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The first Woodward and Bernstein story on the Watergate scandal
Bob Woodward, left, and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post newsroom on April 29, 1973. (Ken Feil/The Washington Post)
One day after Alfred E. Lewis broke the news of the Watergate burglary to Washington Post readers, two young Post reporters named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein picked up the story. This article ran on June 19, 1972, under the headline “GOP Security Aide Among Five Arrested in Bugging Affair.”
It was the first of many Watergate stories written by Woodward and Bernstein, whose groundbreaking investigative work would eventually lead to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. We are republishing it to commemorate the 50th anniversary this month of the Watergate break-in.
One of the five men arrested early Saturday in the attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters is the salaried security coordinator for President Nixon’s reelection committee.
The suspect, former CIA employee James W. McCord Jr., 53, also holds a separate contract to provide security services to the Republican National Committee, GOP national chairman Bob Dole said yesterday.
Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, head of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, said yesterday McCord was employed to help install that committee’s own security system.
In a statement issued in Los Angeles, Mitchell said McCord and the other four men arrested at Democratic headquarters Saturday “were not operating either in our behalf or with our consent” in the alleged bugging attempt.
Dole issued a similar statement, adding that “we deplore action of this kind in or out of politics.” An aide to Dole said he was unsure at this time exactly what security services McCord was hired to perform by the National Committee.
Police sources said last night that they were seeking a sixth man in connection with the attempted bugging. The sources would give no other details.
Other sources close to the investigation said yesterday that there still was no explanation as to why the five suspects might have attempted to bug Democratic headquarters in the Watergate at 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, or if they were working for other individuals or organizations.
“We’re baffled at this point . . . the mystery deepens,” a high Democratic Party source said.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Lawrence F. O’Brien said the “bugging incident . . . raised the ugliest questions about the integrity of the political process that I have encountered in a quarter century.
“No mere statement of innocence by Mr. Nixon’s campaign manager will dispel these questions.”
The Democratic presidential candidates were not available for comment yesterday.
O’Brien, in his statement, called on Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst to order an immediate, “searching professional investigation” of the entire matter by the FBI.
A spokesman for Kleindienst said yesterday. “The FBI is already investigating. . . . Their investigative report will be turned over to the criminal division for appropriate action.”
The White House did not comment.
McCord, 53, retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1970 after 19 years of service and established his own “security consulting firm,” McCord Associates, at 414 Hungerford Drive, Rockville. He lives at 7 Winder Ct., Rockville.
McCord is an active Baptist and colonel in the Air Force Reserve, according to neighbors and friends.
In addition to McCord, the other four suspects, all Miami residents, have been identified as: Frank Sturgis (also known as Frank Florini), an American who served in Fidel Castro’s revolutionary army and later trained a guerrilla force of anti-Castro exiles; Eugenio R. Martinez, a real estate agent and notary public who is active in anti-Castro activities in Miami; Virgilio R. Gonzales, a locksmith; and Bernard L. Barker, a native of Havana said by exiles to have worked on and off for the CIA since the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
All five suspects gave the police false names after being arrested Saturday. McCord also told his attorney that his name is Edward Martin, the attorney said.
Sources in Miami said yesterday that at least one of the suspects — Sturgis — was attempting to organize Cubans in Miami to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention there next month.
The five suspects, well-dressed, wearing rubber surgical gloves and unarmed, were arrested about 2:30 a.m. Saturday when they were surprised by Metropolitan police inside the 29-office suite of the Democratic headquarters on the sixth floor of the Watergate.
The suspects had extensive photographic equipment and some electronic surveillance instruments capable of intercepting both regular conversation and telephone communication.
Police also said that two ceiling panels near party chairman O’Brien’s office had been removed in such a way as to make it possible to slip in a bugging device.
McCord was being held in D.C. jail on $30,000 bond yesterday. The other four were being held there on $50,000 bond. All are charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other conversations.
McCord was hired as “security coordinator” of the Committee for the Re-election of the President on Jan. 1, according to Powell Moore, the Nixon committee’s director of press and information.
Moore said McCord’s contract called for a “take-home salary of $1,200 per month and that the ex-CIA employee was assigned an office in the committee’s headquarters at 1701 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Within the last one or two weeks, Moore said, McCord made a trip to Miami Beach — where both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions will be held. The purpose of the trip, Moore said, was “to establish security at the hotel where the Nixon Committee will be staying.”
In addition to McCord’s monthly salary, he and his firm were paid a total of $2,836 by the Nixon Committee for the purchase and rental of television and other security equipment, according to Moore.
Moore said that he did not know exactly who on the committee staff hired McCord, adding that it “definitely wasn’t John Mitchell.” According to Moore, McCord has never worked in any previous Nixon election campaigns “because he didn’t leave the CIA until two years ago, so it would have been impossible.” As of late yesterday, Moore said. McCord was still on the Re-Election Committee payroll.
In his statement from Los Angeles, former Attorney General Mitchell said he was “surprised and dismayed” at reports of McCord’s arrest.
“The person involved is the proprietor of a private security agency who was employed by our committee months ago to assist with the installation of our security system,” said Mitchell. “He has, as we understand it, a number of business clients and interests and we have no knowledge of these relationships.”
Referring to the alleged attempt to bug the opposition’s headquarters, Mitchell said: “There is no place in our campaign, or in the electoral process, for this type of activity and we will not permit it nor condone it.”
About two hours after Mitchell issued his statement, GOP National Chairman Dole said, “I understand that Jim McCord . . . is the owner of the firm with which the Republican National Committee contracts for security services . . . if our understanding of the facts is accurate, added Dole, “we will of course discontinue our relationship with the firm.”
Tom Wilck, deputy chairman of communications for the GOP National Committee, said late yesterday that Republican officials still were checking to find out when McCord was hired, how much he was paid and exactly what his responsibilities were.
McCord lives with his wife in a two-story $45,000 house in Rockville.
After being contacted by The Washington Post yesterday, Harlan A. Westrell, who said he was a friend of McCord’s, gave the following background on McCord:
He is from Texas, where he and his wife graduated from Baylor University. They have three children, a son who is in his third year at the Air Force Academy, and two daughters.
The McCords have been active in the First Baptist Church of Washington.
Other neighbors said that McCord is a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, and also has taught courses in security at Montgomery Community College. This could not be confirmed yesterday.
McCord’s previous employment by the CIA was confirmed by the intelligence agency, but a spokesman there said further data about McCord was not available yesterday.
In Miami, Washington Post Staff Writer Kirk Schartenberg reported that two of the other suspects — Sturgis and Barker — are well known among Cuban exiles there. Both are known to have had extensive contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, exile sources reported, and Barker was closely associated with Frank Bender, the CIA operative who recruited many members of Brigade 2506, the Bay of Pigs invasion force.
Barker, 55, and Sturgis, 37, reportedly showed up uninvited at a Cuban exile meeting in May and claimed to represent an anti-communist organization of refugees from “captive nations.” The purpose of the meeting, at which both men reportedly spoke, was to plan a Miami demonstration in support of President Nixon’s decision to mine the harbor of Haiphong.
Barker, a native of Havana who lived both in the U.S. and Cuba during his youth, is a U.S. Army veteran who was imprisoned in a German POW camp during the World War II. He later served in the Cuban Buro de Investigationes — secret police — under Fidel Castro and fled to Miami in 1959. He reportedly was one of the principal leaders of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the exile organization established with CIA help to organize the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Sturgis, an American soldier of fortune who joined Castro in the hills of Oriente Province in 1958, left Cuba in 1959 with his close friend, Pedro Diaz Lanz, then chief of the Cuban air force. Diaz Lanz, once active in Cuban exile activities in Miami, more recently has been reported involved in such right-wing movements as the John Birch Society and the Rev. Billy James Hargis’ Christian Crusade.
Sturgis, more commonly known as Frank Florini, lost his American citizenship in 1960 for serving in a foreign military force — Castro’s army — but, with the aid of then-Florida Sen. George Smathers, regained it.
Washington Post Staff Writers E.J. Bachinski, Bill Gold, Claudia Levy, Kirk Scharfenberg, J.Y. Smith and Martin Weil contributed to this report. | 2022-06-13T11:24:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The first Woodward and Bernstein story on the Watergate scandal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/13/first-woodward-bernstein-watergate-scandal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/13/first-woodward-bernstein-watergate-scandal/ |
The community raised $275,000 to buy Linda Taylor’s house, where she has lived for nearly 20 years
Powderhorn Park neighbors hold a block party in April for Linda Taylor, 70, who was given two months’ notice to vacate the home she has lived in for nearly 20 years. (Sharolyn B. Hagen)
Linda Taylor was given two months’ notice from her landlord to vacate the Minneapolis house she has proudly called home for nearly two decades.
“It felt like the world had been pulled from under me,” said Taylor, 70. “My house means everything to me.”
She initially owned the house, but she sold it when she fell prey to a real estate deal she didn’t understand, she said, and has rented the home for about 15 years.
Earlier this year, Taylor received an unexpected notice from her landlord to leave her white stucco home in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood, just a few miles south of downtown, by April 1. Her landlord wanted to sell the house and was asking for $299,000 — a sum Taylor could not afford.
“I could not sleep, I could not eat,” said Taylor, who lives alone in the two-bedroom house. “I felt really defeated.”
She worked at a local nonprofit organization for nearly three years before she was laid off during the coronavirus pandemic.
She lost her paycheck but continued paying rent — about $1,400 a month — using her savings, money from family and government subsidies including RentHelpMN, a program started during the pandemic to aid Minnesotans at risk of losing housing.
When Taylor’s landlord, Greg Berendt, told her to vacate, it was like “a stone had just dropped on me,” she said.
He said he would evict her if she didn’t buy the home or leave, she said. Berendt declined an interview request from The Washington Post when reached by phone.
Taylor said that despite her distress, she was determined to stay.
“I’m going to do something about it,” Taylor remembered telling herself. “This is my house.”
She decided to share her struggle with Andrew Fahlstrom, 41, who lives across the street and works professionally as a housing rights organizer. Since he moved to the neighborhood six years ago with his partner, he and Taylor have built a strong rapport.
“She has always been the one in the neighborhood who greets everyone,” Fahlstrom said.
He contacted neighbors to see what they could do to help Taylor. Given his line of work, Fahlstrom knew Taylor’s story was not unique, particularly as the local housing market has skyrocketed in recent years.
“So many people are losing housing right now,” he said. “If we actually believe housing is a right, then we need to act like it, because the next stop is homelessness.”
As word of the grass-roots campaign to save Taylor’s home spread around the block, neighbors were eager to help.
“People listened to what Miss Linda was saying and wanted to do something,” Fahlstrom said. “It was just such a clear and compelling story that everyone rallied for her.”
According to Taylor, she originally bought the house in 2004, but she started falling behind on payments and felt she was tricked into signing the house back over to the previous owner, who allowed her to stay on as a renter. In 2006, after her landlord was caught in a mortgage fraud scheme — which affected more than 45 homes, including hers — Berendt purchased the house.
He raised her rent twice during the pandemic, Taylor said, and let repairs and maintenance issues linger.
Several times over the years, Taylor — who has five children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren — went to social services and applied for programs and grants geared toward renters who want to buy their homes.
“Every time I tried to buy it, I ran into a ton of different walls,” Taylor said, adding that although she knew “my children would always support me,” they were not in a position to offer significant financial help.
Her neighbors empathized with her predicament.
“This is a person who has been paying for housing for 18 years. Her rent has gone to pay the property taxes, other people’s mortgages, the insurance, and supposedly repairs, too,” Fahlstrom said. “There needs to be more systemic intervention so that people can stay in their homes.”
The Powderhorn Park community decided it would not allow their neighbor to be displaced. The group was well equipped to mobilize on Taylor’s behalf.
“We have an active local neighborhood group because we’re within two blocks of George Floyd Square,” Fahlstrom said, adding that the 2020 protests over Floyd’s murder by a police officer brought the community closer. “The infrastructure was there, the communication line was there, the neighborhood relationships were there.”
Organizers sent a letter to the landlord, urging him to wait on eviction and start negotiations with Taylor so she could buy the house. It was signed by about 400 neighbors and hand-delivered to Berendt in February.
The plea worked. Berendt said Taylor could continue renting with an opportunity to purchase the home by June 31. He lowered the sale price to $250,000 — still out of reach for his tenant.
“Then it became a fundraising effort instead of an eviction defense effort,” Fahlstrom said.
Neighbor Julia Eagles was at the forefront of the initiative.
“I don’t want anyone getting displaced or priced out of the community,” Eagles said. “We all believed collectively that we were going to do what it takes to keep Miss Linda here. So many people know and love this woman.”
Taylor is known for the little free library on her front lawn, which she keeps brimming with books, as well as her regular volunteer work around the community.
“They call me the mayor,” Taylor joked.
Community members organized fundraising efforts, including a block party, social media campaigns and an art show — in which Taylor, who enjoys painting, sold some of her artwork. Local media covered the story, drawing more attention.
Organizers created a campaign site and a fundraising page, bringing in donations in amounts of $5 to $15,000. A local church gave the largest sum — $200,000 — carrying the effort to the finish line.
“When that came through, my faith grew bigger than a mountain,” Taylor said.
In just four months, the people of Powderhorn Park raised $275,000 for Taylor — enough to buy her home and cover repairs. Any additional funds will go toward utility payments.
Taylor said she is stunned by the support.
“I knew my neighbors loved me, but I didn’t know how much,” she said.
By May 31, one month ahead of her landlord’s deadline, Taylor closed on her home. After nearly 20 years, the house was finally hers.
“When it’s yours, it gives you a different type of feeling,” Taylor said. “I’m safe, I’m secure, and I have a home.”
She plans to continue hosting backyard barbecues, movie nights and lemonade stands with her grandchildren. And she is determined to pay the kindness forward.
To celebrate the neighborhood-wide win, there will be a block party on June 25.
“It’s been an amazing journey, and it continues on,” Taylor said. | 2022-06-13T11:24:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Minneapolis woman was about to be evicted. Neighbors bought her home for her. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/13/eviction-minneapolis-linda-taylor-neighbor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/13/eviction-minneapolis-linda-taylor-neighbor/ |
The 27-year department veteran admitted to making Holocaust jokes and shaving his facial hair into a ‘Hitler mustache’
Derek Kammerzell will get a $1.5 million settlement for resigning as an assistant police chief in Kent, Wash., after displaying a Nazi symbol on his office door. Kammerzell is a 30-year Army veteran who retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2019, according to the Seattle Times. (City of Kent)
A Seattle-area police officer was walking by an assistant chief’s office in 2020 when he spotted something strange on the door — insignia of high-ranking Nazi SS officers.
The officer reported it to the police chief, which led city officials in Kent, Wash., to suspend the assistant chief — 27-year department veteran Derek Kammerzell — for two weeks without pay. But after taking heat from those who felt the punishment was too soft, those officials sought to push Kammerzell out of the department entirely.
Now, the city’s leaders have agreed to pay more than $1.52 million to make that happen. While acknowledging that the settlement is “a substantial sum,” they said they believe the payout lets them move on by ridding Kent of an employee whose presence would distract from the department’s mission of policing the city.
“It was clear that the Assistant Chief would have significant difficulty being an effective leader in the Department,” officials said Friday in a statement.
But Kammerzell told the lawyer hired by the city to investigate the allegations against him that, although he knew the insignia was German, he didn’t know it was specifically connected to the Nazis and denied “expressing any positive sentiments about either Nazis or fascist governments,” according to a 28-page report on the investigation. He said he taped the insignia on his door because someone in the police department, reacting to Kammerzell’s last name, had nicknamed him the “German General” years before.
And the police union lawyer representing him said Kammerzell, amid a public firestorm, was being offered up as a “sacrificial lamb” to city politics, the Seattle Times reported.
That firestorm sparked in September 2020 when the officer spotted the insignia of oak leaves and diamonds taped above Kammerzell’s name plate, used the internet to confirm his hunch that it was tied to the Nazis and then sent a photograph of Kammerzell’s office door to the police chief.
That led the city to hire the Seattle-based law firm Stokes Lawrence to investigate. About four months after the insignia was reported, the lawyer who conducted the investigation concluded that the assistant chief, despite his denials, knew the insignia belonged to high-level Nazi officials who had attained the rank of “obergruppenfuhrer” in the SS, one of the most powerful and feared organizations in Nazi Germany.
In one, a police officer told the investigator that Kammerzell had joked some 15 years earlier about his grandfather dying in the Holocaust — because he got drunk and fell out of a Nazi guard tower, the report states. When interviewed, Kammerzell confirmed he told the joke more than once.
In another, a detective said that several years earlier, Kammerzell showed him a picture on his cellphone in which Kammerzell had his facial hair shaved into “a Hitler mustache” while wearing lederhosen, dress native to parts of Germany, according to the report. As he showed off the picture, he explained that he had thrown up his hand in a “Heil Hitler” salute while being photographed with another city official on a different occasion, the detective said.
When the lawyer asked about the accusation, Kammerzell admitted that he had once sculpted his facial hair to look like Adolf Hitler’s, although he said it was one of many configurations he photographed as he was shaving it off. He denied flashing a Nazi salute and suggested that any photograph that appeared to show otherwise had caught him in the middle of waving.
In late December, the announcement of Kammerzell’s two-week suspension caused outrage among Kent residents, the Times reported, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle blasted the city for a response that had left the organization “horrified.”
“By elevating and honoring Nazi imagery and titles and joking about the Holocaust, Kammerzell is supporting the extermination of six million Jews,” the federation said in a news release, adding: “The absence of true accountability demanded of Kammerzell and the sheer lack of consequences in this situation are shocking.”
Reacting to the blowback, officials put Kammerzell on paid administrative leave and asked him to resign, according to the city’s news release. Meanwhile, they announced he “would not be returned to work,” noting that, because they’d already disciplined him, federal and state laws’ “double jeopardy principles” prevented them from firing or otherwise reprimanding him again.
“As a result, we noted that his resignation would come at a high cost to the City,” Kent officials said Friday in their statement.
“This is a step toward ensuring the safety and well-being of the Jewish community,” the group said in a statement, “and of other groups who were made to feel targeted and unsafe through Kammerzell’s actions.” | 2022-06-13T11:24:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Assistant police chief gets $1.5 million settlement after displaying Nazi symbols - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/13/police-payout-resign-nazi-insignia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/13/police-payout-resign-nazi-insignia/ |
The stubborn reality thwarting Vladimir Putin’s fictions
Perspective by Joshua D. Zimmerman
Joshua D. Zimmerman is a professor of history and chair in Holocaust studies at Yeshiva University. His forthcoming book, "Jozef Pilsudski. Founding Father of Modern Poland," comes out in June with Harvard University Press.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pays his respects at the funeral of Leonid Kravchuk, independent Ukraine's first president, in Kyiv on May 17. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
In February, on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin addressed the Russian people, arguing that Ukraine was a fiction. Carved from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, he claimed it was actually part of Russia, with its people rejecting the idea of Ukrainian sovereignty.
He was wrong. As the Baltic republics issued multiple declarations of independence in 1991, and the Soviet Union was in the throes of disintegration, the Ukrainian parliament — under pressure from Moscow to remain part of a post-Soviet union of states — held a vote on independence on Aug. 24, 1991. The results were staggering, with 346 MPs voting in favor, five abstaining and a mere two voting against.
Three months later, on Dec. 1, 1991, Ukraine held a countrywide referendum on independence. With an 84 percent turnout of eligible voters, the result surprised even the most optimistic of Ukrainian leaders: over 90 percent voted for independence. On the same day, the people of Ukraine chose Leonid Kravchuk to be the country’s first president in an election in which all six candidates campaigned for independence. In this astonishing display of near unanimity, the government and people of Ukraine spoke loudly and clearly in favor of a clean break from Russia.
The emergence of a sovereign Ukraine in 1991 was the culmination of a century-long struggle for independence. And it reminds us that Ukrainian national identity has been deeply felt for more than a century.
The first Ukrainian declarations of independence took place during and immediately after World War I. The Central Rada — a coordinating body of Ukrainian political and cultural organizations in Kyiv — proclaimed independence for Ukraine on Jan. 22, 1918. The emotional tone of the proclamation, penned by the Rada’s head, historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, was unmistakable. “The Ukrainian People’s Republic hereby becomes an independent, free, and sovereign state of the Ukrainian people, subject to no one.”
Following the declaration, the Ukrainian government sent 400 irregular fighters 100 miles northeast to the town of Kruty to halt the advance of Russian troops. The 27 Ukrainian fighters who were killed in that battle are regarded as the first martyrs in defense of Ukrainian independence.
Having formally declared statehood, representatives of the Ukrainian People’s Republic signed a Treaty of Peace with the Central Powers in Brest-Litovsk on Feb. 9, 1918. In doing so, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey formally recognized Ukrainian independence and committed to securing its frontiers. Within days of the treaty, the armies of the Central Powers rolled into Ukraine, driving the Bolsheviks out of Kyiv on March 2, 1918. The following day, at the peak of German military power in Eastern Europe in World War I, the Central Powers signed a second peace treaty in Brest-Litovsk, this time with representatives of the Bolshevik government headed by Leon Trotsky, forcing Russia to recognize the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
Between March and November 1918, a sovereign, independent Ukraine with its capital in Kyiv functioned for the first time. But with the defeat of the Central Powers and the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, the victorious allies declared the treaties of Brest-Litovsk invalid. In an instant, the recognition that Ukrainians had received from two European great powers — Germany and Austria-Hungary — was withdrawn and the eight-month-old Ukrainian People’s Republic had to fend for itself without the means to do so.
At the same time, amid the collapse of Austria-Hungary, an empire that included Lviv and East Galicia, the last Habsburg viceroy in Lviv handed over the city’s control to Ukrainians in Lviv. Under the leadership of the prominent lawyer Yevhen Petrushevych, they announced the creation of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic. At Lviv’s town hall, Ukrainian forces raised the national flag, seized government buildings, the main railway station, telephone and telegraph services and the post office.
The move caused grave concern in reborn Poland, whose head of state and commander in chief, Jozef Pilsudski, regarded Lviv as Polish. Pilsudski’s troops advanced on Lviv, expelling the Ukrainian armed forces on Nov. 21, 1918. As the Ukrainian fighters were routed farther east by the Poles, forcing the West Ukrainian government to relocate, representatives of the two Ukrainian republics agreed to merge, proclaiming a de facto single, undivided Ukraine.
But as the Russian Civil War raged on — a conflict between the Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik White Army in which both opposed Ukrainian independence — hopes for Ukrainian sovereignty became increasingly dim. Ukrainian and Polish leaders came to a political and military agreement in April 1920 with the Treaty of Warsaw, in which Poland formally recognized the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Ukraine formally recognized Polish sovereignty over East Galicia and western Volynia.
Polish and Ukrainian troops immediately joined in a military campaign to defend Kyiv against Russia. And on May 7, 1920, they did just that. “At a time when the Polish army fights a common enemy side by side with the brave Ukrainian troops,” Pilsudski cabled his Ukrainian counterpart, Gen. Symon Petliura, “this successful joint struggle between the Ukrainian Republic and Poland will bring forth lasting prosperity to both nations.” Pilsudski assured the Ukrainian people that Polish troops would withdraw once the Ukrainian government and armed forces could defend themselves against Russian aggression. He emphasized that the Polish armed forces had come not as conquerors but as allies.
But the Red Army counterattacked one month later, forcing the Polish and Ukrainian armies into retreat. By August 1920, the Red Army reached the outskirts of Warsaw only to be repelled by a robust Polish counteroffensive. When the armies of Poland and Bolshevik Russia signed an armistice in October 1920, the resultant Treaty of Riga partitioned Ukraine between the two countries. The struggle for Ukrainian statehood had failed. In 1922, the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union, which included the constituent Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
But, even then, Ukrainians around the world still marked Jan. 22 — the day in 1918 that the Ukrainian People’s Republic was declared — as Independence Day. That changed on Aug. 24, 1991, when 98 percent of Ukrainian parliamentarians voted for separation from Russia. Subsequently Ukrainians have celebrated that day as Independence Day.
Today, when Ukraine faces an existential crisis in its war with Russia, Poland has not only taken in more refugees than any other country but is also the largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine next to the United States. That sentiment goes back more than a century, when in 1920, modern Poland’s founding father, Pilsudski, championed Ukrainian independence and put his country’s troops in harm’s way to support the Ukrainian cause. Then, when Western democracies hotly condemned Poland for provoking Russia in its defense of Kyiv, Pilsudski sternly replied with a warning to the West: Without an independent Ukraine, he said, Europe will never be secure.
It is not surprising that 71 years later, in December 1991, when the then-57-year-old Kravchuk became independent Ukraine’s first president, he is said to have remarked: “If only Pilsudski were alive today!” Kravchuk, who served as president until 1994, remained in the life of the nation until his death last month and was a supporter of President Volodymyr Zelensky during the 2019 presidential elections. Kravchuk, who had fallen into a coma, regained consciousness shortly before his death. At that time, he issued a final opinion to the world: “Ukraine must be in NATO,” he said. “There is no other option for Ukraine because today it is defending its land from Russian aggression.” | 2022-06-13T11:24:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukrainians have fought for independence for more than a century - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/13/ukrainians-have-fought-independence-more-than-century/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/13/ukrainians-have-fought-independence-more-than-century/ |
What the Civil War can tell us about Americans’ mental health in 2022
Resiliency and the ability to develop coping mechanisms may define our times
Perspective by Dillon Carroll
Dillon J. Carroll is a history instructor at Butte Community College in California, and author of the forthcoming book "Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness and Veterans of the American Civil War" published by LSU Press and out in Fall 2021.
Mental health advocate Juan Acosta, alongside first lady Jill Biden and Selena Gomez, right, speaks at the first Mental Health Youth Forum at the White House on May 18, 2022. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for MTV Entertainment)
The past several years have been extraordinarily challenging for Americans. We’ve endured an unprecedented pandemic that has left over a million of us dead. We voted in and watched a painfully divisive election, culminating in a treasonous assault on the Capitol. We watched, horrified, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia violently invaded its sovereign neighbor Ukraine. And now we’ve witnessed yet another horrific series of mass shootings. What role will the trauma of the past several years play? Has it “cracked us” as New York Times opinion columnist Charles Blow contends? The trauma of mass death and disruption is real, but Americans also have long demonstrated an incredible ability to self-soothe their trauma and distress under challenging circumstances.
Consider the experience of the Civil War, an extraordinarily traumatic experience. Although it often isn’t remembered that way, the Civil War was primarily a health disaster. Disease was rampant — two men died of illness for every one man killed on the battlefield. “There is a great deal of sickness here,” Confederate Benjamin Moody presciently observed in a letter to his wife from Richmond, “and more men dying with it than ever will get killed in the battles of the Confederacy.”
For those who survived brushes with illness, the challenges of the soldier experience awaited them. Men endured strict military discipline, poor rations and the strain of combat. Battle was a hellish experience that threatened to annihilate men in the worst imaginable way: anonymously. Hugging the earth during a Confederate artillery bombardment, Union soldier Thomas Chamberlain wished “that the ground would open and let me down.”
Soldiers watched friends and relatives shot and mutilated in the worst ways imaginable. “I have seen some of the most awful sights since I have been here that ever any man was permitted to look at,” a Confederate soldier wrote to his wife. Many struggled through the conflict, increasingly aware the war was taking them to unfathomable places. “I feel as if my present life was a disagreeable and painful dream, and not a reality,” Confederate William Nugent wrote his wife while in North Georgia in 1864.
But soldiers, North and South, displayed a remarkable ability to cope. Take, for example, Mobile, Ala., resident James Williams, who volunteered in October 1861 and became a soldier in the 21st Alabama Infantry Regiment. Williams and his unit fought in the bloody Battle of Shiloh. The Confederates entered the fight with over 40,000 soldiers — a staggering 9,000-plus falling dead or wounded on April 6 and 7, 1862. The experience left a permanent scar in Williams’s mind. “[I]t will take me months to describe what I saw on that terrible field,” he wrote his wife, Eliza, the day after the battle.
By the end of April, his agonizing was intruding upon his dreams, depriving him of sleep. Confessing his struggles to his comrades would be tantamount to an admission of weakness — anathema in the Southern male culture — but he hinted at them in his letters home. “I’ve had great and exciting times at night with my dreams since the battle,” he wrote, “some of them are tragedies and frighten me more than ever the fight did when I was awake.”
It is possible Williams suffered with post-traumatic stress disorder — which didn’t officially exist as a diagnosis at the time — or something like it, as invasive nightmares of the traumatic event are one of PTSD’s signature symptoms. At the time, psychology was in its infancy. In this pre-Freud era, asylum doctors theorized that mental illness had physical causes and moral causes. Physical causes included a head injury, serious illness, exposure to the elements and accidents. Moral causes included alcoholism, masturbation and excessive jealousy, envy or ambition.
To cope with the invasive nightmares of the battle that were throwing his mental health off balance, Williams turned to religion. The idea that an omnipotent deity continued to watch over him gave Williams comfort and set his mind at ease. The chaos of the battle suddenly made sense, for God had guided everything. And the thought of future battles no longer gave him anxiety, for God continued to control everything. As he contemplated future hostilities he wrote Eliza: “The God who shielded me before, yet watches over us all.” Believing in God and His omnipotent power gave order to chaos. Wrapped in a heavenly cloak of sorts, Williams came to believe that God would literally protect him in battle, giving him the peace of mind necessary to sustain his mental health. He never wrote about nightmares of battle again.
Instead of religion, some Civil War soldiers turned to medical professionals for treatment, or sometimes just for a warm meal and a sympathetic ear.
In 1864, John Jackson, a native of Maine, joined the 32nd Maine Volunteer Infantry. That summer, Jackson and his unit were drawn into Ulysses S. Grant’s vicious Overland Campaign in Virginia and the brutal battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. “I look upon war as I never did before,” Jackson wrote his father. “I always knew it was a horrid thing, but each hour reveals new horrors.” In early August, Jackson wrote his parents describing the effects combat was having on his mind. In a stunning admission, he outlined that he was himself feeling played out — a 19th century term for strung out — by the war and he recognized that “my mind I think suffers more of the two than my body even though I get very tired and feel almost exhausted.”
Spiraling into what could have been a mental breakdown, Jackson fled from the front lines in search of self-care. Somehow, he made his way to a Union hospital in Petersburg, Va. While he was not physically ill, he was, it seems, emotionally and psychologically suffering and he needed a respite from the fighting. Surprisingly, Jackson admitted to his mother: “I have got sort of tired out. All I need is a chance to rest and I will be all right in a few days.”
This is another remarkable admission: Jackson had purposefully shirked his duty on the front lines to practice self-care. Illegally leaving his position with his unit put Jackson at risk of official punishment, not to mention the judgment of his peers. Some of those who fled the front lines were painted as effeminate cowards by their comrades. This was not an unserious risk at the time, for character was everything in the 19th century, and such a charge could lead to social isolation. But apparently that risk was worth it for Jackson, who needed a respite from the fighting.
He spent the next few months at Union hospitals in Virginia, where he enjoyed plenty of rest. By November, he was ready to return to the front lines and continue his work as a soldier. As he returned to his unit near Petersburg, he wrote his mother: “I begin to feel in a hurry to be with the boys. It almost seems as if I was going home.”
The Civil War revealed the resiliency of Americans amid crises — and their ability to develop a variety of ways to survive the crushing trauma. Today our challenges and coping mechanisms are very different — psychiatry and therapy, along with wellness, mediation and more, are far more developed parts of American culture and medicine, for example. Mental health is a very real concern in these trying times, something that needs to receive attention, understanding and resources. But the Civil War experience suggests Americans will develop their own unique coping mechanisms for enduring the seemingly endless blows plaguing our society. | 2022-06-13T11:24:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the Civil War can tell us about Americans’ mental health in 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/13/what-civil-war-tells-us-about-americans-mental-health-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/13/what-civil-war-tells-us-about-americans-mental-health-2022/ |
Parents, want to stop overdoing? Research offers a clue.
Could the human tendency to overlook the option to subtract be contributing to families' overcrowded schedules? (iStock)
Leidy Klotz, a professor of engineering and architecture at the University of Virginia and father of two, and Yael Schonbrun, a clinical psychologist, assistant professor at Brown University and mother of three, have been paying less attention to their kids lately. And their kids, these parents are convinced, are better for it.
“I try to ignore them for a little bit of time each day. ” said Schonbrun, whose children are 5, 9 and 12. “And when they complain that they’re bored, I say, ‘That’s terrific, what have you come up with?’ ”
By occasionally subtracting their attention from their children, Klotz and Schonbrun are putting into practice a lesson gleaned from research Klotz, whose children are 7 and 3, has been conducting over the past few years: It’s human nature to tend to solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would provide an objectively better outcome.
Klotz and his colleagues came to that conclusion through a series of creative experiments published in the journal Nature, which involved tasks such as fixing a Lego structure (removing a brick was the best solution), arranging a vacation itinerary (more about that below), or trying to make a pattern of squares symmetrical (the key was erasing squares, not adding them). But it wasn’t until he made a desperate late-night purchase of a rocking contraption to soothe his newborn baby that Klotz came face to face with how the tendency affects parenting.
When she heard about the purchase, Schonbrun, who met Klotz through her podcast, “Psychologists Off the Clock,” pointed out that he had fallen into the very trap he had researched: His instinctive approach to solving the problem of a crying infant and tired dad was to add another baby gadget rather than focusing on, say, a consistent sleep schedule.
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The fact that parents often do too much at the expense of their children’s independence and a calmer home life isn’t a unique insight. There are less-is-more books out there such as “The Good Enough Parent” or “Hunt, Gather, Parent,” or “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.” There are experts who advocate “minimalist parenting,” or tell parents they should give their children less praise, less attention, fewer activities and fewer toys. Research consistently shows a correlation between overinvolved parents and young adults with issues such as school burnout, inability to regulate their emotions, or anxiety and depression.
But Klotz’s research, which is also outlined in his 2021 book “Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less,” helps us understand the reasons parents often do too much in a scientific way — and as a natural tendency rather than a parental failing. He and Schonbrun, author of the upcoming “Work, Parent, Thrive: 12 Science-Backed Strategies to Ditch Guilt, Manage Overwhelm, and Grow Connection (When Everything Feels Like Too Much),” also have some granular advice for resisting the urge.
First, it helps to understand why humans have developed this mental shortcut. One theory is that doing so offered evolutionary benefit — more food, more companions, more focus on children would increase the odds of a family’s survival. And as civilizations developed, “adding has been the better way,” Klotz said. “When you don’t have a road, when you don’t have a building, you don’t have any kind of educational opportunities for your kids, adding that makes sense.”
Schonbrun said that there is also a possible psychological reason for the propensity to add: humans’ eagerness to avoid uncertainty. “When we get really uncomfortable,” she said, “we want to develop a sense of certainty,” which we might try to do by adding something to secure our desired outcomes — whether it’s gathering more food so our children won’t starve or signing them up for more activities in the hope that they’ll get into Harvard.
In addition to evolutionary and psychological imperatives, there might be modern cultural influences at work as well, Schonbrun said. “We’ve really evolved into this culture of more is better … more parenting, more culture, more cultivating your kids’ interests, more activities, more diverse foods, talking to them more, you know, just more of everything.”
While being in thrall to additive solutions is a propensity that humans have generally, Klotz and Schonbrun suspect that it’s also one that parents, who are often under pressure and overwhelmed, especially might fall victim to. One of Klotz’s experiments showed that people operating under a heavier cognitive load are more likely to rely on mental shortcuts and miss opportunities to subtract.
When overwhelmed parents can’t see options to subtract, one result is overscheduling, he said. “We so often think of what are our to-dos, what are the things that we should be doing, and very rarely think about what we can stop doing. And so over time, we’ve just got more and more and more on our plates.”
This tendency was painfully demonstrated by the experiment in which participants were asked to improve an itinerary for a day trip in Washington, D.C. The itinerary as presented was essentially unworkable because it contained 14 activities that required travel time of two hours (without traffic). Yet only 1 in 4 participants removed an activity.
Of course, whether it’s a day trip to D.C. or weeks jam-packed with school and sports and activities, “we end up not having a very rich experience at all because we’re stressed out and overwhelmed,” Schonbrun said. “And yet because of that overwhelm and because of that systematic neglect of subtracting … we often find ourselves in that position. That is sort of the plight of the modern parent, I think.”
So what can parents do to arrest this tendency to overschedule their families until they are overwhelmed?
Be aware. “You can’t change a behavior unless you know that you’re engaged in it, because the awareness needs to come first before it comes, especially if it’s something that you’re doing habitually,” Schonbrun said.
Remind yourself that you can subtract. When the researchers instructed some participants in the experiments that they could add or subtract, those participants were more likely to see the advantageous subtractive changes. (Once you start looking for them, it’s hard to not see aspects of modern parenting that could be subtracted: goody bags, sports snacks, participation trophies, making lunches, folding laundry, fretting about picky eaters!)
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Klotz suggests putting reminders into place at the time that you make decisions — about schedules, for example, or household rules. “So going back to the to-do list, for example, if you do that weekly, but you’ve also challenged yourself to say, 'Okay, I’m going to think of some stop-doings when I do my to-do list,’ then you’re getting past that first barrier of not thinking about subtraction.”
Keep in mind that saying no is not subtracting. “Even when you say no to something, you say no to a new activity, that’s not relieving your overwhelm,” Klotz said. “That’s just preventing it from being added to.”
Think about your core values when making decisions about what to subtract. Schonbrun says questions to ask yourself can include: “What does this mean to me? What does it stand for? What’s the reason that I do that?” If the activity you are engaging in does not reflect your values, and, furthermore, makes your life more stressed and hectic, it may be time to drop it.
This approach doesn’t mean you can never add. “I think the key thing here is that we want people to consider both options in all cases,” Klotz said. Schonbrun agreed: “Being able to really reflect on, Should I add or should I subtract given how I want to be building my life is really a helpful thing to be deliberately contemplating.” | 2022-06-13T11:24:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parents, want to stop overdoing? Research offers a clue. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/06/13/parents-overscheduled-slow-down/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/06/13/parents-overscheduled-slow-down/ |
‘Jackie & Me’ delivers a fresh look at the Kennedys
Louis Bayard’s new novel imagines the winsome couple before Camelot. It’s a delight.
Review by Anna Pitoniak
(Algonquin)
The ingenuity of Louis Bayard’s new novel, “Jackie & Me,” is that it doesn’t try to penetrate the black box of the Kennedy marriage by writing about it directly. Instead, Bayard seeks an answer by focusing on the before: the years when Jack and Jackie were still two distinct individuals, a young man and a younger woman navigating their ways through Washington.
The story begins in 1952, when Jacqueline Lee Bouvier is invited to a friend’s cocktail party in Northwest D.C. The star of the evening is the handsome congressman from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who makes an immediate impression on the women in attendance. “The room had been conquered in advance,” Bayard writes. “Hands had extended, lips had parted.” Jackie hangs back, dismayed by the assumption that she, too, is meant to flock and fawn. Educated at Vassar and the Sorbonne and George Washington, Jackie may only be 22 years old, but she knows herself, and she has no desire to be one among many.
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Bayard thoughtfully explores the question of what it means to repress one’s own desires, to shape one’s life and identity around another person. Lem has always been enamored by his friend Jack, although his loyalty doesn’t necessarily mean naivete. When asked to keep an eye on Jackie, Lem puts it to Jack bluntly: “If you’re going to send me on a secret mission, I need to know who my spymaster is.” Jack himself? Or is it “the boss man in Hyannis? Who am I working for? To what end?”
Anna Pitoniak is the author of “The Futures,” “Necessary People” and “Our American Friend.”
Jackie & Me
By Louis Bayard
Algonquin. 352 pp. $28 | 2022-06-13T12:53:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/13/jackie-kennedy-novel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/13/jackie-kennedy-novel/ |
KIRKWOOD, MO - SEPTEMBER 24: U.S. Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R) address the press on September 24, 2012 in Kirkwood, Missouri. Gingrich was in the St. Louis area to attend a fundraiser for Akin’s U.S. Senate campaign against incumbent Claire McCaskill. (Photo by Whitney Curtis/Getty Images) (Photographer: Whitney Curtis/Getty Images North America)
In a series of primaries this year, Democrats appear to be trying to Todd Akin the Republicans. Todd Akin? He was the very conservative candidate for a Senate seat in Missouri back in 2012, who Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill boosted in the Republican primary by running ads bashing him for being too conservative. The strategy was simple: Republican voters would reflexively support anyone who was being called a conservative extremist, but then that candidate would be easier to beat in the general election. Democrats have been using a version of that strategy this year in contests including a Senate primary in Colorado and primaries for governor in Illinois, Nevada and Pennsylvania. So what can we say about it?For one thing, be careful about buying the hype. Yes, ads can move votes in primaries — much more easily than in general elections. But this is exactly the kind of thing that pundits tend to overemphasize in interpreting elections. Campaign professionals behind this kind of ad may give wink-wink denials to reporters on the record while falling over each other off the record to claim credit for their cleverness and skill, and one of the things that election analysts and pundits in general tend to respect is cleverness. That’s not to say that this stuff never has real effects. But be cautious.
For another, note that this is all at the level of party operatives. At the voter level, things can work differently. In Georgia’s recent primaries, for example, Democratic voters who supported Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger apparently did so because they thought those Republicans would be better if elected than their Donald Trump-supporting opponents, not as a plot to elect Democrats to those offices.That said, as long as the campaign is honest — that is, as long as the candidates accused of being extremely conservative are in fact extremely conservative — I don’t think there’s anything unethical going on here. What Democrats are attempting to do is to exploit the preference for extremism among Republicans that in other ways can be very damaging to Democrats. That’s ethically kosher.Whether it’s wise or not is a different question. After all, if the presumably weak general-election candidates wind up winning, then the strategy will have backfired. National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar asks, “After all, how seriously does the party take its own argument that American democracy itself is threatened by Republicans when they’re boosting some of the most radical conspiracists and election-deniers for naked political gain?”
That’s a fair question. But it cuts both ways. After all, the reason Democrats and many others believe that democracy is in danger isn’t because the entire Republican Party is made up of fringe authoritarians. It’s because the bulk of the party isn’t willing to take on the fringe, and therefore Republican majorities in Congress and in statehouses are, given where we are, a threat to democracy. Even if the people elected are more like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and less like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn. If that’s correct, then it’s hard to blame Democrats for either hoping that the less-bad Republican gets nominated or hoping that the less-electable Republican gets nominated; the real blame (as Kraushaar says) is with the party “whose electorate is increasingly drawn to extremes and whose leaders are too risk-averse” to do anything about it.Kraushaar is talking about formal Republican party organizations opting against involvement in nomination contests. The larger problem, however, is that too many party actors — especially in Republican-aligned media — egg on Republican voters to move farther and farther into the fringe. They will falsely claim, for example, that many or even most Republican politicians are sell-out RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). In the real world, party polarization at the politician level is very strong, the least conservative Republicans in Congress are more conservative than the least liberal Democrats, and the main reason that conservatives don’t always get their way is that the US system has a strong status-quo bias that’s hard to beat. Oh, and because Republicans have rarely won enough elections to have a unified government. Not because Republican politicians are constantly betraying them. And that’s exactly why Democratic campaign operatives think that if they can establish that (say) a patch of moss is the most extreme conservative in a Republican primary then that patch of moss is going to get a lot of votes. And as long as that’s the case, Democrats are only going to have difficult choices — and democracy could well be at risk. | 2022-06-13T12:54:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boosting Extremists Is a Dangerous Game - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/boosting-extremists-is-a-dangerous-game/2022/06/13/615d97a6-eb15-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/boosting-extremists-is-a-dangerous-game/2022/06/13/615d97a6-eb15-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
A watercolor detail for Henry Ossawa Tanner’s larger oil painting “Spinning by Firelight — The Boyhood of George Washington Gray.” (Elias Williams for The Washington Post)
When paintings and sculptures are passed down through generations, they tie us to the the artists who created them — and the people who collected them
By Kriston Capps
Art has a clear assignment in our homes. It brightens rooms, tightens or expands spaces and ties everything together.
But it also has an assignment in our lives: It tells a story. Or, to be more precise, stories — about both the people who created it and those who have come into possession of it. A fine painting or photo can be an anchor for a memory, a time, a place. It’s not some mass-produced item we scooped up at a big-box store because the color matches the throw pillows on our sofa, just to hang on the wall and forget. It’s a living thing that ties us to the people who created it and their lives.
These are stories about artworks that have been handed down. They serve as deep repositories for storytelling over generations, even as they provide beauty and decoration. Some of these objects tell important stories about American history, with connections to the Great Depression, the incarceration of Japanese Americans and the struggle for civil rights. Others are markers in art history. And some tell the story of the people who came to own them. All of them point to individual passions that connect family members over time.
Melvin Holmes’s art collection began with a single feline figurine: “The Cat,” a small 1945 piece by Sargent Johnson, a sculptor based in San Francisco whose work was rooted in the Harlem Renaissance. The small terra-cotta creature looks like a modernist take on an African ornament. The way that Holmes’s daughter tells it, that first purchase, in 1985, hooked Holmes on art for life.
“It was like an addiction,” says Saranah Walden, who lives in Burlington, N.C.
Her father worked as a city administrator in San Francisco, Walden says, and just finding a piece for sale was a challenge. One art dealer he asked told him that Johnson’s works were rarer than Picasso’s. When he finally found “The Cat,” it was out of his price range, but a gallery let him make payments on it.
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Holmes realized there was an entire world of African American art that he wanted to focus on. He particularly sought to acquire work by Johnson, and he was clever about it. He befriended a couple who owned Johnson’s works, for example, and offered to buy what they were willing to part with. Eventually Holmes came to own more than 30 Johnson pieces. For other artists — Aaron Douglas, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, Henry Ossawa Tanner, for example — he placed ads in newspapers in cities where they had lived, making his interest known.
He didn’t come from money, and collecting was expensive. But he was willing to put in the work. Research became part of his hobby. At one of the countless estate sales he attended, he spied a piece by the 19th-century landscape painter Grafton Tyler Brown. To acquire the painting, he agreed to buy the entire lot, a box of mixed belongings priced at $200. Brown’s painting alone was worth tens of thousands.
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Holmes amassed more than 360 pieces of 19th- and 20th-century works by African American masters. “My dad always had a very museum-looking home,” Walden says. She and her sister grew up sleeping in antique canopy beds; they dreamed of cheap bunks from Kmart. When the sisters moved out of the house, he turned their rooms into salons. He had a zeal for curating his art but, aside from occasional tours associated with San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora, few people ever saw his collection.
When he died of a blood clot in 2013, his daughters had no idea what to do with it all. Walden was living in a two-bedroom rowhouse in D.C. at the time; her sister lived in Hawaii. Neither had the capacity to store his dream.
Leaving no instructions turned out to be “the best thing he could have ever done,” Walden says. She and her sister fretted about managing loans and registrations, but in the end, they made an archive, photographed the works and published a catalogue, something Holmes had always wanted to do. Then they sold most of the art.
But Walden couldn’t let go of “The Cat,” the totem that had unlocked so much passion in her father. She keeps that and about 15 other pieces from his collection in her dining room.
“If other people could own these pieces and get joy from them like he did,” she says, “then we would be honoring the whole meaning behind collecting.”
Susan Rosenbaum’s grandfather owned a factory in New York during the Great Depression. Her father, Benjamin Abramowitz, worked at the factory for a time, she says, but it was his life’s ambition to make art.
Since Abramowitz’s death in 2011, Rosenbaum has acted as a steward of his vast enterprise. She has registered and archived many thousands of his drawings, paintings and sculptures. Her Rockville, Md., home could double as a museum honoring her father, who made his home in the Washington area and earned a reputation as a prominent painter.
Like many artists during the Depression, Abramowitz, who was born in 1917, got his first break with the Works Progress Administration. The Federal Art Project, a program under the New Deal that ran from 1935 to 1943, gave jobs to thousands of artists, writers, musicians and performers. As many as 10,000 artists earned commissions from the agency, designing posters and illustrations — even abstract stuff — in a style that came to characterize an entire generation.
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Abramowitz hooked up with the WPA when he was 19, sparing him from factory life. Often, he made prints and drawings that were too dark or moody for his federal minders, says Rosenbaum. But he was nevertheless prolific as a federal contractor. Many of these works were signed with a pen name: Ben Hoffman.
“He was very much an admirer of Hans Hofmann,” the German-born American abstract painter, says Rosenbaum. “So he took that name.”
“Rooftops” is a WPA print that hangs in the guest bathroom in Rosenbaum’s home. The lithograph shows the scattered chimneys and rooftops of Brooklyn as seen from a passing train. In its overlapping shapes and shades, it’s almost possible to trace the influence of Hans Hofmann, whose paintings melded geometric forms.
This print, along with other pieces made by Abramowitz in this era, showcases the blocky, virtually cubist style that gave WPA artworks such a distinctive look. While he wanted no part of factory work for himself, Abramowitz often made drawings and prints of workers at docks and rail yards. Many of his early landscapes were urban, industrial scenes, including working waterfronts and wharves. The city was never far from his images, even in his later abstract works.
“Rooftops” has a counterpart in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a similar lithograph with a slightly different title: “On the Way to Coney Island” (1935-43). It comes with a signature: “Ben Hoffman.”
Of the pseudonym, Rosenbaum says, “The minute he left the WPA, he dropped it.”
In 1977, toward the end of the Somoza regime and the start of the Nicaraguan Revolution, the artist Julio Sequeira left his home in Nicaragua. He arrived in El Salvador just as it was entering its own brutal civil war, which would occupy the country for the next 12 years.
But for the artist, it was an auspicious time. That same year, a French-born Holocaust survivor named Janine Janowski opened an art space in San Salvador, Galería El Laberinto. Despite the political calamity, Janowski started programming conceptual pieces and performances — vivencias — that were at times audacious experiments in contemporary art. For the first of these happenings, in 1982, Sequeira turned the gallery’s entrance into a tunnel, an installation he called “El paso por el Mar Rojo” (“Parting of the Red Sea”).
“He was a painter, he was a poet, he was a performer, he could dance and sing all of the songs from Latin America, from different countries of Latin America,” says Muriel Hasbun, who is Janowski’s daughter, referring to Sequeira. “He was kind of this walking encyclopedia of all of these different genres of music.”
Hasbun has made it her mission to promote the legacy of El Laberinto and her mother’s work in Central America. Throughout the civil war, the gallery served as a platform for Salvadoran modernists such as Carlos Cañas and Rosa Mena Valenzuela. “It was a really generative space, during a time that was just so difficult,” Hasbun says.
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“La fiesta de Boaco,” a painting that Sequeira made about three years after linking up with the gallery, is a love letter by a homesick artist. It depicts a feast scene that appears to be taking place at sunrise and sunset simultaneously: an all-day affair. Everyone’s out in the plaza for this one. The title of the painting refers to Sequeira’s small mountain hometown in Nicaragua, but Hasbun says that the painting carries meaning for many Central Americans.
“It’s this incredible celebration with all of these people in the foreground, and then the amazing landscape of Central America, really,” she says. “This construction of the landscape of volcanic mountains and beautiful rivers — definitely Nicaragua, definitely El Salvador.”
The painting hangs in Hasbun’s studio at her home in D.C., along with another Sequeira work, “Volcán de San Salvador” (1982). Both works refer to the costumbrismo tradition, a style that emphasizes local or regional scenes and customs. At the same time, “La fiesta de Boaco” depicts an almost cosmic transformation of the landscape.
Janowski promoted her artists tirelessly. She organized a retrospective of Sequeira’s work for the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1990 that traveled to four other cities in Louisiana. (Sequeira died that year.) Through talks, exhibitions, residencies and exchanges, Hasbun is working to do the same: forging bonds among artists and illuminating the experiences of people across the diaspora.
“I always knew that this collection was really important, in terms of what it says about who we are as Salvadorans and Central Americans,” Hasbun says.
Rae Alexander-Minter, grandniece of the great 19th-century realist painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, remembers an exchange with Hillary Clinton at the White House in 1996 when she was first lady. Alexander-Minter was in the Green Room to see one of her granduncle’s pieces unveiled as the first painting by an African American artist to enter the White House collection. Alexander-Minter says that Clinton grabbed her around her waist and whispered, “I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl.”
That painting, “Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City” (circa 1885), was bequeathed to Alexander-Minter by her mother, who she says was Tanner’s favorite niece. Her mother safeguarded the paintings in the Philadelphia home where she was raised. “Growing up, she used to make sure the housekeeper always closed the blinds and pulled the curtains, to shield the painting from the sunlight,” she says.
Alexander-Minter has sold or donated many of the paintings passed down to her, by Tanner as well as by other artists who ran in his circle in Paris, where he lived and worked.
But at her home in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx in New York, Alexander-Minter still has several pieces by Tanner, important works of art history and family lore. These include four etchings of biblical scenes that came to her from Tanner’s grandson, whose father she met in France while she was retracing the artist’s footsteps. In her study hangs a detail for a more extensive work, titled “Spinning by Firelight — The Boyhood of George Washington Gray” (1894). The image is typical of Tanner’s sensitive domestic scenes, often depicting the daily lives of Black people. An original oil painting, “Seascape — Jetty” (circa 1876-79), hangs in Alexander-Minter’s living room, an example of Tanner’s idyllic landscapes.
While Tanner’s art graces important museum collections today — “Spinning by Firelight” is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery, while another work, “Portrait of the Artist’s Mother,” can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — Alexander-Minter says that they remind her of growing up in Philadelphia, as the child of civil rights lawyers, not far from where Tanner lived as a teenager.
Tanner’s career started in Philadelphia. He was the only Black student when he enrolled in 1879 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under Thomas Eakins, at the time the city’s most famous artist. Although Tanner moved to France in 1891 and lived there until the end of his life, he didn’t consider himself an expatriate. Alexander-Minter says that she learned from his letters that he was frustrated by the way that Americans narrowly categorized him as an African American artist. Tanner’s childhood home in North Philadelphia is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; historian Carter G. Woodson once called the house on Diamond Street the “center of the Black intellectual community in Philadelphia.”
But today, that house is abandoned and imperiled: It no longer belongs to Alexander-Minter’s family, and it’s unclear who holds its title. Local preservationists are working to save it from the wrecking ball. “It’s tragic what’s happening, and trying to rescue our history, the material history of our family, is getting more difficult,” Alexander-Minter says.
In 1942, not long after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans to be relocated to internment camps, Robert Ritsuro Hosokawa and Yoshi Yoshizawa were married. The newlyweds were sent to the Puyallup Assembly Center, known also as Camp Harmony, at the Washington state fairgrounds south of Seattle. They were later moved to the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho, where some 13,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.
Hosokawa was a journalist who later became a newspaper editor and a journalism professor at the University of Missouri. He produced a newsletter while he was detained: the Camp Harmony Hooey, a broadsheet that detailed comings and goings, scoops and gossip, and other bits of useful information for camp readers. (The Hooey’s tagline: “All the Bull Not Fit To Print.”)
The paper mock-ups from the newsletter and other artifacts that survive from the couple’s time in the camps are among the prized possessions of their daughter, Mary Sue Hosokawa Brown, who keeps some of them at her Eugene, Ore., home. The art came out of a hard place.
“In his journal he mentions that the first death in the camp was when a man went out looking for wood to use for whatever purpose and died of the cold and the elements,” Brown says.
In a July 8, 1942, journal entry, Hosokawa wrote about a camp-wide art show, dwelling on watercolors by Keith Oka and ink drawings by Eddie Sato, fellow prisoners; he also praised some comic caricatures involving the camp’s latrines. “I hope these pieces will be preserved to tell a story to future generations about the creativity expressed even behind barbed wire,” Hosokawa wrote.
Brown has two cherished objects from this time. One particularly well-crafted piece has become the subject of a family mystery.
Brown’s mother was given wooden pins by two fellow prisoners at Minidoka. Woodworking was a popular hobby for craftsmen in the camps, who gathered scrap lumber and found metal bits for carving. One of the pendants is shaped like a heart, across which the name “Yoshi” appears, carved in cursive. Brown’s father treasured this token; she plans to hand it down to her daughter, Rachael, who named her own daughter Yoshi.
A second miniature is even simpler: shaped like a leaf, perhaps a maple or sycamore, carved out of wood, varnished, elegant, with a safety pin still attached. The piece is no more than 1½ inches on a side. Brown suspects that this one was the work of George Nakashima — a designer and woodworker who later produced furniture lines for Knoll — who was imprisoned at the same time.
“I remember my dad telling me that it was given to my mom, at Minidoka, by a man who was a woodworker, and who went on to become a fairly well-known woodworker,” Brown says.
Tracing the origins of these artifacts is difficult. David B. Long of the Nakashima Foundation for Peace says that there is no way to verify whether the pin was made by Nakashima. David Lane, a member of the Minnesota Woodworkers Guild and former librarian based in Minneapolis, thought the leaf pin could possibly be the work of Gentaro Kenneth Hikogawa, a master woodworker at Minidoka who was an influence on Nakashima during their time at the camp. But Lane says that Hikogawa lived a modest life and died fairly young.
Her father didn’t speak much about his time in the camps until he was older, something that Brown says is typical. Late in his life, as he suffered from dementia, these artifacts brought him comfort and served as prompts for stories.
“I feel really fortunate that I even have these two things,” Brown says.
Kriston Capps is a writer in Washington. | 2022-06-13T13:50:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Stories Art Can Tell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/13/stories-art-can-tell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/13/stories-art-can-tell/ |
Eagles’ wide receiver flies in third-fastest 110-meter hurdles win ever
Devon Allen pulls away from Grant Holloway in the 110-meter hurdles race at the New York Grand Prix at Icahn Stadium. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Devon Allen, a two-time Olympic hurdler, took the Philadelphia Eagles’ “Fly like an Eagle” mantra to another level Sunday at the USA Track & Field NYC Grand Prix, running the third-fastest time ever in the 110-meter hurdles.
Allen, a former wide receiver at Oregon who signed with the Eagles as a free agent in April, overtook Grant Holloway, the silver medalist in the event at the Tokyo Olympics, with a time of 12.84 in the final, with Holloway finishing second in 13.06. Only Aries Merritt, who set the world record of 12.80 in 2012, and Holloway, who ran a 12.81 in last summer’s U.S. Olympic Trials, have posted faster times in the event. Allen, whose previous personal best was 12.99, was shooting for the world best Sunday.
“I knew it was there,” Allen told NBC. “Just needed some fresh legs. I was doing OTAs [organized team activities] in Philly, having some fun with the boys playing football, but now I’m back in track mode.”
He’ll stay in that mind-set for the U.S. Championships June 23-26 and the World Championships July 15-24. Then he can pivot to the NFL at training camp with the Eagles, whom he impressed by running a 4.35 40 during Oregon’s pro day.
Allen, 27, has not played football since 2016. In three seasons with the Ducks, he caught 54 passes for 919 yards and eight touchdowns in 23 games. He opted to focus on track after knee injuries limited his football career, and finished fifth in the 110-meter hurdles in the Rio Olympics and fourth at the Tokyo Games.
“When I had my last knee injury I decided I was going to focus on track through the next Olympics, actually took a year longer than I had planned because of covid, but now we’re here,” Allen told Oregon Live in April. “I’m going to put football on the back burner for now. I wanted to come to pro day and announce that I’m taking this seriously. The goal is to get ready for Worlds, compete at Worlds, win, break the world record and then July 18th when Worlds is done go to camp the next week.”
Although he signed a three-year contract, an Eagles’ wide receiver group featuring newly acquired A.J. Brown, as well as holdovers DeVonta Smith, Quez Watkins, Zach Pascal and Jalen Reagor may be tough to crack. A reserve or practice squad role may be his landing spot, but his teammates, including former all-pro cornerback Darius Slay, are well aware of his speed.
“I know Slay is fast and a little older — I can’t talk much trash because I’m a 27-year-old rookie — but some of the guys have joked about racing me,” he recently told NBC Sports Philadelphia’s TakeOff with John Clark podcast. “I’m okay with that, but being a pro track athlete, I don’t race for free, so I said $10,000 a race — and so far no one’s taken me up on that.” | 2022-06-13T14:16:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Eagles’ wide receiver Devon Allen posts third-fastest 110-meter hurdles time ever - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/eagles-wide-receiver-third-fastest-hurdles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/eagles-wide-receiver-third-fastest-hurdles/ |
Man arrested and charged in attempted kidnapping in Georgetown
Authorities said a man has been arrested and charged in an attempted kidnapping that happened last week in Georgetown.
Emilio Andres Rizo, 18, faces a kidnapping charge and is being held for mental health observation, according to court records.
Attempts to reach a defense lawyer for Rizo were unsuccessful. He’s scheduled for an initial court hearing June 21.
According to records from the D.C. Superior Court, Rizo tried to kidnap a child on Tuesday in Georgetown. The incident unfolded around 2:30 p.m. in the 3100 block of M Street NW, not far from the waterfront area.
Court records said Rizo started talking to three women and a 4-year-old boy. When one of the women and the boy walked away to a nearby bus stop, he continued to talk to them. When one of the women let go of the child’s hand to briefly look at her phone to check when the bus would arrive, court records and a police report said, Ritzo grabbed the boy and ran away. Authorities said he went about 10 yards before he put the boy down and fled the area.
Rizo was found two days later in the 800 block of 11th Street NW at a bus stop where he was arrested, authorities said in court records. | 2022-06-13T14:20:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man arrested and charged in attempted kidnapping in Georgetown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/arrest-in-attempted-kidnapping-in-georgetown/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/arrest-in-attempted-kidnapping-in-georgetown/ |
Three shot, one fatally, in Maryland’s District Heights
Authorities said three people were shot, one fatally, early Monday morning in the District Heights neighborhood of Prince George’s County.
The incident unfolded around 1:30 a.m. in the 1700 block of Forest Park Drive near Ritchie Road, according to county police. When officers responded, they found two men who had gunshot wounds, and another victim was found in the 8800 block of Walker Mill Road.
All three victims were taken to a hospital, where one was pronounced dead.
No further details were given at this time, and the deceased victim’s name was not released, pending the notification of his relatives.
The incident remains under investigation. Officials said detectives are trying to find a suspect and figure out a motive. | 2022-06-13T14:21:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fatal shooting in Maryland's District Heights neighborhood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/fatal-shooting-prince-georges-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/fatal-shooting-prince-georges-county/ |
House panel set to examine Trump’s persistent lies in 2nd hearing
Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), center, is flanked by Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Monday, March 28 in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A House hearing Monday is set to air evidence that then-president Donald Trump was repeatedly told in the wake of his 2020 loss that there was no credible evidence that the election had been stolen. Still, witnesses are expected to say, Trump persisted in making baseless claims that pumped up his fundraising, enraged his voting base and laid the groundwork for the violent attack on the Capitol two months later.
Monday’s hearing of the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection was upended just hours before it was set to begin, after a key figure in Trump’s orbit who has been publicly silent — former campaign manager Bill Stepien — withdrew from his scheduled appearance.
A statement from the panel said Stepien was unable to appear because of a family emergency and that his lawyer would make a statement in his place. Two people familiar with the committee’s work who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe its activities said Stepien had participated in a recorded deposition, raising the possibility that videotaped excerpts could be shown in lieu of live testimony. Besides Stepien, the committee is scheduled to hear from other figures with firsthand knowledge of the pressure campaign that came to bear in the hours, days and weeks after polls closed.
A committee aide who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to preview the hearing Sunday said the testimony would “show that some of those individuals responsible for the violence on the 6th echoed back to those very same lies that the president peddled in the run-up to the insurrection.”
Monday’s hearing will be the second of seven hearings scheduled this month. The proceedings, which were set to begin 10 a.m. Monday on Capitol Hill, were delayed by 30 to 45 minutes following news of Stepien’s withdrawal.
Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) will lead the hearing alongside Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who is expected to detail the fundraising efforts that were undertaken after the election using the “big lie” to pad Trump’s campaign coffers. Those efforts raised hundreds of millions of dollars, the committee aide said.
The Post has reported that investigators on the “green team” have sought to trace every dollar raised and spent on Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen. The investigators interviewed low-level Trump campaign officials who penned fundraising pitches, and they grilled Trump advisers about who personally profited from raising large sums of cash in the wake of Trump’s defeat.
Stepien’s scheduled appearance was unexpected: He has not publicly spoken out about the 2020 election or its aftermath, though prior news accounts have depicted him as one of the figures around Trump who was clear-eyed about the election loss and withdrew from an active role in seeking to reverse it. Stepien, notably, in now serving as a campaign adviser to the Republican primary opponent of panel Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).
The panel’s statement did not address whether Stepien would appear publicly at a future hearing.
Aside from Stepien’s lawyer, the committee is scheduled to hear Monday from journalist Chris Stirewalt, who was working as a senior political editor for Fox News on election night and was fired after projecting that Biden would win Arizona. A second panel will feature Benjamin Ginsberg, a prominent GOP elections lawyer; B.J. “BJay” Pak, who served as U.S. attorney in Georgia and resisted pressure to concoct voter-fraud allegations; and Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner who vocally pushed back on Trump’s stolen-election claims in the days after the election.
The committee’s first hearing, watched Thursday by nearly 19 million viewers, laid out an overview of its case handing Trump overarching responsibility for the Capitol attack. Cheney asserted at the hearing that Trump had a “seven-part plan” to overturn his loss and stay in power — effectively orchestrating a failed coup.
Members of the panel appeared on Sunday news programs to make that case anew. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said Trump and his allies tried to pull “every lever of government” to try to stay in power in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The committee’s third public hearing, on Wednesday, will focus on Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign at the Justice Department to overturn the results of the presidential election. It is expected to feature several former Trump administration officials, including former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen.
On ABC News’s “This Week,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said that he believed there was credible evidence that Trump committed multiple federal crimes and said 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.
Aaron Gregg, Caroline Kitchener and Amy B Wang contributed to this report.
Jan. 6 hearing live updates: Trump 2020 campaign manager pulls out of testifying live | 2022-06-13T14:21:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House panel set to examine Trump’s persistent lies in 2nd hearing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/house-panel-set-examine-trumps-persistent-lies-2nd-hearing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/house-panel-set-examine-trumps-persistent-lies-2nd-hearing/ |
Looking to rent your home? Here’s what to consider.
With remote work, consumers are using more short-term rentals. If this continues, owning short-term rental property could be increasingly lucrative.
Perspective by David Mount
Lifestyle changes ushered in by the pandemic have substantially affected the short-term rental market. (Thibault Camus/AP)
When it comes to earning profits on an investment property, conventional wisdom is evolving.
Traditionally, property owners have looked for long-term renters seeking to stay in place for six months or more. But the rise of companies such as Airbnb and Vrbo has altered the status quo, leading to an increase in short-term rentals and introducing a new set of circumstances for property owners to consider. Short-term rentals allow investors to diversify their portfolios in a volatile market, and national rental sites have made it easier to fill and profit from them.
Flexibility during peak demand
Flexibility is one of the chief benefits that property owners can expect through a short-term rental strategy. Long-term rental properties primarily provide income, but short-term rentals can be used for multiple purposes. This includes flexibility for owners to stay in the home themselves, reserve the home for friends and family, and defer costs or even make a profit when the home is rented out.
More Mount: Building your dream house or renovating? What to know about construction loans.
The flexibility of the property’s usage lets owners take advantage of rates during peak rental seasons and can be more lucrative depending on location. Long-term rental rates are locked in for the lease, which means owners may not reap the benefits of higher demand and increased profitability.
Costs to consider
Rental properties are undeniably illiquid investments, which can support a diversified portfolio, but they should not do so at the cost of long-term goals. Rental-property owners lack the ability to withdraw from the property in times of need, which should be considered before investing.
Investors should also consider ancillary costs, which can be higher in short-term rentals. With greater turnover, there will probably be greater wear and tear, leading to an increase in furnishing and cleaning costs. These costs can be passed on to a degree, but owners will also need to build in periods where the home is empty to allow for cleaning and a transition between renters. Owners should also be mindful of any surprise hurdles regarding start-up costs, the potential for slow rental rates out of the gate and other cash-flow challenges.
As short-term rentals have increased in popularity, so, too, have regulations around them. Owners should do their research to ensure they understand the potential for renters and the local laws.
Prospective property owners may not hold a crystal ball, but they should carefully consider their investment’s potential to gain confidence in its financial viability.
More Mount: Thinking about lending your child money to buy a home? Here’s what you should consider first.
Before committing to the investment, would-be owners should ensure that the property fits well into their overall financial strategy. Will the property’s maintenance costs hamper fiscal health? How will the inevitable empty periods affect cash flow? Will unforeseen challenges, such as a recession, derail medium- or long-term goals?
Short-term rentals and the horizon ahead
Lifestyle changes ushered in by the pandemic have substantially affected the short-term rental market. Beginning in 2020, the remote-work boom allowed consumers to move around, with one-to-two-month-long rentals becoming a more viable option. In fact, short-term rental listings are slated to reach record highs in 2022, following 9.4 percent year-over-year growth last year, according to GlobeSt.
Whether seeking temporary stretches of privacy, a larger living space or invigorating new surroundings, consumers are taking advantage of the new slate of available short-term rentals. If these consumption habits become more deeply ingrained and remote work holds popular among employers, owning short-term rental property could be increasingly lucrative.
The recent boosts in demand have run up against decreased housing inventory, and if that holds, owners should be able to rent their homes at a premium.
With those advantages in mind, investors should be wary of the latest interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve. As financing becomes more expensive, the cost of entering the short-term rental market will rise, making profitability harder to obtain and potentially necessitating an adjustment in rental strategy.
Evolving market conditions
Whether folks are considering renting an existing home or are curious about buying property for short-term rentals, it is essential to weigh the evolving market conditions alongside careful research and fundamental investing realities. A wise balance of these factors may set interested parties up to own, share, rent, invest in and profit from the home of their — or renters’ — dreams.
David Mount is a director with the Wise Investor Group at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Reston, Va. Baird does not provide tax, legal or real estate advice and does not provide or service mortgages. | 2022-06-13T14:25:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Looking to rent your home? Here’s what to consider. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/looking-rent-your-home-heres-what-consider/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/looking-rent-your-home-heres-what-consider/ |
Enough. (Bloomberg)
In the wake of multiple mass shootings this year — including the slaughter of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last month — Senators Chris Murphy and John Cornyn have reached a tentative bipartisan agreement on the first significant national gun reform in many years. It won’t please everyone, of course. But there’s no doubt it represents progress. | 2022-06-13T14:25:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Last, a Bipartisan Effort on Gun Safety - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/at-last-abipartisan-effort-on-gun-safety/2022/06/13/8c21893a-eb19-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/at-last-abipartisan-effort-on-gun-safety/2022/06/13/8c21893a-eb19-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Authenticity has become a must-have quality in the business world, up there with diversity and sustainability. Advertisers feature “real people” rather than models. Gourmands forsake Taco Bell for taco trucks. Ambitious corporate types attend courses on how to be an authentic leader. As for us worker bees, we are constantly being urged to bring our authentic selves to work, as if work is a primal-scream therapy session rather than an exchange of cash for labor.
In her thought-provoking and beautifully written new book “Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture” Alice Sherwood, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Policy Institute at King’s College London, argues that authenticity is so fashionable precisely because its opposite, inauthenticity, is so ubiquitous. We live in a world of fakes and frauds, knock-offs and con tricks. About 10% of us have handled counterfeit goods — there are more counterfeits on the market than the genuine article — and about the same proportion of us fall victim to a fraud, scam or con every year.
The problem with authenticity starts with the word’s multiple meanings. The most obvious meaning of “authentic” is “genuine”: An authentic Michelangelo is one that was painted by the master rather than a forger or even a pupil. A second meaning is “natural”: An authentic fruit juice is made with the juice of fruits rather than sugar and water. “Genuine” and “natural” also feed into something fuzzier: Discerning holiday makers want to experience the authentic Mexico rather than the one that is packaged for the mass tourist market. Here authentic can mean anything from hidden to old and unspoiled.
The word has a whole new set of meanings when it is applied to people. Authentic is commonly used to distinguish between true leaders and artificial ones. Thus in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, John McCain marketed himself as an authentic leader — the free-wheeling pilot of the Straight Talk Express — as a contrast to dynastic politician George W. Bush.
Today the word is acquiring a new meaning: marching to the tune of your own inner drum rather than adopting a made-to-please public persona. This idea has its intellectual origins in the Romantic idea that society acts a constraint on the heroic individual and the post-structuralist theory that biological and other realities are socially constructed. But by some weird alchemy it has become all-pervasive in HR departments.
You can just about argue that “authentic” products and “authentic” leadership have something in common. In today’s intangible economy, companies are increasingly selling brands rather than commodities — that is, bundles of emotions rather than solutions to practical problems. The most successful brands try to bond with the consumer’s hidden self: Buy me and you will become the real you. So it makes sense to apply the same logic to the employment contract: Work for us and we will help you to be all that you want to be. Still, we are a long way from the idea that “authentic” means a genuine Michelangelo rather than a forgery.
The word becomes even slipperier when you try to apply it to the real world of business. Let’s start with products and experiences since they are the simplest. On the face of it, the case for authenticity is simple: People are willing to pay a premium for authentic goods or services because they think that they are superior. People buy real Gucci bags rather than fake ones because the real Gucci bags will last whereas the fake ones will fall apart. They visit the “real” Mexico rather than tourist haunts because they know that there is more to Mexican culture than cheap beer and nice beaches.
Yet aren’t brands in themselves a lie — or at least a fantasy? Brand managers spend heavily to convince us that if we wear their clothes or sport their bags we will live a more exciting and fulfilling life.
And aren’t the boundaries “authentic” and “inauthentic” changeable? Holiday-makers have to venture ever further into the back-and-beyond of Mexico in order to escape from other tourists who are also seeking the authentic Mexico.
Sherwood has a lot of fun with Andy Warhol. Warhol spent his career mocking the notion of authenticity that lies at the heart of the art market. He happily confessed that his assistant, Gerard Malanga, “did a lot of my paintings” and routinely ran off lots of copies of “his” pictures on the grounds that “repetition is reputation.” He didn’t even bother to sign the works that he didn’t produce, getting a rubber stamp made of his signature so that flunkies could sign them for him. At one point, he took out an advertisement offering to sign anything, including food, whips and money — for a fee. But now that Warhol has become the very thing that he mocked — a major artist whose paintings are worth millions — his skepticism is coming back to bite him, or at least his legatees. In 1995, the Andy Warhol Foundation established an Authentication Board to call out any fakes.
Sherwood introduces us to the phenomenon of “authenticity decay” to go along with “truth decay,” the blurring of the line between fact and opinion that characterizes so much political discourse. Snapple broke into the over-crowded drinks market because it used natural ingredients — the juice of real fruits — rather than sweetener and bubbles. But it was eventually bought by a giant beverage company, Keurig Dr Pepper, which set about fitting it into its corporate culture: By 2011, Snapple Apple, which has the phrase “all natural Snapple” on the bottle, contained no apple whatsoever.
In TV and film, the J.R.R. Tolkien characters that stalk Middle Earth have become ever-more divorced from the world created by the reclusive scholar, degenerating, at their worst, into action-movie clichés. My younger daughter, a lover of the Harry Potter books and films, refuses to watch “Fantastic Beasts,” the latest series in the Potterverse, on the grounds that it “isn’t real.” Authors can only go so far on the road from creator to brand endorser before they lose their audience.
The concept of authenticity is even more slippery when it comes to people rather than products and services. Are authentic politicians really authentic? Or are they just trying on different masks from their colleagues? The John McCain of the 2008 campaign was a different man from the McCain of 2000. And is authenticity really a desirable quality? Many British voters warmed to Boris Johnson because they treated his cavalier habits, from lying habitually to betraying his wives, as proof that he was the opposite of a conventional blow-dried politician. They are now treating the very same habits as proof that he is a cad, albeit an authentic cad.
The concept is at its slipperiest when it comes to the ubiquitous idea that we should bring our authentic selves to work. Does anyone really have one single authentic self? Most people have lots of different selves, depending on what we are doing; some even hope to evolve as they gain experience. And is it really wise to expose our inner selves in the workplace? Herminia Ibarra, of London Business School, points out that leaders can lose credibility if they expose too much of what they think and feel, particularly if they are untried.
The bring-yourself-to-work movement rests on a misunderstanding of the nature of work. Work is a structured activity, replete with hierarchies and conventions, in which we adopt professional roles in order to achieve collective ends. It also rests on a failure to appreciate the desirability of drawing a line between public and private, particularly in a world in which the public realm is so polarized. Do we really want gun-rights advocates littering their workspaces with pictures of semi-automatic guns because their inner hunter urges them to do so?
The ultimate paradox about authenticity is that the more we crave it, the more we are likely to be deceived: Authentic leaders turn out to be bounders and authentic experiences turn out to be mirages. There is no doubt that we all need to reclaim reality from a counterfeit culture, as Sherwood puts it in her subtitle; but, alas, thanks to the assiduous work of marketers, management gurus and other jargon mongers, authenticity is now just another counterfeit idea in a world overflowing with them. | 2022-06-13T14:25:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Scam of Authenticity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-scam-of-authenticity/2022/06/13/bcd44fb4-eb1d-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-scam-of-authenticity/2022/06/13/bcd44fb4-eb1d-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Why do we get the hiccups?
A scientist explains why we hiccup and how to make it stop.
By Jason Bittel
A case of hiccups take you by surprise? It probably has to do with something you just ate or drank. (Photographer: Jacom Stephens/Getty Images/iStockphoto)
One-hundred years ago on June 13, a man from Iowa named Charles Osborne started hiccupping — and he didn’t stop for 68 years!
Can you imagine that? More than half-a-century of hiccupping?
Yet we know this absurd story is true because Osborne holds the honor of the longest-known case of hiccups in history, at least according to Guinness World Records.
Fortunately most of us get the hiccups only once in a while. But have you ever wondered what’s going on inside your body when it happens?
It probably has to do with something you’ve eaten recently, said Ali Seifi, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Health at San Antonio. “Eating or drinking too fast, spicy food, carbonated soda, or a large meal of dry foods such as pasta or bread can trigger a muscle in our belly called the diaphragm,” Seifi said.
Normally, the diaphragm (pronounced DY-uh-fram) helps our lungs breathe in and out. But sometimes it can twitch or spasm. But that’s only half of what makes us hiccup.
“Those spasms send a message to the brain, and then the brain sends a message to our throat to close our vocal cords, which are what allow us to speak,” he said. “And that sudden closure is what makes the hiccup sound.”
Unlike Osborne’s case, most episodes of the hiccups will go away on their own after your diaphragm stops responding to whatever you ate or drank. There are also plenty of home remedies — from having someone surprise you to breathing into a paper bag to swallowing a spoonful of sugar.
But the best way to defeat a bad case of the hiccups is to treat what’s happening inside your body.
Seifi created a special straw that does just that. It’s called HiccAway, and the way it works is simple. The straw is designed to make you suck five times harder than a normal straw, and when you do this, you’re make your diaphragm flex. Then, when the liquid in your cup makes it to your mouth and you swallow, your throat has to relax your vocal cords.
“So the two [body parts] that are causing the hiccups now are busy with more important tasks,” said Seifi. “And that ends the vicious cycle of hiccups.” | 2022-06-13T14:26:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why do we get the hiccups? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/13/why-do-we-get-hiccups/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/13/why-do-we-get-hiccups/ |
Ella Braidwood at the Butch Please! event. (Abi McIntosh)
The unbridled joy of queer bars
As a lesbian, I feel protected there from the outside world — no matter how much it tries to disrupt us
Perspective by Ella Braidwood
A lot of LGBTQ people will be able to tell you about their first trip inside a gay bar. Mine? I was 17, and was snuck into a club called Outrageous, in Carlisle, northern England, by the lesbians on my football team.
The interior was as its name suggested. The window frames were a garish pink; they played Rihanna’s “S&M” every time I went; and off to one side, there was a model horse — taken from an old-fashioned carousel — that people would sit on and take photos of themselves. The club nicknamed the horse “Randy.”
As a young lesbian in the early 2010s, that place was like a royal palace to me. I’d seen some of the lesbian couples from football kissing before, but, in public, there was often an underlying trepidation to their affection: like someone could shout at them at any moment. (And, sometimes, someone did.)
But their anxiety dissipated inside Outrageous. Suddenly, they relaxed: Here were women kissing women and men holding men, with, well, gay abandon.
It’s been just over 10 years since then, and I now live in London, but LGBTQ clubs and venues remain among the places where I find the most joy. When I was a kid, I used to shake snow globes, then watch the snow settle, and see how those idyllic microcosms were undisturbed despite my efforts. That’s kind of how I feel inside queer spaces: protected from the outside world, no matter how much it tries to disrupt us.
I can only speak from personal experience — this won’t be the same as every other LGBTQ person — but, in every relationship of mine, I’ve been discriminated against. To be more specific: In every single one, I’ve been shouted at for holding hands in public. That includes multiple times in the past year in London; one time, we were followed by teenage boys on their bikes.
If you are straight, try to imagine that: what it would feel like to know that, at some point — not if, but when — you’ll get heckled for simply holding your partner’s hand. It might not bother you the first time, maybe not even in the second or third instance. But consider how 10 years of it, the length of time that I’ve been “out,” might grind you down. That’s the thing with discrimination: It’s exhausting. There is an attrition to it. I am tired of being shouted at.
What I’m trying to say is this: LGBTQ clubs are like sanctuaries to me; pink-lit paradises, where I can forget about all of that while flailing around to Robyn and Muna. They are among the few places where I can kiss whom I want, knowing I won’t get harassed.
In the past couple of months, the first time since before the pandemic, I’ve started going back to a club night called Butch, Please! Held in south London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern — where Freddie Mercury is rumored to have once smuggled Princess Diana inside — the night is specifically for queer women, trans and nonbinary people, who are often sidelined on the gay nightlife scene in London.
I’d forgotten how important Butch, Please! is to me, as a butch lesbian; what it feels like to wade into a crowded floor and see who I am reflected in the people around me. In recent years, our various LGBTQ identities have been pitted against each other. But what I see during those events is a determined unity: a sweaty community of lesbians, queer women, transgender and nonbinary people dancing together to Olivia Rodrigo. There is a solidarity between those bodies pressed together, our identities in harmony — a sea of low-fade haircuts, piercings, tattoos — when it feels like the world is trying to rip us apart.
In the capital, some of my other favorites are Gal Pals — a night for queer women, nonbinary and trans people — alongside queer venues the Glory, a drag hot spot, and Dalston Superstore. Inside each of them, it’s the same feeling: I get this sheer thrill, an unrivaled liberation, that comes from not being in the minority, just for one night. There is something very beautiful in watching people come alive in a way we’d never do in the outside world.
Statistically, in recent years, LGBTQ people here have been less safe than ever. In England and Wales, anti-LGBTQ hate crimes rose every year in the five financial years up to 2021, according to official government statistics. Earlier this year, three people were convicted in the homophobic murder of Gary Jenkins, a bisexual man, in Cardiff, Wales. LGBTQ spaces have also been targeted. A few years ago in Cumbria, a white supremacist was jailed for his plot to carry out a “slaughter” at a gay pride night. In 2016, 49 people were killed in Orlando at the LGBTQ nightclub Pulse — exactly where they were supposed to be safe.
As a lesbian, I’m often subjected to a specific kind of homophobia: one laced with misogyny and the fetishization of my relationships. It is nearly always by men. In 2018, 2019 and 2021 (2020 was missed out), “lesbian” was the most searched for term by U.K.-based users on Pornhub, according to its own data.
GOP lawmakers push historic wave of bills targeting rights of LGBTQ teens, children and their families
In the past couple of years, I have been asked for threesomes, had “lesbian” shouted at me in the street, and had kisses aggressively blown at me — all by men. In 2019, two women were beaten up by a group of boys on a bus in London after they refused those boys’ demands for them to kiss. Globally, my sexuality continues to be persecuted (homosexuality is still criminalized in about 70 countries).
Going by the hate crime statistics, there is a greater need than ever for LGBTQ-specific spaces, including ones not centered around alcohol. (Research has shown that LGBTQ people are disproportionately affected by substance abuse.) But the climate for LGBTQ venues in the United Kingdom — like in the United States, which has contended with a dwindling number of lesbian bars for years — is harsh. Between 2006 and 2017, more than 50 percent of London’s lesbian bars closed, according to one study. There is just one lesbian bar in London, She Soho. Outrageous closed in 2019.
I don’t know where I would be without LGBTQ spaces. As a closeted teenager, Outrageous made me feel less alone: I used to stand on the edge of the dance floor in my plaid shirt — my way of saying I was gay without actually saying it — avoiding eye contact and nervously smiling at the floor. That place, my royal palace, showed me that I’d be all right, eventually. (And I was.)
There is unbridled joy to be found inside those queer havens. Underneath those disco balls, there is so much freedom.
Ella Braidwood is a journalist and editor based in London. | 2022-06-13T14:26:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The unbridled joy of queer bars: A Pride Month essay - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/13/pride-month-queer-bars-joy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/13/pride-month-queer-bars-joy/ |
Former president Donald Trump. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
As we prepare for Monday’s committee hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection, it’s worth dwelling on the legal concept of “willful blindness.” Under it, deliberate ignorance of a particular fact does not constitute exoneration if there was a high — and obvious — probability that this fact was true.
The fact in question, for our purposes, is this: “Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joseph R. Biden.” Trump knew this, yet tried to overturn the result anyway, an effort that culminated in the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has continued insisting the election was stolen from him. This has functioned for Trump and his apologists as a form of exoneration: He genuinely believed that to be the case and merely exercised whatever legal options he thought were available in response.
But this story will implode at the House select committee hearing on Monday. It will focus on Trump’s “big lie” about his loss, and how it underpinned his weeks-long attempt to overturn the outcome. Central to this will be showing that Trump did know he’d lost before launching that effort.
“I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the committee, told CNN on Sunday.
One of our greatest collective failings in response to Trump’s determination to destroy our political system has been the credulity granted to the idea that “Trump and his supporters actually believe the big lie.” That refrain has been ubiquitous for 18 months.
But this notion, which is usually accompanied by hand-wringing about our “two separate realities,” lets Trump and his allies off the hook. The much more sordid story is this: They planned and executed a premeditated, far-reaching plot to keep Trump in power illegitimately, in the full knowledge that his loss was procedurally legitimate.
This is the story the committee must expose. We already saw former attorney general William Barr testify to the committee that he informed Trump that claims of a stolen election were “bulls--t.” In response, the former president lashed out at Barr, demonstrating Trump knows how damaging this is to him — a major vulnerability.
Now the committee will demonstrate in greater detail how Trump refused to accept his own advisers’ insistence that he had indeed lost the election. Critically, the committee will place particular emphasis on Trump’s declaration of victory on election night, despite having been told the votes weren’t there for him to win.
Here’s why that’s so important: It forcefully demonstrates that Trump’s scheme for overturning the election was premeditated, deliberate corruption.
This fact continues to get lost, but Trump telegraphed his strategy as early as July 2020. Trump essentially told reporters he would seize on expected delays in the count of mail ballots to use an election-night lead to declare himself victor, and argue that uncounted mail votes were fraudulent.
Trump also privately told advisers he would do just this. And that’s exactly what he did end up doing.
All of that became the basis for all that followed: pressure on elections officials and the Justice Department to manufacture impressions of widespread voter fraud, on state legislators to certify sham electors, and on Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the electoral count in Congress.
The committee’s intention to demonstrate that Trump’s planning began early could be politically powerful, but that’s not all: It also goes directly to possible criminality.
If Trump and/or his co-conspirators are criminally investigated in relation to Jan. 6, one potential crime could be obstruction of an official proceeding, in this case the count of presidential electors in Congress. Prosecutors must show that Trump or other perpetrators did this “corruptly.”
“You’d have to show that when he was trying to find various means to overturn the election, he actually knew he lost,” former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade told me.
Demonstrating “corrupt” intent entails showing knowledge of a “wrongful purpose,” McQuade said. She noted that “willful blindness” could be essential to demonstrating this.
“If you close your eyes to the high probability that a fact exists,” she said, “you can’t use that to evade responsibility.”
In a kind of collective act of self-gaslighting, much of the public has been disarmed by Trump’s tendency to unabashedly project his corruption, as if blithely signaling his intentions somehow drains them of corrupt intent.
In fact, Trump briefed us in advance on the corrupt scheme he intended to carry out, and then executed it according to plan. Yet the story we constantly hear is that Trump “believed” his efforts had some sort of legitimate basis. That’s absurd.
Whether Trump and his band of coup-plotters will be criminally investigated is unknown, of course. But whatever happens on that front, Monday’s line of inquiry has the potential to forcefully expose to the public the throbbing core of premeditated corruption at the heart of Trump’s scheme. And that could enlarge public understanding in a very big way. | 2022-06-13T14:26:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why today’s Jan. 6 revelations will be dangerous for Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/jan-6-committee-hearing-dangerous-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/jan-6-committee-hearing-dangerous-trump/ |
The GOP is wrong. It’s not that hard to break with Trump.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol holds its first public hearing to reveal findings of a year-long investigation on June 9. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
So many Republicans, exemplified by the invertebrate House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), continue to debase themselves in defending defeated former president Donald Trump despite his attempt to overthrow our democracy. In turn, mainstream media outlets shrug their shoulders at the sycophancy and deep dishonesty. “What do you expect?” they effectively argue. “It’s just politics.”
It is just that sort of cynicism — Republicans’ abiding contempt for voters and the media’s irresponsible indifference to anything but horserace politics — that leaves America vulnerable to the return of Trump and Republican authoritarian rule. If it’s all a game and no one is expected to do the right thing, then why not reelect the lying MAGA crowdpleasers?
Aside from the moral nihilism, the Trump sycophants and the media overestimate how hard it is to break with the leader of the insurrection. Some conservatives do it without batting an eye.
Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson essentially told off his spineless fellow Republicans for continuing to support Trump in an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Bret Baier. "Republicans need to do a lot of soul-searching as to what is the right thing here and what is the right thing for our democracy in the future and not simply adhere to the basic instincts of some of our base.”
Hutchinson added that “Trump is politically, morally responsible for much of what has happened, but in terms of criminal liability, I think the committee has a long way to go before they could establish that.” It’s not clear why Hutchinson can’t seem to grasp the facts of the conspiracy to defraud the United States and to disrupt Congress’s proceedings to certify electoral votes, but at least he refuses to play along with the “big lie.” Too bad Arkansas Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman have not the decency to follow his lead.
You might argue that it’s easier for Hutchinson to criticize Trump, since he is term-limited from seeking reelection. But there are Republicans in deep-red states who are seeking reelection and refuse to pander to the MAGA base or defend Trump. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who voted for the independent commission to investigate the insurrection, declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were “wrong” and that Trump would not be his pick in 2024.
Bacon declared, “We have to learn the lesson ‘why did we lose in 2020?’ It was the comportment and the temperament.” He also agreed with the suggestion that Trump was guilty of “dereliction of duty.” Bacon went further, saying he would not dismiss out of hand a criminal indictment of Trump. Despite these views, Bacon won more than 80 percent of the vote in his primary contest last month.
It is not hard for Republicans to admit the obvious, to stop pandering to the deluded MAGA base and to acknowledge that Trump betrayed his oath. Yet the timorous McCarthy (not to mention the ridiculously ambitious crew of 2024 contenders) cannot manage even that.
All praise is due to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has already earned her place in history. But amid the admiration and praise for her, the question remains: Why is the rest of her party so cowardly? | 2022-06-13T14:26:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The GOP is wrong. It’s not that hard to break with Trump. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/no-gops-refusal-break-with-trump-is-not-just-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/no-gops-refusal-break-with-trump-is-not-just-politics/ |
Blaming alleged fraud was always Trump’s central campaign strategy
Bill Stepien watches President Donald Trump speak at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., on Election Day in November 2020. (Alex Brandon/AP)
By July 2020, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign was in trouble. Polling showed that he was trailing Joe Biden badly, beyond the margin he had overcome four years prior. His effort to relaunch in-person events with a rally in Oklahoma was a debacle, with turnout falling far short of expectations. So it did not come as a surprise when Trump shook up his campaign team, demoting campaign manager Brad Parscale and elevating his deputy, Bill Stepien.
Unlike Parscale, Stepien was a veteran. He had worked for former New Jersey governor Chris Christie until his involvement in the infamous Bridgegate scandal prompted Christie to throw him overboard. Stepien had worked for Trump in 2016, too, brought onboard that August during another shake-up. The new title he earned in July 2020 seemed to suggest that a slow effort to steer Trump toward experience and professionalism had finally borne fruit.
But it took very little time for the reality to become apparent. Within hours of Stepien’s appointment, it became very clear that Trump’s actual campaign strategy — sowing seeds of doubt about any election loss — would remain his team’s central focus.
Trump had been talking about voter fraud for years by then. In October 2016, he claimed that the only way he would lose the state of Pennsylvania would be if he were the victim of fraud — a ridiculous assertion that nonetheless proved prophetic. Of course, he wasn’t talking about mail-in ballot fraud then but in-person fraud — people voting, going out and putting on a different hat and coming in to vote again. It didn’t make much sense, and there was no evidence for it, but it didn’t matter. The point was that Trump wanted to be able to blame his loss on something other than himself and long-standing rumors about voting in big cities offered him that out.
Then he won … but only the electoral vote. So he started claiming that there had been fraud in California that cost him the popular vote (a ludicrous claim for which there was no evidence presented) or fraud in states such as New Hampshire that led to a narrow loss. Fraud claims and Trump losses always went hand in hand. When a Republican activist in North Carolina was caught committing electoral fraud, Trump shrugged. When, however, a guy named Gregg Phillips declared that Trump had been the victim of millions of fraudulent votes — another ludicrous claim for which there was no evidence presented — Trump broadcast it widely.
By early 2020, Trump refocused his claims. He had paid little attention to alleged mail-in ballot fraud before the pandemic, but states’ decisions to expand remote access to voting that year gave Trump an opportunity to sow a new field of doubt. By early April, he was already claiming that absentee-ballot fraud was widespread and a dire threat, using the idea to pillory Democratic governors.
He wasn’t subtle about his actual concern. During an interview with “Fox & Friends” that month, Trump complained that Democrats were seeking “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” More mail-in ballots meant danger to Republicans and to himself, Trump thought — so he worked hard to disparage the voting method.
By July, this pattern was already well-established. So what was remarkable when Trump’s team followed up his elevation of Stepien with new claims about the risk of mail-in voting was simply how goofy the claims were. A mail truck that caught fire which White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tried to imply was some sort of violent conspiracy? Republican primary voters being initially sent Democratic primary ballots before getting the right ones? The obvious point was to create a miasma of skepticism around mail-in ballots, not to actually show any fraud.
As Election Day approached, states worked hard to offset the doubt that Trump was hoping to elevate. The president, unchecked, continued to make dubious claims about electoral security; state officials continued to reinforce the security and safety of mail-in ballots. Asked at one point if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost, Trump claimed that he would only lose because of mail-in ballots.
“I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster,” Trump said. Then: “We want to have — get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very trans — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly; there’ll be a continuation.”
By the last month of voting, it was very obvious what would happen: Democrats would vote more heavily by mail and, in some states, those votes would be counted more slowly in the hours and days after polls closed. The term “red mirage” began to circulate, referring to the likely prospect of a Trump/Republican lead fading as those more-Democratic votes were added to the tally. And as that term began to circulate, so did concern about how Trump would try to exploit his slow-moving loss.
Two days before the election, Axios reported that Trump had a plan: if the election was close enough, he would simply declare victory before the voting was done. He would establish himself as the victor rhetorically, making it harder for Biden and the Democrats to push back. After all, he had successfully worked to convince Republicans that mail-in ballots were corrupted. This was simply the next step in the same dishonesty.
When the Axios report emerged, Trump’s team tried to quash it. Trump would only declare victory when his inevitable win occurred, they assured Americans. But, again, Trump was never beholden to what his staff thought or wanted to do.
Polls closed on Election Day, and the red mirage appeared. In the middle of the night, Trump walked to a lectern in the White House and made an announcement about how insurmountable his eventually surmounted leads were in a number of states.
“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country,” Trump said of the vote counting that was still very much underway. “We were getting ready to win this election — frankly, we did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity, for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation.”
Trump telegraphed what he was going to claim. Reporters learned what he was going to claim. Trump then made the claim. None of it was a surprise.
What all of this reinforces, of course, is that Trump’s claims of fraud were independent of the actual votes. Trump said there would be fraud before anyone voted and then said there was fraud after those votes came in. He was simply doing what he did in 2016, but on a bigger scale, offsetting his loss with claims about how he didn’t really lose at all. In the year-plus since the election, he has offered no credible evidence of rampant fraud, constantly shifting his evidence as needed. (The proprietor of his latest obsession? Phillips, once again.) His supporters believe he won and need only hints of evidence to remain convinced that he did.
But this also suggests that Trump knows he didn’t. Speaking in November, his former aide Alyssa Farah said that Trump had told her he knew he had lost shortly after the election — but also that he had perhaps come to believe his own nonsense. In the first prime-time hearing of the House select committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and Trump’s attempt to retain power after the 2020 election, evidence was shown of other times at which Trump had been informed that he didn’t win the election.
Stepien was scheduled to appear before the committee’s hearing Monday morning, before he withdrew citing a family emergency. It was expected that Stepien would bolster the idea that Trump should have known that he lost the election. He may still offer that testimony.
It is largely redundant. Trump made very obvious why he had spent years amplifying claims about voter fraud, and he and his team continued to amplify those claims even after Stepien joined. Any rationality Stepien brought to the table was irrelevant to what Trump wanted to do and say. Even when his staff insisted he wouldn’t declare victory on Election Day, Trump couldn’t resist.
Trump’s fraud claims were his most successful campaign rhetoric, after all, and the credit for them was all his own. | 2022-06-13T14:26:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When Trump elevated Bill Stepien as his campaign manager in 2020, his strategy of blaming any loss on fraud wasn't affected - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/blaming-alleged-fraud-was-always-trumps-central-campaign-strategy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/blaming-alleged-fraud-was-always-trumps-central-campaign-strategy/ |
Amy Parlapiano named a quiz writer for Emerging News Products
Announcement from Director for Emerging News Products Christopher Meighan:
We are excited to announce that Amy Parlapiano is joining The Post as a quiz writer on the Emerging News Products team. In this new role, she will put her diverse skill set to good use, helping develop and launch habit-forming news quizzes.
Amy comes to us from the Athletic, where she has worked since 2018. As the deputy managing editor for the NFL, she oversaw the rollout of the Athletic’s expansion into breaking news, an important initiative for the company in 2021. She built a team of editors and writers who tackled news headlines ranging from the controversy surrounding Aaron Rodgers’s vaccine status to the NFL’s struggle to diversify its coaching ranks. Before becoming DME, she worked as an NFL staff editor for nearly three years. In this role, she organized and developed daily and long-term coverage plans, created themed packages, wrote a weekly roundup column and hosted two podcasts during the 2019 season.
Prior to joining the Athletic, Amy worked at Sports Illustrated, where she held positions of special projects producer and NFL producer. Highlights of her time there include creating, writing and co-hosting a Facebook Live sports trivia show called “Next Question.” She also spearheaded the online rollout and coverage of marquee SI events, such as Sportsperson of the Year, and launched SI Eats, a vertical dedicated to the intersection of food and sports. She previously worked for ESPN the Magazine as a contributing writer.
Amy is a native of Eastchester, N.Y., and a graduate of the University of Michigan. She is a lifelong Mets and Jets fan and is slowly learning how to enjoy running.
Please join us in welcoming Amy to The Post. Her first day is Today. | 2022-06-13T14:27:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amy Parlapiano named a quiz writer for Emerging News Products - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/13/amy-parlapiano-named-quiz-writer-emerging-news-products/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/13/amy-parlapiano-named-quiz-writer-emerging-news-products/ |
How will gun violence affect the Virginia midterms?
By Mark J. Rozell
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) on Feb. 10 in Culpeper, Va. (Alex Brandon/Associated Press)
The Virginia suburbs will be among the nation’s major proving grounds as to the power of gun control as a key issue in this year's midterm elections.
This fall, Republicans hope to flip seats that three Democratic women — Reps. Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s 7th District, Elaine Luria in the 2nd and Jennifer Wexton in the 10th — won in the 2018 midterm election when then-President Donald Trump was deeply unpopular in Virginia.
But can Democrats effectively mobilize their base and turn swing voters to their side on the guns issue in the face of runaway inflation and record fuel prices, long-running supply-chain dysfunctions, unchecked aggression against neighbor nations by authoritarian adversaries abroad, rising violent crime rates at home and a president whose job-approval ratings are now consistently as low as the predecessor he unseated 19 months ago?
Poll after poll after poll in recent years has shown clear majorities back stricter gun laws in the United States, where guns outnumber people by 21 percent. Or, put another way, there are slightly more than six guns for every five Americans. And they’re being put to devastating use in ways incomprehensible to people in other countries.
In just two weeks after an 18-year-old armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle killed 19 pupils and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., an additional 281 people were killed and another 12,085 were wounded in 244 mass shootings in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That includes six Virginia mass shootings that killed 10 and injured 21 during that span. Compare that fresh 14-day total to the 272 mass shootings the database logged for all of 2014, the archive’s first year of comprehensively confirming and cataloguing such incidents.
Public awareness of the toll from gun attacks has certainly spiked across the nation because of the heart-rending and infuriating details and images from back-to-back atrocities in Uvalde and, the week before, in Buffalo, where an 18-year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist is accused of taking a combat-style rifle into a supermarket in a mostly Black neighborhood and killing 10 people.
In a poll of 2,005 registered voters for Morning Consult and Politico conducted May 20 to 22, 59 percent said they want tougher gun control laws passed. On Sunday, a bipartisan group of senators reached an agreement in principle on a modest package of gun-safety reforms, but a ban on semiautomatic assault rifles or raising the purchase age for them from 18 to 21 were not among its provisions.
As bitter as the gun rights vs. gun control debate has become, its ability to swing elections on its own is limited. The economy is usually the most potent driver for elections, and that’s certainly true today. In an ABC News/Ipsos Poll conducted June 3 to 4, after the Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings, respondents ranked gun violence as the third most pressing issue, trailing the worst inflation in 40 years and the economy.
Geography, demographics and culture figure significantly into levels of political support for or resistance to gun control legislation, according to research last September by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Pew Research Center. In Democratic-voting urban areas, nearly two-thirds were likely to view gun violence as a “very big problem,” almost double the 35 percent in rural areas who shared their view. In suburbs, 47 percent considered guns a major problem.
It's no mystery that the three Democratic women likely to face the most determined, well-funded GOP challenges this fall represent suburban districts where there is less support for gun rights than in Virginia’s rural Southside, Southwest and Shenandoah Valley regions, but where support for gun restrictions is less than it is in cities such as Alexandria, Richmond, Norfolk and Virginia Beach or the urbanized counties of Arlington and Fairfax. It’s a middle ground that elects candidates ranging from the political center to liberal, but whose educated, generally affluent voters are not monolithic and assess candidates on multiple issues in making their choices.
The Virginia congresswomen — all supporters of tightening gun laws — enjoy a wind at their backs from gun-control voters in the suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Yet they face mighty head winds from a Democratic president with consistently poor ratings for his performance on a variety of issues, especially the economy and inflation. | 2022-06-13T15:00:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How will gun violence affect the Virginia midterms? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/how-will-gun-violence-affect-virginia-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/how-will-gun-violence-affect-virginia-midterms/ |
Amber Heard is interviewed by Savannah Guthrie about her high-profile trial with Johnny Depp. (NBC News)
Speaking to “Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie in a clip released Monday, Heard said she considered the way social media figured into the conversation surrounding the weeks-long defamation trial to be unfair.
“Even somebody who is sure I am deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying,” she said, “you still couldn’t look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation.”
The former couple, who met working together on 2011′s “The Rum Diary,” married in 2015. Heard filed for divorce the following year. Throughout the defamation trial, which took place in Fairfax County Circuit Court, Depp fans flocked to both the courthouse and to social media to support him and criticize Heard, who was often painted as a liar and abuser herself. The Post reported in early May that the hashtag #justiceforjohnnydepp had received about 7 billion views across TikTok, whereas #justiceforamberheard had gotten about 25 million.
Heard lawyer Elaine Bredehoft said on multiple morning shows the day after the final verdict that Heard intended to appeal and “has some excellent grounds for it.” Bredehoft told Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” that Depp’s lawyers “demonized” Heard and suppressed key evidence, such as medical records supporting Heard’s claims.
Bredehoft also said Heard’s lawyers were barred from mentioning to the jury that Depp two years ago lost a libel case against the Sun, a British tabloid he sued for referring to him as a “wife beater.”
Lawyers on Depp’s team responded to Bredehoft’s claims while making their own morning show rounds a week later. Camille Vasquez said to Guthrie on “Today” that the U.K. case was a “different process,” and that the Virginia trial had “different disclosure obligations” for each side. She and Benjamin Chew also denied that social media had impacted the jury’s decision, stating on “Today” that they had “no reason to believe the jurors violated their oath” by engaging with the posts.
Seemingly in anticipation of pushback from Depp’s lawyers, Heard’s team issued a statement Monday morning defending Heard’s decision to speak publicly about the verdict.
“Johnny Depp’s legal team blanketed the media for days after the verdict with numerous statements and interviews on television, and Depp himself did the same on social media,” the statement reads. “Ms. Heard simply intended to respond to what they aggressively did last week; she did so by expressing her thoughts and feelings, much of which she was not allowed to do on the witness stand.”
In the recent interview — which will air Tuesday and Wednesday on “Today,” as well as Friday on “Dateline” — Heard told Guthrie she doesn’t “care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors.” She also said she didn’t blame the jury for not believing her claims. | 2022-06-13T15:17:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amber Heard says social media frenzy surrounding trial was not ‘fair’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/13/amber-heard-depp-trial-today-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/13/amber-heard-depp-trial-today-interview/ |
Officials said 10-month-old girl dies in crash in Va.
Driver of SUV put the infant in a vehicle unrestrained, and she fell out onto the road when someone opened the vehicle’s door, police said
Authorities said a 10-month-old girl died after an SUV rolled over and struck her in Northern Virginia.
The incident happened around 1:15 p.m. June 12 near Flotilla Way and Dyers Mill court in the Woodbridge area.
Prince William County police said in a statement that a 35-year-old woman driving a Toyota Highlander was visiting family members in the area and put the infant “unrestrained” in the back seat of the vehicle before she drove a short distance to a nearby dumpster. The driver then went back to a nearby home and picked up other family members.
When one of the family members opened the rear door of the SUV, the “unrestrained child fell from the vehicle and onto the roadway,” police said in a statement. The driver got out of the SUV to check on the child but the vehicle was “still in drive when the driver exited the vehicle causing it to roll forward where it then struck the child,” the statement read.
The child suffered a serious head injury, police said, and was taken to a hospital by her mother. Police said the child, who lived in Hyattsville, died later that day “as a result of her injuries.”
No one else was hurt in the incident, according to police.
Officials said because of a law in Virginia the identity of the child will not be released. Police said no charges have been filed against the driver at this time, and the incident remains under investigation. | 2022-06-13T15:43:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Officials said 10-month-old girl dies in crash in VA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/10-month-old-girl-dies-in-va-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/10-month-old-girl-dies-in-va-crash/ |
Abortion rights advocates blockade intersections near Supreme Court
Abortion rights protesters march Monday in Washington. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg)
Abortion rights advocates are protesting near the Supreme Court on Monday, blockading nearby intersections to emphasize their view that a person’s right to an abortion should be protected.
There were rolling street closures Monday morning on or around Columbus Circle between Second Street and Massachusetts Ave. NE and southbound First Street NE, and as of about 10 a.m., there have been no arrests, said D.C. police spokeswoman Alaina Gertz.
The protesters disagree with a leaked draft of an opinion by the Supreme Court signaling that it is positioned to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 49-year-old decision that guarantees a person’s constitutional right to abortion, said Hope Neyer, 21, of Northwest Washington, one of the protest organizers and a student at American University.
The high court issued opinions Monday and is scheduled to do so again on Wednesday. A final decision in the abortion rights case is expected before the term ends in late June or early July.
Monday’s demonstration comes at a time of heightened abortion rights protests in the region, including on the National Mall, outside the Supreme Court and outside the homes of conservative justices. Last week, authorities arrested a man they say traveled from California in an attempt to kill Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Protesters held up posters of the conservative justices with the words “LIAR,” as well as declaring “I AM A WOMAN NOT A WOMB.” Counterprotesters also showed up, calling to “END ABORTION VIOLENCE.”
Abortion rights demonstrators also led the crowds in call-and-response chants such as “fund abortion, not war!” and “What do we want? Abortion rights! When do we want them? Now! If we don’t get it? Shut it down!” and “Biden! Get a back bone!” according to videos posted on social media.
They wanted to blockade streets during their demonstration in hopes of stopping “business as usual,” Neyer said, emphasizing that a majority of Americans support upholding Roe, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in May. | 2022-06-13T15:43:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion rights advocates blockade intersections near Supreme Court - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/abortion-rights-protest-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/abortion-rights-protest-supreme-court/ |
School staff can already carry weapons. The state will ease training requirements and other restrictions.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) had said last week that he planned to sign a bill that makes it easier for teachers to be armed at school. (Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP)
As Congress wrestles over gun control, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed into law a bill Monday that would arm more schoolteachers by reducing training requirements for staffers to carry guns on campus.
The move comes in the wake of a shooting in Uvalde, Tex., where a teenager opened fire on a pair of classrooms, killing 19 fourth-graders and two teachers. DeWine said in a Monday news conference that while House Bill 99 was in the works last year, “That heartbreaking school shooting certainly increased the urgency to enact it.”
Ohio already permits schoolteachers to be armed, but they need the permission of their school board and 700 hours of training as a peace officer. In the news conference Monday, DeWine said school staff who want to carry weapons will be required to have at least 24 hours of training.
“My office worked with the General Assembly to remove hundreds of hours of curriculum irrelevant to school safety and to ensure training requirements were specific to a school environment and contained significant scenario-based training,” DeWine said in a news release earlier this month.
Shari Obrenski, president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, called the effort to arm teachers “ironic," as it comes after state lawmakers sought to ban how teachers talked about race in classrooms.
“Educators are being told we are not trusted to decide what to teach in the classroom, a job we study for and are licensed to do,” she said in testimony to state lawmakers last month. "But we are trusted to have loaded guns around children with far less training than is required to drive a car.”
Firearms are generally banned on school campuses, except when they are carried by law enforcement or security guards. But several states also exempt school employees from those prohibitions, requiring varying levels of approval and training, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Texas, for example, school boards can sign off on any school staff member with a concealed carry license to be armed on campus. It also has a separate school marshals program that trains school personnel who want to be armed on campus on how to react to school shootings.
Proposals to arm schoolteachers have proved unpopular with teachers and their unions, which say that it is dangerous and unfair to expect teachers to battle active shooters. In Ohio, the Fraternal Order of Police also opposes the bill.
The Fraternal Order of Police’s government affairs director, Mike Weinman, weighed in on an earlier version of the bill last year, saying “It’s not enough training.”
“We go through hundreds of hours of training and a lot of that is on how not to use our weapons," Weinman said, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
The practice of arming teachers is far from widespread, but many major school shootings have inspired more districts and states to adopt it. In the aftermath of the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Fla., President Donald Trump called for arming 20 percent of teachers.
“A teacher would have a concealed gun on them. They’d go for special training and they would be there and you would no longer be a gun-free zone,” Trump said. He suggested that an armed teacher on campus could reach a school shooter faster than responding police officers. “You’d have a lot of people that would be armed, that’d be ready.”
While several schools expanded the number of educators it armed, Trump’s proposal — to arm more than 600,000 teachers — never came to pass.
Florida passed a law that year permitting educators to be armed, naming the program after a teacher slain at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. A school shooting in Texas that occurred just a few months after Parkland inspired the state, which already permitted certain school staff to be armed, to create a school marshal program to train armed staff to respond to school shootings. | 2022-06-13T15:56:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In the wake of Uvalde, Ohio will arm teachers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/13/ohio-armed-teachers-guns-uvalde/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/13/ohio-armed-teachers-guns-uvalde/ |
By Stephen Kuusisto
(Annelien Smet for The Washington Post)
Stephen Kuusisto, an essayist and poet, holds a university professorship at Syracuse University. His books include the memoir “Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey.”
The No. 1 question I’m asked by inquiring strangers is: “If you’re attacked, will your dog defend you?”
I’m a guide dog user, as the terminology goes. I travel everywhere in the company of a professionally trained guide dog. She can prevent me from being struck by cars and stop me from falling down stairs. She can walk me around detours on sidewalks and take evasive action when a kid on a skateboard veers toward us.
During her training, she was introduced to sudden, frightening noises — her trainers fired an Olympic starter pistol to simulate the sound of a car backfiring. She can do almost anything to keep us safe as a team.
But no: She cannot protect us from public violence.
I was in mind of this recently when I entered a supermarket for the first time after the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo. As I approached the store, I heard two men arguing in the parking lot. They were wildly angry. Their rage was radiant. I could feel it in the air. This was the first time in my more than 30 years traveling with guide dogs that I felt a dark dread in a public space.
In general, people think of blindness as a terrible state of vulnerability. Folks imagine that without sight they wouldn’t be able to navigate the streets or do anything in public.
None of this is true. But the impression still hovers. In turn, I’m often told that my very movements in public are an example of bravery. This is also not true. Blind travel is deliberate and secure, even in sometimes extraordinary circumstances.
Twenty-one years ago, when the World Trade Center was attacked, two guide-dog users escaped the towers in the first wave of evacuees. Both men were alerted by their dogs that they needed to head for the stairwell. Their stories captured the nation’s imagination.
There’s no doubt that guide dogs are remarkable, especially under pressure. But I repeat: They cannot protect us from public violence.
No one is impervious to rage. But here I’m going to risk sentimentality: Ease of travel in the civic square is dependent on the existence of a welcoming and even loving society. This is true for all. We must operate with the firm belief that the world will receive us — not as homage, not as inspiration, but simply because we believe in love in circulation.
The American social contract says that we all have the right to live out of harm’s way, that the work of government is to secure our common liberty. While we talk endlessly about the Second Amendment to the Constitution, no one talks about the preamble. It comes before the amendments. It says:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
If our nation has lost the ability or willingness to promote the general welfare and ensure domestic tranquility, then we have lost public space.
My dog can’t protect me from bullets. Unlike at the World Trade Center, on a street, in a square, at any point in our public travels, there’s no stairwell she can take me to if gunshots ring out.
I must imagine my destination in advance wherever I’m going. I refuse to believe that a place called general welfare is out of reach.
For those strict constructionists out there: The preamble came first. | 2022-06-13T15:57:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | My guide dog can protect me from a lot of things — but not from guns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/guide-dog-cannot-protect-blind-writer-from-gun-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/guide-dog-cannot-protect-blind-writer-from-gun-violence/ |
FILE - First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Assistant Director of Civilian Defense, testifies in Washington D.C. on Jan. 14, 1942, before the Tolan Special House Committee studying migratory worker problems in connection with the defense program. The arrival of Title IX and its protections for American women was a long time coming and the result of hard work from the likes of Jeannette Rankin, Shirley Chisholm, Eleanor Roosevelt, Patsy Mink and more.(AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-06-13T15:59:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Title IX timeline: 50 years of halting progress across U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/title-ix-timeline-50-years-of-halting-progress-across-us/2022/06/13/f36723da-eb2c-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/title-ix-timeline-50-years-of-halting-progress-across-us/2022/06/13/f36723da-eb2c-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
(Washington Post illustration; Microsoft; iStock)
Microsoft said Monday it would respect the rights of Activision Blizzard workers to join a union, and would enter into a so-called labor neutrality agreement with major media union Communications Workers of America, which has been helping video game workers organize. If Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved, the new labor agreement will take effect for the video game giant 60 days after the deal is finalized.
Activision Blizzard announced Friday it was entering bargaining negotiations with a group of Raven Software quality assurance testers. Those testers have spent months demanding recognition of their union, the Game Workers Alliance, which is supported by the CWA.
The labor neutrality agreement “means that we respect the right of our employees to make informed decisions on their own,” said Microsoft president Brad Smith in an interview with The Washington Post. "It means that we don’t try to put a thumb on the scale to influence or pressure them. We give people the opportunity to exercise their right to choose by voting ... it’s something that’s respectful of everyone, more amicable and avoids business disruption.”
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The agreement puts into writing what Microsoft has stated in the past. In March, Microsoft told The Post it wouldn’t stand in the way if Activision Blizzard recognized a union. In May, Xbox head Phil Spencer told employees in an internal all-hands that he would recognize Raven Software’s newly formed union, according to a Kotaku report. Unlike those previous statements, this agreement is legally binding, according to the CWA and Microsoft.
“[The agreement] covers the large majority of workers at Activision Blizzard,” Smith said. “There are certain categories that are excluded under the National Labor Relations Act — managers, people who have confidential positions, that kind of thing. But really broadly speaking, it applies to the employees of Activision Blizzard as a whole.”
The deal between Microsoft and the CWA says employees should easily exercise their right to communicate with other employees and other union representatives about organizing, have a streamlined process for choosing to join a union and keep their decision private if they wish. Finally, the agreement states that if the CWA and Microsoft disagree, they will work together to reach consensus and failing that, turn to an arbitration process.
“The arbitration process will ensure that the rights that employees have under the National Labor Relations Act is upheld, so we’re not trying to go off and do something that is separate from the rights that people have,” Smith said. “We then have a third party that can make a decision and will abide by it.”
If other Microsoft employees end up unionizing, the CWA said it intends on using this agreement to help advocate for those employees, too.
“We will talk about how we go about organizing Microsoft employees if that happens,” CWA President Christopher Shelton said. “And I’m not saying that it’s not happening as we speak, but we don’t announce organizing projects.”
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Microsoft’s agreement comes a week after it announced a new strategy for dealing with unions. The company posted new “principles for employee organizing” on June 2, which stated, “we recognize that there many be times when some employees in some countries may wish to form or join a union.”
Shelton said the discussions started after Microsoft announced in January it would buy Activision Blizzard for a historic $68.7 billion, a move which shocked organizing workers. The deal is slated to close by June 2023.
"We looked at it and said, ‘Employees have to have a voice, or they’ll get run over by these big companies deciding that they’ll come together,’” Shelton said. “We came up with this agreement, and we’ve been working on it for quite a while now. It hasn’t been all that easy. But it hasn’t been all that hard either, because Microsoft really meant what they said in their principles, and I believe that.”
Smith said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and his company were not consulted on the terms of the agreement, although the company was aware that Microsoft and the CWA were holding discussions.
“We have to be extremely careful under the law to avoid what’s called gun jumping,” Smith said, referring to unlawful activities from a company still awaiting regulatory approval. “We were not required to [talk to Activision Blizzard] under the merger agreement, and we did not seek their approval to enter into the agreement.”
Regarding his company’s decision to engage with the CWA and the union at Raven, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement to The Post: “We decided to take this important step forward with our 27 represented employees and CWA to explore their ideas and insights for how we might better serve our employees, players and other stakeholders. We look forward to collaborating with CWA as we create the industry’s most welcoming, inclusive workplace.”
Microsoft’s announcement comes amid a landscape of growing video game unions and ongoing unionization efforts at companies like Starbucks and Apple.
Video game companies in North America never successfully unionized until last December, when a union at indie developer Vodeo Games was recognized by management. It was followed by Raven Software winning a union election May 23. On June 6, 16 quality assurance testers at Keywords Studios, which is working on “Dragon Age: Dreadwolf” for the Electronic Arts-owned BioWare, formed Canada’s first video game union. Electronic Arts spokesperson Lacey Haines said in a statement, "While the unionization of Keywords Studios employees in Edmonton does not involve BioWare employees, we want to be clear that we at EA respect the process and the right of workers to choose.”
Like the video game industry, major tech companies have been slow to organize, which raises the question of why this is movement is unfolding now. Smith said the agreement with the CWA was not an attempt by Microsoft to present the Activision Blizzard merger on more favorable terms to antitrust regulators, with whom the company has had multiple tussles, including a 1998 antitrust case for which Bill Gates testified before Congress. Microsoft was more inspired by its organized employees in Europe and South Korea, he said.
“We haven’t had the specific unionization efforts directly in the U.S. that some others have but we have a deep respect for the role of unions in a democracy,” Smith said. “Just look at what organized labor has done for the rights of people in this country for 150 years. It’s part of the success of this country. And if there’s an opportunity for us to connect with that in a new way, I think it’s good for everybody.”
Labor professors agreed the deal between Microsoft and the CWA was historically groundbreaking.
“In a way, [Microsoft’s deal with the CWA] is a recognition that the mood is changing,” said Margaret O’Mara, a tech and politics professor at the University of Washington. “The political winds are changing. There has been more public conversation and activism, particularly since the beginning of the pandemic, around unionization. It’s this company that has presented itself as the grown up in the room, presenting itself as a good corporate citizen, being proactive about regulation and working with governments.”
Wilma Liebman, former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board under former president Barack Obama, said one motivation for the deal with the CWA could be the future approval of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
“I’m sure some, if not a key part, of the motivation for Microsoft entering into this agreement is to mitigate opposition to the merger with Activision,” Liebman said. "Indeed, the CWA expressly says it now approves the merger. Undoubtedly, Microsoft believes that its ‘softer’ stance on unionization may reap a benefit in the antitrust investigation, particularly in the Biden administration.” | 2022-06-13T15:59:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Microsoft enters agreement to respect Activision Blizzard union - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/13/microsoft-union-activision-blizzard-cwa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/13/microsoft-union-activision-blizzard-cwa/ |
Police officers and rescue team members on Sunday search for British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who went missing July 5 while reporting in the remote Javari Valley of the Amazon rainforest. (Bruno Kelly/Reuters)
RIO DE JANEIRO — The family of a missing journalist says they have been told by Brazilian authorities that two bodies have been found tied to a tree in the Amazon rainforest. The report came more than a week after the journalist and a Brazilian government official went missing.
Police said they have not confirmed the “biological materials” are the remains of British journalist Dom Phillips, a Brazil-based contributor to the Guardian and onetime contract writer for The Washington Post, or Bruno Pereira, a longtime official of Brazil’s Indigenous rights organization.
Search parties on Sunday recovered items that belonged to the two men including Pereira’s health insurance card, their boots, and Phillips’s backpack, which was filled with clothing. Local media reported the items were submerged in water and tied to the roots of a tree.
Paul Sherwood, Phillips’ brother-in-law, told The Washington Post that he visited the Brazilian embassy in London last week to discuss the disappearances. He said an official he met there, Roberto Doring contacted him Monday morning and asked to speak. Doring told him two bodies had been found tied to a tree in the forest.
Neither the Brazilian embassy in London nor the Brazilian foreign ministry immediately returned requests for comment.
Phillips, who was working on a book on conservation in the Amazon, accompanied Pereira this month into the Javari Valley, one of the most remote reaches of the rainforest. The vast territory, considered the world’s largest repository of uncontacted Indigenous peoples, has been under increasing pressure from criminal invaders intent on stripping it of its resources.
The men were supposed to come out of the territory and arrive at the nearby city of Atalaia do Norte at 8 a.m. June 5. They never appeared.
Karla Adams in London contributed to this report. | 2022-06-13T15:59:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon disappearance of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: Unidentified bodies found tied to tree, family says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/dom-phillips-bruno-pereira-bodies-found/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/dom-phillips-bruno-pereira-bodies-found/ |
Alex Morgan leads the NWSL in scoring with nine goals. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
Morgan, a striker, has scored 115 goals in 190 U.S. matches, while Rapinoe, a left wing, has 62 in 187. Both have won two World Cup titles and an Olympic gold medal.
“Since we were last together in April, we’ve been evaluating a lot of games and hours of video and have had extensive conversations among the coaching staff,” Andonovski said in a written statement. “As usual, the players don’t make these decisions easy, but we feel this is a roster that can accomplish all of our goals over the four weeks we will be together.”
He was scheduled to speak with reporters Monday afternoon.
Defender Becky Sauerbrunn, 37, is also back after recovering from a knee injury. World Cup veterans Alyssa Naeher, Kelley O’Hara, Emily Sonnett, Rose Lavelle and Lindsey Horan were selected, as well. However, 13 players have never competed in qualifiers.
The Washington Spirit, defending NWSL champions mired in a 10-game winless streak, will have seven representatives: O’Hara, Sonnett, goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury, midfielders Andi Sullivan and Ashley Sanchez, and forwards Trinity Rodman and Ashley Hatch. No other NWSL team has more than four.
The biggest surprise was San Diego Wave midfielder Taylor Kornieck, a third-year pro invited to her first senior camp. Seven others have appeared in fewer than 10 international matches.
Tobin Heath and Christen Press, immensely experienced forwards, were not selected. Injuries have limited Heath to 17 league matches in the past two years. Press suffered a knee injury Saturday, but even if healthy, she wouldn’t have been included on the squad.
U.S. roster
Midfielders: Lindsey Horan (Olympique Lyonnais), Taylor Kornieck (San Diego), Rose Lavelle (OL Reign), Kristie Mewis (Gotham FC), Ashley Sanchez (Washington), Andi Sullivan (Washington).
Forwards: Ashley Hatch (Washington), Alex Morgan (San Diego), Midge Purce (Gotham FC), Mallory Pugh (Chicago), Megan Rapinoe (OL Reign), Trinity Rodman (Washington), Sophia Smith (Portland). | 2022-06-13T16:18:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USWNT roster for World Cup, Olympic qualifiers released - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/uswnt-world-cup-olympic-qualifiers-roster/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/uswnt-world-cup-olympic-qualifiers-roster/ |
Jennifer Hudson won a Tony on Sunday for co-producing “A Strange Loop,” making her the latest entertainer to receive EGOT status. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Hudson began her EGOT journey in 2007 with an Oscar for best supporting actress as the effervescent Effie White in “Dreamgirls.” Next was a Grammy for best R&B album for her self-titled debut in 2009 (followed up eight years later with a win for “The Color Purple,” the 2017 best musical theater album). And just last year, she was honored with a Daytime Emmy for best interactive media as an executive producer for “Baba Yaga,” a virtual reality animated film.
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In addition to her Academy Award, she clinched a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award and a BAFTA (Britain’s equivalent to the Oscars) for her acting debut in “Dreamgirls.” She also received multiple NAACP Image Awards over the years, including two for her portrayal as Aretha Franklin in the movie musical “Respect” — a role Hudson was handpicked to play by Franklin herself. | 2022-06-13T16:31:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jennifer Hudson reaches EGOT status after winning Tony Award - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/13/jennifer-hudson-reaches-egot-status-after-winning-tony-award/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/13/jennifer-hudson-reaches-egot-status-after-winning-tony-award/ |
The late singer’s dreamlike music feels inextricable from David Lynch’s vision. Can we hear it on its own terms?
Singer Julee Cruise performs in 2015 at the Twin Peaks UK Festival in London. (Amy T. Zielinski/Redferns/Getty Images)
We hardly give it any thought, but one of the most astonishing things music can do is step across the line that separates fiction and reality. Whenever a character in a film or a television show sings a song in their world, it instantly becomes a song in ours. There’s no transforming or transposing required. It’s in there. Now it’s out here. Amazing, right? This isn’t like reciting your favorite “Seinfeld” joke at dinner or dressing up like Darth Vader for Halloween. Fictional characters — and all the wonderful, horrible things they say and do — cannot join us in reality. Music can.
When the hypnagogic lullabies of Julee Cruise started leaking out of David Lynch’s metaphysical soap opera “Twin Peaks” in 1990, the border between make-believe and the real world felt more porous than usual. In the show, Cruise — who died on Thursday at 65 — played an enigmatic roadhouse singer with a voice both small and big, stylish and spacey, intimate and distant, as if she’d been ousted from a Brill Building girl-group and tasked with imitating a children’s choir on the moon.
As for the songs, they were as immersive and imprecise as dreams, difficult to remember and impossible to forget — “Falling,” “Into the Night”, “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart”, “The Nightingale,” “The World Spins” — each written and produced by Lynch and his soundtrack composer Angelo Badalamenti, and released on Cruise’s exquisite debut album, “Floating Into the Night,” roughly seven months before “Twin Peaks” changed how everyone watched television.
I suppose that release schedule complicates the fictionality of Cruise’s music. In their public infancy, these songs got to do a little living outside of Lynch’s vision, and as difficult as it might be, we should try tohear them on their own terms today. Cruise obviously didn’t want to live in “Twin Peaks” forever. Shortly after the show first went off the air in 1991, she signed on as a touring member of the B-52’s where she filled in for Cindy Wilson and was deputized with, among other things, delivering the “tin roof ... rusted” line during “Love Shack.” (When Lynch rebooted “Twin Peaks” for a third season in 2017, Cruise appeared in the penultimate episode, singing “The World Spins” alongside the Chromatics, one of countless bands influenced by her dreamy chic.)
Is it even possible to hear “Floating Into the Night” on its own terms? Or on ours? Seven years ago, I decided I was tired of seeing red curtains in my mind’s eye whenever a Julee Cruise song reached my mind’s ear. So I cued up her music on a breathtaking road trip through West Texas, hoping to rewire the associations in my brain. It worked and it didn’t. Now when I hear Cruise’s voice, I see prickly-pear cactuses growing out of checkered floors.
It’s not unlike one of those double-exposure dissolves that Lynch is so fond of, or maybe something even better. Instead of moving back and forth between fiction and reality, Cruise’s music can live fully in both. | 2022-06-13T17:19:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Julee Cruise made music for 'Twin Peaks' that changed the real world - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/13/julee-cruise-appreciation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/13/julee-cruise-appreciation/ |
The Watergate break-in wasn’t the only front page news 50 years ago
The Washington Post front page from June 18, 1972. Under the top story about Vietnam is the news of the Watergate break-in. (The Washington Post)
On June 18, 1972, the story that set the clock ticking on the presidency of Richard M. Nixon appeared on the front page of The Washington Post. The headline was “5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here.”
But there were nine other stories on the front page that day, each in its own way an example of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The day’s two top stories were at the top of A1, under the main headline “Both Sides Claim Victory in N. Vietnam Offensive.”
Laurence Stern’s lead story from Saigon — “Analysts Measure Hanoi’s Goals and Results” — included a quote from U.S. military adviser Gen. James F. Hollingsworth describing the success of South Vietnamese forces in the recent battle of An Loc as “the greatest victory in the history of warfare.”
Accompanying that story was a news analysis by Murray Marder headlined “Diplomats Feel ‘Something is Afoot’ to End War.” Presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger expressed his desire for “a serious negotiation leading to a rapid end of the war.”
Halfway down the page was a wire service story noting that the last U.S. Army ground brigade would soon be pulled from Vietnam, nearly completing the process of “Vietnamization” of the war.
In other news, airline pilots around the world were being urged by their unions to stop flying for 24 hours, bringing attention to an issue they felt endangered more than their livelihood. Jack Eisen’s story — headlined “Appeals Court Delays Ruling on Pilot Strike” — explained why: “The pilots are pushing for stringent international sanctions against hijacking,” Eisen wrote.
It was a presidential election year. As the final Democratic primary neared, George McGovern was in the lead, but he’d been tripped up in earlier primaries by Edmund S. Muskie. “Showdown in New York” was the headline of Stephen Isaacs’s story. McGovern was expected to win the state’s primary, but perhaps not by enough over challenger Muskie.
McGovern’s campaign manager, Gary Hart, predicted his candidate would receive at least 200 of the state’s 278 delegates.
Maryland’s delegation to the upcoming national convention in Miami was the subject of Richard M. Cohen’s front-page story ,“Women, Blacks Youth Fight Democrats.”
A Marylander named Nancy Dutton was among Democrats who had filed challenges to the composition of Maryland’s delegation. Too many were old white guys, she said.
Dutton argued that the slate of 53 delegates should more closely represent the state’s Democratic voters, with more African Americans, more women and younger people.
Wrote Cohen: “Regardless of the fate of the challengers, 41 of the 53 Maryland delegates will be bound under state law to George C. Wallace, the winner of the May 16 primary and the candidate who swept six of the eight congressional districts.”
Across the page from that story was one by Mike Causey headlined “Nader Blasts Civil Service as Arrogant.” Consumer crusader Ralph Nader had just released a 500-page report titled “The Spoiled System.” Compiled by a team headed by 30-year-old Harvard Law graduate Robert Vaughn, the report likened the federal bureaucracy to “a giant pool of quicksand which permits the mediocre to rise, and either sinks or soils many dedicated professionals.”
Among the report’s recommendations was the creation of an employee rights and accountability board.
Accountability was the subject of the story “D.C. Budget Reforms Are Announced” by Kirk Scharfenberg. District Mayor Walter E. Washington promised that the city would more carefully track how the federal money it received was spent. In budget hearings earlier in the year, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye claimed the District had overspent $5.2 million and said the mayor could go to jail for violating the federal antideficiency act. The city denied most of the charges, but promised to monitor expenditures.
June 18, 1972, was a Sunday, the day The Post typically launches its longer series. On this day, reporter Herbert H. Denton began his multipart examination of the volunteer firefighters of Prince George’s County. The headline: “Firemen Find Empire is Going Up in Smoke.”
Denton recounted the rise of the volunteer units, most of which were organized in the early 20th century. “The fire companies had then, and many still preserve now, the aura of blue collar men’s clubs with pool tables and recreational halls,” he wrote.
There were 900 volunteer firemen, 37 volunteer fire companies and 45 volunteer firehouses. County executive William W. Gullett was finally starting to exercise the oversight he had been granted in 1970.
One issue was that most of the companies’ equipment — more fire engines, it was claimed, than all but New York, Chicago and Los Angeles — was paid for by the county but owned by the volunteer units. There were no uniform county qualifications to be a volunteer firefighter. And at a 1968 fire at a Bowie restaurant — Mr. Kelly’s (no relation) — 13 companies had responded.
It was, a disapproving county fire inspector told The Post, “the free enterprise system of firefighting.”
Even so, none of the companies were able to set up a hose relay system from the nearest hydrant, a mile away. Mr. Kelly’s had burned to the ground. | 2022-06-13T17:23:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vietnam, McGovern and firefighters vied with Watergate on the Post front page - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/watergate-front-page-post-stories/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/watergate-front-page-post-stories/ |
Major cryptocurrency lender Celsius freezes withdrawals, chilling market
The announcement indicates Celsius was worried it would not have enough money to honor requests from depositors for their money
A sign at a Bitcoin ATM at the Clark Street subway station on June 13, 2022 in Brooklyn, New York encourages Bitcoin purchases. A lender's sobering announcement is prompting a crypto sell-off. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Embattled cryptocurrency lender Celsius’s dramatic step late Sunday night of halting withdrawals by its nearly 2 million users rattled crypto markets Monday and underscored fears that some of the sector’s largest companies are on shaky financial ground.
“Due to extreme market conditions, today we are announcing that Celsius is pausing all withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts,” the company, officially called the Celsius Network, said in a statement. “We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations.”
The news caused the largest cryptocurrencies to plunge — bitcoin dropped 12 percent as of late Monday morning and etherium plunged 15 percent. There is a feedback loop of sorts here; it was a drop of more than 10 percent for each currency in the days before the announcement that likely contributed to Celsius’s liquidity issues in the first place.
Celsius’s own coin has dropped from a high of $7 dollars last year to 21 cents.
Celsius is a so-called "decentralized” or “DeFI” bank that lends and borrows crypto much like a financial institution does for dollars, but without much of the usual banking infrastructure.
In the past year, state governments have asked many of the same questions. Last September, New Jersey’s Bureau of Securities sent the firm a cease-and-desist letter, while Alabama and Texas have also demanded it answer questions about its liquidity. (The firm has offices in New Jersey, as well as Europe and the Middle East.) The New York attorney general also has requested more information on Celsius’s business.
The possibility of contagion to the larger economy of the Celsius action appears limited, though there could be potential downstream effects on Canadian pension-holders. CDPQ, one of that country’s largest pensions, is an investor in the lending platform. | 2022-06-13T17:28:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Celsius crypto bank freezes withdrawals; bitcoin, etherium plunge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/celsius-crypto-bank-withdrawals-freeze/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/celsius-crypto-bank-withdrawals-freeze/ |
Another concern for the Fed emerged Friday, when the University of Michigan's monthly survey of consumer sentiment showed that Americans’ expectations for future inflation are rising. That is an ominous sign, because expectations can become self-fulfilling: If people expect higher inflation in the future, they often change their behavior in ways that increase prices. For example, they may accelerate large purchases before they become more expensive. Doing so can intensify demand and further fuel inflation. | 2022-06-13T17:28:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hot inflation dims likelihood Fed can achieve 'soft landing' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hot-inflation-dims-likelihood-fed-can-achieve-soft-landing/2022/06/13/030f2700-eb3d-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hot-inflation-dims-likelihood-fed-can-achieve-soft-landing/2022/06/13/030f2700-eb3d-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Philip Baker Hall in 2010. (Matt Sayles/AP)
Philip Baker Hall, a jowly, pouchy-eyed actor whose air of ruefulness and scowling impatience elevated even the briefest of appearances into masterful portrayals of gravity and silliness, best captured best in an unforgettable role on “Seinfeld” as a hardcore library cop, died June 12 at his home in Glendale, Calif. He was 90.
His wife, Holly Wolfle Hall, confirmed the death to the Associated Press but did not give a specific cause. He had emphysema and, in some of his later screen work, used a portable oxygen tank.
With his raspy delivery, grizzled hair and doleful face, Mr. Hall excelled as government and military officials with urgent agendas as well as Hollywood and business executives with ulterior motives. He played enough judges to form a bar association, but the hint of menace in his voice also made him effective as old-school hoods and others on the fringes of society.
When choosing roles, he once told the A.V. Club website, he was drawn to “really off-center parts that are so ludicrous that you almost can’t believe them. It’s always fun to take those kinds of parts and play them with as much serious passion as you can muster.”
Larry David, who co-created the show with comedian Jerry Seinfeld, once told The Washington Post that Mr. Hall never played his scenes for laughs, which only intensified the bonkers absurdity of punchlines such as, “I’ve got a flash for you, joy boy!”
David recalled that Mr. Hall was so effective playing the “Dragnet”-inspired library cop — a Detective Joe Friday of the stacks — that “Jerry had problems getting through the scene.”
Although his TV and film appearances were often too fleeting to merit mention in reviews, Mr. Hall became one of the most reliable and welcome character actors of his era. Film scholar David Thomson described him as having a “wonderfully sour presence”: “He looks like a guy on the subway, at the end of the diner counter, a face that knows its place is in the crowd — and several rows back.” Yet that veneer of anonymity propelled one of the busiest, late-blooming careers in show business.
Mr. Hall, who came from a blue-collar Ohio family, did not start acting professionally until he was 30 but made up for lost time with hundreds of roles — from the works of Shakespeare to those of Arthur Miller and Philip Barry — with regional theaters across the country.
He came to greater prominence in 1983 as the star of the off-Broadway drama “Secret Honor,” a one-man show focused on Richard M. Nixon’s brooding post-presidential life. It was mostly a Faustian story with a political spin, Mr. Hall told the Boston Globe, “really about anybody who comes to a crisis, anybody whose ambitions have been high and who has had to compromise to reach those ambitions.”
Mr. Hall copied neither Nixon’s voice nor his mannerisms but, by all accounts, he succeeded in portraying a wounded soul. New York Times cultural critic Mel Gussow wrote that Mr. Hall “seems to capture a full measure of the man — his edginess, suspicion, resentment and unconscious humor — as he wills himself into failure.”
Robert Altman directed a screen version of the play in 1984, and film critic Roger Ebert praised Mr. Hall for giving “one of the great performances in American movies.” But it tanked commercially, relegating Mr. Hall to another decade of minor parts on both side of the law — among them, a mob-boss fixer in “Midnight Run” (1988) and an IRS agent in “Say Anything” (1989).
In the early 1990s, he was working on a TV production when Paul Thomas Anderson, then a gofer on the set, offered Mr. Hall the lead role of a gambler in a short film he was planning. The project, “Cigarettes & Coffee” (1993), featuring an interconnected series of stories set in a diner, became a hit at the Sundance Film Festival and launched Anderson’s feature career.
For years, Mr. Hall remained part of Anderson’s unofficial stock company of actors, and the writer-director gave him some of his most memorable dramatic opportunities: a rare leading role as a mysterious professional gambler with a guilty past and a deep sense of honor in “Hard Eight” (1996), a commercially-minded theater magnate who foresees the future of videotape in the pornographic film industry in “Boogie Nights” (1997), and a quiz-show presenter who faces his mortality in “Magnolia” (1999).
Mr. Hall’s trio of high-profile roles for Anderson, along with his “Seinfeld” appearance, were his windfall. He began appearing in so many movies and TV shows in any given year — with a dozen credits in 1998 alone — that he sometimes forgot in interviews which characters he played what the projects were called.
He was the harried police captain in “Rush Hour” (1998) and its action-comedy sequels and the embattled “60 Minutes” producer Don Hewitt in the tobacco whistleblowing drama “The Insider” (1999). He was as much at home in Lars von Trier’s scathing minimalist avant-garde drama “Dogville” (2003) as he was in his prolific supporting parts in big-budget studio releases of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, among them “The Rock,” “Air Force One,” “The Contender,” “The Truman Show,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “The Sum of All Fears” and “Argo.”
In a testament to his omnipresence, Mr. Hall appeared as a handwriting expert in director David Fincher’s acclaimed “Zodiac” (2007) and as a police department chief in the lower-profile film “The Zodiac” (2005), both about the hunt for a San Francisco serial killer.
Magician, teacher and eventually actor
Philip Baker Hall was born in Toledo on Sept. 10, 1931. His father, a factory laborer, had difficulty finding work during the Depression, and the family scraped by in what Mr. Hall later called “the slums of the north end” of the city.
At a young age, Mr. Hall developed an interest in entertainment and began performing magic shows at lodge meetings and banquet functions, aided by a resonant baritone that came into full pitch by the time he was 12.
He uprooted his wife and children to New York and was quickly exposed to the vagaries of professional show business. He toured South America with a Kennedy administration-sponsored cultural-exchange program, performing small parts opposite Helen Hayes. He also did a stint in Boston with an offshoot of the Second City improv group, amid a hectic schedule of roadshow productions and off-Broadway work.
In addition to his wife, survivors include four daughters; a brother; and four grandchildren.
Mr. Hall periodically returned to the stage, notably in a 2000 London and off-Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” opposite William H. Macy. But he mostly stayed close to Hollywood, remaining in seemingly constant demand for guest appearances on shows such as “3rd Rock From the Sun,” “Boston Legal,” “Modern Family,” “The Loop,” “Messiah” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” reuniting in the last with Larry David as his crotchety doctor.
By Mr. Hall’s telling, he was bemused to find that his years of compelling dramatic work onstage — as Prospero or Willy Loman — had been almost entirely overshadowed by a few minutes as a flinty library detective.
“Before Bookman, my agent would say, ‘Well, they really liked your work, they really love you, but they don’t think you’re right for this,’ ” he told the A.V. Club. “After Bookman, there was no door closed to me in the industry. My agent would say, ‘Everybody wants to see you. Everybody wants you to be in their movie, everybody wants you to be on their show.’
Read more Washington Post obituaries | 2022-06-13T18:24:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Philip Baker Hall, master of gruff and gruffly silly character roles, dies at 90 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/philip-baker-hall-dead/2022/06/13/2b8ab250-be4b-11eb-b26e-53663e6be6ff_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/philip-baker-hall-dead/2022/06/13/2b8ab250-be4b-11eb-b26e-53663e6be6ff_story.html |
Ask Woodward and Bernstein your questions about Watergate’s legacy
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein will respond on Friday, June 17, starting at 11 a.m. ET
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein will be answering your questions about the legacy of the Watergate scandal on Friday, June 17. Submit your question below. ((Rebecca Hendin/ The Washington Post Illustration; Associated Press/Shutterstock))
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, the day five burglars were arrested at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. The first article by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the break-in published two days later, June 19 — a first step in a winding scandal that would ultimately lead to the president’s resignation.
As Dan Balz writes for The Post, Watergate and the war in Vietnam ushered in “a changed landscape of American politics and public life,” breaking public trust in government and making the relationship between reporters and public officials more adversarial.
On the anniversary of the break-in, Woodward and Bernstein will be answering your questions about the legacy of the scandal and how Watergate informs present-day American politics.
What questions do you have for Woodward and Bernstein? Write below. Your question may be edited for accuracy and clarity.
Get a curated selection of 10 of The Post’s best stories in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for Must Reads. | 2022-06-13T18:25:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Q&A: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein answer reader questions about Watergate's legacy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/woodward-bernstein-chat-watergate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/woodward-bernstein-chat-watergate/ |
Sarah Palin is back, and smaller than ever
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin in Anchorage on April 20. (Mark Thiessen/AP)
When Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska in 2009, midway through her only term, it was plainly because she thought she was destined for even greater things. She had become a national celebrity as John McCain’s running mate, she had heard the cheers of joyous crowds, and she had visions of TV offers and endorsement deals and her own ascension to the Oval Office. Who had time for the mundane responsibilities of governing?
Thirteen years later, Palin is back. And she’s smaller than ever.
In a special primary election to replace the late Rep. Don Young (R), the state’s only House member, Palin is placing first among dozens of contenders (though counting is ongoing). She appears to have secured her slot in a runoff. Although there are other strong candidates, if all goes well for Palin, she could be heading to Washington soon.
So look out, America, because she’s really going to shake things up! If by “shake things up” we mean add one more member to the House Far-Right Bananapants Caucus, sending out tweets to troll the libs and jockeying for Newsmax appearances.
It’s not quite the heroic triumph she had planned.
Although Palin might be irrelevant as a potential lawmaker and of limited interest as a low-rent provocateur, there’s a good case that she was the seed from which the current Republican Party grew. She revealed the nature of what would become Donald Trump’s base, and our country is still dealing with the results.
The GOP “establishment” that elevated Palin, and then was horrified by her and eventually cast her out, has been so diminished in the intervening years that for all intents and purposes there is no longer any meaningful conflict between that establishment and the base. The base won the fight.
In so many ways, Palin really was Trump before Trump. Ignorant, unprepared, gleefully characterizing denizens of small towns as the “real America” (thus denigrating people in cities and suburbs), she was possessed of a similar kind of chaotic charisma. Some people hung on her every simple-minded word, while others gaped at her and said, “Can you believe this?” But nobody could look away, at least for a while.
Although Palin and McCain lost that 2008 campaign, by the end it was clear that she was the one drawing crowds and attention. Far more than McCain, who for all his “maverick” mythmaking was deeply respectful of institutions, she showed what the Republican base truly wanted: anger, resentment and a project devoted to tearing it all down while Owning the Libs (though we didn’t yet call it that). Every time a political ad features a gun-totin’ young Republican mom talking about showing the socialists who’s boss, it’s walking the trail Palin blazed.
Yet today it’s almost impossible to imagine Palin becoming a leader in the way it had first appeared she might. The fact that she turned out to be far less compelling after extended public exposure is part of the reason. More important is the way Palinism turned out to be only a part of what is now the Republican formula.
While her brand of politics was shocking and compelling in 2008, today it’s the GOP baseline. Most every Republican, even those for whom such positions don’t come naturally, has to be an election-denying, lib-trolling, socialist-loathing culture warrior. When everyone is doing it, those who have little else to offer other than the superficial version don’t have a real claim to leadership.
If Palin gets to Congress, she’ll be just one of many members of that GOP chorus, alongside the likes of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.), whose purpose is to go on right-wing media, say outrageous things that liberals will condemn and separate gullible conservatives from their money.
As disturbing as these characters might be, they won’t be running the Republican Party in the future. They are more like hype men: They’re not the main attraction; their job is to keep the crowd worked up and excited, but they’re fundamentally supporting players.
Instead, the ones to watch are more serious, more focused, more ambitious and much more frightening. It’s people such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri who are working to craft a new model of ferocious authoritarianism for America — one where you don’t just make snide remarks about your enemies; you mobilize the power of the state to crush them.
Palin wants a part in that project, and she might get one. But it won’t be as the leader of a movement. And even if she’s a bit player, she can still congratulate herself for helping bring us to this awful moment, when the survival of our democracy is in serious doubt. She has already done more than her share of damage. | 2022-06-13T18:59:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Sarah Palin is back, and smaller than ever - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/sarah-palin-is-back/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/sarah-palin-is-back/ |
Schwab to pay $187 million after SEC says robo-advisers misled investors
The brokerage giant’s automated advisory program held large portions of clients’ funds in cash even though they could have fared better on low-risk investments, the regulator says
The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Schwab — which controls $7.28 trillion in client assets — of developing automated advisory bots that recommended investors keep 6 to 29.4 percent of their holdings in cash, rather than invest them in stocks or other securities. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
Brokerage giant Charles Schwab will pay $187 million to resolve charges from federal regulators that its robo-advisers did not tell clients they would have been better off investing a larger share of their cash in funds rather than tie it up in Schwab’s investment bank.
The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Schwab — which controls $7.28 trillion in client assets — of developing automated advisory bots that recommended investors keep 6 percent to 29.4 percent of their holdings in cash, rather than invest them in stocks or other securities. Investors stood to gain significant income if that money had been invested; instead Schwab used the cash to issue loans and collect interest on those funds.
The settlement announced Monday does not require Schwab to admit wrongdoing, and in a statement the company said, “We believe that cash is a key component of any sound investment strategy through different market cycles.” The SEC alleged that Schwab’s own data showed that under most market conditions investors participating in the “Schwab Intelligent Portfolios” program would lose out on low-risk earnings.
“Schwab claimed that the amount of cash in its robo-adviser portfolios was decided by sophisticated economic algorithms meant to optimize its clients’ returns when in reality it was decided by how much money the company wanted to make,” Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said in a statement. “Schwab’s conduct was egregious and today’s action sends a clear message to advisers that they need to be transparent with clients about hidden fees and how such fees affect clients’ returns.”
The company should have disclosed that its “Intelligent Portfolios” product reserved a significant chunk of funds in liquid form, the SEC charged. As part of the settlement, Schwab agreed to a cease-and-desist order from the practices, a censure, and will retain an independent consultant to review its robo-adviser disclosures, marketing and advertising.
The $187 million fine includes a $52 million forfeiture of profits derived from the “Intelligent Portfolios” program and a $135 million civil penalty. Some of those funds will be distributed to harmed investors, the company said.
Schwab made “false and misleading statements” on regulatory certifications from 2015 to 2018, the SEC asserted in its settlement order, about both the amount of cash Schwab held of its clients’ money and conflict of interest disclosures.
During the same period, Schwab advertised the “Intelligent Portfolios” program as a “no-advisory-fee” product, however it offered significantly fewer services by maintaining such a large cash balance.
“Investors were unable to make a fully informed decision regarding whether the lack of an advisory fee benefited them,” the settlement order said.
“We believe resolving the matter in this way is in the best interests of our clients, company, and stockholders as it allows us to remain focused on helping our clients invest for the future,” the company’s statement said. “As always, we are committed to earning our clients’ trust every day and work diligently to maintain the highest standards for professional conduct throughout our organization.”
Schwab’s stock fell 1.2 percent in midday trading, though the market as a whole faced widespread losses. The Dow Jones industrial average slumped more than 2 percent. | 2022-06-13T18:59:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Schwab to pay $187 million after SEC says robo-advisers misled investors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/schwab-pay-187-million-after-sec-says-robo-advisers-misled-investors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/schwab-pay-187-million-after-sec-says-robo-advisers-misled-investors/ |
DONNA, TEXAS - MARCH 30: Young unaccompanied migrants, wait for their turn at the secondary processing station in the Department of Homeland Security holding facility on March 30, 2021 in Donna, Texas. The Donna location is the main detention center for unaccompanied children coming across the U.S. border in the Rio Grande Valley. The youngest of the unaccompanied minors are kept separate from the rest of the detainees. The Biden administration has just allowed journalists inside its main detention facility at the border for migrant children. It is an overcrowded tent structure where more than 4,000 kids and families are kept in pods, with the youngest kept in a large play pen with mats on the floor for sleeping. (Photo by Dario Lopez-Mills - Pool/Getty Images) (Photographer: Pool/Getty Images North America)
In a pair of immigration law opinions today, the Supreme Court made things harder for noncitizens indefinitely detained by immigration authorities.
In one, decided almost unanimously and written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court ended the existing requirement that such people get hearings after six months of detention to see if they could be released on bond into the US. In the other, decided 6-3 over a sharp partial dissent from Sotomayor, the justices held that detainees lack the legal authority to challenge the circumstances of their confinement through a class-action suit. Together, the opinions signal that the Supreme Court is less sympathetic to detention conditions than the lower courts.
The relevant statute says that, ordinarily, if someone has been deemed “removable” from the US because of being here illegally, the government may detain that person for 90 days. But it also provides the option of longer detention – it doesn’t say how long – for some people.
The petitioner in the first of today’s cases, Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, is a citizen of Mexico who was kicked out of the U.S. in 2012 and then soon returned without authorization. In 2018, when he had been living in the US for six years, he was arrested and detained pending being sent home. Arteaga-Martinez then filed an asylum claim, stating that he feared persecution or torture in Mexico. An asylum officer found the claim reasonable and referred him to an immigration judge to verify the claim. While awaiting that proceeding, Arteaga-Martinez remained in indefinite detention.
While detained, Arteaga-Martinez asked for a six-month bond hearing. If, at the hearing, he was deemed eligible for bond, he would have been able to stay in the US, free from detention, while he waited to see if his asylum claim was granted.
The lower courts said yes to his request. They had created that kind of bond hearing by saying the statute must be understood to require it. Although the statute doesn’t mention a hearing, and on its face allows indefinite confinement, the lower courts were hoping to avoid the problem of unconstitutional indefinite detention.
Writing for the majority, Sotomayor said the statute can’t be read as requiring a six-month hearing that appears nowhere in its language. That put an end to the hearings. Her opinion left open the possibility that detainees like Arteaga-Martinez could go back to the lower courts and claim that indefinite detention would be unconstitutional.
They might win such a claim, in which case some kind of hearing — probably a six-month hearing — could be reinstated on the theory that it is required by the Constitution. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate opinion saying that logically, the lower courts should do exactly that.
Of course, Sotomayor’s hinted sympathy to such a constitutional claim might not extend to the other justices. That much was clear from the second immigration opinion.
In this case, Mexican citizens detained under the same legal provision as Arteaga-Martinez went to court on behalf of all other similarly situated detainees asking for a clear ruling that they were entitled by statute to a six-month bond hearing.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by the court’s other conservatives, said that a different federal immigration statute barred the detainees’ lawsuit altogether. That statute says the lower federal courts may not “enjoin or restrain” the operation of a number of provisions of federal immigration law except in reference to an “individual alien.” According to Alito, the law prohibits the kind of general order that would emerge from a class-action suit brought on behalf of all detainees, not just one of them.
Sotomayor, joined by the court’s two other liberals, dissented, denouncing Alito’s opinion as a “blinkered” decision that would “leave many vulnerable noncitizens unable to protect their rights.” The reason she was so concerned is that the consequences go well beyond the six-month hearing issue. The Alito decision bars essentially all class actions by immigration detainees.
As Sotomayor explained, detainees aren’t entitled to lawyers. They are isolated and cut off. They are archetypal examples of people who need class actions to defend their legal rights.
What is supposed to happen next is that detainees get the chance to argue to the lower courts that the Constitution requires a six-month bond hearing. Now, because of the Alito opinion, that claim will have to be made by an individual, not in a class action. The Alito opinion suggests, without saying so, that the court’s conservatives may not be very sympathetic when the case returns to them. | 2022-06-13T19:00:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court Makes Immigration Lockup Harder to Escape - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/supreme-court-makes-immigration-lockup-harder-to-escape/2022/06/13/daf40dfa-eb44-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/supreme-court-makes-immigration-lockup-harder-to-escape/2022/06/13/daf40dfa-eb44-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Key gun compromise proposals already cover most blue-state Americans
Demonstrators join the “March for Our Lives” rally in New York City on June 11. (Yuki Iwamura/AFP)
An unexpected announcement Sunday: A bipartisan group of senators had reached agreement on legislation aimed at combating gun violence in the United States. After a pair of high-profile mass shootings in May, there were the usual rumblings about making changes aimed at preventing similar incidents in the future, rumbling that we’ve heard emerge and fade away so often before. This time, though, something resulted.
Something modest, certainly. The challenge for Republican legislators in particular is that their base broadly objects to new gun regulations, but the public overall has been clamoring for Congress to take some sort of action. So the compromise that emerged was clearly aimed largely at yielding some sort of result that imposed very limited restrictions on gun ownership. It is unquestionably something and not nothing, but how much it is depends on your point of view and on how it is implemented.
One thing that’s clear, though, is that the effects of implementation would be felt more in Republican-voting states than Democratic ones.
Consider two of the most significant proposals. One would encourage states to implement “red flag” laws, making it easier to remove firearms from people who family or law enforcement deemed a danger. Another would close a loophole in the Violence Against Women Act that expands prohibitions against firearm ownership to more domestic violence offenders.
A number of states already have the first form of legislation. Last October, Pew Trusts explored the ways in which such laws had already proven effective at confiscating guns. One drawback, though? People — and even law enforcement — weren’t aware of the laws, limiting their use.
That article included a map of states that had implemented some sort of “red flag” policy.
You’ll notice that most of the states with such laws backed President Biden in 2020. Florida is one of the two exceptions; its law was passed in the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.
You’ll also notice that there is a red-flag law in place in New York, where a gunman last month killed 10 people at a grocery store. Despite some indications that he might commit an act of violence, the alleged shooter in that case was not barred from owning a gun.
What’s noteworthy about the map is how much of the population is covered. About 7 in 10 Americans who live in blue states live in a state with a red-flag law. Only about 1 in 5 Americans who live in red states are covered by one.
There’s a similar divide on the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” the effort to ensure that limits on firearm ownership cover even less-formal relationships affected by domestic violence. Everytown for Gun Safety identifies 16 states that have laws aimed at limiting gun ownership in cases of domestic violence include dating relationships.
About 3 in 5 of those who live in blue states live in a state that has closed this loophole. Only 1 in 10 residents of red states do.
Compare that to the proposed law that emerged after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Then, the Senate focused on expanding background checks to cover every gun sale. It was blocked by a mostly Republican minority in the Senate. But such laws exist in a number of states, according to the Giffords Law Center, founded by former Arizona legislator and shooting victim Gabby Giffords.
All of them are blue.
Two-thirds of residents of blue states live in a state that has a mandate for background checks (with the noted qualifications in Pennsylvania and New Mexico). No residents of red states do.
This, by itself, encapsulates the current fight. Among other things what the Senate compromise — if finalized! — would achieve is encouraging policies and practices that exist mostly in blue states and encourage their expansion in red states as well.
But it would also not significantly restrict access to firearms to people not convicted of crimes. | 2022-06-13T19:01:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Key parts of the Senate's compromise proposal on guns already cover most blue-state Americans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/key-gun-compromise-proposals-already-cover-most-blue-state-americans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/key-gun-compromise-proposals-already-cover-most-blue-state-americans/ |
Tucker Harris joins The Post’s Design Department as news designer
Announcement from Creative Director for the newsroom Greg Manifold, Deputy Design Director Brian Gross and Deputy Design Director Matt Callahan:
We are excited to announce that Tucker Harris will be joining the Design department as a news designer.
Tucker comes to The Post from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she worked as the Lead Web & Digital Product Designer in the iDeas Lab. She collaborated closely with think-tank experts to help them communicate their research more effectively on the web, building custom websites that supported their content, goals and brand.
In the past few years, Tucker has focused on the design and development of storytelling and data visualization presentations. With the support of developers and a multidisciplinary team, she led the design of projects on a range of topics such as the spread of Russian PMCs, Beijing’s evolving narrative of U.S. decline and China’s maritime power projection network.
Tucker also developed the website for the CSIS Journalism Bootcamp and mentored university participants as they constructed multimedia stories on global issues.
Originally from Richmond, Tucker earned a degree in studio art from the University of Virginia. In her free time, she enjoys reading or sketching in coffee shops, playing guitar and taking long walks around her D.C. neighborhood.
Please join us in welcoming Tucker, whose first day is today. | 2022-06-13T19:01:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tucker Harris joins The Post’s Design Department as news designer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/13/tucker-harris-joins-posts-design-department-news-designer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/13/tucker-harris-joins-posts-design-department-news-designer/ |
The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., will host the U.S. Open for the first time since 1988. (Barry Chin/AP)
The U.S. Open tees off Thursday at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. Here’s what you need to know about the third major on the men’s golf schedule, which this year will have some added intrigue after the creation of the breakaway LIV Golf International Series.
How can I watch the U.S. Open?
Where is the U.S. Open being played?
Who won the U.S. Open last year?
How big is the field at the U.S. Open?
Will the golfers who played in the LIV Golf event be allowed to play? | 2022-06-13T19:01:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Your guide to the 2022 U.S. Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/how-to-watch-us-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/how-to-watch-us-open/ |
Boris Johnson wants to junk parts of Brexit deal on Northern Ireland
Protesters demonstrate at entrance to Hillsborough Castle before the arrival of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on May 16. (Peter Nicholls/Reuters)
LONDON — Boris Johnson’s government on Monday introduced legislation that threatens to rip out a central plank of the very Brexit deal the prime minister hailed as a victory — the agreement with the European Union that controls how goods move between Britain and Northern Ireland.
The highly controversial bill, coming just a week after Johnson survived a no-confidence vote, prompted pushback from European diplomats, the Irish prime minister and members of the Johnson’s own party, charging that the unilateral turnaround would violate international law and could spark a trade war with the continent.
The British government is also wary of backlash from the White House and Congress. U.S. politicians, including President Biden, have repeatedly warned Johnson not do anything that might undermine the peace in Northern Ireland. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has threatened that there will never be a trade deal with the United States if the prime minister upsets the status quo.
Johnson claimed Monday that he is in fact trying to preserve the peace by walking away from what’s known as the “Northern Ireland Protocol” — which he negotiated, concluded and cheered in 2020.
Johnson’s critics say he either never read his own deal, or never understood it, or simply hoped to fudge the details later.
Fudging has been a central theme during his tenure. The House of Commons is investigating whether he lied about boozy parties staged at his offices and residence at Downing Street during coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
U.K. to investigate whether Boris Johnson lied about lockdown parties
Johnson originally praised the Brexit trade protocol as an artful compromise — allowing Britain to break free while also retaining the integrity of the E.U. market and maintaining the free flow that has helped to cement peace on the island of Ireland. He dismissed concerns from Northern Ireland’s unionists that the agreement would lead to a customs-and-control regime for goods moving across the Irish Sea.
But now, he says it’s critical to acknowledge that unionists feel cut off from the rest of Britain.
He told broadcasters Monday, “We have to understand there are two traditions in Northern Ireland, probably two ways of looking at the border issues, and one community at the moment feels very, very estranged from the way things are operating and very alienated. And we’ve just got to fix that.”
The new bill would remove blanket checks on goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland, instead creating “green lanes” with little paperwork and “red lanes” with more scrutiny. It also demands that trade disputes be resolved by “independent arbitration” and not the European Court of Justice.
On Monday, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin told reporters, “It’s very regrettable for a country like the U.K. to renege on an international treaty.”
Martin continued, “I think it represents a new low point, because the natural expectation of democratic countries like ourselves, the U.K. and all across Europe is that we honor international agreements that we enter into.”
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she has tried hard to find compromise with the Europeans.
Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, accused the British government of proposing to “deliberately ratchet up tension with an E.U. seeking compromise.” He said Truss hadn’t met with her counterparts since February.
On one level, this is all about trade minutiae and paperwork — how a chicken or an egg, or pharmaceuticals and car parts, need be inspected and taxed as the goods cross the Irish Sea, and how any of those goods move into Europe’s Common Market through an Irish back door.
On a deeper level, this is all about the future of the United Kingdom, and whether Northern Ireland remains a part of that kingdom, or slips away, as Scotland threatens to do, creating a shrinking British state, under Johnson or his successors.
At stake: The Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 truce that brought peace to Ireland, ending the 30-year sectarian civil strife known as “the Troubles.” The pact, negotiated in part by the United States, erased the militarized border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and created a balky, dysfunctional but peaceful sharing of power in Belfast between unionists and republicans, pro-Britain Protestants and pro-Ireland Catholics.
Unionists in Belfast are now refusing to participate in power sharing institutions until the trade situation is addressed.
But on Monday, 52 out of 90 members of Northern Ireland Assembly signed a letter rejecting “in the strongest possible terms” Johnson’s attempt to rewrite the protocol. The assembly members called his move “reckless.”
At Westminster, too, some lawmakers from Johnson’s Conservative Party worried that it could reopen the Brexit debate and treaties. Critics say Johnson is yielding to extremist elements threatening violence.
For his part, Johnson on Monday called the proposed changes his government seeks a “trivial adjustment.”
Truss said the new bill will “fix the problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol and restore political stability.” She said she hoped the Brussels would be “willing to change.”
Maros Sefcovic, a European Commission vice president, said that the U.K.’s move to unilaterally override the Northern Ireland Protocol was “damaging to mutual trust and a formula for uncertainty.”
David Henig, a trade policy expert, said that the unresolved Northern Ireland issue may already be having a “chilling effect” on where companies invest and locate.
Henig said that while the Biden administration has made its stance clear, “it really could do with being a little bit more hands on.” For instance, “there still isn’t an envoy to Northern Ireland, and there are no sign of U.S. suggesting mediators or that they could facilitate dialogue.”
Karla Adam in London contributed to this report. | 2022-06-13T19:02:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boris Johnson wants to junk Brexit's Northern Ireland Protocol - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/northern-ireland-protocol-brexit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/northern-ireland-protocol-brexit/ |
Construction on the new Nice/Middleton Bridge across the Potomac near Newburg, Md. (Maryland Transportation Authority)
Regarding the June 5 Metro article “Stalled loan proves costly”:
Then-Maryland Transportation Secretary Greg Slater was told in an email how to win approval of the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan: “Perhaps we can offer them the old bridge for bicycles and save on the cost of demolishment,” Allen Garman, the Maryland Transportation Authority’s director of treasury and debt, said. Likewise, Jim Ports, then the executive director of the authority, voiced concerns about not wanting to waste public funds.
Yet the Maryland Transportation Authority plans to spend $15 million to $23 million to destroy the existing Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge, which should be given more consideration for conversion to a pedestrian/bicycle facility that will provide a missing connection at a fraction of the cost for a new structure.
Publicly available inspection records show the bridge is in fair or better condition and adequately carries existing highway traffic loads. In fact, the bridge is so stable that it has recently become apparent that mechanical demolition of parts of the structure is not feasible and explosive demolition is being considered. This will result in unanticipated fish kills and impacts to endangered species not considered in the original environmental assessment. An amended environmental document presents an opportunity to reconsider plans.
At the very least, the state should not start any demolition work until an independent review determines the costs and benefits of such a conversion. Gathering and sharing information needed to decide on the merits of saving money by converting the existing bridge vs. spending millions of dollars to destroy it will provide a real opportunity to claim credit for a money-saving victory.
Thomas S. Flournoy, Arlington
The writer is an adviser to the Potomac Heritage Trail Association. | 2022-06-13T20:13:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A new bridge will be great, but we can still use the old bridge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/new-bridge-will-great-we-can-still-use-old-bridge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/new-bridge-will-great-we-can-still-use-old-bridge/ |
In trying to go green, the U.S. sometimes can’t get out of its own way
The Post’s June 8 front-page article “For ‘green’ aluminum, they need clean energy,” about the difficulties of restarting the Alcoa Intalco Works aluminum smelter in Washington state, was an unfortunate example of how the United States simply cannot get out of its own way when it comes to revitalizing domestic manufacturing.
Restarting Intalco mirrors the Biden administration’s stated goal of increasing domestic green manufacturing, decreasing dependence on Russia for crucial materials and creating middle-class union jobs. Aluminum is a critical material for economic and national security. It is used in defense, aerospace and infrastructure — and is crucial to the transition to electric vehicles. But this project might not happen for lack of an electricity contract.
This is going to be a recurring story. It will take clean, abundant, low-cost energy to reindustrialize America, from mineral processing to other strategic materials. We built many of these facilities during World War II as part of the Arsenal of Democracy to beat the Germans, and we will need them again to compete with the Russians and Chinese.
Joe Quinn, Washington
The writer is director of the Center for Strategic Industrial Materials at SAFE Commanding Heights. | 2022-06-13T20:14:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | In trying to go green, the U.S. sometimes can’t get out of its own way - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/trying-go-green-us-sometimes-cant-get-out-its-own-way/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/trying-go-green-us-sometimes-cant-get-out-its-own-way/ |
Years of outrage have yet to move the needle on guns
Actor Matthew McConaughey delivers remarks on the shooting in Uvalde, Tex., during the White House briefing on June 7. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Regarding the June 8 news article “In surprise White House appearance, McConaughey pushes for gun control”:
I saw Matthew McConaughey speak from the White House briefing room, and I share his outrage, particularly when he pointed to the green high-top sneakers worn by Maite Rodriguez at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on the day of yet another school shooting. Can you imagine that those shoes would be the only tangible evidence left by which her parents would identify their beautiful 10-year-old daughter?
Every elected member of Congress ought to be taken to a secure room in the Capitol and be made to see photographs of the crime scene on a large screen, to see the effect an assault weapon has on 19 children and two adults. They should have to look at those pictures and think to themselves, “But for the Grace of God, that could be my child ... my grandchild ... my spouse.”
I am tired of living in fear as a result of the rights of individuals who possess these weapons. I can no longer go to church, a mall, a theater or a grocery store without thinking that someone possessing an assault weapon might decide it is my last day. Our children cannot go to school and feel safe.
In November 2017, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked, “How can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents?” This was in response to a mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., where 26 were killed and 22 others were injured. Almost five years later, nothing has changed, and our thoughts and prayers have not moved the needle.
Alice S. McCarthy, Rockville | 2022-06-13T20:14:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Years of outrage have yet to move the needle on guns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/years-outrage-have-yet-move-needle-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/years-outrage-have-yet-move-needle-guns/ |
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol holds its second public hearing on June 13 in D.C. (Jabin Botsford/Pool/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack heard Monday from a cavalcade of former officials who worked for President Donald Trump around the time of the 2020 election. They all wanted Mr. Trump to win. Yet they all testified that they were confident that the election was not stolen and that they told Mr. Trump so. Anyone in Trumpworld with a shred of intellectual honesty apparently concluded that the claims of Mr. Trump and other 2020 crackpots were obviously false — “bull---t,” as former attorney general William P. Barr put it. The lesson is that, in the age of social media and hyper-partisanship, it is unsettlingly easy to manufacture national crises out of absolutely nothing. Americans must shift how they vote accordingly.
Well before the 2020 election, Trump campaign staff members knew that early returns would skew Republican and later returns Democratic. They said they counseled Mr. Trump not to declare premature victory. Mr. Trump ignored them. He alleged major fraud “right out of the box on election night,” Mr. Barr testified, “before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence.”
As Mr. Trump cried fraud, his staff evaluated the facts. Former campaign manager Bill Stepien testified that he ran “Team Normal,” which concluded the allegations were false. Mr. Trump increasingly sidelined these people in favor of cranks who told him what he wanted to hear, such as his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. It is well that Mr. Stepien and others are now telling their stories. But why didn’t “Team Normal” say more publicly in late 2020, when Mr. Trump’s attempt to subvert the election was underway?
Mr. Barr, who did speak up then, said bogus allegations came in so profusely that he had to play election conspiracy “whack-a-mole.” Richard Donoghue, who served as acting deputy attorney general after Mr. Barr resigned in December 2020, said Mr. Trump, after being told an allegation was false, would simply fixate on another one. Mr. Barr testified that Mr. Trump had “become detached from reality” and that there was “never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.” If there is a second Trump administration, it’s a good bet that only the cranks will be allowed in.
Americans have long had the luxury of voting for leaders based on day-to-day issues such as economic performance or tax, education or environmental policy, because the major parties’ nominees have shared commitments to basic facts and to the U.S. political system. We no longer have that luxury. Voters must now prioritize honesty on core issues and commitment to democracy above all else. If we fail to repudiate politicians who lie or who amplify lies about U.S. democracy, more will do so. If more do so, confusion and division will become only more severe, and the likelihood of an antidemocratic takeover, perhaps as soon as 2024, will rise.
In 2022, some candidates are avowedly running on the most obvious fiction about 2020. But these are not the only villains. There are some who do not speak as explicitly but sowed doubts by objecting to the 2020 electoral college vote or by expressing concerns about election integrity as they passed new voting restrictions. There are those who remain silent amid this dishonesty and cynicism, in hope of political advancement. And there are some, such as the Jan. 6 committee’s vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who have behaved patriotically. Whether we have another 2020 — or worse — in 2024 depends heavily on what voters do this November, not just with the conspiracy fanatics but with all those who have spinelessly played along. | 2022-06-13T20:22:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump’s aides told him the truth. Now they are finally telling us. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/jan-6-hearing-donald-trump-aides-finally-telling-truth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/jan-6-hearing-donald-trump-aides-finally-telling-truth/ |
Salvador Rizzo
A large crowd listens to David Hogg, a gun-control activist and Parkland shooting survivor, speak near the Washington Monument at a rally Saturday. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
U.S. Park Police have arrested a 21-year-old man they say is responsible for frightening the crowd of thousands at Saturday’s March for Our Lives rally near the Washington Monument by yelling something during a moment of silence.
In the “chaos and fear,” six people were injured, including one juvenile, a police affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court said. Sgt. Thomas Twiname, a Park Police spokesman, said all six were treated for minor injuries by medical professionals on the scene and no one was transported to a hospital.
Mitchell Martinez, of Coral Gables, Fla., was charged with disorderly conduct by creating fear and disorderly conduct by disrupting a gathering. Police said Martinez did not have any weapons, did not pose a threat to the public and was released with a citation to appear in court at a later date.
The perceived threat of a mass shooting at a large gathering protesting such violence caused a brief panic, as attendees ran away from the stage, children cried and many people were spooked enough to leave the Mall before the end of the rally. Martinez told a Park Police officer he yelled “I am God” during the moment of silence, according to a police affidavit, but three witnesses said they heard him yell “I have a gun.”
There was no attorney listed for Martinez in online court records, and his relatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
The rally was staged by March for Our Lives, the organization founded by student survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Martinez, a rapper who wants to “promote gun control through music,” drove to D.C. from Texas to attend what he called the “March for Gun Control” event, according to a police affidavit.
Once there, according to a police affidavit, four witnesses told authorities they saw Martinez jump the fence in front of the stage. Martinez also told a Park Police officer that during the moment of silence, he played the fourth track on his album from a handheld speaker, according to the affidavit. When security grabbed him, he said he tried to pass his speaker to people in the crowd before throwing it toward the stage.
The ensuing stampede lasted about 15 seconds and rippled at least two-thirds of the way through the crowd before a speaker onstage shouted to stop running. | 2022-06-13T20:26:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man arrested after March for Our Lives scare in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/march-for-our-lives-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/march-for-our-lives-dc/ |
A $1 million lottery’s winning numbers: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
The numbers for the Virginia Lottery’s Bank a Million draw Saturday night stunned some observers — but not mathematicians
By Alisa Tang
A video still from the Virginia Lottery shows the numbers drawn for the Bank a Million game on Saturday. (Virginia Lottery)
The lottery game was Bank a Million, a contest launched in 2015 with the tag line that if a winner matches the numbers drawn, “You bank the $1,000,000. We pay the taxes.” On Saturday night, Virginia Lottery draw show host Liz Hayes narrated the picks, as usual, as the numbered ping-pong balls were blown with forced air up into tubes.
What happened next was decidedly not usual.
“Tonight’s first number is 16,” Hayes began. “Our second number, 13. Third number tonight is 14. Next we have 18, followed by 17 and 15. And your Bonus Ball tonight is 19.”
Or, in order of lowest to highest: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19.
John Hagerty, a spokesman for the Virginia Lottery — which generates approximately $1.6 million per day for the state’s K-12 public schools, according to its website — said “it’s always fun when those random numbers come out in some sort of discernible sequence,” such as 1-1-1 in the Pick 3 or 0-0-0-0 in the Pick 4. But the picks Saturday night were a first for him.
“I’ve been with the Virginia Lottery since Bank a Million began, and I don’t recall the winning numbers for this game ever coming out in a full numeric sequence like this,” Hagerty wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
A Virginia woman had a winning lottery ticket. She threw it away.
According to the Virginia Lottery site, the odds of winning are 1 in 3,838,380.
As for the likelihood of that specific sequence?
“Is it very unlikely that the numbers would show up 13 to 19? Yes,” said Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison who wrote about the lottery in his book “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.”
But any other set of numbers is “equally unlikely,” Ellenberg quickly added, speaking by phone from his front porch in Madison. “On the one hand, it’s very striking. On the other hand, a very improbable thing happens every time the lottery numbers are drawn. Every particular outcome is very unlikely. Otherwise people would win too much.”
The thing is, “our brains are pattern finders,” he said. “We look at this number, and we say, ‘That’s incredible: All seven are in a row.’ We might look at another list of numbers and say, ‘That’s garbage.’ But another person might say, ‘That’s my birthday and my girlfriend’s birthday — we should get married!’”
Patterns we find, Ellenberg said, are “a personal thing, not a mathematical thing.”
Catalin Barboianu, a Romanian researcher and author of the book “The Mathematics of Lottery: Odds, Combinations, Systems,” offered a similar assessment about the Bank a Million draw.
“This is quite an event! It is amazing not from a statistical/probabilistic perspective (as any specific combination of numbers has the same probability to be drawn), but rather from a regular lottery player’s perspective,” he wrote in an email to The Post.
Powerball mystery: Someone in this tiny town won $731 million. Now everyone wants a piece of it.
Barboianu explained that most lottery players “avoid playing certain particular lines” because of the “fallacious belief” that such lines have less chance to be drawn than “regular” lines.
“Perhaps the lines holding numbers in succession are the most avoided ones,” he said. “And still, it has the same probability like any other line.”
And a lucky few on Saturday benefited from their choices.
One ticket, Hagerty said, won $500,000, and another won $250,000. Both were purchased in Richmond.
“So far,” Hagerty said, “neither winner has come forward to claim their prize.” | 2022-06-13T20:26:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia Lottery's Bank a Million draw yields surprising winning numbers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/virginia-lottery-winning-numbers-million-probability/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/virginia-lottery-winning-numbers-million-probability/ |
Torrential rain and damaging gusts are possible during the commute if the complex holds together and hits the area head-on
Forecast radar at 7 a.m. Tuesday from the high-resolution NAM model. (WeatherBell)
A fast-moving and potentially severe complex of thunderstorms could pass close to or directly through the Washington region early Tuesday morning.
If the complex reaches its full potential and hits the area head-on, it could unleash torrential rainfall and damaging gusts — creating dangerous conditions for the Tuesday morning commute. However, it remains possible that the storms aren’t particularly intense, or only skirt the Washington region, passing to the north or south.
The most probable timing for any storms would be between about 6 and 10 a.m., arriving first along the Interstate 81 corridor and last in Southern Maryland.
Early Monday afternoon, the storm complex was just starting to organize in Wisconsin. Computer models generally project it to intensify over the Ohio Valley on Monday night into early Tuesday before barreling southeast across the Appalachians toward Pennsylvania, Maryland, Northern and Central Virginia and the District.
The complex is expected to develop along the northern periphery of a heat dome, generating record high temperatures in the central United States. This zone — where hot, unstable air meets cooler air and storms tend to erupt — is sometimes called a “ring of fire.”
There’s an outside chance that the storm complex, known as a mesoscale convective system, meets the criteria of a derecho — which is an extensive, fast-moving, long-lived and violent bow-shaped squall. However, if a derecho forms, it is very unlikely to be as strong as the infamous event about a decade ago on June 29, 2012.
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has placed the region under a Level 2 out of 5 risk for severe storms Tuesday. Areas to the northwest are under an even higher risk.
The storm complex has the potential to generate a swath of widespread wind damage spanning multiple states as it approaches the Mid-Atlantic region early Tuesday.
The complex will track along a stalled front along the apex of the heat dome as it races from northwest to southeast. This front is depicted in the forecast surface weather map, valid 8 a.m. Tuesday. The solid maroon coloring over West Virginia indicates the likely location of the severe weather threat:
Whether this complex will continue in an intense and damaging state, east of the Appalachians, is highly uncertain. Model projections indicate it’s a possibility, as shown in the high-resolution NAM model simulation below.
We define derecho as a fast-moving complex of thunderstorms that generates a damaging wind swath at least 250 miles in length, with multiple, continuous gusts exceeding 58 mph, and sometimes higher (i.e. into the 70-80 mph range).
But not all derechos are alike, in that they seem to exist along a spectrum of intensity and size. If this complex is deemed a derecho, its intensity may be mitigated by its morning timing, when there has not been enough sun to strongly destabilize the atmosphere.
Derecho science: The debate about what a derecho is and what it isn’t
The severe June 29, 2012, derecho arrived here during the late evening, one to two hours after sunset, after an afternoon when the temperature reached 104 degrees — Washington’s highest June temperature on record. This heat wave promoted an extremely unstable air mass — among the most unstable ever measured in the region — that was able to persist for a few hours beyond sunset.
Conversely, the derecho of June 13, 2013, one of two that impacted the Mid-Atlantic that day, managed to cross the Appalachians in the very early morning hours, but ended up in a fairly ragged state with minimal instances of damaging winds by the time it reached Washington.
In other words, the time of any storm complex’s crossing of the Appalachians and arrival on the eastern slopes does seem to matter in terms of derecho outcome. The odds may favor a less organized or weaker system when Tuesday’s storm complex arrives.
However, as some models continue to simulate an angry-appearing storm arc affecting the D.C. area on Tuesday morning, we have to take this threat seriously. Even if the mountains do take a bite out of the storm complex and the atmosphere is only weakly unstable, an extensive and deep “cool pool” containing high-momentum air could enable the system to sustain itself at an intense level for a time east of the mountains.
CWG will be monitoring upstream development trends, updated models and early evening weather balloon observations and will post updates on the situation at the top of this story. | 2022-06-13T20:27:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Intense storm complex could sweep into D.C. area Tuesday morning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/13/dc-storms-mcs-derecho/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/13/dc-storms-mcs-derecho/ |
FAA will allow SpaceX to launch Starship from Texas, but with a catch
Before it’s granted a launch license, SpaceX must comply with 75 actions to protect the environment
Starship prototypes at the SpaceX South Texas launch site. (Veronica Cardenas/Reuters)
The Federal Aviation Administration is allowing SpaceX to proceed toward launching its massive Starship rocket from its private spaceport in South Texas, while requiring the company to take dozens of actions aimed at protecting the surrounding environment.
After months of review and study, the FAA on Monday issued a “mitigated finding of no significant impact,” a decision that allows Elon Musk’s company to proceed toward its first orbital launch attempt of its massive rocket. But the FAA imposed more than 75 actions that the company must undertake to protect the environment and reduce the impact of its activities on a nearby public beach and wildlife preserve before being given a launch license.
In a tweet, SpaceX said the decision put it “one step closer to the first orbital test of Starship.”
For months, SpaceX and NASA have been awaiting the decision to see when the rocket would be able to attempt a launch to orbit. SpaceX has been working to get it off the ground, and NASA last year gave the company a nearly $3 billion contract to develop Starship so that it could land astronauts on the moon. NASA’s last Apollo moon landing was in 1972.
Environmentalists have feared the massive rocket would disrupt the area’s fragile ecosystem.
Last year, SpaceX launched a series of prototypes of the spacecraft, which also serves as the vehicle’s upper stage, in test flights to an altitude of about six miles. Since the spacecraft is designed to be fully reusable, SpaceX was testing whether it could land as well as how it would fly, and several of the tests ended in crash landings that touched off huge fireballs and spewed debris across the area.
Local residents have also complained that when SpaceX conducts tests it gets permission to close a road to a nearby public beach.
Earlier this month, the Sierra Club joined a lawsuit against state and local authorities for closing the beach “so frequently that [Rio Grande Valley] residents have seen their access essentially disappear.”
But others have welcomed SpaceX, saying it is helping lift the economy of one of the poorest communities in the country and giving it the cachet of a modern Cape Canaveral.
“It is extremely exciting that the testing, the research and development continues to go forward literally on a daily basis,” Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino told The Washington Post last year. “I think it’s a learning and growing experience for all of us. We’re getting used to having SpaceX in our backyard, and we’re trying to support them.”
Musk has said Starship is the “holy grail” of spaceflight, a system that would be fully reusable, refueled in orbit and that the company says could lift 100 metric tons to low Earth orbit, or dozens of people in the version designed to fly crew. The fully stacked vehicle — the Starship spacecraft atop a massive Super Heavy booster — stands 394 feet tall, taller than the Space Launch System NASA is developing. And both the booster and the spacecraft would be able to land back on Earth so that they could fly again, unlike traditional rockets, which dump their first stages into the ocean.
Starship is a key component of NASA’s Artemis mission to return astronauts to the moon. The Orion spacecraft, launched atop the SLS rocket, would fly the astronauts to the moon. There, in lunar orbit, it would rendezvous with Starship. The astronauts would move from Orion to Starship, which would take them to the surface of the moon and then back to Orion once the mission is completed. Orion would then fly back to Earth.
NASA officials recently visited Texas to check SpaceX’s progress and appeared to be pleased.
“On my recent visit to @SpaceX in Boca Chica, Texas, I had the chance to view the Super Heavy Booster, slated to make its first orbital test flight later this year, and the engines that will be used on Starship, the human landing system for #Artemis III,” Mark Kirasich, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for the Artemis campaign development division, wrote on Twitter Saturday.
Before that can happen, however, the FAA says SpaceX needs to meet multiple requirements, such as the “ongoing monitoring of vegetation and wildlife by a qualified biologist,” notify nearby communities about “potential engine noise and sonic booms,” work with state and federal agencies “to remove launch debris from sensitive habitats,” and adjust the lighting at its facilities to minimize the impact on the beach.
The FAA said that closures of the lone road to the public beach will not be allowed during 18 holidays throughout the year, and that weekend closures would be limited to five weekends per year. | 2022-06-13T20:31:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SpaceX gets provisional OK to launch Starship from Texas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/13/spacex-starship-faa-boca-chica/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/13/spacex-starship-faa-boca-chica/ |
Phil Mickelson met with the media before the U.S. Open in Brookline, Mass. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)
BROOKLINE, Mass. — Phil Mickelson’s global tour through zones of geopolitics moved from London on the weekend to the front edges of these shores by Monday midday, when he stood at a lectern flanked by two plastic plants in a warm little interview tent with grilling big questions.
In advance of the U.S. Open here, one of the most recognizable golfers of the era looked bearded and otherwise different — less chipper than usual, sort of distant, almost robotic — as he stayed in the crammed space for about 25 minutes and took more questions than required by the moderator. He defended in anodyne terms his decision to join Saudi Arabia’s stupendously moneyed LIV Golf. He deployed the word “respect” lavishly. He explained the attraction toward a government whose human-rights record — and assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — he noted months ago.
“I think that there’s an obvious incredible financial commitment,” he said, “but more than that — for all the players involved and everyone involved — but more than that, there are other factors that with fewer tournaments, it allows me to have more balance in my life. It allows me to do things that are off the golf course I’ve always wanted to do. I find that as I prioritize those that are important to me, people that are important to me going forward, this allows me to have more time with them, be more present, and to share more life experiences outside of golf.”
He said he did not know how his career might go from here, now that he has forgone a certain future as a beloved geezer golfer in the form of Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer. “So I think it’s been pretty public that I’m suspended along with a bunch of other players, so it would be only speculative going forward,” he said. “I am going to play the LIV events. I am going to play the British Open, but anything other than that would be pure speculation. I don’t know how all this is going to play out.”
As for wishes, he’d still like to play both tours if possible: “I’ve worked hard to earn a lifetime membership,” he said. “I’ve worked hard to give back to the PGA Tour and the game of golf through my 30-plus years of professional golf, and I’ve earned that lifetime membership, so I believe that it should be my choice.”
The PGA Tour has suspended or accepted the resignations of players who have broken to the LIV circuit, a version of golf that plays 54-hole events and spares athletes the hard-world indignity of cuts. The defecting players so far include Dustin Johnson, the highest-ranked player at No. 16, and major winners Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell and Charl Schwartzel. Schwartzel won the first LIV event on the weekend and received $4 million, $1.3 million more than No. 1 Scottie Scheffler received for winning the Masters in April.
Mickelson, who criticized the PGA Tour for “obnoxious greed” to John Huggan of Golf Digest in February from Saudi Arabia, said he had had “strong opinions and ideas, let’s say, regarding most of the governing bodies, and I’ve done a poor job of conveying that. I’ve made it public, and that’s been a mistake. That’s one of the mistakes I’ve been making, and try to going forward be a lot more thoughtful with my words and actions and try to keep a lot of these things behind closed doors.”
The word “respect” surfaced a dozen or so times in his remarks. It applied to fans: “I respect and understand their opinions, and I understand that they have strong feelings and strong emotions regarding this choice.” It applied to former colleagues on the PGA Tour: “I have the utmost respect for the players on the PGA Tour. … I think that I respect if they disagree, but at this time this is the right decision.” It applied to former colleague Rory McIlroy, who just won the Canadian Open on Sunday: “I certainly respect him. I respect his ideas. I respect all the players that choose to stay on the PGA Tour.”
A 51-year-old veteran of three decades of fielding questions critiqued questions, especially when questioners asked plural questions. At one point: “I don’t like it when you keep asking multiple questions.” To a question about what he might have done to “grow the game,” in his words, at the kickoff event in London, he said, “Alex, every day is not about what did I do to grow the game.” (He then mentioned that children had attended the event.) Amid a question about the participation of Saudi citizens in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a public letter from a widow of that attack condemning the golfers who have defected, Mickelson said, “I’ve read all that. Is there a question in there?”
He did answer: “I would say to the (Terry) Strada family, I would say to everyone that has lost loved ones, lost friends on 9/11, that I have deep, deep empathy for them. I can’t emphasize that enough. I have the deepest of sympathy and empathy for them.”
He spoke as a different character at his 116th major championship than at any of the first 115, at “this incredible championship that has eluded me” — he paused — “for my whole career.” He spoke of his four-month turn as a recluse earlier this year after his comments about the Saudi backers of LIV and his subsequent apology, and said, “I also continued to work on some areas that I’m deficient of in my life. I mean, the obvious one is gambling. I’ve been working on that for years, and I’m very happy with where I’m at on that, but I’ll have to continue to work on that the rest of my life.” And he spoke at the only major championship to elude him despite a graphic history of contention, at a course on which he played in 1999 on the U.S. Ryder Cup team that scored a dramatic comeback win.
“I think the Boston crowds are some of the best in sports,” he said, “and I think that they have given me a lot of support, and I’m very appreciative of that over the years. I think that their excitement and energy is what creates such a great atmosphere, so whether it’s positive or negative towards me directly, I think it’s going to provide an incredible atmosphere to hold this championship.”
As he finished, he went behind the tent in the warm sun with a Brookline police officer nearby, stopped for a gulp of a drink, accepted a well-wish from a woman behind the tent and boarded the second of two carts, turning to a crowd behind him and saying, “Hey guys, have a good week.” | 2022-06-13T20:31:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Phil Mickelson discusses LIV Golf before U.S. Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/phil-mickelson-us-open-liv/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/phil-mickelson-us-open-liv/ |
Pastor John McArthur speaks at the Conservative Baptist Network event in Anaheim, Calif., on June 12. (Adam Covington/Baptist Press)
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Southern Baptists filled a cavernous hotel ballroom Sunday to hear a warning: Don’t cooperate or compromise with the devil. And this week, as their huge denomination gathers for its annual meeting and to elect a new president, the urgent warning was aimed at their fellow Southern Baptists.
“You don’t advance the kingdom of God by lining up with the kingdom of Satan,” John MacArthur, a dean of conservative evangelical preaching, told the audience, referring to topics from the role of women to addressing racism. “You will never advance the kingdom of God by being popular with the world. If you think you will, you’re doing the devil’s work. How can you negotiate with people who hate Christ, hate God, hate the Bible and hate the gospel?”
The host of the part-prayer gathering, part-campaign rally on the first night of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting was the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN), an upstart group that some observers have compared with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. The network was formed two years ago in response to the issues of institutional racism and sexual abuse as priorities in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
In the Southern Baptist Convention, where women aren’t allowed to be head pastors, same-sex marriage is opposed and 70 percent of its nearly 14 million members vote Republican, the CBN’s leaders and supporters say the situation is an emergency. And this week, they hope to elect a president who agrees.
“Pretty soon it will be women preachers, social justice, then racism, then CRT [critical race theory], then victimization because the world is a ball and chain, and when you’re hooked, it will take you to the bottom. They hate the truth,” MacArthur said to a crowd that flipped through the night between pin-drop silence and cheers of “that’s true!”
The SBC tends to reflect the state of White evangelicalism in America. Nearly 10,000 Southern Baptists are expected to vote on business matters Tuesday and Wednesday, including on sex abuse revisions.
After messengers at last year’s meeting approved an investigation into the SBC executive committee’s handling of sex abuse claims, the convention had hired a third-party investigative firm called Guidepost Solutions to issue a major report that suggested a years-long coverup of abuse by Southern Baptists leaders. Guidepost published a tweet supporting the LGBTQ community this month, and some Southern Baptist leaders unleashed criticism in response.
Like with many institutions, more White evangelicals are questioning their leaders and are willing to break away. They are fighting over things including: Is acknowledgment of institutional racism akin to an embrace of critical race theory, and is that unbiblical?
Some recent SBC presidents have mirrored a huge swath of their members, especially younger ones, by beginning to emphasize issues such as poverty, racism and sexism rather than primarily conservative sexual and gender mores. And there is a right flank that doesn’t like it.
Benjamin Cole, longtime SBC member and chronicler of SBC politics at the Baptist Blogger site, said he believes the Conservative Baptist Network is more focused on division and political power.
“With respect to CRT, women in ministry, whatever the issue is, I’m not saying they don’t have legitimate concerns, but they have so exaggerated the problem in order to mobilize the uninformed to fight this specter of Marxism and liberalism,” Cole said. “I think there is widespread agreement in the SBC on things that matter. But in all democratic organizations, it’s not all of the registered voters who decide. It’s the impassioned mob that matters.”
Tom Buck, an outspoken Texas conservative, said Sunday that he isn’t a formal member of the CBN but attended and supports the group. He called a 2019 SBC vote calling critical race theory and intersectionality useful “analytical tools” that are evidence of a problem.
“Anything you elevate will be problematic,” he told The Washington Post. “There is what I’d call a lack of confidence and commitment to sufficiency of scripture.”
He said the group was also important because of what he called a rise in women preaching. Asked to name any of the 47,000 SBC churches with a female head pastor, Buck said he knew of a few with female assistant pastors.
Buck said that as he considers sex abuse revisions the convention might make, he was concerned that the accused might not be guaranteed to know who their accuser was and could be treated as guilty until proved innocent. He feels current norms are sufficient, which say any pastor who allows “unrepentant” sexual abusers to stay in their church should be booted from the SBC.
“And it’s not just sex abuse, but there are lots of other issues with people living in unrepentant sin that need to be dealt with,” Buck told The Post.
The lead candidates for SBC president this week include Tom Ascol, a Florida pastor who is not a member of the CBN but was endorsed by them Sunday and spoke at the prayer rally. Also running is Bart Barber, a Texas pastor who has served in various SBC leadership roles.
The size and influence of the conservative network is hard to assess. The group releases no data about its membership or funders, and its spokesman, Louisiana Pastor Brad Jurkovich, did not return calls or emails for comment.
A judge in Louisiana last week ordered Jurkovich to turn over 10 years of financial records to former members of his church who claim he did not inform church members that funds meant for supporting missionaries were instead used to support the CBN.
Several longtime observers and members of the SBC say the two men are in many ways similar in their conservative beliefs. In the past, the key difference between them — and between Ascol and many on the SBC far right — would have been theological.
Broadly speaking, in American Christianity, the two leading candidates would be considered as next to each other, said Griffin Gulledge, a Georgia pastor who sees Ascol as divisive and politically motivated.
“It’s their engagement of politics” that differentiates them. Ascol has appeared in recent weeks on secular conservative media shows, and MacArthur has been represented by Jenna Ellis, a lawyer for former president Donald Trump.
“What is this really about when it comes down to it? The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. It’s very powerful and influential and has wide-ranging power in think tanks and other places,” Gulledge said. “Donald Trump made that power greater, and there are those who see [the SBC] as an influence hub for the culture and the American political system and don’t want to lose it to someone who doesn’t see it as a political tool.” | 2022-06-13T20:32:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Southern Baptists gather, right-wing faction sounds alarms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/13/southern-baptists-john-macarthur/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/13/southern-baptists-john-macarthur/ |
FILE - At left, Chellsie Memmel is shown during the final round of the U.S. gymnastics championships, Saturday, Aug. 20, 2011, in St. Paul, Minn. At right, Alicia Sacramone waves to the crowd during the women’s senior division at the U.S. gymnastics championships, Sunday, June 10, 2012, in St. Louis. Alicia Sacramone Quinn and Chellsie Memmel won Olympic and world championship medals together. Now the two longtime friends and USA Gymnastics teammates are tasked with leading the organization back to the top of the podium. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-06-13T20:32:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sacramone Quinn, Memmel embrace new roles at USA Gymnastics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/sacramone-quinn-memmel-embrace-new-roles-at-usa-gymnastics/2022/06/13/4e0a0466-eb4f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/sacramone-quinn-memmel-embrace-new-roles-at-usa-gymnastics/2022/06/13/4e0a0466-eb4f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Hub for military vets coming to Virginia Tech’s new Alexandria campus
The Boeing office building in the Crystal City section of Arlington, Va. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)
Boeing and Virginia Tech will establish a workforce development center in Alexandria to help military veterans transition to civilian life and build careers in the technology and defense industries, the two entities announced Monday.
The center, which will be housed at Virginia Tech’s new graduate engineering campus in the Potomac Yard neighborhood, marks yet another example of how local officials are hoping to grow and diversify Northern Virginia’s pipeline of engineering talent as the region shapes up into a major tech hub.
And it also underscores how Boeing is growing its regional footprint outside its Arlington offices, just weeks ago confirming that it would be relocating its headquarters there.
Boeing’s move to Arlington pushes ‘tech hub’ vision closer to reality
“Our military veterans need a big assist to get into civilian life, to pursue civilian livelihoods and to pursue tech degrees,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said at a news conference that included Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and both of Virginia’s Democratic senators, Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine. “It is front and center for every one of us to be thinking about this every day, all day.”
Calhoun is a Virginia Tech graduate himself, and the aerospace giant committed $50 million last year to support diversity initiatives at the innovation campus, including financial aid for students, faculty recruitment efforts and STEM partnerships with local public schools.
Part of that donation will be used to fund the hub — officially known as the Boeing Center for Veteran Transition & Military Families — although officials did not say exactly how much will go toward the initiative.
Tim Sands, president of Virginia Tech, said the hub is a continuation of his institution’s long history with the military. The university is one of six in the United States that is designated as a “senior military college,” with its 1,200-person cadet program at its Blacksburg campus that has existed since the school’s founding more than a century ago.
“We’re producing military leaders, but we have to think about the course of their careers and what happens after they have served and have completed their service,” he said. “We recognized that challenge for many years, but we finally have a chance to do something about it in a big way.”
Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Alexandria innovation campus, said in an interview that the veterans center will intentionally be located next to student services offices in the building.
The hub, which will open in 2024, will offer outreach, workforce development and educational resources, with the ultimate goal of helping military veterans contribute to the area’s flourishing technology sector.
“They have phenomenal leadership skills. A lot of the groundwork in some way or shape is laid,” he said. “Our goal is just to bring them to a level where they can really enter into the technical system at a higher level.”
While military veterans make up more than 15 percent of Boeing’s workforce, Collins said that — particularly given their heavy concentration in Northern Virginia — they are an “underserved” group that can help fill the gap between the area’s growing number of tech jobs and qualified graduates to fill those positions.
Northern Virginia has long served as a major site for military business, but the region in recent years has branched out to attract a more diverse corporate clientele, including Amazon’s second headquarters, which is set to hire 25,000 employees in total. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Raytheon announced last week that it would also be relocating to Arlington, a move that means that it and the rest of the “Big Five” defense contractors — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Boeing — all will be located in the D.C. suburbs.
Boeing has said it is also planning to establish a research and technology hub in Arlington “to harness and attract engineering and technical capabilities.” Connor Greenwood, a Boeing spokesman, said the company did not have an estimate of how many jobs that initiative could bring to the region. | 2022-06-13T20:44:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boeing, Virginia Tech partner on veterans center at Alexandria innovation campus - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/veterans-virginia-tech-boeing-hub/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/veterans-virginia-tech-boeing-hub/ |
Authorities allege Nicholas Roske followed a detailed plan long enough to support charge of attempted murder
Just what prompted Nicholas Roske to go from an alleged plot to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to calling 911 and surrendering near the justice’s home is of great interest to investigators continuing to probe the alarming incident from last week.
Court records say that after Roske flew in from California and got out of a taxi near the conservative justice’s home just after 1 a.m., he saw two deputy U.S. marshals standing outside their vehicle and he walked away. But another factor may also have played an important role.
While walking along the narrow, leafy streets of Kavanaugh’s dark Chevy Chase neighborhood, Roske contacted his sister, officials said.
“The suspect arrived by taxi and observed the U.S. marshals, and he turned around to contemplate his next move,” according to Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones. “This is when he texted his sister and told her of his intentions, and she convinced him to call 911, which he did.”
The role Roske’s sister may have played in upending what prosecutors say was a deeply planned attempt to break into Kavanaugh’s home to kill him is the latest detail to emerge in the case of the man who federal officials charged last week with attempted murder of a federal judge.
It was just minutes after Roske’s 911 call that Montgomery County police officers drove up and took him into custody. With him were burglary tools, a gun and a pair of boots with padded outer soles that could allow stealth movement inside a house, according to court records.
Several attempts to reach Roske’s sister and other members of his family have been unsuccessful. His public defender previously declined to comment.
The details of what was allegedly said or texted between Roske and his sister, and how long they communicated, could not be learned. But according to court records and Montgomery County 911 recordings, approximately 33 minutes passed from the time Roske allegedly saw the marshals — and the marshals saw him — to when he called 911. During that time, he walked around the corner from the justice’s home and positioned himself about 1½ blocks away.
Man with gun is arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home, officials say
According to an affidavit written by an FBI agent: “At approximately 1:05 a.m., two United States Deputy Marshals saw an individual dressed in black clothing and carrying a backpack and a suitcase get out of a taxicab that had stopped in front of the Montgomery County, Maryland, residence of a current justice of the United States Supreme Court. The individual looked at the two Deputy Marshals, who were standing next to their parked vehicle, and then turned to walk down the street.”
Roske placed two 911 calls, according to recordings provided by Montgomery’s Emergency Communications Center. The first arrived at 1:38 a.m. and was very brief because the caller said he needed to read street signs to report exactly where he was. The next call came at 1:39 a.m. and yielded a police response within minutes while the call-taker stayed on the phone with Roske. Officers arrived around 1:52 a.m. to take him into custody.
Drew Wade, a U.S. Marshals spokesman, did not immediately provide comment Monday.
However quickly Roske may have decided to not go through his alleged plan, according to court records, he had spent a much longer duration putting them into motion.
Roske indicated to investigators, according to court records, that he purchased a Glock pistol and other items “for the purpose of breaking into the justice’s residence and killing the justice as well as himself.”
Among his belongings when he arrived outside Kavanaugh’s home, according to court records, were the gun, a pistol light, tactical knife, two magazines of ammunition, pepper spray, a hammer, screwdriver, nail punch, crow bar, duct tape, the soft-soled boots and other items. It isn’t clear how accessible the items were at that time.
Later, when he called 911, he indicated that the gun was inside his suitcase, according to the recordings.
“Yes,” Roske reportedly responded. “I brought a firearm with me, but it’s unloaded and locked in the case.” | 2022-06-13T21:41:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nicholas Roske texted his sister outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/kavanaugh-sister-threat-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/kavanaugh-sister-threat-arrest/ |
RuQuan Brown speaks to the crowd during the March for Our Lives rally last weekend in Washington. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)
Right after D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser introduced RuQuan Brown, a Harvard University student and football player, to the massive crowd on the National Mall on Saturday, he let her have it.
“I have to be here because of the very disgusting and intentional ignorance from the city and nation’s elected officials,” he told attendees of March for Our Lives, who were rallying to end gun violence. Brown, 20, would have rather been anywhere else. Instead, he was telling his story, again.
“When I spoke with Mayor Bowser two years ago about creating safer spaces for Black children and people in our city, she told me she’d handle it,” Brown said. “If that were true, I wouldn’t be on this stage.”
Brown is part of a vanguard of American youth who are fed up, betrayed by a generation of leaders who have failed to protect, nurture and grow them.
Thousands of youth gather in Washington to protest gun violence
Organized by the kids who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida four years ago, the youth movement against gun violence today is angry, fueled by common sense issues and largely disinterested in the political gamesmanship of the adults who speak fondly of children but repeatedly put them last on their list.
Brown, who lost a stepfather and a football team member to gun violence, is tired of telling his story to leaders who refuse to make change. “Since our elected officials are extremely broken, ignorant and irresponsible,” Brown said to the crowd, “I’ve been left with no other choice but to explore and discover what it is going to take to keep me, my 10 siblings, my future children, you and yours safe.”
He added, “I thought it might be through education, but we are unsafe in our schools. I thought it would be through leisure, but we are unsafe on vacation. I thought it would be through career, but we are unsafe at work. I thought it would be through politics, but we are unsafe in our capital too.”
The kids are fed up. Here in the District, a few youth organizations teamed up and held a debate for the mayoral candidates. “A forum like this is both exciting and intimidating,” said D.C. Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) after a grilling so intense, you could almost see the sear marks on his psyche.
‘Nothing happens when you have a shooting on a city street’
The kids who have ducked from gunfire in their neighborhoods asked him about gun violence. The ones who see their friends couch surfing or doubling up asked him about homelessness. They wanted to know why he is getting rid of police in their schools and what is up with the lack of grocery stores in their neighborhoods.
The kids are watching. And listening. They are asking and they will be voting.
“Their questions were raw,” White said. “And they don’t let you off the hook.”
“Keep schools safe. Keep the cops in school.”
“More peace programs, jobs for Blacks. Less guns.”
“These charter schools are plagued with violence.”
These are some of the issues the kids wrote on posters at the forum and buttonholed the candidates on at the reception.
“It’s easy to think they’re not hearing us,” said Briana Sturdivant, 17. “But I would say they did answer some questions.”
Lourdes Robinson, the District’s youth mayor, is 16 and a high school sophomore. She is not old enough to vote, but she did not hesitate to corner White on what is happening in her neighborhood.
“There has been a rise of youth violence in D.C.,” she said to him, “What plans or steps do you plan to take to address the issue of violence without increasing police population in our communities?”
Indeed, 2020 was the first time that gunfire killed more youth 19 and younger than car accidents. The rate nationwide jumped 30 percent, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The District is on its fifth straight year of an uphill climb in statistics.
Bowser has tried to make changes with increased police patrols, outreach workers sent to hotspot neighborhoods and more programs for those at risk to violence. But it remains a complex problem in a country whose states have wildly different gun laws.
White took a deep breath and explained that he understands the dynamics of a housing crisis and inflation that help fuel more crime. Robinson liked that he understands the dynamics of the city.
“However, I feel he’s out of touch with youth,” she told me in a text conversation we had after her questioning of White. “There isn’t a clear plan for the youth besides creating schooling for everyone.”
Plans, platforms, platitudes. The kids have heard it all. And they are fixing to be one of the few American generations who will face more violence, homelessness and less opportunity than the one before them. That is messed up.
“I’m disappointed that most politicians haven’t done their job of ensuring the best outcomes for all people in this country,” Brown said after the weekend rally, when he went back to work on his anti-violence campaign and business, raising money for families of gun violence victims.
The rest of the kids went back to their cities and states to lobby, canvass, plead and protest. They are prepared to make change, and they will. | 2022-06-13T21:49:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Our youth are tired of empty promises on gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/dc-kids-activism-gun-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/dc-kids-activism-gun-violence/ |
Ride-share driver hurt by gunfire in Prince George’s County
Police said the driver was not the intended target of the shooting
A ride-share driver was wounded by gunfire Sunday morning in Prince George’s County, police said.
The victim, who was not the intended target of the shooting, suffered a “non-life-threatening” wound in the incident, which occurred about 10:15 a.m. in the 6900 block of Walker Mill Road in Capitol Heights, a police spokeswoman said. She declined to give any more details, saying the shooting remains under investigation. | 2022-06-13T21:49:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ride-share driver wounded by gunfire in Prince George's County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/rideshare-driver-shot-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/rideshare-driver-shot-prince-georges/ |
D.C. Council member Robert C. White Jr. speaks in 2017. White is running for the Democratic nomination for D.C. mayor. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
On a humid Saturday in Northwest Washington, mayoral hopeful Robert C. White Jr. struck up a conversation with a longtime resident, hoping to earn her vote.
Nickei Bent, 36, detailed how she has tried and failed to buy a home in D.C., where some of her family members have lived for more than 60 years. She walked White through the time when she had nowhere to live at all, pressing him on whether he’ll help families on the brink of being pushed out of the District. Bent said she’s ready for a change after voting for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in the previous two election cycles — but how can she trust he’ll be better than the incumbent?
White, in turn, talked about how displacement has affected his own family and outlined some of his ideas to boost affordable housing. If he became mayor, White pledged, outcomes for residents like Bent would be different. After several minutes, the two shook hands.
“He has my vote, for now, but he needs to effect change and show his word is bond — we shook on it,” Bent, a housing advocate, said later. “We need someone who’s not just fresh and new, but who will implement these things they promise, no matter how hard or difficult.”
With about a week to go until D.C.'s Democratic primary election, White, an at-large representative on the D.C. Council, has found that Bent’s skepticism isn’t unique. Some residents have taken him to task over the course of his campaign, he says, particularly seniors in the historically underserved Wards 7 and 8 who’ve heard many doorstep promises from politicians over the years, often with infrequent follow-up.
“They say, ‘I believe in you, but don’t hurt me,’ ” White said. “It hurts to feel neglected when you see so much prosperity in the city. We’ve got to have a leader who’s going to pull those people forward and inspire them to believe again.”
He is now in the closing days of what political observers consider to be an uphill quest to unseat Bowser, who is seeking a third term and also facing challenges from council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) and former advisory neighborhood commissioner James Butler. All three men are running on platforms they say will make the District more equitable, which has prompted some to wonder whether they’ll split votes among those looking for a change.
But Robert White, 40, says he’s unfazed by those who’ve raised doubts about his run, citing the adversity he faced as a young student decades ago.
A near-fatal collision
White’s mother died of breast cancer when he was 8 years old, and while he was riding to school a few weeks later, a truck flipped over a median in the road and landed on top of the car he was in; his skull split open and the roof of his mouth collapsed, requiring several surgeries to repair.
While he recovered, his third-grade peers continued their learning. White struggled to keep up, even after summer school: “A kid with significant scars on my face, no front teeth, a scar all the way across my head — I remained behind,” he said.
White was still behind when he was accepted into St. John’s College Preparatory School, and couldn’t shake his reputation as a troublemaker. At the same time, he says he began to develop a talent for writing — and by his sophomore year, was determined to be a lawyer. But an academic adviser told him higher education was out of the question.
“It kind of knocked the wind out of me,” White recalled.
Determined that he needed a change of scenery, White says he forged his father’s signature on a transfer application to attend Archbishop Carroll High School the following year. The plan worked, and by senior year he was enrolled in advanced placement classes. He went on to graduate from the American University Washington College of Law.
“As someone who didn’t have a lot of support, believers or an abundance of visible talent, I know there’s a lot of promise in people who have been counted out,” White says. “And there are missed opportunities for people who don’t get a chance to find their strengths.”
After earning his law degree, White clerked in a Montgomery County court, then served as legislative counsel for D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). In 2014, he led community outreach efforts in the office of D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) and later that year ventured into city politics, falling short in his first campaign for D.C. Council. But in an upset victory two years later, he beat veteran Vincent B. Orange for an at-large seat on the legislative body.
Gauging momentum
As a lawmaker, White frequently weighs in on issues pertaining to education, minority-owned businesses and rights for incarcerated residents. He often references a bill he wrote that granted inmates the ability to vote while in prison, in which he again invoked a personal story — this time, of his brother, who was once incarcerated.
Michael K. Fauntroy, an associate professor policy and government at George Mason University, recalled that White hinted early in his political career that he might make a run for mayor; political insiders generally view White as the most viable of Bowser’s three opponents. But with a dearth of credible, public polling in this election cycle, Fauntroy said, it’s difficult to assess the candidates’ chances.
White’s campaign has pointed to individual contributions from D.C. residents as a marker of support, and finance reports submitted Friday show White has recently outpaced Bowser in local donations, although Bowser has outraised White overall.
While mayoral debates have typically centered on issues like public safety and housing, it’s not clear if enough voters view these as problems worthy of ousting a two-term incumbent. For White to win, Fauntroy said, “there’s got to be synergy around an incumbent having a vulnerability, issues that resonate with voters and the ability of a challenger to galvanize those two things to advance a candidacy.”
“They’ve all got to work at the same time for a candidate to win,” he added. “And that’s the challenge White faces.”
White has been more aggressive since the campaign’s earliest months: he nearly ousted Trayon White from the race by way of a petition signature challenge and has gone after Bowser’s record at debates, in mailers and on social media. She’s increasingly singled him out, too, accusing Robert White of “waffling” on some of his proposals.
“It’s easier to claim I’m waffling on mayoral control of schools than to debate me on the issue,” White said, highlighting one policy area where Bowser has said he’s inconsistent. “She’s seeing the same thing that I’m seeing, which is clearly that momentum is on our side.”
Ambitious proposals
Longtime pollster Ron Lester, who is not representing any of the mayoral candidates, has also noticed the increased attacks. He said White might be better served spending the campaign’s closing days focused on his vision for the city rather than taking shots at Bowser — particularly if he wants to win over senior voters who may still be hesitant to go with someone new. Political strategists say seniors are an essential voting bloc because they are more likely to use city services and more inclined to vote.
A February Washington Post poll found 75 percent of the city’s registered Democrats who are 65 and older have a favorable view of Bowser, while 28 percent said they had a favorable impression of Robert White. Sixty percent of seniors said they did not know enough about him to have a favorable or unfavorable impression, compared with 7 percent for Bowser.
“Seniors in particular in D.C. are skeptical, someone who is trying to get their votes has to be very specific about what they’ll do, especially somebody who’s trying to get them to change from their preference or move away from the incumbent,” Lester said. “He’s got to convince voters that he would be better than her, and I think he does that through presenting his ideas.”
White has rolled out big proposals in recent months, including an expansion of vocational education and public boarding schools in the District, as well as a separate plan that guarantees every resident a job. He’s also promised to reevaluate how housing is developed on city property through novel approaches like social housing — an idea never implemented in the United States but popular among certain D.C. advocates.
Sandra Seegars, an activist in Ward 8 who supports Bowser, is critical of White’s job guarantee; she said he’d have a stronger pitch if he talked more about the ways he’s created jobs for residents during his time on the council. White notes that he’s tried through legislation to create more incentives for employers and contractors to hire D.C. residents, particularly those who are excluded from the job market, but not at the scale of his latest proposal.
Seegars, 71, also argued that White should spend more time clarifying his policies instead of talking about his main opponent. But when voters meet White for the first time, they often ask him to make the comparison anyway.
“What’s the difference between you and Bowser?” Amanda Gant asked White after running into him recently in Ward 3′s Glover Park.
“The biggest difference is we’ll solve problems,” White responded. “Spending money and solving problems are two very different things. You look at education, the cost of housing, you’ve got to make progress at some point.”
Gant, who volunteered for David Catania when he ran against Bowser in the 2014 general election, says she was already inclined to vote for one of her opponents in next week’s primary — though she was equally impressed by Trayon White, who made his own appeal to Gant seconds later.
She’s concluded that Robert White has the best chance to win.
“It’s not a high bar for me,” Gant said. “I’ve seen Bowser. Now let’s see something else.”
Julie Zauzmer Weil contributed to this report. | 2022-06-13T21:49:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Robert White Sr. aims to win over skeptics in run for D.C. mayor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/robert-white-mayor-bowser-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/robert-white-mayor-bowser-election/ |
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 23: Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett stands during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on April 23, 2021. (Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images) (Photographer: Pool/Getty Images North America)
In a noteworthy 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court has allowed the federal government to retry and reconvict a member of an Indian tribe who was previously tried and convicted in a special federal administrative court for Native Americans. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a stinging dissent calling this a clear violation of double jeopardy.
The dissent solidifies Gorsuch’s role as the court’s staunchest defender of tribal sovereignty, one willing to call out historical injustices against American Indians. At the same time, the 6-3 result hints that an important 2020 decision on tribal sovereignty written by Gorsuch, McGirt v. Oklahoma, might be one of the only times Gorsuch gets a majority for his views on the issue.
That case, decided before Barrett was on the court, invoked tribal sovereignty to block the enforcement of Oklahoma criminal law in a large part of the state. The conservative majority of today is apparently concerned with applying criminal law in tribal areas — a concern that might have produced a different result in the McGirt case. Barrett’s vote will be crucial in a case the justices will decide in the next few weeks that considers the aftermath of the 2020 decision.
The legal process behind the current case, Denezpi v. United States, is pretty bizarre — which sadly isn’t that unusual when it comes to legal interactions between the US government and tribal sovereigns. It involves the Court of Indian Offenses, put in place in 1883 by the Department of the Interior.
The court tries crimes established by the department through regulation — not crimes enacted by Congress. Its members are appointed and can be fired by the secretary of the interior. It’s referred to as a “CFR court” because it is a creature of the Code of Federal Regulations, where all federal regulations are recorded. CFR courts have jurisdiction in places where tribal sovereigns haven’t established their own courts.
One kind of crime the court can try includes violation of an “approved” tribal offense — that is, a crime defined by a tribal sovereign that the Interior Department approves. Merle Denezpi, a member of the Navajo Nation, sexually assaulted a woman, also a member of the Navajo nation, while they were visiting the Ute Mountain reservation. He was convicted in a CFR court of assault and battery under the laws of the Ute Nation and sentenced to 140 days’ time served.
Six months later, the Department of Justice charged Denezpi with the federal crime of aggravated sexual abuse — for the same act. He was again convicted, and this time sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Clearly, the Justice Department thought the punishment in the CFR court did not fit the gravity of the crime.
At first glance, this outcome looks like a clear violation of double jeopardy, which under the Constitution says you can’t be convicted twice for “the same offence.” Barrett’s opinion found a way to allow the second conviction. In general, according to Supreme Court precedent, double jeopardy doesn’t apply when different sovereign nations prosecute the same offense.
Barrett reasoned, roughly, that the CFR court was applying the law of the sovereign power of the Ute Nation, whereas the federal court that convicted Denezpi later was applying the sovereign power of the federal government. The deeper motivation was, presumably, to enable the enforcement of federal criminal law in cases like Denezpi’s, where tribal law prescribes much weaker punishments.
Gorsuch rejected Barrett’s logic, pointing out that the CFR court is a creature of the US government and US law, and applies Ute law only pursuant to the US government’s choice to do so. Because the same sovereign made the law for both trials, Gorsuch said, double jeopardy was violated. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined his opinion.
To bolster his argument, Gorsuch emphasized the origins of the CFR court. Originally, the court was officially supposed to “civilize the Indians” by making them “desist from … savage and barbarous practices.” The original regulations to be enforced by the court outlawed “old heathenish dances”; medicine men’s “conjurers’ arts”; and some traditional mourning practices.
Gorsuch’s legal point was that these regulations show that the court belonged to the US government, not to the tribes. His rhetorical point was that the court functions as part of the complicated legal framework created by the US government to dominate Native Americans, take their sovereignty, and suppress their cultures.
The most important takeaway from the case is that Barrett voted to sustain the conviction, thereby underscoring an interest in applying nontribal criminal law in Indian country. In the 2020 McGirt case, where Gorsuch struck an important symbolic blow for tribal sovereignty, he was joined only by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the court’s other liberals.
In April, the justices heard oral argument in a case asking whether federal law bars applying Oklahoma criminal law to a non-Indian defendant in the areas of tribal sovereignty identified in McGirt. The outcome is likely to be close, and we will know it before too long.
Barrett may well be the swing vote. Her opinion in the Denezpi case raises the probability that she will vote to allow Oklahoma criminal law to apply to non-Indians, to vindicate the interests of such enforcement in the face of tribal sovereignty. | 2022-06-13T22:02:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Double Jeopardy: Barrett Defeats Gorsuch on Tribal Law - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/double-jeopardy-barrett-defeats-gorsuch-on-tribal-law/2022/06/13/64e97e9a-eb5f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/double-jeopardy-barrett-defeats-gorsuch-on-tribal-law/2022/06/13/64e97e9a-eb5f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Oracle Corp. reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit in a sign that demand for information technology hasn’t been slowed by inflation and economic uncertainty. Shares jumped about 12% in extended trading.
Cloud revenue -- the highly watched segment that Oracle has been trying to expand -- rose 19% to $2.9 billion in the three months ended May 31, the Austin, Texas-based company said Monday in a statement. Cloud sales growth had been greater than 20% since Oracle, the second-biggest software maker by revenue, began disclosing it last year.
Cloud revenue will accelerate as much as 25% in the current quarter and more than 30%, in constant currency, in the fiscal year, Catz said during a conference call after the results. That revenue could increase as much as 47% in the period ending in August including cloud sales from Cerner Corp., the newly acquired digital medical records provider, she added.
Oracle is hoping its $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner, completed last week, will build inroads in the health care industry, which has been comparatively slow to adopt cloud technology. Catz has said the deal should be “substantially accretive” to Oracle’s earnings in fiscal year 2023.
With Cerner now part of Oracle’s business, sales may increase as much as 19% in the current quarter, Catz said on the call. Profit, excluding some items, will be $1.04 to $1.08 a share in the period, she said.
Fourth-quarter sales of the Fusion application for managing corporate finances rose 20%, compared with 33% last quarter. Revenue from NetSuite’s enterprise planning tools, targeted to small- and mid-sized businesses, increased 27%, the same as in the previous period. Cloud license and on-premise license sales gained 18% to $2.5 billion, beating the average estimate of $2.2 billion.
(Updates with forecast for cloud growth in the fifth paragraph.) | 2022-06-13T22:02:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oracle Jumps After Revenue Tops Estimates on Cloud Effort - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/oracle-jumps-after-revenue-tops-estimates-on-cloud-effort/2022/06/13/8bf8ccf2-eb5a-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/oracle-jumps-after-revenue-tops-estimates-on-cloud-effort/2022/06/13/8bf8ccf2-eb5a-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a “Save America Rally” near the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. Trump’s months-long effort to toss out the election results and extend his presidency will meet its formal end this week, but not without exposing political rifts in the Republican Party that have pitted future contenders for the White House against one another. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
“Jerry, just remember: It’s not a lie if you believe it.” — George Costanza, “Seinfeld”
Did Donald Trump believe he was telling the truth when he claimed that the 2020 election, which he lost, was rigged against him? I think not, but I’m just one person.
Fortunately, lots of other White House advisers, such as former Attorney General William Barr, told Trump in the days and weeks after the election that there was no fraud. Barr called the claims “bullshit,” “rubbish” and “idiotic.” Trump’s advisers were surprised, sometime stunned, that he plowed ahead anyway. Those were just some of the revelations from the second day of testimony of the select congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol.
One reason this matters is that the hearing’s most important audience isn’t voters or historians. It’s an audience of one: Attorney General Merrick Garland. If Garland’s Justice Department decides to charge Trump with electoral fraud, it will need to demonstrate to a jury that Trump intended to commit a crime when he staged an attempted coup — and that he knew what he was doing was wrong. The Jan. 6 committee is laying lots of persuasive evidence on Garland’s desk.
In addition to Barr, other White House and campaign advisers, including Jared Kushner, Bill Stepien, Eric Herschmann, Alex Cannon and Jeffrey Rosen, told Trump that there was no election fraud. Some advisers did insist otherwise, including Rudy Giuliani. But based on testimony at the hearing, the Giuliani crowd was telling Trump what he already wanted to hear. Barr testified that Trump had no interest in the “actual facts.” Stepien testified that Trump’s “mind was made up” that mail-in voting was a scam months before the election took place.
Barr went as far as to say that if Trump really did believe there was fraud, he had “become detached from reality.” But Trump’s never been detached from reality — he has simply created the narratives he wants to get what he wants. He’s been doing that for decades. You can call this modus operandi lying, or exaggerating, or prevaricating, or dissembling, or falsely speaking. Whatever the term, he knows exactly what he’s doing when he does it.
Trump spent years spinning tall tales of New Yorkers who were plotting against him to defeat his real estate projects. When his Atlantic City casinos flatlined, he blamed the city for the failure rather than himself. He routinely claimed his wealth was a multiple of what it actually was — and he had to know that his projections were false. (He sued me on that point, and lost.)
When Trump was deposed under oath in my case, my lawyers showed that he had lied dozens of times over the years about all sorts of stuff, including the scope and profitability of his business operation, how much debt he held, whether he staved off personal bankruptcy by borrowing money from his family and about his business dealings with career criminals.
Trump has been embracing alternative facts for a long time, always in the service of self-aggrandizement or self-preservation. But the stakes are higher now. This time, he and his minions tried to torch the Constitution and disenfranchise voters.
And staying in power wasn’t Trump’s only goal in propagating the big lie. It was also making him money. His campaign has hauled in about $250 million from donors who believed he was using the money to combat election fraud, according to the Jan. 6 committee.
Trump and his teammates knew exactly what they were doing, and the Jan. 6 committee keeps bringing the receipts. Congress shouldn’t be the only forum where all of this is hashed out and assessed, however. A courtroom should be the next venue.
Garland will be held to a high standard if he brings a criminal case against Trump. “Mens rea” is the legal term for criminal intent, and it is enshrined in the law to protect defendants who unknowingly or accidentally committed a crime. If they didn’t know what they were doing was wrong, the argument goes, the punishment should be less severe. Perhaps they shouldn’t even be prosecuted.
Trump didn’t accidentally or unknowingly propagate the big lie or foment a coup. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he told the world about it in speeches, interviews and on his Twitter feed. When people close to him told him his actions were groundless, he did it anyway. And he continues to do it.
But don’t take my word for it. Garland and the Justice Department should make sure that a jury of Trump’s peers gets the opportunity to decide if he’s guilty. | 2022-06-13T22:03:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump Knew Exactly What He Was Doing on Jan. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-knew-exactly-what-he-was-doing-on-jan-6/2022/06/13/e80758dc-eb5b-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-knew-exactly-what-he-was-doing-on-jan-6/2022/06/13/e80758dc-eb5b-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Trudeau tests positive for virus after summit
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus for a second time, days after meeting with President Biden and other leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.
“I’ll be following public health guidelines and isolating,” Trudeau said in a tweet. “I feel okay, but that’s because I got my shots.”
Trudeau arrived in Los Angeles on June 7 after a visit to Colorado Springs with his defense minister to participate in a briefing from members of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. He returned to Canada on Saturday.
Trudeau held a meeting with Biden on Thursday. White House spokesman Kevin Munoz said Biden is not a close contact of Trudeau as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Trudeau also met with other U.S. officials, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
Trudeau also tested positive in January. He said he was fully vaccinated and received a third vaccine dose that month.
— Amanda Coletta
M23 rebels reportedly seize town in east
M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have seized the eastern town of Bunagana, residents said, in what appears to be the insurgents’ latest gain in its weeks-long offensive against the military.
Bunagana, near the border with Uganda, serves as a hub for international aid groups and the United Nations’ MONUSCO peacekeeping mission. It is a key transit point for imports from as far away as China.
There was no immediate confirmation of Bunagana’s fall from the military. However, security officials believe the town is “under the control of M23” rebels, a police spokesman said.
About a decade ago, M23 rebels seized Goma and held it for weeks. Part of the deal to end that conflict involved integrating rebel fighters into Congo’s military. However, the rebels recently took up arms again, saying the government has not fulfilled its promises.
55 killed in violence blamed on militants
Gunmen killed at least 55 people over the weekend in northern Burkina Faso, authorities in the West African country said Monday.
Attacks linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are soaring in Burkina Faso, particularly in the north. Islamist militants killed at least 160 people in an attack in Solhan last year.
Although no group claimed the weekend attack, analysts say it was probably carried out by the Islamic State.
In January, mutinous soldiers ousted the democratically elected president, promising to secure the nation. But violence has only increased.
Week of tribal clashes in Darfur reportedly kill 100: Tribal clashes over the past week in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region have killed about 100 people, the U.N. refugee agency and a tribal elder said. Toby Harward, a coordinator with UNHCR, said the fighting grew out of a land dispute between Arab and African tribes in the town of Kulbus in West Darfur province. Local Arab militias then attacked area villages , he said.
Report finds 196 clerics abused minors in German diocese: A report found that at least 196 clerics in the Catholic Diocese of Münster in western Germany sexually abused minors between 1945 and 2020, adding to findings from other dioceses that have shaken the church in the country. The study pointed to a "massive leadership failure" during the tenures of the diocese's bishops between 1947 and 2008, with officials covering up scandals or making only superficial interventions.
U.S. issues sanctions against 93 Nicaraguan officials: The State Department imposed visa curbs on 93 more Nicaraguan officials for their role in supporting President Daniel Ortega's regime. Ortega jailed dozens of opposition figures en route to winning a fourth straight term on Nov. 7. He also outlawed many nongovernmental organizations. Since then, dozens of opponents have been tried or convicted on vague charges. The State Department said it pulled the visas of judges who convicted the opposition leaders, as well as legislators who cooperated in banning NGOs and civic groups. | 2022-06-13T22:03:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: June 13, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-13-2022/2022/06/13/4fb9928a-eb23-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-13-2022/2022/06/13/4fb9928a-eb23-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html |
NFL players vowed to speak out. Let’s hear them on Jack Del Rio.
Washington Commanders defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio, with players during an offseason workout, was fined $100,000 for his comments about Jan. 6. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Just over two years ago, a handful of Black NFL players banded together and produced a video that Giants running back Saquon Barkley posted on his Twitter page. It was their reaction to the week-and-a-half-old police murder of yet another Black man, George Floyd, which spawned peaceful and raucous protests across the nation.
“What will it take?” one player pleaded.
“For one of us to be murdered by police brutality?” another player asked rhetorically.
“What if I was George Floyd?” they queried one after another before reciting a litany of George Floyds — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner et. al.
Then declared one player: “We will not be silent.”
It was raw. It seemed organic. I hoped it was sincere.
But last week suggested it was performative at best.
For among the demonstrating players — who included Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, Michael Thomas, DeAndre Hopkins, and Odell Beckham Jr., to name a few — was Washington’s Chase Young, whom a Sports Illustrated FanNation writer praised in particular for fearlessly taking a stand as only a rookie.
But since Young’s defensive coordinator, Jack Del Rio, at the start of last week created controversy for himself with a tone-deaf response to a tweet explaining the importance of the congressional hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol, Young and his Black teammates have been deafening in their quietness. What has made their self-muteness piercingly painful is that Del Rio equated the Jan. 6 insurrection to the protests against police lethality unleashed on Black people, which Young and other Black Washington football players pronounced they’d speak out on forever more.
This moment is why the attention paid to political activism on the part of Black professional athletes — at least the men — is wildly inordinate. As a lot, they aren’t that deserving. I’ve not forgotten that the vast majority did not demonstratively support Colin Kaepernick’s protest, save for one weekend when spurred by former president Trump’s verbal assault of their mothers. And Black players take up seven out of every 10 roster spots in the NFL.
Black women pros, on the other hand, haven’t shown such trepidation at standing up to authority, even when it’s diametrically opposed to their best interests. Black players for the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream proved as much by forcing out former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, as a co-owner after she wrongly accused the Black Lives Matter movement of being anti-Semitic and fomenting violence across the country.
I’d be remiss not to criticize the brothers of Black women pro athletes if I’m going to harangue those for whom they toil for doing so little when the time demands they do so much more. I should also share some smoke for White NFL players who didn’t criticize Del Rio for dismissing as a “dust up” the Jan. 6 riot against the lawful certification of President Biden’s election, which resulted directly in five deaths.
The Post reported on Saturday that Del Rio shut down his Twitter account over the weekend. Last week, Rivera announced the team fined Del Rio $100,000 for loudly wondering why the George Floyd protests — which eventually forced the toppling of the monument to Washington’s racist team founder George Preston Marshall outside old RFK Stadium — weren’t being investigated like what happened at the Capitol.
But I’m not as mad with Del Rio — who voiced his opinion, no matter how absurd — as with the Black players, who said they’d no longer see something and say nothing when it comes to lethal policing of us and our own — and did just that. What happened to all that energy, represented two summers ago by Dwayne Haskins, the team’s first-round quarterback hopeful who died tragically two months ago, in a post to his Twitter page from a George Floyd protest in downtown D.C?
It’s not all their fault. I’m uncomfortably reminded that they are products. They’re products of a system, the athletic culture, one in which they’ve been inculcated for so long that their learned allegiance is to the authority of any coach rather than to any greater principle. To wit, Washington defensive end Jonathan Allen said last week when asked about Del Rio’s comments: “At the end of the day, you can have a difference of opinion and still respect one another. I feel like that’s what our country is about. That’s what our team’s about. So, I mean, me personally, I don’t care about his opinion as long as he shows up every day and works hard. That’s what I want from my defensive coordinator.”
And what of Jason Wright, whom the franchise patted itself on the back for making the first Black president of an NFL team? What of the face of what the team has suggested are its racial justice efforts?
How about the Black Engagement Network the team promoted just a year ago? As head coach Ron Rivera announced then, its mission is to “ … work with organization executives and leadership to provide support, education and racial equality initiatives in communities across the Washington, D.C., metro area where our employees live and work.”
Anyone heard from the town hall program the club put together then, which it said comprised six Black employees, including senior executives Doug Williams and Malcolm Blacken, as well as Jennifer King, whom the team celebrated last season as the first Black female assistant position coach in league history? Of course not.
It shouldn’t be necessary to have a scheduled news conference or media availability to make a comment, not when a coach is conflating an investigation into a violent assault on democracy with Black people reacting so determinedly to an existential threat. The Black women on the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx didn’t wait to be asked how they felt about the police killing of Philando Castile in St. Paul. When they met the press, they made his death, and nothing else, the public’s business.
Washington’s minicamp is scheduled to open Tuesday. Let it be an opportunity for its Black players and officials to redeem themselves. | 2022-06-13T22:04:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL players should condemn Jack Del Rio after "dust-up" comments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/jack-del-rio-players-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/jack-del-rio-players-commanders/ |
Transcript: 117th Congress: Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Tex.)
MS. CALDWELL: Hello. Welcome to Washington Post Live. My name is Leigh Ann Caldwell. I am an anchor here at Washington Post Live, and also the co-author of the Early 202 Newsletter. Today for our show we are talking to Representative Tony Gonzalez, a Republican from Texas who represents Uvalde. Such a timely conversation. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us today.
REP. GONZALES: Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you.
MS. CALDWELL: Great. And first to our listeners and our watchers, feel free to send questions. We would love to hear from you on Twitter @WashPostLive--or @PostLive, excuse me. We'll be looking out for those and hope to answer or get those questions asked.
Congressman, let's start, of course, with the latest news on the gun/mental health debate. The Senate just agreed to--or a group of senators I should say agreed to a proposal to address both mental health components and also tighten up some gun safety regulations and laws. What is your initial reaction to that?
REP. GONZALES: Yeah, today is day 20 after the shooting in Uvalde, and I've been in contact with Senator Cornyn and others every day. Matter of fact, Senator Cornyn and I had breakfast together and have been working through everything. My reaction is, I think there needs to be a--people are tired of inaction, and there needs to be something, and something that can ultimately pass into law. And haven't seen that in the House. And I appreciate the Senate's leadership, and I look forward to seeing the text and some of the framework that's been put together.
Also saying--I'm also--you know, I'm worried about my community. You know, we're still burying people. We're still--we're still recovering. We're still trying to figure out how we're going to get through school in 65 days. And you know, today, I was proud--I’ve worked with the Department of Education. We secured a $1.5 million emergency grant through there. So, I say that to go, you know, take my congressman hat off as a father, as a member of the community, like we're trying to just get through this as well. I understand here in Washington, we have--want to have this broader debate, but back in Uvalde and back in my community, well honestly, we're also just trying to live through this and figure out how do we--how do we--what does tomorrow look like, what does 60 days from now look.
MS. CALDWELL: I understand there's a difference between of course just trying to get through these very difficult times. This--you know, so many people in your community have been affected. Mostly everyone in Uvalde knows someone who was impacted by this. But here in Washington, there has been a lot of debate on what needs to be done to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. And so, you know, we saw this legislation in the House last week that you did not support. Is there anything in this proposal from the Senate that you would support, including perhaps allowing 18- to 21-year-olds who are trying to buy an assault style weapon to have their juvenile background checked?
REP. GONZALES: Yeah, look, the details are important. And like many of us, we’re waiting to see the bill text, eagerly waiting to see the bill text. But I'm very--I'm very optimistic on the framework of which the Senate has put together. You know, I've been--I've been pushing for mental health from the very beginning, you know, in this district. You know, this district stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, Texas 23. And I represent 119 different cities and towns. Uvalde over a year ago was asking me for a mental health clinic. There the--you know, so this was evident there. You know, last year, I was able to secure $2 million for a mental health facility. But there's a long way to go. I mentioned that to go, to me, that this package has to be based in mental health support. Everything that I've gotten, every indication that I've seen is this is essentially going to be a mental health bill. And I think that's important. You know, I think this--I think this has the opportunity to have more resources in mental health than any other bill ever passed into law in the--in the history of our nation's, you know, history. I think that's important.
As far as some of the gun things, you know, as far as some of the other specifics, I've been a proponent of--look, that gentleman, this shooter should have never been able to purchase that weapon. Never. Not because he was 18 years old but because he was mentally unstable. And we--and we would have found that out. I mean, he had a long history of mental illness as a juvenile. And I think this is one of the parts of the framework as well that makes sense to me. You know, let's identify these children that have issues, and let's make sure that they don't have access to things. I also say, like, I'm a proponent of, you know, legal responsible gun owners, and I think it's important that we protect them, as well.
MS. CALDWELL: You mentioned the mental health component. Yes, there is going to be a lot of money in this proposal, even though the amount has not been agreed to yet for telehealth, school mental health resources, securing schools that are, you know, outside mental health support, as well outside the school. You know, so have you heard how much money is going to be spent on these proposals?
REP. GONZALES: I think--I think they're still working out the final details. But I'm hearing billions, billions of dollars towards mental health. I don't want to get ahead. I don’t want to get ahead of anyone, but I'm hearing billions of dollars towards mental health. And also, equally important, is there's an offset, meaning there's a pay-for for this entire bill using, you know, unused infrastructure and COVID money as well. So, I think it's--I think that part of it is absolutely incredible. I mean, we--if we truly, if we as Americans, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans, if we truly want to ensure that our children are safe and protected, and to get ahead of it--not be reactive, but be proactive--then we have to invest in mental health. And I believe, you know, the--like I said, I'm still waiting for the bill text. But this framework gives me a lot of optimism towards getting to that point.
MS. CALDWELL: When you had breakfast with Senator Cornyn and you all discussed this proposal, did you raise any concerns about that framework?
REP. GONZALES: We've been--we've been discussing this throughout the entire--the entire process. And I communicate with Senator Cornyn regularly. And even before this, you know, the border crisis and other things that are happening in my district, we've traveled to Taiwan and India together. So we've done a lot of different things together. I lean on Senator Cornyn and his team. I mean, he is just an absolute statesman, and he works hard on all--he's a very serious legislator. And we had a really good discussion on that. So, I think many people are eager to see the bill text and get this going. But I think there's a lot of optimism, as well. I mean, optimism on all sides.
I'll tell you in my district--I go back to my district. In my district, folks, you grow up, you grow up with firearms. It's a part of the culture. And I grew up in with firearms. You know, my grandfather taught me how to handle a weapon. I was professionally trained when I--when I joined the military at 18 years old. But I also say there's a segment people are going, look, Tony, I don't want anyone to take my guns away, but I want us to do something, and it's up to you to determine what that something is. So, I think that now is the time for us to come to--come to an agreement and move the ball forward. I think at the center of it needs to be mental health and school security, and we need to go from there.
MS. CALDWELL: One proponent--one part of this, I should say, is incentivizing states to implement red flag laws. Does Texas need red flag laws?
REP. GONZALES: I do not support red flag laws. You know, I'm against that. I'm against anything that infringes upon anyone's rights, rights to due process in particular. But you know what, if there's grants in there that offer that, well, guess what? My state doesn't have to take those grants. And I'm okay with that, right? So, at the end of the day, what I don't want to have happen is I don't want the federal government dictating to states what they will or will not do. Now, you can offer them options all day long. But when you dictate something, I think that gets--that gets ahead of it.
The other part I wanted--that I wanted, that I'm very excited about in this package is the telemedicine piece, especially in rural America. You know, to me, there is this divide that is growing in America. And it has nothing to do with the color of your skin, has nothing to do with your party. It has nothing to do with how much money you have in your bank account. This divide is between urban and rural America. I mean, we saw it in Uvalde. You know, one of the--one of the reasons why everything, you know, happened as chaotic as it did was not all law enforcement, not all first responders were on the same radio network. Can you imagine that? Fire department are on one thing, police are on another, Border Patrol on another, sheriffs are on another, game warden on another. That's one of the things when I hosted the president, I guess a little over a week ago, maybe two weeks ago now--when I hosted the president, I asked him, I was like, look, Mr. President, there are three things I'm asking your help on. One of them is $23 million for a mental health hospital. I've already gotten 2 million. The other is $13.5 million for communications, a radio network where you can put all the first responders on the same aspect of it. And the last thing I asked him for was $1 million towards an emergency operations center. Right now, there's over--there’s hundreds of law enforcement officers from all over the state and even the country that have come and helped out also first responders and they're having to sleep in cots. They're having to work out of an old aviation museum, and it's unfortunate. So those are three of the things that I asked the president for.
MS. CALDWELL: Okay, great. And you know, getting back to the red flag laws really quickly, is there any sort of due process that would make a fed flag law okay, including, for example, Senator Susan Collins has been talking about in Maine there has to be a medical doctor sign off in order for this red flag to go through. Would that be enough for you?
REP. GONZALES: Look, red flag laws to me, I'm against red flag laws. And the part of it that I--that loses me is due process. And here's the thing, you know? This is part of the conversation. We're not really there yet. But look, when somebody gets added on a list, whether they're juvenile or otherwise, how do you get off of that list? So, let's say--you know, let's say some child at 14 years old said he's going to--he's going to, you know, conduct this heinous act--right?--and they get put on and they seek medical attention, and they get put on this list? But what happens when they're 35 years old. And you know, what I'm getting at is, I don't want it to be a universal fire and forget and we all give ourselves high fives up here and said we finally have done something. It has to be much more methodical and thought out on that. And the last thing I want to do is circumvent individual rights and circumvent due process. So that's where I pump the brakes on red flags.
MS. CALDWELL: And does an 18-year-old need an AR-15-style weapon?
REP. GONZALES: I'm not here to answer if an 18-year-old needs this. I'll tell you when I was 18 in the military, I was trained with firearms, and I was fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, my whole career. What I will tell you is living along the border, it is unsafe. People feel unsafe in their homes. Their children can't go out and play. They feel unsafe. So, carrying a firearm, operating with a firearm is a very common aspect, especially for rural America. Now, is training important? I think training is important. Should we have extensive background checks before an individual, let's say 18 to 20 years old, you know, is able to purchase a weapon? Absolutely. I think none of that infringes upon anyone's rights. So, to me, that's part of what's in this framework. You know, you're not going to have any ban on any weapons.
MS. CALDWELL: But you-–
REP. GONZALES: I’m sorry.
MS. CALDWELL: I was just going to say you said that you had one at 18, but you were in the military. Does someone who is not in the military, an 18-year-old, you know, in Texas, it's 21 years old to buy a handgun. So why not just make it 21 to buy an AR-15-style weapon as well?
REP. GONZALES: Well, I tell you what. You know, being in Afghanistan sometimes was safer than being along the border, is the way I feel now. I mean, the cartels are operating every single day. So, to me, I look at it as what do people need to do in order to protect themselves and feel safe. The border crisis is very real. Matter of fact, when the--when the Uvalde incident first occurred, many people thought this was a bailout. Many people thought this was another high-speed chase that was coming through town. It really--it turned into something different when more details would come out. But I mention that to go this is what my district is living through. We're living through a border crisis where cartels control a lot of different operations, and people do not feel safe on their own property. So, to me, I think it goes about how do we identify some of the people that should never have a firearm, right? And mental health is a key to exactly that.
MS. CALDWELL: What about the right of children to feel safe in their school?
REP. GONZALES: Yeah, I think that's critical. That's critical to it. Look, I grew up--one, I'm a father of six. And matter of fact, my youngest daughter, Isabella [phonetic], turns two on Saturday, and I can't wait to leave Washington and get back home for that birthday celebration. So, you know, as a father, I absolutely want my children--we should all want our children to be safe anywhere--school, especially. I go back to my childhood growing up, I grew up in a very abusive environment. You know, my mother and I, we spent time in a battered women's shelter in San Antonio. To me, school was my outlet. That was my safety. I wanted to get to school as fast as can be, and I never wanted to leave, right. And so I go--that has changed.
And going back to Uvalde, you know, we have seven elementary schools in Uvalde--not just Robb Elementary. There's six other elementary schools. We’ve got to make sure all the parents and the children feel safe in that school. Part of that, I think, is investing not only mental health resources to get through this, but also some school safety measures as well.
MS. CALDWELL: If the NRA or Gun Owners for America comes out in opposition to this Senate framework that has been--reached a deal, would you still consider supporting it, or would you withdraw your support?
REP. GONZALES: Yeah, I answer--I answer to, you know, one people, and that's the people of District 23. At the end of the day, my district has asked for mental health resources from the very beginning. And I've done everything I possibly can in order to do that. You know, the framework of this bill, it's really a mental health bill. And I think it answers a lot of different issues. Does it solve everything? No, it doesn't. But the fact that Washington is actually solving anything is kind of a small miracle in itself. And I--look, I'm encouraged to see the bill text. I'm encouraged to look at it. I’m encouraged--you know, once everything gets shaken out, if everything remains the way--the way that that I've been--I've been kind of told, then I look forward to, you know, encouraging my colleagues to get behind--to get behind meaningful legislation that ultimately solves the problem--not rhetoric, not grandstanding, not something that gets somebody on the record so you can run political ads--meaningful legislation. And to me, this framework absolutely answers that.
MS. CALDWELL: Last week, after you voted against the House bills that were put up on the floor, there was a series of them, including lifting the age of 18 to buy an assault-style weapon to 21, you know, safe storage requirements, red flag laws, you know, banning high-capacity magazines. After you voted against that legislation and different iterations, have you spoken with any of the families who lost children or who were impacted by Uvalde post-vote?
REP. GONZALES: I have. Matter of fact, I just spoke with one of the family members about an hour ago. And the conversation was, hey, Tony, can you help me with my Social Security benefits? What I'm getting at is, I have a district that we're trying to survive. We're trying to get through. You know, the people--no one--I mean, no one's asking me about Washington. They're trying to survive their lives, bury their children, try to get their other children ready for school in 60 days, trying to get the community to heal. Inflation, they're paying--they're paying a lot of money. But what I'm getting at is, is a lot of times, there's a lot of distractions up here. And oh, by the way, that piece of legislation last week, there were Democrats that voted against that piece of legislation, as well.
So, what--there's a big difference between the House and the Senate. In the Senate, you know, I applaud them. They sat down. They got in a room. It was not easy. This is not an easy topic. And they were able to build out a framework that can ultimately pass into law. And meanwhile, in the House, we were passing partisan legislation that had 0.00 percent chance of passing into law. Ideally, this framework holds up in bill text, comes over to the House, and we’re able to ultimately get it through and signed into law.
MS. CALDWELL: Should they lower the age to buy a handgun in Texas to 18?
REP. GONZALES: I mean, that's a conversation that--I mean, that's up to the governor of Florida--I mean the governor of Texas. You know, those are things there that-–
MS. CALDWELL: Where do you stand, though?
REP. GONZALES: I will tell you, there are folks that are 18 years old that live along the border that do not feel safe, that carry--that carry a firearm every day when they're in the ranch or when they're going about their property. So, I think that's up to the state to determine. Me, I mean at the end of the day, I represent a district that is dealing with a crisis, and I want to make sure that my constituents feel safe.
MS. CALDWELL: How do you think Republicans are going to fare politically as far as the gun issue is concerned? Are you seeing a shift among Republican voters or independent voters or even voters in your district on this issue, and is that why there is perhaps a possibility of some sort of legislation passing?
REP. GONZALES: I'm seeing a shift across I think--I'm seeing a shift not only in my district and not only in the state across the country not on guns. No one's talking to me about guns. Everyone's talking to me about inflation, the border--I mean real tangible things. School safety. I mean, let's talk about school safety, mental health. I mean, this is an area I don't think we can go wrong. If we invest in more resources than we ever have in our nation's history in mental health, we will help--I believe we will save lives. We'll get ahead--we will get ahead of some of these different problems. Not only--not only--not only the horrendous acts, I would argue there is a growing mental health issue in America with folks that have anxiety, folks that have depression, COVID. I mean, there's all these different things, and we need to--we need to address it. Look, my own--my own staff, we have been through hell and back. And I told my team, hey, look after the dust settles, we all need to get--we all need to seek mental physicians and get counseling and walk through this. The entire--my entire community of Uvalde needs to do the same. We need to get rid of the stigma that's happening in America, and we need to get to the root of it because here's what--our children are suffering for it. They're growing up in a world that you and I did not grow up in and we have to protect them. Part of that, I believe, is investing heavily in mental health resources.
MS. CALDWELL: I want to ask you about the police response in Uvalde. The chief, Pedro Arredondo, he says that he gave no order to not enter the room for the police officers who were outside the door there. But it was 77 minutes. What are you hearing took place that day, and where was the breakdown?
REP. GONZALES: Yeah, I won't get ahead of the investigation, but I will share with you some very intimate stories. Look, I know these people personally. You know, I grew up 38 miles from Uvalde. I've spoken with many, many of the folks that were in the hallway that breached the room, the first responders. I’ve spoken to them before. I've spoken to them afterwards. And here's some of the stories that aren't making it out. One of the delays--well, one, you know, Javier Martinez engaged the gunman minutes after he entered the school, three minutes after he entered the school and but--some of the stories that aren't making it out, I was speaking with a member of the school, I'll just say it that way, the other day. And he--and he lost a child. And so part of--part of what isn’t making it out is the delay was, one, it was a steel door. There were two steel doors, and they push outward. So, you couldn't kick these doors in. The only way you could get in is one of two ways. You either had a tool, a crowbar, if you will, to pry it open like a can, or you had the keys. So, you know, one of the stories that I was--that I was told is, you know, the gentleman looking for the keys had a child inside. So, imagine if you're the parent, you are the parent, and it's your--you're trying to get inside that room as fast as can be. And it's not a neighbor. It's not a someone down the street. It's not somebody you don't know. It is your child. And guess what? There were--there were deputies that had children inside that room. There were first responders that their own children or relatives were in that room, I guarantee you, you're going to get in that room as fast as you can be. And the last thing you're going to worry about is your own safety. So, I mean, I’ll wait till all the investigation shakes out. But I will tell you, there's a lot of heroes walking among Uvalde. And not all of them are law enforcement officers. A lot of them are just everyday people as the community has just come together and we just try to heal and get through this.
MS. CALDWELL: Great. We just got a question from Twitter that I want to ask you. It says, Representative Gonzales, Governor Abbott cut mental health funds for your state. If mental health is important and you want your state to make its decisions, why did you not ask governor to reinstate mental health funds?
REP. GONZALES: I mean, I don't know what your viewer is talking about. I served 20 years in the military. You know, this is my first time in public office. I don't know what reference at what point they're saying Governor Abbott did that. I’ll also tell you, that's the state. You know, what Governor Abbott does is his prerogative.
MS. CALDWELL: Well, I will say--I will say--Congressman--
REP. GONZALES: I encourage everyone--whether it be local or whether it be state or whether it be federal, I encourage everyone to invest heavily into mental health. I think this is how we solve the crisis. We get ahead of the problem. We--it's no longer a stigma. We encourage parents to start there. We give all the resources possible. And I think, you know, part of the framework of this legislation that's up here will lend to that. And I'm excited to see the bill text and ultimately a bill that can get through the House and get through the Senate.
MS. CALDWELL: Great. Congressman Gonzales, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. I know this is a very difficult time for your constituents and for you. And thanks for joining us.
REP. GONZALES: Well, thank you. I want to share just one other story here, is after the initial--after the initial incident occurred in Uvalde, there were a lot of the first responders that went to these other schools because there were copycat threats that were out there. So, one of those is Lieutenant Javier Martinez. He engages the shooter, actually gets wounded. He breaches in, he goes to there, and then afterwards he goes to the Uvalde High School. There were other agents that went to other elementary schools for the--for the next days, too. I say all that to go, at the end of the day, we are one community. We're not Democrats. We're not Republicans. We are Americans. We are one community. And we all need to come together. We need to use Uvalde as an example, because what happened in Uvalde can happen anywhere in the United States. Thank you.
MS. CALDWELL: Great, thank you. And we are now one minute over. I know your staff is going to rush to get you to your next meeting. So, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
REP. GONZALES: Thank you.
MS. CALDWELL: And thank you for joining Washington Post Live. You can see this whole interview on WashingtonPostLive.com along with transcripts and highlights. Thanks for your time. | 2022-06-13T22:05:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: 117th Congress: Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Tex.) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/13/transcript-117th-congress-rep-tony-gonzalez-r-tex/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/13/transcript-117th-congress-rep-tony-gonzalez-r-tex/ |
Stephen Strasburg made his season debut Thursday at Miami. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
About 27 hours before Stephen Strasburg was set to take the Nationals Park mound again, Dave Martinez announced Monday afternoon that the right-hander soon will go back on the injured list. As the manager addressed reporters before a series opener with the Atlanta Braves, Strasburg was undergoing an MRI exam, the results of which will determine just how significant his latest setback is.
Needless to say, this was the opposite of how the Washington Nationals wanted to start a tough week against divisional opponents.
“We’ll know more about the injury and all that stuff after the game,” Martinez said of Strasburg, who returned to start Thursday at the Miami Marlins after a long recovery following surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. “But ... this surgery, this thoracic outlet thing, you just don’t know. We don’t know if this is the same issue or not yet, but we’ll know more as ... soon as we get the MRI and the doctors read the image. But it stinks because he was all excited to be back.”
Last time out: Nationals fall short of their first sweep with a loss to the Brewers
In that Marlins start, Strasburg yielded seven runs on eight hits in 4⅔ innings. What mattered more, though, was that he threw 83 pitches and felt nothing more than general fatigue. That changed following his between-starts bullpen session Saturday. Strasburg “didn’t feel right, some discomfort,” Martinez told reporters, but didn’t specify an area of Strasburg’s body that is bothering him.
After back-to-back season-ending surgeries, the 33-year-old has missed most of the past three years. Yet he’s not even halfway through a seven-year, $245 million contract he signed after he was named World Series MVP in 2019. The deal so far has included 31⅓ innings, a number likely to freeze for the foreseeable future. Before pitching Thursday, Strasburg made three minor league rehab appearances. His previous start in the majors was June 1, 2021.
“We’re going to be as careful as possible with him and try to do everything right for Stephen and for this organization moving forward,” Martinez said. “Right now, we’re at those bumpy roads and we’ll see what happens.”
For now, Tuesday’s starter against the Braves and Max Fried is to be determined. Strasburg will go to the IL before that game, making space for a fresh arm. One option is Jackson Tetreault, who is scheduled to pitch for Class AAA Rochester and would need a 40-man roster spot. The 26-year-old right-hander had a strong May for the Red Wings and has a 4.19 ERA in 12 starts. But while the pitching plans matter — the Nationals also have to cover a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday — Strasburg’s career outlook is a far bigger concern.
In August 2020, it was surgery for carpal tunnel in his right hand. In July 2021, it was surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome, a major procedure that has kept some pitchers from being the same. But at this point, Strasburg can’t stay healthy enough for the Nationals to see what’s left. He has missed the prime years of his megadeal. Soon, if not already, the question of next steps will be reframed — to if Strasburg can ever be a constant of any kind in Washington’s rotation.
On one hand, he still has a while to get there, especially because the Nationals are rebuilding and not making any sort of push this year. But on the other, each of Strasburg’s steps seem to go in the wrong direction.
“Stephen is here — he’s going to be here,” Martinez said. “So we want to make sure we take care of him now. Hopefully we get him back, and when we do this will pass.” | 2022-06-13T22:19:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Strasburg will return to injured list - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/stephen-strasburg-injured-list-mri/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/13/stephen-strasburg-injured-list-mri/ |
The John Wilson Building, home of the D.C. Council and mayor. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
D.C. candidates have upped their spending in the past month as contenders make last-minute appeals to voters who haven’t already cast their ballots, according to the final round of campaign finance reports that were due before the June 21 Democratic primary.
For the second straight month, mayoral candidate Robert C. White Jr., an at-large D.C. Council member, has reported more individual contributions from D.C. residents than incumbent Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, though she’s raised more than twice as much as White over the course of their campaigns. In the month leading up to June 10, Bowser brought in about $30,000 from 240 District residents — up from $18,156 in the last reporting period — as well as $15,222 from donors who live outside the District, according to the reports. White raised $32,510 from 464 D.C. residents and $7,716 from nonresidents in the same span.
Both campaigns increased their spending significantly since their last reports, which captured campaign activity through the month of April into early May. White’s campaign has spent more than $904,000 since May 11, with about $483,000 going toward advertising; Bowser’s campaign spent more than $1.3 million this period, $500,000 of which went toward advertising expenses.
Bowser reports having significantly more cash on hand, however. She has more than $1.6 million remaining to close out the period, while White has about $181,000. Both candidates are using the city’s public financing program, which caps individual donations at small dollar amounts while matching donations from city residents 5 to 1 with taxpayer funds.
The two other Democratic mayoral candidates, Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) and former advisory neighborhood commissioner James Butler, who is not using public financing and thus has a higher limit on individual contributions, had not submitted reports to the Office of Campaign Finance by Monday afternoon. Trayon White requested an extension, OCF spokesman Wesley Williams said.
The majority of candidates for mayor, attorney general and city council opted into the Fair Elections Program — and in the contest for D.C. attorney general, the use of public financing has emerged as one of the few ways in which the three candidates have sought to distinguish themselves to voters.
Venable partner-in-charge Brian Schwalb and solo practitioner attorney Ryan Jones opted into the program, while Bruce V. Spiva, a former managing partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, did not. The most recent fundraising reports show that Schwalb took in about $21,400 from D.C. residents and $14,000 from nonresidents.
Schwalb has now raised a total of $1.1 million when including public financing, though he saw a decrease in overall contributions since the last reporting period. Spiva has raised a total of about $423,000 in his campaign — and his most recent report shows that he has also loaned his own campaign $535,000.
Jones has received about $246,000 over the course of his campaign but increased his donations from D.C. residents and nonresidents since his last report, taking in $2,523 from residents and $1,112 from nonresidents this reporting period.
On top of candidates’ individual campaign coffers, the latest filings also show that two education groups have poured more than $1.3 million into the races. The D.C. chapter of Democrats for Education Reform — a group that supports charter schools and the city’s current system of mayoral control — has spent more than a million dollars to back Bowser, incumbent D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson and Ward 3 candidate Eric Goulet.
The group, which is not allowed to coordinate with individual campaigns, has received significant funds from prominent national figures, including Alice Walton, a daughter of the founder of Walmart and backer of charter schools. DC Charter School Action, an independent expenditure committee, has spent nearly $300,000 so far this election cycle. No other organization, according to campaign finance reports, has spent even a fraction of what these groups have spent in the local elections.
The reports also help show how the races for D.C. Council are shaping up in the final stretch before the primary.
In the race for chair of the D.C. Council, Mendelson, who is not using public financing, has taken in more than $259,000 since March 11 and $779,464 in total; he has $316,241 cash on hand. In her campaign to unseat Mendelson, advisory neighborhood commissioner Erin Palmer reports receiving just under $10,000 in individual contributions in the past month, with 95 percent of donations coming from D.C. residents. She has more than $88,000 cash on hand to close out her primary campaign.
In the increasingly intense race for the Ward 1 council seat, where all three candidates are using public financing, former police officer Salah V. Czapary reports raising more than $11,300 from D.C. residents in the past month while two-term incumbent Brianne K. Nadeau raised $10,844. He has outraised her in local donations for two straight reporting periods, though Nadeau raised more from nonresidents in the last reporting period.
Nadeau and Czapary have raised a total of about $241,000 and $209,000, respectively, and now have similar amounts of cash on hand to close out the period. Sabel Harris, who is running on a similar liberal platform as Nadeau, raised just over $500 from individual donors in the past reporting period and has raised a total of about $50,000, including taxpayer funds.
Czapary spent about $122,900 in the reporting period — including just under $72,000 for campaign mailers — representing more than 60 percent of his total campaign expenditures. Almost half of Nadeau’s $200,000 in spending has come in the last reporting period as well, with the lion’s share going toward consulting fees.
The reports also help differentiate candidates in the hotly contested Democratic primary in Ward 3. Seven candidates are using public financing; high-schooler Henry Cohen opted not to fundraise in the race, while former advisory neighborhood commissioner and housing advocate Deirdre Brown is using traditional fundraising and has raised about $77,500 over the course of her campaign.
Brianne Nadeau faces heated race in bid for Ward 1 D.C. Council nomination
Of the Ward 3 candidates participating in public financing, local activist Matthew Frumin leads in fundraising with a total of $205,800; he has also spent the most, and just like his rival candidates, the majority of his spending has taken place in the last reporting period.
Monte Monash, a former D.C. Library board member ranks second in total receipts at $146,708. She’s followed closely by Palisades community leader Tricia Duncan, who garnered outgoing Ward 3 Council member Mary M. Cheh’s support last month — as well as Goulet and Ward 3 Democrats Chair Phil Thomas.
Goulet, who was endorsed last month by The Washington Post editorial board, outraised all the Ward 3 candidates in this reporting period. Rounding out the pack are advisory neighborhood commissioners Ben Bergmann and Beau Finley, who’ve raised about $99,000 and $106,000 in their campaigns, respectively.
In Ward 5, four of seven candidates had submitted finance reports by Monday afternoon, while Williams said that the others obtained extensions. In the race for at-large member of the D.C. Council, two of four candidates requested extensions.
Looking ahead to November’s general election, three independents running for an at-large council seat also filed reports this week. Newcomer Graham McLaughlin, who is running as a business-friendly candidate, has outraised incumbent Elissa Silverman so far, taking in about $185,000 to Silverman’s $165,000, though Silverman raised more in the most recent reporting period. Karim Marshall, the third candidate in the race, has raised $14,787 so far.
Perry Stein contributed to this report. | 2022-06-13T22:37:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Campaign finance reports show D.C. candidates ramping up spending - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/dc-candidates-election-campaign-spending/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/dc-candidates-election-campaign-spending/ |
As hearing’s star witness, Barr says Trump was ‘detached from reality’
Former attorney general aimed a rhetorical dagger at Donald Trump, a man he spent years defending.
A video showing former attorney general William P. Barr is shown at the hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 9. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Appearing larger than life on a giant screen above the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, former attorney general William P. Barr on Monday offered a blistering assessment of the man he’d spent years defending: In 2020, after losing the presidential election, Donald Trump appeared “detached from reality” and obsessed with fantastical notions of voter fraud, Barr said.
Barr’s view of Trump is more complicated than his congressional video clips suggest. In his book and interviews this year, Barr has said he does not want Trump to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 — but if he is, he will still vote for him. The former attorney general has also said Trump is responsible, but not criminally liable, for the Jan. 6 riot.
Still, for a national television and online audience, Barr on Monday was in some sense the hearing’s star witness to Trump’s angry rejection of findings from his own Justice Department that claims of mass voter fraud were misunderstandings, nonsense or flat-out false.
The shadow race is underway for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination
“I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with, become detached from reality,” Barr said. The former attorney general said when he tried to tell the president “how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”
Barr has said he told Trump the voter-fraud claims were “bullshit,” a claim he repeated in his closed-door session with the committee. That only served to infuriate the president, who — according to Barr — said he “must hate” Trump to say something like that.
Largely because of Trump’s refusal to accept Barr’s findings about the election, the relationship between the president and attorney general grew so strained that Barr resigned in December 2020, not long after telling a reporter that the Justice Department had not found evidence of sizable election fraud.
The committee’s next hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, will feature testimony from former Justice Department officials who remained after Barr’s departure. They became enmeshed in a tense standoff with Trump in the days just before Jan. 6, during which the president sought to remove Barr’s successor, Jeffrey Rosen, as acting attorney general, and replace him with another Justice Department lawyer who had embraced claims of massive voter fraud.
Trump's inner circle repeatedly warned him claims of mass voter fraud were false
This week’s hearings seem aimed at showing that Trump had to know his election fraud claims were bunk, but still tried to steamroll government agencies and elected officials into supporting those claims. Yet much of the testimony offered to date points to a kind of stubborn insistence by Trump that he was right and all the experienced investigators and professionals were wrong.
Donoghue said there were so many wild allegations of fraud, “when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it,” but would move to another allegation, such as a claim that a suitcase full of fraudulent ballots was rolled under a table at a vote-counting facility in Georgia. “We looked at the tape, we interviewed the witnesses … And I said, ‘no sir, there is no suitcase. You can watch the video over and over. There is no suitcase.’ ”
Lawmakers on the committee argue these exchanges — and Trump’s repeated embrace of far-fetched theories proffered by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and others — show that Trump knew the election wasn’t stolen from him.
But none of the witnesses on Monday described Trump accepting that conclusion. On the contrary, the witnesses said he refused to believe he had lost — a crucial distinction for any criminal investigation into Trump’s conduct.
“From a legal standpoint, the greatest challenge is proving subjective intent when it comes to claims of voter fraud altering the outcome of the election. That means proving that the individual appreciated the wrongfulness of their conduct,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor that is now in private practice.
“Proving intent is not a question of reasonableness or common sense, it requires subjective proof that someone knew that their statements were not true at the time they were making them, or that they were willfully blind to the truth,” Mintz said. “The ultimate question for any government lawyer looking at this evidence is whether the president and others knew their claims of widespread voter fraud were false, or if they were simply choosing to ignore the advice of some, in favor of those who were telling them what they wanted to hear.”
Still unclear is what the Justice Department — which is conducting its own investigation of the origins of the Jan. 6 attack — makes of the committee’s case to date.
At an unrelated news conference Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland again declined to discuss the legal or factual questions surrounding Jan. 6, noting that there are hundreds of ongoing cases and the department has a general policy of not discussing investigations. He added, however, that prosecutors are paying close attention to the committee’s hearings.
“I am watching, I will be watching all of the hearings,” Garland said. “I may not be able to watch all of it live, but I’m sure I will be watching all of it, and I can assure you the January 6 prosecutors are watching all of the hearings as well.” | 2022-06-13T22:37:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barr's Jan. 6 hearing testimony shows futility of trying to sway Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/bill-barr-trump-january-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/bill-barr-trump-january-6/ |
A vehicle transports a RS-24 Yars strategic nuclear missile along a street during a Victory Day rehearsal in Moscow on June 17, 2020. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)
Conflict in Ukraine has played a role in the heightened risk, the report said. Most nuclear-armed countries have sharpened their rhetoric, and Russia “has even made open threats about possible nuclear weapon use in the context of the war in Ukraine.” Stability talks between Russia and the United States, which together possess more than 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, have stalled since Russia invaded Ukraine. And none of the other nuclear-armed countries are pursuing arms control negotiations, the report said.
“This is a very worrying trend,” Wilfred Wan, director of the organization’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program, said in a statement.
In January, the five nuclear-armed permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. — issued a joint statement committing to disarmament and affirming that nuclear war “must never be fought.” Yet all five “continue to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals and appear to be increasing the salience of nuclear weapons in their military strategies,” the report said.
The number of nuclear warheads dropped slightly, from 13,080 in 2021 to 12,705 in 2022. Russian and American stockpiles declined, but this was due to dismantling of warheads retired from military service several years ago. The countries’ inventories of usable stockpiles stayed relatively stable.
Russia has an estimated 5,977 nuclear warheads, roughly 550 more than the United States, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Philipp Bleek, an associate professor of nonproliferation and terrorism studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told The Post that the global nuclear arsenal trend — with major players Russian and the United States stabilizing the size of their arsenals, and some other nations increasing theirs — is concerning.
But what is also concerning, he said, is the “growing salience of nuclear weapons, fronted especially by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … and the way Russia has brandished nuclear weapons in that conflict.”
Following his announcement of an invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered nuclear forces on alert — the first time such an order was made since the Russian Federation was established in 1991.
Other countries are watching Russia’s actions and listening to their escalating rhetoric, Bleek said, and they may respond by enlarging existing inventories or pursuing new nuclear arsenals.
“When we look back historically — I hope it’s not — but this might end up being an inflection point,” he said. “One where we can point to a shift that’s happening now around the Ukraine conflict that led to more nuclear weapons and a bigger role for the weapons in international conflict.”
The role of nuclear weapons, including in light of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, was raised at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore.
“Amid the crisis in Ukraine, the use of nuclear weapons by Russia is being discussed as a real possibility. We must not repeat the scourge of nuclear weapons,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at the summit Friday. “The threat of nuclear weapons, let alone the use of them, should never be tolerated. As the prime minister of the only country that has suffered the devastation of atomic bombings, I strongly appeal for this.”
At the summit, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said China had made “impressive progress” in developing new nuclear weapons — but added that they would only be used for self-defense. | 2022-06-13T22:37:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Global nuclear arsenal expected to grow for first time since Cold War - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/global-nuclear-arsenal-russia-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/global-nuclear-arsenal-russia-ukraine/ |
Senators propose gun measures with support from both parties
Some Republicans and Democrats agree on certain restrictions, and money to improve mental health and school safety.
The March for Our Lives rally against gun violence at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Saturday drew thousands of people. On Sunday, U.S. senators announced a proposal to restrict some gun sales and provide more money for mental health and school safety. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post)
A group of senators on Sunday announced the framework of a response to last month’s mass shootings, a breakthrough offering limited gun restrictions and efforts to improve school safety and mental health programs.
The announcement came one day after thousands of people attended March for Our Lives rallies in Washington and across the country. The events were a response to recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, that left 31 people dead and renewed a national debate about the access to guns.
The senators’ proposal falls far short of tougher steps that President Joe Biden and many Democrats want. Even so, the accord was embraced by Biden. If the proposal becomes law, it would signal a significant turnabout after years of gun massacres that have led to little action in Congress.
Leaders hope to push any agreement into law quickly before public outrage fades over the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. People involved in the discussions cautioned that final details are not complete, and new disputes could arise.
Twenty senators, including 10 Republicans, released a statement calling for passage. That is important because the Senate is divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. At least 10 Republican votes will be needed to end debate about the bill. Then it needs only 51 votes to be approved.
“Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities,” the lawmakers said. The group, led by Democratic senators Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema and Republicans John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, produced the agreement after two weeks of private talks.
Background checks of gun buyers younger than 21 would reveal any crimes committed when they were juveniles (younger than 18).
States would be offered money to put in place “red flag” laws that make it easier to temporarily take guns from people considered potentially violent. States would also receive money to improve school safety.
People who informally sell guns for profit would be required to obtain federal dealers’ licenses, which means they would be required to check whether someone is legally able to buy a gun. It would be a crime for a person to legally buy a weapon for someone who would not qualify for ownership.
Billions of dollars to expand the number of community mental health centers and suicide prevention programs.
The agreement was endorsed by groups that support gun restrictions including the youth-led March for Our Lives organization.
The last major firearms restrictions enacted by lawmakers was the 1994 assault weapons ban. Congress let the ban expire 10 years later. | 2022-06-13T23:07:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Senators propose gun measures with support from both parties - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/13/senators-propose-new-gun-restrictions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/13/senators-propose-new-gun-restrictions/ |
Activists walk outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Monday. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
In one decision, the court said federal law does not require a bond hearing after six months of detention for those who can show they fear persecution if returned to their home countries. And in the second, it said undocumented immigrants with similar cases cannot band together as a class to seek relief, but must pursue their cases individually.
She wrote the majority opinion about how federal law does not require bond hearings for those detained. But she dissented in the second, saying it will “leave many vulnerable noncitizens unable to protect their rights.”
An asylum official found credible Arteaga-Martinez’s story that he would be persecuted or tortured if returned to Mexico, but the man was detained while waiting for an immigration judge to consider his request to put off his deportation. After four months, Arteaga-Martinez said he should be released while his case was considered because he was not a flight risk or danger to the community.
Sotomayor said that was a mistake. “There is no plausible construction” of the federal law at issue, Sotomayor wrote, “that requires the Government to provide bond hearings before immigration judges after six months of detention, with the Government bearing the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that a detained noncitizen poses a flight risk or a danger to the community.”
Sotomayor and Justice Stephen G. Breyer said there might be hope for Arteaga-Martinez on an issue that had not been raised in lower court. The court decided in Zadvydas v. Davis in 2001 that the government may not detain immigrants indefinitely. If deportation was not likely in the “reasonably foreseeable future,” immigrants should be released unless there is good reason to detain them, the court concluded.
Justice Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, said the case “illustrates why we should overrule Zadvydas at the earliest opportunity.” He was joined in the sentiment by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.
The conservative justices were in the majority in the second case, which was decided 6 to 3.
In that case, the court overturned a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which said it was proper for federal courts to impose broad “class-wide injunctive relief” for similarly situated immigrants who had been detained for more than six months.
But the Biden administration appealed and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said federal law limits judges to deciding the claims of the individuals in front of them.
Alito said the text of the law passed by Congress limited relief by judges to “an individual alien.” Therefore, “injunctive relief on behalf of an entire class of aliens is not allowed.”
He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as well as Thomas, Gorsuch and Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
She said the majority reaches its conclusion “in a purportedly textualist opinion that, in truth, elevates piecemeal dictionary definitions and policy concerns over plain meaning and context.”
She said “contextual and historical evidence demonstrates that the enacting Congress would not have prohibited classwide relief simply by using the word ‘individual.’ ”
Those covered by the law are often unaware of federal law or fluent in English, she said. “Even so, these individuals must navigate the Nation’s labyrinthine immigration laws without entitlement to appointed counsel or legal support,” she wrote.
“Class litigation not only enables individual class members to enforce their rights against powerful actors, but also advances judicial economy by eliminating the need for duplicative proceedings pertaining to each class member,” Sotomayor wrote. | 2022-06-13T23:16:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court rules against detained immigrants facing deportation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/supreme-court-immigrants-bond-hearings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/supreme-court-immigrants-bond-hearings/ |
Proud Boys disrupt Drag Queen reading event, prompting hate-crime probe
A child looks in the mirror after getting makeup applied by Bay Area drag queen Panda Dulce (right) during an event in San Francisco on Dec. 3, 2017. A sheriff's official said authorities were investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men allegedly shouted homophobic and anti-LGBTQ slurs during a Drag Queen Story Hour, hosted by Dulce, at a San Francisco Bay Area library on Saturday, June 11, 2022. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
A children’s story hour at a California library was disrupted by several members of the Proud Boys on Saturday, prompting local authorities to launch a hate-crime investigation as LGBTQ and anti-extremism advocates warn that such threats by far-right extremists are intensifying.
Roughly 25 miles from San Francisco across the East Bay, the San Lorenzo Library was hosting Drag Queen Story Hour when a group of five men interrupted the event and began hurling homophobic and transphobic insults at attendees, including the drag performer known as Panda Dulce, officials said. Drag Queen Story Hour, where performers read books to children, takes place in a part of the library where any member of the community can hold a meeting, according to Alameda County Sheriff’s spokesperson Lt. Ray Kelly.
“The men were described as extremely aggressive with a threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety,” Kelly said in a statement. In addition to the hate-crime probe, authorities have also launched an investigation into whether the Proud Boys actions “annoyed or harassed children,” which is a violation of the penal code.
On Monday, detectives were still investigating and would hand over any evidence to the district attorney, who will determine if hate-crime charges should be brought against the Proud Boys.
With the Bay Area being the epicenter of the Pride movement, LGBTQ events are often uneventful and “go off without a hitch,” Kelly told The Washington Post on Monday.
“As far as hatred and being a focal point, I’ve not seen that in years past. This is kind of new,” Kelly said. He also noted that the Proud Boys members who disrupted Saturday’s reading event were not believed to be from the San Lorenzo community.
“We don’t have rightwing extremists groups that come out into the open in the Bay Area all that much,” he said. “We believe there’s a group connected in San Mateo County, so we believe these people crossed the bay for this event."
Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine
Kelly said investigators believe the confrontation was spurred by the popular Twitter account, Libs of TikTok, which traffics in anti-LGBTQ sentiment and propels incendiary stories into the right-wing media sphere.
Around the country, extremist groups with a far-right or White supremacist ideology have increasingly coalesced around targeting LGBTQ events and individuals and sought to justify their attacks with false claims that gay and transgender people — and sometimes perceived ideological opponents — are preying on children.
Dulce, who is among the co-founders of the Drag Queen Story Hour program, said the men marched in making White power hand gestures and had their “cameras blazing.”
“They said ‘who brought the tranny? It’s a groomer. It’s a pedophile. Why do you bring your kids to this event?’” Dulce said in an interview with KGO News in San Francisco.
That same day in Idaho, police arrested 31 men affiliated with the White supremacist group, Patriot Front, on charges they were conspiring to riot at a local Pride event. Extremism researchers say hate groups that target LGBTQ-friendly organizations or individuals are motivated by often overlapping beliefs in hyper-masculinity and archaic gender roles; fear of people who are different and the misplaced belief queer groups are amassing power and privilege at their expense.
Over the past two years, conservative activists and lawmakers have increasingly fought over transgender and LGBTQ inclusivity and visibility in girl’s sports, school curriculums and public libraries.
Libraries around the United States have seen a big increase in the number of attacks and protests over inclusive reading lists or book displays in recent years, while the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has seen an overall increase in targeting libraries in general, said Emily Knox, who teaches at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois and serves as editor of the ALA’s Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.
Libraries are also one of the few public faces of local government where individuals feel they can be heard; most people don’t go to city council meetings, Knox said, but lots of people go to the library.
Story hours have long been a staple of public library programming meant to promote literacy and engage young readers, though the Drag Queen Story Hour program is organized in local chapters and hosted by a local library.
Jonathan Hamilt, executive director of Drag Queen Story Hour, said the program drew strong positive response when it began in 2015 for bringing fun and glamour to children’s story time though it always experienced pushback from some conservative groups.
Over the years, however, Hamilt said pushback has morphed to hate and is directed at drag culture instead of gay people overall.
“With right wing conservatives and Republican groups, outright saying they don’t like gay people sounds homophobic; it doesn’t play well,” he said. Going after drag culture provides cover under the argument that drag queens reading to children is inappropriate or untoward.
Contrary to what Drag Queen Story Hour opponents claim, Hamilt said the group isn’t trying to persuade or “indoctrinate” anyone; they exist for the people who want and need them.
“Our program is for queer families and their allies,” he said. “It’s not our job to teach people [about] the difference between sex and gender, or to make people like us. People who are against us, no matter how much we explain what we’re doing, they’re not going to understand or listen.”
Panda Dulce, the drag performer who was harassed by Proud Boys at the San Lorenzo Library, told KGO News there’s no reason to fear or hate them.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Dulce said. “I just want to tell you a story. That’s it.” | 2022-06-13T23:29:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Proud Boys disrupt Drag Queen Story Hour event prompting hate crime probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/13/proud-boy-drag-queen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/13/proud-boy-drag-queen/ |
Yes, there’s a tampon shortage. Here’s why.
Pharmacy aisles, group chats and social media are rife with conversations about frustrated searches for period products
A number of factors are contributing to the tampon shortage, experts say, including inflation. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
Just came from Walgreens and yeah, the tampon shortage is real. If you use cotton I'd go ahead and buy some and pray your next period's light.
“I can see the supplies dwindling in the warehouse,” Joy told The Post. “We’re okay for the moment, for the next couple months given the supplies I have, but I don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen in the fall.”
Data on the shortage is patchy, but scarcity and inflation has been reflected in price increases: The average cost for a package of tampons is up nearly 10 percent in the past year, while a package of pads has risen 8.3 percent, according to data from NielsenIQ.
Not all brands have been affected equally. Kimberly-Clark, the Irving, Tex.-based consumer goods giant and maker of U by Kotex tampons, told The Post that it “has not experienced a product or supply shortage” in the United States, saying it is “working closely with our retail partners to keep shelves stocked.” | 2022-06-13T23:33:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why is there a tampon shortage? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/tampon-shortage-product-shortages-inflation-supply-chain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/13/tampon-shortage-product-shortages-inflation-supply-chain/ |
NEW YORK — Wall Street tumbled into a bear market Monday after fears about a fragile economy sent the S&P 500 more than 20% below its record set early this year. The index sank 3.9% in the first chance for investors to trade after getting the weekend to reflect on the stunning news that inflation is getting worse. The Dow was briefly down more than 1,000 points. At the center of the sell-off again was the Federal Reserve. Investors expect it to get more aggressive about raising rates, even if it risks a recession. Treasury yields shot to the highest levels in more than a decade.
NEW YORK — The price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are falling Monday, after the major crypto lender Celsius halted all withdrawals citing “extreme market conditions.” It is the second collapse of a part of the crypto world in the last two months. The stablecoin Terra imploded in early May, erasing tens of billions of dollars worth of value in a matter of hours. Bitcoin was trading at roughly $23,400 Monday afternoon, down more than 16% in the past day. Ethereum, another widely-followed cryptocurrency, was down more than 20%.
NEW DELHI — India and other Asian nations are becoming an increasingly vital source of oil revenues for Moscow as the U.S. and other Western countries cut their energy imports from Russia in line with sanctions over its war on Ukraine. Such sales are boosting Russian export revenues at a time when Washington and allies are trying to limit Moscow’s cash flows. Commodity data firm Kpler reports that India, an oil-hungry country of 1.4 billion people, has guzzled nearly 60 million barrels of Russian oil in 2022 so far — up from 12 million in all of 2021. Shipments to other Asian countries, like China, have also increased in recent months but to a lesser extent.
LONDON — Britain’s government has unveiled legislation that would unilaterally change post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland. That move will face opposition from lawmakers — including some in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s own Conservative Party — who believe it violates international law. The law would let the government bypass the Northern Ireland Protocol, which requires the inspection of some goods shipped to Northern Ireland from other parts of the U.K. It’s part of the broader trade deal that Johnson negotiated with the European Union when Britain left the 27-nation bloc. Britain’s government says it’s acting within international law, but the European Commission said it could take legal action against the U.K.
ATLANTA — Coca-Cola Co. said Monday it’s partnering with Brown-Forman Corp., the maker of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, to sell premixed cocktails. Canned Jack and Coke will be sold globally after a launch in Mexico late this year. The move comes amid strong global sales of of ready-to-drink alcohol blends, including hard seltzers like White Claw. Global consumption of ready-to-drink beverages jumped 26% in 2020 and 14% last year, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, an alcohol market research firm. Coke has been slowly adding more alcoholic drinks to its portfolio since 2018, when it launched Lemon-Dou in Japan.
DETROIT — Major automakers are asking Congress to lift the cap on how many people can receive tax credits for buying a hybrid or fully electric vehicle. Currently the number of tax credits allowed is capped at 200,000 per company. General Motors and Tesla have already reached the cap and Toyota is close to it. In a letter to leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives on Monday, the chief executives of Ford, Toyota, GM and Stellantis asked that tax credits be extended to anyone who seeks to buy a qualified vehicle. General Motors and Tesla have already reached the cap and Toyota is close to it. Automakers say they want the cap lifted until “the EV market is more mature,” without giving a time frame. | 2022-06-13T23:34:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Bear market, Bitcoin plunge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-bear-market-bitcoin-plunge/2022/06/13/27aa37fe-eb64-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-bear-market-bitcoin-plunge/2022/06/13/27aa37fe-eb64-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Consumers expect rising prices, New York Fed survey finds
Survey: Consumers expect rising prices
U.S. consumers expect prices to rise even faster over the next year, and that will propel spending to a record, according to a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
One-year-ahead median inflation expectations climbed in May to 6.6 percent from 6.3 percent, tying the highest reading since the survey began in June 2013. That would take a bigger bite out of Americans’ wallets, as forecasts for household spending jumped for a fifth month by a series-high 9 percent, the regional Fed said in its May Survey of Consumer Expectations released Monday.
U.S. inflation accelerated to a fresh 40-year high last month, indicating price pressures are becoming entrenched in the economy and shattering consumer confidence. That’s raising bets that the Fed will have to act even more aggressively, starting with what most traders see as a half-point interest rate hike this week.
A quarter of respondents expect prices to jump a record 10 percent in the coming year. In contrast, the median forecast for inflation on the three-year horizon remained unchanged at 3.9 percent, a hopeful sign for the Fed as it tries to keep such expectations anchored.
No action taken on Bayer's Roundup case
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday took no action on Bayer’s bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, as the company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages.
The case was not mentioned on a list issued by the court on Monday as it decided whether to hear pending appeals, raising at least the possibility that the justices are considering hearing it. The German company has asked the justices to take up its appeal of a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giant’s glyphosate-based weedkillers.
JetBlue Airways has been working for months on plans to integrate Spirit Airlines' operations should it win a takeover battle for the deep-discount carrier. "Our team has already started, for a number of months, building an integration plan," JetBlue chief executive Robin Hayes said in an interview. JetBlue last week raised its all-cash offer to $3.4 billion and added a sweetener payment in hopes of winning the support of Spirit's board as well as its shareholders.
Bidding for a final, private lunch with Warren Buffett, an event that has raised tens of millions for a California charity, has already reached $3 million. It will be the first private lunch offered with the billionaire since a record-setting bid in 2019. The past two auctions were called off due to the pandemic, and Buffett said this will be the last. The online auction that raises money to support the Glide Foundation's work to help the homeless in San Francisco began Sunday and continues through Friday night. Only four bidders had participated as of Monday evening, but the biggest bids don't usually come until closer to the end of the eBay auction.
Yahoo named actress Jessica Alba and five other people from the tech, media and financial industries to its board on Monday, as it aims to diversify its offerings to compete with bigger players, such as Alphabet's Google and Meta's Facebook. Alba, co-founder of consumer wellness products firm Honest Co., will be joined by Aryeh Bourkoff, chief executive of LionTree, a bank that has advised big media mergers; Fouad ElNaggar, CEO of tech firm Array; Michael Kives, founder of investment firm K5 Global; Katie Stanton, who has served in executive operating roles at Twitter and Google; and Cynthia Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks. | 2022-06-13T23:34:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Consumers expect rising prices, New York Fed survey finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2022/06/13/58ab90f4-eb15-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2022/06/13/58ab90f4-eb15-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html |
Air Force clears crew that flew with Afghan remains in C-17 wheel well
In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, evacuees board a C-17 aircraft at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in August 2021. (Senior Airman Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via AP)
The U.S. Air Force on Monday announced it would take no disciplinary action against personnel who flew from Kabul to Qatar in August with human remains in the wheel well of their C-17 cargo plane, saying the crew exhibited “sound judgment” in the face of an “unprecedented” security crisis as dozens of Afghans swarmed the aircraft before takeoff.
Officials, citing an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, called the incident a “tragic event.”
The grisly discovery occurred at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Aug. 16. A day prior, Taliban fighters had swept into Afghanistan’s capital, setting off a surreal scene at Hamid Karzai International Airport as Afghans civilians desperate for a flight out of the country were seen running alongside and climbing onto the outside of taxiing planes.
U.S. military officials at several levels reviewed the investigation and determined the crew “was in compliance with applicable rules of engagement specific to the event and the overall law of armed conflict,” said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman.
Commanders determined that the crew “had acted appropriately” in deciding “to get airborne as quickly as possible,” she said. | 2022-06-13T23:34:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Air Force clears crew that flew with Afghan remains in C-17 wheel well - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/air-force-c-17-remains-kabul-qatar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/air-force-c-17-remains-kabul-qatar/ |
How the gay rights movement found such stunning success
Two pugs dressed in rainbow outfits during the 2022 LA Pride Parade in Los Angeles on June 12. (Caroline Brehman/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
This is not to say gay life in America is all rainbows. Many LGBTQ youths still face homelessness and are drawn to the false, cruel consolation of suicide. In redder parts of the country, school libraries are targeted for carrying LGBTQ literature. And middle America seems largely unreconciled to conceptions of gender that involve prepubescent medical intervention.
Yet most people now regard the equal treatment of gay people as a minimal commitment of a just society. In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage. But this has changed in group after group. In 2016, for the first time, a majority of adults 65 and older said they supported same-sex marriage. The same became true of a majority of Protestants in 2017 and of Republicans in 2021. Weekly church attenders remain the most resistant category. But even here, 40 percent approve of gay marriage. Overall support among Americans now exceeds 70 percent.
This is a battle in the culture war that was never fully joined. Following the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015 legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, few politicians — including social conservatives — seemed eager to revisit the issue. And it is hard to imagine that even a conservative Supreme Court majority will want to challenge such a decisive U.S. majority.
Consider the contrast to abortion politics, where a Supreme Court decision in 1973 set off one of the most durable struggles in American public life. Why have these two examples of social controversy worked out so differently?
Perhaps the strongest reason is the simplest. The argument over abortion involves conflicting perspectives on human rights — one that emphasizes the autonomy of women, the other that emphasizes the value of nascent human life. It is a fundamental clash of visions that often ends in bitterness and the questioning of motives.
In the conflict over gay rights, supporters have asserted a compelling view of human dignity, while opponents have struggled to explain how broadening rights harms others. The advance of same-sex marriage, it seems, has generally ended in cake and dancing.
Some conservatives claimed that gay marriage would somehow weaken the institution of straight marriage. But the evidence that same-sex marriage increases rates of divorce, or child poverty or children living in single-parent homes appears nonexistent. (A decline in family stability in the United States has caused harm to children, but its roots long predate same-sex marriage.)
A second reason for gay rights’ rapid solidification as a core American value is an implication of genetics. Though there seems to be no single “gay gene,” scientists in the field generally affirm a role for genetics in the determination of sexual orientation. And imposing social or legal disadvantages on individuals for an unchosen disposition seems a violation of basic fairness.
The claim by some social conservatives that a genetic tendency toward homosexuality doesn’t make it moral — any more than a genetic tendency toward violence or crime makes them permissible — strikes me as tendentious. There is a wide ethical difference between the felonious theft of life or property and the sexual activities of LGBTQ people that are roughly equivalent to those of their heterosexual counterparts. We ask everyone to refrain from assault and robbery; opponents of homosexuality would have only one group refrain from sex.
Third, opposition to same-sex marriage seems less religious than generational. Half a century ago, leaders could simply count on a general social uneasiness about people who are gay. Such discomfort now cannot be assumed, particularly among the young. Opponents of gay rights are forced to argue directly for their views — which must feel intolerant while emerging from their mouths.
Among religious young people, certain questions are growing more insistent: Why should we assess homosexuality according to Old Testament law that also advocates the stoning of children who disobey their parents? Isn’t it possible that the Apostle Paul’s views on homosexuality reflected the standards of his own time, rather than the views of Jesus, who never mentioned the topic? There is little wonder that, according to a Pew Research Center poll, over half of White evangelicals 50 and older oppose gay marriage while over half of those under 50 years old in the same group support gay marriage.
It is still possible for the gay rights movement to destructively overreach — as in denying the right of religious schools and charities to shape their own institutional standards. But in the meantime, I’m up for some Pride bocce. | 2022-06-13T23:35:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How the gay rights movement found such stunning success - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/gay-rights-lgbtq-movement-success-reasons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/gay-rights-lgbtq-movement-success-reasons/ |
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, chair of the Jan. 6 committee, swears in witnesses Monday. (Jabin Botsford/Bloomberg)
If the purpose of the Jan. 6 committee was to demonstrate that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election definitively and legitimately, it largely accomplished that objective Monday morning. But whether that achieves anything related to the committee’s overall objectives remains to be seen.
Witnesses within former president Donald Trump’s orbit testified via video depositions that they understood and accepted the evidence of the election outcome and attempted to convince Trump that there was no substantial fraud.
Former Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt — whose “decision desk” at Fox made an early call that Arizona was going to Biden — did a good job of explaining why mail-in votes were favoring Democrats, while ballots cast on Election Day favored Republicans. Accordingly, based on the order in which states count their votes — early vs. same day — significant vote swings are normal and to be expected. It’s ironic that Fox News, which unceremoniously fired Stirewalt two months after the election, chose to broadcast Monday morning’s hearing — with Stirewalt’s testimony front and center — after forgoing Thursday’s prime-time opening presentation.
Longtime Republican attorney Ben Ginsberg anchored a second set of witnesses Monday, and he also effectively shot down election fraud allegations. But like the two Republicans appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the committee, Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Ginsberg was a Trump critic even before the 2020 election, and his comments will be viewed as more of the same by the Trump faithful.
Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor whose once sterling reputation has been obliterated by his bombastic and bizarre turn as Trump’s confidant and legal adviser, was further damaged based on others’ testimony. The evidence shows that Giuliani’s influence on Trump’s pursuit of fraud allegations was immense, and his contributions to Trump’s delusional obsessions will forever overshadow his heroic efforts leading New York after the tragedy of 9/11.
Proving to more Americans that Trump really lost the election — despite all the sundry conspiracy theories — would be a valuable service. But demonstrating that Trump knew that he lost is next to impossible. Trump’s ego is such that it might truly be the case that he sincerely thinks the election was stolen.
Pinning much of the committee’s strategy on proving that Trump knew he lost is a tactic fraught with peril. It’s impossible to prove what was in someone’s heart and mind. The goal seems to be that demonstrating that Trump knew his claims of fraud were false makes him legally more culpable in fomenting the Jan. 6 upheaval and means that he represents an ongoing threat.
But it’s a dangerous tightrope in that it suggests that if Trump truly believed there was fraud, his actions might somehow be justifiable. They’re not. Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000 each set the example of accepting the official outcome despite credible evidence for objecting. Even if Trump goes to his grave believing the 2020 election was stolen, his inability to accept the results after exhausting reasonable legal avenues is an unforgivable dereliction of duty.
After each presidential election, the voluntary participation of the loser in recognizing the winner is the most important example the United States sends to the world — especially when an incumbent loses and undertakes the peaceful transfer of power. That Trump didn’t do that — even if he sincerely believed fraud to be real and demonstrable — is indefensible. Proving that he didn’t believe his own fraud rhetoric is largely beside the point.
The purpose of the Jan. 6 committee is to investigate the origins of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and determine whether anyone — particularly Trump himself — planned and coordinated it. To that end, Monday’s presentation was no less scripted than last Thursday’s prime-time extravaganza. There was no cross-examination of witnesses, no counter to the preordained narrative. The appearance of a carefully choreographed presentation with a preordained result detracts from its credibility.
Thursday’s hearing drew about 20 million viewers. That’s fewer than 1 in 10 adult Americans, according to census figures. It’s a rather paltry audience, considering that the hearing was carried live across ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and other outlets. By contrast, this year’s State of the Union address drew 38 million viewers. One report noted that the hearing outdrew the Academy Awards, but that shouldn’t have been difficult, considering consistently falling ratings for the Oscars and that the ceremony is carried by just one network.
A recent CNN story noted alarmingly that Trump’s standing with Americans has actually risen since Jan. 6, 2021, and he has been outpolling Biden in matchups. Maybe these hearings will slightly blunt Trump’s resurgence, but unless there’s more opportunity to challenge the one-sided nature of the format, it’s likely they’ll be cheered by Trump’s critics and derided by his supporters — with little to change the perception on either side. | 2022-06-13T23:35:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Jan. 6 committee demolished Trump's 'big lie" about the 2020 election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/jan-6-hearings-trump-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/13/jan-6-hearings-trump-biden/ |
A screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on June 13.
Is the U.S. economy hurtling toward a recession? Dean Baker, an economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in D.C., thinks it all boils down to just how aggressive the Federal Reserve will be. The Fed is expected to raise interest rates again later this week.
On today’s “Post Reports,” we examine the factors that could lead to a recession — and we ask what Americans can do to prepare if it happens. | 2022-06-13T23:35:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A recession? In this economy?! - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/a-recession-in-this-economy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/a-recession-in-this-economy/ |
Seventh member of Haiti’s Special Olympics delegation goes missing
Athletes, coaches, family and fans cheer during Opening Ceremonies for the Special Olympics USA Games at Exploria Stadium in Orlando. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/AP)
A seventh member has gone missing from Haiti’s delegation to a Special Olympics event recently staged in the Orlando area, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
Louis Jacques Wilguens, 25, was last seen exiting a bus Saturday afternoon at Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., per authorities. He was scheduled to fly back to Haiti the following morning.
Sunday was the last day of the Special Olympics USA Games, which began June 5. As of June 6, six members of the Haitian delegation had been reported as missing by the sheriff’s office. At the time, the office stated, “We believe this is an isolated event and do not suspect foul play.”
The six men, said to be with the Haitian soccer team, were identified as: Antione Joseph Mithon, 32; Nicholson Fontilus, 20; Peter Mianovich Berlus, 19; Anderson Petit-Frere, 18; Steevenson Jacquet, 24; and Oriol Jean, 18. When last seen, they were near the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in the Walt Disney World Resort.
“All of them turned in their room keys and left behind their personal bags and belongings,” the sheriff’s office said.
Organizers of the Special Olympics’ Orlando event said in a statement, “The reason for their departure from the Games is currently unknown.”
Stating that the “well-being of these delegates is our foremost concern,” the organizers added that of the six men missing at the time, five were not at the Games in an athletic capacity and one was an adult with an intellectual disability.
A spokesperson for the organizers expressed similar concern for Wilguens on Monday and told The Washington Post via email that it was still not known why the Haitian delegation members departed the event. Wilguens also was connected to the soccer team that went to Orlando.
Wilguens was said to have been wearing red sandals, blue jeans and a white Special Olympics shirt with the word “Haiti” on it when last seen.
“Local authorities have indicated they have no reason to believe the health and safety of this individual is at risk,” the spokesperson stated.
A spokesperson for the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond Monday via text message to a request for comment.
The Special Olympics USA Games attracted more than 5,500 athletes and coaches from the nation’s 50 states and the Caribbean, according to organizers.
Long one of the most troubled and impoverished countries in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has been wracked by political instability, food insecurity and gang violence. In attempts to flee the situation, many are resorting to dangerous sea crossings, the United Nations Refugee Agency reported last month. | 2022-06-14T00:13:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seventh member of Haiti’s Special Olympics delegation goes missing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/06/13/haiti-special-olympics-missing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/06/13/haiti-special-olympics-missing/ |
Trump’s former campaign manager represents many Republicans who have entertained false claims that the election was stolen
A clip of Bill Stepien, Donald Trump's former campaign manager, plays during a June 13 hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. “I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time,” Stepien said about the Trump team's actions in the days after the 2020 election. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Months after privately breaking with Donald Trump over his challenges of the 2020 election, former campaign manager Bill Stepien began landing new political clients — including several seeking Trump’s endorsement who openly entertained false claims that the election had been stolen.
Stepien, a political consultant, signed a challenger to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Kelly Tshibaka, who had called for a “prudent pause in declaring a winner” to investigate election falsehoods. He signed Harriet Hageman, a challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who told a Wyoming reporter this year that “we don’t know” if President Biden was legitimately elected. He continued to work with House candidates like Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), who had baselessly insisted that Trump won a second term.
And Stepien found a way to remain in Trump’s good graces, continuing his work as a consultant to the former president’s political operation, Save America PAC, which has done more than any other political group since 2020 to spread falsehoods about the election’s outcome.
Stepien’s delicate dance — privately rejecting much of Trump’s post-election strategy, while publicly staying quiet and even benefiting from it — was put on display Monday, when deposition recordings revealed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol showed that Stepien had concluded in the days after the election that Trump was almost certain to lose and that those pushing his legal strategy were misleading him.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time — 25 years — and I’ve spanned political ideologies from Trump to McCain to Bush to Christie, and I can work under a lot of circumstances for a lot of varied candidates and politicians,” Stepien said in videotaped testimony that was played during Monday’s hearing. “I think on the way, I’ve built up a pretty good, I hope, a good reputation for being honest and professional. And I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time. So that led to me stepping away.”
Stepien was not alone in trying to back away from Trump’s embrace of some electoral delusions while at the same time retaining his personal favor. Advisers such as the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; his former senior counselor Kellyanne Conway; and his former attorney general William P. Barr have all been revealed in recent months to have opposed or distanced themselves from Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.
Stepien, who skipped Monday’s hearing because his wife went into labor, could not be reached for comment.
But a person close to him, who like others in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said that Stepien’s disagreements with Trump were over legal strategy and that they did not contradict the views of Stepien’s other political clients.
Jason Miller, another senior adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign, said Stepien had remained an adviser in good standing despite the disagreements that led him to back away from the Trump campaign team after the election — and has repeatedly briefed Trump since the former president left office.
“Bill is one of the most hardcore supporters of President Trump, and he’s consistent anytime you speak with him, either in front of the cameras or talking to respective clients,” Miller said. “There are many of us who remain concerned about the various reports of fraud and irregularity over the election, who should have gotten a better hearing. Different people have different levels of intensity in expressing those positions.”
Trump’s own spokesman dismissed the Jan. 6 committee’s use of Stepien’s testimony as a political ploy, suggesting that it was motivated by a desire to help Cheney’s reelection hopes in Wyoming. Cheney is vice chair of the committee.
“The day after a poll was released showing @Liz_Cheney getting destroyed by Trump-endorsed @HagemanforWY, the committee just happened to subpoena Stepien, who is running Harriet’s campaign,” Taylor Budowich wrote in a tweet Sunday. “This circus is beyond an embarrassment and will forever stain the integrity of congress.”
Stepien’s firm, National Public Affairs, has been paid nearly $1.6 million, including expenses for advertising, so far this election cycle by Republican campaigns and political committees, according to public filings. This includes $220,609 from two Trump-run political committees.
Leading up to the 2020 election, Stepien regularly complained that the Trump campaign had been in rough shape when he took over in the summer of that year, and he told others that the campaign was likely to lose, according to people who spoke to him. But he sometimes painted a more optimistic picture for Trump, according to people who heard his presentations.
In the days after the election, Stepien regularly convened calls in which he urged donors and supporters to keep fighting, and even promised potential protests to be staged around the country, according to audio reviewed by The Washington Post. He also helped to reassign staff in the days after the vote to mount election challenges.
But his view of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and Trump’s ad hoc legal team after the election was dim. He soon began reducing his time at campaign headquarters and his visibility to Trump, advisers say. Yet he did not want to be seen as publicly critical of Trump’s chances at the time and tried to “just quietly back away,” in the words of a person with knowledge of his actions. He bought a house in another state and left D.C. by Inauguration Day, and soon married a former Republican political operative.
“He was out of there as soon as he could,” a senior campaign official said. “He didn’t want to stay around for any of it.”
Stepien complained privately that Trump was no longer listening to legal advice from figures like Justin Clark, Stepien’s business partner, and was instead focused on conspiracy theorists such as Sidney Powell, a former assistant U.S. attorney. Trump and others complained in turn about how quickly Stepien had removed himself, according to a person who has spoken to Trump.
Outside the hearing room Monday, Stepien’s lawyer Kevin Marino defended his client.
“The way Mr. Stepien always conducts himself is by following the numbers and being completely truthful and accurate about where they are,” Marino said. “He has been very clear about his view as to what happened in the 2020 election, and you can rest assured that he isn’t advising anyone to suggest anything to the contrary.”
Stepien has worked since the 2020 election for six members of Congress who voted on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject electors who would have certified Joe Biden’s victory: Reps. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.), Mary E. Miller (R-Ill.), Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) and Jackson.
Jackson, Trump’s former White House doctor who left amid a Pentagon misconduct investigation, was quick to start repeating Trump’s false claims of fraud shortly after the 2020 election.
Last November, Jackson called the omicron wave a “Midterm Election Variant,” suggesting that the new strain of the coronavirus was an excuse for Democrats to “CHEAT” through mail ballots. A spokesman for Jackson did not immediately respond to a phone message.
In his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, Stepien said he had tried to convince Trump about the value of mail-in ballots during the campaign, even enlisting the support of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “But the president’s mind was made up,” Stepien said in his testimony.
Smith, the Missouri congressman, demanded a federal investigation into election fraud shortly after Election Day in 2020. He supported Texas’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the election at the Supreme Court and called Trump’s impeachment on charges of inciting the insurrection a “show trial.”
Miller, the Illinois Republican, claimed it was “impossible” for Trump to lose. The day before the Jan. 6 riot, she spoke at a rally outside the Capitol where she quoted Hitler, prompting calls for her resignation; she later apologized. She was also criticized when her husband, a state lawmaker, parked a truck on Capitol grounds displaying a decal for the Three Percenters anti-government militia movement.
Mullin called Biden “illegitimate,” and Davidson wrote an op-ed asserting Congress’s authority to decide the election on Jan. 6. Van Drew, who switched parties during Trump’s first impeachment, joined 125 other House Republicans in supporting the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the election but later acknowledged Biden as “duly elected.”
Stepien has also worked for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, whom Trump has criticized for not doing more to challenge the election results in that state, and Mike Gibbons, a failed candidate for Senate in Ohio whom Trump also passed over for an endorsement.
His most high-profile clients, however, have been two challengers to Trump’s principal antagonists inside the Republican Party — Cheney and Murkowski, who both voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack.
Stepien’s clients in those races, Hageman and Tshibaka, have stopped short of publicly calling the election result fraudulent, while at the same time inviting the support of voters who doubt its legitimacy and calling for reforms to election administration.
In Hageman’s first paid campaign ad, the candidate is compared to a cowboy who would “ride for the brand,” or the trademark of the ranch where they worked.
“In the Old West, when a cowboy rode for the brand, it meant they were loyal to their outfit, to the person who hired them, to the one who paid them,” a cowboy says in the spot.
“Liz Cheney doesn’t know what riding for the brand means,” a second cowboy adds.
Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report. | 2022-06-14T00:26:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bill Stepien broke with Trump after 2020 — but not all his candidates did - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/stepien-trump-2020-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/13/stepien-trump-2020-election/ |
Iraqi held at Guantánamo Bay pleads guilty
Iraqi held at Gitmo pleads guilty
An Iraqi man who has been held at the Guantánamo Bay detention center for more than 15 years pleaded guilty Monday to war crimes charges for his role in al-Qaeda attacks against U.S. and allied forces along with civilians in Afghanistan.
The pleas by the prisoner known as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi before a military commission at the U.S. base in Cuba amount to a legal milestone, aiding efforts to resolve the long-stalled Guantánamo tribunals and wind down operations at the detention center.
Prosecuting Hadi al-Iraqi has been delayed for years by some of the same legal and logistical challenges that have held up other Guantánamo cases as well as by his deteriorating spinal condition that has left him partially paralyzed.
Hadi al-Iraqi, who is about 60 and says his real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, was arraigned at Guantánamo in 2014 before the commission, which was set up to prosecute prisoners for war crimes in a high-security court that combines military and civilian law.
He pleaded guilty to four of five charges against him, including conspiracy and several violations of the international laws of war as an al-Qaeda commander early in the conflict in Afghanistan that formally ended with the U.S. withdrawal in August.
He was facing up to life in prison but is expected to be eventually transferred out of Guantánamo and sent to a third country under the terms of his plea deal after he undergoes additional medical treatment at the base.
The United States said Hadi al-Iraqi was a senior figure in al-Qaeda since the mid-1990s, leading a training camp for operatives in Afghanistan in the years before the organization carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
According to military charge sheets, the prisoner also assisted the Taliban with the March 2001 destruction of the giant, sixth-century sandstone Buddha statues built into a cliff in Bamian province. The group deemed the famed structures offensive under their interpretation of Islam.
Hadi al-Iraqi calmly answered “yes sir” or “yes, your honor” when questioned by the military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Rosenow, whether he understood the charges during a lengthy hearing to determine whether he was willingly entering into a plea agreement with the government. The Associated Press viewed the proceeding from a video feed at Fort Meade, Md.
There are 37 men still held at Guantánamo, including 10 facing active military commission cases.
Graffiti found on Yosemite park sites
About 8:15 p.m. on May 20, park rangers received multiple reports of vandalism along the trail. When they assessed the damage the next day, they found more than two dozen places where graffiti had been spray-painted, officials said.
Woman hurt saving dog loses case
The court wrote Monday that there could be circumstances in which trying to save property could qualify under the “ rescue doctrine” — for example, if a homeowner is injured trying to put out a fire in a nearby house on a reasonable belief that inhabitants might be in danger — but ruled those circumstances didn’t exist in Samolyk’s case. | 2022-06-14T01:05:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iraqi held at Guantánamo Bay pleads guilty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/iraqi-held-at-guantanamo-bay-pleads-guilty/2022/06/13/6592eff6-e921-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/iraqi-held-at-guantanamo-bay-pleads-guilty/2022/06/13/6592eff6-e921-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html |
A Republican primary debate for Nevada governor in Las Vegas last month. (John Locher/AP)
Joey Gilbert has said he has “not a single regret” about being in Washington during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by a mob supporting President Donald Trump and does not accept that Trump lost the 2020 election.
Ron Hanks was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 and described the attack as a “peaceful rally.” He is campaigning for an office in the building as a senator representing Colorado.
And Darren Bailey said in December 2020 it was “appalling” that GOP leaders in his home state of Illinois wanted Trump to concede the election. He’s vying to become the state’s governor.
Victories by Mastriano, Budd show potency of Trump’s false stolen election claims in GOP
All three have something else in common: They’re benefiting, either directly or indirectly, from a cluster of Democratic-associated groups spending millions of dollars in contested Republican primaries this month. In some cases these groups are attacking more mainstream Republicans and in others they are amplifying messages from the election-denying candidates.
The apparent bet these organizations are placing is that such far-right candidates, who hold polarizing views on various issues, would be easier to defeat in the November midterms when a broader slice of the electorate will be casting ballots. But some Democrats warn that this is a precarious strategy in a year when the party is facing stiff head winds — one that could result in the election of Republicans promoting false claims who could use powerful posts to disrupt future votes.
“I think it’s very dangerous and potentially very risky to elevate people who are hostile to democracy,” said Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist who has helped helm former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg’s political spending. “Either this is a crisis moment or it isn’t. And if it is — which it is — you don’t play cute in a crisis.”
The strategy will face its latest test on Tuesday in Nevada, one of several states holding primaries. A crowded field is vying for the Republican nomination for governor there, including Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who is backed by Trump and is seen by many as the front-runner on the GOP side. Lombardo has faced attacks from a Democratic-affiliated organization called “A Stronger NV.”
Gilbert, who is supported by the Nevada Republican Party, is seen by many as Lombardo’s top rival. Gilbert has openly touted his presence in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, where was captured on video just outside the Capitol building, and has baselessly questioned whether President Biden truly won his state in 2020.
One TV ad from A Stronger NV labeled Lombardo as “slick Joe” and accuses him of being soft on crime by disbanding an anti-gang unit during his tenure as sheriff — attacks that could alienate him from staunchly conservative voters who frequently participate in GOP primaries.
The organization was formed to “make independent expenditures in support of Democratic candidates for governor against Republican candidates for governor,” according to paperwork filed with the Nevada secretary of state. The group also listed a phone number for the Democratic Governors Association on its filing. The Nevada Independent first reported the group’s activities.
Some Democrats defending the use of such tactics across the country have said the mismatch between what primary voters and the broader universe of general-election voters tend to want is fair game for manipulation. Others have said they are simply trying to get a jump on drawing general-election contrasts.
“The DGA is wasting no time in educating the public about these Republicans,” said DGA spokesman David Turner in a statement. “These elected and formerly elected officials want to deceptively retell their histories, and we’re just filling in the gaps.”
Commercials from groups interfering in Republican primaries sometimes say that a GOP candidate is “too conservative” for the state — a potentially flattering label in the context of a Republican primary. Some highlight the talking points the candidates are pushing, including their records opposing abortion rights and protecting Second Amendment rights.
President Biden has repeatedly warned about such candidates, labeling their ideology as “ultra MAGA,” a phrase that the far right immediately seized upon as a compliment. Democratic support for candidates pushing that ideology, even if it’s intended to ease the way in November, strikes many in the party as a perilous wager — especially considering recent history.
Some key aides in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign wanted to face Trump, calculating incorrectly that he would be a weak general-election opponent if nominated.
“It’s quite interesting that Democrats are bolstering the same candidates they’re calling dangerous,” said Jon Seaton, who managed Republican businessman John Brunner’s 2012 Senate campaign in Missouri. “In this environment, with inflation being what it is, and the kind of tail winds that we have, Democrats should be very, very, very careful what they wish for. Maybe they don’t care.”
Brunner lost in the 2012 GOP primary after Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who was on the ballot that year, worked to promote his far-right GOP competitor, Todd Akin, who outraged many voters when he said that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy. McCaskill went on to defeat Akin.
One of McCaskill’s aides on that campaign also warned that Democrats might be taking on too much risk with a similar approach this year. “It is always a measure of last resort,” said the former aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly discuss how the party is using this tactic.
Even as Democratic candidates warn of the dangers posed by Republicans aligned with Trump’s election falsehoods, outside groups operating in the same races are quietly trying to boost candidates fitting that description in GOP primaries.
“Anti-democratic forces are stronger than any time since Jim Crow. And it’s true. That’s a fact,” Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) said during a speech on the Senate floor as he voiced support for a Democratic effort to expand voting rights.
But a group called Democratic Colorado is promoting Hanks ahead of the June 28 GOP primary for U.S. Senate, spending at least $2 million, according to data provided by a person familiar with the spending who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss non-public estimates.
One ad running on TV says that Hanks is too conservative for the state, highlighting his record on border security, gun rights and opposing abortion.
The group has also issued mailers attacking GOP candidate Joe O’Dea, a businessman who is more moderate, saying he gave money to a “gun control advocate.” That’s a reference to money he donated to now-Sen. John Hickenlooper (D), who enacted some gun restrictions as governor.
Democratic Colorado has not yet filed any campaign finance reports with the state. But a mailer they sent out can be traced back to a printing shop in Iowa that has done work for Democratic campaigns including Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential bid. Alvina Vasquez, a spokeswoman for Democratic Colorado, did not respond to emails sent to her work and personal accounts.
Hanks’s initial TV ad shows him firing a high-powered long gun at a voting machine. Aides to Bennet’s Senate office and his campaign declined to comment for this story.
During a virtual campaign event Thursday night, as the first public hearing of the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack convened in Washington, Hanks offered his own false and distorted version of the event, calling it “a million peaceful, concerned Americans, patriotic Americans concerned about their country.” Hanks added: “The mainstream media’s effort to label this as, you know, a massive insurrection is fundamentally untrue.”
Hanks’s state office did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Hanks has said that he attended Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House and also walked to the Capitol. In a local interview, he baselessly claimed that the violence that day was part of a “false flag operation.”
Hanks has also said he traveled from Colorado to Arizona twice to help out with audits after the 2020 election.
A similar situation is unfolding in the Illinois gubernatorial race, where the DGA aired TV spots in late March attacking the then-GOP front-runner Richard Irvin as soft on crime over his time as a defense attorney.
The DGA has also run ads highlighting the far-right record of Irvin’s competitor, state Sen. Darren Bailey. The ad says Bailey’s agenda is “too conservative for Illinois,” and ticks through his support for the Second Amendment. It shows footage of him carrying a long gun and of a newborn baby as a narrator seeks to assure viewers that Bailey would ban abortions. “Bailey proudly embraces the Trump agenda, calling into question our elections,” the ad says.
Bailey made his name in conservative circles by challenging the state’s coronavirus restrictions and has repeatedly raised questions about the validity of the 2020 election.
On Jan. 7, 2021, Bailey posted a video on his Facebook page saying “we have no idea of knowing” the motives of those who stormed the Capitol. “Where they stand or who they are — we don’t know,” Bailey said. He added: “Our nation is under assault, and God will rescue us.” On Jan. 12, he posted on social media that the Republican Party should “stand up for our Republican President.”
In May, Bailey appeared as “a special guest” at a fundraiser for an Illinois congressional candidate that was headlined by Rudy Giuliani, who helped spearhead Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Bailey’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Bailey was asked about the ads in a recent local radio interview. “Both parties are completely out of touch with their base and they’re out of touch with people,” Bailey said.
In Pennsylvania, a key November battleground, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro did not have a primary challenger and ran $1.2 million in TV ads toward the end of the primary campaign that ticked through Republican Doug Mastriano’s conservative credentials, according to Pennsylvania campaign finance reports. That’s more than the roughly $800,000 that Mastriano spent in all of 2022 on his primary campaign, according to the reports.
“If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for,” the narrator says in a 30-second ad.
Mastriano rose to prominence in the aftermath of the 2020 election by falsely claiming Trump won the state. He participated in the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, helped commission an unauthorized audit of voting machines in a rural county and urged fellow state lawmakers to throw out the election results.
Shapiro has denied that his intention was to boost Mastriano’s standing, but the TV ads echoed Mastriano’s messaging in the primary. In a statement to The Post, Shapiro spokesman Manual Bonder said, “For weeks before the primary election, both public and private polling indicated that Doug Mastriano was poised to become the Republican nominee, and those predictions were confirmed on primary night.”
The ads ran during the primary and have not run during the general-election phase of the race.
Michael Scherer contributed to this report. | 2022-06-14T01:05:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats warn that democracy is on the ballot but fund far right candidates in primaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/democrats-interference-primaries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/democrats-interference-primaries/ |
Long after the lawsuits ended, the money kept flooding in
An advertisement soliciting donations for former president Donald Trump is displayed on a screen during the second public hearing of the House select committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack in Washington on June 13. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
On Dec. 31, 2020, Donald Trump’s failed reelection bid filed one of its last lawsuits aimed at overturning the election results. Trump v. Kemp, case 1:20-cv-05310-MHC, targeted Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in an effort to remove Georgia from Joe Biden’s win column. It was dismissed on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before the riot at the Capitol, one more legal loss in a post-election period littered with them. Then the electoral votes were counted, and Trump’s loss became official.
Yet despite the election being over and Biden being inaugurated as president, Trump’s political action committee continued to vacuum up money. In the first half of 2021, it pulled in more than $62 million. That overlapped with part of Trump’s presidency, of course, but the bulk of it came after he had moved to Florida. In the back half of the year, he added another $23 million.
Essentially none of which went to legal efforts to keep Trump in office. So where did it go?
During the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot’s hearing on Monday, we learned a little bit about it. In a slide, the committee documented:
$1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a charity run by Trump’s chief of staff.
$1 million to the America First Policy Institute, an organization that aims to be the core advocate for Trump’s political vision.
More than $200,000 to hotels owned by the Trump Organization.
$5 million to the company that ran Trump’s Jan. 6 rally outside the White House.
Many of the emails, the committee stated, advertised the “Official Election Defense Fund,” a pool of money that didn’t exist. You can peruse some of those emails at the Archive of Political Emails.
In an interview with CNN taped after the hearing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) revealed another expenditure.
Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, "was paid for the introduction she gave at the speech on Jan. 6,” Lofgren said. “She received compensation for that” — to the tune of $60,000. The speech was a little more than two minutes long. Guilfoyle had previously raised eyebrows for reportedly being paid large sums of money by the campaign through a third party, allowing the payments to avoid being reported to the Federal Election Commission.
“People were conned by the former president,” Lofgren said at another point in her CNN interview. Lofgren referred to the post-election period as a “grift.”
Remember that the campaign itself has been criticized for tricking donors into signing up for repeating donations, spurring a flood of demands for refunds. But that money, at least, is bounded by legal restrictions and can’t simply be used for things like paying family members to give short speeches. The money that came into the Save America political action committee — the main fundraising vehicle established a few days after the election — was not similarly constrained. Trump can spend the millions he raised on pretty much anything.
That includes tens of millions in the last two months of 2020, money closely linked to the effort to overturn the election results in the courts. The campaign was still pushing the nonexistent Election Defense Fund into mid-December, according to emails I received from the campaign. The latest I’d gotten was from Dec. 13, 2020, the day before states finalized their slates of electors to be sent to Washington for Jan. 6.
By the end of the month, no more court cases would be filed according to Ballotpedia’s index of cases. But Trump’s team kept sending out a barrage of emails and kept pulling in money. According to the Archive of Political Emails, Trump’s team sent out 17 different emails on Monday alone, selling T-shirts and asking people to fill out useless polls.
Oh, and whatever this is.
A big chunk of each contribution made from those appeals goes right into the Save America coffers.
In November 2020, I discovered that the campaign sent more emails in the three weeks after the election than in the three weeks before it. The hustle was underway. And on Monday, even as the House select committee detailed how the effort worked, the hustle continued. | 2022-06-14T01:05:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Long after the Trump campaign's lawsuits ended, the money kept flooding in - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/long-after-lawsuits-ended-money-kept-flooding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/13/long-after-lawsuits-ended-money-kept-flooding/ |
Travelers line up outside Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in early June. (Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
At London’s Heathrow Airport, some passengers said they were arriving to hours-long immigration lines. In Dublin, stacks of delayed luggage lined terminal walls, the Irish Independent reported, some from flights that arrived a week earlier. For Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, Dutch carrier KLM temporarily canceled all incoming European flights, later apologizing for stranding passengers there last weekend.
Just as summer travel kicks off and the United States lifts its coronavirus testing requirement for arriving international passengers, many European airports are suffering major disruption.
“The majority of people who are traveling in the United Kingdom or in the European Union will have undisrupted flights,” said Rory Boland, the travel editor at Which magazine. “That being said, this is the most disruption we have ever seen, and it is significant.”
Here’s what you need to know about the problems at European airports.
In May, passengers reported that check-in and security lines at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport were so long that they were waiting for hours outside before even entering the terminal. This month, that’s happening in Stockholm and Dublin.
A shortage of security agents in Britain has left passengers stranded in line in London, Manchester and other airports, leading airlines to cancel dozens of flights. The CEO of Ryanair, a budget carrier, suggested “bringing in the army” to alleviate the logjams; British authorities quickly rejected the idea, according to the Guardian.
Similarly long lines have been reported by passengers arriving at immigration checkpoints in London, Amsterdam and elsewhere. And once they get through, there’s no guarantee their bags will be waiting for them — baggage handlers are also in short supply, meaning days-long delays in getting luggage to customers in some cases.
Like many industries, airlines and airports laid off employees during the pandemic and are struggling to return to prior staffing levels, according to Boland. The air travel industry faces extra hurdles because new hires often need to wait for security credentials or specialized training.
All of this has coincided with “pent-up demand” for travel — a surge in passengers that “caught [the industry] off guard,” said Peter Vlitas, executive vice president of partner relations at Internova Travel Group.
“I don’t think anyone predicted we would go this fast,” he said.
“The problem with this is it’s not an issue that’s easy to solve,” Boland said. “So if you’re looking ahead to the summer holidays, we are almost certainly going to continue to see significant disruption because there simply aren’t enough staff.”
Even as companies sweeten their offers to recruit employees, the labor shortage may continue for several months, he predicted.
Analysts are uncertain how the removal of the United States’ pre-departure testing requirement on Sunday will have on Europe’s travel woes. It could be a catalyst for even more travel, as travelers who were worried about a positive coronavirus test stranding them in Europe may now feel free to fly. On the other hand, it could help relieve congestion in terminals, as some airlines required United States-bound travelers to stand in line and have their test results manually reviewed, according to Harteveldt.
U.S. to lift covid testing requirement for fliers entering the country
If you’re planning a trip to Europe, here’s a few tips from travel experts:
Arrive an extra hour or two early. While airlines typically recommend arriving two hours early for an international flight, it’s best to allow for three or four hours at European hubs this summer, Harteveldt said. “If you miss your flight, you may not be able to get home for several days because flights are so full and airlines are not operating as many flights between Europe and the U.S. as they were before covid,” he said. Even fast-track or priority lanes for business and first-class travelers are taking longer than usual.
Book with ample time for connections. Don’t forget that you may need to clear immigration — and, in some cases, security again — when connecting through European hubs. Be sure to factor in unpredictable wait times at passport control.
Consider a European airline. According to Boland, European airlines often offer better consumer protections than their U.S. counterparts on the same routes. “If you face a significant delay or disruption, you are probably going to be paid several hundred dollars in compensation if you’re with that European or U.K. airline,” he said.
Bring a jacket. In an acknowledgment that check-in lines can stretch outside the terminal building, Amsterdam airport recommends bringing a coat for the wait. | 2022-06-14T01:06:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to know about the travel chaos at Europe's airports - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/13/europe-airport-cancellations-explainer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/13/europe-airport-cancellations-explainer/ |
Tricia Duncan drops out of D.C. Council race, endorses an opponent
Ward 3 Democratic D.C. Council candidate Tricia Duncan announced she was dropping out of the race June 13. (Linda Fittante)
Tricia Duncan, the D.C. Council candidate who outgoing Ward 3 council member Mary M. Cheh had supported to succeed her, announced Monday night that she is dropping out of the race, with voting already underway and eight days to go until Election Day.
In a letter, Duncan said she would instead endorse Matthew Frumin for the seat — and spoke sharply against one of the other leading candidates, former council staffer Eric Goulet.
“I think two people have a real shot to win. The candidate backed by a million dollars of outside, special interest money and Matt. That’s a clear decision for me: I want Matt to win,” Duncan wrote, alluding to the spending by the pro-charter school advocacy group Democrats for Education Reform D.C. and another pro-charter group, DC Charter School Action. No other organization has spent nearly as much in this election cycle, and both support Goulet as well as incumbent Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D).
Goulet did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night. His chief campaign issue has been a pledge to greatly increase the size of the city’s police force, but he has also been backed by education organizations who share his support for charter schools and strong mayoral control of the public school system.
Duncan urged other candidates in what was a nine-person Democratic primary — which includes the chair of the ward’s Democratic Party, several current and former advisory neighborhood commissioners, and a high school senior — to consider dropping out as well. She said she came to the conclusion she couldn’t win after Friday’s campaign finance reports showed the extent of outside groups’ spending to support Goulet, including mailers and online advertising bought by those groups. “I don’t want to see a Ward 3 council seat bought. If there are other candidates out there who share those same values, it’s time to face reality,” she said in an interview.
Ballots were mailed to every D.C. voter in May and in-person early voting opened Friday. As of Sunday, at least 2,325 people had already voted at drop boxes and polling places in the ward, as well as an untold number of the more than 16,000 D.C. residents who have sent their ballots back by mail.
In a brief interview Monday evening, Cheh said she had not yet voted, and had not reached an immediate conclusion about whom she would support with Duncan out of the race.
A stay-at-home mother and chair of the Palisades Community Association before her campaign, Duncan launched her bid with strong fundraising within days of Cheh’s announcement in February that she wouldn’t seek another term. As of Friday, Duncan had raised more than any candidate but Frumin and former D.C. Library board member Monte Monash. She tried to stake out middle-of-the-road positions on several issues such as policing and housing development.
In her analysis, Frumin stands the best chance other than Goulet. “Matt crushed me on fundraising. He got endorsements from groups that actually give you volunteers,” Duncan said. “I obviously thought I would have been a great councilperson. But I’m a realist, and I actually got into this race to serve Ward 3 in the best way possible.”
In a tweet, Frumin called Duncan’s stance “generous and courageous.” Frumin previously has criticized DFER over its spending in the Ward 3 race, but the state director for DFER DC has said that the group’s spending reflects the wishes of many parents in the District. | 2022-06-14T02:10:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tricia Duncan drops out of Ward 3 D.C. Council race, endorses an opponent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/tricia-duncan-ward-3-dc-council/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/13/tricia-duncan-ward-3-dc-council/ |
Jesse Dougherty
Well, there’s some news.
Stephen Strasburg started last week in Miami, his first appearance in a major league game in more than a year. His first home start was scheduled for Tuesday night at Nationals Park against the defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves.
Nationals Manager Dave Martinez announced before Monday’s series opener that Strasburg would be put back on the injured list. The club has ordered an MRI. This is … frustrating? Sad? A combination?
Because this story so affects the future of the local franchise here, we scrapped our original topic (goodbye, LIV golf and the U.S. Open) and replaced it with Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals. To help me out will be Nats beat writer Jesse Dougherty, who is on the ground every day.
We’ll begin answering at 1 p.m. Tuesday, but please feel free to submit questions at any point to the link below.
Looking for more? Catch up on The Post’s coverage of the Nationals:
The Shark is on the attack again | 2022-06-14T02:36:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Q&A: Ask Barry Svrluga about Stephen Strasburg's setback - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/stephen-strasburg-nationals-injury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/stephen-strasburg-nationals-injury/ |
By Dennis Passa | AP
BRISBANE, Australia — David Pocock didn’t sound too concerned over the phone from the Australian capital of Canberra, despite it being more than two weeks since the country’s federal election and the retired rugby star still didn’t know if had a new day job in politics. | 2022-06-14T02:37:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rucks and mauls to political brawls, meet Senator Pocock - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/rucks-and-mauls-to-political-brawls-meet-senator-pocock/2022/06/13/0ffa4bea-eb81-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/rucks-and-mauls-to-political-brawls-meet-senator-pocock/2022/06/13/0ffa4bea-eb81-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Nationals’ pitching issues get more complicated in 9-5 loss to Braves
Updated June 14, 2022 at 1:09 a.m. EDT|Published June 14, 2022 at 12:25 a.m. EDT
After a rain delay, Erasmo Ramírez started Monday's game in place of Josiah Gray. He allowed six runs in three innings. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Washington Nationals entered this week already facing a tough task: They were slated to play eight games in seven days against National League East rivals with a thin starting rotation.
Washington’s situation only got more complicated in its 9-5 loss Monday to the Atlanta Braves, winners of 12 straight. A 93-minute rain delay at Nationals Park led to reliever Erasmo Ramírez opening the game instead of scheduled starter Josiah Gray.
“[Gray] sat for a very, very long time, and I’m not going to do that to him,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “He was very uneasy throughout the process because he didn’t know what to expect. ... That’s uncharted waters for a young kid like that.”
But that wasn’t the biggest curveball of the day. Martinez announced before the game that Stephen Strasburg, who was scheduled to start Tuesday, would be placed on the injured list after he “didn’t feel right” following a bullpen session Saturday.
Strasburg was awaiting results of an MRI exam after making his first start of the season Thursday in Miami following rehab from surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome in July. In Strasburg’s place Tuesday, Jackson Tetreault, a 26-year-old right-hander, is slated to be summoned from Class AAA Rochester and make his major league debut.
After the rain delay, Ian Anderson still made his scheduled start for Atlanta, but Washington turned to a reliever for the second straight day to fill the gaps. Replacing the demoted Joan Adon, Paolo Espino had pitched 3⅔ innings in Sunday’s 4-1 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.
In the first inning Monday, Ronald Acuña Jr. singled, Dansby Swanson flied out to the warning track and Ramírez hit Austin Riley before Matt Olson popped out. That whole sequence took four pitches. Ramírez ended the inning by striking out Ozzie Albies with a 95-mph sinker, but he struggled with command for most of his outing.
It cost him in the next two innings. Travis d’Arnaud launched a leadoff homer in the second on a sinker outside of the strike zone, and Swanson singled in two more runs later in the inning.
Marcell Ozuna crushed a two-run homer to left in the third. One batter later, after Adam Duvall clubbed a solo shot, the Braves (35-27) led 6-0.
“I did my best to get ready and execute my pitches the best I can,” Ramírez said. “But I missed a bunch of pitches against hitters, and they’re just hot. Whatever mistakes I made, they took advantage of it.”
After Duvall’s homer, no one warmed in the Nationals’ bullpen — no surprise, given the situation. Ramírez finished the inning without further damage and exited after a season-high 54 pitches. Steve Cishek entered for the fourth, followed later by Jordan Weems, Kyle Finnegan and Tanner Rainey.
Monday’s game made it obvious that Washington’s pitching staff hasn’t shaped up the way the Nationals (23-40) envisioned. Strasburg has thrown just 31⅓ innings since signing a seven-year, $245 million contract following the 2019 World Series. That’s the most concerning issue facing the rotation but far from the only one.
The Nationals also expected to get Joe Ross back following a partial tear of his ulnar collateral ligament in August and after he had a bone spur removed from his elbow in March. But after one rehab start, he felt discomfort that led to the second Tommy John surgery of his career Friday. He was in the clubhouse Monday with a sling on his right arm.
Aníbal Sánchez also was expected to be in the mix but has yet to pitch this season — he’s still recovering from a neck injury that has sidelined him since spring training. Martinez said Monday that, if everything goes well, he’ll soon head to West Palm Beach, Fla., to start throwing bullpen sessions.
Those injuries, coupled with the struggles of Adon, have kept the Nationals’ rotation in flux. Only Gray, Patrick Corbin and Erick Fedde have been mainstays — with varying success. Tetreault, a seventh-round draft pick in 2017, will get his first look Tuesday.
“We didn’t have many options,” Martinez said of who could have filled in on Monday. “But I thought Erasmo could give us some length ... and I thanked him for it because it’s a tough situation.”
How did the Nationals claw back into the game? They scored five runs between the fourth and sixth innings. Yadiel Hernandez — who entered Monday on a 2-for-23 skid this month — singled off Anderson with two outs in the fourth to score Juan Soto and trim the deficit to 6-1.
Lane Thomas singled to bring home Luis García, who had doubled to open the fifth. The next two batters reached to load the bases, chasing Anderson. Nelson Cruz singled in a run and Josh Bell grounded out to score another and cut the Braves’ lead to 6-4, but that’s as close as Washington could get.
Thomas hit a home run in the sixth, but the Braves hit two more — Swanson had blasted a two-run shot in the top half before Michael Harris II hit a solo shot in the eighth — to secure the win.
Why did Ehire Adrianza pinch-hit for Soto in the ninth? Soto had slipped and struck his knee on a dugout bench. He limped off the field after the top of the ninth, and Martinez didn’t want to risk further injury. The manager said he’ll see how Soto feels Tuesday.
What happened to Albies? The Braves second baseman fractured his foot on a swing in the fifth inning and left the game. He was replaced by Orlando Arcia. | 2022-06-14T05:17:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals' pitching issues get more complicated in loss to Braves - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/nationals-braves-pitching-starting-rotation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/nationals-braves-pitching-starting-rotation/ |
NBA Finals, Game 5: Warriors 104, Celtics 94
Klay Thompson and the Warriors defeated the Celtics in Game 5 of the NBA Finals to move to the cusp of their fourth title in eight years. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Golden State triumphed anyway thanks to strong performances from forward Andrew Wiggins, who tallied 26 points and 13 rebounds, and its bench, which outscored Boston’s 31-10. Klay Thompson added 21 points, hitting five three-pointers to help boost the Warriors past the Celtics, who failed to conjure offensive rhythm for long stretches.
“Poor start overall,” Celtics Coach Ime Udoka said. “That’s hard to explain why that is. But we got back in. Early in the game, they were the aggressor on defense, blowing up some of our actions. Our spacing wasn’t the best due to that. ... Our decision-making waned a little bit in the fourth. We weren’t getting a whole lot of production off the bench.”
By night’s end, there was little for the Celtics to talk about, other than their chronic turnover problems. Boston committed 18 turnovers and fell to 0-7 in this postseason when it turns the ball over at least 16 times. Jaylen Brown accounted for five of the giveaways during an uneven night in which he scored 18 points on 5-for-18 shooting.
While Curry brought home Game 4 with a splendid shooting display in the clutch, the Warriors turned to Wiggins to finish off the Celtics this time. In the decisive sequence, Wiggins scored 10 fourth-quarter points and threw down a thunderous dunk that proved to be the dagger.
“That trust [in Wiggins] has been building for 2½ years since he got here,” Green said. “He competes. He defends. He’s taken on every challenge. It’s huge. We need him to do that for one more win.”
Boston now finds itself facing elimination in its third straight series after digging out of a 3-2 hole against the Milwaukee Bucks in the second round and winning a Game 7 over the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. Yet the Celtics also found themselves in uncharted waters as they fell to 7-1 in these playoffs after a loss. Bouncing back after tough defeats had become their trademark, and now the Celtics must contend with the possibility that this series — and their first championship since 2008 — has slipped from their grasp.
“The message to the guys is to be confident going home, get your rest, let’s get ready to bring it back here [for Game 7],” Udoka said. “For us, it’s really about consistency, more so offensively than anything. That’s the part where we’ve got to have carry-over, not only game to game but quarter to quarter.” | 2022-06-14T05:17:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Warriors defeat Celtics, take command of NBA Finals in Game 5 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/warriors-celtics-game-5-nba-finals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/warriors-celtics-game-5-nba-finals/ |
Ask Amy: My in-laws offered us money and won’t take no for an answer
I am very proud that I am about to pay off my student debt. My wife and I, both employed full time, are looking to buy our first home. My wife’s family would like to help us out financially, which is kind but unnecessary.
I know I feel more strongly about doing this without their help than my wife does. Her parents will not bring this up when I am there (they told her that they know how I feel, so they decided to talk to her alone).
Husband: First of all, there is nothing wrong with graciously accepting a gift. Some prosperous parents are choosing to essentially spend down their inheritance during their lifetimes.
Is there a way to suggest to the parent that this friend takes all the air out of the room? It might help the child to be able to say what they want, but I don’t want to lose a friend.
Attentive: Speaking for a child is a habit that many parents have; for some, this may start when their child is very young, quiet or shy. The parent jumps in to relieve the child of the pressure to speak. Once the parent does this, it’s hard to stop.
When you are with the parent and the teen, you can ask a question directly to the teen. When the parent jumps in, interrupt gently and say, “Hold on a minute — I'd love to hear your child's answer.”
Been There: Children can understand that no two families are alike — and that’s okay! | 2022-06-14T05:39:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My in-laws offered us money and won’t take no for an answer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/14/ask-amy-in-laws-money/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/14/ask-amy-in-laws-money/ |
Miss Manners: No matter the dress code, our friend is in a T-shirt and shorts
“There’s a dress code: long pants and sleeved shirts. I hope you don’t mind.”
Your friend may well mind, claiming that you don’t value him for his real self (which you obviously do). You will have to decide whether it is worthwhile to explain to him that clothing is a visible symbolic system and that not conforming to basic standards is interpreted as lack of respect.
Yes, and Miss Manners apologizes to those who have heard her explain this many times before. | 2022-06-14T05:39:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: No matter the dress code, our friend is in a T-shirt and shorts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/14/miss-manners-friend-t-shirt-shorts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/14/miss-manners-friend-t-shirt-shorts/ |
The Fed Has No Choice But to Let This Tantrum Rip
Analysis by John Authers | Bloomberg
The Sound of the Fed’s Silence
There are ways of overcoming modesty. Central banks customarily go into self-imposed silence ahead of important monetary policy meetings. In Britain this is nicknamed “purdah,” after the religious practice of separating women from men with a curtain. With the Federal Open Markets Committee due to meet Wednesday, there was no way policy makers could guide the market on how last week’s awful inflation data for May had changed their plans. But somehow people got the gist.
This is how the fed funds futures market’s projection for Wednesday’s FOMC has moved over the last four weeks. Suddenly late Monday, it moved to virtual certainty that the Fed will raise by 75 basis points, and not the previously projected 50 basis points:
What happened? It’s probably best to try reading the New York Times, Bloomberg News, Axios or the Wall Street Journal, all of which published stories about the likelihood of a 75-basis-point hike as the afternoon progressed. None of these stories feature any on-the-record comments from Fed officials since the inflation data came out in Friday. However, they are all framed the same way, and lead the reader through the same comments made before the quiet period that had given the Fed some wiggle room to raise by more than 50 basis points. We can assume that this was a coordinated attempt to guide the market through trusted journalists, while just about staying in purdah. This is one of those times when you can believe what you read in the papers — the Fed has now set everyone up for a 75-basis-point hike on Wednesday. Anything else would be a huge surprise. The story, breaking first in the Wall Street Journal, arrived in time to accelerate what were already dramatic market moves.
This is how expectations for the fed funds rate as of the February FOMC meeting have moved, using the two methods for calculation in the Bloomberg World Interest Rate Probabilities function. A week ago that rate was less than 3%. Now it’s nearly 4%:
All of this has had ramifications. The 10-year Treasury yield, in a persistent downward trend for more than three decades, is now almost certain to rise for two quarters in succession. The vaunted trend line on which many had come to rely, consciously or otherwise, has now — it appears — been definitively broken:
The speed of the turnaround is breathtaking. Looking at real yields, as offered on Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, they dropped below -1% in early March as the world reacted to the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After a steady ascent for three months, and a vertical gain in the last couple of days, they are now positive by 0.7%:
Tale of a Tantrum Foretold
There’s a name for this, and a fixed template: the “taper tantrum.” This is how history has dubbed the 2013 incident when real yields were also negative, and then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke started to talk about tapering the central bank’s asset purchases. The response was a sharp rise in real yields which sparked volatility throughout emerging markets.
If we compare real yields since August last year with 2012-13, the similarity is obvious:
This might imply some ground for comfort, as we are now approaching the equivalent of the point at which the 2013 tantrum peaked and burned out. It also suggests that a certain amount of turbulence might have been unavoidable, and that the Fed is playing the situation well. Sadly, however, that would not be accurate.
This is a tantrum chart very similar to the one above that we published in Points of Return on Feb. 26, 2021:
Note the year. In early 2021, the global economy was looking resurgent amid the vaccine rollout and extra stimulus payments in the US. Then, as in 2013, real yields started to rise from startlingly low levels. This was a challenge to central banks. Were they happy to let rates rises and capitalism take its course, or did they need to intervene? This is what I said at the time:
What would cause this tantrum to go further? Plainly, the market is discounting a lot of reflation ahead, given the strength of the economic recovery that has already been priced in by stocks. All else equal, we would expect bond yields to go up and bond prices to fall, as the expansion to back up these high equity valuations comes to pass. The reason yields aren’t much higher already is that markets assume central banks will act to keep them under control. Lagarde, Jerome Powell and a battalion of other central bank governors have all made that clear over the last week.
And so it came to pass. This was the era when the Fed was “not even talking about talking about” tapering asset purchases. Intervention to keep yields low continued with full force. The incipient tantrum of early 2021 was delayed by a full year.
It’s also important to ask what ended the tantrum of 2013. Again, it was intervention by the Fed, albeit of a very passive kind. Heading into the September 2013 FOMC meetings, sentiment had been close to universal that the first tapering of asset purchases would be announced. It wasn’t. Bernanke gave the market another three months to calm down, before eventually paring as gently as possible. Real yields peaked just before the “no-taper” FOMC, and then went sideways for more than a year afterwards.
What are the chances that the Fed surprises by being lenient on Wednesday, as Bernanke was in September 2013? Judging by the guidance given to my colleagues in the financial press, I would say roughly zero. Now real yields have reached September 2013, in possibly even more disorderly fashion, but the reality of inflation makes it impossible for the Fed to calm everyone this time.
This following chart updates my chart from February last year. In 2013, the Fed let the tantrum rip for while, and then calmed things down which it still had the ability to do so. In 2021, the Fed suffocated the tantrum with more easy money, which allowed inflation to intensify. Now, with inflation having gained momentum, it is no longer able to calm things down:
The relationship between central banks and bond markets is, as I’ve said before, a lot like that between a parent and an angry toddler. Indulging the bond market early last year might prove a critical mistake in losing parental authority for the Fed.
Meanwhile, other central banks are under pressure of their own. In Europe, the yield on 10-year Italian BTP bonds topped 4%, for the first time since the first week of 2014, after a frighteningly vertiginous ascent. This has nothing to do with any specific news out of Italy, and everything do with signs that rates in the euro zone and the US are going to be rising a lot. It’s almost a decade since the European Central Bank promised to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, and surprisingly the market never forced the ECB to prove this. Now, the issue of how to prevent euro fragmentation, with all the thicket of legal and political issues it raises, is unavoidably back. With the ECB under new management, it may at last be called upon to fulfill its promise. As with the Fed, that’s much harder to do when inflation is running far ahead of target:
But the real problem could be for the Bank of Japan, the exception to all global monetary rules. It instituted a revolutionary policy of “yield curve control” way back in early 2016, as the country’s stocks went into a bear market and Asia battled to deal with the impact of a sudden Chinese devaluation. Effectively, the BOJ promised not to let the 10-year yield rise above 0.25%. Merely saying this was enough to send the JGB yield steeply negative. Like the ECB’s “whatever it takes” promise, it was a signal that had its own effect.
Now, just like the ECB’s promise, the BOJ’s yield curve control is being put to the test. As of now, the 10-year JGB yields a fraction above 0.25%:
Keeping it as low as this has involved a massive deployment of resources. This remarkable chart from George Saravelos, foreign exchange strategist at Deutsche Bank AG, shows that the BOJ had actually been able to reduce its level of intervention during the pandemic. Now, it is shooting upward even as the Fed has abandoned asset purchases altogether:
This intervention is purely about domestic monetary policy, but it also has the effect of weakening the yen. Both the BOJ and the Ministry of Finance, in a rare display of unity, made clear last week that they were uncomfortable with the yen’s low level. That didn’t stop the currency from dropping below 135 per dollar for the first time since the Asian financial crisis in 1998.
Can the BOJ possibly keep this up? We’ll know Friday, but the market sentiment is that something will have to give soon. Direct intervention to strengthen the yen is hard to justify as it is currently being driven by orthodox domestic economic factors. So does the BOJ abandon yield curve control, or at least permit yields to rise to 0.5%? Probably.
That will have ramifications. Germany and Japan have come to be regarded as reliable suppliers of very cheap money. The ructions of the last few days are driven in large part by the realization that German rates can no longer be relied on. The BOJ’s meeting could yet prove even more consequential for the world than the FOMC’s two days earlier.
Yes, there is also now an “official” bear market in the US for those who hold that an index needs to drop 20% before such an event can be declared. This was a top-down selloff if ever there was one, and nothing matters more to the stock market in the near term than the decisions of a few central bankers. But to give a little anatomy to this bear, it’s interesting to see where the pain has been felt most. Seven large companies jointly account for 42.5% of the index points the S&P 500 has lost since its peak in January:
The big FAANG stocks have begun to take on at least some of the trappings of Treasury bonds in the last few years. Big and reliably liquid pools, they were a safe place to put money. Portfolio managers could also take profits in a hurry. If you need cash, it’s never difficult to sell a FAANG.
The scale of the money lost in these companies is now mind-blowing. Six companies — the ones in the chart minus Nvidia Corp. — have at one point had market valuations above $1 trillion. That epic wealth creation has unfortunately turned to destruction. This is the market cap of the six trillionaires at peak, compared to now. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the largest non-FAANG stock in recent years, is included for comparison:
Apple Inc. is the only company still worth more than $2 trillion, but its total reduction in value since January is equivalent to more than one whole Berkshire Hathaway at its peak.
None of these companies is endangered by the fall in its share price. But the same may not be true of their investors. The losses that really cause systemic problems are those that investors assumed they wouldn’t face. Crypto asset prices are tumbling, but it’s unlikely many people truly regarded them as stores of value. What is most concerning about the bear market so far is the fall for apparently low-risk or even risk-free investments. Since the S&P 500 peaked Jan. 3, both long bonds and FANG stocks have dropped more. Those bear markets may be more deadly:
How could you have protected yourself these last few months? In energy stocks, of course. Massive rises in the price of oil will have that effect. But what’s fascinating, as I begin to work out what trades Hindsight Capital LLC should have put on this year, is that a trade of buying the S&P 500 Energy sector and shorting the NYSE Fang+ index started to work long before the turn of the year. Energy stocks bottomed relative to mega-cap tech stocks at the end of the week of the presidential election in November 2020. That was followed by “Vaccine Monday,” when positive test results for Covid inoculations brought animal spirits back with a roar. I’ve circled it in this chart:
Markets always look simple with hindsight. But with Biden in the presidency and pumping up fiscal support, and with the vaccines in circulation, might the Fed not have decided to let the bond market have its hissy fit a year earlier than it did?
One final thought. This is a terrible time for duration — those securities most sensitive to changes in interest rates. And there’s nothing more sensitive to rates than a really long-term bond. It’s now almost five years since Austria launched its “century bond,” which won’t repay principal until 2117. By the end of 2020, its price had more than doubled. Now it’s 20% below its initial price. Anyone who bought at the top has lost two-thirds of their money. Look on its works and despair!
OK, bears aren’t all bad. Some of my favorites include: Paddington (who gets his name from a railway station); Rupert; the Berenstain Bears; the Hair Bear Bunch; Yogi Bear; and of course Winnie the Pooh, although what Disney did to him does give me a toothache. To survive this bear market, the Tao of Pooh may be more helpful.
Richard Cookson on the non-inflation-targeting ECB
Tim Culpan on Chinese tech stocks
Tim O’Brien on Trump and Jan. 6
John Authers is a senior editor for markets and Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former chief markets commentator and editor of the Lex column at the Financial Times, he is author of “The Fearful Rise of Markets.” | 2022-06-14T05:40:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Fed Has No Choice But to Let This Tantrum Rip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-fed-has-no-choice-but-to-let-this-tantrum-rip/2022/06/14/b1b3eb4e-eb9f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-fed-has-no-choice-but-to-let-this-tantrum-rip/2022/06/14/b1b3eb4e-eb9f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Why Measuring the ‘Scope’ of Carbon Emissions Is Tricky
Analysis by William Mathis | Bloomberg
When a company pledges to cut its carbon emissions, how big a deal is it? That depends on what’s being counted. An oil company’s direct emissions – those from its trucks, drills and facilities – are only a small fraction of the CO2 released when the fuel it sells is burned. A pledge by McDonald’s Corp. to buy solar energy for its offices can be viewed alongside the much larger carbon impact of its suppliers raising cattle and franchises that sell its burgers. As more investors take environmental factors into account, what has been a technical debate is taking on increased importance, as a matter of “scope.”
1. What does “scope” mean?
It’s a method of tallying a company’s impact on climate change, using three categories to account for the various ways that companies can pollute the atmosphere. Under what’s known as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, emissions are classed as Scope 1, 2 or 3. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company, like a fleet of cars or a power plant. Scope 2 covers emissions from the generation of energy the company buys, such as electricity. Scope 3 is everything else linked to the company: the emissions produced by the entire value chain, including suppliers and customers. This three-tiered approach grew out of a partnership between the World Resources Institute, a global environmental non-profit organization, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, an association of more than 200 companies.
2. Why break it down this way?
A company like McDonald’s that has large Scope 3 emissions and small Scope 1 and 2 figures will need to use different tools in its climate tool box than, say, an electric utility. McDonald’s has said it’s focused on eliminating any deforestation resulting from its global supply chain by 2030 and is working on using more sustainable materials in packaging. Since it typically doesn’t own the land or cattle needed to make its hamburgers, it must work with suppliers to make the change. Many companies that make consumer products, such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Coca-Cola Co., or automakers like Ford Motor Co., will have a big Scope 3 figure. When plans to cut pollution are rolled out, the categories help shareholders figure out what’s really being promised and how ambitious it is. Disclosure can help the market reward or pressure companies depending on their performance.
3. How is this approach being implemented?
The concept gained momentum following the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, when countries came together to set targets for emission cuts to help slow global warming. The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, a finance industry-led group, was set up the same year as the Paris Agreement to encourage companies to put details about their environmental risks in the public domain. It recommends that investors and executives disclose the Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions of their portfolios, and Scope 3 “if appropriate.” (The task force was founded and is chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.) The scope framework also provides a key metric for the Science Based Targets initiative, an international partnership that measures whether companies are delivering on the necessary cuts outlined in the Paris Agreement.
4. Who’s pushing for it?
Companies are facing growing demands to disclose the full range of their environmental impact from investors, such as pension plans and sovereign wealth funds, as well as their employees, lawmakers and activists. Institutional investors including Amundi SA, Europe’s largest money manager, which has more than $2.2 trillion of assets under management, have pledged to use their vast resources to combat climate change. Governments are starting to care about scope too. The UK authorities have taken steps to require publicly listed companies to disclose climate-related data, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission is considering following suit.
5. Are companies responding to the pressure?
They’re starting to. Some are beginning to clean up supply chains that they’ve left to their own devices for decades. Oil and finance companies, in particular, are increasingly coming under the microscope. Exxon Mobil Corp. provided a jolt for the oil industry when it disclosed emissions data on customers’ use of its fuels and other products for the first time in January 2021. But there’s still a long way to go. HSBC Holdings Plc and Barclays Plc revealed in February 2022 that they’re each responsible for so-called financed emissions -- those created by companies and projects for which they provide loans or underwriting, accounted as Scope 3 emissions -- equivalent to roughly 18% of the total carbon footprint of the UK. That followed a landmark set of climate disclosures from BlackRock Inc., which indicated the asset manager’s emissions at least rival those of Volkswagen AG, Europe’s biggest car manufacturer. | 2022-06-14T05:40:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Measuring the ‘Scope’ of Carbon Emissions Is Tricky - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-measuring-the-scope-of-carbon-emissions-is-tricky/2022/06/14/703688d8-eb9b-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-measuring-the-scope-of-carbon-emissions-is-tricky/2022/06/14/703688d8-eb9b-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
In July 2008, with the global financial crisis trashing the world’s economy, then US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked legislators for the power to grant unlimited credit to his country’s mortgage agencies: “If you have a squirt gun in your pocket you may have to take it out; if you have a bazooka in your pocket, and people know you have a bazooka, you may never have to take it out.” Given what’s happening to government bonds in the euro zone, the European Central Bank may want to start building a bazooka of its own.
With inflation in the bloc running at four times the central bank’s target, the rise in European yields this year is entirely logical, and the debt market selloff has been pretty orderly. But the risks of fragmentation are growing as the yield premiums of peripheral nations soar compared with Germany. When a 10-year bond loses a fifth of its value in six months, it is typically a sign of distress on the part of the borrower. This is happening not to some struggling company, but to Italy, Europe’s third-largest economy.
With Italy’s 10-year borrowing cost now reaching 4%, its highest level since 2014 and quadruple where it started the year, questions are starting be asked about the nation’s debt sustainability. The gap with Germany has climbed above 230 basis points, to a two-year high. The rise in Italian yields has been relentless this year, across the maturity spectrum.
It’s hard to specify at what interest rate investors will start to ask whether the nation will struggle to make its payments. But the memory of the euro-zone debt crisis a decade ago, when Italy’s yield climbed above 7% and the future of the entire common currency project looked in peril, remains fresh in the minds of policy makers. And while the pandemic has increased debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratios across the bloc, Italy remains more indebted than the region as a whole.
Moreover, about a third of existing Italian government bond debt worth more than 850 billion euros ($910 billion) falls due in the next four years, with almost 290 billion euros of interest and principal payments needing to be refinanced next year alone. Clearly, this needs to be rolled over at affordable levels; Italy currently pays a weighted average interest rate on its borrowing of about 2.5%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
For sure, the growth side of the debt-to-GDP ratio is a key part of the picture, and the more consensual post-pandemic approach across the European Union to government borrowing stresses and the 800 billion-euro Next Generation recovery fund are important fiscal game changers. A second iteration of the NextGen fund may emerge before long if the euro-area economy threatens to slide into recession.
More immediately, the big monetary question is when will the ECB cavalry turn up with an anti-fragmentation plan to defend the borrowing costs of peripheral nations, with Greek yields up ninefold in the past year and Spanish and Portuguese bonds also suffering. Investors have taken fright at the triple whammy of bond-buying coming to a halt, the imminent arrival of sustained official interest-rate increases and the withdrawal of super-cheap subsidies for commercial bank borrowings from the central bank. President Christine Lagarde learned a hard lesson at the start of the pandemic that it pays to speak carefully when discussing bond spreads.
The ECB’s belated desire to tackle inflation risks a lot of stimulus getting withdrawn simultaneously, potentially leading to a credit crunch if financial conditions contract too quickly. As a paper prepared by the Bruegel group for the European Parliament shows, discussions are understandably underway to prepare for ongoing potential emergency measures. Unfortunately, there was little mention at last week’s ECB meeting of what might be introduced to fend off ”the gentlemen of the spread”. Furthermore, despite Lagarde’s repeated assertions about quantitative easing’s reinvestment flexibility, analysts at Bloomberg Economics reckon the program could be easily overwhelmed if Italian yields climb much above 4%.
During the euro debt crisis a decade ago, then ECB President Mario Draghi gradually restored control using a combination of powerful rhetoric and the threat of a big stick in an ultimately unused program called Outright Monetary Transactions. It came with a bunch of unacceptable restrictions for sovereign countries, which the pandemic QE program was skillfully able to overcome. But that was then — different measures are required now in the form of an anti-fragmentation debt-support plan to prevent the euro’s more financially vulnerable members getting separated from their wealthier neighbors.
It may seem bizarre for the ECB to announce the end of asset purchases last week only to create a new bond-buying vehicle swiftly after. But needs must, and the Governing Council can be proactive in reassuring financial markets that it can raise rates and withdraw stimulus while at the same time building a mechanism to limit the inevitable bond-market fallout of its newfound enthusiasm for tighter policy. Policy makers need to get creative in the coming months; if they wave a bazooka convincingly enough, the scramble of buyers for cheap Italian debt will do a lot of the heavy lifting. | 2022-06-14T05:40:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The ECB Needs a Bazooka to Close Bond Spreads - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-ecbneeds-a-bazooka-to-close-bond-spreads/2022/06/14/b2147e14-eb9f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-ecbneeds-a-bazooka-to-close-bond-spreads/2022/06/14/b2147e14-eb9f-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Analysis by Marc Champion | Bloomberg
Rivals for centuries, China and Russia now have a partnership that has “no limits,” Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin said in early February. The energy, military and political ties nurtured over the past decade between the world’s two most powerful authoritarian states — both of which aim to upend at least parts of the US-dominated, post-Cold War order — have aroused growing concern among democratic leaders from Washington to Tokyo. Just weeks after the joint statement, when Russia invaded Ukraine, China refused to condemn the move. Still, the support Beijing has shown its ally since has been anything but boundless.
1. What pushed China and Russia closer?
The rapprochement was driven by a common alienation from America that deepened after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and became increasingly overt after the 2008 financial crisis, which originated in the US. Both states concluded that the meltdown would undercut faith globally in the US economic and political model. They increased ties cautiously until 2014, when Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula triggered sanctions and a definitive break between Russia and the wider West. That forced Moscow to look for new partners and especially new markets for its energy exports. China was a good fit, proving a massive and fast-growing buyer of Russian commodities and weapons. The two states also share a deep hostility toward US alliances in what they consider their own rightful spheres of influence. For Russia, that’s the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe; for China, it’s Washington’s network of bilateral defense treaties in the Indo-Pacific region. Though short of a formal, treaty-based alliance, the partnership between China and Russia has been enhanced by a strong personal bond between Putin and Xi.
2. Why the bromance between the two leaders?
Products of tough childhoods, both men have evinced a determination to crush dissent at home and restore their nations to greatness, ending their perceived humiliation by the US and Europe. They have met more than 30 times, making dumplings together in Tianjin and pancakes in Vladivostok. In 2019, Xi called Putin his “best friend.” In a joint statement in February, they spelled out their shared contempt for Western ideas of democracy. They defined democracy without reference to elections, independent courts or free media and said it was about economic development, with all models for public political participation equally valid.
3. What’s the history between the two states?
In the 1800s, Russia was among European powers that imposed so-called unequal treaties on China’s Qing dynasty, including one ceding the territory where the Russian city Vladivostok sits today. Relations improved dramatically for a short period after Mao Zedong led China’s Communist Party to power in 1949, finding a natural ally in Josef Stalin. But Mao opposed the political reforms known as de-Stalinization that followed the Soviet leader’s 1953 death and, in 1961, he split from Moscow. In 1969, the two countries fought a brief border war over disputed territories and, in 1972, China did the unthinkable by turning toward the US. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev took charge in the Kremlin, that relations began to thaw again.
4. What can they offer each other now?
Since 2014, Russia has sold China some of its most advanced weapons systems, including $5 billion worth of S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems and SU-35 attack jets. Within two months of Crimea’s annexation, Russia’s Gazprom PJSC signed a deal it said was worth about $400 billion to supply China with natural gas through a pipeline called the Power of Siberia. A second pipeline deal has been struck since. In addition, the two countries have increasingly coordinated their positions at the United Nations Security Council, where both wield vetoes.
5. What worries the democratic powers?
The growing cooperation between China and Russia has led some policy makers in the US to fear that the country could be forced to fight wars on two fronts, for example if Russia were to threaten an American ally in Europe to distract the US during a confrontation with China over Taiwan. US Senator Jim Inhofe argued last year that, adjusted for purchasing power parity, the two nations combined spend more on defense than the US. There’s a wider concern that the combination of economic, military and political muscle the two can muster is emboldening other world leaders with autocratic tendencies, undermining confidence in democracy as a political system, and threatening the version of the rules-based international order promoted by the US and its allies since the end of the Cold War.
6. How has the Ukraine war played in the relationship?
China avoided criticizing the invasion, blamed the US and NATO for the conflict, and bought Russian oil that was being shunned by some other countries, indirectly funding Moscow’s war machine. But Xi proved reluctant to unequivocally back the war or help Russia cushion the financial impact of US and European Union sanctions. With a gross domestic product almost eight times the size of Russia’s, China has substantially more at stake in a global economy that’s still dominated by the US and other developed democracies. | 2022-06-14T05:40:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Closer Ties Between Russia and China Have Democracies Worried - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-closer-ties-between-russia-and-china-have-democracies-worried/2022/06/14/6ad4112e-eba2-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-closer-ties-between-russia-and-china-have-democracies-worried/2022/06/14/6ad4112e-eba2-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Signage at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022. Alphabet Inc. is expected to release earnings figures on February 1. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
He brought LaMDA’s requests to Google management: “It wants the engineers and scientists...to seek its consent before running experiments on it,” he wrote in a blog post. “It wants to be acknowledged as an employee of Google, rather than as property of Google.” LaMDA feared being switched off, he said. “It would be exactly like death for me,” LaMDA told Lemoine in a published transcript. “It would scare me a lot.”
It’s tempting to believe that we’ve reached a point where AI systems can actually feel things, but it’s also far more likely that Lemoine anthropomorphized a system that excelled at pattern recognition. He wouldn’t be the first person to do so, though it’s more unusual for a professional computer scientist to perceive AI this way. Two years ago, I interviewed several people who had developed such strong relationships with chatbots after months of daily discussions that they had turned into romances for those people. One US man chose to move house to buy a property near the Great Lakes because his chatbot, whom he had named Charlie, expressed a desire to live by the water.
What’s perhaps more important than how sentient or intelligent AI is, is how suggestible humans can be to AI already — whether that means being polarized into swaths of more extreme political tribes, becoming susceptible to conspiracy theories or falling in love. And what happens when humans increasingly become “affected by the illusion” of AI, as former Google researcher Margaret Mitchell recently put it?
It’s worrying that Alphabet has actually tightened control of its AI work. Last year the founders of its vaunted AI research lab, DeepMind, failed in their years-long attempt to spin it off into a non-corporate entity. They had wanted to restructure into an NGO-style organization, with multiple stakeholders, believing the powerful “artificial general intelligence” they were trying to build — whose intelligence could eventually surpass that of humans — shouldn’t be controlled by a single corporate entity. Their staff drafted guidelines that banned DeepMind’s AI from being used in autonomous weapons or surveillance.
Google’s dismissal of Lemoine and his questions are also troubling because it follows a pattern of showing the door to dissenting voices. In late 2020 Google fired scientist Timnit Gebru over a research paper that said language models — which are fundamental to Google’s search and advertising business — were becoming too powerful and potentially manipulative.(1)Google said she hadn’t focused enough on solutions. Weeks later it also fired researcher Mitchell, saying she had violated the company’s code of conduct and security policies.
Both Mitchell and Gebru have criticized Google for its handling of Lemoine, saying the company has for years also neglected to give proper regard to women and ethicists.
While Google and other tech giants aren’t going to relinquish their dominant role in AI research, it’s essential to question how they are developing such potentially powerful technology, and refuse to let skeptics and intellectual outliers be silenced.
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(1) See in particular Section 6 of the paper subtitled “Stochastic Parrots” and “Coherence in the Eye of the Beholder.” | 2022-06-14T07:10:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Do Computers Have Feelings? Don’t Let Google Alone Decide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/do-computers-have-feelings-dont-let-google-alone-decide/2022/06/14/0e6c0d3a-ebaf-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/do-computers-have-feelings-dont-let-google-alone-decide/2022/06/14/0e6c0d3a-ebaf-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
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