t just about helping them avoid the worst options; it’s about helping them pick the best path.
Similarly, those who argue that all students need is a basic understanding of mathematics and compound interest are naive. Being savvy at personal finance today is as much about knowing how to navigate paperwork and legal terms as it is about basic math. Customers have to pick between different bank accounts and fee structures, different loan types and traditional banks vs. non-bank lenders. The recent surge in “buy now, pay later” options at many stores is yet another reminder of how quickly old ideas can be repackaged for the digital age and catch consumers off-guard. And then there’s the rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The fact that Michigan’s bill passed overwhelmingly highlights how this is a rare bipartisan issue. We are glad to see Virginia is one of the top-ranked states for personal finance education, according to Next Gen Personal Finance. Maryland is ranked in the middle, and D.C. is sadly ranked 49th. Personal finance should be as core to a high school education as Shakespeare and algebra. | 2022-06-12T12:23:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Personal finance class should be required in high school - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/personal-finance-class-should-be-required-high-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/personal-finance-class-should-be-required-high-school/ |
By Gordon F. Sander
People protest in Warsaw in January 2021 after Poland's Constitutional Tribunal confirmed its ruling further tightening the mainly Catholic nation's strict antiabortion law. (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)
Last month, when Americans were stunned to learn of a draft Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, one group of people was less surprised: Polish abortion rights advocates.
“What happened with the Supreme Court is of course shocking but not a surprise to us,” said Kinga Jelinska, a member of the Polish abortion rights group Abortion Dream Team. She sees “a lot of parallels between what is happening in the U.S.” and in Poland.
Only two developed countries have rolled back abortion rights in the 21st century: the United States and Poland. As Americans grapple with the potential end of the constitutional right to abortion, the story of Poland’s 90-year fight over abortion shows what the end of that right might look like.
The history of abortion in Poland has been a topsy-turvy affair. Before 1932, abortion was banned without any exception. In that year, the young republic’s Constitutional Tribunal legalized abortion when there were manifest medical reasons for performing one, such as when the health of the mother was at stake. Abortion was also permitted when a pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.
This relatively liberal law remained in force from 1932 to 1956 — through the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany, the defeat of Nazi forces by the Soviet Union and the reoccupation of Poland under Joseph Stalin.
The only exception was from 1943 to 1945, during the last two years of the apocalyptic German occupation, which saw millions of Polish civilians killed, including most of the country’s large prewar Jewish population. In that horrid interregnum, abortion on request was authorized by direct order of Adolf Hitler, who despised the Polish “untermenschen” — or those considered racially or socially inferior — and wanted Poles to have fewer children.
Abortion was also forced on pregnant Jewish prisoners at the concentration camps at Ravensbrück and Waltrop-Holthausen. The Nazis had no ethical problems with abortion — as long as it was being performed on what they considered the right people. (The Polish antiabortion movement has capitalized on this history with posters that juxtapose Hitler’s face with an image of an aborted fetus.)
In 1956, during the “Khrushchev thaw” under Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev, the law was further liberalized when the Polish legislature followed Moscow’s example and repealed its ban on abortion, allowing it in cases where the woman was experiencing “difficult living conditions.”
Not that the Polish Communist government encouraged abortion. On the contrary: The authorities hoped to bolster the country’s reproductive capacity and thought illegal underground abortions hurt women’s procreative health more than legal medicalized abortions.
However, in practice, abortion in Poland was available on request.
‘We have had abortions’: 1972 petition changed abortion rights movement
In the 1950s and 1960s, it was not uncommon for women from European countries where abortion was restricted, including more “liberal” Sweden across the Baltic Sea, to travel to Poland to have abortions because they were more accessible and affordable there.
Then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and so did the Polish Communist regime. As political and intellectual freedom expanded, reproductive rights reverted to the prewar “norm,” and abortion was effectively pushed underground — or abroad, for those who could afford it — due to the powerful influence of the Catholic Church. (More than 85 percent of Poles identify as Catholic, the highest percentage in any European country.)
Since then, abortion access has continued to diminish, though the trend has also given rise to a vociferous abortion and women’s rights movement, including Abortion Dream Team.
That movement secured a major victory in 2016, during the “Black Protest,” when thousands of Polish women bearing black umbrellas and other black accoutrements demonstrated against and stopped legislation proposed by Catholic groups that would have imposed a total ban on abortion.
The Black Protest sparked demonstrations in other countries with restrictive abortion regulations, including heavily Catholic Ireland. There, a nationwide referendum overturned a similar ban in 2018.
However, in Poland, the Black Protest proved a rearguard action in the losing fight for abortion rights, which culminated in a ruling last year by the Constitutional Tribunal that made abortion, or abetting an abortion, a criminal act, with exceptions only for rape, incest and to protect the mother’s life.
That ruling resembles the leaked draft opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. that would overturn Roe, said Jelinksa. “If you look at the leak, the tone and the language is very similar,” she said.
The Tribunal’s exception to protect mothers’ lives hasn’t always been observed. Last September, a Polish woman known as Izabela died after being denied medical intervention when her water broke in the 22nd week, or fifth month, of pregnancy. In January, a woman known as Agnieszka T. who was in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy died after the heartbeat of one fetus stopped and Polish physicians, wary of breaking the law, refused to carry out an abortion.
“Many people in both countries perceive judicial institutions to be politicized,” said Courtney Blackington, an American Fulbright scholar affiliated with the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw who has been studying the abortion crisis in Poland. “When the new [Polish] abortion ruling came out last year, there were activists who told me that they could not respect it because they felt it emanated from an institution that no longer respected the law.”
Polish abortion opponents, she added, “are hyperaware of what is happening in the U.S.” and have used their American counterparts as a model for their movement.
“The antiabortion coalition in the U.S. is basically the same as the antiabortion coalition in Poland,” said Agnieszka Graff-Osser, a Polish feminist author and activist who works at the American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw. She added, “It is the same movement, the same strategy.”
Nevertheless, Polish abortion rights activists say American women shouldn’t despair that the United States will follow Poland into a complete ban on abortion. For one thing, a ruling to overturn Roe wouldn’t outlaw abortion, and many states would continue to allow it. For another, the relatively recent availability of abortion pills can still give people a way to access abortions if doctors stop providing them.
“The pills are a real game changer,” said Jelinska, of Abortion Dream Team. But they aren’t without substantial risks. Justyna Wydrzynksa, an Abortion Dream Team activist, is on trial for giving the pill to a woman experiencing domestic violence. Jelinska called her case “a powerful reminder of the risks to activists from unjust, outdated laws.”
Still, “the Polish example shows that medical abortion with pills and feminist support networks can help [women] survive such difficult times,” said Natalie Broniarczyk, another Abortion Dream Team member. “This is what authorities are most afraid of,” she added.
The Abortion Dream Team members said the principal lesson that American women should take from Poland’s rollback of abortion rights is not to sink into despair, but to continue to support one another in finding ways to obtain safe abortions. The Polish activists may have lost one type of abortion access after another over the past few decades, but they have not lost hope.
Gordon F. Sander is a journalist and historian based in Riga, Latvia, and a visiting lecturer at the Latvian Academy of Culture. Eleonora Balode in Riga and Zuzanna Wieniewska in Warsaw provided research assistance for this article. | 2022-06-12T12:31:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Poland's war on abortion rights, and lessons for U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/12/poland-abortion-rights-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/12/poland-abortion-rights-history/ |
Culinary Workers Union member Maria Orozco hands voter information to a resident as she canvasses at an apartment complex in Las Vegas on June 8, 2022. Nevada holds its primary elections on June 14. (David Becker for The Washington Post)
LAS VEGAS — Yuniel Acosta spent several minutes pleading with Manuel Ayala.
“Do it for your kids. Rent is going up. Prices are up. Support your kids. Do it for your community and vote Democrat,” said Acosta, a canvasser here for the influential Culinary Workers Union.
Ayala, a 57-year-old father, wasn’t buying it. But he wasn’t interested in supporting Republicans, either. Instead, he wasn’t sure he would vote at all.
“Politicians just do whatever they want. Why vote when you know the president and those around him won’t be any different from those before them, regardless of party?” he said in an interview outside his North Las Vegas home.
Democrats are trying to convince voters that their response to the pandemic paved the way for a more stable economy, particularly in a tourism-dependent city such as Las Vegas. But the message that Democrats are the party most capable of revitalizing the economy is a tough sell as inflation continues to rise under their watch. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday that inflation jumped a historic 8.6 percent last month from a year earlier as gas prices reached nearly $5 a gallon nationwide, a trend that most Americans expect will worsen.
Lack of motivation to vote also is common during midterm elections, compared to presidential years. In a warning sign for Democrats, a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more certain than Democrats that they will vote in November.
“I do believe there’s a level of exhaustion and uncertainty about the future, and that, to me, is what you’re seeing a lot of in Biden’s approval ratings,” said Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.), whose district stretches from western Vegas to the southern tip of the state. “This guy promised us that covid was going to be gone. Bottom line is you can’t control a virus; you can only control the response to it.”
Redistricting made Horsford’s and Lee’s districts slightly more Democratic, but both still face tough odds in a year that independent analysts say favors Republicans. And Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), who has served in the House on and off for over a decade, lost a double-digit advantage in redistricting, now occupying a district that includes the more conservative-leaning neighborhoods of Henderson and Boulder City.
All three Las Vegas-area representatives are in what the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter considers toss-up races — contests so competitive it is hard to predict which party most voters will choose.
Joe Biden won Lee’s district by 6.7 percentage points, with margins of more than eight points in the Horsford and Titus seats. But the apathy of voters, some of whom fault Democrats for not controlling inflation, endangers the slim Democratic control of the House.
“I get people are turned off right now. It’s been hard between the pandemic, the recession that followed, the war in Ukraine, the cost of living — this is what the average person is focused on. They’re not top of mind and thinking, ‘Oh, I got to go vote,’” said Horsford, who represents North Las Vegas.
To get people to the polls, Democrats are telling anxious voters that they spearheaded the employment recovery over the past year. In March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that Nevada had experienced the largest one-year employment growth rate of all states, with an increase of 9.1 percent. The unemployment rate was 5 percent in April, an almost 25 percentage point decrease from the peak of the pandemic two years ago.
“One of the things I think we have to get better at between now and the general election is talking about what we’ve done,” said Donna West, a former Clark County, Nev., Democratic chairwoman. “I know it’s going to be an uphill fight, but we have to get better on what we provided.”
At several events across Las Vegas, House Democrats pointed to the roughly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan that the party passed without GOP support as the reason for the quick recovery. Republican members and strategist have spent the past year countering that the Democratic-passed recovery bill is a contributor to inflation.
Acknowledging the burden of inflation, Democrats argue that they are still the party with the policies to lower the prices that the government can control. House Democrats have passed stand-alone bills aimed at easing the financial burden of rising housing and child-care costs, as well as lowering the cost of insulin. Those proposals, however, have not been taken up by an evenly split Senate.
“To me, it’s: Look at the record on who’s actually worked, who’s churned out these bills and who’s gotten things across the finish line, really in light of the great opposition by Republicans,” Lee said in an interview.
Whether that message is resonating outside of Democratic circles isn’t yet clear.
Anna Diggs, a kitchen worker at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, says that when she is knocking on doors as a canvasser, she meets people who blame Democrats for inflation “all the time.” A culinary union member for 32 years, she has sensed a split among colleagues, even within the union, over which way they will vote in November.
That’s an encouraging sign for Republicans, who feel extremely confident that they will win back Democrat-held seats, including the Nevada governorship and a majority in both chambers of Congress.
Scott Raymer, 58, a finance company president, remembers that Las Vegas’s recovery from the 2008 financial crisis took over a decade. A Republican who lives in the Summerlin neighborhood in Lee’s district, Raymer said the feeling is reminiscent of the days before the 2008 recession, signaling that “it’s time for a clean sweep.”
“I think the whole kind of way covid was handled irritated a lot of people here, especially with all the casinos and stuff and how tight it was. I think the way [Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak] handled the situation wasn’t good,” he said.
Several Republican campaign strategists think the state’s economy, so interlinked with the tourism and hospitality industries, which are still lagging because of the global pandemic, will suffer even more if consumers stop spending on big trips to the Las Vegas Strip.
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, echoed the point in an interview. He said that judging by how much money is being spent on ads in the Las Vegas media market by political committees aligned with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democrats are worried about losing the three Las Vegas-area House seats.
“Well, why don’t you ask Nancy? ... That’s where she put the most of her money,” he said. “They clearly see [the three seats] as swings.”
Democrats are answering recession speculation by trying to remind voters that Republicans have chosen to cut taxes for corporations rather than for the middle-class, as exemplified by the 2017 Trump tax cuts — a point Acosta says is the reason he is a registered Democrat and knocking on doors for candidates endorsed by the Culinary Workers Union.
“I’m a Democrat because I believe Republicans really work to enrich the rich and the Democrats fight for the middle class, people like me. I’m not a millionaire. I’m middle-class and try to make ends meet,” he said.
But not all Hispanic voters, who make up almost 30 percent of the Nevada electorate, are enthusiastic Democrats like Acosta.
Chris Romano, a Mexican American who has worked in Las Vegas Latino political circles, attended the monthly Hispanics in Politics breakfast at Doña Maria Tamales this month and concluded that Horsford and Lee “falta la sazón” — they lack the “spice” to motivate the Hispanic community.
Romano said that many Hispanics he knows are so “disenchanted” by the economic situation and Democrats’ inability to keep promises that they either are turning to Republicans or will not vote this year. Romano, who is an independent but planning to vote Republican this year, said that although he believes Donald Trump as president was “too brusque” and “caused damage,” people will remember how the economy thrived under his administration.
“The Democrats, this time around, have disappointed us. I think they’re going too far left,” he said. “We all remember we were better off under [Trump]. There was money flowing in the street. People seemed happier. People had hope. People felt strong and safer.”
But it’s not a sure bet for Republicans, either.
Zoila Sanchez, who organizes the Hispanics in Politics event, has sensed that those who are open to the GOP have recoiled after being reminded how the Republican Party often responds after a mass shooting. Las Vegas remains the scene of the largest mass shooting in the United States: the 2017 attack in which a man firing from a hotel window killed 60 people and injured more than 400 attending a music festival.
Democratic candidates have heard concerns from voters, especially suburban mothers, on school safety since the shooting in Uvalde, Tex., last month and a leaked Supreme Court draft showing the possible imminent reversal of the 1973 court decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion across the country.
“We’re hearing a lot about Roe on the doors, we’re hearing a lot about abortion on the doors. Clearly, where we stand is with the voters, the majority that support legal access, and now we’re asking about whether kids are safe in school,” said West, the former county chairwoman who has been leading canvasses ahead of the primary. “I think it shows for all the bravado we’re seeing from the Republican Party, they clearly know they’re in trouble with the voters on a number of issues.”
But the problem for Aliece Empey, who is self-employed, is Democrats’ failure to deliver on several promises after being given the chance to change the country’s direction after Trump. Outside a Target store in Hendersonville, Empey, 25, noted that bottles of shampoo now cost the same as the hourly minimum wage.
“I feel like, as always, there’s a lot promised and a lot cut short. I think the situation [Biden] had in front of him was really difficult. He still has time. I feel like I’m a more optimistic person, but it would be good for him to keep some promises,” she said.
Rep. Titus, who is reintroducing herself to voters in this part of town, said that the voter anxiety in Vegas is tied to lessons from the 2008 recession and housing crisis. Voters are discouraged and fear the worst is still to come.
“Even though we’re the fastest-recovering community, people are concerned, because they want to be sure that the recovery touches everybody, not just people at the top, and also, that it lasts. I think they just kind of don’t believe it, and they’re worried about what the future will hold,” she said. | 2022-06-12T12:31:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As economic worry grows, Democrats face weary Vegas voters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/12/economic-worry-grows-democrats-face-weary-vegas-voters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/12/economic-worry-grows-democrats-face-weary-vegas-voters/ |
WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 25: U.S. President Joe Biden answers questions from members of the press before departing from the White House on May 25, 2021 in Washington, DC. Biden is scheduled to make a quick trip to Wilmington before returning to Washington later this evening. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) (Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America)
Every modern presidency eventually hits bumps in the road, at which point the call will come from someone somewhere to “let the president be himself.”
Many of my friends are familiar with the “Let Bartlet be Bartlet” episode of “The West Wing,” but the modern version of the cliché dates to the 1980s. Ronald Reagan presided over an administration that was essentially a coalition: conservative movement activists inherited from Barry Goldwater, and members of the conservative governing establishment inherited from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Whenever faced with frustrating signs of moderation or pragmatism — or just bad publicity — the call would go forth: “Let Reagan be Reagan.”
It’s easy to forget now, but — despite the candidate’s status as the former vice president in a popular and successful Democratic administration — Biden’s 2020 operation had a lot of the atmosphere of a longshot campaign. In terms of fundraising, he lagged behind Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg to the very end (in the early running, Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris were ahead of him too). He didn’t have much of the party’s “top” staff talent behind him, and he wasn’t well-liked or broadly supported by the constellation of para-party nonprofit groups that make up the progressive movement.
Biden reminisced about working with segregationists, scolded low-income parents over their child-rearing practices, and called Harris a “kid.” From a policy standpoint, he was the lead author of a then-much-reviled 1994 crime bill and he wouldn’t endorse faddish ideas such as banning fracking, decriminalizing illegal entry into the US or passing Medicare for All. Biden was seen as a cringeworthy figure, an all-around yesterday’s man out of step with a country and party demanding bold progressive change.
You might think that, after he won the nomination in 2020, Biden could finally be … Biden. But he still needed to court Democratic Party elites.
Selecting the more liberal Harris as vice president helped Biden win over donors who were unenthused about his campaign. He fired his original campaign manager and brought on Jen O’Malley Dillon, the No. 2 official on Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and former architect of the O’Rourke presidential campaign. And he formed a unity task force with Sanders to get progressive activists excited, becoming the first Democrat in living memory to reposition himself to the left after winning the nomination.
A mismatch between the politics of the president and those of his staff is nothing new. But the dynamics can change with issues and over the course of an administration. The “establishment” wing of the Reagan administration provided valuable moderate ballast that helped the president claw back from the huge budget deficits created early in his administration. Trump-era establishmentarians probably saved the country from several disasters but also talked him out of some more moderate instincts on gun control in the wake of a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas.
Biden unleashed is also likely to reveal that the president actually is out of step — with some of the values of the contemporary progressive movement. Many of Biden’s younger aides doubtless see that as a problem. In reality, it is one of his political strengths. And as the national agenda turns to issues such as new initiatives to fight inflation and crime rather than new investments in preschool and childcare, Biden would be well-served by a return to form.
• Is Biden’s White House Really ‘Adrift’?: Jonathan Bernstein | 2022-06-12T14:03:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden Needs to Unleash His Inner Biden - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-needs-to-unleash-his-inner-biden/2022/06/12/63c42c5a-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-needs-to-unleash-his-inner-biden/2022/06/12/63c42c5a-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Politics Have Distorted Americans’ Views of the Economy
A vehicle at a fuel pump of a Fuel 4 gas station in Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S., on Sunday, March 13, 2022. The cost for a gallon of gas in the U.S. continues to reach all-time highs, as the national average jumped nearly 7 cents last week. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
According to a recent survey, a majority of Republicans and a plurality of Democrats believe the US is in a recession. The question is how seriously to take their complaints.
Most Americans probably do not know the formal definition of a recession — “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months” — but they do know that current prices of gas and food are especially high, and inflation is rising the fastest in 40 years. At the same time, unemployment is below 4% and the US economy continues to create new jobs at a rapid pace.
When it comes to the economy, Republicans tend to focus on the negative and Democrats on the positive. If the parties were intellectually consistent, it would be the opposite.
Think back to the presidency of George W. Bush. Republicans offered a consistent (albeit debatable) vision of economic success: an “ownership society” where net worth was relatively high, savings were high, and people relied on their own resources to deal with the vicissitudes of the marketplace. With secure property rights and high savings, momentary disturbances could be offset by individual economization. People could manage temporarily higher prices by consuming less or by seeking appropriate substitutes. The initial problem, to the extent there was one, was that not enough households had enough ownership and material resources.
You might think Republicans would find this situation at least tolerable. Yet because they are not in power, they are emphasizing the negative aspects of the current economy.
Many Democrats are also inconsistent. The broadly Democratic approach to household well-being is to use subsidies and regulations to lower the prices of important commodities. Such programs might include food stamps, public and subsidized housing, and Medicaid. The theory is that high and volatile market prices in these areas are harmful, which creates a case for subsidies or in some cases direct provision.
These transfer programs, which many Democrats want to expand, have the longer-run impact of lowering savings rates. If unemployment insurance and Medicaid are made more generous, for instance, the demand to save will go down, because government will be picking up more of the tab.
You might then think that Democrats would view the current mix of high savings with high and volatile prices as pretty disastrous. Yet the apologists for the current economic situation are more frequently Democrats. Paul Krugman, for instance, has argued repeatedly that there is a huge disconnect between how people portray the economy and how they actually are doing. In essence, he thinks there is too much complaining.
So who is right? Is America’s economy something to be happy about, or not? There is no simple answer. I will say that I have noticed that many people quickly internalize wealth gains and focus emotionally on losses, such as higher prices for many consumption items.
• The Biggest Threat to the US Economy Is Policy Makers: Allison Schrager | 2022-06-12T14:03:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Politics Have Distorted Americans’ Views of the Economy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/politics-havedistorted-americans-views-of-the-economy/2022/06/12/646d206c-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/politics-havedistorted-americans-views-of-the-economy/2022/06/12/646d206c-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
An abortion clinic in Texas. (Photographer: Bloomberg)
Suppose Roe v. Wade is overturned. A recent fanfare of concern worries that a state would then be able to punish its citizens for traveling to other states to seek medical assistance in ending their pregnancies. Missouri is considering a statute that would do exactly that, and Texas activists are pushing a similar proposal. Other states may follow.
Would such a law be constitutional? It’s hard to be sure. The doctrine is a confusing mishmash, and the Supreme Court has declined to offer definitive guidance. Although legal scholars have been arguing since the 1990s in favor of a right to travel to seek an abortion, the last time the justices directly addressed the issue of a state’s power to punish crimes beyond its borders was ... um ... 1941.
In short, we can’t predict how a court would treat an effort by one state to bar its citizens from obtaining abortion in another. But one need not be pro-choice to see the strength of the argument against such a law.
Let’s start with a basic question: Can a state punish its citizens for breaking the state’s laws while beyond its boundaries? It would seem that the answer is yes. In 1941, the Supreme Court held that Florida could punish its residents for breaking Florida law while on the high seas. Over the ensuing decades, other states have successfully prosecuted crimes committed at sea.
It would also seem that the answer is no. During the era of human enslavement, the general rule was that one state could not enforce its own laws on the matter outside its borders. In Lemmon v. The People (1860), for example, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the legal status of slaves brought to New York would be determined only by New York law; thus they were set free.
The process also worked the other way around. I recently came across an 1831 decision holding that Indiana’s ban on slavery could not prevent Indiana residents from owning slaves held in other states.
Here’s a way to harmonize the cases. In the Florida case (as in the many others involving conduct on the high seas), the crime is committed outside the jurisdiction of any state. There isn’t a countervailing interest. The 1831 case, however, arose where the laws of two separate states were in conflict. Kentucky allowed slavery; Indiana didn’t; the court held that an act legal in Kentucky couldn’t be prevented because the person who did it couldn’t have done it at home.
I’m not saying that the pro-choice side should rely on cases handed down in the era when human beings were property. But it’s worth noting that the antebellum cases arose because different states had different laws on the subject. Thus there’s good reason to heed the advice of my Yale colleague Lea Brilmayer, who has argued that one state’s right to punish its citizens for doing what its own law prohibits should yield to another state’s right to take a strong policy position in favor of it.
The policy point matters. As Brilmayer notes, there’s no conflict “if the first state wished to prohibit certain types of conduct, while the second was simply indifferent.” The issue arises only when two states are actively working to promote different answers to the question. If this argument is correct — and I believe it is — then in a nation where Roe v. Wade is no longer constitutional law, pro-choice states would do well to adopt statutes explicitly recognizing the right to an abortion. By writing their preferences into policy, they would create sufficient conflict to prevent the pro-life state from enforcing its law beyond its territory.
Even if all of this is unpersuasive, there remain prudential reasons that states considering sharp restrictions on abortion shouldn’t try to punish their residents for obtaining abortions in the state next door.
The most obvious reason is reciprocity. Consider two adjoining states, like Missouri and Illinois. Missouri is likely to bar all or most abortions. Illinois not only allows abortion but in 2019 enacted a law saying that women have a “fundamental right” to access abortion and that a “fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights.” If abortion law crosses the border, why couldn’t the Illinois law apply in Missouri if an Illinoisan travels there? (An analogous caution might apply were a state to bar employers from paying expenses for employees who travel to seek an abortion, although the legal issues are somewhat different.)
There’s another prudential concern, one that has nothing to do with abortion. In March, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to a California law restricting the sale of pork products unless the farms meet certain standards, even though nearly all the farms in question are outside the state. The challenge builds on previous decisions, such as the 1996 case where a majority of the justices warned that “a State may not impose economic sanctions on violators of its laws with the intent of changing the tortfeasors’ lawful conduct in other States.”
No, the issue isn’t remotely the same. But this line of cases is a reminder that we live at a time when states are trying all sorts of devices to regulate conduct beyond their borders, even when the conduct is legal elsewhere. We should take the time to ponder whether that’s the direction in which we want to move.
• The Supreme Court Has a Nasty Surprise in Store for Business: Noah Feldman
• Jan 6. Panel Made the Case Against Trump: Jonathan Bernstein
• Democrats Need the Stacey Abrams Playbook for the Roe Fight: Julianna Goldman | 2022-06-12T14:03:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pro-Choice States Should Protect the Right to Travel for Abortion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pro-choice-states-should-protect-the-right-to-travel-for-abortion/2022/06/12/6436e614-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pro-choice-states-should-protect-the-right-to-travel-for-abortion/2022/06/12/6436e614-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Analysis by Francis Wilkinson | Bloomberg
A short video taken this spring on a barrier island in North Carolina followed a narrative arc made familiar by nature programs. First, an oceanfront house buckled on its spindly pilings, like an antelope folding in the jaws of a lion. Then the dismembering began. The sea thrashed the structure with the mindless intensity of an apex predator tearing into the haunches of a helpless prey. It splintered the second-floor deck. It lunged at the first floor and tore away a meaty chunk, leaving the room upstairs suspended above the void. Then the sea ripped the house entirely from the sand, launching it sloshing into the surf. When the feast was over, flotsam from the carcass drifted along a 14-mile stretch of Atlantic Coast.
In an era of climate change and rapidly rising seas, a barrier island is akin to an exhausted, encircled antelope. Of course, houses along the shore have been vulnerable to a voracious sea since long before carbon began branding the wreckage. But the ocean’s volume, appetite and reach are growing. I traveled last month to Sanibel Island, on the Gulf Coast of Florida, to get a sense of how a barrier island in the hurricane zone confronts that peril.
Florida is especially vulnerable to rising seas, overheated water and a super-charged tropical atmosphere. Miami gets attention because it’s a large and glamorous city in the eye of the storm. But other places are arguably more at risk. According to a study by First Street Foundation, Cape Coral, Florida, just north of Fort Myers and a few miles landward from Sanibel, is the city most vulnerable to flood in the entire U.S. The city is famous for its slapdash development, a midcentury frenzy of dredge-and-fill that annihilated marsh and mangroves on the way to creating 400 miles of man-made canals.
Sanibel is the regional counterpoint to that sunny paragon of reckless real estate — a Florida Gallant to Cape Coral’s Goofus. “Sanibel has a really different vibe from anywhere else in Southwest Florida,” said James Douglass, a biologist and expert in sea grasses at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers.
While Cape Coral’s angular shoreline is hardened by concrete sea walls, Sanibel works to bolster a “living shoreline” bequeathed by nature. It wields a unique set of social and natural defenses to help it fend off relentless pressure from both real estate developers and a rising sea.
It’s unclear, however, how much conscientious environmental stewardship can do. It just might not be possible to ride out this soggy century on a barrier island in Florida. Sea level rise, combined with storm surges jacked up by warmer water, high tides and more powerful storms, may simply be more than any one spit of sand can withstand.
Sanibel, which bills itself “a barrier island sanctuary,” is methodically working to prolong its existence. It’s a famously comfortable one. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal cited Sanibel as one of the best places to have a second home. “We are really fortunate to have a citizenry that is, one, really well engaged, and, two, well educated,” said Holly Milbrandt, the city’s director of natural resources. “You are constantly meeting CEOs.”
Indeed, Sanibel, which is overwhelmingly White and a magnet for retirees, is a nesting ground for wealth. With only about 7,000 year-round residents, and about 7,500 units of housing, the approximate market value of the island’s real estate is $6.3 billion, according to city data.
All that is threatened by the sea, which along this stretch of the Gulf Coast has been rising a little more than three millimeters per year. “I mean, three millimeters per year. It doesn’t sound like a lot,” said James Evans, who was the city’s director of natural resources before becoming the CEO of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. “It will catch up with us.”
The pace, of course, is picking up as the target date for reducing carbon in the atmosphere perpetually recedes. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the “intermediate scenario” for sea rise in nearby Fort Myers predicts an increase of 1.44 feet by 2060. That estimate does not factor in high-water incidents resulting from storms or unusually high tides.
Sanibel’s neighborhood is already problematic. In 2018, when the Florida Panhandle was hit by Hurricane Michael, a Category 5, U.S. Geological Survey sensors in Mexico Beach registered water levels 15 to 19 feet above mean sea level. Waves hitting Mexico Beach from the Gulf rose even higher, smashing into second floors. More than three dozen died; much of the town was destroyed.
Projecting a similar surge onto Sanibel, which is about 12 miles long and 3 miles wide, is a grim exercise. On an island that peaks at a little over four feet above sea level, even an additional foot of sea rise poses a menace. “When a storm comes through, the king tides, the storm events, that adds tidal input on top of that foot,” said James Evans. “So I would even argue that at a foot of sea level rise, this island may be uninhabitable.”
Yet the city is not investing in vast sea walls or calling upon the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to erect the kind of multi-billion-dollar barrier systems that the Corps has proposed along the Texas coast and the South Jersey shore. Instead, Sanibel is doing what it has long done, and what sets it apart from most of Florida’s development-mad coast: It is trying to enlist nature in its defense.
“Sanibel has a comprehensive land-use plan that is based on natural systems, where it puts wildlife and wildlife habitat at the top of the hierarchy of values,” said Evans. “As a result, between the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge and the city of Sanibel, we’ve been able to preserve more than 70% of the entire land mass of Sanibel for conservation.” With no homes or infrastructure in conservation areas, the stakes of a deluge are lower, and the management of the problem is easier. “When you look at the threats of climate change and sea level rise on our community,” Evans said, “you’ve taken all of that area, 70% of the island, out of harm’s way.”
In effect, Sanibel is trusting that shrewd land-use decisions made in the 20th century will improve its prospects for survival in the 21st. Like most barrier islands, Sanibel’s greatest sea-rise threat comes from the bay side. Wave energy from the Gulf can — and one day will— produce catastrophic damage. When saltwater accompanying a hurricane swept over the island in 1926, it effectively ended agriculture on Sanibel. But it’s the slow, steady intrusion of water rising from the bay that threatens to engulf the island.
Much of Sanibel’s bay side consists of wetlands where development is prohibited. That’s where the 5,200-acre J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge is mostly located. A cartoonist and conservationist who served in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, Darling later helped found the National Wildlife Federation. His former home, “Fish House,” on Captiva, Sanibel’s sister island to the north, is a local icon.
Darling’s conservation efforts were crucial to securing open land. His preservation campaign was aided significantly by inconvenience: Until the first causeway from the mainland was constructed in 1963, Sanibel was accessible only by ferry. Once a causeway was in place, however, developers moved to exploit some of Florida’s most alluring beaches. Had their efforts not been impeded, Sanibel would no doubt present a typical Florida post card — beachfront high-rises strung together by asphalt and shopping.
Instead, the city successfully countered the invasion, incorporating in 1974 to chart its own fate. Old-school Republican leaders such as Porter Goss, the town mayor who went on to serve in Congress and led the Central Intelligence Agency under President George H.W. Bush, were anything but laissez-faire about local development. Marrying an ethic of conservation to the self-interest of Not In My Backyard, they thwarted big development, eschewed national chain stores and rebuffed decades of political pressure from the county and state. “We have to remain vigilant because we are continuing to see development pressure come from Lee County, which is the county that we belong to here in Southwest Florida,” Evans said. “I mean, the development pressure is unrelenting.”
A key to the island’s ecological victory was the Sanibel Plan. Adopted in 1976, two years after Sanibel incorporated, the plan essentially blocked Lee County from controlling development on the island. County zoning and development standards would’ve allowed some 30,000 residential units, with scant regard for environmental consequences. The Sanibel plan sought to cap residential units at 7,800, though the ceiling was later lifted to 9,000, partly in response to lawsuits.
The consequences are visible everywhere. Instead of strands of beachfront towers, two-story construction predominates, with most buildings enshrouded by lush vegetation at a respectful remove from the beach. While limiting development, the plan also sought to safeguard water quality, preserve sensitive environmental areas and limit roads and sprawl. Two decades later, after several revisions to the plan, the city recommitted itself to environmental preservation with a vision statement and an explicit “hierarchy of values.” It promised to “sustain ecological balance and preserve and restore natural settings for residents, visitors and wildlife” and called on “the coordinated vigilance of residents, government and private enterprise” to protect the island’s natural beauty and ecology.
Sanibel is and shall remain a barrier island sanctuary, one in which a diverse population lives in harmony with the Island’s wildlife and natural habitats. The Sanibel community must be vigilant in the protection and enhancement of its sanctuary characteristics. The City of Sanibel will resist pressures to accommodate increased development and redevelopment that is inconsistent with the Sanibel Plan, including this Vision Statement.
Sanibel’s undeveloped, ecologically vibrant land may buy the island time. Expansive marshes attenuate wave energy, reducing erosion to the land. They can also expand through accretion if conditions are right, increasing the buffer zone. Fewer roads on the island lead to heavier traffic, but with more land unpaved, the island can better absorb excess rainfall or storm surge. And every beachfront tower that the town refused to permit is now a safety and environmental burden that Sanibel doesn’t bear.
On May 20, the City of Sanibel held its 2022 Hurricane Seminar at the Big Arts Center, the kind of commodious public gathering and performance space that only a very affluent small town could will into existence. The seminar, which was attended by about 100 residents and featured public officials from both city and county, was a good example of the murky political consensus that has emerged in Florida in response to climate change.
The first rule of that consensus is to avoid, whenever possible, the phrase “climate change.” In a pinch, you can tacitly acknowledge that climate change is having real-world effects, and that those effects require real-world responses. But you must not acknowledge that climate change has known causes, or suggest that those root causes should in any way be addressed.
Dave Roberts, the city’s weather consultant, spoke about intense storms. The reasons for such storms, he averred, were beyond his meteorological ken, and perhaps beyond human understanding. Lee County Public Safety-Emergency Management Director Sandra Tapfumaneyi shared a remarkable statistic: In the five years since 2017, she said, there have been more Category 4 and 5 hurricanes than there were in the previous 53 years. As to the cause of this robust new hurricane manufacture? Tapfumaneyi didn’t venture a guess.
In two hours of presentations on hurricanes, in a county where 300,000 people were evacuated in 2017 in advance of Hurricane Irma, not a single speaker joined the words “climate” and “change” together. It’s not a coincidence. Under Florida’s previous governor (and current U.S. senator) Rick Scott, the state government’s refusal to acknowledge climate change was near total. Current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a MAGA culture warrior who treats the causes of climate change as a mystery. But DeSantis doesn’t ignore the effects; he has provided more funds for localities to deal with the consequences of That Which Must Not Be Named.
A study released earlier this year by Freddie Mac found that Florida homes exposed to sea level rise were selling at a 2.8% discount compared to homes that are not exposed. Flood insurance rates are rising, as they are in other coastal areas, and one Florida insurance agent told CBS News that some lenders were considering curtailing the issue of 30-year mortgages in South Florida.
Federal flood insurance is capped at $250,000, far below the value of a typical Sanibel home, which Zillow pegs at around $1.3 million. Sanibel insurance agent Chris Heidrick told me that a million dollars of flood insurance for a home on the Gulf generally costs around $5,000 to $7,000. Sea rise doesn’t influence the price much, he says, in part because insurers “look backward, not forward,” for the data they use to set rates. In any case, Heidrick credits Florida’s pervasive troubles with insurance fraud, more than climate threats, for driving some insurers to leave the state altogether.
Like pretty much everyone else in government, Holly Milbrandt, Sanibel’s natural resources director, avoids talking about climate change directly. But her office, which employs five biologists including Milbrandt, focuses much of its energy on mitigating climate effects. Sanibel just finished applying for a new round of state funding. “For the past two years, the governor has allotted significant dollars to resiliency planning,” she said.
Without a sizable reduction in global carbon emissions, however, there’s a limit to what public works on Sanibel can achieve. If accelerated sea rise is inexorable, Sanibel will face problems that neither local government nor civic groups can resolve. “You can go to the NOAA website and use all their great tools to see what’s going to happen with one foot of sea level rise, two foot, and the answer is never good for a barrier island,” Milbrandt said. “It’s a challenge. But I think we try to position ourselves just to say, there’s a lot we can do. We’re not just going to throw up our hands.”
It’s hard to be a long-term optimist about the compounding threat that sea rise and storm surge pose to Sanibel and other barrier islands. But it’s nonetheless impressive to see the island’s response. Much like the Sanibel Plan that safeguarded the island against overdevelopment, there is a game plan for defending it against the sea. I spent a few hours on a hot, sunny day in May touring the island with James Evans, who has been working on Sanibel’s coastal defenses for two decades.
“In some areas where we have high wave action and pressure on the bay side, we’re actually losing some mangroves,” Evans said.
Where mangroves are abundant and healthy, they approximate a lush coastal jungle. One of the most striking stretches of Sanibel is Bowman’s Beach, a broad, white, generous, public beach facing the Gulf. To get to Bowman’s you take a wooden bridge across Clam Bayou, which is shrouded by mangroves on all sides. While Evans and I walked across, a sizable snook leaped out of the water. The mangroves here, sheltered from the force of water and wind, are robust.
Mangroves are not an aesthetic concern on Sanibel — they’re an existential one. Mangroves, which include dozens of species of a coastal plant that never strays far from the equator, are a beautiful mess, a chaotic tangle of roots and leaves and branches that rise in odd formations and topple over one another on the shoreline. They also dissipate energy from the ebb and flow of tides and the pulse of waves. Mangrove forests attract fish and smaller organisms that enrich estuaries. Crucially for Sanibel, they also collect sediment around their roots, which helps shorelines hold their own against the sea.
Sanibel is trying to fight erosion through accretion. “Accretion can outpace sea level rise in healthy coastal habitats,” James Douglass, the biologist at Florida Gulf Coast University, told me. “These coastal habitats like oyster reefs and the mangroves, they pile up on top of each other year after year — at least they do in a healthy environment. They can actually move the coastline outward as long as the sea level rise is not too fast. So there’s sort of a horse race between the rate that sea level is rising, and the rate that these coastal habitats are able to build up the shoreline.”
That’s the logic behind “living shoreline” projects. Concrete sea walls and other hard barriers may hold back the sea for a time, but they don’t absorb wave energy, which ricochets elsewhere, often resulting in a trade of erosion in one place for another. And eventually they crumble. Living shorelines try to beat the sea at its own game — enlarging the shoreline just as the sea works to shrink it.
A recent study by the Nature Conservancy and other researchers found that mangroves were a significant factor in protecting property during Hurricane Irma in 2017. According to the study, more than 626,000 people living behind mangrove forests in Florida experienced reduced flooding. Mangroves averted an estimated $1.5 billion in surge-related flood damage, representing savings of around 25% in counties protected by mangroves.
“The flood reduction benefits of mangroves are sizeable enough to inform habitat restoration priorities and nature-based risk reduction strategies,” the researchers wrote.
Evans showed me a mangrove restoration project along Woodring Road, on the north side of the island. Winter cold fronts from the Northeast batter this shore, which is opposite St. James City, another Florida city facing a rising risk of drowning. Before erosion, mangroves stretched 10 to 20 feet from the shore. Now, a few red mangroves were struggling for survival. Overwhelmed by the joint force of wind and water, they were almost capsized, roots exposed. A construction crew working on the restoration had closed the adjacent road, which has become increasingly subject to flooding as the mangroves retreat.
“We’ve been able to do some significant mangrove restoration projects on the island where we’ve actually been able to reestablish the mangroves,” Evans said. On one stretch of restored shoreline we visited, mangroves are expanding and sand is accumulating.
It’s not always easy. On another part of the island, Evans and I visited a stretch of wet sand with a few desolate, dying mangroves sticking out of buried planters. Had the project succeeded, the mangroves would have overgrown their planters and become entangled with their neighbors, growing a natural barrier to bolster the shore. But here, most of their kin had already perished, leaving behind empty planters still visible underwater.
No one is giving up. Plans are already under way to place beach-ball sized spheres off the shore to blunt the force of waves and wake, then try once again to cultivate mangroves. It’s a case of trial and error, against a ticking clock.
Sanibel is enormously fortunate in many ways. It has a freshwater marsh in its center, adding to its biodiversity. It has healthy dunes on some beaches. It has a sewer system, reducing risks associated with storm damage. Unlike other islands stretching up Florida’s Gulf Coast, Sanibel is mostly oriented east to west, instead of north to south, dramatically reducing erosion on the Gulf side while also showering its Gulf beaches with shells. The shells do more than attract tourists; pulverized by waves, they build up the beaches where they land. Meanwhile, Sanibel’s neighbor across a tiny bridge to the north, Captiva, does periodic beach replenishment to fight erosion on its Gulf beaches. Much of that sand washes down to Sanibel, padding its beaches for free.
Sanibel has impressive resources, expertise and a fighting spirit. What’s unknown is how much time it has before the sea overtakes its defenses.
“I do have hope and confidence that we can put in place some measures that will extend that amount of time,” Holly Milbrandt told me. But Sanibel’s local efforts are countered by a global phenomenon of rising temperatures and seas. “You know, with no efforts at the local level, at the state level, at the national level, even globally, to really tackle the causes, I just — I don’t know how we’re going to not experience significant change,” Milbrandt said. Sooner or later, she added, “It’s gonna look different.”
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was an editor for the Week, a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist. | 2022-06-12T14:03:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sanibel Island’s Last Stand Against Rising Seas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sanibel-islandslast-stand-against-rising-seas/2022/06/12/63fd10d8-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sanibel-islandslast-stand-against-rising-seas/2022/06/12/63fd10d8-ea50-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Body weight is considered a risk factor for cancer — but can losing it reverse that risk?
A study suggests the answer is an emphatic yes, at least for those who lose significant weight through bariatric surgery. Patients who had the surgery were 32 percent less likely to develop cancer and 48 percent less likely to die of cancer than their counterparts who did not have surgery, according to research published in JAMA.
The results came from a long-term study of more than 30,000 Cleveland Clinic patients between 2004 and 2017. The patients all had a body mass index of 35 or greater — considered “class 2,” or “moderate risk” obesity by medical professionals.
Researchers followed up with about 5,000 patients between ages 18 and 80 who had gastric bypass or gastric sleeve surgery during the study period. None of the people studied had been previously diagnosed with cancer.
About 74 percent of adults in the U.S. are overweight, according to the CDC
And their chances of developing, or dying of, obesity-linked cancers such as ovarian and pancreatic cancer were significantly lower. During the study, 2.9 percent of patients who had surgery developed cancer, compared with 4.9 percent of their counterparts; 0.8 percent died, compared with 1.4 percent of nonsurgical patients. The effects were seen across the board and appeared to be independent of age, sex or race.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1.7 million new cancer cases were reported in 2019 alone. Additionally, nearly 42 percent of U.S. adults had obesity as of March 2020.
“Given the growing epidemic of obesity, obesity-associated cancers are a major public health concern,” says Ali Aminian, director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Bariatric and Metabolic Institute and the study’s lead author. “If we help patients to lose weight, we can significantly mitigate that risk.”
Bariatric surgery has gained steam as an obesity treatment in recent years, with an estimated 256,000 such procedures performed in the United States in 2019, according to an industry group. The researchers said “substantial weight loss” was required to reduce cancer risk.
Five myths about obesity
Other factors might be at play — it’s unclear whether the surgical patients made healthier lifestyle choices or the nonsurgical patients were hesitant to participate in cancer screenings. Few of the patients were not Black or White, indicating a need for further research. | 2022-06-12T14:03:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weight-loss surgery linked to lower cancer death rate in large study - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/12/reducing-obesity-cancer-risk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/12/reducing-obesity-cancer-risk/ |
By Dan Belson | AP
In this image provided by Anne Arundel County Police Department, Sgt. R. Gow-Collier and Cpl. C. Anderson speak during a podcast created by the Anne Arundel County Police Department called The Crime Journal” on May 18, 2022, in Millersville, Md. (Cpl. R. Herard/Arundel County Police Department via AP) | 2022-06-12T14:03:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police department's podcast aims to solve cold cases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/police-departments-podcast-aims-to-solve-cold-cases/2022/06/12/e2976282-ea4f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/police-departments-podcast-aims-to-solve-cold-cases/2022/06/12/e2976282-ea4f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
7 questions I want the Jan. 6 committee to answer at its upcoming hearings
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), flanked by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), gives opening statements as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack holds its first public hearing on June 9. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
To say that the Jan. 6 committee’s Thursday hearing was the most compelling in congressional history would be to damn with faint praise. Certainly, the admonition from Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to her Republican colleagues that “there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain” will compare favorably to Joseph Welch’s famous remark levied against Joseph McCarthy (“Have you no sense of decency?”).
But above all, the hearings are about facts. And I can’t wait to hear more of those on at least seven topics during the committee’s second session on Monday.
Who were those members of Congress pleading for pardons from Donald Trump, and what conduct did they think would lead to prosecution? It’s rare to learn about a member’s possible criminal action and even rarer to have such strong evidence of a guilty mind. And it’s possible there is more than one. The identities of those who sought pardons will certainly shed some light on why Republicans refused to support an independent commission and seek to whitewash the entire coup attempt.
When aides repeatedly told President Donald Trump that there was no basis for overturning the election and no legal way for his vice president to keep him in power, what did Trump say? We know that in one instance when Justice Department officials explained they could not invalidate the election, Trump responded, according to notes from acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.” More comments like that will cement the conclusion that he knew there was no legal basis to overturn the election.
What was Vice President Mike Pence doing? Cheney stated that while Trump was inactive during the insurrection, Pence called the defense secretary, attorney general and the Department of Homeland Security. As Gen. Mark A. Milley recounted: "There were two or three calls from Vice President Pence. He was very animated, and he issued very explicit, very direct unambiguous orders. ... ‘Get the military down here, get the Guard down here. Put down this situation,’ etc.” That suggests Pence knew Trump was not going to do anything to stop the violence. It suggests Trump was on the other side.
How did Trump’s statements and tweets to his supporters promote violence? The committee provided a preview of the close interaction between Trump’s tweet calling on supporters to come to D.C. and the right-wing groups plotting the insurrection. Cheney reiterated that Trump was told violence would ensue. Testimony from aides showing that he welcomed or was indifferent to mob violence would be further evidence of his corrupt intent. (His stunning alleged declaration that “maybe our supporters have the right idea [to hang Pence]” supports the notion that he would have at least tolerated his vice president’s assassination if it could help him stay in power.)
Why did no one go public or alert the FBI? It’s frankly stunning that all of Trump’s enablers knew he lost and knew what he was doing to try to overturn the results, yet no one took the logical steps to stop it. They could have called law enforcement, held a news conference or sat for an interview. They could have gone to the House speaker and the Senate majority leader. The White House counsel could have quit, as he threatened, and gone public. One can imagine they thought they had things “under control” or that they still were looking out for their career prospects. Either way, the dereliction of duty is stunning. Maybe we need a federal law obligating government officials to contact the FBI (or other authority) if they have reason to believe a coup is underway. Yes, we’ve come to the point where we need a law for that.
If virtually everyone else in the White House knew there was no fraud or basis for overturning the election, how did John Eastman’s scheme for a “nonviolent coup” get to Trump and spark this whole series of events? The phony elector scheme, the demand for Georgia to “find” enough votes to reverse the election and the draft letter for states to reconsider their slates of electors, not to mention the pressure campaign on Pence, never would have gotten off the ground unless someone invited Eastman into the picture, allowed him to pitch his idea and gave his insane memo the patina of credibility.
Perhaps the most intriguing question: If White House chief of staff Mark Meadows knew claims of fraud were bogus (“no there there,” as he put it), what was he doing as the plot built momentum? We don’t know whether he was the emissary to Eastman or was involved in the Pence pressure campaign. And we don’t know what role he played in coordinating discussions between Trump and his congressional allies. He has resisted testifying even in the face of contempt charges, but if called before a grand jury, his only real option would be to invoke the Fifth Amendment. One could see why that might be sound legal advice. | 2022-06-12T15:03:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | 7 questions I want the Jan. 6 committee to answer at its upcoming hearings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/7-questions-i-want-jan-6-committee-to-answer-second-hearing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/7-questions-i-want-jan-6-committee-to-answer-second-hearing/ |
What does it mean to have Jewish genes but no Jewish heritage?
Perspective by Shelley Couvillion
Am I Jewish or not? I can easily say “I’m part French,” but I don’t feel the same way about my Jewish heritage — even though it makes up a significant part of my family’s history. It doesn’t feel like it’s mine to claim. | 2022-06-12T15:08:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What does it mean to have Jewish genes but no Jewish heritage? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/12/jewish-heritage-comic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/12/jewish-heritage-comic/ |
Incumbent Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) talks with journalists as he arrives for an election night party in Peachtree Corners, Ga., on May 24. (Ben Gray/AP)
A cybersecurity executive who has aided efforts by election deniers to investigate the 2020 vote said in a recent court document that he had “forensically examined” the voting system used in Coffee County, Ga. — the strongest indication yet that the security of election equipment there may have been compromised following Donald Trump’s loss.
Representatives of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said in April that while his office had investigated several election-related issues in Coffee County, none appeared to amount to a breach of equipment. In May, The Washington Post reported that former county elections official Misty Hampton had opened her offices to a man who was active in the election-denier movement to help investigate after the 2020 vote. Recounting the incident to The Post, Hampton said she did not know what the man, bail bond business owner Scott Hall, and his team did in her office.
In the new document, a sworn declaration filed Wednesday in a civil case in federal court in Arizona, Benjamin Cotton, founder of the digital forensics firm CyFIR, wrote that he had examined Dominion Voting Systems used in several jurisdictions. Among them were Coffee County, Mesa County, Colo., and Maricopa County, Ariz., where he worked as a contractor on a Republican-commissioned ballot review.
The episode in Coffee County is one in a steady drip of revelations since the 2020 election about attempts by Trump allies to examine or copy tightly guarded voting machines to search for evidence of fraud. Some of those attempts have been aided by like-minded election officials, raising concerns about insiders as a growing threat to election security. Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County, was indicted in March on charges stemming from her participation in a successful effort to allow outsiders to copy voting-machine hard drives. Peters has denied wrongdoing and is running to be the Republican nominee for secretary of state.
The federal government considers voting systems to be “critical infrastructure” vital to national security, and preventing unauthorized physical access to machines is seen as essential to protecting them from manipulation. Since 2020, machines in several jurisdictions have been decertified because their chain of custody after the election was broken or uncertain.
Cotton, who said in his declaration that he has more than 26 years of experience in computer forensics and has testified as an expert witness, did not detail which components of the Coffee County voting system he claimed to have examined. Nor did he explain how he gained access to voting system data from Coffee or provide evidence of his examination beyond the descriptions of his findings. The findings generally describe what Cotton says he found in the counties’ systems collectively and are not specific to Coffee.
The Cotton declaration was first reported by a disinformation researcher who posts on Twitter under the name Trapezoid of Discovery. The document alleges a number of security vulnerabilities in the Dominion systems. It concludes that the election system machines and networks do not meet industry certification standards.
The declaration was filed by lawyers for two Republican candidates who are suing to block Arizona from using electronic voting machines in the November 2022 midterm election, citing in part the findings of Cotton and others who worked on the GOP-commissioned ballot review. The plaintiffs — election deniers who have sought to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory — are Kari Lake, who is running for governor, and Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state.
The defendants, supervisors in Maricopa and Pima counties and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), have moved to dismiss the case, arguing that it is based on a host of misleading and false claims. The specific claims about security vulnerabilities arising from the ballot review were, the counties said, “baseless ‘findings’” that “have been debunked.” Hobbs called them “vague, speculative allegations of potential security risks.”
Cotton did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Lake and Finchem also did not respond to requests for comment.
Asked about Cotton’s declaration, a spokeswoman for Dominion referred The Post to materials the company previously published in response to allegations of election fraud in Antrim County, Mich., Maricopa and elsewhere. No court has found those claims to have merit, and many local, state and federal officials have said there is no evidence of vote manipulation in the 2020 election. In multiple jurisdictions, hand counts of paper ballots substantiated tallies by Dominion machines.
Cotton’s court declaration comes just two weeks after the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency notified election officials in more than a dozen states that use Dominion Voting machines of several vulnerabilities and recommended measures to help detect or prevent attempts to exploit those vulnerabilities.
But the agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, also said it found no evidence that flaws in the machines have ever been exploited, including in the 2020 election. Dominion said in a statement that the advisory reaffirms that its machines “are accurate and secure.” The issues identified by the agency “require unfettered physical access to election equipment, which is already prohibited by mandatory election protocols,” the company said.
Allegations of improper access in Coffee County arose earlier this year in a long-running federal lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Good Governance and others against defendants including the Georgia secretary of state’s office. The plaintiffs argue that the state’s election system is so insecure that it violates the rights of voters. In a recorded phone call filed as part of that case, Hall claimed to have arranged for a plane to take people to Coffee County — a rural county Trump won by 40 points — to scan ballots and copy data from voting equipment.
Hall did not respond to requests for comment.
Attorneys for Raffensperger told the court in April that the secretary of state’s office launched the investigation as soon as it became aware of the recorded phone call. They said state officials have not found evidence of a security breach.
Jordan Fuchs, deputy secretary of state and Raffensperger’s chief of staff, declined to comment on Cotton’s statement Friday other than to say, “We take investigations seriously and will continue to be thorough throughout this litigation process.”
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, called the Cotton declaration “alarming” and said the plaintiffs in her case “are serving subpoenas to obtain more information on the details of the alleged breach and compromise of Georgia’s system in Coffee County.”
Hampton told The Post that she could not remember when Hall’s visit occurred or what he and the others — whom she did not name — did when they were there. She said she did not know whether they entered the room housing the election management system server, the central computer used to tally election results.
Hampton said Friday that she knew of Cotton, but did not know anything about his alleged access to voting system data from Coffee County.
The Daily Beast, citing text messages, reported in early June that the team of outsiders spent several hours at the office on Jan. 7, 2021, and included Paul Maggio of the Atlanta data security firm SullivanStrickler.
Neither the founders of SullivanStrickler nor Maggio responded to requests for comment from The Post.
Cotton’s declaration also raises questions about the possibility of an additional, previously unreported election security breach in Fulton County, Ga., home to Atlanta. Cotton wrote that his conclusions were based on his “analysis of the Analyzed Election Systems” in several jurisdictions including Fulton.
“Fulton County is not aware of any analysis performed by Mr. Cotton of our voting systems or our election processes,” said Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, the county’s director of external affairs. “Fulton County uses the exact same voting system used by all other Georgia counties, as required by the Secretary of State.”
There have been no public allegations of unauthorized access to machines in Fulton County, Ga. The Pennsylvania secretary of state, however, did order the decertification of machines in Fulton County, Pa., after she said they were improperly accessed in December 2020 by individuals seeking to investigate the election. That order is being challenged in court.
Cotton submitted a sworn declaration last year in a case in Antrim County, on behalf of a local real estate agent who claimed that the 2020 election results had been manipulated. The lawsuit has been dismissed, and allegations of vote-flipping in Antrim were roundly rejected by a Republican-controlled committee of the Michigan Senate.
In his declaration in that case, Cotton described examining not only Dominion voting equipment used in Antrim but also equipment made by Dominion’s competitor, Election Systems and Software, and used in the 2020 election. The declaration did not say how or in which jurisdiction the ES&S equipment was accessed.
In February, Michigan law enforcement officials launched an investigation into alleged unauthorized access of ES&S machines in the state’s Roscommon County. A county official and a township official in the county told investigators that they gave election equipment to unauthorized third parties after the 2020 election, Reuters reported last week, citing police records. | 2022-06-12T15:34:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Court filing offers new evidence of post-election breach in Coffee County, Georgia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/12/coffee-county-georgia-dominion-breach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/12/coffee-county-georgia-dominion-breach/ |
How Shireen Abu Akleh was killed
A Washington Post analysis of available visuals, audio and witness statements shows an Israeli soldier likely fired the fatal shot
By Sarah Cahlan
“We are now at the doors of the Jenin refugee camp,” Ali al-Samoudi, an Al Jazeera news channel producer, said as he began a live stream on Facebook early on May 11, during an Israeli military operation in the camp. Sounds of gunshots rang out in the distance. “Heavy clashes,” could be heard, Samoudi said in the video, which was recorded shortly after 6 a.m.
Less than 30 minutes later, the scene was quiet enough that Samoudi, along with three other journalists, felt safe inching toward a column of Israeli military vehicles that was involved in one of the early morning raids. Among the group was Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran correspondent for Al Jazeera who had covered countless similar operations in a career spanning decades, colleagues said.
The journalists wore helmets and protective vests labeled “PRESS” in large white letters. They paused for about five minutes in a location where they thought the Israeli convoy could identify them clearly as members of the press, Samoudi later said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“We were very sure there were no armed Palestinians, and no exchange of fire or clashes with the Israelis,” said Samoudi. Then, the journalists headed up the street, toward the Israeli convoy. “It was totally calm, there was no gunfire at all.” Suddenly, there was a barrage of bullets. One struck Samoudi. Another hit and ultimately killed Abu Akleh, as their colleagues scrambled for cover.
The audio analyses of the gunfire that likely killed Abu Akleh point to one person shooting from an estimated distance that nearly matches the span between the journalists and the IDF convoy. Based on video The Post filmed in Jenin, Abu Akleh and other journalists identified as press would likely have been visible from the IDF convoy’s position, which was roughly 182 meters (597 feet) away. At least one soldier in the convoy was using a telescopic scope, the IDF said later in a news release. A live stream on TikTok filmed seven minutes before the shooting shows a relatively calm scene with people milling about. Distant single gunshots are heard on occasion but there are no signs of a firefight.
The IDF, in written responses to questions and a summary of The Post’s findings, said it “will continue to responsibly investigate the incident, in order to get to the truth of this tragic event. The bullet is vital to reaching a conclusion as to the source of the fire that killed Ms. Abu Akleh, and it is an important source for reaching an evidence-based conclusion. The Palestinians continue to refuse the IDF’s offer to conduct a joint forensic examination of the bullet, with American representation.”
The statement, quoting Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, the IDF chief of the general staff, repeated Israel’s previous contention that it was investigating whether the bullet was fired by the IDF or a Palestinian gunman. “There is one thing that can be determined with certainty: no IDF soldier deliberately fired at a journalist. We investigated this. That is the conclusion and there is no other,” he said.
Shortly after 6 a.m. Abu Akleh sent an email to the Al Jazeera assignment desk saying “occupation forces are breaking into Jenin’s camp and besieging a house in Jabriyat neighborhood,” referring to two operations being conducted by the IDF. She wrote that she would update the network on the situation once she reached the camp. By the time she arrived around 6:15 a.m., other journalists, including Shatha Hanaysheh and Samoudi, had gathered at a roundabout at the entrance of the camp.
“The main road was pseudo living a normal life, there were vehicles driving by with people going to work, there was normal foot traffic,” Hanaysheh recalled.
Saleem Awaad, a 27-year-old resident of Jenin, started a live stream on TikTok at roughly 6:24 a.m. In the video, which was obtained by The Post, someone tells Awaad that IDF forces are positioned just to the southwest. At the same time, the journalists can be seen standing around wearing helmets and protective vests labeled “PRESS.”
Video location
Location of
Location of IDF convoy
Location of Shireen
Abu Akleh shooting
VideoSolid1
“I’m going to film them [the Israeli soldiers],” Awaad is heard saying, as he rushes past the journalists.
As he approaches an intersection, three rounds of gunfire are heard in the distance. Roughly two minutes later, he points the camera south revealing Israeli military vehicles about 182 meters (597 feet) away, according to The Post’s analysis of the footage. “There’s the Israeli army,” he says. The vehicles are in the same location and formation as those seen in body-camera footage of the raid later released by the IDF.
Over the next three minutes, the video records distant single gunshots from time to time, but the scene is relatively calm and the gaggle of people gathered at the corner seem relaxed, joking and milling about. At about 6:31 a.m., the journalists start to walk toward the military vehicles. “We decided to move through that street slowly to get closer toward the army to cover the news,” Samoudi later told The Post.
In the video, less than 30 seconds after the journalists walked toward the military, six gunshots erupt. People who were recording the scene scatter.
A different video obtained by The Post shows Samoudi moving hurriedly, but carefully, toward a silver car stopped at the intersection. Just as he reaches the road, a second burst of seven gunshots comes. The group again scrambles away from the corner. Someone calls out, “Who was hit?” Hanaysheh yells for an ambulance, because Abu Akleh had been shot, she told The Post.
Three more shots ring out. Then someone shouts, “Shireen! Medic, medic! Stay where you are, don’t move, don’t move.” The camera pans to show Hanaysheh crouched behind a tree near Abu Akleh, who is on the ground, facing down.
A group of men attempt to reach the two journalists by crossing the street for nearly a minute, as a fourth burst of at least nine gunshots erupts in rapid fire. One man, who is already across the street, climbs over a crushed wall to reach Abu Akleh and Hanaysheh. As the man grabs Abu Akleh’s arm, in what appears to be an attempt to move her, another shot goes off. He runs back against the wall and crouches down. He ushers Hanaysheh away from the scene, back over the crumbled wall before helping to carry Abu Akleh’s body from behind the tree into the back seat of a car.
The Post has decided to publish the 8-minute video recorded by Awaad it in its entirety below.
At The Post’s request, Steven Beck, an audio forensic expert who consulted for the FBI for more than a decade, conducted an analysis on the gunfire heard in the two separate videos. Beck found the first two bursts of gunfire, 13 shots in total, were shot from between 175-195 meters (574-640 feet) away from the cameras that recorded the scene — almost exactly the distance between the journalists and the Israeli military vehicles.
The sound wave produced by the gunshots for both bursts of gunfire was remarkably consistent, suggesting a single person “pulling the trigger of a rifle that fires supersonic bullets almost as fast as they can,” Beck said, referring to bullets moving faster than the speed of sound. There are two slight deviations from the pattern of fire, Beck explained, but the deviations — involving two rounds — are likely caused by someone re-aiming. Everything else about the audio signature of the shots is consistent, he added.
It is likely Abu Akleh was killed by one of these first two bursts of gunfire. Hanaysheh, who was next to Abu Akleh, can be heard calling for an ambulance immediately after the second burst of gunfire. She told The Post her call was for Abu Akleh. The audio analysis of the first two bursts also indicates that the bullets were fired in the direction of — and very close to — the journalists. The analysis could not, however, determine the exact point of origin of the shots.
Palestinian authorities, who are in possession of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, said it was a 5.56x45mm round. Beck said he used a number of different weapons that fire that caliber of round in his analysis, but there is little significant difference between them in determining the distance between Abu Akleh and the shooters.
There are two subsequent bursts of gunfire after the one believed to have killed Abu Akleh, but their origin was harder to determine, experts said.
The bursts, of at least 12 shots in total, point to a shooter in a different location from the first two bursts, Beck said, estimating they may have been fired from roughly 10-30 meters (32-99 feet) away from the journalists. The shooter was firing in the general direction of the journalists, but could have been shooting at something else because the bullets pass further away from the group than the first two bursts.
“The gunshot signatures, the echo signatures, and the timing of these bursts were very different from the burst that likely killed the journalist, indicating a firing location that was different and much closer,” Beck told The Post in an email. “Without knowledge of the type of round, a more accurate estimate of the shooter distance is not possible.”
A second analysis, conducted by a physics-based computer model built by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, similarly found the first two bursts of gunfire were fired 233 meters +/- 46 meters (765 feet +/- 150 feet) from the camera — roughly aligning with Beck’s analysis and the position of the Israeli military vehicles. The model did not determine if the first two bursts were fired by one or two shooters — only that the distance between the gunman and the camera stayed consistent. Similar to Beck, researchers also used a number of different weapons in their analysis that could have fired a 5.56x45mm or similar round.
The Carnegie Mellon researchers said the third and fourth bursts indicate a second shooter, but they could not determine this person’s distance from the journalists because of the videos’ poor audio quality.
An investigation by the Palestinian Authority concluded that Abu Akleh was hit by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. The Palestinian attorney general, Akram Al-Khateeb, said at a press briefing last month that she was shot “directly and deliberately,” a conclusion he said was based in part on the fact that Abu Akleh and Samoudi were shot in the upper part of their bodies, and gunfire, he said, continued after they were shot.
Khateeb said a decision had been made not to hand over the bullet to the Israelis — or even to disseminate an image of the round — “to deprive them of a new lie, a new narrative,” he said, adding that the Palestinians were capable of conducting a thorough investigation on their own.
The IDF says its investigation is ongoing, but said it had already concluded that there was no criminal conduct in Abu Akleh’s killing.
Shifting explanations from the IDF about the source of gunfire that killed Abu Akleh emerged from the beginning. IDF spokesperson Ran Kochav first acknowledged the incident in a tweet at 7:45 a.m., “The possibility that journalists were injured, possibly by Palestinian gunfire, is being investigated.” Later in the morning, he told Army Radio that it was “likely” that a Palestinian gunman was responsible. The Israeli Foreign Ministry tweeted an edited version of a video filmed hours earlier with the caption, “Palestinian terrorists, firing indiscriminately, are likely to have hit Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqla.”
Palestinian fighters
The original video shared by the Israeli Foreign Ministry was recorded sometime before 6:41 a.m., the earliest instance The Post found the video shared on social media. A Palestinian fighter fires two shots down a stairwell, before turning to move down the street. Open-source investigators, including B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, were quick to identify the location where this video was recorded, noting the geography alone — including high walls and no sightline to Abu Akleh’s position — makes it impossible that these shots are the same as those that struck the journalist.
The Israeli government walked back its initial statement on the incident that Abu Akleh was “likely” killed by a Palestinian gunman. An Israeli government news release said they are investigating two possibilities. In one scenario, Abu Akleh was struck by a stray bullet while Palestinian gunmen shot at Israeli military vehicles from a number of different directions.
Available visuals The Post reviewed of armed Palestinian men in Jenin show they were not between Abu Akleh and the IDF, nor did they have a line of sight to the journalists at the time of the shooting. The timestamp on one photo, labeled No. 6, shows it was taken 14 minutes before Abu Akleh was shot and was recorded far away. Two videos showing Palestinian gunman, in the same area as No. 7, were captured more than 10 minutes after Abu Akleh was shot. The Post could not confirm the exact time of the video labeled No. 7. Gunshots heard in one video to the south of the convoy, labeled No. 5, do not match those heard when Abu Akleh is shot, indicating the video was most likely recorded at a different time, however, The Post could also not confirm the exact time.
Known locations of Palestinian
fighters throughout the morning
Known locations of
A Palestinian gunman sits atop an alleyway in the Jenin neighborhood of the West Bank on May 11, 2022.
Another possibility presented by Israeli authorities suggests Abu Akleh was hit with a bullet from a soldier firing at a Palestinian gunman who was positioned somewhere in the approximately 200 meters (656 feet) between the journalist and the military vehicles. According to The Post’s analysis of available footage, the IDF convoy stretched roughly 182 meters to 243 meters (597 feet to 797 feet) away from the group of journalists including Abu Akleh. The IDF declined to comment on whether the convoy The Post identified was the same one under investigation.
The IDF said in a statement that the gunman fired “multiple barrages” toward the convoy, before the IDF soldier returned fire. The Post’s analysis, however, found no evidence of a firefight in the moments before Abu Akleh was killed.
Additional videos of the convoy were filmed from about halfway between the location of Abu Akleh and the military vehicles. The Post was not able to identify who recorded these videos or determine precisely when they were recorded.
“I went to cover the news,” Samoudi said. “The news and the story, whatever it is, is not more precious than my life. So when I take precautions, I take them for the sake of my life.”
Those precautions, he said, included ensuring that there was no one around him that could have left the journalists caught in a gunfight — either militants, or even youth throwing stones at the Israelis. Samoudi, who was released from the hospital but is still recovering from a bullet wound to his shoulder, called on the IDF to release any footage it had filmed during the raid.
“We went to cover news,” he said. “Not to die.”
Editing by Elyse Samuels, Kareem Fahim and Reem Akkad. Video editing by Sarah Cahlan. Graphics editing by Atthar Mirza. Copy editing by Jamie Zega. Design editing by Junne Alcantara. Design and development by Irfan Uraizee.
Osama Hasan in Jenin, Shira Rubin in Tel Aviv, Ellen Francis in London, Sarah Dadouch and Nader Durgham in Beirut, and Sufian Taha in the West Bank contributed to this report.
Sarah Cahlan is a video reporter for The Washington Post's Visual Forensics team. Before joining the Post she was an NAHJ fellow at NBC News. Twitter Twitter
Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Hendrix has written for just about every section of the paper since coming to the Washington Post 20 years ago, reporting from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia and most corners of the United States. Twitter Twitter | 2022-06-12T15:34:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Shireen Abu-Akleh, Al Jazeera correspondent was killed - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/shireen-abu-akleh-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/shireen-abu-akleh-death/ |
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) speak at the opening of a gun violence memorial installation on the National Mall in Washington on June 7. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A bipartisan group of Senate negotiators is set to announce Sunday that it reached a tentative agreement on legislation that would pair modest new gun restrictions with significant new mental health and school security investments — a deal that could put Congress on a path to enacting the most significant national response in decades to acts of mass gun violence.
It does not include a provision supported by President Biden, congressional Democrats and a handful of Republicans that would raise the minimum age for the purchase of at least some rifles from 18 to 21. Handguns are already subject to a federal 21-and-over age limit.
Other provisions could funnel billions of new federal dollars into mental health care and school security programs, funding new campus infrastructure and armed officers. Several senators last week said they expected one cornerstone of the deal would be legislation sponsored by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) to establish a nationwide network of “community behavioral health clinics.”
The announcement Sunday represents the fruit of a crash bipartisan effort launched in the days after the May 24 killing of 19 children and two teachers inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., which itself came 10 days after another shocking mass shooting inside a Buffalo supermarket.
Ahead of Sunday’s announcement, senators publicly sketched out a negotiating position in general terms.
Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has led Democrats’ efforts on gun legislation since the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., said during an anti-gun-violence rally Friday that he was determined to break congressional stasis on gun legislation, but not at any cost: “I’m not interested in doing something unless that’s something is going to save lives, unless that something’s going to be impactful and meaningful.”
Meanwhile, John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who has an A-plus rating from the National Rifle Association, said last week that he is interested in forging a compromise, but only if it preserves gun owners’ rights under the Second Amendment.
“This is not about creating new restrictions on law-abiding citizens,” he said. "It’s about ensuring that the system we already have in place works as intended.”
“The details will be critical for Republicans, particularly the firearms-related provisions,” said a GOP aide familiar with the talks. “One or more of these principles could be dropped if text is not agreed to.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled Friday that the Democratic-controlled House would move to enact whatever bill the Senate managed to pass. “If it’s life-saving and can make a difference, and they have bipartisan support for it, then we would welcome it, even though it won’t be everything that we want,” she said at a news conference.
The Senate returns to session Monday, and while Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) did not lay out any ultimatums last week on timing, he urged the negotiators to act quickly. | 2022-06-12T15:34:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Senators strike bipartisan gun deal, heralding potential breakthrough - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/12/senate-gun-deal-framework/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/12/senate-gun-deal-framework/ |
In this photo provided on Saturday, June 11, 2022 by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee held during June 8 - June 10, 2022 in Pyongyang, North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) (Uncredited/KCNA via KNS) | 2022-06-12T15:34:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seoul: North Korea fires suspected artillery pieces into sea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/seoul-north-korea-fires-suspected-artillery-pieces-into-sea/2022/06/12/1bb6acf2-ea60-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/seoul-north-korea-fires-suspected-artillery-pieces-into-sea/2022/06/12/1bb6acf2-ea60-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
More glimpses of the CIA’s clandestine photography department
In 1963, the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center moved into this building at First and M streets SE. The building was demolished in 2014. (Jacqueline Dupree/The Washington Post)
For the past few weeks in this space, we’ve been hanging around the Steuart Building at Fifth and K streets NW, the top floors of which were home to the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center from 1956 to 1963. The place buzzed in October 1962 when Soviet nuclear missiles were photographed in Cuba.
Even the most closely held secrets can be hard to keep. Jim Allen’s father, George, was in the Steuart Building for a few years when he was part of a small contingent from the Army Map Service that worked there with the CIA.
Wrote Jim, of Fairfax Station: “He told me that he once got a cab to go there and when my dad told the cabdriver the address, the cabdriver said, ‘Oh. You’re one of those CIA guys.’”
Dave Stinson said there was a CIA print shop on the top floor of the building, with print jobs laid out on skids.
“On our hot D.C. summer days the large industrial-size windows were kept open,” he wrote.
One day, a massive summer thunderstorm hit. Papers blew out through the windows and fluttered to the ground below. Wrote Dave: “The area was filled with government employees collecting the wind blown documents!”
Chris Hughes’s father, John T. Hughes, worked in the Steuart Building, first as a photo interpreter for the Defense Intelligence Agency, then as a national security briefer.
Wrote Chris: “Half our neighborhood in Annandale was working overtime during October 1962 — a lot of neighbors were in the intelligence community. He told my mom nothing about why he couldn’t come home for those two weeks but said to fill the car with food and water and if anything happens, take the kids and go west.”
After tensions had died down, John F. Kennedy wanted the nation to understand what had happened. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara asked John Hughes to deliver a televised security briefing in prime time. (You can find it on YouTube.)
John had to sort through images, finding ones that weren’t classified. The visual aids were projected on a 10-foot-high screen.
“He didn’t have a long enough pointer that day,” wrote Chris, of Herndon. “In order to point out a feature up high on the screen, he used two fishing poles someone had in their car trunk. Taped together he could then point to the top of the screen.”
Carolyn Harwood worked in the Navy Yard in the 1970s and 1980s. Her carpool used to pass a building near there that had “Photographic” in its name. Wrote Carolyn: “Do you know whether the CIA had an office there?”
Answer Man suspects she’s referring to Building 213, which became the home of the NPIC in 1963 after the organization had outgrown the Steuart Building.
Unlike the Steuart Building, Building 213 — on the southeast corner of First and M streets SE — was a government office building, more obviously secure. It was encircled by a chain-link fence topped in barbed wire.
Jack O’Connor, a retired CIA intelligence officer and author of “NPIC: Seeing the Secrets and Growing the Leaders: A Cultural History of the National Photographic Interpretation Center,” said that when an extension was built onto the building between 1984 and 1988, the chain-link fence was replaced with a wrought-iron fence and brick-faced concrete columns.
“Also at that time, the name of the organization was put over the entrance — National Photographic Interpretation Center — so your reader in the carpool is not misremembering,” he wrote.
Morgan Birge II of Fredericksburg, Va., worked in Building 213 from when it opened in January 1963 until the late ’90s. Among his memories is watching Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” fame argue with a guard at the gate, attempting to get the guard to admit it was a CIA facility. Wallace was instructed to call a phone number for more information.
Because of the classified work in Building 213, the documents generated there were marked with their security classification. That included the cafeteria menu. “Perhaps well deserved,” Morgan said. “The way the food was, they needed to do that.”
Morgan said that to obscure the nature of the work going on inside 213, the big yellow boxes of film supplies coming from Eastman Kodak were rewrapped in plain paper before delivery.
Not all the work related to national security. The U.S. Geological Survey occupied part of the sixth floor, accessible by an outside elevator that bypassed the secret stuff.
“This office investigated the rocks brought back from the moon,” Morgan wrote.
Today, NPIC’s descendant — the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency — is in Springfield. Building 213 was demolished in the summer of 2014. Washington Nationals fans may remember walking past its location on the way to the ballpark. There was a trapeze school on the block that once held the top-secret facility. | 2022-06-12T16:52:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two Washington buildings figure prominently in CIA's photo intelligence work - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/12/cia-photo-buildings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/12/cia-photo-buildings/ |
Health officials in Salt Lake City distributed information at the Utah Pride Festival in June about monkeypox. During an ongoing outbreak, the viral disease has been concentrated among men who have sex with men. (Alex Goodlett for The Washington Post)
Monkeypox had arrived in Salt Lake County, with two men testing positive after returning from Europe, the epicenter of a global outbreak concentrated in gay and bisexual men.
Officials in the Utah county faced a dilemma. They wanted to warn men who have sex with men that they were at higher risk for exposure to the virus. But they feared unintended consequences: heterosexuals assuming they’re not susceptible, closeted men in a heavily Mormon community avoiding care so they’re not seen as gay, and critics exploiting the infections to sow bigotry.
It’s not just Utah officials who are struggling to find the right message. As the United States confronts its largest-ever monkeypox outbreak, with nearly 50 probable cases, public health authorities navigate a delicate but familiar balancing act. In the 17 U.S. cases in which the sexual behavior of the patient is known, all but one involve men who have sex with men, mirroring trends in Europe. It’s something never recognized before in outbreaks of the virus.
In Salt Lake County, health officials consulted with advocacy groups and decided to get the message out to gay and bisexual men without making the message about them. At a booth during the Utah Pride Festival in Salt Lake City this month, Health Department staff distributed business-card-sized monkeypox warnings urging people to avoid close or sexual contact with anyone experiencing a rash or flu-like symptoms. The warning didn’t say anything about the gay community.
“We don’t need to put rainbows all over and make clear it’s only for [men who have sex with men] because it’s not,” said Nicholas Rupp, who oversees public outreach for the Salt Lake County Health Department. “The virus, of course, doesn’t see sexual orientation.”
Officials nationally want gay and bisexual men to be alert for symptoms, particularly rashes and lesions on or near the genitals, as they travel, party and congregate in June for LGBT Pride month, which commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York that marked a seminal moment in the fight for LGBT rights. But they also want to avoid creating a false impression that monkeypox is a gay disease.
The early days of the AIDS epidemic weigh on public health and LGBT advocates responding to monkeypox. Activists say public health officials failed to act with urgency as HIV decimated gay communities in the 1980s and gay men were blamed for the epidemic.
The strain of monkeypox driving the current outbreak is rarely deadly and causes an illness lasting several weeks, unlike AIDS, which is incurable and was often lethal before effective treatments emerged in the 1990s. But even if monkeypox does not pose a mortal threat akin to HIV, health officials don’t want to ignore any emerging disease threat disproportionately affecting gay men.
How covid vaccine breakthroughs could boost long-elusive quest for HIV vaccine
“It’s really important from the public health perspective for us to make sure that populations that may be more in harm’s way because of how this started are aware of the risk, as well as how to keep themselves healthy,” said Demetre Daskalakis, who leads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of HIV/AIDS prevention and is involved in monkeypox outreach.
LGBT organizations are mobilizing to deliver the message themselves.
Staff members from a clinic serving gay men in Chicago added monkeypox prevention to their usual public health outreach at the International Mr. Leather festival in May. The hookup app Grindr issued two alerts about monkeypox in recent weeks. An LGBT community center in South Florida scheduled a town hall meeting on monkeypox ahead of next weekend’s Stonewall Pride Parade and Street Festival after local authorities identified multiple cases.
The organizations are mindful of not creating panic. Monkeypox is easier to contain than highly contagious strains of the coronavirus circulating because it is comparatively difficult to spread. Many of the cases identified in people in the United States have been linked to travel to Europe, where most infections have been detected, although the CDC warns that the virus appears to be spreading locally, too.
Monkeypox had never been associated with men who have sex with men until the latest outbreak, when Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom and disease trackers in other nations noted that infections were heavily but not exclusively concentrated in that group.
Experts said they believe it reflects the virus spreading first through gay social networks and at locations frequented by men who have sex with men, including European saunas and festivals. They also cite two factors that might be making it more likely that cases are being detected in the gay community: regular testing for sexually transmitted diseases and health providers being on alert.
“In a way, maybe we are a victim of our own success that people are coming forward and our sexual health services are picking it up,” said Andrew Lee, a professor of public health at the University of Sheffield in Britain.
The virus usually spreads through close contact with someone with rashes or lesions, which includes sex but can also include hugging, skin-to-skin contact while dancing or sharing contaminated clothing and bedding, or through droplets over a prolonged period, such as among people living in the same house. Federal officials said the virus is unlikely to spread through passing interactions in a store or bar.
Officials see a parallel to an outbreak of the infection caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — known as MRSA — about a decade ago. It was first reported among men who have sex with men before being detected in locker rooms and health clubs; the bacteria spreads through shared equipment and skin-to-skin contact.
“There’s so many infections that at some point were thought to only exist in one population, and it ends up being pretty misguided,” said the CDC’s Daskalakis, highlighting the stigma cast upon Asian people early in the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization has repeatedly stressed that monkeypox is not a gay disease, and it has encouraged Pride celebrations. Advocacy groups have condemned news organizations that emphasize gay and bisexual men in their headlines and coverage.
Coronavirus and the long history of using diseases to exploit xenophobia
“One of the things most strikingly wrong about the initial message about AIDS is it was gay-related immune deficiency or not transmitted heterosexually or from mother to child,” said Daniel R. Lucey, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America who started his medical career treating AIDS patients in San Francisco. “It’s clear everyone wants to call attention to avoiding the trap of blaming a certain population, in this case, men who have sex with men.”
But some cultural observers worry about an overcorrection that leaves gay and bisexual men in the dark about the viral threat.
“Early in the AIDS crisis, public health officials and news reporters didn’t raise the alarm about a new disease because they didn’t care about gay or bi men, they didn’t care whether we lived or died,” sex columnist Dan Savage recently said on his podcast. “Now, they are failing to raise the alarm because they care about us too much, so much so they don’t want to hurt our feelings or accidentally hand ammo to anti-gay bigots.”
Jim Downs, a gay historian who has written about the history of infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, said a fixation on avoiding stigma could undermine efforts to raise awareness.
“Worry about allocating the resources to the gay community so they can get the word out,” Downs said. “We have a history where the community has been an efficacious force in the promotion of public health.”
The legacy of AIDS has created a robust network of public health organizations in the gay community, a reflection of how the community often stood alone in promoting condoms and in pressuring drug companies to develop AIDS treatments.
Bowls of condoms and STD literature are fixtures at gay clubs, and so are HIV outreach teams at gay spaces known for sexual activity. On Grindr, it’s routine for users on their profiles to list their HIV status and whether they use prevention pills to reduce transmission risk.
The International Mr. Leather — known as IML — convention in Chicago during Memorial Day weekend presented one of the first tests for organizations adapting to monkeypox.
The LGBT-oriented Howard Brown Health Center routinely sends workers to the annual event to distribute condoms and offer rapid HIV testing. In response to monkeypox, outreach workers urged people at the festival to examine themselves for lumps, bumps and redness around the genitals and to consider examining partners before having sex in the dark.
LGBTQ people face higher covid risk. But no one knows the true toll.
“Telling people to avoid IML? That’s ludicrous, and it will never work,” said Anu Hazra, Howard Brown’s co-medical director. “People are already at IML, so what can we do is to make them mindful.”
The White House held a call this month with advocates and nonprofits that work with gay men to discuss messaging and outreach.
“What a painful contrast it was to 1981 and HIV,” said Peter Staley, a longtime AIDS activist who was on the call. “If the White House had reached out to the gay community like this with the first reported cases in June and July of 1981, we certainly [would] had a chance to make it an epidemic that’s the fraction of the size it ended up being in the U.S.”
Some organizations say the small number of monkeypox cases so far does not warrant a full-fledged response at the same time that HIV and the coronavirus are more prevalent.
“The interventions that work for both covid and HIV are going to go a long way for preventing the spread of monkeypox,” said Alexis Sanchez, director of advocacy and training at the Sacramento LGBT Community Center.
Five cases have been detected in Sacramento County, including close contacts of an international traveler. Those cases come against the backdrop of the CDC designating the county as having high coronavirus levels, which triggered a mask mandate in some schools.
“Especially in Sacramento with there being a surge of covid, a person is more likely to contract covid. Which isn’t to say [monkeypox] is not within our radar, but it’s not our main priority,” Sanchez said.
Some activists want HIV prevention and LGBT organizations to do more to spread warnings about monkeypox symptoms and to help quell the outbreak.
“This is a nascent crisis, and we can contain a virus that is now spreading in its early days in the United States in our community. There’s no reason to sit on the sidelines,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health and a longtime AIDS activist.
Some have used the monkeypox outbreak to condemn Pride and other aspects of gay life.
In the United Kingdom, an organization called the LGB Alliance urged the shutdown of saunas and leather bars during Pride month to limit the spread of monkeypox, prompting an outcry from mainstream LGBT groups that have often criticized the alliance for espousing anti-transgender views.
David Bath, a 43-year-old health economist in London who contracted monkeypox in May, was among those rejecting that view, saying it would only fuel stigma and make people less likely to report symptoms.
He said his experience with monkeypox testifies to the value of a free public health system that does not ostracize gay men.
U.K. advises those with monkeypox symptoms to abstain from sex
Bath sought care at a clinic where he routinely is screened for infections after he noticed symptoms that included a fever and spots on his body and after hearing about monkeypox from a doctor friend and reading an article that noted that cases were concentrated among men who have sex with men.
When health authorities investigating the spread of the virus contacted him, Bath had no qualms about filling out a spreadsheet with information on 28 contacts, including friends he had hugged, his therapist and a sexual partner. Some were offered vaccines that can stop the virus from causing illness. He worries this would not be possible in an anti-gay society.
“Reticence to talk about sex and stigmatizing communities and their practices which are part of life is not just wrong and unethical, but counterproductive,” Bath said. | 2022-06-12T17:05:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monkeypox dilemma: How to warn gay men about risk without fueling hate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/12/monkeypox-warning-gay-men/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/12/monkeypox-warning-gay-men/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Russia likely to seize control of eastern ...
People visit a former McDonald's restaurant during reopening under a new brand Vkusno I Tochka, in Moscow, Russia, 12 June 2022. (Maxim Shipenkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
That’s a play on the old slogan of McDonald’s in Russia, which was “fun and tasty,” a hint, perhaps, “that it won’t be fun anymore,” as blogger Pavel Komarovsky suggested in a tweet.
“We are so happy you came here 32 years after the flagship McDonald's, the very first restaurant in Russia, opened,” the chain's new owner, Siberian businessman Alexander Govor, said, addressing a crowd that was visibly smaller than the thousands of people who flocked to the original McDonald's opening at the Pushkin Square site in January 1990.
“Life has interjected with its own changes,” Govor said, in an understatement that conformed with Russia’s refusal to call its invasion an invasion or its war a war.
Russia’s full-scale, bloody attack on Ukraine has left a once globalized Russian economy toxic for global businesses, including McDonald’s.
Almost 1,000 companies curtailed their operations in Russia, according to a database compiled by the Yale School of Management. McDonald's suspended its operations in Russia in mid-March and two months later announced that the war in Ukraine and unpredictability of running a business in Russia made its presence “no longer tenable” nor “consistent with McDonald's values.”
The company's complete exit would have made a dent even in a well-off megapolis such as Moscow, as McDonald's revenue accounted for over 50% of all fast-food business in the city.
Instead, McDonald’s sold its business to Govor with a significant discount compared to its market value, according to his interview with the Russian business daily Vedomosti.
“Frankly, we were worried about the fate of the enterprise, employees, and suppliers; we are talking tens of thousands of people,” Moscow's mayor Sergey Sobyanin said at the opening ceremony, which coincided with Russia Day, a holiday celebrating the country's independence. “We have been helping the chain reconfigure its work as soon as possible and I'm glad it worked out.”
Across the country, 62,000 people will be able to retain their jobs for two years, including McDonald's top management, as Vkusno & Tochka plans to gradually refurbish around 850 restaurants.
Some of the old McDonald’s has been preserved. The ducts are reportedly as greasy as ever and the double cheeseburger is still a double cheeseburger.
“It tasted the same,” said a customer at “Tasty and that’s it,” identified on local state TV only as Lyudmila. “Nothing has changed.”
The new fast-food joint will likely be able to keep the original Moscow McDonald’s flavor, as most of the products have been locally sourced in Russia for years. But the U.S. company put vast restrictions on the new owner to distance itself from the successor as much as possible.
Govor said the chain logo now depicts a burger and two individual fries in green and orange tones that some commentators compared to the Marriott hotel chain.
Some Russian netizens felt the franchise’s new name reflected the level of authoritarianism in modern Russia. “Any mention of a Big Mac will result in a Big Fine,” mocked one of Russia’s satirical news websites.
The updated menu is much smaller and does indeed lack staple items like BigMac and McFlurry due to clear links to the Mcdonald’s brand.
Coca-Cola fountains will soon be replaced with new flavors — the company is now accepting bids from local manufacturers.
“We have some stocks of Coca-Cola which we will use for some time … but sooner or later, the stocks will run out. New Coca-Cola will not be produced in Russia, I am sure its competitors will produce wonderful flavors,” executive Oleg Paroev said ahead of the opening.
A Russian juice company Sady Pridonya had to remove most of the design from its boxes, jokingly dubbing the new look “A Limited Sanctions Edition,” as restrictions placed on Russia disrupted supplies of “necessary materials, including some types of cardboard, special varnishes and paints.”
The launch presents a big test to the Russian economy. If it succeeds offering good enough alternatives to Western brands, this may further encourage President Vladimir Putin to think Russia can go it alone.
The Kremlin had long promoted the concept of import substitution, which so far has yielded mediocre results, especially when it comes to high-tech imports and industries. Earlier this week, Putin met with young Russian entrepreneurs to project his public commitment to keeping the national economy running even as his war in Ukraine stalls with no clear exit in sight.
Moscow is betting on other trade routes, particularly China, India and its Middle Eastern partners, to substitute the markets it lost in the West.
But it remains an open question just how committed economic powerhouses such as China are to aiding Putin’s heavily sanctioned government and risking its own business dealings with the West. | 2022-06-12T17:06:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Moscow McDonalds reopens without goldenarches, Big Macs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/12/mcdonalds-moscow-reopen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/12/mcdonalds-moscow-reopen/ |
Justin Bieber, seen in 2021, recently revealed that he is suffering from Ramsay Hunt syndrome. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Last week, Justin Bieber posted a video to Instagram not only sharing his diagnosis of Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which has left half of his face paralyzed, but also showing it.
Coming just days after several of Bieber’s concerts were canceled, the news brought an outpouring of well-wishes for Bieber, 28, who was in the middle of touring for his fifth and sixth studio albums, “Changes” (2020) and “Justice” (2021).
Such openness isn’t always encouraged. In Selma Blair’s memoir, “Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up,” which was released last month, the 49-year-old actress describes being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). “My doctors urged me not to go public,” she wrote. They told her: “ ‘You’re an actress; your body, your voice, it’s all you have.’ ” Blair went forward anyway, posting about it on Instagram in 2018.
These disclosures come as public figures have more direct access to fans through social media posts, and their intimate-feeling live streams and stories can go straight to their followers. Although celebrities may have previously opted to keep their medical issues from public scrutiny, today, many seem to believe that the benefits — increasing awareness of medical conditions and controlling the narratives regarding their own health — outweigh the costs.
In these online spaces, 27-year-old singer Halsey can post a video of herself wearing a heart monitor and talking about postpartum health problems and endometriosis to millions of followers — with the ease of sending a message to a friend. Comedian Lilly Singh can share that her “ovaries have the AUDACITY to be wilding out” from her hospital bed. And Hailey Bieber, Bieber’s wife, can tell her fans about being rushed to the emergency room in March for a blood clot — while simultaneously offering firsthand evidence that she is okay.
As for Justin Bieber’s condition, “if he were to hide it, that would open more questions of what’s wrong with him. Not doing something is more of a risk than him actually doing something,” says Christine Kowalczyk, an associate professor who studies celebrities and branding at East Carolina University. “If people hear that he’s canceling shows, he wants to be open and honest on the reasons why, so people will continue to come and see him.”
Kowalczyk says she has observed a shift toward transparency in the entertainment industry over the past decade or so. She points to Angelina Jolie’s 2013 New York Times op-ed about breast cancer as an example. In the essay, Jolie, who in 2016 suffered from facial paralysis similar to Bieber’s, disclosed her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy when she learned that she had the gene that increases the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. “I am writing about it now because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience,” she said.
Being up front about an illness can also be a powerful act of advocacy. Halsey spoke at the 2018 Blossom Ball for endometriosis research. Selena Gomez helped raise nearly half a million dollars for research on lupus, which she has herself. And wider awareness of Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia, an autoimmune condition that causes hair loss, led to numerous calls to end the stigma around the disease. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) called herself a “proud Alopecian.”
And maybe if we did, he suggests, the response to Bieber’s experience would look a little different. Smit, who is disabled, noticed some comments about how brave Bieber is for posting about his condition on social media. “In my culture, that’s not bravery,” he says. “It’s just living.” | 2022-06-12T18:37:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Justin Bieber is one of many celebrities sharing personal health struggles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/12/justin-bieber-celebrity-health-disclosures/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/12/justin-bieber-celebrity-health-disclosures/ |
Sam Fuentes is a March for Our Lives veteran. Zoe Touray is a movement newcomer. Will this time be different?
By John Woodrow Cox
Zoe Touray, left, who survived the Oxford High school shooting in November, and Sam Fuentes, right, who was shot at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in 2018, prepare to head to Capitol Hill to lobby lawmakers on gun control. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The children who did not die are young adults now, and on a Wednesday morning in Washington, they gathered just before 9 inside a hotel conference room on Capitol Hill. The school shooting survivors had come from all over the country, each of them hoping that this time would be different.
“Are you Zoe?” Alexa Browning asked Zoe Touray, who was standing alone by the door, nervously fiddling with a cell phone wrapped in a Mickey Mouse case.
“Yes,” the 18-year-old answered, smiling and extending her hand. This was her first trip away from home without an adult. She’d just graduated from Michigan’s Oxford High, where four students were killed in November, including one of Touray’s closest friends. She’d gone to funeral after funeral, staring into open caskets at swollen faces that looked nothing like the kids she knew.
Browning opened a black folder and removed a packet of documents that on one side read, “MARCH FOR OUR LIVES,” and on the other, “IT ENDS WITH US.”
But none of the people being handed the packets knew whether that was true. Many of them had been here before.
In 2018, survivors of the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., had organized a demonstration that drew tens of thousands of protesters to D.C. One teen after another took to the stage in front of the U.S. Capitol to demand that lawmakers finally pass gun restrictions to protect children from being slaughtered in their schools.
Among the most memorable to appear was Sam Fuentes, then a senior at Douglas who a month earlier had been shot in the leg and struck in the face with shrapnel. At the time, Fuentes thought she was lucky. With tears and blood streaming from her eyes, she had watched two of her friends die.
“Our mission is simple, and our ambitions unbeatable,” she had shouted to a roaring crowd, so overcome with nerves that she vomited on stage before finishing her speech. She’d recited a poem she’d written entitled “Enough.”
But, of course, none of it was enough. The lawmakers they had begged to listen ignored them, and the school shootings continued.
Samantha Fuentes, an 18-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who was shot in both legs and face, spoke at the March for Our Lives rally. (Video: The Washington Post)
Now Fuentes, 22, had come back for a second march, but she’d long ago shed the naïve hope of those early days. Meaningful progress, she knew this time, would not come easy, if ever.
Standing just outside the conference room, she watched Browning explain their schedule to Touray, who’d been recruited to help lobby members of Congress and give a speech at an event that afternoon.
In the four years between the massacre that led Fuentes to stand on a D.C. stage for the first time and Touray’s intention to do the same, there had been at least 130 shootings at schools, another 57 people killed and more than 115,000 children admitted to the circle of survivors.
More than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine
Browning, a March for Our Lives policy associate, skimmed through the pages of the packet, detailing all the items they wanted Touray and the others to pitch to lawmakers: universal background checks for gun purchasers, the Protecting Our Kids Act, an assault weapons ban.
Touray chewed on her bottom lip. She didn’t really know about any of those things.
“I won’t talk too much. I’m nervous,” said Touray, who was both intimidated and inspired by the other activists. They were all so smart and determined. She couldn’t imagine that the people in charge wouldn’t listen to them, especially after 19 fourth-graders in Uvalde, Tex., were shot to death in May.
Fuentes could imagine it, though. She’d given so many speeches to approving crowds, lobbied in so many offices bedecked with U.S. flags and promises of American exceptionalism.
“I try not to be jaded,” said Fuentes, who still had shrapnel embedded in her leg and behind her right eye. But she’d come to D.C. despite her growing cynicism, because she needed this community of survivors and the activism that helped her manage the trauma.
Fuentes has been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. On some nights, she wakes up sweating, thrashing, screaming.
Touray had just started seeing a therapist, because fear had changed who she was, too. At the Detroit airport the day before, she began to panic over what she would do if someone drew a gun. She didn’t see any exits. She imagined being shot, dying alone.
But, like Fuentes, she’d that found that doing something helped soothe her anxiety. So she ignored her dread and got on the plane.
Now, at the hotel, Fuentes headed off to change into her blue “March for Our Lives” t-shirt, her black folder of talking points still unopened, and Touray found a quiet space on the other side of the room where she could study all of them, hoping to come up with a question that would somehow make a difference.
'The day that haunts me’
Touray paced behind the stage, her forehead beading with sweat.
She had been invited to speak at an event hosted by Moms Demand Action in front of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, but she hadn’t understood until she and Fuentes arrived that hundreds of people and dozens of cameras would be watching her.
“I really need you to hype me up this rally is huge,” she texted her mother from behind a tall black sign that read: “DON’T LOOK AWAY.”
At the microphone was Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who had followed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had followed Sen. Chris Murphy, who had followed Moms Demand’s founder, Shannon Watts.
They were among the most important figures in the fight for reform, Touray had just learned. And now it was nearly her turn.
“I just got here and there’s so many people and now I’m speaking,” she wrote in another text, before her mom called.
“Just calm down. It’s okay,” Vickie Brent-Touray told her. “You were meant for this.”
Six months ago, she was grief-stricken and adrift, struggling to sleep, despite the melatonin and Benadryl.
Touray hadn’t thought much about school shootings before her own. As a child, she rarely paid attention to the news and was only allowed to watch PBS Kids on weekdays. She’d heard of Parkland, but knew almost nothing about it. Then, after Oxford, Touray was invited to talk about what she’d been through at a state event. Her mother encouraged her to speak up, so she did.
Touray, who plans to study anthropology at North Carolina A&T, considered herself a courier of a message that her schoolmates would never get the chance to deliver. And that was why, as the summer heat climbed above 80, she refused to take off the black sweatshirt that listed each of their names: Hana St. Juliana, Tate Myre, Madisyn Baldwin, Justin Shilling.
“I want them with me up there,” Touray said, after someone suggested that she change clothes.
Fuentes understood. At the end of her speech on March 24, 2018, she led the crowd in singing happy birthday to Nicholas Dworet, one of the two friends who’d died in her classroom. He would have turned 18 that day.
As Touray readied to go on stage, rehearsing the lines in her mind, Fuentes sat in the distance, beneath the shade of a white oak. The shrapnel buried in her muscles made it hard to stand for too long. She needed to take breaks.
Everything about these gatherings left her conflicted. Seeing young new activists like Touray was both refreshing and dispiriting, because they were joining a movement that hadn’t been able to end the crisis. She felt the same about seeing old friends from other gun safety organizations. She loved reconnecting, but what almost always brought them together was another massacre.
“I think, as a collective, we’re all very tired,” she said, between drags on a vape pen.
Fuentes was studying film at Hunter College in New York and worked at a jewelry wholesaler in Manhattan, but activism had long felt like her real job. She was represented by a speaking agency and, before the pandemic, traveled a couple times a month to speak at colleges and nonprofits. Just hours before she flew to D.C., she did an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which she referred to only as “GMA,” because she’d been on it so many times.
Now a young woman holding a sign that said “Pro-Life Is Gun Laws” walked up to her and stared.
“Are you Sam?” she asked.
“You’re from Parkland, right?”
“Thank you so much for all your work,” she said.
A few minutes later, a man with a clipboard and a headset ushered Touray toward the stage. She stood at the lectern and glanced down at the speech on her phone.
“November 29th was the last good day,” she said. “November 30th is the day that haunts me."
She described heading to class after lunch and her friends hearing a sound that reminded them of balloons popping. It was gunfire.
″We sit in the back of the room," she remembered. "We talk, we text, we call, we cry. We wait in terror fearing for our lives until the gunfire comes to an end.”
What Touray didn’t say: they’d escaped through a window and ran.
“Nothing about this has been easy. I was drowning. Now I’m floating. I want to be able to swim... not in a sea of grief,” she continued, before asking Congress to pass the new laws that March for Our Lives staffers had helped her work into the speech. “Save the next Madisyn. The next Justin. The next Tate. The next Hana. Save them before it’s too late.”
Her sister was killed at Oxford High. She refuses to let the school move on.
She stepped away from the microphone, relieved, until Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who was up next, took Touray’s hands in his and led her back onto the stage.
“Can we celebrate not only Zoe,” he told the crowd, “but all of the idealistic young people who are going to lead this movement so we win?”
‘A realist’
Touray and Fuentes had just made it through security at the Hart Senate Office Building, passing inside a metal detector monitored by three armed guards, when a roller on the x-ray machine came loose, slamming against the tile floor.
Touray flinched; Fuentes didn’t.
She used to, until she taught herself to brace for the triggers before they came. It was why Fuentes tried to keep her back to the wall whenever possible, scanning for threats.
Accepting that bad things were inevitable made them easier for her to manage, and Fuentes knew that made her sound like a pessimist sometimes, but she rejected that label.
“I’m just a realist,” Fuentes explained, and she was thinking about her sense of reality again during a meeting with Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who had long championed new firearm restrictions.
On the TV outside Murphy’s office, broken families from Uvalde and a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., were testifying in front of a congressional committee. The House was just hours away from voting for sweeping new gun legislation that many believed had no chance of passing in the Senate. But Murphy urged Fuentes, Touray and the other activists to keep doing what they’d been doing. Rallying, lobbying, demanding change and maintaining the momentum.
Fuentes was skeptical.
“I don’t think the same thing is necessarily going to work,” Fuentes said afterward, sitting on a stone bench outside Murphy’s office as Touray listened.
Demanding that conservative lawmakers acknowledge a moral obligation to protect children from guns hadn’t succeeded, Fuentes realized, so maybe that was the wrong approach. She had learned over the past four years that guns were central to many Americans’ identities, but she’d also learned that lots of gun safety laws could protect those people and their children from harm without stripping them of something they cherish.
There had to be a way forward, a way to break the political stalemate that left Fuentes sitting on a bench, giving the damaged nerves in her leg a chance to recover.
Congress’s refusal to act had shaped every aspect of her life.
She suffers from tinnitus in her ears and could eventually go blind in one eye. At least three of her schoolmates have died by suicide since the slaughter that left 17 dead inside Stoneman. She will never again talk to her friend Helena Ramsay about their favorite musicians or joke with Nicholas Dworet in a Shakespearean accent.
To Fuentes, being right didn’t matter much, not anymore. Only making a real difference would.
‘Don’t lose hope'
Fuentes’s message was on Touray’s mind that night in her hotel room, where she left the bathroom light on because in Michigan she shared a bedroom with her younger sister and was sleeping alone for the first time since she was 4. Touray didn’t like saying so little during the meetings with lawmakers, so she laid in bed trying to come up with a good question.
The next morning, her chance to ask it came at the base of the U.S. Capitol steps during a meeting with Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democratic congresswoman from Massachusetts.
“Just in terms of, like, helping, what else do you think that we could do other than what we’re already doing?” Touray asked, holding a pink notebook that on some pages had her new gun violence notes — “this time HAS to be different the #1 cause of death in children is guns” — and on others had food ideas for her upcoming graduate party — “banana pudding!”
Standing in front of her, Pressley thought for a moment.
“You can focus on your healing and take care of yourself, honestly,” Pressley said. “And also — don’t lose hope.”
Touray smiled, gratified that her question had elicited a thoughtful response, but she was also distracted, because a belligerent man on the steps behind her was screaming about government brainwashing. She started trembling.
Pressley’s words left Touray feeling hopeful, even after a more somber meeting with Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, who told the group that he wasn’t sure whether the Senate would pass any new legislation, and if they did, it wouldn’t include many of the items they wanted most.
“This package will come together quickly, or it won’t come together at all,” said Blumenthal, who was helping lead negotiations with Republicans. “It has to happen in days, not weeks.”
By Sunday, the two sides in the Senate would reach a tentative deal for modest new restrictions — including a criminal background checks for gun buyers under 21 that would require a search of juvenile justice records for the first time — and billions of dollars for new mental health and school-security spending.
Touray believed progress was possible, in part, because of the person she was scheduled to meet next, David Hogg, Parkland’s most famous survivor and one of March for Our Lives co-founders. They were scheduled for a joint interview on CNN the next morning, but she was nearly as nervous about speaking with him as she was about appearing on live TV for the first time.
A staffer guided her to a bench beneath the 51-foot-tall black steel sculpture in the atrium of the Hart building, where Hogg was finishing up a photo shoot for an upcoming magazine profile.
Afterward, Hogg sat next to her. He looked her in the eyes.
“I’m sorry that you’re part of the club that none of us want to be part of,” he said. “I thought we could change things and make it so that things like what happened at Oxford don’t happen anymore. Unfortunately, so far I’ve been wrong.”
“I’m hoping that you do it this time, though,” Touray said, sensing Hogg’s exhaustion after what had already been a frustrating week of discussions with lawmakers.
“We have the most valuable thing on our side that anybody can have in politics besides an enormous boatload of money, which is time,” he told her. "We’re going to outlive almost everybody in this building, hopefully.”
Touray laughed, but Hogg was serious.
“At least you’re doing something about it,” she said.
“I’m not. We are,” he said. “I get a lot of the credit, but I don’t deserve it. It’s people like you.”
It was nice of him to say, Touray thought, but she didn’t really agree. He was the face of the movement she’d just joined. He had 1.2 million Twitter followers. She had 18.
But Hogg wanted her to understand that he meant it. He was just one survivor from one shooting.
“I can’t speak for you or what happened at Oxford,” he told her, his tone serious. “You need to.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding.
Touray would try.
‘I need help’
“How’d the interviews go?” Fuentes asked Touray, the two of them standing together in a gated VIP section next to the March for Our Lives stage, where Hogg was midway through his speech.
“So many,” Touray marveled.
“I know,” Fuentes replied, and both of them laughed.
It was just past 1 p.m. Saturday, and, combined, they had already talked to NBC, CBS, NPR and MSNBC, along with a batch of other news outlets.
Thousands of people were packed onto the hill behind them leading up to the Washington Monument, and a layer of gray clouds lingered overhead, but the rain had stopped. This year’s rally wasn’t meant to be like the one in 2018. There were no Hollywood celebrities leading chants, no pop stars belting anthems. This time was about “rage,” as one March for Our Lives staffer put it, but that’s not what Fuentes and Touray were feeling.
They were happy.
Fuentes had spent the day exchanging hugs and jokes and silly memories with friends from Parkland she hadn’t seen in months. Touray had reconnected with a fellow Oxford survivor and hung out with new friends who had lived through the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary, including Jordan Gomes, a teen who’d joined her in the meeting with Blumenthal. Touray had talked about lipstick options with Parkland survivor X González and danced to nearly every beat booming through the towering overhead speakers.
“This is my song,” she’d said to at least three different songs.
Touray had arrived in D.C. unsure of whether she was meant to be an activist, but by Saturday, she felt convinced of it.
“This time is different,” Touray had heard people she admired say over and over last week, and she believed them.
Now Touray and Fuentes decided to get a photo together in front of a blue background adorned in March for Our Lives logos.
Suddenly, as they were walking over to it, hundreds of people rushed by the metal fence in front of them, screaming as they sprinted toward Constitution Avenue, away from the rally.
Dozens of attendees scattered in fear after a man stormed on stage during a moment of silence at the March for Our Lives protest in Washington, D.C. on June 11. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Getty/The Washington Post)
“Why is everyone running?” Fuentes asked, voice quavering, her eyes wide and watery. “Why is everyone running?”
Touray leaned against a chain-link fence and closed her eyes, placing a hand on her forehead.
Fuentes staggered toward her. She was fighting not to pass out.
On stage, a speaker announced that people needed to stop running. Everything was fine. Nobody was in danger.
“I’m freaking out,” Touray said, leaning on her knees.
“What happened?” Fuentes said.
They’d hear later that a man in the crowd had shouted something that sounded like “gun” during a moment of silence for Uvalde, sparking a stampede. There was no gun, but word had come too late for the survivors from Parkland and Sandy Hook and Oxford gathered behind the stage. Within seconds, terror had swept from one to the next, and now each of them had returned to the worst day of their lives.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Touray said, rushing into a white tent nearby.
She stood in the corner, facing the wall, and called her mom.
“I need help,” Touray told her, tears trickling down the side of her nose. She was too shaken to say anything more.
“Calm down,” her mother said, again and again.
Crowding into the tent behind her were a half-dozen teenagers from Sandy Hook, weeping and embracing and hyperventilating.
“Were you watching the live-stream?” one of them was saying on the phone. “Someone started yelling, and then people started ducking, and so we started running, because we thought somebody was trying to kill us.”
Touray rejoined Fuentes, who put her hand on Touray’s shoulder.
“You can cry," Fuentes told her.
Touray buried her head in her hands, until at last she looked up. Fuentes stared into the teen’s vacant eyes, her heart aching for Touray’s anguish and her own and for all the others who’d been scarred by school shootings and would never entirely escape what they’d endured.
“Take deeper breaths,” Fuentes told her.
Now the rally was nearing its end, and González was about to take the stage. A group of survivors, including Fuentes and Touray, had been asked to stand behind her in a show of solidarity.
“God, why am I still crying?” Touray asked, embarrassed, as she followed the group toward a waiting area near the stairs. “I feel like I cannot breathe right now.”
Gomes, the Sandy Hook survivor, told Touray she would stand next to her. They could hold hands.
She asked Touray to breathe with her. Inhale for four seconds, she instructed, hold for seven, exhale for eight.
“You’re okay,” Gomes said. “Are you sure you want to go up there?”
Touray nodded.
“Enough is enough,” the crowd was chanting. “Enough is enough.”
Then it was time for them to join the others on stage. Fuentes walked up first, and Gomes went behind her. Then Touray ascended with the rest of the activists, stopping and steadying herself in the middle of the stage.
She was one of them now.
Story editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Miller and Mark Gail, design by Irfan Uraizee | 2022-06-12T18:37:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parkland's Sam Fuentes, March for Our Lives veteran, meets Oxford shooting survivor Zoe Touray - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/12/survivors-parkland-oxford-march-for-our-lives/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/12/survivors-parkland-oxford-march-for-our-lives/ |
Dustin Johnson, left, and Phil Mickelson during the first round of the inaugural tournament of LIV Golf at the Centurion Club in St. Albans, Britain, on June 9. (Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Rick Reilly, a former Sports Illustrated and ESPN contributor, is the author of “So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game.”
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but pro golf is a triple bogey right now. It’s teetering on the edge of a disaster.
LIV Golf, Saudi Arabia’s effort to sportswash its murderous human rights record by buying off pro golfers with stupid money (Phil Mickelson: reportedly $200 million), is working.
The inaugural event of this LIV and Let Die Tour, with a massive $25 million total purse, finished Saturday at the Centurion Club north of London. LIV has already signed up nine majors winners, with more big-name defectors to come.
These LIV golfers know the Saudis butchered Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. They know the Saudis jail dissenters, criminalize homosexuality and oppress women. And in response, the players have sent a message loud and clear: We don’t care. We want bigger jets.
It’s hilarious to hear Mickelson and the others try to justify working for blood money. Well, sure, he knows the Saudis are “scary mother------s,” as he told his biographer, Alan Shipnuck. But he also says: “I’ve also seen the good that the game of golf has done through history.”
Right. Nothing relieves the downtrodden people of a despotic nation like a well-struck 6-iron. Remember when Kim Jong Il shot 34 one day and the North Korean people suddenly weren’t starving? Yeah, neither do I.
Mickelson says it isn’t about the money. (It is.) No, he says working for the Saudis is part of his plan to “reshape” the PGA Tour that made him. What he’s actually trying to reshape is his retirement account.
Two-time major winner Dustin Johnson says it’s not about the money. (It is.) No, his decision to take a reported $125 million from the country that about 75 percent of the 9/11 terrorists called home is about doing “what’s best for my family.” He married a Gretzky, was already Kardashian rich and has only two kids. What’s he want, each of them to have their own yachts?
Tiger Woods, meanwhile, turned down (I’m hearing) upward of $500 million to flip. He would’ve taken in that haul on Day One of Sheikh Week. In every LIV tournament, in every round, he could’ve put up radio stations (103s and 107s) and still made enough to choke a Walton family member. Wanted no part of it.
But the trickle of golfing ratfinks is turning into a fire hose. Superstar Bryson DeChambeau and his 400-yard biceps just signed up, as did 2018 Masters champion Patrick Reed and Players champion Rickie Fowler. There’s talk of Bubba Watson, too. Hey, would the last guy leaving the PGA Tour bring in the flagsticks, please?
This sucks for golf. It means the number of events when the best play the best will be further apart than desert oases.
No wonder the PGA Tour started suspending Saudi-signed players within minutes of the first LIV tee shot on Thursday. They were so distraught, they had to console themselves by counting all the zeros on their checks.
Already, the players and media are discovering what life is like under an autocracy. An Associated Press reporter was tossed out of an LIV presser at the Centurion last week for not being “polite.” (He was asking a hard question; they eventually let him back in.) Shipnuck got pushed around Thursday when Mickelson was about to talk to reporters.
So now what? Nobody knows. The PGA Tour isn’t saying how long the ban will last. U.S. Open officials say they’ll let jumpers play in the tournament this week, but what about next year? What about DeChambeau and Johnson, who have 10-year exemptions to play in the tournament? Augusta National hasn’t said a word, but would it ban five former Masters champions?
The PGA of America is stuck, too. If it bans all LIVers from the Ryder Cup, that’ll be duller than C-SPAN 3.
The Saudis aren’t going away. There’s no bottom to their wallets. The PGA Tour is going to have to change, and I mean yesterday. It needs to start allowing appearance fees. It needs to start paying for caddies’ hotels and health insurance. It needs to start offering smaller, no-need-to-make-the-cut, star-thick cash grabs of its own. It needs to stop worrying so much about the 101st-ranked player and start worrying about the 1st.
And the PGA Tour needs to open a small window to let these defectors back in. Because otherwise, soon you’re going to be getting up at 2 a.m. to watch the all-important Mecca Masters.
P.S., Phil, be careful with your new bosses. If they start talking about “sudden death” … run. | 2022-06-12T18:37:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Saudi-backed golf rival for the PGA is a case of ‘LIV and let die’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/saudi-liv-golf-rivals-pga/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/saudi-liv-golf-rivals-pga/ |
A better plan than blanket student-debt forgiveness
Activists hold signs at a rally near the White House on April 27. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Bravo and thanks for The Post’s June 1 editorial “Stop the student loan stunt.” Even with a $150,000 income cap, the Biden administration’s plan would be wasteful and regressive, and it would set a dangerous precedent. The repayment zeal of new borrowers could be affected by the possibility of future election-year cancellations. Our hope is that, instead of broad student debt forgiveness, President Biden will expand and improve the income-based repayment provisions of current law that were highlighted in The Post’s April 29 editorial “The better course on student debt.”
As that editorial pointed out, under current law, a borrower’s monthly payments can be limited to a percentage of his or her income (generally 10 or 20 percent of discretionary income) with any remaining balance canceled after 20 or 25 years, thus enabling borrowers, in The Post’s words, to “pursue their desired careers without worrying how they will pay off their student loans.” Those income-based repayment authorities were enacted with bipartisan support under President Bill Clinton and then expanded under President Barack Obama. Unfortunately, most borrowers have not taken advantage of them, likely because of inadequate consumer information and counseling.
Assuming the president has adequate legal authority, he should make the existing income-driven plans immediately available to all borrowers whose debts are delinquent, including those who initially chose more traditional payment schedules. Another positive step would be to reduce the time period before the remaining balance is canceled. Mr. Biden should also consider making all repayment plans income-contingent. Those steps would involve new costs, but nothing like the huge costs of immediate broad-scale cancellation of current debt. Plus, the benefits would be individually targeted, and their delivery could utilize existing mechanisms instead of requiring the creation of new procedures.
Robert Davidson and Elizabeth Davidson, Falls Church
Robert Davidson is a former official at the U.S. Education Department; Elizabeth Davidson is a former director of financial aid at American University. | 2022-06-12T19:11:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A better plan than blanket student-debt forgiveness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/better-plan-than-blanket-student-debt-forgiveness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/better-plan-than-blanket-student-debt-forgiveness/ |
Is ‘stagflation’ the appropriate label?
Gas prices are displayed at a gas station in Sacramento on May 27. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
Regarding the June 8 front-page article “World Bank fears a 1970s rerun of global ‘stagflation’ ”:
The term “stagflation,” which indicates a period of stagnation, inflation and high unemployment, doesn’t accurately describe the current state of the economy. More broadly, unemployment, a closely monitored economic indicator, is historically low, and another important indicator, inflation, is at its highest rate in decades.
Perhaps the best way to understand the present phase of the economy is to unravel consumer sentiments. This requires an examination of the relationship that exists between the tolerance of a higher inflation rate by consumers and the historically low unemployment rate. Previously, economists have depicted this as the Phillips curve, named for economist A. William Phillips.
Simply stated, one of the main tenets of the Phillips curve is that levels of unemployment influence the rate of wage increases. More specifically, a low unemployment rate with a low rate of inflation is not easily achievable.
As I see it, “recessflation” is a more appropriate portmanteau to express rising inflation as the economy slumps into a recession.
Mark M. Spradley, Chevy Chase | 2022-06-12T19:12:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Is ‘stagflation’ the appropriate label? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/is-stagflation-appropriate-label/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/is-stagflation-appropriate-label/ |
It is time to refocus our police reform efforts
As a retired police officer, I have followed the various proposals for police reform closely. I commend the state of Maryland for moving forward with efforts to that end. When reading the June 6 Metro article “Pr. George’s residents weigh in on policing bill,” I noticed a continuation of the polarization that has deadlocked any progress on a national level.
In constructing a Police Accountability Board, the focus has become more concerned solely with investigating and disciplining officers rather than establishing proactive measures designed to prevent future tragic events, while establishing greater public safety and improving police professionalism.
The time for greater public participation in police department oversight has come. However, holistic improvements in police and community relations can be achieved only through open communication and involvement for all. That includes both the public and police officers. Officers should be involved in the investigation and discipline of accused officers all the same, but the public must be included with greater involvement in not only punitive measures but also departmental hiring processes, recruiting, even promotional selections and perhaps segments of training.
It is important to remember the common goal of community safety and the reestablishment of respect and trust for law enforcement. There is no simple solution to this complicated issue, but, whatever the result it must be accepted by all concerned to be effective in establishing a safer community.
John L. Young, Monterey, Calif. | 2022-06-12T19:12:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | It is time to refocus our police reform efforts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/it-is-time-refocus-our-police-reform-efforts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/it-is-time-refocus-our-police-reform-efforts/ |
When it comes to mass shootings, acceptance is not an option
(Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)
Regarding Michael Gerson’s June 7 op-ed, “The GOP spin on gun rights is morally and legally wrong”:
Mr. Gerson’s citing of the finding in a recent CBS-YouGov poll that 44 percent of Republicans agree that mass shootings are “unfortunately something we have to accept” in a free country highlights the logical, yet immorally grim, conclusion that many Republicans, including a large portion of their congressional representatives, have reached. For them, not wanting to offend the gun lobby and its most committed followers appears to have a higher priority than reducing the occurrence and magnitude of tragedies such as those in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex.
As a matter of honesty, then, they should at least have the logical consistency to introduce legislation establishing a “National Martyrs for the Second Amendment Day.” It would recognize and honor the innocent victims who have been forced to give their lives on the altar of defending the higher priority of many congressional Republicans to be perceived as pure in their support of the right to bear arms.
Of course, these gun zealots would react with “righteous” indignation to this effort to have them live with the consequences of their words and actions. But, quite frankly, they would say and do anything to hide the immoral subtext of their staunch defense of the Second Amendment: For them, the dead bodies in a supermarket aisle or on the floor of a fourth-grade classroom are “acceptable breakage.”
Chuck Cutolo, Westbury, N.Y.
My husband and I are planning on visiting the United States soon to see our son and his family, and we have both been vaccinated four times. Until this weekend, we would have had to take a covid-19 test before traveling. It would seem we are considered to be more of a risk to the health of your country than an 18-year-old who can legally buy any number of assault rifles for no good reason other than to wreak havoc.
Cynthia Bengen, London | 2022-06-12T19:12:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | When it comes to mass shootings, acceptance is not an option - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/when-it-comes-mass-shootings-acceptance-is-not-an-option/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/when-it-comes-mass-shootings-acceptance-is-not-an-option/ |
PM Update: Strong storms possible tonight. A bit hotter on Monday.
Early showers and thunderstorms were a bit of a surprise this morning. As a result, it took a little while for the clouds to break up and for the sun to pop out. But now that we’ve got some daytime heating, the risk of more showers and storms developing increases as we head into the evening hours. Keep an eye out for any severe weather notifications, as a few of these storms could become quite strong. After some early morning showers tomorrow, the heat and humidity build back in again for Monday.
Through Tonight: Scattered showers and thunderstorms will remain likely in the early evening hours, gradually diminishing in coverage before midnight. Some of these thunderstorms will feature heavy rain, gusty winds and small hail. It will clear out overnight but remain warm and humid, with lows in the mid- to upper 60s.
Tomorrow (Monday): A batch of showers and storms will slide through in the morning hours, before mostly sunny skies develop in the afternoon. Temperatures will top out around 90 degrees, and humidity will be high. A few isolated showers and storms are possible late in the afternoon. Partly cloudy and warm at night, with lows in the upper 60s and humidity levels of near 100 percent.
Dangerous heat waves in Africa and Europe: It’s not just the western United States that will be under the influence of an extended heat wave this week. Large parts of northern Africa and southern Europe have experienced some extremely hot temperatures recently. The story will remain the same next week as a stronger heat wave is expected to build and expand across a large part of Europe.
Today 12 June was another very hot day in North Africa and South Europe with 47C at Faya (Chad), 0.6C from national heat record.
In Morocco 44.9C at Kasba Tadla and Beni Mellal and hottest June night ever at Fes with Tmin of 27.5C.
In Spain 43.0C at Andujar,in France up to 38.6C https://t.co/bEn6BwHwbA | 2022-06-12T19:38:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PM Update: Strong storms possible tonight. A bit hotter on Monday. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/12/pm-update-strong-storms-possible-tonight-bit-hotter-monday/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/12/pm-update-strong-storms-possible-tonight-bit-hotter-monday/ |
A video of then-President Donald Trump speaking at a rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, is shown as members of the House select committee investigating the attack that day on the U.S. Capitol holds a public hearing on June 9, 2022. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Trump and his allies’ efforts to pull “every lever of government” to try to keep him in power would become clear across the compilation of the committee’s findings, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), a member of the committee, said Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
Other Jan. 6 committee members said Sunday that the next hearings would continue to show evidence that Trump was responsible for the Capitol attack. On ABC News’s “This Week,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said that there was credible evidence that Trump committed multiple federal crimes and that it would be up to the Justice Department to make a decision about whether it could prove that to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
“[Trump] heard it from the White House counsel. He heard it from all of the lawyers who threatened to resign if he staged his little mini-coup against the Department of Justice by installing someone that would go along with his fairy tale about there having been electoral fraud and corruption,” Raskin said. “So, yes, I think any reasonable person in America will tell you he had to have known he was spreading a big lie. And he continues to spread it to this very day. He continues to foist that propaganda on his followers.”
The select committee’s first public hearing, on Thursday, was covered every major cable news outlet except Fox News. In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) tried to pierce the partisan information bubble by squeezing in remarks about the committee in a segment that was otherwise dominated by questions about inflation and threats to Supreme Court justices.
“I think the point here has been to take a hard and clear-eyed look at what happened on Jan. 6, and new evidence that they’ve uncovered about the role of the former president’s close advisers in how they shaped the events that led to that really critical moment in our modern American history,” Coons told host Bret Baier. “We’ve never had our Capitol stormed by Americans. We’ve never had an attempt through an insurrection, through a riot to try and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.”
“In retrospect, if I’d have known what I know now, I’d have very much changed my line of questioning,” Quested said on “Meet the Press,” adding that it took his crew months to process — mentally and physically — what it had witnessed. “My camera was broken. I’d been shot with pepper balls and I’d got into various scuffles just on the [Capitol] steps, which was particularly shocking because we weren’t prepared for this.”
Aaron Gregg and Caroline Kitchener contributed to this report.
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the "Fox News Sunday" host. He is Bret Baier, not Brett. | 2022-06-12T20:47:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday’s Jan. 6 committee hearings to focus on Donald Trump’s inaction, ‘dereliction of duty’ during Capitol attack - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/12/jan6-hearing-trump-inaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/12/jan6-hearing-trump-inaction/ |
Retired general resigns from Brookings think tank amid federal probe
Retired four-star Marine Gen. John R. Allen has resigned as president of the Brookings Institution, one of the world’s most renowned think tanks, after he was placed on administrative leave amid a federal investigation into his suspected lobbying on behalf of the government of Qatar years ago, the firm announced to employees Sunday.
The inquiry is focused on whether Allen, a military commander who once led U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan, secretly urged the Trump administration to tone down its criticism of Qatar in 2017, when neighbors in the Persian Gulf imposed economic sanctions on the country, accusing it of supporting Islamist extremism, according to court records. Allen was placed on leave, Brookings said last week.
Allen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday afternoon.
In an email to staffers on Sunday afternoon, Glenn Hutchins and Suzanne Nora Johnson, co-chairs of the Brookings board of trustees, said Ted Gayer, a senior economic fellow, has taken over as acting president. The note thanks Allen for his “leadership in successfully guiding the institution during the pandemic” and does not explicitly mention the federal investigation.
“Brookings seeks to maintain high ethical standards in all its operations,” Hutchins and Nora Johnson wrote in the email, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Our policies on research independence and integrity reflect these values.” | 2022-06-12T21:39:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John R. Allen leaves Brookings Institution after federal probe about his activities with the Qatari government - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/12/brookings-institution-john-allen-resigns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/12/brookings-institution-john-allen-resigns/ |
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) on Capitol Hill on March 23. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
No sooner had a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators announced on Sunday they had reached a tentative deal on a package of safety and gun-related measures than the criticism and second-guessing began. One common refrain was that the package was too modest. We’d also like to see more. But this agreement, if passed by Congress, would be the most significant piece of gun-safety legislation in more than 25 years, and for that, it should be applauded.
The 20 senators —10 Democrats and 10 Republicans — have put together a framework that would join some new gun restrictions with new investments in school security and mental health services. Among the gun provisions: incentives for states to pass and implement red-flag laws to remove firearms from potentially dangerous people; stricter gun background checks for people between the ages of 18 and 21 to include a mandatory search of juvenile justice records; and closing what is known as the “boyfriend loophole” to bar dating partners — not just spouses — from owning guns if they have been convicted of domestic violence. Under the deal, billions of new federal dollars would go to mental health care and school security programs.
President Biden quickly embraced the deal, saying: “Obviously, it does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades.” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledged to put a bill on the floor as soon as possible once legislation is written. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) released a statement praising the negotiators but stopped short of pledging to support an eventual bill.
Like Mr. Biden, we think other reforms are needed. Notably, addressing the danger posed by assault weapons and high-capacity magazines — either banning them or, at the very least, raising the minimum age for buying them from 18 to 21, the same as is required for handgun purchases. But the compromise that has been worked out — credit to Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) — is reasonable and meaningful. No, it won’t save all lives lost to gun violence, but it will save some. We urge Congress to approve it. | 2022-06-12T21:40:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Senate’s bipartisan gun deal is an encouraging first step - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/senates-bipartisan-gun-deal-is-an-encouraging-first-step/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/12/senates-bipartisan-gun-deal-is-an-encouraging-first-step/ |
FILE - Honoree Toby Keith performs at the 46th annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala at the Marriott Marquis on June 18, 2015, in New York. Keith announced Sunday, June 12, 2022, that he has been undergoing treatment for stomach cancer since last fall. The multi-platinum-selling singer said on Twitter that he underwent surgery and received chemotherapy and radiation in the past six months .(Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-06-12T23:11:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Country star Toby Keith discloses stomach cancer diagnosis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/country-star-toby-keith-discloses-stomach-cancer-diagnosis/2022/06/12/e5fcbdca-eaa2-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/country-star-toby-keith-discloses-stomach-cancer-diagnosis/2022/06/12/e5fcbdca-eaa2-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
South: North test-fired suspected artillery shots
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it detected several flight trajectories believed to be North Korean artillery on Sunday morning.
The North’s artillery tests draw less outside attention than its missile launches. But its forward-deployed long-range artillery guns are a serious security threat to South Korea’s populous metropolitan region, which is only 25 to 30 miles from the border with North Korea.
The suspected artillery launches were the latest in a spate of weapons tests by North Korea this year in what experts call an attempt to pressure Washington and Seoul to relax sanctions against Pyongyang and make other concessions.
South Korean and U.S. officials recently said North Korea had almost completed preparations for its first nuclear test in about five years. In March, North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland in breach of a 2018 moratorium on big missile tests.
Legislators from Sadr's bloc quit parliament
The 73 lawmakers from powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s bloc submitted their resignation based on his request, to protest a political deadlock that has persisted eight months after general elections were held.
Sadr, a maverick leader who led an insurgency against U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion, emerged as the winner in the October vote.
The election was held several months earlier than expected, in response to mass protests that broke out in late 2019 over endemic corruption, poor services and unemployment.
The vote was a blow for Sadr’s Iran-backed Shiite rivals, who lost about two-thirds of their seats and have rejected the results.
Sadr has been intent on forming a majority government that excludes them. But he has not been able to corral enough lawmakers to parliament to get the two-thirds majority needed to elect Iraq’s next president — a necessary step ahead of naming the next prime minister and selecting a cabinet.
Macron's centrist bloc likely to keep majority
French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance is expected to keep its parliamentary majority after the first round of voting, according to projections Sunday.
Projections based on partial election results showed that at the national level, Macron’s party and its allies got about 25 percent to 26 percent of the vote. That made them neck-in-neck with a new leftist coalition. Yet Macron’s candidates are projected to win in a greater number of districts than their rivals, giving him a majority.
More than 6,000 candidates were running for 577 seats in the National Assembly in the first round of the election.
Consumer concerns about rising inflation have dominated the campaign, but still voter enthusiasm has been muted. That was reflected Sunday, with fewer than half of France’s 48.7 million voters casting ballots.
After Macron’s reelection in May, his coalition was seeking an absolute majority to enable it to implement his campaign pledges, which include tax cuts and raising the retirement age from 62 to 65.
Yet Sunday’s projections show Macron’s party and allies could have trouble securing more than half the seats in the Assembly this time around. A government with a large but not absolute majority would be able to rule but would have to seek some support from opposition legislators.
Polling agencies estimated that Macron’s centrists could win 255 to about 300 seats.
9 arrested in assault on women in China: Chinese authorities arrested nine people on suspicion of violently assaulting several women at a restaurant after surveillance footage of the attack sparked outrage. Footage from the restaurant in northern Hebei province showed one of the men approaching a table where four women were seated and placing his hand on a woman's back. She rebuffed him several times before he flew into a rage and slapped her, prompting her to fight back. A brawl ensued, with a group of men entering the restaurant and brutally attacking the woman and her dining partners . | 2022-06-12T23:11:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: June 12, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-12-2022/2022/06/12/c54f1fb6-ea50-11ec-8881-ce66b991ccce_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-12-2022/2022/06/12/c54f1fb6-ea50-11ec-8881-ce66b991ccce_story.html |
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, left, congratulates RBC Canadian Open winner Rory McIlroy. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)
Monahan was making an appearance Sunday on CBS’s telecast of the final round of the Canadian Open, one day after the conclusion of LIV Golf’s debut, staged near London. The 52-year-old commissioner emphasized the benefits, as he saw them, for PGA Tour players to stay put — and mentioned that those who have already signed with the deep-pocketed rival might regret that decision.
Asked by Nantz why players couldn’t compete on both circuits — a stance questioned by LIV Golf Investments CEO Greg Norman — Monahan began his reply with a question of his own: “Why do they need us so badly?”
“You’ve got true, pure competition — the best players in the world here at the RBC Canadian Open, with millions of fans watching. And in this game, it’s true and pure competition that creates the profile and the presence of the world’s greatest players. That’s why they need us. That’s what we do.
LIV Golf players are currently sacrificing the opportunity to climb or hold steady in the world rankings, which could affect their ability to qualify for majors.
Monahan — who is a member of the OWGR’s eight-person governing board — said of that predicament Sunday, “Those ranking points are a critical element to why the best players in the world are out here, in this pure and true competition against the depth of field that we have.” | 2022-06-13T00:16:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LIV Golf players can’t ‘free-ride’ off PGA Tour, Jay Monahan says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/liv-golf-players-cant-free-ride-off-pga-tour-jay-monahan-says/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/liv-golf-players-cant-free-ride-off-pga-tour-jay-monahan-says/ |
Ketanji Brown Jackson to 2022 grads: ‘Always seek to learn something’
Jackson delivered the commencement speech to Georgetown Day School graduates on Sunday
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in for her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 21. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a commencement speech Sunday to her daughter’s graduating class at Georgetown Day School, imploring students to seek opportunities to learn in every stage of life.
The Supreme Court justice-designate did not mention politics or her high-profile appointment, and instead stuck to themes and lessons common in graduation speeches. Her two parting lessons to students: “Choose your own adventures” and adopt a “growth mind-set” that will enable you to learn and grow each day.
“Class of 2022,” she said, “I hope that you will remember that in whatever chapter or challenge in life you find yourself in the future, you can always seek to learn something, and you might be pleasantly surprised at how much you grow as a result.”
Jackson started serving on the school’s board in 2019 but stepped down soon after she was nominated to the country’s highest court.
Georgetown Day School came under fire during her March confirmation hearings, when Senate Republicans zeroed in on her role at the private school, highlighting the school’s teachings on race and gender, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) saying the school “is filled and overflowing with critical race theory.”
The elite D.C. prep school at the center of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing
At one point, Cruz revealed a stack of controversial books that he said are taught or are available at Georgetown Day. He questioned Jackson about the book “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi and asked the judge whether she agreed with the book and thought “babies are racist.”
Jackson issued a sweeping defense of her involvement in the school, saying that it’s a private institution and that any parent who enrolls a child there does so willingly. She cited the school’s history — which she also cited during the commencement speech — and said it was founded by a group of Jewish and Black families at a time when schools were still segregated.
How Ketanji Brown Jackson will recast the Supreme Court
“I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or though they are not valued, or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I do not believe in any of that,” she answered at the time.
Each year, the private school — located in a wealthy neighborhood of Northwest Washington — chooses a parent to deliver a speech to students. Jackson committed to delivering the speech before she was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court. She said Sunday that she had considered backing out, alluding to recent security threats to Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. But, she quipped, she decided she couldn’t miss the opportunity to deliver advice to her teenage daughter in a place where she couldn’t look at her phone and tune her mother out.
“Here was a chance to give advice to my teenager, and she would have to look up from her cellphone,” Jackson said. “Better still, no child could interrupt me and tell me how lame I sounded. I was not throwing away my shot.”
Jackson included some personal anecdotes, too. She warned the graduates that they would face pressures to conform to what others are doing or to what they think might be expected of them. She advised them to intentionally make their own life decisions, to “choose their own adventures.”
The judge said that at her 30th Harvard University reunion last week, the “unfortunate consequences of selecting a path that is not in line with what you really want was highlighted.” She said she listened to two panels in which her classmates lamented that they selected a certain path because they believed that’s what their parents expected of them.
“When you get to decision points, I want you to remember that you have the power to choose how you are going to respond, react and behave,” Jackson said. “You now have an opportunity to make a path about your future. I encourage you to listen to your inner voice, the things that make you say, ‘This is great, I want to do more of this.’ ”
Jackson referred to the successful Boston Celtics team, quoted author T. H. White and mentioned her own parents as she explained to students the importance of choosing a “growth mind-set.”
“ ‘Whatever happens, you can always learn something,’ ” she said her mother, an educator, would always tell her. “Every situation provided a teachable moment, and, boy, did I learn.”
She said Brad Stevens, the former coach and current executive of the Boston Celtics, has been touting the growth mind-set to his players for years. The coach, she said, tells his players that they should commit to improving themselves each day, not getting deterred by challenges or overwhelmed by achievements — simply moving on to the next day.
Quoting White’s “The Once and Future King,” the judge said: “ ‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlin, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.’ ”
“A world of learning awaits you,” Jackson told the Class of 2022, “and the future is yours to shape.” | 2022-06-13T00:29:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers commencement speech to D.C. high-schoolers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/12/ketanji-jackson-georgetown-day-commencement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/12/ketanji-jackson-georgetown-day-commencement/ |
GOTEMBA, JAPAN - MAY 28: Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) disembark from a CH-47 Chinook helicopter during a live fire exercise at East Fuji Maneuver Area on May 28, 2022 in Gotemba, Shizuoka, Japan. The annual live-fire drill takes place as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to boost defense spending after a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden and other “Quad” leaders this week. (Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images) (Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images AsiaPac)
“Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told an international security gathering in Singapore, a catchphrase that speaks to the harsh lessons learnt over the past few months. Better deterrence and response capabilities, he told a room packed with defense officials and diplomats, will be “absolutely essential if Japan is to learn to survive in the new era and keep speaking out as a standard-bearer of peace.” Cranking up rhetoric, though, is the easy part.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has jolted the pacifist nation into making bigger promises on spending, security and a foreign policy that relies on more than economics — welcome news for allies eager to have a muscular Japan discouraging provocations from its nuclear-armed neighbors. Tokyo now needs to overcome what remains of domestic resistance, free up funds and strengthen alliances, and fast. But this “courteous power” can already use diplomatic tools to do more for the “rules-based free and open international order” that Kishida talked up at the Shangri-La Dialogue on Friday. He could do worse than to start in Southeast Asia. It’s a region that, like much of the emerging world, has largely distanced itself from allies’ response to President Vladimir Putin’s aggression, and where Japan has more credibility than most.
Ukraine has made even Tokyo’s most ardent pacifists realize that a totally unprovoked war is not a distant prospect. It’s a tough neighborhood: North Korean missiles, Russian saber-rattling around islets it says are part of its Kuril chain and Japan calls its Northern Territories, and tensions in the East China Sea — never mind the dramatic consequences of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Joint military exercises by Russia and China have done little to ease nerves. Little wonder that even if an overhaul of Japan’s constitutional article forbidding “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential,” remains unlikely, public opinion is shifting, and limits are becoming more flexible, with counterstrike capabilities now up for discussion. Even Kishida, whose family hails from Hiroshima and is less hawkish than others in his party, is pledging a substantial increase in defense spending, a step further from the pacifist mindset of recent decades.
Even so, it will be challenging to move quickly at home. Kishida gave no specifics, but an increase in the defense budget to 2% of gross domestic product, or NATO levels, as his party has proposed — roughly doubling the current share — may be a tough sell in practice, given post-pandemic demands and already stretched public finances. Kishida can still add manpower to the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan’s military is known, bolster missile defense and cybersecurity (a major concern), while working on strengthening the alliance with America — though Kishida has, for now, pushed aside nuclear sharing, or the possibility of hosting US nuclear weapons on Japanese soil.
But Japan, which has already broken with precedent by accepting refugees and sending bulletproof vests to Ukraine, can take other steps to protect not just itself but the rules-based order it depends on, with more forceful diplomatic efforts to help widen the alliance of nations condemning Russia’s aggression and pushing to isolate its economy. Southeast Asa is a good place to begin.
With the exception of Singapore, which has imposed unilateral sanctions for the first time in more than four decades, the region has largely sought to remain neutral in the conflict. That’s due in equal parts to the power of Russian weapons exports, deep-seated anti-Western sentiment, Soviet-era ties, disinformation — and of course diplomatic disengagement on the part of the wealthy world, not to mention sheer distance. Just a day after Kishida addressed the Singapore gathering, Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, whose country has refused Ukraine’s request for weapons, defended what he called strategic neutrality, with a reference to former South African leader Nelson Mandela’s comment when asked in a US interview about Cuba’s Fidel Castro: “Your enemy is not necessarily my enemy.” It’s a position Russia is exploiting as the food crisis worsens, which will be used to weaken support for Ukraine as the war grinds on. And it’s an issue the West is not doing enough to tackle.
Southeast Asia is important, not just as a grouping of important emerging economies but because this year, it has the global spotlight: Indonesia chairs the G20, which will meet in Bali in November, and Thailand will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s economic leaders summit. So it matters when Cambodia, the current chair of ASEAN, joins with Indonesia and Thailand to issue a statement on their respective meetings that skirts the small matter of a war of conquest entirely, in favor of working “with all partners and stakeholders.”
Japan is already engaged with the region and in his first months, Kishida has visited Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, and welcomed Malaysia’s prime minister in Tokyo. It’s also the region’s most trusted partner, not to mention a leading investor. But as with its investment, diplomatic efforts have been patient and understated, and far more is needed. There is an uncomfortable colonial past and officials will be dealing with reluctant and distracted governments — Indonesia, for one, is already beginning to look ahead to a 2024 election. It will also have to steer away from values conversations around political systems. Singapore’s defense minister is right that there will be “few takers for a battle royale on that basis”.
But stronger economic ties will help, as will military supplies to reduce dependence on Russia, not to mention coordinating food aid and support where needed as the conflict in Ukraine fuels a surge in prices and hunger. Persistent diplomacy too. Avoiding another aggressor trampling over smaller neighbors demands it.
• Joe Biden May Just Provide the Push Japan Needs: Gearoid Reidy
• The U.S. Needs to Do More Than Just Show Up: Ruth Pollard | 2022-06-13T00:42:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Japan’s Assertive Foreign Policy Can Start in Southeast Asia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/japans-assertive-foreign-policy-can-start-in-southeast-asia/2022/06/12/63cf4c36-eaa8-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/japans-assertive-foreign-policy-can-start-in-southeast-asia/2022/06/12/63cf4c36-eaa8-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Police officers in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, guard a group of men who were among dozens arrested June 11 for conspiracy to riot. (North Country Off Grid/Youtube/Reuters)
The dozens of masked men from a dozen different states dressed in the visually singular identity of the white supremacist group Patriot Front, authorities said. Piled into the back of a U-Haul set up outside a hotel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Saturday, they had one goal as they headed to a popular park that was hosting an LGBTQ Pride event, according to Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White.
“These individuals were prepared to riot,” White told The Washington Post Sunday. The men, whom he described as all working together, had riot gear that included shin guards, shields, helmets, at least one smoke grenade and long metal poles like the ones used by some U.S. Capitol rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, White said.
“They even had an operations plan to detail their actions once they arrived at the Pride event,” he said, citing the plan as the main contributor for the eventual misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot. White said further charges could be added depending on what authorities find, like weapons, as they process the U-Haul and other vehicles.
31 tied to hate group charged with planning riot near LGBTQ event in Idaho
By Sunday afternoon, all of the men had posted bond and were free as they await arraignment later this week, according to a spokesperson with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office. The legal saga for the arrested men is only beginning, but the impact to the Patriot Front group — which rebranded after one of its members killed one woman and injured several others by plowing his car into people protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 — is unclear.
Those who study extremist groups or organize against their ideology say that after years of warnings that the ranks of far-right and militia-type groups were growing, the threat they pose to public safety and national security is impossible to ignore.
“We’ve been trying to sound this alarm since the Obama years that these groups are starting to organize, and they’re at the gates now,” said Kurt Braddock, a professor at American University who studies violent extremist groups and their messaging. “It’s a disservice to American security to ignore or minimize them any more.”
White, the police chief, said the group had planned for confrontation at Pride in the Park, an event advertised as a “family-friendly, community event celebrating diversity and building a stronger and more unified community for ALL.”
Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, a community organizing group that advocates for inclusivity and democratic principles, said it’s a far cry from an isolated incident.
“People should be paying attention to these arrests far beyond Coeur d’Alene,” Ward said via email. “Idaho is a bellwether state for where the rest of the country may be headed in terms of how anti-democracy groups try to build power and how effectively they’re blunted.” He noted that in 2020, Idaho was among the first states to “turn anti-transgender attacks into law” by banning trans women and girls from school sports and that the local Republican Party has supported candidates for the library board who ran on pulling LGBTQ books from shelves.
Braddock said researchers have been predicting LGBTQ groups would be the next target of far-right extremists, who he said adhere to a hypermasculine worldview and the belief that other, often marginalized groups are making gains at their direct expense.
“They see it as a zero-sum game when it really isn’t,” Braddock said.
The North Idaho Pride Alliance, which organized Saturday’s event, did not respond to request for comment Sunday.
White, the police chief, said the suspects were arrested with planning documents that outlined their intended course of action had they made it to the park.
“They talked about entering the park and immediately confronting people; as soon as they met some level of resistance, they were going to release smoke grenades,” White said.
The men, most of whom were in their early 20s and who reside in states as far as Michigan and Arkansas, appeared prepared for arrest, White said.
When police stopped the U-Haul and began to make arrests, White described the men as “quiet and stoic.”
“They had either been coached or trained on how to respond if a law enforcement encounter took place,” he said.
White credited a local tipster who saw the suspects loading into the U-Haul and called the police.
“Were it not for one extremely observant citizen who reported what he saw — rather than tweet about it or put it on video and get his 15 minutes of fame — there would have been a riot,” he said.
Since the arrests, white supremacist and Patriot Front sympathizers have flooded the police tip line with harassment, White said. The chief was also quick to dispel misinformation that had already begun to circulate.
“There is a whole lot of online chatter people thinking this was antifa in disguise, or a false flag by the FBI,” he said. “That is absolutely false. This was Patriot Front.”
Authorities had been aware of online threats leading up to the weekend, White said, so police had increased their presence in the city’s downtown. Two SWAT teams and officers from the city, county and state assisted in the arrests.
In the weeks leading up to the Pride event, a local motorcycle club dubbed the Panhandle Patriots had planned a “Gun d’Alene” event on the same day as Pride in the Park to “go head to head with these people,” an organizer said in April during an appearance with state Rep. Heather Scott (R).
Braddock, the extremism researcher, said just as police must contend with the growth of extremist groups, the public must pay attention to the elected officials and personalities in the mainstream who ignite the talking points that ultimately animate far-right groups.
When they see a mainstream politician pick up on something they agree with, they see that as validation,” he said of false claims some Republican lawmakers have made about trans people being “groomers” and “pedophiles.” “Just like the ‘great replacement theory,’ it trickles down to the far-right elements and they run with it.”
Nick Parker and Annabelle Timsit contributed to this report. | 2022-06-13T00:43:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police chief says Patriot Front 'prepared to riot' at Pride event - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/12/idaho-patriot-front-arrested/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/12/idaho-patriot-front-arrested/ |
Navy orders safety pause for aircraft after crashes
Navy orders safety pause for aircraft
“As a result of recent crashes involving U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, Commander, Naval Air Forces has directed all non-deployed Navy aviation units to conduct a safety pause on June 13 in order to review risk-management practices and conduct training on threat and error-management processes,” it said. Deployed units will do the same as soon as possible, it added.
— Annabelle Timsit
2 killed, 4 wounded in nightclub shooting
Officers responding to reports of shots fired around 2 a.m. in Gary, southeast of Chicago, said they found two people who had been shot and were unresponsive. A 34-year-old man was near the entrance to Playo’s NightClub and a 26-year-old woman was found inside, police said. Both were declared dead after being taken to a hospital. Four others were wounded, including one who was in critical condition, police said.
Authorities did not release information about what may have led to the shooting.
3 dead in shooting at warehouse party
Three people were killed and four others wounded in a shooting early Sunday at a warehouse party, Los Angeles police said.
Paramedics responded to a reported shooting at 12:27 a.m. in the Boyle Heights area, said Nicholas Prange, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Detective Frank Carrillo with the Los Angeles Police Department said three people were killed and four others were taken to a hospital.
Neighbors said they heard the gunfire. Patty Calzada, who lives two doors down from the warehouse, said that she watched the commotion through her security camera and that many of the young people fleeing the building after the shots were fired looked underage.
Texas prisons to restart inmate transport with more security: Texas prison system officials will resume inmate transportation Monday with tougher security after a convicted murderer escaped a prison van and killed five people, officials said. In a statement, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said inmate transportation will resume with three corrections officers for each transport instead of the previous two and other new security measures. Prison officials had suspended non-emergency trips after Gonzalo Lopez slipped his restraints and cage, stabbed the driver, and escaped a prison van last month. He went on to kill five members of a Houston-area family before law enforcement officers killed him, authorities said.
Wildfire approaches Alaska Native community: A tundra wildfire continued to creep closer to an Alaska Native community in southwest Alaska, but mandatory evacuations have not been ordered, fire officials said Sunday. The East Fork fire was within 3½ miles of St. Mary's, a statement from Alaska Wildland Fire Information said. Even though it had moved 1½ miles closer to the Yup'ik community since Saturday, fire managers said the progress had slowed somewhat because of favorable weather. The fire is burning in dry grass and shrubs in the mostly treeless tundra in southwest Alaska. It was started by lightning May 31. | 2022-06-13T00:43:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy orders safety pause for aircraft after crashes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/navy-orders-safety-pause-for-aircraft-after-crashes/2022/06/12/3b7b369c-e921-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/navy-orders-safety-pause-for-aircraft-after-crashes/2022/06/12/3b7b369c-e921-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html |
TYLOSAND, Sweden — Linn Grant became the first female winner on the European tour, running away with the Scandinavian Mixed by nine strokes.
GREER, S.C. — Robby Shelton parred the second hold of a playoff with Ben Griffin in the BMW Charity Pro-Am for his third career Korn Ferry Tour title. | 2022-06-13T00:44:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | McIlroy defends Canadian Open title; Henderson wins on LPGA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/mcilroy-defends-canadian-open-title-henderson-wins-on-lpga/2022/06/12/cbf57a00-eaa4-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/mcilroy-defends-canadian-open-title-henderson-wins-on-lpga/2022/06/12/cbf57a00-eaa4-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Stephen Eilperin, D.C. Superior Court judge, dies at 84
He drew media attention for a notable custody case and was described as a ‘sensitive and empathetic person’
By Ethan Ehrenhaft
Judge Stephen Eilperin during a trip to Ireland in 2020. (Michelle Hester)
Stephen F. Eilperin, a D.C. Superior Court judge from 1983 to 2019 who drew media attention for his ruling in a case granting custody of a foster child to same-sex foster parents over the child’s extended family, died June 9 at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. He was 84.
The cause was a heart ailment, said daughter Juliet Eilperin, deputy climate and environment editor at The Washington Post.
As a young lawyer, Judge Eilperin worked on a team with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division that crafted congressional speeches advocating for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was present at the signing of the act and was gifted one of the pens used by President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the landmark civil rights legislation.
After working in private practice, he joined the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1975 as an assistant general counsel and later solicitor and administrative judge. In 1983, he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the D.C. Superior Court, the trial court overseeing the city’s civil, criminal, family, probate, tax, landlord and tenant, and traffic cases, and he served as an associate judge before being elevated to senior status in 1998.
One of his higher-profile decisions involved the custody of a 4-year-old Black child identified as “T.J.” The child, whose mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, had been placed in a foster home for a year before going to foster parents, a White lesbian couple. When they petitioned for formal adoption, T.J.’s great-aunt began a legal challenge.
Judge Eilperin favored the couple, explaining that in their care the child had shown remarkable growth in vocabulary, his fits of rage were gone, and he was involved in youth sports. The judge, whose ruling was reported by the publication Legal Times, described T.J. as a “surprisingly happy, active, normal (although still at risk) little boy.”
“Essentially, for a child’s successful development,” the judge wrote, “race, gender, extended family and all else is subservient to the fundamental importance of forming an attachment very early on to a person who is viewed as fundamentally different from all other and irreplaceable.”
The judge called the great-aunt “a kind and loving 60-year-old woman who has raised eight of her own children and is raising T.J.’s 12-year-old half sister.” Offering his “deeply-felt regrets” to the great-aunt and her family, he urged them to “shower T.J. with all the love my decision allows and their hearts hold.”
His ruling drew support from Rita Simon, an American University law professor specializing in transracial adoptions. “If families who adopt across racial lines are not special when they start out, they become so over the years,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “What they come to learn is that they are not only adopting a child but a set of traditions, folkways, a history, and they feel responsible in helping children understand that history and heritage.”
The decision, which was later overturned, struck a personal chord for Judge Eilperin, who lost his own father at 3 and “was doing everything possible to protect this little boy from suffering a similar fate,” his daughter said.
Judge Eilperin was a “sensitive and empathetic person,” according to D.C. Superior Court Senior Judge Frederick H. Weisberg, who “always thought about the impact of his decisions on the people behind the legal disputes he was being asked to resolve.”
Stephen Francis Eilperin was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 25, 1937, and grew up in Manhattan. His father owned a small business. After being widowed, his mother worked as an Internal Revenue Service clerk.
On scholarship, he graduated in 1959 from Columbia University and in 1963 from Columbia Law School, where he was the editor of the law review. After a judicial clerkship, he worked at the Justice Department from 1964 to 1966.
His first marriage, to Sophie Cook, ended in divorce. In 1998, he married Michelle Hester. In addition to his wife, of Washington, survivors include two children from his first marriage, Juliet Eilperin of Washington and Michael Demos of Brooklyn; two stepchildren, Laurel Hester of Alexandria, Va., and Megan Hester of Brooklyn; and nine grandchildren.
Throughout his rulings, Judge Eilperin stressed flexibility, as he reflected on in one Daily Washington Law Reporter opinion published in 1983.
“Sentencing is difficult and unpleasant for a judge; even more so for the defendant,” he wrote. “The judge knows little about the person who stands before him — informed by the trial (if there has been one), a presentence report, and a short conversation at the time of sentencing; rarely anything else. Based on this brief acquaintance and what resources society makes available, the judge is expected to mete out a sentence that will do the defendant and the community some good.” | 2022-06-13T02:14:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Eilperin, D.C. Superior Court judge, dies at 84 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/12/stephen-eilperin-judge-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/12/stephen-eilperin-judge-dies/ |
Tony Awards 2022: Patti LuPone, Jesse Tyler Ferguson among early winners
Host Ariana DeBose kicked off the first regularly scheduled Tony Awards since 2019 with an opening number that mashed up musical theater classics and a monologue about inclusivity on Broadway
Ariana DeBose performs the opening number for the 75th Tony Awards on June 12 at Radio City Music Hall in New York. (Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — With an Oscar-winning host and a roster of celebrity presenters including Jennifer Hudson, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bernadette Peters, the 75th Tony Awards got underway Sunday night at Radio City Music Hall.
A preliminary hour-long streaming ceremony on Paramount Plus, hosted by Darren Criss and Julianne Hough, handed out awards in several of the evening’s 26 categories, before the main three-hour broadcast on CBS, emceed by Ariana DeBose, Academy Award winner for “West Side Story.” (For a running list of winners, visit tonyawards.com.)
A total of 29 new productions received nominations for work during the 2021-2022 Broadway season that ended April 30. It was the first full season since the pandemic shut down theaters in March 2020. And judging by some categories, loaded up with more nominees than is the norm, Broadway’s return has been a boon to theatergoers. Six shows, for example, are vying for best new musical, and seven actors are competing to be named best actor in a play.
Among the most exciting races are those for best new musical and best new play. The musicals “A Strange Loop,” “Six” and “Girl From the North Country” and such plays as “The Minutes,” “The Lehman Trilogy” and “Clyde’s” are contending for the coveted top prizes. A win in either of those contests is a huge boost in prestige, and for a show still running, it can lead to a substantial spike in ticket sales.
Sunday’s telecast comes just nine months after the last Tony ceremony, a belated presentation of awards for the truncated 2019-2020 season. That installment on CBS included a unique variety show-style tribute to Broadway, hosted by Leslie Odom Jr. The 75th proceedings represent a return to the night’s traditional form, with a focus on the prizes themselves and a glitzy opening number from DeBose that mashed up myriad musical theater staples — “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Rent,” “Hamilton” and “Dreamgirls” among them.
The stakes could not be higher for Broadway at this year’s Tony
DeBose also delivered a monologue focused on Broadway’s steps toward improved inclusivity, pointing out that the season featured new shows written by seven Black playwrights, among other milestones.
“I am so proud the theater is becoming more reflective of the community who adores it,” DeBose said. “In doing so, it has gained new performers, new creatives, new fans. It has shown us stories that have broadened our world and opened our hearts and our minds, and while we have not solved all of our problems, I feel like the phrase ‘Great White Way’ is becoming more of a nickname as opposed to a how-to guide.”
Later, DeBose also took a moment to applaud understudies, swings and stage managers during a season that has been heavily impacted by coronavirus-related absences.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson won the first award of the main broadcast, for featured actor in a play for “Take Me Out,” before “Company’s” Patti LuPone won for featured actress in a musical — her third win.
Also among the evening’s honorees: Angela Lansbury, who was singled out for a lifetime achievement award during the preliminary show. The 96-year-old actress did not attend the ceremony, but her “Sweeney Todd” co-star Len Cariou accepted the award on her behalf before introducing the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus for a performance of the title song from “Mame,” the 1966 musical for which Lansbury earned her first Tony.
Myles Frost was born to play Michael Jackson
Criss and Hough opened the Tonys’ first hour with a number called “Set the Stage,” with music and lyrics by Criss, before “Six” composers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss claimed the evening’s first award for best score. “MJ” led the early awards with three wins — for choreography, sound design and lighting design of a musical — while “The Lehman Trilogy” claimed scenic design and lighting design of a play and “Six” won a second prize for costume design of a musical. They were the only productions that entered the main broadcast with multiple wins after the first hour spread its 11 awards among seven shows.
Entering the evening, “A Strange Loop,” the 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama that had a pre-Broadway engagement at Washington’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre this past fall, led the pack with 11 nominations. “MJ” and “Paradise Square” were second with 10, while “The Lehman Trilogy” paced all plays with eight nods.
The nominated performers include Hugh Jackman (“The Music Man”), Billy Crystal (“Mr. Saturday Night”) and Mare Winningham (“Girl From the North Country”) in the musical categories. Ruth Negga (“Macbeth), Sam Rockwell (“American Buffalo”), Uzo Aduba (“Clyde’s”) and Phylicia Rashad (“Skeleton Crew”) are among the nominees in the play categories.
Floyd reported from Washington. | 2022-06-13T02:14:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tony Awards 2022: Patti LuPone, Jesse Tyler Ferguson among early winners - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/12/tony-awards-2022-winners/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/12/tony-awards-2022-winners/ |
Mystics lament a ‘wasted opportunity’ in an overtime loss to the Mercury
Mercury 99, Mystics 90 (OT)
The Mystics' Shatori Walker-Kimbrough couldn't believe what she saw during Sunday's loss to the Mercury. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
Mike Thibault walked into the media room in the bowels of Entertainment and Sports Arena and just plopped down into a chair. After Sunday night’s overtime loss, the fury that radiated from the Washington Mystics’ coach was nearly visible and certainly could be felt.
There were no minced words.
“Wasted opportunity — that’s all I’ve got,” he said. “This is the most frustrating one of the year. Chance to beat a good offensive team, playing good defense for the most part, and let them off the hook.”
In a game that featured 12 lead changes and 13 ties, the Phoenix Mercury came away with a 99-90 victory despite trailing by six points with under four minutes remaining in regulation. The Mystics (9-6) were outscored 24-9 from that point on, including 14-5 in overtime. The Mercury’s nine-point margin at night’s end was the largest lead of the game.
The Mercury seized control with a Shey Peddy three-pointer, a Skylar Diggins-Smith three-point play, another Diggins-Smith basket and a Peddy layup to take a 95-87 lead with less than 90 seconds left in overtime. Diggins-Smith was a problem all night; she scored 27 points as Phoenix shot 51.4 percent.
“Yeah, we’re frustrated,” Mystics forward Myisha Hines-Allen said. “We felt like we gave them that game. [Alysha Clark] said it best: They wanted it more. But we play them Tuesday, so right from the jump, let them know it’s not going to be easy — we’re not going to give them the game.”
Last time out: Mystics trounce Lynx as Shakira Austin continues to thrive in Minnesota
Hines-Allen and Ariel Atkins got going in the fourth quarter — the pair scored every point during an 11-4 run that gave Washington an 81-75 lead with 3:56 to go. Hines-Allen finished with season highs in points (18) and rebounds (10); Atkins had 15 points despite a rough shooting night (3 for 16) because she was able to get to the free throw line (8 for 9).
Clark and Shakira Austin added 12 points apiece. Natasha Cloud had seven assists and has notched at least five in 17 straight games — a franchise record and the fifth-longest streak in WNBA history.
But the Mystics shot just 40 percent from the field, 27.6 percent from behind the arc and 64.7 percent from the free throw line. They also had 20 turnovers that led to 21 Phoenix points.
Late in the fourth quarter, Diana Taurasi and Diggins-Smith wouldn’t let the Mercury (5-8) die. Diggins-Smith completed a four-point play to give Phoenix an 85-83 lead with 32.1 seconds remaining. Two Clark free throws led to overtime after each team squandered its last possession. Taurasi fouled out early in the extra period; she had 20 points and seven assists.
“I don’t think they were better than us tonight,” Atkins said. “That’s not a good feeling.”
Buckner: The Celtics should be on their way to the title. But … Stephen Curry.
Delle Donne out again
Mystics star Elena Delle Donne missed a second consecutive game with an injury to her back that kept her off the floor for all but three games in the previous two seasons.
The Mystics have been supremely cautious with Delle Donne’s health, and Thibault said he and the medical staff made the call for her to sit Sunday. She spent the game on the bench in her warmup gear.
“I think that she’s improved,” Thibault said. “But I think to be ready for what’s ahead and be ready for Tuesday [for another game against Phoenix], talking to our medical people, she’s got no issues with the surgery thing itself but just the muscle tightness from trying to get used to her body. There are [uncomfortable] days and just a carry-over from the other day. I talked to her today — she probably could play if it was a playoff game, but I think we are better served to not and try to be ready for Tuesday and beyond.”
Delle Donne left Wednesday’s win over Chicago in the second quarter with lower back tightness that Thibault later described as muscle spasms. In a scheduled rest day, she didn’t travel for Friday’s win at Minnesota, then was listed as probable for Sunday. The plan all season has been to mix in rest days in an attempt to have her fully healthy late in the season and in the playoffs.
Charles returns
Former Mystics standout Tina Charles returned to Entertainment and Sports Arena for the first time since she signed with the Mercury in the offseason.
Charles led the WNBA in scoring during her lone year with the Mystics in 2021 — she had signed for the 2020 season and then opted out — but the injury-laden squad did not compete for a title, which was why she signed. The 2012 MVP with the Connecticut Sun joined the Mercury with the same goal in mind, but again she has had to play a much different role than planned.
With Brittney Griner still wrongfully detained in Russia, Charles was asked to do more — the same thing that happened when she was in Washington with Delle Donne out. Charles started and posted 12 points and eight rebounds Sunday but declined to speak with reporters before or after the game. | 2022-06-13T03:23:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics lose to Mercury in overtime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/mystics-mercury-overtime-elena-delle-donne/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/mystics-mercury-overtime-elena-delle-donne/ |
How the ‘Energy Shock’ Has Upended the Global Economy
Cooling towers emit vapor at the Leuna refinery and chemical industrial complex, home to refineries and plants operated by TotalEnergies Se, Shell, BASF, Linde AG, and DOMO Group, in Leuna, Germany, on Tuesday, June 7, 2022. TotalEnergies’ 240,000 barrels per day Leuna refinery is set to cease importing Russian crude oil via the Druzhba pipeline some time later this year. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Just as the world was getting serious about a green-energy future, its dependence on fossil fuels struck home with a force not seen since the 1970s. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine combined with pressures unleashed by the pandemic to send the price of all forms of energy rocketing, with oil climbing more than 50% in the first half of 2022. That energy shock was at the heart of a surge in inflation that caused hardship and political headaches around the globe.
1. Why do we have an energy shock?
Just two years ago, the price of the benchmark US oil futures contract plunged briefly below zero as the pandemic sank the global economy. A year later, the price had rebounded to pre-pandemic levels and kept on rising as revived demand outstripped growth in crude supplies. Then came a wild series of jolts from the waves of sanctions by the US and its allies to shut out Russia, the source of 10% of the world’s oil (along with other key commodities from wheat to fertilizer to nickel). More than half of Russia’s oil exports go to the countries in the European Union, but markets for energy are global, so changes in supply and demand are felt worldwide.
2. Who got hurt?
Consumers were hit particularly hard, since spending on energy is difficult to cut. In the UK, regulators warned that the surge in global natural gas prices was set to drive the average household energy bill up another 42% in October when a price cap is adjusted higher, producing the biggest hit to living standards since the 1950s. In much of the world, retail fuel prices rose even faster than crude. Gasoline topped an average of $5 a gallon (3.79 liters) in the US for the first time in June, the start of the summer driving season there. The end result was a surge in inflation that the world hadn’t seen in decades, with energy making up more than half of the jump in major advanced economies. Beyond price concerns, there were worries that global power grids already strained by climate change could prove even more fragile, leading to blackouts that could put lives at risk.
3. What was the fallout?
There was a scramble to increase supplies and reroute fuels to where they were needed — efforts that met with limited success. The EU phased in a partial ban on Russian oil and bought more liquified natural gas on world markets to wean itself off of Russian gas pipelines, which accounted for 40% of supply. By mid-June, Russia, for its part, had cut off gas flows to four EU countries. US President Joe Biden’s administration asked oil refineries about the feasibility of bringing back mothballed capacity. There were other responses as well: To cool the surge in inflation the US Federal Reserve and its counterparts were expected to crank up interest rates in the most aggressive monetary policy tightening cycle in decades (China and Japan were exceptions). That won’t bring energy costs down right away, but the aim is to slow economic growth to such an extent that inflation fizzles out.
4. Could it drag on?
By early June, there was no sign of an end to what had become a grinding, bloody war in Ukraine and little hope for big boosts in energy production, with the oil-rich OPEC nations agreeing to only a modest increase in oil output. The price of the West Texas Intermediate oil futures contract climbed above $120 a barrel, and a potential post-pandemic resurgence in consumption in China, the world’s biggest crude importer, threatened to add even more upward pressure. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said that oil had the potential to hit $150 or $175 a barrel and that the bank was bracing itself for an economic “hurricane.”
5. How does this compare with previous shocks?
The vault in prices is comparable to history’s two most famous oil shocks: the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which led many crude producers to refuse to sell to countries that supported Israel, and the revolution in Iran six years later that for a time cut out about 7% of global crude supply. But there are differences: Economic growth isn’t as closely linked with oil as it was in the 1970s — output is much less energy-intensive than it was back then. Fracking shale has made the US the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, bringing America much closer to the energy independence it pursued after gasoline shortages hit home in the 1970s. Still, the crisis was a reminder that the world remains reliant on fossil fuels for more than three-quarters of its energy, a state of affairs that’s likely to endure for decades, even as some countries speed up their investment in renewables.
• A Bloomberg Economics report on what’s driving faster inflation around the world
• How Russia’s war in Ukraine is choking commodities exports.
• A blog post from the International Monetary Fund on how the world now gets more mileage from each barrel of oil.
• Bloomberg Opinion’s John Authers on comparisons with the oil shocks of the 1970s. | 2022-06-13T03:45:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the ‘Energy Shock’ Has Upended the Global Economy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-the-energy-shock-has-upended-the-global-economy/2022/06/12/0172f02c-eabe-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/how-the-energy-shock-has-upended-the-global-economy/2022/06/12/0172f02c-eabe-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Daniel Suárez becomes first Mexican winner on NASCAR Cup Series
“My family, they never gave up on me,” said Daniel Suárez. “A lot of people did, but they didn’t.” (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
The NASCAR Cup Series has its first Mexican-born race-winner after Daniel Suárez held competitors at arm’s length Sunday and took the checkered flag at Northern California’s Sonoma Raceway.
The 32-year-old’s breakthrough came in his 195th race on the Cup Series, where he made his debut in 2017 after winning the Xfinity Series title the year before.
“It’s crazy,” an emotional Suárez said immediately after winning the race. “It’s been a rough journey in the Cup Series, and these guys believed in me.”
“I have a lot of people to thank in Mexico,” he added. “My family, they never gave up on me. A lot of people did, but they didn’t. I’m just happy we were able to make it work.”
Suárez became the fifth foreign-born Cup Series winner, following Marcos Ambrose (Australia), Juan Pablo Montoya (Colombia), Earl Ross (Canada) and Mario Andretti (Italy).
As he clambered out of his car, Suárez waved a “Win Numero Uno” flag, and he gleefully smashed a piñata in the shape of a giant taco. He then pumped his fist in the direction of a group of his “Amigos,” the nickname given to a community of Suárez supporters.
“I’ve been working very hard for this moment,” he said at a post-race news conference. “Not just myself, but my entire team.”
Suárez races a No. 99 Chevy for Trackhouse, a second-year team co-owned by former Cup Series driver Justin Marks and pop star Pitbull. Teammate Ross Chastain finished seventh Sunday, and he is in second place in the season-long standings, 16 points behind Chase Elliott.
Coming in a relatively distant second Sunday, 3.849 seconds back, was RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher, who was looking for his second Cup Series victory and first since 2016.
“Hurts to be that close, but congratulations to Suárez,” said the 29-year-old Buescher, who won the Xfinity Series in 2015. “We were trying, trying to get him. Ran out of steam there.”
Kyle Larson, the defending champion in the Cup Series and at Sonoma, started on the pole and won the first stage race but finished 15th after his right front wheel came off heading into a turn. The infraction could cost Larson his crew chief and two pit crew members for four races, per NASCAR rules.
Here's the call of Suárez taking the checkered flag: pic.twitter.com/TDZq831sXF
Michael McDowell came in third, Kevin Harvick was fourth, and in fifth place was Austin Cindric, who won the season-opening Daytona 500. The result at Sonoma gave the 23-year-old Cindric his best showing in 15 races since then, but it was his sixth top-12 finish in that span.
For Suárez, it was a day to revel in what he was finally able to accomplish.
“I come from a very humble family, and every step of my life has cost me a lot,” he said. “I knew that it’s important to remember that if I was able to come all the way here, I wasn’t going to give up here. My confidence was high, but obviously knowing that you haven’t won yet, there’s a little bit of doubt. But I knew that I was fast. I knew that I could race with them, with the guys that are winning. … Those tough moments, those ups and downs are what makes this moment so special.”
A North Carolina resident, Suárez recalled tougher times more than a decade ago, when his first stint in the United States as an aspiring driver involved teaching himself English with the help of TV cartoons while coping with chilly weather in Buffalo.
“You know, it’s been quite a journey,” he said, “and that’s why I feel like my story is very similar to many, many Mexicans, Latinos that are coming to this country trying to find a goal, trying to find their dream.
“And if I was able to make it happen, everyone out there can make it happen.” | 2022-06-13T03:45:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daniel Suárez becomes first Mexican winner on NASCAR Cup Series - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/daniel-surez-becomes-first-mexican-winner-nascar-cup-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/12/daniel-surez-becomes-first-mexican-winner-nascar-cup-series/ |
Last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin was given a history lesson from a schoolchild. Putin was lecturing a gathering of students in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok about the merits of possessing “knowledge of the past” to have a “better understanding of today.” In one exchange, he invoked the great legacy of Russian czar Peter the Great, who he said defeated the Swedes at the Battle of Poltava in the Seven Years’ War against Sweden in 1709.
Except that wasn’t quite right, as Nikanor Tolstykh, a student from the Arctic Circle city of Vorkuta, reminded the Russian president. Russia fought Sweden in what’s known as the Great Northern War, which lasted more than two decades from 1700 to 1721. The Seven Years’ War was a sprawling, global conflict later in that same century during which Russia and Sweden actually were on the same side.
In the aftermath of this mild fact check, the principal of Tolstykh’s school decried the “arrogance” of her pupil in local media. In a separate interview, Tolstykh’s teacher admitted she would not have had the temerity to contradict Putin. A Kremlin spokesman insisted that Putin had an “absolutely phenomenal knowledge of history,” but that “he is always prepared to listen to such corrections, whether from a child or a specialist.”
Last Thursday, Putin showed that he had not forgotten this correction. At an event commemorating the 350th anniversary of Peter’s birth, he explicitly likened himself to the empire-expanding czar and celebrated his years of conquests.
When Putin compared himself to Peter the Great he didn't look 'cornered' or defensive
After 3+ months of war in Ukraine which he claimed was to 'denazify' & not occupy, he now says it straight: he is on a mission to 'return' land to Russia
He's expanding his 'empire' pic.twitter.com/UV3QypXDO4
— Sarah Rainsford (@sarahrainsford) June 10, 2022
Russia’s Victory Day marks a war of competing nationalisms
“Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years,” Putin said after visiting an exhibit in Peter’s honor. “It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned [what was Russia’s].”
The Russian president then alluded to the ongoing “special operation” in Ukraine, which he and his state’s propaganda arms have also cast as war of restoration and return — no matter that the sovereignty-violating invasion marks a grievous breach of international law and has led to many billions of dollars in damage to Ukraine’s towns and cities, the deaths of thousands of people and disruptions to the global economy that imperil millions more.
“What was [Peter] doing?” Putin said. “Taking back and reinforcing. That’s what he did. And it looks like it fell on us to take back and reinforce as well.”
Peter’s wars and territorial expansion helped shape the contours of the later Russian empire, pushing its frontiers to areas of Finland in the north and the Black Sea in the south. The Battle of Poltava that Putin cited saw Russian forces deliver an epochal blow to Sweden’s continental ambitions in Europe. A few years earlier, Peter established his west-facing capital of St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea, built at the site of a captured Swedish fortress.
Школьник попросил Путина подписаться на его YouTube-канал. "Подписать что нужно? Я не понял. Что я должен подписать?" - сначала не разобрал президент. Но потом пообещал, что подумает. pic.twitter.com/J3qtOlMKRy
— Кремлевский пул РИА (@Kremlinpool_RIA) September 1, 2021
Soviet flags keep rising over Russian-occupied Ukraine
Putin has for years lionized the 18th century monarch and keeps a bronze statue of the czar over his ceremonial desk in the Kremlin’s cabinet room. In a 2019 interview with the Financial Times, he declared that Peter “will live as long as his cause is alive.” At the time, the British newspaper interpreted that “cause” to be the preservation of Moscow’s “sphere influence” along the borderlands of an expanding NATO bloc.
But the ongoing war has revealed something more deep-seated in Putin’s psyche: a narrative of mythic destiny that supersedes any geopolitical imperative and which has set Russia on a bloody collision course with the West. Ukraine for Putin is an inseparable part of the Russian story; it is where Orthodox Christianity entered into Russian culture more than a millennia ago and therefore a kind of cradle of Russian civilization. He preceded the invasion of Ukraine with a speech fueled by historical animus, raging at the Bolshevik divisions of Russian lands while rejecting Ukraine’s de facto right to sovereignty.
“Though this grievance seems situated within what Putin has called the tragedy of the Soviet collapse, his imperial inspiration extends even deeper into the country’s past,” wrote Lynne Hartnett, a historian of Russia at Villanova University, in The Washington Post. “As Putin described it in a 2012 speech, the revival of Russian national consciousness necessitates that Russians connect to their past and realize that they have ‘a common, continuous history spanning over 1,000 years.’ ”
Others pointed to historical legacies Putin may not welcome. “Like Putin, Peter wanted to build Russian military power, and not only reformed his army but built his navy, just as Putin spent 20 years modernizing his military,” wrote Mark Galeotti in the Spectator. “In the process, though he began the Russian state’s slide into insolvency and ensured it would be fighting wars not just to its north-west but also to the south, against the Ottomans.”
About windows.
Russia is marking 350 years since the birth of Peter the Great, the emperor who tried to transform Russia into a European power. Under P the G, who founded St Petersburg, Russia opened its ‘Window to Europe.’ Today, under VP, it feels like the window’s closing. pic.twitter.com/lm03ATtDKh
— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) June 9, 2022
Russia is, of course, not the only country where ruling nationalists get swept away by such grievance. Hungary’s illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban grumbles about the borders delineated by the World War I Treaty of Trianon and the loss of a “greater Hungary” in the surrounding Balkans. Turkish nationalists, meanwhile, lament the Treaty of Sèvres, which tore up the defeated Ottoman Empire and shrunk the Turkish footprint in the Middle East. Hindu nationalists in India conjure up the idea of “Akhand Bharat,” a united Indian subcontinent defined by the historic reach of Hindu culture.
Political scientists would classify these urges as “revanchist” or “irredentist,” with politicians whipping up their supporters with rhetoric about lands lost and brethren communities separated by unjust borders. But Putin’s revanchism, unlike that of most other right-wing nationalists elsewhere, now has provoked a geopolitical conflagration and has a growing body count underlying it.
Putin’s critics point to his explicit embrace of Peter the Great’s conquests as evidence of the foolhardiness of offering concessions to the Kremlin now. The war, they argue, was not about NATO expansion or a farcical belief in the need to “denazify” Kyiv, but the uncompromising zeal of a 21st century imperialist.
“Putin’s confession of land seizures and comparing himself with Peter the Great prove there was no ‘conflict’, only the country’s bloody seizure under contrived pretexts of people’s genocide,” tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian government. “We should not talk about [Russia] ‘saving face’, but about its immediate de-imperialization.”
One need look no further than Poltava, site of Peter’s famous victory over Sweden but now a place that’s within Ukraine. Local authorities there have not welcomed Putin’s invasion. Instead, a court in the Poltava region last month found a pair of detained Russian soldiers guilty of committing war crimes. | 2022-06-13T04:20:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Peter the Great: Putin makes his imperial pretensions clear - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/putin-imperial-russia-empire-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/putin-imperial-russia-empire-ukraine/ |
Ask Amy: I saw him kiss the nanny. Should I tell his wife?
It was dark in the room. (I had been resting there.) When the man subsequently turned on the light, I said nothing.
He urged me to “give him a chance to fix it,” and not to tell his wife, the hostess. Several times during the evening, he sought me out and asked for time and silence.
I told him I did not keep secrets from my partner (his wife’s father). He told me he would be seeking couple’s therapy. He then stunned me again, by saying that he and his wife hadn’t had sex for 12 years.
I told my partner what I had seen, and he was much less concerned, saying his daughter might not even mind if she found out. The nanny cried and told me how sorry she was, and that she was desperately in love with the husband. She said that she was returning to school abroad.
I don’t want to be the cause of a total breakdown of the marriage; at the same time, I need to have an honest relationship with people I care about.
Witness: On a very deep level, none of this is any of your business, and yet the principles won’t shut up about it, so with every entreaty, they are drawing you further in.
You are even being gaslighted into this statement: “I don’t want to be the cause of a total breakdown of the marriage.”
Worried: What you do is put your hands together, hold on to your thoughts and hope for the best.
My mother began teaching me about body parts, what they do, and how, from a very young age. At age 4 or 5 I absolutely knew about sperm, eggs and how they met each other. I never became a promiscuous teen mom or a drug addict.
Precocious: Information leads to knowledge, which leads to self-awareness. | 2022-06-13T05:12:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I saw him kiss the nanny. Should I tell his wife? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/13/ask-amy-cheating-nanny-husband/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/13/ask-amy-cheating-nanny-husband/ |
Wall Street may be abuzz with talk of recession next year, but it’s a different story in the energy market. Most traders, policy makers and analysts see oil demand growing through 2023 and supply struggling to keep pace.
While everyone waits for the IEA’s forecast, commodity trading houses, oil companies, and OPEC nations and Western consuming countries have already run their numbers. Their consensus for 2023 oil demand varies between an extra 1 million barrels per day and 2.5 million barrels per day. In 2022, it is likely to have grown by 1.8 million barrels a day, according to the IEA, to about 100 million. Typically, anything above 1 million a day in annual demand growth is seen as quite robust.The supply side doesn’t look a lot better. At best, oil traders expect Russia to hold to its current level of about 10 million barrels a day, down about 10% since its invasion of Ukraine. But many believe that it may drop another 1 million barrels, or even 1.5 million barrels. The OPEC+ cartel, which started 2022 with ample spare production capacity, is reaching its own limits, too. “With the exception of two-three members, all are maxed out,” OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said last week, referring to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The result is likely the third consecutive year of drawing down existing oil stocks — and that’s after a precipitous decline in global crude and refined products inventories in the last 18 months.So far this year, Western governments have mitigated the impact of falling supplies by releasing the most barrels ever from their strategic petroleum reserves. Without further action, the emergency releases will end in November, removing the biggest cushion from the market.The refining sector represents another problem. The world has effectively run out of spare capacity to turn crude into usable fuels like gasoline and diesel. As a result, refiners’ profit margins have exploded, which in turn means that consumers are paying far more to fill their tanks than oil prices suggest.The industry measures refining margins using a rough calculation called the “3-2-1 crack spread”: Three barrels of West Texas Intermediate crude are refined into two barrels of gasoline and one of distillate fuel, such as diesel. From 1985 to 2021, the crack spread — the gap between the price of crude and the refined products — averaged about $10.50 a barrel. Last week, it surged to an all-time high of nearly $61. Very few new refineries will come on stream in the next 18 months, suggesting that cracking margins may stay sky high for the rest of the year and into the new one.The 2023 outlook has some big question marks – and most of them relate to government action. Each can shift supply and demand by 1 to 1.5 million barrels a day, more than enough to move prices significantly. The most important one is the duration of oil sanctions on Russia, themselves linked to the invasion of Ukraine. The others are China’s zero-Covid policy, Western sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, and the release of strategic reserves. Oil price shocks are typically remembered by their height. But that’s only half of the question; the other half is their duration. And that’s where the 2023 forecast outlook matters most.The last oil price spike was brief. After a gentle price increase throughout 2007 and early 2008, the rally accelerated in May 2008, with prices climbing above $120. By July, oil prices had reached their peak of $147.50 but by early September, they’d fallen to under $100. Brent traded below $40 by December 2008.
Until now, the 2021-22 oil price rally has been a carbon copy of the 2007-08. In spooky fashion, the price charts track in near perfect sync. But any hope the oil market is about to follow the pattern of what happened 14 years ago misreads reality. Oil prices aren’t about to crash. A better analogy is the period between 2011 and 2014: oil prices never revisited the 2008 record high but still stayed above $100 almost without interruption for more than 40 months.Brent has already averaged $103 a barrel in 2022, above the 2008 annual average of $98.50 a barrel. The next six months may see higher prices still. But far more important is how long those prices remain elevated. For now, there’s no end in sight.
• In Oil Markets, the Dollar Is the World’s Problem: Javier Blas
• How Russian Is It? A Very Crude Question: Julian Lee | 2022-06-13T05:13:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Oil Price Shock Will Reverberate Into Next Year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-oil-price-shock-will-reverberate-into-next-year/2022/06/13/801d448c-ead6-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-oil-price-shock-will-reverberate-into-next-year/2022/06/13/801d448c-ead6-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Facebook’s Greater Threat Is the Law, Not Lawsuits
Meta Platforms Inc. has become a lightening rod for legal challenges in the US, from the FTC’s antitrust case to shareholder lawsuits alleging the company misled investors. Last week, eight complaints were filed against the company across the US, including allegations that young people who frequently visited Instagram and Facebook went on to commit suicide and experience eating disorders. (Facebook has not commented on the litigation, and has denied allegations in the FTC and shareholder complaints.)
The allegations echo the concerns of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, whose leak last year of thousands of internal documents showed that Meta was aware of the psychological harms its algorithms caused users, such as, for instance, that Instagram made body issues worse for one in three teen girls.
While the lawsuits strike at the heart of Meta’s noxious social impact and could help educate the public on the details, they likely won’t force significant change at Facebook. That’s because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields Facebook and other internet companies from liability for much of what their users post. Unless US law changes — and there are no signs this is happening soon — Meta’s lawyers can continue to use that defense.
But that won’t be the case in Europe. Two new laws coming down the pipe promise to change how Meta’s algorithms show content to its 3 billion users. The UK’s Online Safety Bill, which could come into force next year, and the European Union’s Digital Services Act, likely coming into force in 2024, are both aimed at preventing psychological harms from social platforms. They’ll force large internet companies to share information about their algorithms to regulators, who will assess how “risky” they are.
Mark Scott, chief technology correspondent with Politico and a close follower of those laws, answered questions about how they’d work, as well as what the limitations are, on Twitter Spaces with me last Wednesday. Our discussion is edited below.
Parmy Olson: What are the main differences between the upcoming UK and EU laws on online content?
Mark Scott: The EU law is tackling legal but nasty content, like trolling, disinformation and misinformation, and trying to balance that with freedom of speech. Instead of banning [that content] outright, the EU will ask platforms to keep tabs on it, conduct internal risk assessments and provide better data access for outside researchers.
The UK law will be maybe 80% similar, with the same ban on harmful content and requirement for risk assessments, it but will go one step further: Facebook, Twitter and others will also be legally required to have a “duty of care” to their users, meaning they will have to take action against harmful but legal material.
Parmy: So to be clear, the EU law won’t require technology companies to take action against the harmful content itself?
Mark: Exactly. What they’re requiring is to flag it. They won’t require the platforms to ban it outright.
Parmy: Would you say the UK approach is more aggressive?
Mark: It’s more aggressive in terms of actions required by companies. [The UK] has also floated potential criminal sentences for tech executives who don’t follow these rules.
Parmy: What will risk assessments mean in practice? Will engineers from Facebook have regular meetings to share their code with representatives from [UK communications regulator] Ofcom or EU officials?
Mark: They will have to show their homework to the regulators and to the wider world. So journalists or civil society groups can also look and say, “OK, a powerful, left-leaning politician in a European country is gaining mass traction. Why is that? What is the risk assessment the company has done to ensure [the politician’s] content doesn’t get blown out of proportion in a way that might harm democracy?” It’s that type of boring but important work that this going to be focused on.
Parmy: Who will do the auditing?
Mark: The risk assessments will be done both internally and with independent auditors, like the Price Waterhouse Coopers and Accentures of this world, or more niche, independent auditors who can say, “Facebook, this is your risk assessment, and we approve.” And then that will be overseen by the regulators. The U.K. regulator Ofcom is hiring around 400 or 500 more people to do this heavy lifting.
Parmy: What will social-media companies actually do differently, though? Because they already put out regular “transparency reports” and they have made efforts to clean up their platforms — YouTube has demonetized problematic influencers and the QAnon conspiracy theory isn’t showing up in Facebook Newsfeeds anymore.
Will the risk assessments lead tech companies to take down more problem content as it comes up? Will they get faster at it? Or will they make sweeping changes to their recommendation engines?
Mark: You’re right, the companies have taken significant steps to remove the worst of the worst. But the problem is that we have to take the company’s word for it. When Francis Haugen made internal Facebook documents public, she showed things that we never knew about the system before, such as the algorithmic amplification of harmful material in certain countries. So both the UK and the EU want to codify some of the existing practices from these companies, but also make them more public. To say to YouTube, “You’re doing X, Y, and Z to stop this material from spreading. Show me, don’t tell me.”
Parmy: So essentially what these laws will do is create more Francis Haugens, except instead of creating more whistleblowers you have auditors coming in and just getting the same kind of information. Would Facebook, YouTube and Twitter make the resultant changes globally, like they did with Europe’s GDPR privacy rules, or just for European users?
Mark: I think the companies will likely say they are making this global.
Parmy: You talked about tech platforms showing their homework with these risk assessments. Do you think they’ll honestly share what kind of risks their algorithms could cause?
Mark: That’s a very valid point. It’ll come down to the power and expertise of the regulators to enforce this. It’s also going to be a lot of trial and error. It took about four years to ease out the bumps for Europe’s GDPR privacy rules to take action. I think as the regulators get a better understanding of how these companies work internally, they’ll know where to look better. I think initially, it won’t be very good.
Parmy: Which law will do a better job of enforcement?
Mark: The UK bill is going to get watered down between now and next year, when it will hopefully come into play. This means the UK regulator will have these quasi-defined powers, and then the rug will be pulled out from underneath them for political reasons. The Brits have been very wishy-washy in terms of how they’re going to define “legal but harmful” [content that must be taken down]. The Brits have also made exceptions for politicians, but as we’ve seen most recently in the United States, some politicians are the ones purveying some of the worst mistruths to the public. So there are some big holes that need to be filled.
Parmy: What do these laws get right, and what do they get wrong?
Mark: The idea of focusing on risk assessments is I think the best way to go. Where they’ve gone wrong is the over-optimistic sense that they can actually fix the problem. Disinformation and politically divisive material was around way before social media. The idea that you can create some sort of bespoke social-media law to fix that problem without fixing the underlying cultural and societal issues that go back decades, if not centuries, is a bit myopic. I think [British and EU] politicians have been very quick and eager to say, “Look at us, we’re fixing it.” Whereas I don’t think they’ve been clear on what they’re fixing and what result they’re looking for.
Parmy: Is framing these laws as being about risk assessments a clever way to protect free speech, or disingenuous?
Mark: I don’t have a clear answer for you. But I think the way of targeting risk assessments, and mitigating those risks as much as possible, that’s the way to go. We’re not gonna get rid of this, but we can at least be honest and say, “This is where we see problems and this is how we’re gonna fix them.” The specificity is missing, which provides a lot of gray space where legal fights can continue, but I also think that’s going to come in the next five years as the legal cases get fought, and we’ll get a better sense of exactly how these rules will work. | 2022-06-13T05:13:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Facebook’s Greater Threat Is the Law, Not Lawsuits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/facebooks-greater-threat-is-the-law-not-lawsuits/2022/06/13/809b9602-ead6-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/facebooks-greater-threat-is-the-law-not-lawsuits/2022/06/13/809b9602-ead6-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
A shaman stands next a photo of Australia’s national soccer team, on San Cristobal hill in Lima, Peru, Friday, June 10, 2022. Shamans called on Mother Earth to support Peru in its play-off game against Australia on Monday, to seal one of the final spots in this year’s World Cup in Qatar. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) | 2022-06-13T06:48:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Peru, Australia ready to playoff for a World Cup spot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/peru-australia-ready-to-playoff-for-a-world-cup-spot/2022/06/13/16e1eda4-eadd-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/peru-australia-ready-to-playoff-for-a-world-cup-spot/2022/06/13/16e1eda4-eadd-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Russia-Ukraine war live updates Ukrainian forces pushed from eastern city center; NATO chief to visit Sweden
A Ukrainian tank is in position during heavy fighting on the front line in Severodonetsk on June 8. (Oleksandr Ratushniak/AP)
Russian forces battering Severodonetsk have pushed Ukrainian troops out of the city center, the Ukrainian military said early Monday, as fighting there continues to be a focal point of the war.
“The next two or three days will be significant” for Severodonetsk, a key city in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, said Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk oblast. A senior U.S. defense official said Russia could gain control of the city within a week and seize the entire region within a few weeks.
Russia is bombarding a chemical plant in the city where hundreds of troops and civilians are sheltering, Ukrainian officials said. Russian-aligned separatists said the plant is encircled, though Haidai rejected that claim.
On Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is set to meet with Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson in Sweden, which follows talks Sunday with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. The two Nordic nations have applied to join NATO, pushed out of decades of military neutrality by concerns over Moscow’s wandering eye, but their entry has been slowed by opposition from Turkey. Stoltenberg said Sunday that the alliance is still hopeful about their applications for membership.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday appeared in a video at the American Jewish Committee’s global forum, delivering a fiery speech that decried Russia’s “hatred for humanity” and compared the Kremlin’s tactics to those of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Russia has repeatedly used cluster munitions — a type of weapon that drops explosives indiscriminately on a wide area — in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
McDonald’s in Moscow is no longer McDonald’s. It’s “Vkusno i Tochka,” which translates to “Tasty and that’s it.”
By Pranshu Verma2:20 a.m.
In early March, Jakub Kaminski was at home in suburban Boston when a grim message arrived from his friend, a surgeon in Ukraine: Tourniquets were in short supply and, without them, many Ukrainian soldiers could bleed out and die.
Now they have uploaded their best design to the internet. About 120 individuals and companies worldwide with 3D printers have accessed the design. Together, they have made about 5,000 reusable tourniquets that are bound for Ukraine, where they will be stitched and sent to the battlefield, Kaminski said.
Nearly four months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shortages of medical supplies and weapons accessories persist. But help has come from an unlikely source: those with 3D printers. Using digital files, people are designing supplies such as bandages, tourniquets, splints and add-ons to AK-47 assault rifles.
Reis Thebault: International monitors have reestablished data transmission with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in Europe, which has been under Russian control since the early weeks of the war, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Sunday. The announcement means the International Atomic Energy Agency can remotely track safety information from the site for the first time in two weeks — “an important and positive step,” the IAEA said.Russian forces have refused to give the agency’s inspectors regular access to the site. “If I am not able to dispatch inspectors to perform the required verification at ZNPP, implementation of safeguards in Ukraine will be compromised,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement. Ukrainian staffers have continued to operate the plant, but a lack of international oversight has alarmed experts, who say catastrophe could be one accident away.
By Max Bearak2:09 a.m.
Barely two months ago, Russians were pounding this Kyiv suburb with artillery as they retreated after failing to take the capital. In the attacks’ wake, Ukrainian authorities have demined as much of the land as they can. Yet they are just getting started on lakes and rivers — right as Ukrainians, exhausted and traumatized by Russia’s brutal occupation around Kyiv, are craving places to cool off and unwind. | 2022-06-13T06:49:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latest Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ |
By Danny Funt
Sloan conference co-founders Daryl Morey and Jessica Gelman. (Boston Globe/Getty Images)
Keegan Abdoo, a statistical analyst at NFL Network, landed his first two jobs the same way: by walking around the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
The first time, in 2015, Abdoo was perusing vendor booths when he struck up a conversation with employees from Zebra Technologies, which operates data-collecting chips implanted in shoulder pads. That led to a job at the Tennessee Titans’ stadium before he had even graduated from Vanderbilt.
The following year, at a post-conference cocktail party, Abdoo met a Vanderbilt alum who worked for the Cleveland Browns. That led to an email from the Browns’ director of scouting, who offered Abdoo his first job out of college.
“I’m indebted to the conference,” Abdoo said recently. But he also knows how fortunate he was: His first ticket to Sloan was covered by a family friend, his second by his father.
“I had the access,” he said, “and other people didn’t.”
Every March, more than 3,000 people converge on the Sloan conference to discuss the cutting edge of sports science and other topics confronting the industry. Dubbed “Dorkapalooza,” it has long been known to attract a predominantly White and male crowd, offering an annual reminder of inequities plaguing the sports business.
But a growing chorus of critics say the conference doesn’t just reflect barriers to entering the sports industry but helps entrench them. Tickets, which this year cost $425 for students and $850 for everyone else, can be prohibitively expensive, some attendees say, while others say the panels too often lack diversity and can even reinforce stereotypes.
In an interview, the conference’s co-founders, Jessica Gelman and Daryl Morey, said they planned to lower ticket prices after learning about attendees’ concerns this year.
“Honestly, from my perspective, this year was the first year that I really learned about the price stuff,” said Gelman, CEO of Kraft Analytics Group.
Morey, president of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, said, “You can always find someone who’s mad about how much they have to pay.” But he added: “Are we closing people out who should be getting in? I think that’s where we can do better.”
Morey, who pioneered a “Moneyball”-like analytics revolution in basketball, and Gelman spun the conference out of a course they taught at MIT, inviting speakers ranging from team owners to betting operators to authors, including Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis.
Although data science remains a focus, organizers have expanded the conference to include more panels on the business and celebrity of sports. Recent speakers have included former president Barack Obama and rapper Lil Dicky.
The conference is run each year by roughly 60 Sloan graduate students. But Gelman and Morey have the final say on most big decisions, according to five students who worked on this year’s conference, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
“It’s a student-executed conference,” one of the students said. Some students work 20 hours or more a week to prepare for the conference, student organizers said, pulling all-nighters and missing class. None of them are paid.
Students aren’t paid for work on other conferences at Sloan, either. “But the difference,” one student said, “is there aren’t founders micromanaging everything. Students actually run things.”
A university spokesperson defended the arrangement in a statement: “Student volunteers who work on conferences gain hands-on leadership and management experience and make valuable industry contacts that benefit their careers.”
Morey and Gelman each took a $100,000 salary this year, they said. Public disclosures from their nonprofit, 42 Analytics Educational, which puts on the conference, show they have made about that much in recent years, although Gelman took a one-time $20,000 raise in 2019.
Gelman’s wife, Corbin Petro, serves as the conference’s chief financial officer along with “providing significant logistical and operational support,” Gelman and Morey said in a statement. Petro, who was paid $40,000 at least one year, “provides her services partially pro bono and also bills at a discount,” the co-founders said.
A company run by Morey’s brother Lance has handled the conference’s video, light and sound production for the past decade. He was paid $170,666 at least one year, according to disclosures — a 20 percent discount, Morey and Gelman said.
“I’d like to talk about the positives,” Morey said when asked about their compensation. “We follow all the rules of a nonprofit.”
The conference generated $2.7 million in revenue in 2020, the most recent year for which records are available, and reported $2 million in expenses. As the conference has grown, so have ticket prices: The cost of a student ticket has nearly doubled since 2018.
One Sloan attendee, who now works for an NFL team’s analytics department, said he went to the conference three times in college. “Networking was reasons one through 10 why I wanted to go,” he said.
His university covered the ticket twice. One year, however, the school’s grant funds ran out.
“I took an extra job to make sure I could go,” he said, “which was brutal but a worthy gamble on my future.” Fortunately, he lived close enough to Boston to drive.
Lately, the NFL employee said, he and league colleagues meet in Boston during the conference weekend but don’t bother buying tickets.
“Sloan used to be the most direct path for someone with no connections in the industry to get their foot in the door,” he said. “It’s been tough to see it become more constricted.”
In mid-February, when the conference tweeted about its goal of “increasing diversity in sports,” Aaron Blackshear, director of analytics for the Minnesota Timberwolves, fired back, “If this were true you wouldn’t charge students [$425] to attend.” The next day, Blackshear, one of few Black men in the field, woke up to see hundreds of people had liked his tweet — and the conference account had blocked him.
When Michael Lopez, the NFL’s senior director of data and analytics, criticized ticket prices ahead of this year’s event, the official Sloan conference account blocked him, too.
“When the preeminent conference is quite challenging to pay for, you end up with people coming from privileged backgrounds,” Lopez said in an interview.
After someone on Twitter commented on the conference blocking the NFL’s head of analytics, Gelman emailed Lopez to ask him to expand on his critique. In an exchange reviewed by The Washington Post, Lopez sent Gelman a point-by-point response explaining how the Sloan conference — unlike peer events such as the Joint Statistical Meetings, which charges students $100 for five days of programming — fails to promote inclusivity. Gelman took six weeks to reply and did not address his points.
Ticket prices are only one source of frustration, Lopez said. He pointed to four recent graduates whose team was a finalist in the NFL’s 2021 Big Data Bowl, in which competitors propose statistics-based innovations for football strategy.
According to two team members, Asmae Toumi and Tony ElHabr, the Sloan conference invited Toumi to present their project, with several caveats: She wouldn’t be paid, her teammates couldn’t present with her, and if they wanted to attend the conference, they would have to pay full price.
The conference was entirely virtual last year, meaning Toumi’s teammates would have been forced to shell out hundreds of dollars to watch a video of her talk.
“I’m a woman of color, so it’s good for them because sports suffer from not having enough diversity,” Toumi said when asked why she suspects she was picked to represent her group. “I would have been happy to be the presenter, and I think my teammates were, too, but to make them pay the ridiculous ticket price was something I wasn’t willing to accept.” She declined Sloan’s invitation.
“It really is an influential conference,” added Toumi, who has appeared at Sloan before. “It’s done a lot for my own visibility and professional credibility in both sports and data science. The networking opportunities are unparalleled. To restrict that to people who can front the cost is a huge missed opportunity.”
Told of Toumi’s experience, Morey said, “If all we had to do was open up streaming, then we should have done that.”
John Tobias, a professor of sports analytics at UNC Charlotte, works at ESPN, feeding statistics to commentators. Over nearly a decade in that role, Tobias, who is Black, said he has seen just one other person of color and one woman performing that job for a sports network.
“Access creates opportunity,” he said. “There are so many people in underrepresented communities who want to work in sports and love data as much as anyone but can’t pay $1,000.” With airfare and lodging, the cost of attending the Sloan conference can easily exceed that.
Tobias created a nonprofit, Strength in Numbers, that hosts summer camps where students from underrepresented backgrounds learn about sports analytics. Attendance is free.
Most sports conferences — at universities such as Harvard and Carnegie Mellon — charge students less than $150, if anything, to attend. MIT students who have staffed the Sloan conference say they would be happier being unpaid, as is typical for student-run conferences, if they had more autonomy.
The conference has implemented changes. This year, about 50 students from underrepresented backgrounds received free tickets and participated in a mentorship program. Six sessions covered diversity, equity and inclusion issues, including one about transgender athletes, moderated by Gladwell and featuring ESPN writer Katie Barnes, who is nonbinary, and researcher Joanna Harper, who is transgender. A women’s luncheon has become a staple, drawing about 200 attendees this year. The conference introduced a one-day Multiplier Summit, billed as “an accelerator for women in the industry” and which cost an extra $300 to attend.
But there’s a sentiment among some people that the conference is missing a chance to enact changes that would achieve greater diversity throughout the conference rather than bringing in underrepresented people year after year to talk about the need for diversity.
ESPN personality and HBO host Bomani Jones said that in the Sloan conference’s early days he expected it was a matter of time before he would be invited to speak. In 2017, Morey asked Jones if he would be interested in coming, and Jones said he was.
“They asked me to moderate a panel on social activism in sports,” said Jones, who is Black. Considering his breadth of expertise, he told organizers he was miffed to be offered a race-focused gig. They offered him a different panel assignment, but he was unable to attend after a death in the family.
This year, Jones said, he was invited to interview former NFL star Calvin Johnson about the cannabis business. Because Jones was promoting a new show on HBO, he said, he begrudgingly went along.
“They try to achieve some measure of diversity, but it’s often by inviting athletes,” Jones said. “Just saying you have Black people there is not the point. If this conference is a pathway for people to get jobs, it becomes important to demonstrate diversity among those actually engaging in the quantitative research that this is about. And if you can’t find any Black people in those fields, then do something about it.” | 2022-06-13T08:20:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Sloan sports conference, criticism mounts over diversity, access - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/sloan-sports-conference-diversity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/sloan-sports-conference-diversity/ |
FILE - American golfer Francis B. Ouimet, center, shakes hands with Harry Vardon, left, and Ted Ray, both of Britain, at the U.S. Open Golf Championship at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., in 1913. Ouimet defeated the pair to become the new champion. The gallery was among the biggest ever in America for a golf tournament, and it was hailed as one of the biggest upsets in sport. The U.S. Open returns to The Country Club in June 2022. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP)
BROOKLINE, Mass. — A capsule look at the three previous U.S. Open golf championships held at The Country Club: | 2022-06-13T08:20:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US OPEN '22: Capsule look at previous US Opens at Brookline - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/us-open-22-capsule-look-at-previous-us-opens-at-brookline/2022/06/13/b74260f0-eaea-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf/us-open-22-capsule-look-at-previous-us-opens-at-brookline/2022/06/13/b74260f0-eaea-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
TAMPA, Fla. — Steven Stamkos scored two goals and the two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning are headed to the Stanley Cup Final for the third straight year after beating the New York Rangers 2-1 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference final on Saturday night.
ST. ALBANS, England — Former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel banked $4.75 million by winning the richest tournament in golf history on Saturday, while the event’s Saudi backers faced renewed backlash after a 9/11 victims’ group called for American players to withdraw from the rebel series.
BAKU, Azerbaijan — Max Verstappen extended his Formula One championship lead with a victory Sunday at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after Charles Leclerc retired from the lead with an engine failure.
ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — Josef Newgarden earned a $1 million bonus that rewards his versatility by winning on Sunday at Road America. | 2022-06-13T08:20:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weekend Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/06/13/d3639702-eaec-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/weekend-sports-in-brief/2022/06/13/d3639702-eaec-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
North Korea fires artillery shells following vows for arms build up
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, leader Kim Jong Un attends a meeting of the ruling Workers? Party's Central Committee in Pyongyang, June 12. (AP)
SEOUL — North Korea fired artillery shells into the sea on the heels of a major party meeting in Pyongyang during which leader Kim Jong Un called for boosting the country’s military.
“The right of self-defense is precisely the issue of defending sovereignty,” Kim was quoted as saying in state media on Saturday. He reiterated “the invariable battle principle of power for power and head-on contest,” according to the Korea Central News Agency.
Through the first half of 2022, North Korea has conducted a record-breaking flurry of weapons tests, including two already this month in a renewed show of force. Sunday’s launch of suspected artillery shells, came just a week after North Korea fired eight short-range ballistic missiles in what appeared to be its largest single test.
In response to the weapons test, South Korea’s presidential national security office held a meeting to reaffirm Seoul’s military readiness and expressed “concerns about North Korea upgrading its weapons systems that pose a direct threat to the security of South Korea,” according to an official readout of the meeting.
South Korea and the United States recently ramped up their response to North Korea’s beefed up weapons tests. A day after North Korea test-fired its unprecedented salvo of eight ballistic missiles on June 5, South Korea and the United States launched eight ballistic missiles of their own into the sea.
The allies are also closely monitoring signs of a possible new nuclear test in North Korea, which officials said is in the final stages of preparation and would be the first since 2017.
“Any nuclear test would be in complete violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Seoul last week. “There would be a swift and forceful response to such a test.”
The United States warned that it will push for more U.N. sanctions against North Korea, but experts have raised questions about their effectiveness since they have failed to curb the regime’s military pursuits over the past years.
The U.S.-led push to impose new sanctions on North Korea over its ballistic missile launches was thwarted last month after Russia and China wielded their vetoes. North Korea has not responded to Washington’s offer to restart stalled nuclear talks, as the Biden administration has not expressed willingness to offer sanctions relief demanded by Pyongyang.
Instead, North Korea has been ramping up its weapons test activity, including recent launches of powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles that are considered a red line by the United States.
South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup said on Sunday that Seoul will work more closely with the United States and Japan to counter security threats from North Korea. | 2022-06-13T08:54:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korea fires artillery shells after Kim Jong Un vows arms build up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/north-korea-nuclear-shell-weapons-test/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/north-korea-nuclear-shell-weapons-test/ |
Biden vented to aides after an ethanol announcement designed to ease gas prices, questioning the policy’s effectiveness
President Biden speaks about the economy and inflation from the deck of the USS Iowa at the Port of Los Angeles on June 10. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
President Biden seemed upbeat when he visited an Iowa biofuels plant in April to talk about bringing down gas prices, standing before a large tractor as he declared that “biofuels have a role to play right now” and announced a plan to expand the use of ethanol over the summer.
The episode illustrates the White House’s months-long challenge to dampen rising prices, and the president’s increasing frustration with his administration’s inability to do so. The problem has ballooned over the last year, consuming the president’s top aides and threatening his domestic agenda, his international priorities and his party’s political prospects.
If anything, the problem appears to be accelerating. Prices rose 8.6 percent in May, the highest level in 40 years, according to the latest consumer price index released Friday. Moreover, prices climbed more quickly last month than they did in April, denting the optimism in the White House that the country had already hit its inflationary peak.
Five charts that explain the current inflationary run
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) torpedoed the president’s sweeping economic plan in part because of concerns over inflation. The president has changed his approach to Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer, after vowing as a candidate to treat the country as a “pariah." And his approval rating continues to drop, as voters increasingly sour on his handling of the economy.
The White House made a fresh push last month to show that Biden and his team were hard at work trying to rein in inflation. The president met with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in the Oval Office and penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, while the White House sent officials across the cable networks to outline the actions the administration was taking.
Biden and his aides have also taken to attacking Republicans more vigorously, focusing especially on a proposal published by Republican Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that Democrats argue would make things worse by raising taxes on many Americans.
The administration has also struggled to explain how long Americans should expect to see rising prices, giving an inaccurate sense that the rapid price increases would subside relatively quickly. When prices first start increasing markedly last year, Biden and others suggested it was the result of the economy’s rapid reopening after the pandemic and would fade as the economy stabilized.
“They weren’t ahead of the curve. You can’t look back and say, ‘Wow, that was impressive,’ ” he said. "But you can’t look back and say they were doing a highly political spin operation.”
At the Port of Los Angeles Friday, Biden framed inflation as a sweeping global problem, driven by the persistence of the pandemic and Russia’s ongoing invasion, and he touted his administration’s efforts to improve supply chains.
But in a statement before the speech, Biden succinctly summarized his immediate and pressing problem: “We must do more — and quickly — to get prices down here in the United States." | 2022-06-13T09:24:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside Biden’s frustration with soaring prices - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/biden-frustration-soaring-gas-prices/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/biden-frustration-soaring-gas-prices/ |
Historic, four-bedroom house in Charles County lists at $355,000
Built in 1930, this farmhouse in Newburg, Md., sits on a one-acre lot and has a front porch and a back porch. (Kyle Weaver)
If your budget for a new home is about $400,000 and you want more living space or a larger lot, you may want to widen your home search area farther from the city limits where the prices can be lower. The median sales price for a home in Charles County, Md., for example, was $420,000 in April, according to Bright MLS.
Buyers looking for land may be interested in 12190 Rock Point Rd. in Newburg, Md., in Charles County, priced at $355,000. Annual property taxes are $2,633.
Built in 1930, the farmhouse sits on a one-acre lot and has a front porch and a back porch. A detached one-car garage is in the back of the house, which also has parking for four cars in the driveway. The property includes sheds and a brick firepit. Air conditioning is provided by window units, and the house has a septic system, an electric water heater and oil heat.
Inside, the house has 2,192 square feet with original hardwood floors and wood stoves in many of the rooms. Historic details include a coffered ceiling in the dining area, wood trim around the windows and doors, exposed brick accent walls, and a wood staircase with a carved handrail to the upper level.
The old-fashioned kitchen has blue-and-white penny tile flooring, blue and white painted cabinets and a white tile backsplash. Four bedrooms are on the upper level of the house, which has a full bathroom on the main level and a full bathroom on the upper level.
Assigned schools include Dr. Thomas L. Higdon Elementary, Piccowaxen Middle and La Plata High.
For more information, contact real estate agent Pennie Platt with Re/Max 100 at 240-925-7990 or Ron Lord with Re/Max 100 at 301-904-1076. | 2022-06-13T09:47:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Historic, four-bedroom house in Charles County lists at $355,000 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/historic-four-bedroom-house-charles-county-lists-355000/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/historic-four-bedroom-house-charles-county-lists-355000/ |
Didi’s Move From NYSE to Hong Kong — What to Know
Analysis by Shiyin Chen and Coco Liu | Bloomberg
Illuminated office windows at the Didi Global Inc. headquarters at night in Beijing, China, on Monday, July 5, 2021. China expanded its latest crackdown on the technology industry beyond Didi to include two other companies that recently listed in New York, dealing a blow to global investors while tightening the government’s grip on sensitive online data. (Bloomberg)
Didi Global Inc. is preparing to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, after its initial public offering there last year drew the wrath of Beijing. The Chinese ride-hailing giant said it plans to list in Hong Kong instead, allowing existing shareholders to convert their holdings in the company. There are challenges ahead -- for Didi, its shareholders and other Chinese companies looking to go public. Meanwhile, the government’s ongoing investigation and new regulatory measures have hit Didi’s bottom line.
1. Why is Didi going to delist?
Chinese regulators opposed the US listing, saying it could expose Didi’s vast troves of data to foreign powers. The firm pressed ahead with the June 2021 IPO anyway, in a move that Beijing saw as a challenge to its authority. Days after the listing, the government announced a cybersecurity probe into the firm and forced its services off domestic app stores. Later the Cyberspace Administration of China, the agency responsible for data security, was said to have asked Didi’s top executives to devise a plan to delist because of concerns about leakage of sensitive data.
2. How will it work?
Didi has said that listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will ensure that its American depositary shares can be swapped for “freely tradable shares of the Company on another internationally recognized stock exchange.” However, the firm was said to have suspended preparations for a Hong Kong listing after being informed by regulators that its proposals to prevent security and data leaks had fallen short. Shareholders approved the US delisting on May 23 and Didi is expected to work with Chinese regulators on an overhaul of its data systems. The company has put forward several ideas, including ceding management of its data to an outside party in China. Settling the data issue and then preparing for a Hong Kong listing could take months.
Some institutional shareholders may be forced to sell once Didi stops trading in New York as they can’t hold unlisted equity. A Hong Kong listing carries its own challenges as the local exchange makes more stringent demands on companies seeking to list than its New York peers. Even if Didi pulls off a listing in Hong Kong, some investors may choose to sell rather than swap their US shares, which have fallen drastically. Didi in December disclosed a $4.7 billion loss in the September quarter after revenue slid 13% from the previous three months.
4. Why is this such a big deal?
Didi’s blockbuster IPO was the second-biggest in the US by a company based in China (Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s was bigger) and gave Didi a market value of about $68 billion. The listing, which was shepherded by a who’s who of Wall Street banks, appeared to be a model for how international investors could tap into China’s red-hot tech sector. Didi’s largest shareholder was Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., with more than 20%.
5. Will China force other companies to change listings?
Didi’s exit is unlikely to be the last. The Chinese internet regulator began probing two more US-listed companies, Full Truck Alliance Co. and Kanzhun Ltd., soon after launching the review into Didi. In December the government unveiled tighter regulations for Chinese companies seeking to go public abroad using the so-called variable interest entity (VIE) structure, as Didi did. Meanwhile, the US is moving to implement a new law that mandates foreign companies open their books to U.S. regulators or face delisting starting in 2024. The US Securities and Exchange Commission says that only two jurisdictions historically have not allowed the required inspections, China and Hong Kong.
6. Will this end Didi’s troubles?
Unlikely. The cybersecurity probe into Didi is ongoing, and regulators may still impose an array of punishments such as a fine, suspension of certain operations or the introduction of a state-owned investor. The municipal government of Beijing, where Didi is based, was said to have proposed that the Shouqi Group -- part of the influential Beijing Tourism Group -- and others acquire a stake in Didi, which would give control to state-run firms. Media including the South China Morning Post have reported that regulators may force Didi to reshuffle its top management. President Xi Jinping’s campaign to achieve “common prosperity” has heaped pressure on platform companies like Didi to offer better wages and benefits to its army of drivers. More fundamentally, the Chinese government is expected to maintain strict curbs on and scrutiny over big tech enterprises that amass sensitive data.
(Updates after shareholders approved New York delisting in question 2) | 2022-06-13T09:47:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Didi’s Move From NYSE to Hong Kong — What to Know - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/didis-move-from-nyse-to-hong-kong--what-to-know/2022/06/13/c6b7862c-eafa-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/didis-move-from-nyse-to-hong-kong--what-to-know/2022/06/13/c6b7862c-eafa-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Celtics forward Jayson Tatum (center) faced hounding defense and committed six turnovers in a Game 4 loss to the Warriors on Friday. (Michael Dwyer/AP)
SAN FRANCISCO — Jayson Tatum has spent his entire career ahead of the curve: drafted by the Boston Celtics at 19, playing in the Eastern Conference finals at 20 and claiming all-NBA first-team honors at 24.
The St. Louis native’s youth and promise have been such persistent talking points among his supporters that sarcastic social media users, annoyed by the hype, like to pretend he’s still a teenager. Nodding to these widespread cracks, Tatum once tweeted that he was 19 years old for the fourth straight season.
But this postseason has marked a delineation point, in which talk of Tatum’s potential has been superseded by the reality of his blossoming superstardom in playoff series victories against Kevin Durant’s Brooklyn Nets, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks and Jimmy Butler’s Miami Heat. With the NBA Finals knotted at 2 heading into Monday’s Game 5 at Chase Center, the Celtics find themselves needing more than ever from Tatum, whose play against the Golden State Warriors has left something to be desired.
During past playoff runs, Tatum was effective and reliable without stealing the show in the biggest moments. In the 2018 East finals, the young Celtics collapsed against LeBron James, no great sin. The following year, Tatum, along with the rest of Boston, was helpless to stop Kyrie Irving’s implosion. In the 2020 East finals, Tatum moved into a more central role but fizzled at times down the stretch against the Heat. Last year, he had a magnificent 50-point effort against the Nets, but the Celtics were swiftly eliminated in the first round.
At every step, Tatum was impressive for his age: precocious but not quite ready yet. There has been a different feel this postseason: Tatum opened with a bang — pirouetting his way into a buzzer-beating layup in a Game 1 victory over the Nets — and hasn’t looked back.
The 24-year-old forward outplayed Durant in a first-round sweep, and he earned serious stripes in the conference semifinals against the Bucks, scoring 30 points in Game 4 to even the series before pouring in 46 points in Game 6. Then, in a grueling rematch of the 2020 East finals, Tatum won Larry Bird MVP honors by leading Boston to a Game 7 victory over Miami with 26 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. Butler had gaudier individual scoring performances, but Tatum was the steadier force.
That led to the Celtics’ first Finals appearance since 2010 and a date with the Warriors, who evened the series Friday thanks to Stephen Curry’s 43-point masterpiece in Game 4. A dominant individual performance like Curry’s can change the course of a series, and it came against a vaunted Boston defense that has pulled out all the stops to slow the two-time MVP. Tatum, by contrast, has yet to play his best basketball against the Warriors, who are equally intent on holding him in check.
Through four games against the Warriors, Tatum is averaging 22.3 points, 7.0 rebounds and 7.8 assists while shooting just 34.1 percent. Tatum moved the ball well and racked up 13 assists in a Game 1 win, and he held off a Warriors rally in Game 3 with timely fourth-quarter baskets. On the whole, however, he often has struggled to make his presence felt offensively. Boston’s attack was disjointed in Game 4, with Tatum committing six turnovers and disappearing down the stretch.
“It’s on me,” Tatum said after Game 4. “I’ve got to be better. I know I’m impacting the game in other ways, but I’ve got to be more efficient, shoot the ball better, finish at the rim better. I take accountability for that.”
Many of Tatum’s giveaways have come when he has tried to force the issue off the dribble or made errant passes after misreading Golden State’s defense. When the mistakes piled up Friday, Tatum deferred to Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart down the stretch, going scoreless over the last 10 minutes. Cast as Boston’s headlining counterpart to Curry, Tatum was reduced to a bystander as Golden State closed with a 17-3 push.
Although Tatum has displayed real progress when it comes to shot selection and distribution, he’s naturally wired as a score-first wing. Boston’s offense peaks when the ball is moving and the three-point shots are falling from every direction, but it needs more of what Tatum does best.
Tatum consistently found success when isolated against Curry in Game 3, and Golden State has used double teams and respected his three-point range throughout the series. Still, there have been plenty of frustrating moments when Tatum has tried to score in traffic. In the Finals, Tatum is shooting just 14 for 51 (27.5 percent) on all shots inside the arc and 5 for 28 (17.9 percent) on shots taken from five to 19 feet.
Celtics Coach Ime Udoka said Sunday that Tatum is occasionally guilty of “looking for fouls” and must seek “stronger finishes” when he attacks the paint, though he cautioned against “equating missing shots to playing poorly.”
“Don’t be opposed to taking twos,” Udoka said when asked Friday for his message to Tatum. “Pull-up jumpers instead of going all the way to the rim. We talked about the balance, how much we rely on him to score and get other guys involved. Sometimes that balance leads to taking some [tough] shots or over-penetrating when he has a clean pull-up. Nothing wrong with the floater or midrange pull-up to get yourself going, especially when the crowd is sitting there at the rim.”
Tatum’s most electric showing in these playoffs — his 46-point explosion against the Bucks — came in a moment of maximum duress. Boston was facing elimination on the road against the defending champions, and Tatum restored order with a shot-making flurry. Curry’s Game 4 takeover has pushed Boston into a similar predicament, requiring Tatum to deliver another counterpunch if he wants to complete this memorable postseason run with his first title.
“[Game 4] was a tough loss,” Tatum said Sunday. “We understand that. We’ve been here before. We know what it takes. We know what we have to do. I’m confident like I’ve been all playoffs. It’s a big test for us.”
Candace Buckner: The Celtics should be on their way to the title. But … Stephen Curry. | 2022-06-13T09:47:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Celtics need Jayson Tatum to match Stephen Curry - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/jayson-tatum-celtics-nba-finals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/jayson-tatum-celtics-nba-finals/ |
‘Squid Game,’ dystopian Netflix hit, gets green light for second season
A person dressed as a "Squid Game" character at a Netflix event on June 12 in Los Angeles. (Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
SEOUL — “Squid Game,” the South Korean drama that shot to the top of Netflix’s global charts, making it the streaming platform’s most popular show ever, has been greenlit for a second season, its director said.
The first season, released in September, centers on a dystopian game in which Seoulites gamble their lives in a competition for a large pot of money — for most, a way to pay off their debts. It remains Netflix’s most popular series, with viewers watching more than 1.65 billion hours of the show in its first month. (The next most popular debut was the fifth season of the Spanish series “Money Heist," which had 792 million hours viewed in its first month, according to Netflix figures.)
The cultural impact of the show was nearly immediate. People dressed as the pink-jumpsuited “Squid Game” guards for Halloween. DJs sampled the “red light … green light” audio from a scene with a giant killer doll. It inspired a renaissance for the Korean dalgona game, played with brittle sugary treats, and months later, trinket shops in Seoul are still stuffed with “Squid Game”-related merchandise.
Why does ‘Squid Game’ resonate so well in the U.S.? It may be its portrayal of economic despair.
“It took 12 years to bring the first season of Squid Game to life last year. But it took 12 days for Squid Game to become the most popular Netflix series ever,” Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show’s director and executive producer, said in a statement announcing the renewal. Hwang has said he came up with the idea for “Squid Game” in 2008 but was told that the script was too violent and unrealistic to do well with audiences.
Hwang said in the statement that Gi-hun, the show’s main character, would return in the second season, as well as the Front Man, the game’s mysterious villain. And he said “the man in the suit with ddakji might be back,” referencing an ominous character who lures contestants with a Korean game that involves throwing paper tiles.
He also said that in Season 2, audiences will meet the “boyfriend” of the killer doll, Young-hee.
Store names and character names hold truth and deeper meaning in Netflix's “Squid Game.” (Video: Allie Caren, Michelle Lee/The Washington Post)
The note did not include details about when the second season would be released. Kim Ji-yeon, an executive producer on the show, said that “we are working on the script right now and making the form of the story.”
Kim said that there was “a lot of pressure” to make the second season better than the first, and that the show’s producers were “focusing on how to make it even more joyful to the global audience.” | 2022-06-13T09:47:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Netflix confirms "Squid Game" season 2 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/06/13/squid-game-season-two-netflix-young-hee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/06/13/squid-game-season-two-netflix-young-hee/ |
Afghans go hungry as U.S. and Taliban officials blame each other
Story by Susannah George
Photos by Lorenzo Tugnoli
DEZWARI, Afghanistan — Ahmed Shah Jamshidi and his family go to bed hungry every night, but not because food is in short supply. They just can’t afford enough of it.
“We were poor before the takeover. Now we have nothing,” said Jamshidi, 42, who lost his job as a security guard after aid cuts crippled the economy. His village in western Afghanistan, in the mountains outside of Herat, had already endured years of drought, forcing most farmers to sell off livestock and look for work in nearby towns and cities.
Throughout the country, millions of lives are similarly threatened. Childhood malnutrition is on the rise, and nearly half of all Afghans don’t have enough to eat, according to the latest figures from the United Nations. Jamshidi’s family is among them, even as he scrambles to keep his wife and seven children from starving. He borrows money from shopkeepers to buy increasingly expensive items like potatoes and cooking oil that his wife uses to make the family’s main meal: a pot of watery stew.
Some days there is no food and “the children scream from the hunger at night,” he said. “Sometimes all we have is donated stale bread and tea. And when we run out of tea, I just gather grass to boil with the water.”
Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis has been building for decades, driven not just by persistent poverty and too little rain, but also by generations of war and an economy almost entirely dependent on international support. Still, it was the Biden administration’s decision to halt aid in response to the Taliban takeover that put the country on the brink of catastrophe.
“Not another cent will go to a future government of Afghanistan that doesn’t uphold basic human rights,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters after the fall of Kabul in August. It was a “knee-jerk” response, in the recent words of one U.S. official involved in those policy discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about them.
The State Department’s refusal to recognize the Taliban also made it impossible for the country’s new rulers to access billions of dollars in foreign assets. Parallel moves by the World Bank and the European Union brought Afghanistan’s economy crashing down.
As winter approached and humanitarian groups warned of famine, the Biden administration came under increasing pressure to prevent a catastrophe. In recent months, the United States and others began to funnel money through the United Nations and groups that bypass Taliban leadership. Yet these hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid are a small fraction of the billions that once kept the country afloat.
The economic isolation of Afghanistan has done little to moderate the Taliban’s hard-line rule. But the consequences have been devastating for the Afghan people, especially the poor.
Lal Mohammed, Jamshidi’s neighbor in Dezwari, lost his job as a day laborer after the U.S. withdrawal. Desperate to find work, he made four attempts to cross illegally into Iran. Border guards beat him and turned him back. The 65-year-old has resorted to subsistence farming with his sons.
Mohammed’s entire family is eating less, including his pregnant daughter.
“I feel weaker,” said Nour Bibi, a 30-year-old mother of two. “I don’t know exactly what’s wrong. I never had this condition before.”
Mohammed wants to take her to the doctor, but he can’t spare the $2 for a taxi.
Lal Mohammed and his sons work their land in Herat province, resorting to subsistence farming. The nearby river has been mostly dry this year. His entire family is eating less as a result.
Even though Afghanistan has avoided famine — at least for now — its economy remains in tatters, and neither the international community nor the Taliban is taking responsibility for the hunger crisis.
“This is a huge conundrum for policymakers,” said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the record. “There is no easy fix. There is no ‘turning the taps back on,’ ” he said, referring to the billions of dollars in aid that flowed into the country over the past two decades.
“The humanitarian situation remains a central and driving imperative of American policymaking,” he said, but “the onus is increasingly on the Taliban.”
The Biden administration has said the Taliban must form an inclusive government and guarantee the rights of minorities and women if it wants to win recognition from the international community. The group has responded by cracking down on dissent, shuttering schools for girls and forcing women to cover from head to toe.
“Our fight was against the invaders to free Afghanistan from occupation and establish Islamic law,” acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told The Washington Post. “There will be no change in our stance.”
Asked whether the group would soften its interpretation of Islamic law in exchange for humanitarian relief, Muttaqi was indignant: “In the past, our people were killed in bombings and raids, even the mother of bombs was used on them. So do you think that was better?”
Residents in Dezwari say they have not received help from the Taliban or outside groups. The withdrawal of U.S. forces was unnerving, said Jamshidi, but most people thought better days were ahead.
“We thought once the war was over, there would be even more jobs for us,” he said. “Instead, the United States left everything in disorder.”
Thousands of Afghan families have fled the countryside, only to face further deprivation in the cities.
Muhammed Azam Yaqub lost his livelihood when his farm was destroyed last summer in clashes between the Taliban and Afghan government forces. With no money to rebuild in his village and no way to support his family, he spent his savings to move them to Herat.
“We thought even if there is no work here, we can at least find help” from aid groups, he reasoned. “But we haven’t found anything.”
He now lives in a makeshift camp on the city’s edge, and his sons beg door to door for food.
“The hunger, it makes us weak,” said Yaqub’s mother-in-law, Shiringul. “I never thought our family would be in a situation like this.”
Other children from the camp, some as young as 4 or 5, are sent into Herat to shine shoes on street corners, making less than a dollar a day for their families to spend on food.
The Taliban’s deputy minister for refugees and repatriations admitted that the assistance it provides to displaced families is “insufficient” but blamed the international community.
“We are facing financial hardships,” Muhammad Arsala Kharutai said. “When we arrived in Kabul, there was no money left in the government accounts.”
With an economy in tatters, many families have been forced to relocated to a camp for internally displaced people outside the city of Herat.
Born into hunger
The malnutrition ward at Kabul’s main children’s hospital has been full for months, with some babies sharing beds. There aren’t enough nurses to attend to everyone, so family members operate delicate medical devices like feeding tubes.
Madina Noori had to travel more than 250 miles from Mazar-e Sharif to get help for her daughter, Sahar, who was born soon after the Taliban took control. “She was fine when she was born, but after a few days I began to worry something was wrong,” said Noori, who didn’t have enough milk to sustain her. “Her skin started turning yellow, and she was very weak.”
Sahar’s health deteriorated quickly. By the time Noori got her to the hospital, the baby couldn’t swallow liquids. Even after a week of treatment, Sahar hadn’t improved. Her hands and feet were gaunt, her skin a pale gray.
“They told us she may need to stay here for weeks, but I don’t know if we can stay that long,” said Noori, who is quickly running out of money. She and her mother sleep on the hospital floor beside Sahar’s bed because they can’t afford a place to stay.
A doctor at the hospital, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the facility’s shortcomings, said the crush of cases means that only the most critically ill patients can be treated. “Everyone else, we send them home with packets of formula,” he said.
Fahima Galani and her 7-month-old daughter, Sama, were among those turned away.
“I had never heard of malnutrition, but when we arrived at the hospital I saw so many other similar babies,” Galani said. “We were shocked.” For more than a month, she and her older daughters took turns feeding Sama a formula paste from the hospital. The little girl is still not gaining weight.
The Taliban’s deputy economic minister acknowledged in an interview this week that “people are suffering.”
“We have experienced a major revolution, and it has had its impacts,” Abdul Latif Nazari said. “The people have to endure it to reach the next phase.”
For Galani’s family, that has meant slowly selling off household items like carpets and kitchen pots to buy food. Her husband has been out of work since the Taliban takeover and their savings are gone.
“She had such a good appetite when she was born,” Galani said, rocking her crying infant in the family’s bare front room in Kabul. “I just think of all the times I couldn’t feed her.”
“I feel like this is my fault.”
Mothers and children wait to be seen by a nurse at a hospital ward for malnourished children in Kabul. The crush of cases means that only the most critically ill patients can be treated.
Susannah George is The Washington Post's Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief. She previously headed the Associated Press’s Baghdad bureau and covered national security and intelligence from the AP’s Washington bureau. Twitter Twitter | 2022-06-13T10:25:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Afghans go hungry as U.S. and Taliban officials blame each other - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/afghans-go-hungry-us-taliban-officials-blame-each-other/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/afghans-go-hungry-us-taliban-officials-blame-each-other/ |
Ukrainian service members fire toward Russian positions, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on June 8. (Stringer/Reuters)
The battle of Donbas — with momentous implications for the future of Ukraine and the entire postwar world — is poised on a knife edge.
The Ukrainians are resisting bravely, but they are suffering terrible casualties and slowly losing ground. They are able to fire only 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, compared with 50,000 rounds a day from the Russians. The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition for their old Soviet artillery, and they don’t have enough Western artillery tubes to make up for the shortfall.
I am reminded of the old poem about how “for want of a nail a shoe was lost,” then a horse, then a rider, then a battle, then a kingdom. We cannot afford to see Donbas lost for want of artillery shells.
If Russian dictator Vladimir Putin captures this region, after having already secured a land corridor from Crimea to the Russian border, he will hold roughly a fourth of Ukraine, including its industrial heartland and most of its Black Sea coast. The Ukrainian economy is already in dire shape (estimated to shrink by 45 percent this year). Putin will then be in a position to further squeeze the rump state, while preparing a final offensive to finish it off.
Even a limited Russian victory will send a dangerous signal to the world that the West is weak and aggression pays. We must send lots more aid to Ukraine now to avert the loss of Donbas and to enable a counteroffensive to retake ground already occupied, but not yet fortified, by the invaders.
The most obvious Ukrainian need is for more artillery tubes and shells. The Biden administration has already provided 108 M777 155mm howitzers and more than 220,000 artillery rounds. More recently, it promised to send four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars) and ammunition with a maximum range of roughly 45 miles. That is wholly insufficient; even the 220,000 rounds would not last five days at current rates of use.
The West should be sending hundreds of howitzers and multi-launch rocket systems, thousands of rockets and hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds. This should include Excalibur GPS-guided rounds for the M177 (range: 24 miles) and Army Tactical Missile Systems for the Himars (range: 186 miles). Those longer-range munitions would enable the Ukrainians to target Russia’s artillery, rockets and supply lines without risking their new weapons close to the front lines. Of course, it will take time to train Ukrainians on these systems, but they have shown they are fast learners.
Ukraine is also in desperate need of more aircraft to stop Russian airstrikes and to mount its own attacks on Russian ground formations. Biden made a serious mistake in March when, because of overblown fears of Putin’s reaction, he refused to facilitate the transfer of Poland’s MiG-29 fighter jets. But it’s not too late to rectify that blunder.
While the MiG-29s would still be useful, in general we should be transitioning Ukraine to NATO equipment such as MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, F-16 fighter jets, A-10 “Warthog” ground-attack aircraft and Patriot air-defense systems. The Gray Eagle, capable of carrying Hellfire antitank missiles, is a much larger drone than the U.S. Switchblades and Turkish TB2s that Kyiv has been receiving. The A-10, designed to withstand ground fire, would be perfect for pulverizing Russian artillery. The F-16 would allow the Ukrainians to shoot down more Russian warplanes and bomb Russian troops. The Patriot system could shoot down not only aircraft but also missiles.
The immediate objection is that Ukraine doesn’t have personnel trained to operate these systems. Well, if we had started a crash course back in March, that problem might have been fixed. It’s imperative to start training Ukrainians as soon as possible.
In the meantime, a stopgap can be employed. Ukraine already has foreign volunteers fighting in its ground forces. Why not ask for foreign volunteers or contractors to operate and maintain F-16s, A-10s, Gray Eagles and Patriots?
There is ample precedent for such a move. In 1941, Nationalist China bought U.S. P-40 fighter aircraft and set up the American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers, to operate them. The Flying Tigers, composed of former U.S. military personnel led by Claire Chennault, helped save China from Japanese invasion.
Ukraine has millions of volunteers willing to risk death to defend their homeland. What it doesn’t have is enough weapons to arm its fighters. There is no excuse for this shameful failure. The nations imposing sanctions on Russia account for 65 percent of global GDP; Russia accounts for less than 3 percent. Russia cannot be allowed to outproduce Ukraine’s allies in armaments.
Don’t worry about depleting our stockpiles; we can always produce more later. And don’t worry about provoking Putin; nothing would be more provocative than a Ukrainian defeat. We have a strategic and moral imperative to step up now to help Ukraine prevail in its fight for freedom. It is our fight, too. | 2022-06-13T11:22:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We can’t let Ukraine lose. It needs a lot more aid, starting with artillery. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/we-cant-let-ukraine-lose-it-needs-military-aid-artillery-russia-war-donbas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/we-cant-let-ukraine-lose-it-needs-military-aid-artillery-russia-war-donbas/ |
IRS rules about capital gains may lead to questions. We have answers.
If you bought your home in a top-20 metro area a while ago, perhaps during the "Great Recession" or even 30 or 40 years ago, it’s likely that your property has seen a significant increase in value. (iStock)
Over the past few weeks, we’ve fielded a number of questions about how to prove the cost of improvements and calculate the capital gain of real estate.
Home prices have skyrocketed over the past 10 years. Given how fast home prices have climbed, it’s clear sellers are concerned about saving on the capital gains tax bill they may eventually owe.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median home sales price in the first quarter of 2009 was $208,400. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the median home sales price was $423,600, more than doubling in 13 years. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Over the past few years, home prices in certain locations have risen far faster. According to Redfin, the median home price in Los Angeles has risen 14 percent compared with last year. Zillow reports that the typical home in Boise, Idaho, rose 20.6 percent in value over the same period. And according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, home prices in 2021 rose 32.6 percent in Phoenix, 30.8 percent in Tampa and 28.1 percent in Miami — in a single year.
If you bought your home in a top-20 metro area a while ago, perhaps during the “Great Recession” or even 30 or 40 years ago, it’s likely that your property has seen a significant increase in value. If you’re getting ready to sell, you may imagine that you may have a significant capital gains tax bill to pay. And, that capital gains tax might eat significantly into the funds you’ll have to pay for your next home, which has also increased significantly in value.
More Matters: A primer on how the IRS gift-tax law pertains to parents and their children
Here’s how the capital gains tax currently works: Generally, if you buy a home and live there as your primary residence for two of the past five years, you can keep up to $250,000 in capital gains tax free. If you’re married, you can keep up to $500,000 in capital gains tax free.
How do you calculate your capital gains? According to IRS Publication 523, “Selling Your Home,” add up the cost of purchasing the property, plus the cost of any material improvements you’ve made over the years (such as replacing a roof, adding a room or a pool), plus the cost of selling the property (like the commission you’ll pay). Then, subtract that number from the sales price of the home.
One of our readers asked how to calculate the capital gains on the home they demolished in 1993. They rebuilt it for about $250,000, and a year later added a swimming pool for $25,000. Their improvements totaled $275,000. Assuming they paid $100,000 for the old house, the basis (using very general figures) would be $375,000.
Let’s assume the house would sell today for $1 million. If they paid a 5 percent commission, or $50,000, they would add that amount to the basis, bringing it to $425,000. They would subtract $425,000 from the sales price of $1 million and realize $575,000 in capital gain. They could keep $500,000 tax free and would then owe long-term capital gain tax on the $75,000 at whatever their marginal tax rate would indicate.
(They may owe an additional 3.8 percent for the net investment income tax. That tax may affect those who have net investment income and adjusted gross income above certain thresholds. For 2021, the threshold was $250,000 in adjusted gross income for married couples filing jointly. They may also owe taxes to the state in which the home is located.)
Many homeowners have rented out their properties for some period of time during their years of ownership. That complicates the capital gain calculation, especially if you’ve taken depreciation and need to repay the federal government for that depreciation after you sell.
More Matters: Title insurance can protect home buyers from title search failings
Another of our correspondents wrote: “We are selling our townhouse this year that we bought in 1996. We lived there for 17 years as our primary residence. Then, we rented it out for eight years. There will be substantial gain. How do we shelter that?”
The easiest thing to do would be to move back into the property for two years and use it as your primary residence. Then, you would meet the standard of having lived there as your primary residence for two of the past five years, which would allow you to keep up to $500,000 in profits tax free. You may still have to recapture 25 percent of the depreciation you took on the property for those years, but you would shelter a significant part (if not all) of the gains.
As you rented the home for many years, you will have to make sure that you strictly adhere to the “two out of the last five years” rules. Otherwise, you might fail the test and not be entitled to take the exclusion. IRS Publication 523 gives a number of examples on your eligibility and how the exclusion works.
As with anything that comes from the IRS, the rules can be convoluted and confusing. If you have questions, you might want to consult with a tax or financial adviser that has extensive experience in this area. What you don’t want to do is sell the home thinking you are safe only to find out that you technically didn’t fit into the exclusion and end up paying quite a bit of money to the federal government.
Alternatively, if the property is now fully a rental property, and you want to sell it, you could set up a 1031 tax deferred exchange. You would buy a rental property that costs at least as much as the property you’re selling. That would allow you to defer capital gains tax until you sell the new property. If you keep the property and pass it down to your heirs, under current tax law the property would receive a step-up in value to the current market value at the time of your death.
Be aware that 1031 exchanges can be complicated, and there are strict rules you have to follow when identifying replacement property and completing the sale. You can read some of our past columns about 1031 exchanges here and here. | 2022-06-13T11:22:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | IRS rules about capital gains may lead to questions. We have answers. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/25/irs-rules-about-capital-gains-can-be-confusing-we-have-some-answers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/25/irs-rules-about-capital-gains-can-be-confusing-we-have-some-answers/ |
People rest under a bridge in New Delhi on May 29 as the northern region of India experienced the warmest weather in 122 years. (Saumya Khandelwal/Bloomberg)
When Russia invaded earlier this year, threatening Ukraine’s exports of grains, crop-rich India was seen as a global buffer, making up for the shortfall. But this spring’s erratic rains and scorching heat killed crops and made it dangerous for farmworkers to harvest, devastating India’s production. In response, India announced in May they would shut down all grain exports, staving off famine in their own country but threatening starvation abroad.
As of last week, about 750,000 people around the world were facing a food security “catastrophe” — at which “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident" — according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.N. agency tasked with fighting global hunger.
“It does feel as though what we had in the report is just playing out in live stream when I read the news,” said Rachel Bezner Kerr, a professor of global development at Cornell University and coordinating lead author for the IPCC.
“We have consistent robust evidence of increased extreme events from climate change, which exacerbate some of these other non-climatic factors and can lead to real spikes,” she added.
In few places is the situation more dire than in the Horn of Africa, where recent rainfall has been just half of average and a historic drought is stretching into its fourth consecutive season. Hunger mortality rates for the region have been ticking upward, and as much as 29 percent of Somali children younger than 5 are experiencing acute malnutrition. About 7 million livestock in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have died since last fall, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which analyzes food security for governments and humanitarian groups.
Now, one person is probably dying of hunger every 48 seconds in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, according to a report released last month by Oxfam and Save the Children. That report points to the failures of international actors to take sufficient action to respond to early warning information.
Meanwhile, declining snow cover in the mountains of Afghanistan means there will be little water this summer to irrigate the nation’s crops. South Sudan is projected to experience another round of devastating floods that could inundate farmland and force thousands from their homes.
Many of the hardest-hit communities are the ones that contributed least to planet-warming pollution. Combined, the countries on FAO and WFP’s Hunger Hotspots list account for less than 1 percent of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
“They’re not countries where we have high industry. Not countries where we see mass production and degradation of the environment. It’s countries that are living on very basic terms,” Lander said.
“They’re not at fault,” he added. “They’re living the consequences of the West and the industry we’ve developed.”
Yet the world’s wealthiest and most productive breadbaskets are also suffering from an onslaught of weather extremes. Prolonged droughts and destructive wildfire seasons have dented harvests in the United States and Canada. In France, Europe’s biggest wheat exporter, farmers have faced a mix of frost, a record-hot May accompanied by spring drought, and intense hailstorms that brought heavy rain.
Christian Huyghe, scientific director at France’s National Institute of Agricultural Research, said the country has over the past few months experienced “all the events that were predicted to be possibly associated with climate change.”
Cereal production is projected to decrease this year, according to the FAO — the first such decline in four years — even as demand for maize, wheat, rice and other grains skyrockets. In May, the FAO’s price index for cereals hit a new high. With countries forced to draw on emergency supplies, global grain stocks fell to their lowest levels in almost a decade.
“What we see now is just the very beginning of the potential impact,” Huyghe said. “Food security is by far much more under threat because of climate change than because of war.”
Low-income developing nations are feeling the squeeze the most, said Rwandan agricultural scientist Agnes Kalibata, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and U.N. special envoy to last year’s food systems summit. Many already had to borrow money to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, and are carrying debt equal to 70 percent of their GDP or more. Taking out further loans to afford food and fertilizer will make it more difficult to invest in climate change adaptation measures in the months and years ahead.
“Leadership is needed from developed countries to restructure debts to make sure that developing countries aren’t completely destroyed,” Kalibata said.
Similarly, she said, vulnerable families need immediate assistance to make it through this difficult period. Otherwise, they may be displaced or forced to give up the very things — livestock, vehicles, school fees — that could protect them in the future.
“The damage stays with us a very long time,” Kalibata said. It’s yet another way, she said, that “the future is biased” against those who are already suffering the most.
Without humanitarian interventions, experts project that even more people could fall into famine by the end of the year. The FAO and WFP report calls for the global community to provide food and financial support for hard-hit countries, as well as fertilizer, drought-tolerant seed and other support to bolster harvests in low-income regions.
That support can help avert a catastrophe until the current crisis eases. But ultimately, Kalibata said, humanity must act to curb global warming if we hope to prevent a future defined by hunger.
“Hopefully the war in Ukraine will end sooner than later, but I’m not sure climate change will end sooner than later,” she said. “Nobody knows when climate change will end."
Gerry Shih in New Delhi, Rick Noack in Paris and Claire Parker in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-06-13T11:23:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate disasters collide with Ukraine war to deepen hunger crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/13/climate-disasters-collide-with-ukraine-war-deepen-hunger-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/13/climate-disasters-collide-with-ukraine-war-deepen-hunger-crisis/ |
Record-breaking weekend temperatures part of Southwest heat wave
People stand under a shaded bus stop as the temperature reaches 115 degrees on June 12, 2022 in Calexico, Calif. Much of the Southwest is being gripped by a heat wave sending temperatures from California to Nevada into the triple-digit range. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)
LAS VEGAS — Cristian Sanchez’s crew was on the job site by 6 a.m. Saturday, when Las Vegas was just a balmy 90 degrees.
By the end of their shift, ripping out dead grass to make way for drought-resistant vegetation, temperatures at Harry Reid International Airport would reach 109 degrees, tied for the daily record set in 1956. Another 109 the day before broke that day’s record, and set the mark for hottest day of the year, part of a late spring heat wave that also blistered Arizona, California, and much of the American southwest.
The eight landscapers were dressed for battle. Long sleeve reflective orange shirts with hoods. Bandannas and face masks. Baseball caps and broad-brimmed hats. Sanchez, from Veracruz, Mexico, has spent six years as a landscaper in Las Vegas, and he knew what it looked like when heat became overwhelming.
“Vomiting. The loss of strength,” he said. “When I first began working this way, I felt the heat, with a lot of headaches. But over time, one gets used to it, your body gets accustomed to the heat. And it becomes normal.”
But for researchers studying extreme heat here, Sanchez falls neatly into a particularly high risk category for heat-related illness and injury. A study published last month in the International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology that looked at the effects of extreme heat on the health of the outdoor workforce in Nevada, California and Arizona found that heat morbidities increase with years of service on the job. Workers with more than five years of service were at greater risk than those with less than one year of service to suffer a heat-related illness.
“That was not expected,” said lead author Erick Bandala, assistant research professor of environmental science at the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas. He thought newer, unexperienced workers would face the biggest problems. But data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics between 2011 and 2018 suggest otherwise, he said.
Bandala said the accumulation of years of heat stress and exhaustion may account for the findings, or that workers become inured to the threat, even as climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, makes heat waves more frequent and more intense.
“After a while of doing the same thing and not feeling affected that badly, they probably get overconfident,” Bandala said in an interview. “You forget about the risk you’re exposed to.”
The study, in conjunction with Nevada State College and the Guinn Center for Policy Priorities, also found that over the past decade the summertime heat index — a combination of temperature and humidity to measure how heat feels to the human body — rose significantly in both Las Vegas and Phoenix, climbing from a level deemed “extreme caution” in 2012 into the “danger” zone by 2018. The number of nonfatal heat-related injuries and illnesses in all three states increased steadily in that time, to above the national average.
“We all know that when flash flooding or thunderstorms or hurricanes are coming, we better take care of ourselves,” Bandala said. “But not really about extreme heat. It’s probably one of the most under-considered risks that we can be facing.”
For the world, the last seven years have been the seven hottest on record. The Southwest has been enduring a crippling drought for two decades, forcing unprecedented water shortages and shriveling reservoirs to record lows. The arriving summer brings the prospect of more extreme heat waves like the record-shattering heat dome last year in the Pacific Northwest.
Extreme heat is already the deadliest type of weather disaster in the country, one that hits hardest on low-income and minority communities that are hotter — with more pavement and less greenery — and tend to have buildings with worse ventilation and less access to air conditioning.
In Las Vegas, the frequency and intensity of heat waves has increased over the past decade, a trend that correlated with the number of heat-related deaths, according to a 2019 study by Bandala and his colleagues.
Over the past five years, 570 people have died of heat-related causes in Clark County, which has more than 2 million residents and includes Las Vegas. In the five years prior (2012-2016), 241 people died from heat, according to data from the Southern Nevada Health District.
For those who work outside, there is little choice but to persist despite extreme heat.
Jose Martinez, a 47-year-old landscaper from Jalisco, Mexico, watched a colleague collapse from heat exhaustion on Thursday.
“He got overheated. He had just arrived from Mexico. He wasn’t acclimatized,” Martinez said on Saturday as he worked outside Carmel Cliff, a gated community in Summerlin, on the west side of Las Vegas. It was 11 a.m. and 106 degrees. “He needs time to get used to it. It hit him and he lost strength. We said, ‘Go to your house.’ We try to take care of each other. We don’t want to let him die.”
Parts of the Las Vegas metropolitan area are among the fastest-growing places in the country. And new subdivisions and gated communities are rising across hills to the west of the city. Blue flags flutter in the hot wind at new construction sites promoting model homes. Signs and billboards tout “new homes selling now” and open houses in the sprawling desert suburbs.
“There’s a lot of work here,” Martinez said. “Thank God.”
He’s spent nearly three decades doing outdoor work and says he’s adapted to the heat.
“When there is need, there is no choice,” he said.
Over the past decade, the highest annual death toll from heat in Clark County came last year, when 153 died, a rate of 6.4 deaths per 100,000 residents. A quarter of those were homeless.
By noon Saturday, the temperature hit 108 degrees and hundreds of people crowded under fans at the Courtyard Homeless Resource Center, one of several cooling centers across the city. During last summer’s recording breaking July heat wave, authorities encouraged the homeless to leave the open-air shelter because nighttime temperatures remained dangerously elevated.
It was loud and chaotic as people clustered around a water spigot and people yelled at each other under the punishing sun.
“Take a look around,” said Patrick Dewone Jones Sr., who had been living at the shelter on and off for a year. “The heat is getting to them. The heat makes people more aggressive, more meaner, more irritable.”
Jones, 51, said there are fights nearly every night as people jostle for space in the crowded facility. He drinks the warm tap water from the faucets because the alternative is “dehydrate and die.”
“Everybody is on top of everybody trying to get some cool air and trying to get some shade,” he said. “If you sit in somebody’s spot, it’s trouble.”
On Saturday, volunteers with Las Vegas Liberation, a local aid group, handed out bottled water from coolers of ice.
“It feels like it’s getting hotter earlier in the year, and stays hotter longer,” said Tyler Teresi, 25, one of the volunteers. “I’ve worked at some of the shelters before and people will come in just exhausted, clear heat stroke.”
A Black woman approached him just after the last of the roughly 300 water bottles had been passed out. Teresi apologized.
“We just have ice left,” he said. | 2022-06-13T11:23:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Extreme heaat in southwest raising fears of health problems - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/13/extreme-heat-las-vegas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/13/extreme-heat-las-vegas/ |
After a 17-year major league career, Ryan Zimmerman knows a thing or two about handling a change-up. When the Washington Nationals cornerstone retired this past offseason, the speed of his day-to-day life certainly shifted — just not the way you might expect.
“I think baseball is way slower than the life we have now,” says Zimmerman, 37, who in January welcomed his fourth child with his wife, Heather. “Going from pretty much being home for a week, gone for a week, it’s definitely been an interesting change, but a good one. To be around and to be able to see the kids grow up at this age, I think a lot of people miss that time period because they’re working — age 30 to 50 is usually the most important time of your career — so I feel lucky to be home and to be around for a lot of these life moments.”
Svrluga: Ryan Zimmerman: Face of the Franchise, Mr. Walk-Off, Washington’s forever
As the Nationals host the Philadelphia Phillies this weekend, Zimmerman will return to Nationals Park for a celebration of his career aptly billed as Ryan Zimmerman Weekend. Among the festivities: a pregame Q&A with Zimmerman on Friday and the retirement of the two-time all-star’s No. 11 jersey on Saturday.
But the Zimmerman family isn’t going anywhere. Ryan and Heather, who both grew up in Virginia, have put down roots in Great Falls, where they’re raising their daughters, Mackenzie, 8, and Hayden, 6, and their sons, Henry, 2, and baby Benjamin. On their perfect day in the D.C. area, Heather and Ryan enjoy an active morning and afternoon with the full clan before embarking on a date night on the town.
Heather Zimmerman: We’d start the morning by going by Astro Doughnuts & Fried Chicken. Right after the Nats won the World Series [in 2019], they sent a box of doughnuts that had little plastic baby sharks in them, which was amazing. So we’d get a dozen doughnuts of various kinds, and I’d also get the fried chicken honey sandwich.
Ryan Zimmerman: We’d then go by Call Your Mother and get some bagel sandwiches — I like the Thunderbird.
Heather: And I would get the Royal Palm, because I like a good bagel with smoked salmon. We’d take it all and do a little breakfast picnic in front of the Washington Monument. While it’s still a cool morning, we’d actually jet back and do a quick little walk around Great Falls Park with the kids and the dogs, because that’s right down the road from us and it’s just beautiful.
Ryan: After that, our oldest, Mackenzie, loves the National Museum of Natural History, so we’d have to go there. We’d also stop by the National Children’s Museum for a little bit, and head to the National Zoo. We’re going to do a lot.
Heather: Our dream day has more than 24 hours!
Ryan: Next, we’d go to the Salt Line in Navy Yard. [Note: Zimmerman is an investor in the Salt Line.] Both of our daughters love the cheeseburger there, and Mackenzie also likes to try the oysters. Heather loves the lobster roll, and I love pretty much everything. So we’d do that for lunch, walk around Navy Yard a little bit and maybe get the girls some Ice Cream Jubilee.
Heather: Then we’d take a water taxi over to Alexandria and do some shopping at the boutiques. I love the Hive there, and Ivy Lane Living — they have a cute little shop with lots of art and decor and whatnot. Is there anything else we’d do with the kids?
Ryan: No, I think that’s about the time we take them home [laughs]. They got plenty of food and exercise. From there, there are so many restaurants we’d like to go to, so we’d do a cocktail at one place, appetizers at one place and the main course at one place.
Heather: We’d start at Bourbon Steak to get the bread with truffle butter and grab a cocktail — I like a dirty martini with stuffed olives.
Ryan: And they have a really good bourbon selection there, so I usually tell them to just pick something and make it. The wine list is also great, but if we did all of that, I don’t know if we’d make it through our dream day …
Heather: Our next day would not be a dream [laughs]. After that, we’d go by Shoto and get a little bit of sushi, then walk next door to Dauphine’s, grab some frozen cocktails and do dinner there.
Ryan: They change the menu so much and they have so many interesting things that you almost have to have an open mind. One thing I tried there was this rabbit dish — they pound it and fry it and it comes on a bed of greens — and I would have never ordered something like that. But we tried a little bit of everything, and man, it was one of the best things. The jambalaya is also really good — it’s almost like a deconstructed jambalaya, at least when we were there, so it’s different from what you think it would be. They also have tons of options as far as seafood goes.
Heather: You have to get the pommes soufflé — they’re like puffed-up french fries, and they serve them with hollandaise sauce. And you’ve got to do the collards as well.
Then we’d go to an Eric Church concert at the Anthem, since the whole Wharf is such a fun spot. And we love José Andrés — he’s a good friend of ours now — so we’d definitely want to stop by Barmini to end the night for the fun atmosphere and a couple of cocktails.
Ryan: Then would we go home, or would we stay in a hotel?
Heather: Oh, we’d have to stay in a hotel — let’s make it a trip to the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg. And we’ll plan on doing the spa there the next morning.
Ryan: Yeah, let’s stretch it — this is actually a “D.C. Dream 36 Hours.” | 2022-06-13T11:23:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Ryan and Heather Zimmerman would spend a perfect day in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/ryan-zimmerman-dream-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/ryan-zimmerman-dream-day/ |
A Black Army vet spent 16 months in solitary. Then a jury heard the evidence against him.
Andrew Johnson refused to plead guilty to attempted murder charges, insisting he’d been defending himself during a confrontation in California.
By Sydney Trent
Andrew Johnson, now 33, spent 16 months in solitary confinement after being charged with attempted murder in San Jose, Calif. (Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post)
The cell was smaller than a parking space, bound by three dirty beige concrete walls and a steel door with a narrow slot to push in meals and shackle hands.
There was a narrow cot, a toilet, a sink. The filmy glass on the barred window allowed little sun; the always-on fluorescent ceiling light allowed no darkness. Each day brought the clanging of chains, the shuffling and shouting of guards and inmates, the threat of violence or the reality of it. Each day poured itself into the next.
For 16 months and all but a random hour every other day, Andrew Johnson languished in solitary confinement in a California jail. The first day — Nov. 12, 2014 – was hardly different from the 479th day.
“When they put you in solitary confinement, you’re no longer thinking clearly,” Johnson, 33, says now. “You’re thinking ‘Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God. I’m trapped.’ ”
Johnson, an Army veteran who’d undergone Special Forces training, knew how to endure hardship. He’d carried 120 pounds in a rucksack for days, he’d overcome a lifelong fear of heights to parachute from planes, he’d fought his way back from a coma after suffering carbon monoxide poisoning. He had a military diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury to show for it.
But Johnson had never been isolated from the world like this before. He had grown up in a comfortable D.C. suburb, the adored only son in a deeply religious Black family. He had never been incarcerated before.
Then a nighttime encounter with two strangers in San Jose led to his arrest for attempted murder. Johnson insisted he was defending himself and had done nothing wrong. But at 26, he was sent to solitary immediately after he was booked into the jail to await trial.
No one ever explained to Johnson, his parents, William and Angela Johnson, or Johnson’s criminal defense attorney why he was put in isolation, they said. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the jail and was responsible for the decision, did not respond to several requests for comment.
Between 2014 and 2018, Johnson was among about 735,000 people who were being held at any given time in the nation’s 3,000 jails, most of them awaiting trial, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Yet there is no systematic attempt by the federal government to track the use of solitary in jails, experts say. The bureau’s last survey on the subject was a decade ago. In a sample of 357 jails housing almost nearly 53,000 inmates, it found roughly 2.7 percent were held in solitary — some for 30 days or more.
People of color were overrepresented in that count, as they are in the nation’s prisons.
As evidence has mounted about the long-term mental health damage caused by solitary confinement, there has been a “seismic shift” in the willingness of federal and state authorities to reform or eliminate its use in prisons, said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberty Union’s National Prison Project, which focuses on defending inmate rights.
But the anti-solitary movement has had far less success curtailing the practice in locally controlled jails, where it is particularly egregious because most people being detained haven’t been convicted of the charges against them, Fathi said.
Santa Clara County would eventually become an outlier, reforming its use of solitary and greatly reducing the number of detainees it isolates. But not soon enough to help Johnson, who was facing a sentence of up to 85 years to life if convicted.
He and his parents were so traumatized by what happened to him that they’ve never spoken publicly about it as a family.
While Johnson was being held, he witnessed fellow inmates being beaten by guards and was beaten himself, according to a lawsuit he filed in 2018 alleging his civil rights were violated. From his tiny, barren cell, he listened to the cries of a mentally ill inmate as he was pummeled by three sheriff’s deputies, who were later tried and convicted in the man’s death.
Prosecutors offered Johnson a lesser sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, but he refused to accept a deal.
“My frustration with my case will not allow me to consent to a lie,” Johnson wrote his mother in a Nov. 15, 2016, letter. “I am a warrior until my death and I must stand [up] to injustice no matter how dismal the odds.”
It would take three years — almost half of it in solitary — before Johnson got the chance to testify in his own defense. It would take just two hours for a jury to acquit him.
A corner confrontation
Andrew Johnson’s path to solitary began in a crosswalk at a busy San Jose intersection four days before Halloween in 2014.
After his honorable discharge from the Army, he had moved from Northern Virginia to California to become a full-time certified caregiver to his best Army pal, who had been left a quadriplegic after a vehicle accident in Afghanistan.
Johnson testified that he had given Ignacio Arriaga, whom he affectionately called “Nacho,” his sleep medication and hoisted him into bed as usual around 9 p.m. before deciding to walk to the Bonfare Market an hour later. He frequented the corner store a short walk away from his home in the Bella Villagio Apartments, to buy snacks, beer or cigar blunts to empty and then refill with the marijuana he purchased legally as a treatment for his PTSD.
Johnson, a lean 6-foot-4 with light brown eyes, donned his military-issued head covering, known as a balaclava, to keep his face warm in the chilly night air and then wedged Arriaga’s Glock pistol inside his zipped vest in the event, he said, that he needed to protect himself.
As Johnson began to make his way across the busy intersection of Capitol Expressway and Vistapark Drive, two men approached in the opposite direction. He’d seen Alvaro and Bicente Castro earlier in the day during another trip to the market. They were staggering drunk, Johnson testified, and smashing their beer bottles on the sidewalk.
That night in the crosswalk, the Castro brothers were again drunk. Alvaro’s blood alcohol level would test at 0.20, more than twice the legal limit, at the hospital that night. Bicente’s was even higher, according to court records.
Johnson moved to the edge of the crosswalk to allow them to pass. Alvaro Castro turned to him.
“What the f--- are you staring at,” Johnson recalled him saying.
“Where are you from?” Bicente Castro demanded.
Johnson shrugged with his palms up and kept walking, he testifed. Behind him, he said he heard one of the brothers yell out “Do we have a problem?”
Inside the Bonfare, Johnson chatted with the shift manager, Naresh Sharma, both men recalled in court. He left with a beer and a pack of Swisher Sweets cigar blunts.
After returning to the apartment to smoke and finish class work for his online undergraduate degree, Johnson said he decided to make a return trip to the market around 11:30 p.m. As he approached, he could see that the Bonfare appeared to have closed early, the neon sign turned off. So he headed back to the intersection to return home. As he pushed the button to prompt the light to change, he testified that he could hear male voices getting closer.
“Hey, it’s that f-----g guy,” one of the men said loudly, Johnson recalled.
“Where are you from?” Bicente Castro asked again.
“This is the south side. You’re on the south side,” Alvaro Castro yelled.
Suddenly the men were less than an arm’s length from Johnson. He put his hands in the air.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Johnson recalled saying.
At that point, Johnson testified, Alvaro instructed Bicente: “Take everything he’s got."
Bicente lunged toward Johnson and grabbed his vest. Johnson said he saw the glint of a knife in Alvaro’s hand. Fearing he would be stabbed or pushed into traffic, Johnson testified he reached for the Glock.
He fired two warning shots into the concrete sidewalk, he said. In the Army, where he was rated an expert marksman, he was taught to shoot lethally in the chest and head. This time, he purposely aimed his weapon at Alvaro’s left shin and fired and then fired into Bicente’s hip. The brothers both fell to the ground.
“As soon as I saw the weapon, I moved in like a flash,” Johnson said in an interview with The Washington Post. “All that weapons training, all those things I learned to do. It was like muscle memory.”
Instantaneous reactions are common among the growing number of veterans who have become involved with the criminal justice system over the last 20 years, said William Brown, a sociology professor at Western Oregon University and an expert on the effects of military training on veterans. Responding quickly to threats is part of that training, he said.
Alvaro Castro told the jury that Johnson had confronted him and his brother, according to the trial transcript. But he also acknowledged they’d been drinking and struggled to recall key details, including where they’d been shot.
After he fired, Johnson testified that he crossed the street and headed back to the apartment complex. In the growing distance, he said he could see two people, one of whom turned out to be an off-duty EMT, stop to aid the men before police arrived.
Johnson later regretted not calling 911 because it might have saved him the ordeal of the next three years, he told The Post. At the time, he worried about how police would interpret the situation given his race. Would they believe he was defending himself?
Two weeks later, on Nov. 12, 2014, Johnson again returned to the Bonfare Market to buy some beer. As he left the store, police, guns drawn, surrounded him.
Surviving solitary
Over the next three years, two judges would toss out the attempted murder charges against Johnson. Prosecutors got them reinstated on appeal.
The county district attorney’s office declined to comment, citing Johnson’s civil lawsuit.
With his bail initially set at $2 million, Johnson’s parents said they were forced to choose between paying it to free him from solitary or hiring the best lawyer they could find. Johnson insisted they invest in the fight so the family hired a veteran San Jose criminal defense attorney.
Angela Johnson, a research analyst, had been battling for her son’s well-being and safety since the day he was born. She and William, a product manager, thought they were having a girl up to the moment Andrew emerged. There was shock, joy — and then worry.
“I had a little Black boy," she said. "I had to protect him differently.”
Andrew was a good kid who did well at school, but was full of rambunctious energy, his mom said. He bent the frames on his bikes, broke a window with a Wiffle ball, and, after smelling gas, Angela caught him singing “Happy Birthday” to the pilot light on the broiler before blowing it out.
In high school, he joined the junior ROTC and set his sights on enlisting while the nation was at war. Angela believed her son was too young to make such a life-altering decision. She would run out on her front lawn to yell at the recruiter as soon as she saw his white SUV approaching. The first time Andrew joined the Army, she managed to get the contract voided on a technicality. When she learned he had enlisted a second time, in 2008 at the age of 19, it was already too late.
Johnson was stationed in Germany when he was recruited to take the qualification course to join the elite Special Forces unit, also known as the Green Berets.
Eighteen months into the grueling two-year training, he collapsed from heat exhaustion while carrying extra weight in his rucksack. He wound up working in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment based in Fort Campbell, Ky., as a mechanic on vehicles for Special Forces units.
In 2012, the family got an urgent phone call. Johnson had been working on a vehicle off base when he collapsed from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was rushed to the hospital and put into a coma so doctors could treat him.
The Army later approved Johnson’s military disability application while he was in jail based on the chemical injury to his brain, which had impaired his memory and moods, as well as an earlier PTSD diagnosis.
Angela, 60, was frustrated by how blind the criminal justice system seemed to be to her son’s needs as a veteran. Jail administrators failed to provide Andrew’s prescription medication to treat the depression and anxiety caused by his brain injury and PTSD, she said. She and William, also 60, had to fight to get it for him.
But efforts to get his case referred to a veteran’s treatment court were opposed by prosecutors.
And the isolation in jail was making everything worse for him.
The consequences of prolonged periods of solitary confinement can include self-mutilation, suicidal depression, explosive anger, hallucinations and catatonia, according to Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist and expert on the practice.
Prolonged solitary confinement is torture. It’s time for all states to ban it.
The United Nations has equated the use of isolation beyond 15 consecutive days to “a form of torture.”
Even as it is frequently cited by reformers, the 15-day limit has no scientific basis, Rupers said. “I’ve seen people become psychotic or commit suicide after one day.”
Defenders of solitary confinement — also known as restrictive housing and administrative segregation — assert that it can be necessary to keep other inmates and correctional employees safe from harm.
But many correctional officials have come to agree that the practice has limited utility. So have elected officials.
In the last five years, at least 78 laws have been passed by state legislatures to limit solitary for many prison inmates, according to Fathi. Last year, New York became the first state to pass a law eliminating its use for more than 15 days in prisons and jails.
Santa Clara County, which at one point held up to 400 jail inmates in solitary, agreed to major changes in 2019 after settling a class-action lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Prison Law Office.
But many who spend time in solitary confinement continue to suffer profound psychological damage after their release, often unable to be in close proximity to others without great anxiety, said Craig Haney, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who has studied the long-term effects.
”“I’ve had people call who were having panic attacks in grocery stores,” he said. "I’ve heard from people whose spouses were locked in their bedrooms” unable to come out.
To survive months without human contact, Johnson tried to schedule every minute of every day, he said. He exercised constantly in his cell — shadow-boxing, running in place, sit-ups. Never a big reader, he became engrossed in books, purchased for him by his parents through Catholic Charities. The guards eventually entrusted him with performing chores outside his cell because of his good behavior, though that provided little respite.
He was plagued with longing for his 3-year-old daughter from an early marriage that had ended in divorce. During his first months in jail, Johnson’s new girlfriend, a woman he’d known since they were both was 15, came to visit, and he lived for her letters, he said. Then the letters trailed off and she broke off the relationship. She later married another man.
“She thought I would be in jail for the rest of my life," he said.
The visits by his parents were wrenching.
Separated by a thick glass partition, Angela had a hard time looking into her son’s eyes.
“I just wanted to preserve his dignity,” she said. “He’s a detainee. He’s not convicted of anything, right? He’s sitting there in chains because we don’t have $2 million.”
The witness stand
By the time Johnson’s case finally went to trial on Jan. 24, 2018, he had endured far more than isolation.
In his civil rights lawsuit against Santa Clara County, the city of San Jose and individual police officers and jail guards, Johnson alleges that he was handcuffed and then punched and kicked in his cell and in a private interview room in 2015 by three guards.
Five months later, Johnson said he heard a man screaming loudly through the concrete floor below him. It was Michael Tyree , a 31-year-old inmate with bipolar disorder, who was being attacked by three guards. The three men were sentenced on Jan. 5, 2018, to 15 years to life in state prison after a jury convicted them of second-degree murder in Tyree’s killing.
Johnson carried all that with him when he took the witness stand in his own defense on Jan. 31, 2018. His parents, watching in the courtroom, knew how high the stakes were. But Angela had never wavered in her belief that Andrew would be acquitted.
“You’ve been waiting for a while to tell your story, correct?” Johnson’s lawyer, Cameron Bowman, asked him.
“I’ve been waiting for years,” he replied.
Bowman, a former prosecutor-turned-defense attorney, had been reluctant to let Johnson waive his Fifth Amendment right in an effort to defend himself — for good reason.
“It’s a risky strategy to go tell a jury that ‘Everybody’s lying to you except me and my client,’ ” Bowman said in an interview. Johnson’s race made it more so. It was possible jurors could perceive Johnson, now 100 pounds heftier and heavily muscled from jail, as the stereotypically threatening Black man, he said.
Bowman changed his mind when it became clear that the prosecution’s case was unraveling. Evidence had gone missing or was easily refuted. The Castro brothers were awful witnesses, struggling to get basic details right about the shooting, the court transcript shows. Alvaro Castro confirmed on the stand that he had a felony robbery conviction, often carried a knife and may have had one that night, and had been shot in the same leg again since the confrontation with Johnson.
Now the jury — nine White people and three people of color, none of them Black — listened as Johnson recounted his final, aborted trip to the Bonfare Market on Oct. 27, 2014, and his confrontation with Alvaro and Bicente Castro.
“Was your intent to murder these guys?” Bowman asked, according to the trial transcript.
“My intent was not to commit a crime or a felony,” Johnson testified. “My intent was to get these guys off of me in a manner that is going to stop the threat to my life so I can continue and live another day.”
In her cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney Judy Lee pressed Johnson on his behavior after the shooting.
“You don’t think you did anything wrong. Is that correct?” Lee said.
“I think that as an American you should be able to defend your life. And that is not something wrong,” Johnson said.
“And what about telling the police?” Lee asked.
Johnson had already explained to the jury that as a Black man, he feared how the police might interpret the situation.
Lee asked Johnson if he considered yelling for help or punching or kicking Bicente Castro as he was clutching Johnson’s vest.
“I’m being pushed towards moving traffic,” Johnson replied. “I want to make that as clear as I can, that the light is green. There are cars coming at a fast pace ... my primary threat was the cars that I’m being pushed towards and then the knife.”
He fired, he said again, in self-defense.
A verdict delivered
On the evening before the jury began to deliberate, Angela wanted to be near the water to pray. She and William drove to the beach in Santa Cruz.
Reflecting her faith, she had already purchased a one-way plane ticket for Andrew to return to Virginia with them. She also bought copies of “Just Mercy,” civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson’s account of racial inequity in the criminal justice system, to pass out to the jurors after her son’s acquittal.
Angela and William were walking along the glittering ocean when Angela noticed that someone had drawn the outline of a flower in the sand. She picked up a twig, crouched down and in large block letters in the center wrote “Not Guilty.”
The next day, on Feb. 6, after deliberating just over two hours, jurors pronounced Johnson not guilty of attempted murder.
After the verdict was read, William and Angela began sobbing. Bowman felt the tension leave his body. But Johnson neither cried nor felt great relief, he said. He had lost part of his life. He had been abused. He was angry.
There was no time to celebrate anyway. Instead of freeing him immediately, deputies escorted Johnson back to a jail cell and he waited there, furious, for five hours until he was suddenly released into his parents waiting arms.
The next day, the family boarded a plane for Virginia.
Damaged, determined
Johnson now lives with a therapy dog on five acres in southern Virginia — he won’t say where.
For a long time, he had his mail sent to his parents’ house because he didn’t want anyone to know his address. When he eats out, he always sits facing the door of the restaurant. He still fears the police.
His hypervigilance may never recede, which makes what he’s accomplished more remarkable.
Johnson has spent the four years since his acquittal trying to move forward.
He received his undergraduate degree from Grantham University (now the University of Arkansas Grantham) with his family gathered around and Asha, his American Staffordshire Terrier, guiding him through his anxiety across the stage. He went on to earn an MS in leadership and is in the midst of working on his doctorate in organizational development at the University of Arizona Global Campus.
He’s managing a for-profit company that hires and trains formerly incarcerated people to clean carpets and work on construction projects. He also runs a nonprofit based in Stockton Calif., Transition U, that provides housing, services and business coaching for veterans.
His parents, too, have used their experience to help others. After starting a support group and help line for families of incarcerated veterans, they bought a historical house in Newport News, Va., at auction in 2018 to serve as a free overnight haven for court-involved veterans and their families. They renovated the Colonial, with local vets pitching in to bring down expenses.
The home now has a name: Valor Village.
Its five bedrooms are decorated to reflect each branch of the U.S. military. Many of the windows offer sweeping views of the Chesapeake Bay. Just before the pandemic descended in early 2020, Valor Village hosted its first family.
Every month or so, Angela and William drive down from Northern Virginia to manage the property, and Andrew meets them there to help.
One Sunday, he slouches in an armchair in the sunroom, a mane of dark locks framing his face. He and his parents begin debating the meaning of faith.
“You have to call what you believe into existence," Angela says. "You have to claim it.”
Andrew agrees: "We didn’t sit there and hope that something was going to happen. We made it happen. Faith without action is nothing.”
His lawsuit against Santa Clara County has yet to be resolved. In the seven years since he was isolated and beaten, more human rights abuses have been alleged in Santa Clara’s jails.
In January, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced he was opening a civil rights investigation into the management of the jails and the operation of the county sheriff’s office.
Sheriff Laurie Smith, who has run the jails since 1998, did not respond to three requests for an interview made through her office. In March, she announced that she would not seek another term in office and accused her critics of making her a scapegoat.
Even if Johnson wins his civil case, it can’t erase what he endured.
At times, he imagines himself taking the stand again in a civil trial, a jury weighing his accomplishments as evidence of his character. Other times, he hopes for a settlement to come quickly, so he can finally find a refuge from the past.
He has purchased land in Ghana, where he’s engaged to an African woman. He feels safe there.
“There’s no way I’m going to stay in this country after what it’s done to me,” he says. “I’m not going to wait for the police to come and shoot me after I win.”
For now, he says goodbye to his parents. Then he and Asha climb into his pickup and start driving to the place where no one can find him.
Story editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Miller, copy editing by Thomas Heleba and design by Talia Trackim. | 2022-06-13T11:23:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black Army vet Andrew Johnson's 16 months in solitary in San Jose jail - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/solitary-confinement-andrew-johnson-san-jose-jail/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/solitary-confinement-andrew-johnson-san-jose-jail/ |
In Frankfort, Ky., Fischer Wells, right, testifies on Feb. 10 against a bill would bar transgender girls from participating in school sports that match their gender identity. Wells's mother, Jenifer Alonzo, listens at left. (Scott Utterback/Louisville Courier-Journal/AP)
The poll was taken as an increasing portion of Americans, particularly younger ones, identify as transgender and the issue of whether transgender females should compete against cisgender women and girls has become a point of social and political debate.
Last week, Louisiana joined at least 17 other states in banning transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams. Much of that legislation across the country has been passed in the past year, led by Republican lawmakers. The Louisiana ban, which applies to all public and some private elementary and secondary schools and colleges, became law after the state’s Democratic governor declined to sign it or veto it.
A Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday found that 0.6 percent of Americans identify as transgender, but among people age 18 to 29, the share rose to 2 percent. An additional 1 percent of Americans said they are nonbinary — neither a man nor a woman, or not strictly one or the other — a share that rose to 3 percent of people 18 to 29.
Among athletes, the controversy has centered on transgender females, in particular. Critics say they have an unfair physical advantage against cisgender females because of factors such as generally having a greater muscle mass and larger skeletal frame, bone density and testosterone levels, which can help boost athletic performance.
Critics of the bans say they deny transgender athletes’ right to compete in a space that aligns with their gender, further stigmatizing children who are at greater risk of mental health problems. Critics also say the bans overestimate the extent of trans girls’ and women’s participation in athletics.
A slim 52 percent majority say they are “very” or “somewhat” concerned that transgender girls’ mental health will suffer if they are not allowed to compete with other girls in youth sports; 48 percent are “not too” or “not at all” concerned about this.
Despite being mostly opposed to their participation in sports, the Post-UMD poll finds Americans’ general attitudes toward transgender people to be more positive than negative.
The poll also finds that 40 percent of Americans say greater social acceptance of transgender people is “good for society,” while 25 percent say it is “bad for society,” and another 35 percent say it is “neither good nor bad.” The percentage saying transgender acceptance is bad for society is down from 32 percent in a Pew Research Center survey one year ago.
Americans who personally know a close friend or family member who is transgender are twice as likely to say greater social acceptance of transgender people is good for society: 70 percent, compared with 35 percent among those who do not have a transgender friend or family member. Among those who don’t have a transgender friend or family member, 38 percent say social acceptance of transgender people is neither good nor bad, while 28 percent say it is bad.
Americans’ attitudes about transgender athletes appear malleable, and some polls asking differing questions have found contrasting results. The Post-UMD results are similar to 2021 Gallup poll results, which indicated 62 percent of Americans said transgender athletes should be allowed to play only on sports teams that match their birth gender rather than gender identity. However, a May 2022 survey conducted by SSRS found 59 percent of Americans saying they oppose banning transgender girls from participating in K-12 girls sports, while 41 percent supported a ban.
Transgender people have also become increasingly common in popular culture, from retired Olympian and media personality Caitlin Jenner to the reality TV series “I Am Jazz,” about a transgender teenager.
The idea that Americans would become more accepting of transgender people as they become more visible in society makes sense to Michael Hanmer, research director of UMD’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, which partnered with The Post on the survey.
“A long line of research shows that knowing members of a particular group leads to more positive attitudes toward the group,” Hamner said. We see that here, as there is a large increase in the proportion who say greater acceptance is good for society among those who personally know a transgender person.”
But, Hamner added, despite "some evidence of this when we look specifically at support for allowing transgender women and girls to compete with other women and girls ... the shifts are much smaller, suggesting there are additional considerations involved.”
Cherisse Villanueva, 34, a pharmacy technician in Honolulu, said she knows more than 10 transgender people and believes society should be accepting of them. “Everybody’s human regardless of how they feel or what they were born with,” she said.
But Villanueva said she does not believe that transgender girls and women should compete against cisgender ones. “Not to be mean, but biologically they’re built like a male, even though they identify as female ... so of course they would have the advantage of winning.” Villanueva, a tennis player, added that she is “already intimidated when we play co-ed tennis and there’s a male on the other side.”
Villanueva said she didn’t know how to resolve the question of mental health repercussions for transgender female athletes who are not allowed to compete against other women and girls. “This issue is such a dilemma,” she said. “It’s hard to make it equal.”
That concern is common even among people who generally support transgender people, said Mark Hyman, director of UMD’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism. “People increasingly have an awareness of the issue and are empathetic toward the journey that transgender people are on, but the notion that they are competing against athletes that are born a particular sex are lagging behind that.”
“They were totally supportive of her surgery and her path but opposed to her competing on the women’s team, so from a practical standpoint this is more evidence that there is considerable pushback,” he said. “There is significant momentum against transgender athletes competing. ... The survey results point to me that that’s a factor in how people are reacting to this.”
The poll was conducted online May 4-17, 2022, among a random national sample of 1,503 adults by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. The sample was drawn through SSRS’s Opinion Panel, an ongoing survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. | 2022-06-13T11:23:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds most Americans against trans athletes competing in female sports - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/washington-post-umd-poll-most-americans-oppose-transgender-athletes-female-sports/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/washington-post-umd-poll-most-americans-oppose-transgender-athletes-female-sports/ |
The periods before and after a person is told they have the disease tends to produce the most uncertainty and is coupled with a high volume of new information to be absorbed and acted upon
The identity of cancer patient is forced on a person as soon as they hear the diagnosis. With it comes a pause in their life and often a new perspective on mortality, along with a search for a new normal that might never materialize, cancer survivors and health-care experts say.
Aurangzeb Agha, 47, remembers adjusting quickly to seeing himself as a patient. “Initially, I thought I’d weather the storm and would get through it and get better,” he said.
He had ignored the blood in his stool for about six months, assuming the cause was hemorrhoids. When his wife urged him to have it checked, doctors found colon cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes.
A foot of his colon was removed in February 2020, followed by chemotherapy that lasted through October 2021. While many patients can tolerate chemotherapy, he experienced severe side effects. “By about June or July, I started to feel like I wasn’t going to make it,” he said.
Colon cancer screening should start at age 45, U.S. task force says
Monique James, a psychiatrist, says becoming a patient is the first of three overarching categories of identity change in her patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The other two are the arrest of the person’s current stage of life — such as starting a family or stepping into retirement — and the changes to the roles of loved ones.
The period before and just after diagnosis tends to produce the most uncertainty and is coupled with a high volume of new information to be absorbed and acted upon.
“I hear a lot about what it’s like to have such a rapid shift in that identity,” James said.
This change can be more jarring for adolescents and young adults. “It’s different for younger people because maybe they hadn’t taken any medications previously,” she said. “Now they’re coming into the cancer center multiple times a week” to see various specialists.
The physical changes brought on by the disease and treatment keep many patients from their normal activities of work, family responsibilities and recreation.
“The hope is that it’s just a temporary stop. But when you’re confronted with that [uncertainty], it can also be really difficult,” James said. “It can affect emotions and anxieties, and it can be quite motivating for some.”
Facing mortality
Agha remembers the moment that cancer forced him to face his mortality. He was too weak to walk or bathe without assistance and spent most of his time in bed. Dressing himself one day, a task that took 20 minutes, he questioned whether he wanted to continue.
He told his wife, Nola: “I am done. I just cannot do this anymore, and I want to stop the chemo.”
Much shorter chemo works for many colon cancer patients, study says
But his treatment was working, and the couple talked through their shared desire to be around for each other and their two young children.
“The experience of feeling like I was dying was very personal, versus philosophizing about it. The idea of death almost felt welcoming,” Agha said. “At the same time, I was at peace with my life and philosophy of a greater being.”
He finished his course of chemotherapy and returned to work as chief executive of a small software company. Before cancer, he would spend time fretting about potential problems in the business. After his cancer experience showed him that anything can happen, he has found peace in not having control of those outcomes.
An upcoming contract negotiation that would have had him stressed for weeks before cancer is now “just a 2 p.m. meeting on my calendar.”
When he became ill, Agha and his wife reversed the roles from 10 years earlier when his wife went through her own cancer treatment. He said the memories of feeling helpless as a caregiver made him feel guilty about needing so much support when he became the patient. Because his treatment coincided with the pandemic, extended family support was unavailable.
“It was heartbreaking to change roles and know all that Nola and the kids had to do,” he said. “By being sick I put you in this position. To me, that was really hard.”
Enduring treatment and confronting mortality can be overwhelming and complicated, often leading to changed perspectives on life.
Alicia Boulware, 33, experienced both a newfound sense of purpose and feelings of fear following 10 months of treatment for breast cancer.
“I have this blessing to take advantage of now, to be better and be great, more than what I wanted to be before,” she said.
Breast cancer death rates have risen slightly for women in their 20s and 30s
Boulware, who was 30 at the time of her diagnosis, felt like a different person. Back at work in a new department, no one knew she had been on medical leave.
“When you are bald or look sick, that’s a certain kind of presentation,” she said. “As my hair grew and the physical ailments faded, … it’s like the scars are gone and the world doesn’t see that I still live with it.”
Settling into a new normal takes time. Continuing observation for recurrence or progression has patients going into a cancer center a few times a year for scans, down from the weekly visits that had become a sort of routine for many months.
James says that there has to be some sort of reconciliation, and possibly grieving, to go from being immersed in patient-hood to finding a schedule freed from medical tasks.
“The aftermath of cancer is worse than going through it,” Boulware said. “I’ve never felt more lost or fearful of not knowing who I am now or what my limits are.”
Boulware found a virtual support group for African American people through Young Survivor Coalition, a community of young breast cancer survivors. Unsure at first of the need for support based on race, Boulware discovered a powerful connection through shared struggles and anticipations.
“To see other people talking about chemo brain or being distracted at work or ‘scanxiety,’ it gives me confidence that I’m okay, and it’s possible to keep going,” she said.
Scanxiety refers to the feelings of anxiety and fear around the process of having scans and then waiting for the results.
Tackling racial disparities in cancer care by creating new ways for institutions to operate
Other options for community support include programs such as First Descents, a nonprofit group that provides free outdoor adventures for young adults dealing with cancer and other serious health conditions.
First Descents chief executive Ryan O’Donoghue says the goal of the programs is to be a catalyst for participants to help one another.
“Our goal is to hold the space to build that natural support system,” he said. In week-long retreats, participants go to a place they’ve never been, with people they’ve never met, doing things they’ve never done.
First Descents has been part of two externally led research efforts.
The research showed that the week-long programs have positive psychological effects related to anxiety, body image, lack of community and navigating the health-care system. There are some traditions and ceremonies on each trip, including getting to know everyone by their nicknames. But “we don’t want to be overly prescribed,” he said. Rather, programs such as kayaking and rock climbing act as a counterbalance to what is offered in the clinical setting. They are a way to heal the mind and soul, and reconnect with parts of the patient’s humanity, which tend to get lost while enduring treatments.
They found that without continuing support, it is easy to slip back into patterns of distress. The bonds of cancer survivors are rooted in shared experiences of trauma.
Retreat-style programs and community support groups encourage people to lean on their peers. They find safe spaces to talk about difficult feelings and what it’s like to move through the world as someone who has had cancer.
Stephanie Cheng, a palliative care physician at UCSF, has seen people find growth through the cancer experience. Indeed, there is a burgeoning field of research into post-traumatic growth that includes cancer patients and people who have survived other types of life-threatening events.
“One can tap into a deep well of resilience and adaptability … and find as part of their identity that they’re someone who can bounce back,” Cheng said. “Future setbacks aren’t as big.”
The process of rediscovering identity is nonlinear. For Boulware, the expectations of others can weigh on the experience.
“In the cancer world, we talk a lot about not being who you were prediagnosis,” she said. “You still have all the burdens of humanity and society … you have to return to that. But you’re returning as a different person.”
Emily Veach is a writer based in Indiana. They have been living with metastatic breast cancer since 2017. Veach is on the board of the Bay Area Young Survivors, co-founded a phone support line for the MBC community through SHARE Cancer Support, and completed the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s Project LEAD advocate training course. | 2022-06-13T11:23:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cancer patients face identity changes through diagnosis, treatment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/13/cancer-identity-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/13/cancer-identity-change/ |
By Alfred E. Lewis
The luxurious Watergate complex, home of the Democratic National Committee offices, in Washington on April 20, 1973. (AP) (AP)
On June 18, 1972, The Washington Post ran a front-page story on a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building in D.C. The story, the first to run in The Post about what would become the Watergate scandal, was written by longtime police beat reporter Alfred E. Lewis. The next day, a follow-up piece would run under the bylines of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who would go on to break open the scandal that would ultimately lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
This story originally ran with the headline “5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here.” We are republishing it to commemorate the 50th anniversary this month of the break-in that launched Watergate.
Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.
Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.
There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations.
A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee said records kept in those offices are “not of a sensitive variety” although there are “financial records and other such information.”
Police said two ceiling panels in the office of Dorothy V. Bush, secretary of the Democratic Party, had been removed.
Her office is adjacent to the office of Democratic National Chairman Lawrence F. O'Brien. Presumably, it would have been possible to slide a bugging device through the panels in that office to a place above the ceiling panels in O'Brien's office.
All wearing rubber surgical gloves, the five suspects were captured inside a small office within the committee's headquarters suite.
Police said the men had with them at least two sophisticated devices capable of picking up and transmitting all talk, including telephone conversations. In addition, police found lock-picks and door jimmies, almost $2,300 in cash, most of it in $100 bills with the serial numbers in sequence.
The men also had with them one walkie-talkie, a short wave receiver that could pick up police calls, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35 millimeter cameras and three pen-sized tear gas guns.
Near where they were captured were two open file drawers, and one national committee source conjectured that the men were preparing to photograph the contents.
In Court yesterday, one suspect said the men were “anti-Communists” and the others nodded agreement. The operation was described in court by prosecutor Earl J. Silbert as “professional” and “clandestine.” One of the Cuban natives, The Washington Post learned, is now a Miami locksmith.
Many of the burglary tools found at the Democratic National Committee offices appeared to be packaged in what police said were burglary kits.
The five men were identified as:
" Edward Martin, alias James W. McCord, of New York City and perhaps the Washington metropolitan area. Martin said in court yesterday that he retired from the CIA two years ago. He said he presently is employed as a "security consultant."
" Frank Sturgis of 2515 NW 122d St., Miami. Prosecutors said that an FBI check on Sturgis showed that he had served in the Cuban Military army intelligence in 1958, recently traveled to Honduras in Central America, and presently is the agent for a Havana salvage agency. He has a home and family in Miami. Sturgis also was once charged with a gun violation in Miami, according to FBI records.
" Eugenio R. Martinez of 4044 North Meridian Ave., Miami. Prosecutors said that Martinez violated the immigration laws in 1958 by flying in a private plane to Cuba. He is a licensed real estate agent and a notary public in Florida.
" Virgilio R. Gonzales [Editor's Note: Spelling was corrected in subsequent stories to Gonzalez] of 930 NW 23d Ave., Miami. In Miami yesterday, his wife told a Washington Post reporter that her husband works as a locksmith at the Missing Link Key Shop. Harry Collot, the shop owner, said that Gonzales was scheduled to work yesterday but didn't show up. "He's done it before, but it's not a regular thing," Collot said. He said he thought Gonzales came to America about the time Fidel Castro became well-known, and began working for Missing Links sometime in 1959. He described Gonzales as "pro-American and anti-Castro...he doesn't rant or rave like some of them do."
" Bernard L. Barker of 5229 NW 4th St., Miami. Douglas Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five men, told a reporter that shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday, he received a call from Barker’s wife. “She said that her husband told her to call me if he hadn’t called her by 3 a.m.: that it might mean he was in trouble.”
All were charged with felonious burglary and with possession of implements of crime. All but Martin were ordered held in $50,000 bail. Martin, who has ties in the area was held in $30,000 bail.
In court yesterday, prosecutors said Sturgis also used the alias Frank Fiorini — an assertion confirmed by Miami area police.
In 1959, the Federal Aviation Agency identified Fiorini as the pilot of a plane that dropped anti-Castro leaflets over Havana. Described in newspaper clippings as a "soldier of fortune," Fiorini reportedly was head of the International anticommunist Brigade, after the Bay of Pigs invasion, that trained 23 Cuban exiles who in 1962 landed by boat in Cuba's Matanzas Province and set up guerrilla operations.
(Fiorini reportedly is a native of Norfolk, Va., who fought with the Marines in the Pacific during World War II. An early supporter of the Cuban revolution, he reportedly fought with Castro and was named by the premier to be overseer as gambling operations in Havana before the casinos were shut down by the premier.)
The guard, 24-year old Frank Wills, removed the tape, but when he passed by about 10 minutes later a new piece had been put on. Wills then called police.
Three officers from the tactical squad responded and entered the stairwell.
From the basement to the sixth floor, they found every door leading from the stairwell to a hallway of the building had been taped to prevent them from locking. At the sixth floor, where the stairwell door leads directly into the Democratic National Committee offices, they found the door had been jimmied.
Led by Sgt. Paul Leper, the tactical force team, which also included Officers John Barret and Carl Shollfer, began searching the suite, which includes 29 offices and where approximately 70 persons work.
When the officers entered an office occupied by a secretary to Stanley Griegg, deputy party chairman, one of the suspects jumped up from behind a desk, put his hands in the air and cried "don't shoot," police said.
According to police and a desk clerk at the Watergate, four of the suspects — all using fictitious names — rented two rooms, number 214 and 314 at the Watergate Hotel around noon on Friday. They were said to have dined together on lobster at the Watergate Restaurant on Friday night.
Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney's office obtained warrants to search the hotel rooms rented by the suspects. They found another $4,200 in $100 bills of the same serial number sequence as the money taken from the suspects, more burglary tools and electronic bugging equipment stashed in six suitcases.
One of the bugging devices found at the scene of the Democratic National Committee offices was described as being about the size of a silver dollar and capable of being hidden underneath a telephone or a desk.
According to police the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices yesterday was the third incident there since May 28.
On that date, according to police, an attempt was made to unscrew a lock on the door between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m.
According to one police source, at least some of the suspects registered as guests at the Watergate Hotel on that date.
On June 7, police said, a safe at the Committee headquarters was reported broken into and $100 in cash and checks stolen. That break-in occurred about 9 p.m. but there was no door jimmied since the suite was unlocked and people were still working there.
Within hours after the arrests, the suite was sealed off and scores of metropolitan police officers directed by acting Chief Charles Wright. FBI agents and Secret Service men were assigned to the investigation.
Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five, said he met Barker a year ago over cocktails at the Army Navy Club in Washington. “We had a sympathetic conversation — that’s all I’ll say,” Caddy told a reporter.
Caddy said that he was probably the only attorney whom Barker knew in Washington.
Caddy, who says he is a corporate lawyer, attempted to stay in the background of yesterday's 4 p.m. court hearing. He did not argue before Superior Court Judge James A. Belson himself but brought another attorney, Joseph A. Rafferty Jr., who has experience in criminal law, to do the arguing.
In that 30-minute arraignment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert, the No. 2 man in the chief prosecutor's office, unsuccessfully urged the court to order the five men held without bond.
Silbert argued that the men had no community ties and would be likely to leave the country to avoid trial. He said they gave false names to the police after they were arrested and refused to cooperate.
"They were caught red-handed," Silbert said. With such strong evidence against them, their apparent tendency to travel abroad and their access to large amounts of cash, the men should not be released, Silbert said.
Silbert called the men professionals with a "clandestine" purpose.
Rafferty said the five men didn't have firearms and didn't harm anyone, and should be released on bond.
In setting the bond at $50,000 for the Miami men and $30,000 for Martin, Judge Belson also placed restrictions on their movements.
He required the four Miami men to stay in the Washington area and check in daily with the court, if released. Martin would have to check in weekly if released, Belson ruled.
Griegg, deputy party chairman, called it "obviously important" that some of the suspects come from the area around Miami and Miami Beach, where the Democratic National Convention will be held next month.
Contributing to this story were Washington Post Staff Writers Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Bart Barnes, Kirk Scharfenberg, Martin Weil, Claudia Lery, Abbott Combes, and Tim O’Brien. | 2022-06-13T11:23:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The story that broke the Watergate burglary news and led to scandal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/13/first-watergate-burglary-story/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/13/first-watergate-burglary-story/ |
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