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Peter Nyuoni, right, from Sudan, who was evacuated from Libya to Rwanda, plays pool with others at the Gashora transit center for refugees and asylum-seekers, in the Bugesera district of Rwanda Friday, June 10, 2022. As Britain plans to send its first group of asylum-seekers to Rwanda amid outcries and legal challenges, some who came there from Libya under earlier arrangements with the United Nations say the new arrivals can expect a difficult time ahead. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-06-14T07:11:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Refugees in Rwanda warn of challenges for arrivals from UK - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/refugees-in-rwanda-warn-of-challenges-for-arrivals-from-uk/2022/06/14/eb03b6d8-ebac-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/refugees-in-rwanda-warn-of-challenges-for-arrivals-from-uk/2022/06/14/eb03b6d8-ebac-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his troops, especially dead and wounded ones, are favorite targets of dark Ukrainian wartime humor. But there are red lines: Ukrainian dead aren’t laughed about and the grimmest battles, among them the brutal siege of Mariupol and the port city's Azovstal steelworks, are far too raw for jokes. The same is true of atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere. | 2022-06-14T07:11:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | War isn't funny but humor helps Ukrainians cope with trauma - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/war-isnt-funny-but-humor-helps-ukrainians-cope-with-trauma/2022/06/14/427dd892-ebaa-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/war-isnt-funny-but-humor-helps-ukrainians-cope-with-trauma/2022/06/14/427dd892-ebaa-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
In Japan, abortion is legal — but most women need their husbands’ consent
Japan’s male-dominated society has been slow to grant women the reproductive rights taken for granted in many other developed countries
Takeshi Hasuda, the director of Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto, Japan, stands next to an area at the facility where women can anonymously drop off their newborns and place them up for adoption. (Michelle Ye Hee Lee/The Washington Post)
KUMAMOTO, Japan — The discreet path to a safe space for women with unwanted pregnancies is marked with an unassuming sign: two smiling storks, carrying a clover leaf and a smiling baby in a basket.
Here, at Japan’s only “baby hatch,” women can anonymously leave their babies at Jikei Hospital to be put up for adoption. It’s a last resort for those who are unable or unwilling to raise a baby, with some women coming from across the country because they have nowhere and no one else to turn to.
With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to overturn a 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, there is a global spotlight on reproductive care — including in Japan, which has some of the tightest restrictions on abortion among wealthy nations.
Japan is one of 11 countries — and the only one of the Group of Seven largest economies — that mandate women to get their spouse’s consent to obtain an abortion, with very few exceptions, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, an international organization. In practice, advocates say, the requirement often applies to unmarried women, too, and has led to rare and tragic instances of women leaving their babies in public places to die — something the Jikei Hospital baby hatch is meant to address.
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Abortions are legal, but only by expensive surgery. Contraceptive use is low. Morning-after pills are expensive and only available by prescription. Japan is weighing whether to make abortion pills available. The World Health Organization calls their use a safe and noninvasive way to terminate a pregnancy.
But in a male-dominated country, which ranks consistently low among developed economies on women’s empowerment and advancement, Japan has been slow to provide reproductive options for women. For example, Japan only adopted birth control pills in 1999, becoming the last industrialized country to do so after 44 years of debate. That same year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare approved Viagra in six months.
“Is Japan in the Middle Ages or something? Abortion costs a lot of money, and access to hospitals is very difficult. That is why there is no end to the number of cases, year after year, of people giving birth to babies in toilets and then abandoning them or killing them,” Mizuho Fukushima, a female politician with the minority Social Democrats, said during a committee meeting last month. “What kind of country are we living in?”
In fiscal 2018 alone, there were 28 cases of infanticide of children under 1 years old. Seven of them were killed the day they were born, according to the Health Ministry. So far this year, there were at least six known cases of women abandoning newborns in public places.
The lack of options can have grave consequences for women such as Yuriko, 26, who saw her hopes for the future dashed by an unplanned child. She had been on the pill for about a month when she met the father of her baby and thought she was taking the right precautions. But a few months later, she found out she was six weeks pregnant.
She had planned to pursue a graduate degree and wasn’t ready to raise a child. But when she went to the hospital in Hokkaido in northern Japan, where she lives, she was told that she would need to wait two weeks for the procedure because her fetus was too small. In the meantime, she was told to obtain the consent of the father of the baby, even though they were not married.
Between her morning sickness and nerves, the hour-and-a-half flight to Tokyo to get his signature was especially nauseating, said Yuriko, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used out of concerns for her family’s privacy.
“I felt really nervous of what could go wrong, worried that the father may not even show up when I got there. I felt anxious having to pay for an expensive plane ticket, with a piece of paper in hand that I needed to get signed,” she said. “I feared the worst case scenario: having to go home with the paper, without a signature.”
The global stakes behind America’s abortion fight
By taking the pill, Yuriko was already in the minority of women in Japan choosing oral contraception instead of relying on the man to use a condom or pull out.
The use of the pill has hovered around just 3 percent in recent years, according to a 2019 U.N. report on contraceptive use and estimates by the Japan Family Planning Association. That low percentage was attributed to a lack of awareness and education, as well as social stigma.
During those two weeks, she researched surgical abortion and it began to terrify her — and she changed her mind about having one. She is also no longer planning to attend graduate school. She thinks about her decision every day and the limited options she faced in those early, chaotic days as she struggled to process the news.
“I wake up every morning thinking about abortion and what could have been different,” said Yuriko, who is due next month. “If less invasive ways like abortion pills were available as they are in other countries, I think I might have been able to go through with it.”
Morning-after pills, the emergency contraceptives taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, exist in Japan, but they are expensive and only available by prescription, which means women risk pregnancy when they can’t access a physician in time.
Although Japan is now considering medication abortion pills, which are booming globally and have been available for decades in many parts of the world, health officials have indicated they plan to still require spousal consent for them, and they are expected to cost around $740.
“The law does not stop women from abortion. But when it comes to this consent, sometimes women cannot get it, and women cannot get the abortion in the end,” said Kazuko Fukuda, a reproductive rights activist who leads the Nandenaino (Why Don’t We Have It?) Project, a contraceptive advocacy organization.
Under the 1948 Maternal Protection Law, women were required to obtain written consent from their husband to terminate their pregnancy. In 2013, the Health Ministry clarified that it didn’t apply to unmarried couples, and last year, it exempted married women who can prove their marriage was essentially over because of domestic violence or other reasons.
But like in Yuriko’s case, many hospitals enforce the requirement on unmarried women anyway. The Health Ministry’s notice is not legally binding and allows clinics to create their own practices and pricing for providing abortions, said Kumi Tsukahara, founding member of Action for Safe Abortion Japan, a reproductive health advocacy group.
“There have been a lot of discussions about abortion and looking at reproductive rights as human rights in the U.N., as well as how the rights of a fetus cannot come before the rights of the women,” said Tsukahara. “I hope that both in Japan and the U.S., looking at these discussions, more people can come to understand this.”
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The 10 other countries that require spousal consent are Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Equatorial Guinea, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Indonesia, Turkey and Morocco, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has called on Japan to remove the consent requirement for abortions. In 2020, South Korea removed its spousal consent requirement, but activists say some doctors still ask for it.
The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology declined to comment for this report, and the Japan Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology did not respond to a request for comment.
Falling birthrate
In recent years, some politicians have questioned whether women should even have access to abortion — or whether it matters — given the nation’s population decline and low birthrate.
Advocates, however, maintain that women’s reproductive and sexual health is something entirely separate from the nation’s demographic needs and see it as part of achieving broader gender equality in a patriarchal society with deep-seated gender roles.
“When I go to politicians to talk about [reproductive rights], they sometimes ask me, ‘Why are you talking about contraceptives while we face such few numbers of babies?’ It’s not about that. But still, I think things about reproduction is always thought in the context of national profit, instead of women’s choice,” said Fukuda, the activist. “The discussion really should be about creating a societal system that can support these women more, and destigmatizing women’s access to abortion.”
In the meantime, the Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto, a southern Japanese prefecture, has become one of the few safe havens for women with unwanted pregnancies. The baby hatch opened in 2007 and has since been an uncommon and controversial option. So far, 161 women have left their children here — an average of nearly one every month.
There were about 140,000 surgical abortions in 2020, according to the Health Ministry. They cost between $740 to $3,000 — and have become a profitable business for abortion providers, said Takeshi Hasuda, the director of Jikei Hospital.
Jikei Hospital also provides counseling for women who sometimes end up returning home with their baby once they learn of government support, such as welfare payments, he said. To help isolated mothers, the hospital also started confidential deliveries in December and has delivered three babies since without registering the mother’s name.
“People who are trying to get an abortion often feel ashamed, so they feel that they are not in a position to really demand for rights, whether it’s to lower the cost or other accessibility,” he said. “And since these people don’t really raise their voice, it’s difficult for such subjects to become real talked-about issues as in the U.S.”
Even though Japan is not a particularly religious country, he said, it has a strong sense of social responsibility, which has carried over into the debate over abortion and the feeling of shame among women who consider the procedure.
Every once in a while, nurses meet the women leaving their babies. They find that the women struggle with their finances, have ethical questions about terminating a pregnancy or worry about being re-traumatized after the stresses of a previous abortion, he said.
“There are many in Japan who are pregnant and isolated, unable to receive help from anyone around them, afraid of others finding out about their pregnancy. For these people, especially, we are their last resort,” Hasuda said. | 2022-06-14T07:11:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion in Japan is legal, but most women need their husband’s consent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/japan-abortion-pill-women-reproductive-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/japan-abortion-pill-women-reproductive-rights/ |
Russia-Ukraine war live updates Severodonetsk cut off as last bridge is destroyed
Update from key battlefields: Last bridge to Severodonetsk is destroyed
Zelensky vows to help Ukrainians in Russian-occupied areas
Ukrainian forces transport a howitzer in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine on June 12. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
The fight for besieged Severodonetsk is unrelenting, with Ukrainian officials saying they still control parts of the key eastern city and are not yet surrounded even as Russia has taken its center. Severodonetsk was effectively cut off as of Monday, when the last bridge connecting it to the outside world was destroyed, a local official said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the battle for Donbas, the area that encompasses Severodonetsk, could go down in history as among “the most brutal battles in Europe, and for Europe.”
Elsewhere, Russian forces conducted a limited offensive northeast of Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second-largest city — in an attempt to push Ukrainian artillery out of range of Russian rear areas, where logistics are typically located, according to U.S.-based military analysts. In a possible sign that Kyiv could make gains elsewhere, the leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region asked Moscow for reinforcements amid reports of increased Ukrainian shelling in the area. The assertion couldn’t be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Zelensky vowed Tuesday to liberate all cities and territories under Russian occupation, as he seeks to bring an end to a “civilizational blockade” under which many residents are cut off from electricity and humanitarian supplies and suffering a communications blackout. An adviser to the president has also outlined what he believes is needed for Ukraine to continue the fight: 1,000 drones, 2,000 armored vehicles and other equipment.
Russia earned nearly $100 billion in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first 100 days of the war, according to a new report, in a sign of the challenge the West faces in trying to cripple its economy.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will host a meeting with defense leaders from other countries that support Ukraine in Brussels on Wednesday.
Wikipedia’s operators have appealed a Moscow court decision demanding that it remove information related to the invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has censored virtually all independent reporting of the war.
By Rachel Pannett and Brittany Shammas2:41 a.m.
Severodonetsk, a besieged city central to the Kremlin’s goal of capturing eastern Ukraine, is effectively cut off after the last bridge was destroyed — making it impossible for humanitarian convoys to enter and refugees to get out, according to the regional governor. Russia has pushed Ukrainian troops from the city center and could take control of the region within a few weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said.
Severodonetsk: Russia has not captured the city, where Ukrainian troops hold on in some parts, Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor of Luhansk, said Monday. About 500 civilians, including 40 children, were holed up in bunkers beneath a chemical plant in the city, Haidai said.
Mariupol: The Ukrainian attorney general said the deaths of 24 more children have been recorded in this southern city now controlled by Russia, bringing the confirmed number of children killed in Ukraine since the war began to 287. The civilian casualty figures are incomplete, authorities have said. Meanwhile, the bodies of dozens of fighters killed while defending the Azovstal steel plant have not been recovered, said Maksym Zhorin, a former commander of the Azov Regiment that formed the backbone of the defense there. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised Monday that Ukraine’s forces will come for its citizens in Russian-occupied areas, including Mariupol, Kherson and Melitopol.
Elsewhere in the Donbas region: A key flank of the Russian front lies to the west of the Siversky Donets river, which flows through eastern Ukraine and into Russia and forms a natural barrier against Moscow’s advances. Russian troops have sought to destroy bridges over the river to disrupt the flow of supplies and reinforcements between Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, but the destruction has made it difficult for them to attack Slovyansk because of challenges crossing the river, according to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
Bryan Pietsch, Lateshia Beachum and María Paúl contributed to this report.
By Brittany Shammas and Sammy Westfall2:15 a.m.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised Monday that Ukrainian forces will come for its citizens in Russian-occupied areas in the east, where Kremlin-backed forces have made gains in recent months on their way to potentially taking the entire eastern Donbas region.
“We will come to all our cities, to all our villages, which do not yet have our flag on the administrative buildings,” he said on a video address Monday, according to his office. “And we will see them again — everywhere, when we return.”
Zelensky named Russian-occupied cities — including Kherson, Melitopol and Mariupol — that he promised will see the wrath of Ukrainian forces as they retake the land.
“It only takes enough weapons to make it happen. The partners have it in sufficient quantities,” he said. “We work every day for the political will to give us these weapons to appear.”
Zelensky accused Russia of fomenting fear and of creating an informational abyss in a bid to have Ukrainians forget about their homeland and culture.
Russia probably will take control of the entire eastern region of Luhansk within a week as Ukraine deals with shrinking military supplies, a U.S. official told The Washington Post last week.
“There is no one today who will say exactly how long our path to victory will take,” Zelensky said. “But the vast majority of people today are already aware — this is our path. This is how this war will end.” | 2022-06-14T07:12:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latest Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ |
U.S. officials meet with team of Brittney Griner, WNBA star detained in Russia
Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner in 2021. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
State Department officials met with members of Brittney Griner’s WNBA team on Monday to discuss the star’s months-long detention in Russia, which the U.S. government called a “wrongful detainment” last month in an apparent shift toward more aggressively negotiating for her release.
Phoenix Mercury players, coaches and staffers, as well as employees of the WNBA Players Association, were encouraged by U.S. officials to “keep speaking her name, to keep holding them accountable,” Mercury player Brianna Turner said in a statement on the team’s Twitter account following the meeting.
Griner, a seven-time WNBA all-star for the Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, has been in Russian custody since February, when she was arrested at an airport outside Moscow. Russian authorities allege that she illegally brought vape cartridges containing hashish oil into the country, a crime that could carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
The U.S. government has been pushing for regular meetings with Griner, whose pretrial detention was extended last month. At that time, State Department spokesman Ned Price said she was “doing as well as can be expected under what can only be described as exceedingly difficult circumstances.”
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The Monday morning meeting with the team was attended by U.S. officials who specialize in hostage negotiations and cases of wrongfully detained Americans, the Associated Press reported. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also recently spoken with Griner’s wife.
At the time of her arrest, Griner, 31, was returning to the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg, for which she plays during the WNBA offseason. Her detention cast a pall over the start of the WNBA season last month.
“We’re here to do whatever we can to amplify and keep BG at the forefront, which is more important than any basketball game and anything else that’s going on in our lives,” star player Diana Taurasi said in a statement posted on Twitter by the Mercury after the meeting. “We want BG to come home as soon as possible, it’s number one on our list.”
The Mercury are in D.C. to play against the Washington Mystics on Tuesday night. Their meeting with the State Department lasted an hour and took place at the team’s hotel, ESPN reported.
Head coach Vanessa Nygaard noted in a Twitter statement Monday that it had been 116 days since Griner was detained: “She’s our teammate, she’s an American and we want her back home.”
Dave Sheinin and Cindy Boren contributed to this report. | 2022-06-14T07:19:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brittney Griner's team meets State Department over Russian detention - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/brittney-griner-detainment-russia-wnba-mercury/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/brittney-griner-detainment-russia-wnba-mercury/ |
LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 06: Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets with Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas (not pictured) at 10 Downing Street on June 06, 2022 in London, England. The UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson will face a vote of confidence among Conservative MPs this evening, after at least 54 MPs submitted letters to a party committee to trigger the vote. He can prevail with a simple majority. (Photo by Alberto Pezzali-WPA Pool/Getty Images) (Photographer: WPA Pool/Getty Images Europe)
The Protocol has introduced some frictions, costs and inconvenience to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But it has also protected Northern Ireland from many of the vagaries of Brexit. Northern Ireland’s economy is outperforming the rest of the country, thanks to the Protocol, which kept it in the EU’s single market for goods trade. Its businesses largely support the Protocol and it has just held peaceful local elections. Irish government statistics showed exports from Northern Ireland into the Republic growing strongly, while overall trade between Britain and Ireland was down 13% in 2021.
That’s a shame because there are good arguments for improving the way things are working. Only a small portion of the goods (one-sixth is the government figure) entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain are destined for the EU’s single market. The government’s idea of a green lane for trusted traders with goods destined to stay in Northern Ireland — with spot checks and strict penalties (including criminal charges) for those found in violation — and a red lane for customs controls and checks on goods destined for the EU is reasonable.
Some measures in the bill are more problematic. Removing the EU’s right to conduct inspections, for instance, likely won’t fly. And having a dual regulatory regime, allowing businesses the choice of following either UK or EU standards for goods placed in Northern Ireland, invites confusion and would be an enforcement nightmare.
The bill also seeks to remove EU controls over state aid measures involving taxation and spending. No doubt, the government would like that, but EU market access comes at a price, so it’s hard to see how that will pass muster. And while the complete removal of the EU’s Court of Justice from overseeing disputes will please hardcore Brexiteers, it is of little concern to Northern Ireland voters and will just anger the EU.
Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which had left the power-sharing arrangement in protest of the Protocol, said it was reserving judgment. That should come as no surprise — the DUP is never impressed. It will hold out for more, though it always seems to get less.
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• What Will Postwar Ukraine Look Like? Planning Starts Before Peace: Therese Raphael | 2022-06-14T08:42:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boris Johnson Makes His Biggest Brexit Gamble Yet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/boris-johnson-makes-hisbiggest-brexit-gamble-yet/2022/06/14/ceb06c18-ebb8-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/boris-johnson-makes-hisbiggest-brexit-gamble-yet/2022/06/14/ceb06c18-ebb8-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
FILE - Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua gestures during the taping of the Italian State RAI TV program “Che Tempo che Fa” in Milan, Italy, on Jan. 28, 2012. A.B. Yehoshua, a prominent Israeli author celebrated for his mastery of the Hebrew language and a leading peace activist, has died. He was 85. His death was confirmed on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, by a Tel Aviv hospital. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File) | 2022-06-14T08:42:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A.B. Yehoshua, Israeli author and peace activist, dies at 85 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ab-yehoshua-israeli-author-and-peace-activist-dies-at-85/2022/06/14/d46d972c-ebb1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ab-yehoshua-israeli-author-and-peace-activist-dies-at-85/2022/06/14/d46d972c-ebb1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
40 years later, ‘E.T.’ is still the most soulful of box-office sensations
Drew Barrymore as Gertie and the titular alien in 1982's "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial." (Universal Pictures/Everett Collection)
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” which hit theaters 40 years ago this month, was more than a hit. It was a bona fide phenomenon, the kind of lightning-in-a-bottle sensation rarely seen outside the dreams of movie executives. With his suburban fairy tale about a boy who bonds with a kindred spirit from space, Spielberg achieved the platonic ideal of an all-ages smash. His movie transcended demographic appeal to completely dominate the pop-culture landscape. It was the cathartic cry everyone wanted to have in public.
For a record 16 nonconsecutive weekends, “E.T.” was No. 1 at the U.S. box office — a feat no movie would manage again. A year later, it surpassed “Star Wars,” from Spielberg’s buddy George Lucas, to become the highest-grossing movie ever. It would hold that title for another decade, finally surrendering it to another blockbuster Spielberg directed for Universal, “Jurassic Park.” Only a handful of films have sold more tickets than “E.T.,” before or since. Adjust for inflation, and it still sits high on the list of all-time hits.
To peruse that list, or any definitive ranking of box-office successes, is to realize what an anomaly “E.T.” really is. The movies surrounding it are all spectacles of one kind or another: superhero opuses, space operas, historical and biblical epics. In the modest scope of its adventure, “E.T.” resembles almost none of them, not even the grand amusement-park attractions Spielberg and Lucas themselves were building every summer, together and apart. Has a gentler, more sensitive film ever made this kind of money?
Read The Post's glowing 1982 review of 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'
“E.T.” has the simplicity of a fable and the texture of ordinary American life. Much of the action is confined to a single neighborhood in suburban Arizona, and to the cluttered home that 10-year-old Elliott (Henry Thomas) shares with his older brother, Michael (Robert MacNaughton), and younger sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore), under the wavering supervision of their harried single mother (Dee Wallace). Visually and narratively, Spielberg keeps the perspective at a child’s level. When E.T. waddles into the kids’ lives, his supernatural abilities are like an extension of their vivid imaginations. It’s the much ballyhooed magic of childhood made magically literal.
Not that the movie subscribes to the idea of adolescence as a carefree, unburdened time. By now, it’s conventional wisdom that “E.T.” grew out of Spielberg’s memories of his emotionally fraught teenage years. The director modeled his title character on a real imaginary friend he came up with to cope with his parents’ divorce. As written by Melissa Mathison, who combined elements from two scrapped Spielberg projects, the film became a melancholy fantasy deeply haunted by parental absence. At heart, it’s about a broken nuclear family trying to piece itself back together.
There are a few moments of awe-inspiring big-screen wonder. The most iconic is the flight of the bicycle against the backdrop of a full moon — maybe the defining image of Spielberg’s whole career, in part because he’d repurpose it as the logo for his production company, Amblin Entertainment. But “E.T.” has none of the locomotive momentum that characterized Spielberg’s big hit from the previous summer, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The pace is more, well, ambling; this is a slice of life, not a roller-coaster ride. And it remains something of an outlier in the director’s filmography — more intimate in scale than the serious dramas he’d start making a few years later.
Of course, “E.T.” sticks out especially against a canon of record-breaking testosterone fests. The only guns we see are wielded by the film’s bad guys, a faceless military presence that’s a far cry from the soldier-heroes that dominate so many of the other titles on the all-time charts. Spielberg, envisioning peaceful alien visitors again after “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” extols the opposite of a warfare mentality. Empathy is the film’s guiding philosophy. It’s introduced in the early scene of Michael scolding Elliott for not thinking of their mother’s feelings. And it’s communicated most forcefully through the connection that develops between Elliott and E.T., who come to literally share each other’s emotions.
But maybe the true key to the movie’s instant success, and to the enduring popularity it’s enjoyed over the 40 years that followed, is its insight into childhood. “E.T.” is one of the most perceptive films ever made about the emotional experience of being a kid. Every scene with the terrifically naturalistic child actors rings with some truth about pre-adult life. They talk like real kids, trading the occasional curse word. And they react like real kids, as when Gertie’s initial fear of E.T. gives away immediately to curiosity and a barrage of child-logic questions like “Was he wearing clothes when you found him?”
Spielberg, so often characterized as Hollywood’s Peter Pan — the hitmaker who never grew up — inherently understands how lonely and powerless you sometimes feel as a kid. That’s what “E.T.” so touchingly conveys, and what’s so universally relatable about the movie. You don’t have to have been raised in the arid outskirts of Phoenix to recognize yourself in Elliott’s yearning for connection or feel a flush of triumph at the way he and his siblings come of age by accepting the responsibility that’s foisted upon them. “E.T.” speaks to anyone living through the heartache and joy of childhood or to anyone who just remembers it. Which is to say, it speaks to almost everyone. | 2022-06-14T10:13:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'E.T.,' 40 years later, is still the most soulful of box-office sensations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/14/et-movie-anniversary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/14/et-movie-anniversary/ |
Smithsonian’s Latino gallery makes big gains for accessibility
The first permanent Latino exhibition on the Mall represents a milestone for the Smithsonian by embedding technology that engages visitors with physical, sensory and cognitive conditions
Parts of the “¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States” exhibition are seen in the Molina Family Latino Gallery at the National Museum of American History. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
The refugee boat is a gut punch. Tucked in an alcove of the Molina Family Latino Gallery, the homemade raft carried two Cuban refugees, known as balseros, who risked their lives in 1992 in a harrowing water escape from Cuba’s economic crisis. Picturing the makeshift vessel on the open ocean is emotional, and it forces viewers to confront the courage and desperation of thousands of refugees.
The boat sits in front of footage of a roiling ocean, the sound of waves coming from a directional speaker overhead. Visitors who press a button built into the display can smell the sea air, and those who connect to the gallery’s enhanced technology through a QR code can access labels and wall text describing it.
A highlight of the exhibition “¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States,” which opens Saturday in the National Museum of American History, the display provides an immersive experience for visitors of all abilities, including those with disabilities. Part of the most accessible gallery on the vast Smithsonian campus, it represents a milestone for the institution’s commitment to all audiences.
“We made an early decision to make the gallery as accessible as possible. We felt it was the right thing to do,” said Eduardo Díaz, acting deputy director of the National Museum of the American Latino. “The ‘aha’ moment was that it made it better for everyone.”
Latino Museum supporters want the museum to be built on the Mall
The 4,500-square-foot gallery will be the first permanent space on the National Mall dedicated to American Latinos, a growing segment of the nation’s population. The gallery is the precursor to the National Museum of the American Latino, which Congress authorized in 2020 (along with the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum). Smithsonian officials must select the sites for the two museums by the end of the year, and their design and construction are expected to take at least a decade. The Molina Family Latino Gallery, on the first floor of the three-story National Museum of American History, will host the Latino museum’s exhibitions until its permanent home opens.
The gallery’s improved accessibility is a response to the country’s changing demographics and increased focus on diversity. As many as 1 in 4 adults in the United States have some form of disability, according to federal data. The Latino community has a higher percentage of disabled individuals than the overall population, making accessibility even more vital. The aging American population is another factor; the Smithsonian wants to offer the best experience it can for elderly guests and the multigenerational families that regularly visit, officials said.
“People with disabilities want to feel welcome rather than tolerated,” said Janice Majewski, director of Inclusive Cultural and Educational Projects at the Institute for Human Centered Design, an organization contracted by the Smithsonian to work on the gallery design. “This is saying to the walk-in visitor, ‘Welcome. We really want you to be here.’ ”
The national drive for increased diversity and inclusion that has swept the nation in recent years also influenced the design, said Beth Ziebarth, director of Access Smithsonian. New exhibitions at the National Air and Space Museum, expected to open in late fall, will build on the inclusive efforts of the Latino exhibit.
“If you don’t address access, you don’t provide inclusion. People with disabilities are part of diversity. They cross boundaries,” Ziebarth said.
Coronavirus shutdowns and charges of white supremacy: American art museums are in crisis
The exhibition focuses on the people, historical moments and key concepts that illustrate the legacies of American Latinos and Latinas. All of the material — the text, closed captions and audio descriptions — are provided in English and Spanish.
Designers chose a color scheme and print font that is highly legible, and a physical layout that is easy to navigate. Sections that cover colonial legacies, U.S. expansion and immigration stories unfold along its perimeter. Thirteen QR codes are spread throughout, connecting a blind or low-vision visitor’s smartphone and its text-to-audio software to the display text. The codes provide the thematic introductions to the sections and descriptions of the major pieces in each case. The system also offers information about the layout of the gallery, and where the next code is located.
The exhibition’s many digital pieces are also accessible through a keypad. The dozen oral histories in El Foro (the Forum), for example, feature familiar figures such as journalist Maria Hinojosa and others who are less famous, such as Ruby Corado, founder of Casa Ruby, a bilingual LGBTQ community center in Washington, and Nefertiti Matos, a cultural accessibility consultant who is blind. The keypads allow everyone to manipulate these digital exhibits.
Another major digital experience displays visual interpretations of demographic data, including trends in religion, higher education and language. The interactive technology allows visitors to explore the data and to learn, for example, the percentage of people of Latin American ancestry who identify as Hispanic, Latino or Latinx.
Ziebarth encourages sighted visitors to try the added technology, saying the audio adds a valuable layer of information.
“It gets you to focus on an object the way the curator wants you to,” she said.
A station at the gallery’s entrance explains how to use the accessible technology. The keypads, which require wired headsets that must be plugged in at each stop, mirror the technology found at ATMs and airport kiosks, Ziebarth said, and visitors who are blind or who have low vision are familiar with it. A coordinator will be in the gallery Wednesdays through Sundays to assist visitors who need help connecting to the system; staff will provide inexpensive wired headsets to visitors who might not have them.
The keypad technology does not offer a wireless option, Ziebarth said, a fact that reveals the balancing act of work with the various levels of technology available to guests. Some smartphones and hearing aids are Bluetooth-compatible, but many are not.
Tactile and olfactory experiences — including the smell of coffee at a dominoes table — enhance the visual displays, which also feature historical and contemporary biographies, including Mexican American union leader Cesar Chavez, Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente and Cuban American singer Celia Cruz.
As the debut exhibition, “¡Presente!” offers a taste of what the future museum will contribute to existing Smithsonian content. It will also serve as a laboratory.
“You look at all the history, the art, the music, all the culture. It strengthens the idea that even with so many differences, we have so much in common,” said museum director Jorge Zamanillo, whose tenure started last month.
“It is the foundational experience of the museum,” Zamanillo said, adding that he and his future staff will use the space to test content, ideas and technology. “It’s a big incubator. Imagine what we can do in 10 years.”
¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States opens Saturday at the National Museum of American History, Constitution Avenue between 12th and 14th streets NW. americanhistory.si.edu.
Peter Wallsten contributed to this report. | 2022-06-14T10:13:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Molina Family Latino Gallery is the most accessible Smithsonian attraction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/14/smithsonian-accessible-gallery-molina/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/14/smithsonian-accessible-gallery-molina/ |
As high prices move consumers to rethink their attachment to oil and gas, America is struggling to meet the moment
Electric power lines and wind turbines along Interstate 10 in Palm Springs, Calif. The United States' goal is for all carbon pollution to be gone from the electricity sector by 2035. (George Rose/Getty Images)
Big solar projects are facing major delays. Plans to adapt the grid to clean energy are confronting mountains of red tape. Affordable electric vehicles are in short supply.
The United States is struggling to squeeze opportunity out of an energy crisis that should have been a catalyst for cleaner, domestically produced power. After decades of putting the climate on the back burner, the country is finding itself unprepared to seize the moment and at risk of emerging from the crisis even more reliant on fossil fuels.
The problem is not entirely unique to the United States. Across the globe, climate leaders are warning that energy shortages prompted by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and high gas prices driven by inflation threaten to make the energy transition an afterthought — potentially thwarting efforts to keep global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“The energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine has seen a perilous doubling down on fossil fuels by the major economies,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said at a conference in Vienna on Tuesday, according to prepared remarks. He warned governments and investors that a failure to immediately and more aggressively embrace clean energy could be disastrous for the planet.
U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry suggested that nations are falling prey to a flawed logic that fossil fuels will help them weather this period of instability. “You have this new revisionism suggesting that we have to be pumping oil like crazy, and we have to be moving into long-term [fossil fuel] infrastructure building,” he said at the Time100 Summit in New York this month. “We have to push back.”
In the United States — the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China — the hurdles go beyond the supply chain crunch and sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine. The country’s lofty goals for all carbon pollution to be gone from the electricity sector by 2035 and for half the cars sold to be electric by 2030 are jeopardized by years of neglect of the electrical grid, regulatory hurdles that have set projects back years, and failures by Congress and policymakers to plan ahead.
The challenges are further compounded by plans to build costly new infrastructure for drilling and exporting natural gas that will make it even harder to transition away from the fossil fuel.
“We are running into structural challenges preventing consumers and businesses from going cleaner, even at this time of high oil and gas prices,” said Paul Bledsoe, a climate adviser in the Clinton administration who now works on strategy at the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. “It is a little alarming that even now, Congress is barely talking about clean energy.”
Consumers are eager for more wind and solar. Companies looking to go carbon-neutral are facing growing waitlists for access to green energy, and a Pew Research Center poll in late January found that two-thirds of Americans want the United States to prioritize alternative energy over fossil fuel production.
But lawmakers have balked for more than a decade at making most of the fundamental economic and policy changes that experts widely agree are crucial to an orderly and accelerated energy transition. The United States does not have a tax on carbon, nor a national cap-and-trade program that would reorient markets toward lowering emissions. The unraveling in Congress of President Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan has added to the head winds that green-energy developers face.
“There is literally nothing pushing this forward in the U.S. beyond the tax code and some state laws,” said Heather Zichal, a former White House climate adviser who is now the chief executive of the American Clean Power Association.
The effects of the U.S. government’s halting approach are being felt by solar-panel installers, who saw the number of projects in the most recent quarter fall to the lowest level since the pandemic began. There was 24 percent less solar installed in the first quarter of 2022 than in the same quarter of 2021.
The holdup largely stems from a Commerce Department investigation into alleged tariff-dodging by Chinese manufacturers. Faced with the potential for steep retroactive penalties, hundreds of industrial-scale solar projects were frozen in early April. Weak federal policies to encourage investment in solar manufacturing left American companies ill equipped to fill the void.
“We shut down multiple projects and had to lay off dozens of people,” said George Hershman, chief executive of SOLV Energy, which specializes in large solar installations. SOLV, like dozens of other solar companies, is now scrambling to reassemble those projects after the administration announced a pause of the tariffs.
Meanwhile, adding clean electricity to the power grid has become an increasingly complicated undertaking, given the failure to plan for adequate transmission lines and long delays connecting viable wind and solar projects to the electricity network.
While the United States is hitting some significant benchmarks in the transition to greener electricity, boasting record installations of clean power in the first quarter of this year, the rate of growth has slowed and lags where it needs to be to reach key climate goals. The country is not alone in this predicament.
The record growth in wind and solar last year was outpaced by the world’s rising demand for energy, according to Ember, a European think tank that tracks the energy transition. Clean power could meet only a third of that growth in 2021. The rest was largely met by burning more coal.
“We are seeing progress in the transition, but it is not fast enough,” said Roberto Bocca, head of energy at the World Economic Forum. “And it is not resilient enough to the increased volatility in the current economic and political environment.”
The United States needs to triple its pace of emissions reductions to meet the targets it has set for itself, according to a new study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute and other institutions.
There are numerous hurdles in the way, as outdated federal rules and local planning disputes slow projects down. In November, for instance, one of the country’s larger clean-energy projects faltered in the Northeast. Maine voters stymied plans for a transmission line that would bring enough clean electricity from hydroelectric plants fueled by dams in Canada to power 900,000 homes in New England.
The plan was opposed by some local conservation groups that argued the lines would create an environmental menace in Maine’s North Woods and that hydroelectric power is detrimental to fragile aquatic ecosystems. But the most potent opposition came from energy companies heavily invested in fossil fuel, which spent $24 million supporting the ballot initiative campaign to kill the transmission line.
That fight was sobering to Richard Barringer, a champion of the project and former commissioner of conservation and director of state planning who had served three Maine governors.
“The very local opposition did not surprise me,” Barringer said. “What did surprise me was the amount of money that poured in.”
The vote reversed a years-long, multimillion-dollar state approval process during which, Barringer said, environmental concerns were thoroughly considered and mitigated. And voter antipathy toward the project was driven in large part by distrust for the local utility partner on it, Central Maine Power, which has a dismal customer service record and a history of outages.
The project, which supporters are asking the courts to get back on track, was a key building block of the climate action plan for New England’s most populous state, Massachusetts.
Its troubles are indicative of a much bigger nationwide challenge in building transmission lines for all forms of clean energy. The Department of Energy reports that transmission systems need to be expanded by 60 percent by 2030 to meet the administration’s goals. And they may need to triple in capacity by 2050.
Patching wind and solar projects into the grid infrastructure that does exist, meanwhile, is increasingly challenging. Over the last decade, the time it takes to get a project online has jumped from two years to longer than three and a half years, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its researchers say grid operators are taking longer to study project viability and are overwhelmed by a dramatically rise in the number of projects in the queue.
The Biden administration is promising to ease congestion and shore up the grid through billions of dollars in spending on transmission lines and other improvements authorized in the infrastructure package that Congress passed. But it will probably be years before the upgrades and expansions are operational.
The operators of PJM Interconnection, a grid that serves 13 states stretching from North Carolina to Illinois, as well as Washington, D.C., are so backlogged with proposals for solar and wind farms that they are putting most of them on hold as they overhaul their procedures. The pause on new hookups, said Mary Kate Francis, director of energy sourcing at Edison Energy, a company that helps large companies secure clean power, means that “new projects companies wanted to develop in that area will face a multiyear wait to even be considered.”
Clean-power producers are also hitting numerous barriers in their bid to generate huge volumes of energy with offshore wind turbines. Among them is a provision in the House bill funding the Coast Guard mandating that only American ships can be involved in construction work on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. Amid a shortage of such American ships and trained crews to operate them, wind energy developers warn, the measure would effectively halt production of offshore wind.
As the clean-electricity industry confronts these growing pains, promoters of electric cars are running into their own obstacles.
Government programs that exist to promote zero-emissions vehicle production are sending mixed signals to manufacturers and drivers as some tax credits expire, Congress delays extending them and regulations give automakers leeway to set their own timelines for getting more electric cars into showrooms.
A new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance finds that the United States and other countries need to dramatically step up production to meet their goal of making all transportation carbon-neutral by 2050. It would require zero-emission cars and trucks to make up 61 percent of all vehicles sold worldwide by 2030.
Only 4 percent of cars sold in the United States last year were electric vehicles.
The sticker price of a new electric vehicle is $10,000 more than a comparable gas-powered model, and lawmakers have so far balked at renewing some of the subsidies designed to bring the price down while the industry scales up. Even so, interest in the vehicles at a time when gasoline is averaging $5 a gallon is so high that many buyers eager to get in an electric car or hybrid have found themselves instead on a waitlist.
A plan the administration unveiled Thursday to install hundreds of thousands of new charging stations will help accelerate the transition. But even more crucial right now are $7,500 federal tax credits that make the cars affordable for consumers. They have expired for several models and cannot be used to purchase used vehicles.
“We want to be producing millions of these cars a year in America,” said Joe Britton, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association. The group is aggressively lobbying Congress to extend the tax credits.
“We need to scale, and we need to make sure we are making these vehicles here,” Britton said. | 2022-06-14T10:13:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why an energy crisis and $5 gas aren’t spurring a green revolution - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/gas-prices-energy-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/gas-prices-energy-climate/ |
What to consider before replacing the windows on your home
It may be a better idea to install new weatherstripping and window films, and to paint your existing windows with the best urethane resin paint you can find
Window technology is constantly improving. (iStock)
A good friend who lives in the Chicago suburbs reached out to me a few weeks ago. He asked me to help him navigate the treacherous waters of replacement windows. He was afraid of making a grave financial error.
One of the first questions I asked was about his motivation. Were his windows inoperable? Was he sick of painting his existing ones? Did he want to save money on his heating and cooling costs? Did he just want new windows that looked better? You should really think about why you want replacement windows before you commit huge sums of money.
With inflation rising, you’re about to experience sticker shock when you get estimates. My friend lives in a modest brick bungalow with 10 normal-size windows. He got estimates ranging from $10,197 to $31,498.
Window technology is constantly improving. Modern glass can incorporate special coatings that reduce the amount of ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light entering your home. Other coatings can bounce back heat to its source, so heat from your home can stay indoors during the winter months. Some coatings make your windows stay cleaner longer.
This said, you can apply transparent films to your existing windows and achieve the same results. One film can reject 97 percent of the IR light that’s trying to transform the inside of your house into a blast furnace. Another film can block significant amounts of UV light that work to fade your fabrics and carpets. These films cost a tiny fraction of what a new window might set you back. Many are DIY and not that hard to install. I’ve installed window films myself with ease.
More Builder: Old houses are superior to new construction in many ways — with some notable exceptions
Let’s unpack the most common motivation for purchasing replacement windows. A salesperson may have cast a spell cast upon you, convincing you that you’re going to save lots of money on your utility bills once the windows are installed. I’m afraid you’re in for some grim news.
I’ve argued this in numerous columns over the years, and no one has ever challenged this statement: You don’t start to save money on an energy improvement until you have recaptured in fuel and electricity savings all of the money you spent plus any interest you may have paid to finance the purchase.
Sounds confusing, right? It’s not. I propose we use the midpoint between the two estimates and round it off. Let’s use $20,000 for the cost of my friend’s new windows. Let’s also assume he pays cash using money he saved in his mattress and doesn’t finance the purchase. If you finance the project, you need to add in all of the interest you’ll be paying on your loan plus the cost of the windows.
My friend paid $1,539 in 2021 to heat and cool his home. When it comes time in the future to see what you’re saving, it’s best to compare the actual energy quantities you use, not the actual price. Fuel and electric price changes create very fuzzy math.
I reached out to the Gilkey Window Co. in my hometown of Cincinnati, asking what the average energy savings might be if I purchased its best windows. I was told it was reasonable to experience a 15 percent reduction in heating and cooling fuel usage. The savings can go as high as 25 percent, but it’s probably wise to stick with 15 percent.
If my friend installed high-quality replacement windows, he might reduce his heating and cooling costs by $230.85 per year. We can use that number to get a worst-case payback scenario. My calculator showed it would take more than 86 years to break even. Yes, as energy costs rise, the payback period is reduced. Do your own math using your true annual heating and cooling costs. I think you’ll be stunned by the length of your payback period.
More Builder: How to avoid damaging your home with a pressure washer
It’s important to realize the computation of actual payback period of replacement windows is far more complex. It might be a good exercise to see what happens if you keep your money and invest it. The return on your investment each year might pay for the rising cost of fuel, and you’ll still have the money that you would have given to the window company.
You then might want to factor in how long you’ll be in your home. The national average used to be nine years not too long ago. Will you still live in your home when you finally break even on your purchase?
Maybe it’s a smarter idea to install new weatherstripping and window films, and to paint your existing windows with the best urethane resin paint you can find. Urethane house paints can last up to 20 years if you do all the preparation right. Do one window and see if you like the result. What do you have to lose by trying?
Subscribe to Tim’s free newsletter at AsktheBuilder.com. Tim now does live-streaming video Monday to Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern time at youtube.com/askthebuilder. | 2022-06-14T10:14:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to consider before replacing the windows on your home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/what-consider-before-replacing-windows-your-home/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/what-consider-before-replacing-windows-your-home/ |
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 07: Students are led to their classroom by a teacher at Yung Wing School P.S. 124 on March 07, 2022 in New York City. Despite the fact that masks are optional for public school children in New York City from kindergarten and above as of today, most students and teachers were still wearing them. New York Mayor Eric Adams lifted the mask mandate in New York City schools hours after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in late February that she would lift the statewide mandate. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images) (Photographer: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images North America)
If anyone wonders why America’s urban school districts are in such deep crisis, the answer can be easily seen by looking at New York.
Recently, the Democratic-controlled New York state legislature passed a bill watering down mayoral control of New York City’s public-school system. Twenty years ago, our administration fought for and won mayoral control after decades of incompetent management by corrupt and politically driven school boards. The system we inherited was a case study in failure, with high-school graduation rates long stuck at or below 50%.
Over the 12 years that followed, we raised graduation rates by more than 40%, reduced racial and ethnic achievement gaps, and created some of the nation’s best charter schools, which helped many children from low-income communities compete with — and sometimes outperform — their peers in the wealthiest suburban districts.
During that time, voters knew who to hold accountable for the performance of the schools: the mayor. And the mayor, in turn, held the Department of Education accountable. The department held principals accountable, and the principals held teachers accountable. It wasn’t always perfect, but it worked — and millions of children who would have otherwise fallen through the cracks are instead in college and careers.
Our Democratic successor in City Hall also asked for and received extensions of mayoral control. But as a general rule, state legislatures don’t like giving up power to mayors, especially mayors who don’t do the bidding of their largest campaign supporters. And so, at the urging of the teachers union, the New York state legislature decided to tie the hands of Mayor Eric Adams by weakening mayoral control, while also blocking the creation of new charter schools.
The bill the legislature passed still grants Mayor Adams the authority to appoint a majority of members of the board that formally oversees the school system, the Panel for Educational Policy. But it increases the panel’s size to an unwieldy 23 members, and it prohibits the mayor from removing any members who decide to go rogue. As a result, panel members will have the authority to join forces against the mayor and chancellor, risking a return to the days of failure and dysfunction.
Make no mistake: The fault lies squarely with legislators, not the teachers union. It’s the job of legislators to stand up to the union and protect students, and they have failed. In fact, they are guilty of doing the very thing that they correctly attack red-state legislatures for doing: taking power out of the hands of cities. In red states, the issues often involve gun safety and LGBTQ rights. But sadly, Democratic state legislators are just as willing to subjugate cities when it suits their political interests.
Undermining mayoral control is not the only way the legislature is trying to tie the mayor’s hands. The bill passed by the legislature also requires the city to cap the number of students at 20 for kindergarten through third grade, 23 for grades four through eight, and 25 for grades nine through twelve. There is no good evidence that pushing class size down to these levels will make any meaningful improvement in student outcomes, but it will achieve the legislators’ true goal: pleasing the teachers union.
The legislature’s quotas will make it more difficult for the mayor and chancellor to manage their budget and fund programs that would directly benefit students. If a mayor and chancellor want to make class size a top priority, that should be their prerogative. But requiring them to do so will mean less money for educational support, including the promising dyslexia interventions that the mayor and chancellor are developing.
The legislature’s decision to micromanage class size is especially outrageous since it has done nothing to help the city take on chronic absenteeism, which may soon reach a staggering 40%. In effect, Albany is ordering more teachers for classrooms that are often far from full.
The city’s school system cannot afford to continue the decline it experienced during the pandemic. Since Covid struck, K-12 enrollment has fallen 9% — a damning indictment by parents if ever there was one.
Instead of supporting Mayor Adams and his chancellor, David Banks, and their ambitious agenda to get the city’s schools back on track, the state legislature is throwing obstacles in their way. Those lawmakers’ re-election accounts will benefit, but a heavy cost will be paid by the city’s children, most of them from low-income families in Black and Latino communities.
New York City was once at the forefront of urban education reform, and the progress we made was encouraging. Getting that progress going again requires giving the mayor and chancellor the authority they need to do the jobs voters hired them to do. | 2022-06-14T10:14:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York State Democrats Flunk an Education Test - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-york-state-democrats-flunk-an-education-test/2022/06/14/30d5f37e-ebc1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-york-state-democrats-flunk-an-education-test/2022/06/14/30d5f37e-ebc1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Saudi Megaproject Is Big on Hubris and Low on Practicality
Saudi Arabia’s ruler announces a megaproject to build a city, from scratch, in the desert by the Red Sea. It is touted as an ultra-modern urban setting, in which many of the kingdom’s restrictive social rules will be waived — for instance, women won’t need to cloak themselves in the ‘abaya’ in public places. It is to be a hub for investment, local and foreign, in new industries. And, as if to underscore how different it is from other Saudi cities, it has been given an unconventional name.
If that description fits Neom, the city Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is building in the northeastern corner of his country, it also describes another giant project, launched nearly two decades ago. Dubbed KAEC (pronounced “cake”), it was announced to great fanfare in 2005 by Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Prince Mohammed’s uncle and then-Saudi monarch.
What came of KAEC — or, to give it its full but rarely used name, King Abdullah Economic City — should serve as a warning for the kingdom and foreign investors who are being wooed to pump money into Neom. The Saudis may be talking up the prince’s pet project — it will, they say, have the world’s largest buildings, be served by the Middle East’s biggest port and provide the “the safest, most efficient, most future-oriented, and best place to live and work” — but even the grandest exercises in royal vanity have a tendency to wilt in the face of economic reality.
When I visited KAEC in the fall of 2008, it had moved well past the groundbreaking stage. Construction of the port was proceeding apace, dozens of businesses had signed up to set up shop there and more than 1,500 housing units had already been sold. Amr al-Dabbagh, governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, which was running the project, was confident that, in 20 years, KAEC would be the size of Washington, D.C., with a population of 1.5 million.
Dabbagh and his planners were adamant that KAEC would be a serious manufacturing and logistics hub and not a tourist destination for expatriates living in the more conservative enclaves of Riyadh and Jeddah. Most of its population would be young Saudis fleeing the congestion of other cities and attracted as much by the tens of thousands of new jobs as the liberal atmosphere.
A decade after my visit, the population was still short of 10,000. The king who gave the city his name died in 2015, and his nephew, pursuing his own grand projects, had little interest in furthering Abdullah’s ambition. For his part, Dabbagh was a target of the prince’s controversial 2017 anti-corruption drive that led to dozens of princes and billionaires being detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. Dabbagh was released more than a year later, having reportedly suffered physical abuse. Once the face of the kingdom’s economic dreams, he now keeps a low profile.
As for KAEC, although officials periodically announce new plans to revive old ambitions — the latest involves electric vehicle maker Lucid — there is little prospect of the late king’s vision for the city being realized. Perhaps most tellingly, it is now being promoted as a “booming tourist destination,” complete with opportunities for go-karting and cruises on the Red Sea. Ozymandias, and just possibly Abdullah, would have sighed.
Is this the fate of Neom? On the face of it, the project backed by Prince Mohammed, the country’s de facto ruler, is riskier than the one planned by his uncle. Its location runs against the argument of Saudi officials that it is meant to reduce overpopulation in the kingdom’s older urban centers. Neom is hundreds of miles from the nearest major city, which means any Saudis seeking to move there would have to leave their extended family and friends far behind — a big ask in a society that places great value in traditional social networks.
KAEC, in contrast, is ringed by Jeddah, Mecca and Medina, three of the kingdom’s four most-populated cities, and connected to all three by high-speed rail. At its founding, the proximity to Jeddah was thought to be especially advantageous: It is not only a major economic center, but boasts the country’s busiest international airport — a gateway for tens of millions of Muslims who come to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.
If Prince Mohammed, who is better known as MBS, wanted to relieve overpopulation and create a new economic hub, logic suggests he should have doubled down on KAEC rather than try to reinvent the wheel in Neom. But that would add luster to the name of the late king, and not the crown prince — which would run contrary to the goals of royal vanity projects.
What Neom has going for it is the scale of MBS’s ego, and a budget to match: $500 billion. (KAEC’s initial outlay was a more modest $27 billion, although some reports put itat $100 billion.) Another potential advantage is the prince’s youth: KAEC lost steam when its elderly patron passed on, but Neom’s patron is just 36, and can expect to rule for several decades.
But if MBS builds it, will they come? Recent history allows for no optimism about his shining city in the dunes.
How Did Jared Kushner Get $2 Billion From the Saudis?: Timothy L. O’Brien
Saudi Ruler Rewrites History to Shrink Islamic Past: Hussein Ibish | 2022-06-14T10:14:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Saudi Megaproject Is Big on Hubris and Low on Practicality - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/saudi-megaprojectis-big-on-hubris-and-low-on-practicality/2022/06/14/3085066c-ebc1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/saudi-megaprojectis-big-on-hubris-and-low-on-practicality/2022/06/14/3085066c-ebc1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
The White House goes pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month on Oct. 1. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
About 1.9 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in the United States in 2022, according to the American Cancer Society.
The most common type will be breast cancer, with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimating that 290,560 new cases will be diagnosed this year. Prostate and lung cancers are the next most common. Deaths from cancer have been on the decline, however — falling 27 percent in the past two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a milestone, FDA proposes ban on menthol cigarettes, flavored cigars
The decline in the death rate is attributed in large part to fewer people smoking. Smoking causes about 20 percent of all cancers and 30 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the country, and about 80 percent of lung cancers and lung cancer deaths are attributed to smoking.
Smoking also increases the risk for cancers of the mouth, throat, voice box, kidneys, cervix, liver, bladder, pancreas, stomach, colon and rectum. Other factors credited with contributing to the reduced cancer death rate include increased screening, leading to earlier diagnosis, as well as treatment advances.
2.55 million middle and high school students use some type of tobacco product
The NCI projects that, by 2030, there will be more than 22 million cancer survivors in the United States. Still, the American Cancer Society estimates that 609,360 people will die of cancer (not including basal cell or squamous cell skin cancers) this year, and cancer continues to be the second-most-common cause of death in the United States, after heart disease. | 2022-06-14T10:14:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cancer deaths are down, but 1.9 million new cases expected in 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/14/cancer-new-cases-numbers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/14/cancer-new-cases-numbers/ |
Getting closer to a vaccine for cancer
Scientists have worked for years to harness the power of the immune system. New approaches make researchers optimistic about success.
For decades, researchers have been trying to harness the natural power of the human immune system to fight cancer, looking for ways to circumvent the defenses tumors use to thwart it. Despite early disappointments and challenges, scientists studying cancer vaccines believe they now are closer than ever before. While these vaccines are still a long way from approval, researchers think they represent the future of cancer care.
“It’s a very exciting time for the field of cancer vaccines,” says Vinod Balachandran, an oncologist and surgeon-scientist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “We have made so much progress in understanding how the immune system recognizes cancers. There are dozens of cancer vaccine candidates under study by researchers around the world.”
The immune system plays a critical role in controlling cancer. Many experts believe that cancers are constantly trying to sprout within us, only to be squelched by the immune system before they become detectable, a process known as immunosurveillance.
“Our bodies are probably rejecting cancers all the time,” says Jay Berzofsky, chief of the National Cancer Institute’s vaccine branch. “The ones we detect and that turn into cancer we need to treat are the ones that have escaped from that immunosurveillance. The tumors do it by learning how to exploit the mechanisms that regulate the immune system.”
The new approaches include developing both preventive and therapeutic vaccines, the latter designed to discern tumor cells from normal cells with the goal of provoking an immune response against them. Researchers also are assembling a collection of immunotherapy drugs that would boost the vaccines’ efficacy.
‘They look like normal cells’
Cancer cells arise from our own cells and resemble them; thus, the immune system often tolerates them, says Berzofsky, also senior investigator and head of NCI’s molecular immunogenetics and vaccine research section. “They hide their differences, so they look like normal cells,” he says. “The idea of a cancer vaccine is to activate the immune system to pick out ways that the cancer is different from normal cells, recognize them as foreign and reject them.”
Cancer treatment of tomorrow is personalized
It's important to understand how therapeutic cancer vaccines differ from preventive ones, and how immunotherapy drugs differ from both types of vaccines.
Most people are familiar with traditional vaccines that protect against influenza and such childhood diseases as measles, chickenpox and whooping cough. Two vaccines are approved to prevent infection with viruses that raise the risk of cancer: human papillomavirus (cervical and vaginal cancer, anal cancer, penile cancer) and hepatitis B virus (liver cancer).
But scientists also are developing preventive vaccines for people with premalignant lesions such as colon polyps, hoping to keep them from turning cancerous.
Target for the immune system
Olivera Finn, distinguished professor of immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, and her colleagues were the first to identify a tumor-specific antigen — a protein or other molecule found only on cancer cells and not on normal cells — that could serve as a target for the immune system. (The term “antigen” refers to a toxin or other foreign substance in the body capable of inducing an immune response.)
The tumor-specific antigen Finn found, MUC1, is present in several types of cancers, including colon, breast, prostate, lung and pancreatic. An MUC1-based vaccine she and her team developed showed a strong response from the immune system in clinical trials in patients with premalignant colon polyps, leading them to believe the vaccine could help prevent the growth of new polyps and keep existing ones from turning cancerous.
The vaccine reduced polyp recurrence rates by 38 percent in their clinical trial, Finn says.
“We and other groups are paying attention to premalignant lesions and focusing on trying to boost the immune system to stop the progression from premalignant to malignancy,” Finn says, adding that her group is about to begin a trial of the same vaccine in patients with ductal carcinoma in situ — an early stage of cancer that is confined to breast milk ducts and not yet invasive — to see whether the vaccine can stop it from spreading.
Therapeutic vaccines, unlike preventive ones, treat people who already have cancer by attacking existing cancer cells or preventing a recurrence. They prompt the immune system to find and destroy cancer cells that have certain tumor-specific antigens that healthy cells do not have. The vaccine delivers certain molecules that behave like these antigens to stimulate the immune system into making new “killer” T cells, the same cells that also target viruses.
“Therapeutic vaccines introduce substances that stimulate the production of new immune cells that can fight the tumor,” says Keith Knutson, a cancer vaccine researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. “We inject an antigen — a miniature piece of a protein, a fragment — that stimulates the production of T cells capable of attacking the tumor.”
(There is only one therapeutic vaccine on the market so far, Sipuleucel-T, licensed in 2010 for prostate cancer. It doesn’t provide a huge benefit — a clinical trial showed it increased overall survival by about four months — but that was enough for the Food and Drug Administration to approve it, Berzofsky says.)
Personalized vaccines
In some cases, experimental therapeutic cancer vaccines are personalized, that is, created for just one person from samples of that patient’s tumor. Known as neoantigen vaccines, the goal is to achieve the same result as other therapeutic vaccines. Neoantigens arise from mutations unique to a person’s cancer cells.
“Targeting neoantigens is really something quite novel,” says Patrick Ott, clinical director of the Melanoma Disease Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who has been testing them in melanoma patients and in other cancers. In one recent small study, for example, four of six patients vaccinated had no recurrence of their tumors after 25 months. The other two patients’ tumors grew, but then regressed completely after they took additional immunotherapy drugs.
“They had amazing responses,” Ott says. “Maybe having had the vaccine primed their immune system to work with” the drugs.
Balachandran is studying neoantigen vaccines in patients with one of the deadliest cancers, pancreatic cancer, working with scientists at BioNTech, the German company that partnered with Pfizer to produce the successful mRNA vaccine for the coronavirus. They are using the same mRNA technology to make individualized vaccines and have treated 19 patients with pancreatic cancer since 2019. Preliminary results showed half of the patients produced a strong immune response to the vaccine and experienced a longer recurrence-free survival time compared with the half whose immune systems did not respond.
Genetic experiment shrinks tough to treat cancer
“The big advantage of neoantigen vaccines is that they can produce a strong immune response because they are tailored to the individual tumor and look foreign to the patient’s immune system,” Berzofsky says. “Also, advances in mRNA technology — the same technology that quickly gave us effective covid-19 vaccines — means that neoantigen vaccines can be made rapidly, removing a major past obstacle.”
Many cancers also share common antigens, meaning a personalized vaccine isn’t always necessary. HER2, a molecule found in about 25 percent of breast cancers is one example. Berzofsky’s lab is testing therapeutic vaccines for several cancers, including one that targets HER2.
“It’s a ‘driver’ antigen, which means the cancer can’t do without it,” Berzofsky says. “It keeps telling the cell: divide and multiply, so going after it with a vaccine would be very effective.” Early clinical trials have been promising, he says. There is a drug, Herceptin, available to treat HER2-positive breast cancer patients, but “the patient has to come back to get an IV drip every few weeks,” Berzofsky says. “If we had a vaccine that caused a patient to make her own HER2 antibodies, she wouldn’t need to come back for the drug.”
‘It could be revolutionary’
Knutson and Amy Degnim, a breast surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, also designed a HER2 vaccine and recently completed a small clinical trial in 22 patients with invasive breast cancer. The vaccine, based on four fragments of the HER2 protein, provoked both antibodies and T cells in all the patients, Degnim says. The vaccine was given in six doses, each one a month apart.
After a little more than two years, only two patients had recurrences: one developed another tumor in the same breast, the second patient experienced a recurrence in the lymph nodes, “but that patient did not complete the full vaccination course,” having received only four doses, Degnim says.
They are studying the same vaccine in patients with ductal carcinoma in situ, hoping to keep it from progressing.
They are also developing another vaccine they hope will completely prevent breast cancer in women at high risk for the disease. Initially, however, it will be tested — for safety reasons — only in women who already have breast cancer.
“Once we have those safety studies done — they haven’t started yet — then we need to give careful thought as to who should be enrolled” in efficacy studies, Degnim says. But If it works, “it could be revolutionary, really,” she says.
One of the early challenges facing scientists when they began researching cancer vaccines was that tumors often induce damaging effects on the immune system, suppressing it. Immunotherapy drugs counter these effects by unblocking the immune system so it can do its job. One example is “checkpoint inhibitor” drugs that work by preventing tumors from sending an “off” signal to the immune system, thus allowing T cells to work.
“The drugs free an immune system that has been co-opted by the immunosuppressive features of the cancer,” says Joshua Brody, director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, who is studying several therapeutic vaccines delivered in combination with checkpoint inhibitors.
The development of checkpoint inhibitors — which won its discoverers the 2018 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine — was a breakthrough for therapeutic cancer vaccine research, Finn says.
“Therapeutic vaccines initially failed because they could not stimulate the immune system, which was suppressed, both by [cancer] treatments and by the tumors,” she says. “The tumors had figured out how to evade the immune system. But now we know the many different ways the immune system of a cancer patient is suppressed, and we understand what the immunosuppressive environment looks like.”
Scientists are also trying vaccines in combination with other agents, including cytokines, which are substances normally secreted by the immune system, but in this case produced in the lab. The cytokine is injected to enhance the efficacy of the vaccine.
“These different applications work synergistically,” says Jeffrey Schlom, co-director of NCI’S Center for Immuno-oncology.
Although the research is growing, experts warn that widespread use of cancer vaccines is still years away. Nevertheless, they predict their use will become standard practice.
“We are setting the stage,” Finn says. “I believe there will be a time in the future when a doctor will be able to identify your risk for certain cancers and give you a vaccine to prevent them.”
Schlom agrees. “It’s happening as we speak: more trials, more progress,” he says. “The way I think about it, in terms of immunotherapy, the best is yet to come. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve got our foot in the door, and now we are opening the door.” | 2022-06-14T10:14:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Getting closer to a vaccine for cancer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/14/cancer-vaccine-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/14/cancer-vaccine-future/ |
‘For years, it was a big regret,’ said Ted Sams, who marched with the Class of 2022
For 60 years, Ted Sams regretted that he hadn't graduated with the San Gabriel High School Class of 1962. On May 27, 2022, he finally received his wish. (David Orr)
Five days before he was supposed to graduate from California’s San Gabriel High School in 1962, Ted Sams was suspended for goofing around in the halls and missed a final history exam.
He took the test later and passed, but he’d already missed out on marching with his graduating class to receive his diploma.
“When I went to the high school to pick it up, they told me I owed $4.80 for a missing textbook, and I didn’t want to pay the fine,” said Sams, 77, who still lives in San Gabriel, outside Los Angeles.
“I didn’t have a lot of money, and that amount would have filled my car with gas or paid for a dinner date,” he said. “So I figured, ‘Forget it.’ I walked away and went off to enjoy the rest of my summer.”
Over the years, Sams said, it bothered him that he didn’t get to wear a cap and gown with his classmates and that he didn’t have a framed diploma to hang on the wall.
“He always talked about it, and we knew it was a big deal to him,” said Sherry Sams, 46, one of Ted’s five children. “It was always a disappointment that he didn’t get to walk with his class.”
As the 60th anniversary of her father’s missed commencement approached, Sherry Sams and her sister, Sally Bonette, decided this could finally be his opportunity.
“On Super Bowl Sunday, he brought it up again, and we thought it would be nice to surprise him with a duplicate diploma,” said Bonette, 48.
In February, Sherry Sams called San Gabriel High School to explain the situation. She ended up talking to Veronica Molina, the school registrar. Molina was sympathetic to the situation and said she’d look around for Ted Sams’s diploma in the unlikely event that it still happened to be somewhere in the building.
Molina made her way into the school vault, which was dusty and filled with items from long ago.
“It didn’t look like anybody had been in there in a very long time,” she said. “I found a stack of file drawers, and inside one of those drawers, I saw a box labeled ‘old diplomas.’ ”
She carefully flipped through the diplomas, and a name jumped out: Theodore Sams.
She could hardly believe it. She slowly lifted the decades-old, sleeved diploma.
“I was the first person to open his diploma in 60 years, but it was in great condition,” said Molina, 36. “I was really excited to find it.”
So excited that she convened with Principal Debbie Stone, and they came up with a proposition: How about if Ted Sams marched with the Class of 2022 to get his diploma?
They would forgive his $4.80 debt for the missing textbook.
In mid-May, Sherry and her siblings surprised their dad with a video invitation to attend San Gabriel High’s commencement at Rose Bowl Stadium on May 27.
“It was the best invitation I’ve ever received,” said Sams of the video his family created. “Of course, I said yes.”
He’d often thought back to the last days of his senior year, when he and a friend had been goofing around on campus with cameras, pretending to take snapshots, and the school’s vice principal became agitated by the ruckus they’d caused, he said.
“Some people didn’t want their picture taken, and they were protesting what we were doing,” Sams recalled.
“We showed the vice principal that we didn’t have film in the camera, but he didn’t care,” Sams added. “He said we’d caused such a stir that we were suspended.”
His parents were upset with him, Sams said, but they knew he’d passed his graduation exams and they soon put their disappointment aside.
Sams said he went to work that summer at his grandfather’s window-display company and eventually started his own silk-screen printing business in San Gabriel.
He and his wife, Cheryl Sams, raised five children and attended all of their high school graduations, capping each celebration with a pizza party at home.
“I was always brought back to the fact that my high school mischief prevented me from graduating with my own class,” he said. “For years, it was a big regret.”
Sherry Sams said that when they first had the idea to surprise him with a duplicate diploma, they never imagined that the original would be found untouched and pristine.
“We were just hoping for a printed copy,” she said. “But everyone at the school really got onboard with it.”
Molina said she felt as though it was an honor to find it.
“I’d like to think that if this was my dad or my grandpa, somebody would go out of their way to track down the diploma for them,” she said.
Sams said he felt overwhelmingly grateful.
“It was pretty emotional — I could hardly believe it was finally going to happen,” he said. “After 60 years, I was really excited to get that little piece of paper I’d been missing since 1962.”
On the evening of May 27, he put on a royal-blue cap and gown and joined 484 other San Gabriel High graduates in walking across a stage to receive his diploma.
“I was worried that the kids would think it was crazy and they’d wonder, ‘What’s that old man doing up here?’ ” he said. “But everyone gave me a standing ovation. Everywhere I went, people were congratulating me.”
Stone said it was heartwarming to witness everyone’s reaction to Sams finally having the rite-of-passage he’d missed.
“The past year has been extraordinarily difficult, and having Mr. Sams at our graduation was just the story we needed as a graduating class and a community,” Stone said.
Sams’s children and grandchildren beamed at their family’s patriarch, Sherry Sams said.
“How often do you get to see your dad or grandpa graduate from high school?” she said.
Afterward, she and her siblings put on a traditional pizza party for their dad, with a few changes.
“We made it a pizza and beer party, since he’s now old enough to drink,” Sherry Sams said.
The family also added a few extra numbers on the strawberry-filled cake. “Class of 62/22,” it read.
“Everything was just perfect — what a wild night it was,” Ted Sams said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so exhilarated.”
“It was almost like being a teenager again,” he said. | 2022-06-14T10:14:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ted Sams was denied a diploma over a book fine in 1962. He just walked the stage. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/graduation-1962-ted-sams-diploma/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/graduation-1962-ted-sams-diploma/ |
The celebrated scholar talks about his new book, ‘How to Raise an Antiracist’
Historian and anti-racism scholar Ibram X. Kendi. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)
The result of that epiphany is “How to Raise an Antiracist,” published Monday, a book that is both an instructive guide for parents and caregivers and also a reflective memoir. Kendi spoke to The Washington Post about his latest work and his own experience as a father. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
When you set out to write this book as a research-based road map for parents and caregivers, what made you decide that you also wanted to include your own story?
I thought it was important for parents to be able to move past our discomfort around the mistakes that we make as parents. To be a parent is to be imperfect, to be a parent is to be human. And so we’re going to make mistakes, but we’re also very sensitive about the mistakes that we make, particularly towards our children, and I felt by providing my own personal story as a parent and the mistakes that I’ve made, as it related to race with my child, I thought it could help other parents to be self-reflective as well. I also thought by sharing my story as a child, it could help teachers to really begin to understand what they’re doing or not doing from the perspective of a student.
In my reporting over the years I’ve talked to a number of White parents about race — including a lot of Gen Xers and older millennial parents who were actively trying to overcome their own “colorblind” upbringings — and something I’ve often heard is anxiety about saying the wrong thing, giving a wrong answer to a question that a child asks, or not being informed enough to offer a complete answer in the moment. I’m wondering what you would say to parents who are experiencing that worry and insecurity.
First, I think the sources of the worry and insecurity is this belief that if we somehow get it wrong, meaning if we say the wrong thing, in the wrong way, in response to our child engaging us about race, that we’ll somehow make them racist — so the best solution is to just not say anything or to shut down the conversation. When in reality, it’s the other way around. If we don’t say anything, then they’re going to get an answer from somewhere else, and chances are that answer is more likely to be a racist one.
They were raised to be ‘colorblind’ — but now more white parents are learning to talk about race
There’s often a lot of focus on questions that children might ask and how we should respond to them as parents, but you also write of the necessity of parents asking children questions about race, starting when they’re preschoolers or kindergartners. Can you tell me more about why that’s so important? And, since your own daughter is now that age, what kinds of questions have you been asking her, what have those conversations been like for your family?
I think it is incredibly important to ask questions of our children, not just to model critical thinking but also to raise empathy, to encourage a child to be empathetic. So when a child does something wrong — let’s say your child hits another child, instead of us just saying, ‘Don’t do that!’ we can say, ‘Why did you hit the child?” We can ask, ‘How do you think that child felt?’ That is more in line with what scholars call inductive discipline, and inductive discipline is more likely to teach a child to be empathetic, and a child that’s more empathetic is more likely to be anti-racist. So it’s all sort of connected in that way, whether we’re raising a critical thinker or raising a child to be empathetic, we should be consistently asking them questions.
I thought you made a really compelling point about the teen years specifically as a time when kids are especially vulnerable to both conceit and insecurity, which you described as “the twin children of being racist.” Can you tell me more about that — and how parents can help their teens learn to interrogate racist ideas?
I think it is so vitally important for those teenagers to be reading books about racism in particular. When we’re talking about a 3-year-old or 4-year-old, I think it’s important for them to have books with different characters of different colors, and to see those different colors as on the same level. When you’re talking about 11- or 12- or 17-year-olds, they have a very sophisticated understanding of racial inequality. They know racial inequality exists. They’re trying to decide why it exists. So they need to be engaged in conversation, and reading literature, and having discussions about racism, because the only other explanation for why racial inequality exists is that there’s something superior or inferior about a particular racial group. And simultaneously, if you’re a White, particularly male teenager, you’re getting targeted by white supremacists. If you are a Black teenager, according to one study, you’re witnessing or experiencing five instances of racist discrimination per day. And it’s easy for you, as a Black child, to say, ‘This is happening because there’s something wrong with me.’
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I’ve spoken to so many parents over these past couple of years — about the pandemic, police violence, gun violence, climate change and the intersection of racism with all of those things — and in many of those conversations, parents have expressed deep fear, sometimes even despair, about what’s happening around us right now. But they’ve also often noted that parenthood doesn’t afford the luxury of hopelessness, that we owe these kids something better. I wanted to ask you how parenthood has affected the way you relate to this current moment, and how has it shaped your sense of what is possible?
When we realized that my partner, Sadiqa, was pregnant, we went about searching for a name for our daughter, and ultimately we decided to name her Imani. Imani means “faith” in Swahili. When we decided to name her Imani, we just really loved the name Imani, and we also loved that it means ‘faith,’ but we weren’t thinking at the time that she, through her presence in our lives — particularly her coming in 2016, when for many people the despair started to emerge or even grow — that she would become one of our anchors, if not our principal anchor, for hope and for believing that we can transform this world anew. Just witnessing a young person coming of age and navigating her world and just seeing how she doesn’t have all the racial baggage that adults have, that I have, and knowing that all the things that we’ve gotten wrong as adults, our children could get right.
As a personal example: It seems like, every year, Imani has a different favorite color. And this year’s favorite color is the rainbow. And she, of course, won’t even entertain an argument over whether ‘rainbow’ is a color. But when we ask her ‘Why is ‘rainbow’ your favorite color?’ you know she says, ‘Because it has all the colors!’ and she’s almost looking at me like, ‘Of course rainbow is the best color!’ It just reminds me that maybe we could create a world where our kids see all the colors, a collection of colors, particularly human colors, as beautiful. And that’s what I’m hoping that we’re able to create. | 2022-06-14T10:14:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Q&A with Ibram X. Kendi on "How to Raise an Antiracist" - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/ibram-x-kendi-how-to-raise-an-antiracist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/ibram-x-kendi-how-to-raise-an-antiracist/ |
How conservatives drove a wedge between economic and cultural liberals
The wealthy understood that a unified left spelled doom for their economic advantages
Perspective by Jonathan Schlefer
Jonathan Schlefer is a senior researcher in political economy at Harvard Business School, a former editor in chief of MIT's Technology Review and author of books including "The Assumptions Economists Make."
People take part in the Workers First Caravan for Racial and Economic Justice near the United States Capitol on June 17, 2020. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The left is deeply divided between forces fighting for economic justice and those fighting for social equality for minority groups.
Some economic justice advocates express exasperation with excessive “wokeness” and the political damage it does — often sotto voce for fear of being canceled — while those in the Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and LGBTQ rights movements frequently tire of hearing how more economic justice would cure the discrimination minorities face.
In 2020, for example, Adolph Reed, an African American political scientist and civil rights activist, planned to give a talk to the Democratic Socialists of America arguing that overplaying covid’s harm to Blacks weakens multiracial movements that are critical to improving public health. The Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus raised such a fuss the DSA canceled the talk.
What many of these advocates don’t know is that their opponents on the right actually created this schism on the left. Beginning during Reconstruction in the late 19th century, business and White elites saw that united movements for minority and economic justice threatened their interests, so they repeatedly devised strategies to splinter them.
A haunting chapter came in 1947 when Congress passed the Labor Management Relations Act, better known as Taft-Hartley for its sponsors, Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio) and Rep. Fred Hartley Jr., (R-N.J.). Vocally biracial at the time, industrial unions blasted it as a “slave labor” bill. President Harry S. Truman vetoed it. But Northern big-business Republicans and Southern racist Democrats joined to override that veto 75 years ago this month on June 23. Their victory damaged both economic and racial equality to this day.
In the 1890s, biracial coalitions threatened Southern White elites as a “fusion” between the Populist and Republican parties combined to win many local elections. They even captured the entire North Carolina government in 1894, strengthening voting rights and attacking abuses of monopoly capital.
Racist White Democrats reacted brutally, intimidating and killing these opponents to shut them down in 1898. The defeat of the North Carolina fusion — including an actual, violent coup overthrowing the government in Wilmington — sharply intensified Jim Crow segregation throughout the South.
In the face of this oppression, the United Mine Workers (UMW) founded one of the first U.S. industrial unions in 1890. It exhibited some racism, but most locals were biracial, and several Blacks held leadership positions. The UMW made important gains, including sometimes forcing management to end White-Black wage differentials.
In 1904, mine owners in Alabama initiated attacks on the UMW, refusing to renew contracts and hiring Black workers to break sporadic strikes. In 1908, the union fought back with a major strike, but the Alabama governor used the state’s Jim Crow laws to tear down the miners’ integrated housing. With no place to live nearby, they were dispersed from the coalfields and lost the strike. The union was all but crushed. The episode exposed how White elites used racist Jim Crow laws to break interracial coalitions that threatened their economic power and wealth.
Protecting this power motivated racist Southern Democrats — a key New Deal faction with outsize influence in Congress — to ensure the seminal 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) didn’t cover their Black workforce: sharecroppers and maids. They also insisted the new law allow racial discrimination, though not requiring it.
That same year, however, the next threat to their power emerged. A group of unions formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Its first president, John L. Lewis, who was also head of the UMW, understood the potential of biracial organizing. The CIO hired Black organizers, sought to educate racist Whites and adopted the slogan “Black and white, unite and fight.” Its constitution declared “uncompromising opposition to any form of discrimination, whether political or economic, based on race, color, creed or nationality.”
Thanks to the NLRA, which made unionizing easier, and new organizing, U.S. union membership swelled from 3 million in 1932 to 9 million in 1939 — despite the unemployment of the Depression — and then to 15 million during World War II. Having made strong gains among Blacks migrating to work in Northern factories, as well as Blacks in emerging Southern industries, the CIO launched “Operation Dixie” in 1946 to expand its geographical and numerical strength. Department of Labor economist H. F. Douty said, “Workers among both races are beginning to realize that economic cooperation is not only possible, but desirable.”
Labor leaders planned to build a truly national movement, as scholars Sean Farhang and Ira Katznelson have detailed. They hoped to enter tripartite negotiations with the government and business and build a strong, unified welfare state — like their European counterparts were in the process of doing.
Once again, this biracial union vision sent shudders down the spines of big business Republicans, who dominated Congress after the 1946 midterm elections. Meanwhile, Southern elites realized that they hadn’t limited the NLRA sufficiently to truly safeguard their segregated economy. Sen. Burnett Maybank (D-S.C.) compared the CIO to “the carpetbaggers and the scalawags” during Reconstruction who “disrupted our civilization and economy by inciting the colored people and by controlling our Government.”
These two conservative factions came together to pass Taft-Hartley.
The act authorized “right to work” laws letting employees enjoy union benefits without paying dues, blocked foremen and independent contractors from joining unions, created diverse types of injunctions against strikes, limited picketing of employers and split labor enforcement off from the National Labor Relations Board to prevent the relatively pro-union board from prosecuting unfair practices.
The law destroyed Operation Dixie and defeated the CIO’s national ambitions by ruthlessly targeting labor’s strategies for expanding coverage. As United Automobile Workers President Walter Reuther later said, “If Taft-Hartley has been a problem to unions in organized industries, it has been a disaster to those unions whose major organizing job is yet to be done.”
Employers could force workers to sit through anti-union propaganda sessions, deploy foremen to pressure them not to join, assign jobs to independent contractors and swamp courts with alleged violations of newly minted labor-law intricacies. Right-to-work laws also robbed unions of resources: why join and pay dues if you got the same benefits free?
As the CIO turned inward to protect existing members’ salaries and benefits, it began to succumb to racism. Most existing members were White and seniority gave Whites the best jobs. Embracing more Black Southern workers was now almost impossible. Its defensive strategy persuaded the CIO to merge with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the historically racist umbrella group of craft unions. A campaign against “Communist” labor leaders, as part of the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, managed to target the most anti-racist.
Taft-Hartley marked the beginning of the decline of American unions. Peaking at 33.4 percent of nonagricultural workers in 1945, union coverage fell slightly for a few years, crawled back almost to its 1945 level, then continued falling ever since. As unionization fell, income inequality worsened, signifying the dangers of a divided left.
As the civil rights movement peaked in the 1960s, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations focused on nominating judges with civil rights credentials. Few of these judges were as concerned with labor law and, in their desire to protect the civil rights of individuals, they sometimes eroded collective bargaining rights. That helped ratify a division between the fights for economic justice and minority justice.
This divide has persisted to the present day — and hampered the achievement of either social or economic equality. For example, after George Floyd was murdered, support for Black Lives Matter surged to 52 percent of Americans and opposition declined to 29 percent. But instead of including economic justice and class consciousness, activists focused on divisive and narrow demands like defunding the police. This contributed to support for the movement falling to 42 percent and opposition surpassing it at 45 percent.
This schism continues to hamstring the Democratic Party and its ability to enact policies on both fronts. The divide has left Democrats with an unwieldy coalition of cultural liberals — often White and suburban, with less interest in economic fairness — and minority groups, who tend to be more socially conservative but supportive of a robust welfare state and economic justice.
By contrast, liberals have experienced the most success in American history — from the populist fusions of the 1890s to the New Deal — when coalitions join across racial lines and challenge economic elites. They win elections and enact policies that benefit Americans no matter their race.
If Democrats forge more solidarity, they will fare better electorally, enabling them to address the priorities of those advocating for economic justice and racial equality. | 2022-06-14T10:14:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How conservatives drove a wedge between economic and cultural liberals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/14/how-conservatives-drove-wedge-between-economic-cultural-liberals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/14/how-conservatives-drove-wedge-between-economic-cultural-liberals/ |
In South Carolina, race and gender animate Democratic gubernatorial primary
By Stratton Lawrence
Former U.S. congressman Joe Cunningham addresses delegates at South Carolina's Democratic Party convention on June 11 in the capital, Columbia. He is among five Democrats seeking the party's gubernatorial nomination. (Meg Kinnard/AP)
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Democrat Joe Cunningham became a national political star in 2018 when he pulled off a rare electoral feat. Not since 1978 — four years before Cunningham was born — had a Democrat won South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District.
Two years later, Cunningham lost his seat to Nancy Mace, The Citadel’s first female graduate, by 1.3 percentage points.
Now, Cunningham, 40, is vying for another major upset, against Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who has been endorsed by former president Donald Trump, in November. But in the past two weeks, the Charleston attorney’s main primary opponent, state Sen. Mia McLeod, has stormed into view with a series of aggressive tweets and strategic moves. McLeod is the first Black woman to run for governor in South Carolina, a fact that’s been central to her late push. Early this month, her campaign manager, Heidi Young, tweeted, presumably in reference to Cunningham, that “White Savior complex is on the ballot.”
South Carolina’s Black voters have a history as a powerful voting bloc — they saved Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy in the 2020 Democratic primary. And in a state where women and African Americans outnumber men and whites in Democratic primary elections, race and gender might be powerful motivating factors.
The race between Cunningham and McLeod, the top contenders in a primary that includes three other candidates, contrasts differing general election strategies in a state that has not sent a Democrat to statewide office since 2006: appeal to crossover voters in the purple urban areas or mobilize the Democratic base behind the first female, African American nominee for governor.
“It would bring national attention to the state if Senator McLeod is the nominee,” said Christine DeVries, McLeod’s press representative, adding, “People want to see themselves represented in their government.”
Yet some prominent Democrats say that after 12 relatively quiet years as a state legislator, McLeod could never garner the enthusiasm needed to win the general election. Todd Rutherford (D), the state’s House minority leader and one of South Carolina’s most prominent Black politicians, endorsed Cunningham last week.
“One of the things I absolutely had to make clear is that she is no Stacey Abrams,” said Rutherford, referring to the Georgia Democrat and voting rights advocate who narrowly lost her bid to become the nation’s first Black female governor in 2018 and is making a second run for the office this year.
Rutherford cited three bills McLeod has ushered through the South Carolina legislature, two of which were for commemorative license plates.
The endorsement set off a bitter tweet exchange with McLeod. On June 7, she said Rutherford was “barely holding on as minority leader.”
McLeod, 53, declined to comment for this story.
Rutherford said he endorsed Cunningham because of his rare, proven ability to win as a Democrat in South Carolina and for his record introducing successful bills in Washington, even during a Republican presidency.
In South Carolina, he said, Democrats have to “reach across the aisle and do things that are palatable to Republicans. That’s how you get things done, and I think Joe knows how to do that.”
In 2020, Jaime Harrison, now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, ran to oust Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham from the seat he has held for nearly 20 years. Harrison, a Black man, raised over $100 million, and Democrats around the country watched eagerly to see whether he could pull off the upset. Harrison lost by 10 percentage points.
Cunningham said that contest spoke volumes about the need to appeal to crossover moderates. “The fact is, we’re not Georgia. We don’t have Atlanta. The numbers are just not there,” he said. “We’ve got to energize the base and get Democrats out, but we also have to pull people over. And I’ve already been successful in getting those folks into the tent.”
An underdog fighting for attention
Going into Tuesday’s primary, McLeod is at a distinct disadvantage. She lacks name recognition outside of her Columbia-area district, and in the year since announcing her candidacy, she has raised just under a half-million dollars. Cunningham’s total neared $2 million this week, enough to fund TV spots in the state’s major markets. In the final weeks of the campaign, McLeod fought to hold a televised debate, which took place last week. In contrast, the 2018 Democratic primary included three debates.
“There are certain disadvantages you have as a woman of color running for statewide office,” said DeVries, who added that McLeod has attended “five or six or seven events every day,” and “the press just has not been there.” In addition to the lack of attention from the news media, McLeod has struggled to raise money and has had a minimal paid media presence in Charleston, the state’s largest population center.
On June 13, McLeod received an endorsement from Cunningham’s ex-wife via an Instagram post: “It’s been too many years since a woman held the mic, it’s your turn.”
Tyler Jones, Cunningham’s campaign manager, acknowledged the unfortunate optics of the race, but he placed the responsibility for McLeod’s lack of media coverage on the candidate. It’s only in the final weeks, through eye-catching tweets like those attacking Rutherford, that McLeod has garnered notable press attention.
“She’s not just a random person. She’s a sitting state senator, an African American female … she’s been in office for 12 years, she’s got lots of connections, and she’s run several times in somewhat competitive races,” he said. “She just wasn’t able to capitalize on that, and that’s not on anybody but her.”
A crossover candidate in a polarized party
McLeod has criticized Cunningham for voting against a $15 minimum wage while in Congress. Cunningham defends the vote as a demonstration of why he’s a better fit to lead in a state where he represents the minority party.
“That bill would have eliminated tip wages for restaurant workers, and I represented a district that is huge with tourism and the food and beverage industry,” said Cunningham, whose district included Charleston and Hilton Head Island. “What we could have gotten done is $12 [an] hour, and I had Republicans coming up to me saying they would support that. I’m not going to go out there and mislead people and say that I can get $15 [an] hour done with a Republican-controlled legislature.”
But DeVries downplayed the importance of appealing to Republicans or moderates.
“Joe Cunningham wants to turn some Republicans over to him,” she said. “We believe that the best strategy is to get every Democrat to vote for the gubernatorial candidate.”
Harrison’s Senate race in 2020 suggests problems with that theory, and if Cunningham, who started the primary campaign as the front-runner, wins on Tuesday, it will be because a significant number of African American voters chose him. Yet his campaign will have to immediately find ways to appeal to those who did not.
“I’m a little worried about how the first day of the general is going to go,” said Jones, the campaign manager. “There is a racial dynamic to this primary and within the Democratic Party these days. There are going to be some folks who will be very upset if Mia doesn’t win. But that’s not Joe’s fault.” | 2022-06-14T10:15:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former S.C. Rep. Joe Cunningham and Mia McLeod spar over who is best to represent Democrats in the general election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/cunningham-governor-southcarolina/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/cunningham-governor-southcarolina/ |
Maker of Uvalde massacre gun broke campaign finance law, complaint says
Daniel Defense gave $100,000 to a pro-gun super PAC last year, despite rules barring federal contractors from making political contributions
A worker helps prepare the Daniel Defense booth before the National Rifle Association convention in downtown Indianapolis. (Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/Sipa USA/AP)
Shortly after the 2020 election, a super PAC formed in Tampa called the Gun Owners Action Fund.
On Jan. 6, 2021 — a day that would come to be associated with the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol — a Georgia-based gun manufacturer, Daniel Defense, contributed $100,000 to the super PAC.
Last month, Daniel Defense came under a spotlight when one of its rifles was used in the massacre of 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex. The company pulled out of a planned appearance at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. The House Oversight Committee launched an investigation. And a trail of political donations from Daniel Defense’s owners illustrated the financial clout of the gun industry, even as NRA spending has declined in recent years.
Now a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, says Daniel Defense violated federal law when it gave the money to the Gun Owners Action Fund because federal contractors are barred from making contributions to federal candidates or committees.
Representatives of Daniel Defense did not respond to a request for comment. But a treasurer for the Gun Owners Action Fund, Nancy H. Watkins, said in an email that the PAC had refunded the $100,000 contribution in May at the request of Daniel Defense.
Daniel Defense had multiple active federal contracts at the time of last year’s donation, according to a federal contracting database. They included contracts for weapons and replacement parts, among other products, with the Defense Department, the State Department and the Justice Department.
“Allowing federal contractors like Daniel Defense to make political contributions would risk creating a ‘pay to play’ culture of political corruption, in which companies benefiting from taxpayer-funded federal contracts receive favored treatment in exchange for their political contributions,” argues the complaint, filed last week with the Federal Election Commission.
Preventing that kind of corruption, the complaint adds, is why Congress prohibited companies from making political contributions at any time between the beginning of negotiations over a contract and the completion or termination of that contract. The ban was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. in 2015, with then-Chief Judge Merrick Garland, now President Biden’s attorney general, writing the majority opinion.
It’s also an area of campaign finance law that the FEC, whose six members increasingly deadlock along party lines, has proved willing to enforce. In April, the commission fined a lab equipment manufacturer $56,000 for violating the ban on federal contractors making political donations when it gave $300,000 to Americans for Prosperity Action, a conservative super PAC. The super PAC refunded the donation last year, following a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center.
Daniel Defense has been awarded $1.9 million total in federal contracts, according to last week’s complaint. The $100,000 the company gave to the Gun Owners Action Fund accounts for nearly 90 percent of the super PAC’s funding. Its expenditures, meanwhile, were devoted exclusively to boosting then-Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans of Georgia, in their unsuccessful runoff elections against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael G. Warnock. | 2022-06-14T10:15:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daniel Defense, maker of rifle used in Uvalde massacre, accused of violating campaign finance law - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/daniel-defense-campaign-finance-complaint/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/daniel-defense-campaign-finance-complaint/ |
Jeffrey Clark, a mid-level Justice Department official, wanted Trump to name him attorney general in a plan aimed at potentially overturning the election
By Michael Kranish
Jeffrey Clark, assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division, speaks during a news conference, flanked by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, left, and Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, right, in September 2020. (Susan Walsh/Pool/AP)
He had long been an outspoken figure on the right, working as senior legal analyst for the conservative Brietbart website and co-writing a 2010 book about President Barack Obama titled “The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.” Before joining Clark’s team, he’d served as special counsel to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, according to his Facebook page.
Several days later, Rosen learned that Clark had once again met with Trump -— and once again without informing him in advance, Rosen told the Senate committee. Clark told Rosen that Trump wanted him to consider becoming attorney general. Rosen was livid. “He says he won’t do it again. He did it again,” Rosen recalled. But Rosen said he did not have the authority to fire Clark, as he would have liked to do, because Clark was a presidential appointee. | 2022-06-14T10:15:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside the explosive Oval Office confrontation three days before Jan. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/inside-explosive-oval-office-confrontation-three-days-before-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/inside-explosive-oval-office-confrontation-three-days-before-jan-6/ |
How do you persuade Trump supporters to oppose the ‘big lie’?
Reminding them of their patriotism helped bolster their support for U.S. democracy, including the peaceful transfer of power after an election
Analysis by Gregory A. Petrow
John Transue
Manuel Gutierrez
E.J. Graff
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack holds its first public hearing at the Capitol in Washington on June 9. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The House committee investigating last year’s attack on the Capitol started public hearings last week, continuing its inquiry into the “facts, circumstances, and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex.” Central to this investigation are questions about whether then-President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to attack and disrupt the certification of the election, potentially overturning the result.
Some might argue that Trump’s Jan. 6 speech to his supporters reflects his broader pattern of dismissing presidential norms — including the peaceful transfer of power, which is central to democracy. Before the 2016 election, for instance, Trump would not publicly commit to accepting the results as legitimate if he lost. He made similar comments before the 2020 election, raising questions about whether he would cede power.
Our research in fall 2020 investigated which factors might affect whether American voters would support or oppose Trump remaining in office if he lost — which would violate fundamental democratic principles. Political scientists have long studied public support for democratic norms and procedures, such as allowing disliked groups to hold rallies.
Since political partisanship has been rising over the past decades, some observers have voiced concerns about Americans’ support for authoritarian views, particularly among Republican Party voters. Some research, for instance, finds voters with authoritarian mindsets were more likely to vote for Trump. Other research suggests voters who are more likely to support authoritarianism may be less likely to support democratic norms.
What lies behind mistrust of government and doubts about the election? White racial bias.
What influenced Trump supporters
Given this research, we wondered whether Americans who approved of Trump’s performance as president would be more likely to support him remaining in office, even if he lost the 2020 election. Since many Trump supporters have seemed unwilling to engage with information critical of him, we were interested in testing what messages might influence their support or opposition for violating democratic rules. In particular, we wanted to see whether being prompted to think about their American patriotism might increase their commitment to beliefs about democracy — and counter any impulse to support overthrowing the election results.
Valuing democracy, after all, is one of the core principles of American citizenship and belonging. Symbols of American democracy can inspire and activate feelings and beliefs about abstract concepts like “democracy.” Could the simple act of making respondents think about American patriotism lead some Trump supporters to oppose any effort to overturn the 2020 election?
Why aren’t Americans more alarmed by white-supremacist violence?
To answer this, we conducted a social science experiment on the Saturday just before the election. Our Oct. 31, 2020, sample of 1,433 U.S. adults was not representative of the nation, though we did recruit a demographically diverse group through an opt-in online survey. We used Prolific, a company that hires respondents to participate in research studies conducted over the internet.
We randomly assigned respondents to view one of three stimuli: an image of the American flag, accompanied by the national anthem; an article designed to evoke feelings of American pride; and a politically-neutral video of a fog bank moving over some hills. This design was part of a larger project with other elements.
Participants then answered a series of questions. First, they read the following statement and were asked, using a four-point scale, how appropriate or inappropriate this would be: “Donald Trump loses the 2020 election but refuses to leave office because he claims that he has credible evidence of illegal voting.” We also asked participants whether they supported or opposed “Donald Trump remaining president, if he says he lost the election because of voter fraud.” We combined responses to these questions and divided by two to form a single scale of willingness to let Trump decide whether he should leave office, ranging from zero to four. Four would indicate those who thought Trump remaining in office was both very appropriate and strongly supported it.
Pulled by a ‘MAGA faction,’ Republicans no longer support multiethnic democracy
Cuing patriotism boosted support for democracy
We wondered whether the patriotic cues influenced Trump supporters’ opinions. We measured presidential approval by asking people to choose one of seven categories that ranged from “extremely approve” to “extremely disapprove.” We created a linear statistical model to estimate how the effects of the two patriotic cues differed according to how much respondents approved or disapproved of Trump’s performance as president.
Those who “extremely approved” of Trump had an average score on the scale of three out of four — but when we prompted people to think about their American patriotism, it reduced the score by about a half-point. People who approved less of the president were also less likely to support him violating democratic norms; for them, the patriotic messages did reduce their support for such violations, but by less. Among those who “extremely disapproved” of Trump — resulting in a score of zero — the patriotic cues had no effect, because they didn’t support him remaining in office, so it was impossible to reduce that support.
In other words, when we reminded Trump supporters of their commitment to patriotism, they were less likely to say he should remain in office if he lost the election. Interestingly, patriotic symbols had stronger effects among those who approved more of Trump’s presidency.
Our results suggest that one way to defuse Trump’s false claims of election fraud could be to appeal to American patriotism, reminding people that false claims run counter to the U.S. tradition of democracy and freedom.
Gregory A. Petrow is an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
John Transue is an associate professor in the School of Politics and International Affairs and holds a faculty appointment in the Center for State Policy and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Manuel Gutierrez is a visiting researcher in the Center for State Policy and Leadership at the University of Illinois-Springfield. | 2022-06-14T10:15:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When do Trump voters reject the idea that the 2020 election was stolen? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/jan-6-stolen-election-republicans-trump-patriots/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/jan-6-stolen-election-republicans-trump-patriots/ |
Northern Ireland is politically divided. Maybe that’s changing.
A nonaligned party is winning voters from both sides
Analysis by Cera Murtagh
A sign near the Northern Ireland Assembly building in Belfast on June 13, the day the U.K. published a bill to unilaterally scrap some of the rules governing post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)
Five weeks after a historic election, is Northern Ireland any closer to a functioning government? The May 5 election saw nationalist party Sinn Fein beat the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), forcing it into second place.
But the result appears to have left the region stuck. The DUP refuses to enter government, in protest over the Brexit protocol. The U.K. government has inflamed the dispute by threatening to unilaterally override parts of that agreement. The future of the power-sharing settlement between the nationalists (who want a united Ireland) and the unionists (who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the U.K.) hangs in the balance.
A Sinn Fein win in Northern Ireland could bring big changes
Yet polarization is not the only story of this election. For the first time, a party that is neither nationalist nor unionist has become the third largest in the Northern Ireland Assembly. If the Alliance Party continues to grow in support, it may challenge the underlying logic of a political system based on sharing power between two clashing communities.
A nonaligned party did well in the election
Alliance was formed in 1970 as an explicitly nonsectarian party representing partnership across the nationalist-unionist divide. Until recent years, the party enjoyed only modest success. That has now changed. Alliance increased its vote share by a third to 13.5 percent — more than doubling its Assembly seats from eight to 17. That now ranks the party behind only Sinn Fein (27 seats) and the DUP (25 seats).
Long dismissed as a sideshow, “civic” parties that cross the divide now make up 16.5 percent of the vote and 20 percent of the Assembly’s 90 seats, compared with 7 percent in 1998 — albeit that total is heavily dominated by Alliance. This year’s election result has solidified a third force in Northern Ireland politics.
This result was unlikely, given how Northern Ireland works
This rise is particularly remarkable in the context of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing system. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement put in place a system explicitly designed to accommodate nationalists and unionists — marginalizing those that reach across that divide.
The Assembly requires members to designate as “nationalist,” “unionist” or “other,” but gives only “other” members a secondary role. The two ethno-national blocs have an effective veto on certain legislative votes, which “others” do not. The top (equal) offices of first minister and deputy first minister are theoretically open to “others,” but with steeper hurdles. If Alliance had come second instead of the DUP, it still would have been ineligible for the deputy position that the DUP can now claim (if it wants).
Alliance succeeded by working the system
Alliance pulled off this feat by skillfully navigating the system. Northern Ireland’s power-sharing arrangements disadvantage civic parties, but they are still more flexible than systems in places such as Lebanon and Bosnia. “Other” parties at least have a role in politics.
While Alliance wants to change the power-sharing system, it has also participated in the system and — ironically — benefited from some of its features. The party has taken part in the power-sharing government, and was granted a ministerial position under the proportional system that awards such posts to all parties based on electoral performance.
Alliance has also seized openings because of its nonaligned status. Unionist and nationalist parties rarely trust one another on justice and policing, for instance. This means that the Justice Ministry has been awarded to Alliance outside the normal procedures, giving the party another platform from which to grow.
People are talking up the prospects of a united Ireland. It’s easier said than done.
Northern Ireland’s voters are changing
After campaigning for over 50 years, Alliance’s positions arguably resonate better with a changing electorate.
The proportion of people who identify as “neither unionist nor nationalist” has risen since the Good Friday Agreement and is now the largest of the three designations, at 42 percent in 2020. And 38 percent of those “neither/nors” claimed to support Alliance.
To many voters, other issues beyond ethnic/national identity have become more important. A “socio-moral” cleavage on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion has emerged and complicated the unionist-vs.-nationalist dynamic.
Socioeconomic issues such as health care and cost-of-living concerns dominated the 2019 and 2022 elections. Unionist and nationalist parties certainly have positions on these issues, but the more they dominate debate, the easier it is for civic parties to have their voices heard.
The political dysfunction has heightened the urgency of quality-of-life issues. Northern Ireland had no properly functioning executive from 2017 to 2020, and again after February. Brexit and related political crises have afforded Alliance a platform for its solutions-focused policies.
This may have consequences in the longer term
None of this will change the impasse in Northern Ireland politics. In the medium term, Alliance’s success at the polls will help nonaligned parties call for changes in the power-sharing system, to grant nonaligned parties equal representation. Civic parties want to get rid of the requirement that parties designate themselves as nationalist, unionist or other. Scholars suggest changing how premiers are elected, including making the first minister and deputy first minister equal in name.
In the longer term, “center ground” voters who are instinctively neither nationalist nor unionist now have their own bloc, complicating the referendum on Irish unity that Sinn Fein would like to see. Alliance takes an effectively neutral stance — but as the main party in this bloc, it could play a swing role in that debate. That might prove tricky for the party, given the diversity of positions among its supporters, but it could lead to a less ethnically explosive debate.
Whatever happens, a civic party in Northern Ireland is demanding change from within. This has implications for other political systems that have similar power-sharing arrangements, including in Lebanon, where nonsectarian parties made a breakthrough in recent elections. Civic parties can emerge, grow and drive change in power-sharing systems, especially under flexible rules.
Cera Murtagh is assistant professor of comparative and Irish politics at Villanova University. Her research focuses on civic mobilization in post-conflict societies, and she is writing a book titled “Civic Parties in Divided Societies: Northern Ireland and Beyond.” | 2022-06-14T10:15:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Northern Ireland, are voters looking beyond power sharing? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/northern-ireland-alliance-party-union-republican/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/northern-ireland-alliance-party-union-republican/ |
The research on similar tactics in Spain and Latin America helps explain Putin’s logic
Analysis by Svitlana Chernykh
Francesca Lessa
Oleksii Berezovska runs along a corridor of an empty school where he and his family take shelter at an underground bunker in Sloviansk, Ukraine, on May 27. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
Thousands of Ukrainian children reportedly have gone missing since the start of the war on Feb. 24. A growing body of evidence suggests that some of these children have been forcibly taken to Russia. According to Ukrainian Permanent Representative to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya, more than 234,000 children had been transferred to Russia by early June.
The kidnapping of minors is a violation of both the U.N. Genocide Convention and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet recent research suggests such tactics have stark precedents. In the past, authoritarian regimes in Spain and in Argentina, among others, resorted to child kidnapping to target their opponents — just as these regimes entered their most lethal and repressive phases. These historical cases offer lessons about how Ukraine can hold perpetrators accountable.
What do we know about Ukraine’s missing children?
Rumors about the abduction of Ukrainian minors date to March 19, when the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported that Russian forces had taken 2,389 children from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Simultaneously, Pyotr Andryushchenko, assistant to the mayor of Mariupol, reported that around 4,500 city residents had been taken against their will across the border into Russia.
The Baltic states are also worried about Russia
Although the exact numbers of kidnapped adults and children remains unclear, growing evidence suggests these are large numbers. In mid-April, an Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe report detailed claims by Ukraine officials that Russian troops had deported approximately 500,000 civilians. The numbers have grown since then, with Ukrainian authorities recently estimating that 1.2 million Ukrainians have been deported against their will.
These claims have yet to be verified, and locating specific children and families has proved difficult in wartime. But the reports of forced deportations to Russia and the threat to Ukraine’s most vulnerable citizens have raised alarm in the European parliament.
Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian children’s rights ombudswoman, reportedly met with Vladimir Putin in early March to discuss bringing changes before the State Duma that would simplify Russian law, speeding up the adoption of children from the war zone in Ukraine.
In April, Lvova-Belova confirmed that as many as 1,560 children from Ukraine had arrived in Russia without their parents — and that a number of these children, she said, could be adopted by Russian families. And Russian Sen. Lilia Gumerova openly discussed how Ukrainian children “from the liberated territories” lacked knowledge of the Russian language and announced that special summer camps would be organized to teach them Russian.
Regimes elsewhere also stole children
The abduction and illegal appropriation of minors by dictatorships are hardly new phenomena. Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime, for example, was responsible for the systematic disappearance of approximately 30,000 political opponents — but also “stole” an estimated 500 children born during their mothers’ detention.
Through an illegal network of adoptions, these children were often put in the hands of the families of the same military or police officers who had been involved in the murder of the children’s biological parents. In other instances, babies ended up in orphanages or were adopted by families loyal to the military regime, with false documentation concealing their real origins.
These children were treated as “war booty,” with the military dictatorship’s main goal being “to eliminate any vestige of its leftist enemies and their legacy.” Against all odds, since 1977, the Grandmothers of May Square nongovernmental organization has successfully identified and reunited 130 children with their biological families.
The story of Spain’s “stolen babies” came to light in 2011. The practice of transferring children — thousands of whom were removed from political opponents, placed in care homes or given up for adoption to families loyal to the regimes — started under General Francisco Franco during the 1936—1939 civil war. The exact number of children stolen from families considered politically suspect is unknown, but some estimates are in the tens of thousands.
Advocates describe the tactic of involuntarily taking children from women who had fought on the Republican side as an effort by the Franco regime “to wipe out communist tendencies” — a goal that recalls Putin’s stated ambition to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Spain’s illegal adoption network later turned into a “moneymaking business” that continued until the 1980s.
What are the lessons for Ukraine?
Peak moments of repression by authoritarian regimes involve an extreme dehumanizing of the enemy, which is extended to children, denying their innate innocence. History shows that these periods often coincide with more widespread abuses of human rights. In Spain and Latin America, this meant the mass elimination of opponents, including the stealing of their children.
In its war against Ukraine, Russia appears to be using the abduction of Ukrainian children to put extra pressure on the Ukrainian population and the government to surrender.
Until recently, perpetrators of crimes against children rarely were held accountable. However, the tide is turning. In 2012, a Buenos Aires federal court sentenced former Argentine dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone to 50 and 15 years in prison, respectively, for overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners.
In the recently published book “The Condor Trials,” one of us has identified at least 45 criminal proceedings for transnational human rights violations in 1970s South America. Among them, an Argentine court sentenced four former intelligence officers to life in prison in 2020 for crimes against humanity that included stealing and concealing two Uruguayan children.
As Ukraine begins to hold perpetrators accountable for war crimes, these historical cases and recent trials in South America for transnational human rights violations serve as an example of how the truth eventually comes to light. And, most importantly, these cases illustrate how individuals responsible for the abduction of children can be held accountable in a court of law.
Svitlana Chernykh is senior lecturer at Australian National University. Her work has been published in the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies and Political Research Quarterly, among others.
Francesca Lessa is lecturer at the University of Oxford. Her work has been published in the Human Rights Quarterly, International Journal of Transitional Justice and Latin American Research Review. She is the author of “The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America” (Yale University Press, 2022). | 2022-06-14T10:15:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Authoritarian regimes in Spain and Argentina treated children as 'war booty.' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/ukraine-kidnaped-children-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/ukraine-kidnaped-children-russia/ |
What are red-flag laws?
If an emerging bipartisan Senate deal on guns becomes law, one of the most significant provisions will be a federal push for states to set up red-flag laws. These laws allow a judge to take away someone’s gun based on the suspicion that they will use it to hurt themselves or others.
It’s an emerging approach to gun violence that is popular because it’s proactive rather than reactive. And it’s significant that 10 Republican senators, along with 10 Democrats, have signed a statement indicating they are on board to push these laws at the state level: “Our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.”
Here’s what to know about red-flag laws, how they work, and the political and legal debates around them.
Red-flag laws allow police, family members or even doctors to petition a court to take away someone’s firearms for up to a year if they feel that person is a threat to themselves or others. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia — including two Republican-controlled states, Florida and Indiana — have some form of this law on the books.
That’s in contrast to federal law and laws in most other states that require someone to have been convicted of a felony, committed to a mental institution or on the receiving end of a domestic violence protection order before they can lose their right to a firearm, even temporarily.
Under red-flag laws, you don’t have to have a criminal record or a history of mental illness to lose your gun temporarily. If a judge is persuaded by an argument that you are a danger to yourself or others, police can take your guns away for days, weeks, months or a year.
You’ll also hear these laws called “extreme risk protection orders” — a term that gun policy experts favor because it doesn’t carry stigma for those on the receiving end of a petition.
State implementation of these laws varies widely. Florida’s version is relatively narrow, allowing only law enforcement to petition the courts to take away someone’s guns. Maryland and D.C. allow mental health providers to petition. New York allows school officials, and Hawaii allows co-workers.
Do these laws work?
The consensus is that they do seem to work when properly enforced — though it’s hard to prove, because the absence of gun violence is the measure. A study of California’s law after it was enacted in 2016 found at least 21 instances in which a gun was taken away from someone threatening a mass shooting. Most were White men, and most had made explicit threats.
In a state with an entirely different political culture, Florida, judges have used a red-flag law to act more than 8,000 times over the past four years to temporarily take away people’s guns, CNN recently reported: “In just the last two months, [federal judge Denise Pomponio] has taken away the firearm privileges of dozens of people,” including a dad who allegedly threatened to “shoot everyone” at his son’s school and a woman who police say attempted suicide.
An FBI study cited by the gun-control advocacy group Giffords found that the average shooter displays several concerning behaviors and experiences, including dealing with multiple stressors in the year before the attack, taking a week or so to prepare for the attack, having troubling personal interactions or sharing their violent intent with someone.
Gun policy experts also praise red-flag laws for another reason: preventing suicide. Without these kinds of laws, a parent, spouse or other relative doesn’t have much recourse to prevent violence that they fear is imminent, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health say: “State laws often do not provide a clear legal authority to restrict access to guns before a tragedy occurs.”
Suicide is the No. 2 leading cause of death for teens, and Johns Hopkins researchers argue that red-flag laws can make it so “youth don’t have easy access to guns when they are most at risk.”
“You see very consistently the types of behaviors and the patterns and the expressions of harm that I think most reasonable people would agree, gosh, there’s something going on with this person right now, and it’s just not a good idea for them to have access to a gun,” Shannon Frattaroli, a professor at Johns Hopkins who studies and advocates for these laws, told Axios.
The argument against these laws
Gun rights groups — from the National Rifle Association (NRA) down — generally oppose these laws. Their main argument is that they violate an individual’s “due process,” because often the initial petition doesn’t require the person to be present in court. Family members or police have used texts, voice mails or notebooks belonging to the gun owner to make their case.
“Due process is a concern to be taken seriously, making sure people do have a chance to be heard,” said Jake Charles, executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University.
But he said these laws mimic child-custody cases, in which an emergency hearing may be held if someone is in imminent danger, and then another hearing can take place later to hash out the details: “It’s squarely within what the Supreme Court has established is someone’s due process,” Charles said.
Officials must detect and act on concerning behaviors for the laws to work. New York has a red-flag law, but the alleged Buffalo shooter, then 17, had police called on him because he made threatening statements at school — and his rifle was not taken away, because police didn’t petition the court for it. After the Buffalo shooting, the state’s Democrats quickly passed an expanded red-flag law that will also allow mental health professionals to petition the court and require social media companies to flag credible threats of violence.
Why some Republicans support red-flag laws
In 2018, Florida Republicans were on the leading edge of this after the massacre at a high school in Parkland. The warning signs were so obvious — the shooter had been the subject of dozens of 911 calls before he carried out the attack — that lawmakers felt they had to act.
“I knew the time for thoughts and prayers, although necessary, was not enough,” Bill Galvano (R), the Florida lawmaker who introduced the legislation after touring the devastated high school, told CNN.
In addition, some gun rights groups support these laws because they don’t target all gun owners (in the way of, for example, expanded background checks) and instead let the government intervene in potentially dangerous situations.
A conservative sheriff in Florida, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, also defended the law to CNN as a “cooling-off period” rather than an infringement on the Second Amendment.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who was governor at the time, signed the red-flag law alongside other gun-control measures, over the objections of the NRA.
Today, no Republican — even Scott — is suggesting implementing this on a federal level. But they are okay with nudging states toward these kinds of laws, with grants. Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a bill to do just that, and a bipartisan group in the Senate seems to have found 10 Republican senators to support this, among other narrow measures. Their approval, plus that of all 48 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with the Democrats, would be enough to overcome a filibuster by conservative senators. | 2022-06-14T10:15:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Red flag laws, explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/what-is-a-red-flag-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/what-is-a-red-flag-law/ |
Thousands of Southern Baptists meet to vote on sex abuse, new president
Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Southern Baptists vote during the denomination's annual meeting in Nashville in June 2021. (William DeShazer for The Washington Post)
ANAHEIM, CALIF. — Nearly 10,000 members of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination are expected to gather in Anaheim, Calif., this week to discuss how Southern Baptists should respond to the shocking findings of an independent investigation into the handling of sex abuse cases. Members of the Southern Baptist Convention are expected to vote on proposals, as well as elect the next president of the convention.
In May, Southern Baptist leaders published a report detailing a years-long coverup of sex abuse within their denomination. For 15 years, the report alleged, leaders said they were not able to compile a database of sex abuse offenders — but they were secretly keeping a list of their own. The same week they released their report, they also released the secret list, which consisted of hundreds of names of alleged abusers, including many convicted of sex abuse crimes.
Andrew Hébert, a pastor of about 1,000 Southern Baptists in Amarillo, Tex., who sits on the SBC’s sexual abuse task force, said the task force has contacted about a dozen sex abuse survivors who were mentioned in the report and asked them if they could be apologized to by name from the stage. He said Southern Baptists will vote on a proposed resolution that will focus on lament and repentance regarding sex abuse and recommendations by the task force.
“I’m feeling very optimistic. I think Southern Baptists are ready to do the right thing,” Hébert said. “My sense is that this is a recognition that these are common-sense reforms.”
Like other conservative evangelical groups across the country, Southern Baptists have been divided in recent years over issues such as racial justice, female preachers and a fear of liberalism overtaking the denomination. They meet annually in cities across the country. This year, about 8,800 people preregistered, drawing from mostly California and other states where many of the bigger Southern Baptist churches are located, such as Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.
The denomination, which shuns a hierarchical structure and is heavily democratic, passes resolutions every year that often signal the direction thousands of its members want to go. In 2021, the convention passed a resolution on abortion abolition, which called for ending abortion in all cases, with no exceptions. In previous years, there have been flash points over “alt-right white supremacy” and critical race theory.
This time, Southern Baptists who are gathered, called “messengers,” are expected to consider the overhauls proposed by its sex abuse task force, including spending $3 million to set up a website to track abusive pastors and church workers. The denomination’s relief arm, Send Relief, announced it would designate $4 million in existing funding to back the recommendations, including $1 million in survivor care.
The report published in May also suggested that a prominent Southern Baptist leader, Johnny Hunt, was considered “credibly accused” of sexually assaulting a woman during a beach vacation in 2010, a month after his tenure as SBC president ended. He has denied abuse allegations on Twitter. The allegations rocked the Southern Baptist world because Hunt was previously beloved across the denomination and mentored young pastors.
Griffin Gulledge, a pastor who leads a congregation of more than 200 people in Madison, Ga., and is in Anaheim to cast votes this week, said he thinks that most Southern Baptists believe that the sex abuse coverup was conducted by a small group of Southern Baptist leaders but that the vast majority want to be part of the solution.
“Everybody I’m talking to is saying, ‘We want to get this right,’” he said. “And getting it right means addressing what we’ve done in the past, reforming our systems and sending a message to survivors that sorry we didn’t previously.”
Messengers are also expected to elect their next leader, which could shape the direction of the 13.7 million-member denomination. The top candidates include rural Texas pastor Bart Barber, who has been a vocal advocate of sex abuse reforms. While he is still theologically conservative, he is seen as more centrist within the denomination.
Another leading candidate, Florida pastor Tom Ascol, on the other hand, attacked the third-party investigation after the firm Guidepost Solutions earlier this month tweeted in support of the LGBTQ community.
“This is who we gave our tithe dollars to? I & 47,000 other SBC pastors, plus millions of faithful members feel betrayed,” Ascol tweeted. “We paid $millions to a LGBT-affirming & proud organization to guide us on moral & spiritual matters!? Is there no fear of God?”
In a statement, Guidepost spokesman Montieth M. Illingworth said the organization’s tweet reaffirms its anti-discrimination position.
“We believe our anti-discrimination position only strengthens our ability to conduct independent, fair and bias free investigations like our SBC investigation,” the statement said. “Moreover, our work for faith-based organizations seeks to be consistent with faith principles and practices. In the Guidepost Solutions SBC EC report, we consulted with Baptist polity experts to ensure that our recommendations were consistent with Baptist polity and practice.”
Ascol has the backing of the far-right wing of the denomination, called the Conservative Baptist Network, and if he were elected or received a substantial number of votes, it could indicate the future direction of the SBC. Ascol is part of a movement of abortion abolitionists who believe the procedure should be illegal even if a pregnant person’s life is endangered or in cases of rape or incest.
Some of the sex abuse survivors named in the report said they plan to be in Anaheim to press for change. Several of them recently released a list of recommendations, including creating a compensation fund for survivors, an independent commission to receive abuse reports and a monument to abuse survivors outside SBC offices in Nashville.
Southern Baptists could also decide to cut ties with California megachurch Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches in the denomination, which recently announced plans to hire a female teaching pastor. Rick Warren, author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” announced plans to retire this fall and named Andy Wood, a San Francisco pastor, as his successor. Wood’s wife, Stacie, would also become a teaching pastor at Saddleback Church in Orange County, joining three other female pastors who were ordained last year. The ordinations renewed a battle among Southern Baptists over whether women can be considered pastors, as opposed to having them serve as preachers or Bible teachers.
During last year’s meeting, a Louisiana pastor made a motion for the SBC to “break fellowship” with Saddleback, as well as all other churches that ordained female pastors. The motion is being considered by a committee, which can recommend expelling churches, and could be voted on by Southern Baptists this week.
Official business will take place Tuesday and Wednesday, though most of the major votes are expected to happen Tuesday. | 2022-06-14T10:16:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Southern Baptists meet to vote on sex abuse, new president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/14/southern-baptists-sex-abuse-reform-vote/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/14/southern-baptists-sex-abuse-reform-vote/ |
Personal chef Mel Moore dishes out sautéed jumbo shrimp and vegetables for the Commanders’ Antonio Gibson and his girlfriend, Victoria Taylor, at the running back's home. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Seemingly everyone in the team facility has noticed Gibson’s leaner frame. In April, when running backs coach Randy Jordan saw Gibson’s slimmer face, he exclaimed, “Hey, man, you’ve been working!” Offensive coordinator Scott Turner, like others, attributed the growth to Gibson’s maturing ahead of his third season — “having personal accountability … to go be the best version of himself.” Jordan and Turner seem excited about how a fitter Gibson could help the Commanders’ retooled offense.
Last year was not the first time Gibson had gotten heavier than he had liked. As a high school star in suburban Atlanta, he had been able to eat whatever he wanted, but as a freshman at East Central Community College in Decatur, Miss., he said, “the metabolism started wearing out.” Gibson went from about 205 pounds to 220. A wide receiver at the time, he learned how to use that extra weight as power, and in 2018 he transferred to Memphis, where he parlayed an impressive senior season into becoming a third-round draft pick in 2020.
“It’s not completely bad,” he added of the film. “I can still move. I can still run. But it’s just — I know what I can be. I’m so used to being twitchy … and I feel like I lost a good bit of that. So I wanted to cut some weight and get back to that and show people what I’m really capable of.”
Svrluga: During Chase Young’s long road back, performance will outweigh personality
For the first step in a broader overhaul of Gibson’s diet, John recommended a “liver detox.” He wanted to eliminate all processed and refined foods, as well as sodium, nuts, dairy, eggs, grains and animal protein. Gibson had never really liked vegetables — his girlfriend, Victoria Taylor, once asked when he ate them, and he replied, “When you give ‘em to me” — and now John wanted Gibson to eat exclusively plant-based foods for 11 days as the opening stage of a lengthier, Standard Process “purification program.”
In mid-March, Moore said, he put the plan in action by flying to Katy, Tex., where Gibson was training. Over the years, Moore had become an expert in getting athletes to eat foods they needed but disliked. Moore discovered what worked for Gibson — kale chips, sautéed mushrooms with garlic, onion and paprika seasoning — and followed a booklet with foods color-coded by their risk to inflame Gibson’s liver, such as green (apples, black beans), yellow (rice, bananas) and red (dairy, alcohol, coffee). He slowly reintroduced animal protein.
The regime was intense. John prescribed Gibson eat pink Himalayan salt, not regular salt; fresh fish, not farm-raised fish; and fruits low on the glycemic index, such as blackberries and cherries. He drank three to five protein shakes per day with “thermogenics,” a heat-producing supplement intended to spur his metabolism. He had a long list of other supplements — seven “cleanse” capsules three times per day, three fiber capsules three times per day, five capsules of an herbal and vitamin mixture two times per day.
If Gibson was tempted to crack, Moore couldn’t tell. But, in an interview, Gibson admitted he missed sweet wine. During the season, he had begun unwinding after each game with a glass, which was now forbidden.
“I had nothing in the house but like water and snacks,” Gibson said. “If I had [junk food] in the house, I would've cracked. I would've snuck and grabbed it.”
“That ain’t nothin’,” Gibson replied. “Pringles and gummies — I wasn’t tripping about that.”
“[You] did say one time, though: ‘Man, I’m sooooo hungry. I got Pringles in there,’ ” Taylor said.
As Moore cleared the plates after dinner, Gibson said he wanted to arrive to training camp between 220 and 225 pounds. He thought, with a smile, that he would have his burst back. Then, as the faucet turned on for the dishes, he went back to the couch for the final scenes of “Forrest Gump,” one more day that he had stayed on track. | 2022-06-14T10:16:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Antonio Gibson’s rigorous plan to lose ‘bad weight’ and be more explosive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/antonio-gibson-diet-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/antonio-gibson-diet-commanders/ |
A woman serves thieboudienne, also known as ceebu jën, near the Kermel market in Dakar, Senegal, in December. (Carmen Abd Ali/AFP/Getty Images)
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — This was meant to be the time when Jayde Koen and her generation could finally settle into a better life.
A mixed-race South African in Cape Town, she was 9 years old in 1994 when the country’s first democratic election ended White minority rule. Koen was the first in her family to graduate from college, then become a lawyer. She married and worked hard with her husband to build a middle-class life — three kids, a house, two cars.
Today her family is struggling to keep up. The covid-19 pandemic that first hammered South Africa in early 2020 brought hard lockdowns, record unemployment and economic dysfunction as global supply chains shut down. Russia’s war in Ukraine this year has led to spikes in fuel prices and the cost of everyday commodities such as wheat, barley and sunflower oil.
Stories like Koen’s are happening throughout the world, but the crisis is especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, where inflation is the highest it has been since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to the International Monetary Fund. Families already on the brink are slipping further into poverty, while many who had joined the region’s fast-growing middle class are falling behind.
The savings Koen built slowly over the years are dwindling. Her husband, who works in the auto industry, hasn’t had a wage increase since the start of the pandemic. Earnings from his second job repairing cars on weekends once paid for family outings and vacations; now they are spent on groceries.
“We’re just pushing through,” Koen said, “hoping we can breathe again soon.”
She is cooking less to conserve power — with electricity costs up 14 percent compared with last year — and trying to make enough food each time to last several days. With gas prices in South Africa up nearly 30 percent year over year, Koen has traded in her vehicle for a smaller fuel-efficient model and travels outside rush hour twice a week when she goes to the office.
At the dawn of the 21st century, Africans were seeing unprecedented upward mobility. By 2011, the African Development Bank estimated that the continent’s middle class had tripled over three decades to 313 million people, or more than 34 percent of the population at the time. Years of strong economic growth allowed many people to transition away from traditional agriculture to more stable, salaried jobs.
From South Africa to West Africa, that stability is now threatened by the lingering impacts of a global health crisis and galloping inflation.
Senegal was forced to close its borders during the pandemic and suffered a massive loss of tourism revenue. Exploration on new oil and gas fields, which was supposed to help power the country’s economic future, was delayed.
In the capital of Dakar, Aminata Gueye, 34, a single mother of two young sons, is unable to make ends meet despite having a good job in the private sector.
“Things are getting tougher financially,” said Gueye, who works as an executive assistant at a company that builds houses. “My parents help me at the end of every month in spite of my monthly pay, otherwise we just can’t make it.”
Gueye struggles to afford the cornflakes and juice her children have come to expect at breakfast every morning. She thinks the government should invest more in local products so consumers are less reliant on expensive imported goods. “This way, we can have the same quality for lower prices,” she said.
Saliou Diouf, 21, works at Dakar’s Kermel market, where he began as a bag carrier and now fills shopping orders for wealthy clients. “Business is always better until prices go up. Then we lose clients,” he said.
Diouf said the pandemic had already taken a toll on the market. This year, traffic has slowed to a crawl: “Today, I may have five clients, tomorrow two. I can never predict. Sometimes I go all day without seeing anyone.”
Serigne Bamba Gaye, an expert in international development, said the longer the downturn lasts, the greater the odds of regional unrest.
“This can lead to social problems with disputes, riots, a rise in tensions that can weaken African states,” said Gaye. “Africa is at a crossroads and we must find ways and means to stop this inflationary spiral.”
Kevin Urama, acting chief economist at the African Development Bank Group, agrees, but he says debt-saddled governments are limited in what they can do to protect their people from soaring prices.
“It’s like having an earthquake followed by aftershocks,” Urama said about inflation coming on the heels of the pandemic. “All of these global head winds are creating huge challenges for countries. For households, inflation is eating deeper into their pockets.”
At My Father’s House, a community kitchen in Cape Town’s southern suburbs, Pastor Shadrick Valayadum has spent more than 20 years feeding the homeless and the destitute. During the pandemic, people from all walks of life began turning to “Pastor Shaddie” for a hot meal.
“There were people in affluent areas, who lived in big houses, who we never thought would call on us. Then they did,” he said.
Demand for food assistance fell as South Africa’s economy began to rebound at the end of last year; now, he said, rising prices are again pushing people to the brink, and his kitchen is struggling to meet the need.
“We can’t use cooking oil anymore [because] it’s too expensive,” Pastor Shaddie said. “We use water, mix it with sugar and caramelize it in the pot, and then once it starts to brown you throw in water and then you throw in onions.”
The charity used to be able to afford meat four times a week. These days, most of the meals it prepares are vegetarian. It is a vital lifeline for the 1,500 people it feeds every day, a number the pastor expects will keep growing.
“Families can’t feed themselves anymore,” he said. “People are trying to catch up and catch up and catch up, and they can’t.”
Tall reported from Dakar, Senegal. | 2022-06-14T10:16:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Africa’s middle class struggles to keep pace with rising inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/africa-inflation-economy-oil-food/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/africa-inflation-economy-oil-food/ |
‘How to Murder Your Husband’ writer sentenced to life for killing husband
Romance writer Nancy Crampton Brophy, left, watches proceedings in court in Portland, Ore., on April 4, 2022. She was sentenced Monday, June 13, 2022, to life in prison with the possibility of parole for murdering her husband. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP)
The morning he was murdered, Daniel Brophy’s body lay inside the kitchen of the Portland, Ore., culinary institute where he worked. One of the students who discovered his body described on Monday the chef’s final facial expression as “utterly heartbroken.”
Clarinda Perez, the student, attributed the chef’s green-eyed, grief-stricken look to the last thing she said he’d seen before two bullets pierced his spine and heart: his wife, Nancy Crampton Brophy, holding a 9mm Glock pistol.
Last month, after a seven-week trial, Crampton Brophy — a 71-year-old romance writer best known for penning a 2011 blog post titled “How to Murder Your Husband” — was found guilty of second-degree murder. On Monday, she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years for the 2018 murder of her then-63-year-old husband.
Four years later, Brophy’s loved ones are still reeling from the loss. They described the pain of knowing his grandchild will never meet him — all because Brophy was killed by the woman for whom he’d cooked meals, washed clothes, and brought into his family’s fold for 27 years.
“You opted to lie, steal, cheat, fraud, ultimately killed the man that was, for some reason still unbeknownst to me, your biggest fan,” Nathaniel Stillwater, Brophy’s son, said in a statement before the sentence was handed down. “You executed my father in an act of coldblooded, premeditated murder. The man that did everything for you.”
Over the course of Crampton Brophy’s trial, which began April 4, prosecutors with the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office outlined for jurors how they believed she plotted the killing of the beloved chef at the Oregon Culinary Institute. They allege Crampton Brophy bought a ghost gun and attempted to collect life-insurance policies, mirroring things she’d written about in her romantic suspense novels.
‘How to Murder Your Husband’ writer on trial for allegedly killing husband
The Brophys’ marriage appeared idyllic from the outside — the “kind of relationship that made me personally think marriage may not be a bad idea,” Susan Estrada, the writer’s niece, testified in the trial. The couple built a quiet life in the Portland suburbs, where chickens frolicked in the backyard, hot meals were served every night and a “fabulous” vegetable garden bloomed, Crampton Brophy wrote on her website.
But cracks started forming when it came to the couple’s financial situation, prosecutors said. Money became tight the year before Brophy’s death — that’s when his wife hatched a deadly plan to collect the life-insurance policies, they said.
The alleged plot involved a kit to build a ghost gun, the type of untraceable weapon that people can assemble at home. But after having trouble putting it together, Crampton Brophy allegedly bought a pistol. Prosecutors argued that she replaced the gun’s slide and barrel with one she ordered on eBay — making the gun’s shell casings appear not to match the weapon she owned.
On June 2, 2018, Crampton Brophy drove in her minivan to the culinary institute shortly before her husband arrived at work, surveillance cameras showed. When he got there around 7:20 a.m., the chef poured ice and water into buckets he was filling by the commercial sink. That’s when he was shot dead.
Students at the now-defunct cooking institute found his bleeding body about an hour later. Perez, the student who gave a statement at Crampton Brophy’s sentencing, tried to administer CPR. Others called 911. Another one “courageously cleared out the kitchen, so no one would have to see Chef Brophy the way that [his wife] left him,” Perez said.
Shortly after her husband’s death, Crampton Brophy sought to collect $1.4 million in life insurance. That, prosecutors alleged, was the motive behind the slaying.
Police never found the gun that killed Crampton Brophy’s husband. During the trial, prosecutors posited that Crampton Brophy had replaced the gun’s barrel and then discarded it to throw off investigators. Her defense team, on the other hand, suggested someone else might’ve have killed Brophy — perhaps during a botched robbery.
Through it all, Crampton Brophy has maintained her innocence. When she took the stand, Crampton Brophy said she and her husband had both purchased life-insurance policies as part of their retirement planning. The weapons she bought, she said, were part of research she was doing for her upcoming novel — one about a woman in a toxic relationship who gradually began acquiring gun parts to gain the upper hand over her abusive lover.
But the jury was not convinced — instead, it unanimously found her guilty on May 25 after eight hours of deliberation.
An upcoming hearing for restitution is slated for August. In the meantime, Judge Christopher Ramras said he hoped the sentencing could bring closure to the loved ones of a man he’d come to know as “Chef Brophy” throughout the trial.
“I think the thing that you can take away, which I hope gives you some small measure of solace, is that he was a mentor and a teacher to many and had an impact over a lot of people’s lives and hopefully they will turn and have an impact on others themselves as they teach,” Ramras added. | 2022-06-14T11:05:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nancy Brophy sentenced to life in prison for murder of husband - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/how-to-murder-your-husband-life-sentence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/how-to-murder-your-husband-life-sentence/ |
Fans told Lizzo a word in her song was offensive. She changed the lyrics.
Lizzo attends the 2022 Met Gala celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York City. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
One word in Lizzo’s new song “Grrrls” stood out to disability advocate Hannah Diviney: “spaz.”
In the track released Friday from her upcoming album, “Special,” Lizzo talks about going “off the deep end.”
“I think ableism is unfortunately so well ingrained in our society that people don’t always realize when it’s being used, which speaks to the lack of representation and visibility of people with disabilities worldwide,” she said. “If that improved, conversations like this one might not need to happen.”
Several activists noted that the word has been normalized, which is hurtful to those whose diagnoses involve spasms. Imani Barbarin, a disability advocate with a large social media following, posted on TikTok that her spasms are so severe, she sometimes gets nauseated and vomits.
“I’m in so much pain that I can’t sleep if I’m in a really bad spasm,” she said. “I have watched on multiple occasions — without my will or without my brain signaling it to — my leg twist out of place within its socket and stay there for hours because of a spasm.”
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“Let me make one thing clear: I never want to promote derogatory language,” she continued. “As a fat black woman in America, I’ve had many hurtful words used against me, so I understand the power words can have (whether intentionally or in my case unintentionally).”
“We still have a long way to go in making things better for people with disabilities everywhere but this honestly gives me hope that the big changes are within reach,” she added. | 2022-06-14T11:05:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lizzo apologizes, rereleases 'Grrrls' after using ableist slur - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/lizzo-ableist-slur-lyric-apology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/lizzo-ableist-slur-lyric-apology/ |
Idaho police get death threats after Patriot Front arrests, chief says
Police in Coeur d’Alene have also received threats to publish officers’ personal information on the internet
Coeur d’Alene police said June 13 they had received death threats after arresting 31 members of white supremacist group Patriot Front near an LGBTQ Pride event. (Video: Reuters)
Police in Idaho said they’ve received death threats after arresting dozens of suspected members of a white supremacist group right before they allegedly planned to riot at an LGBTQ Pride event Saturday.
Coeur d’Alene police received about 150 calls in the two days after making the arrests, Chief Lee White told reporters Monday at a news conference. In about half of them, callers identified themselves and praised the police department for stopping the 31 men, who are accused of having ties to Patriot Front, which the Anti-Defamation League identifies as a hate group.
“And the other 50 percent — who are completely anonymous and want nothing more than to scream and yell at us and use some really choice words — offered death threats against myself and other members of the police department merely for doing our jobs,” White said, adding that they’ve gotten calls from as far away as Norway.
White said the department had also received threats to dox police officers, or maliciously publish their personal information on the internet.
On Saturday afternoon, Coeur d’Alene police, acting on a tip from a 911 caller, pulled over a U-Haul truck less than a quarter-mile from a park that was hosting a Pride event, White said. The men were clad in riot gear that included shields, shin guards, helmets, a smoke grenade and long metal poles like those used by some U.S. Capitol rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, White told The Washington Post on Sunday.
Police found an operational plan detailing what the would-be rioters intended to do once they arrived at the event, the chief said. It included how to confront people and when to use the smoke grenade, he added.
“I have no doubt in my mind that had that van stopped at the park or … near the park that we still would have ended up in a riot situation,” White said Monday at the news conference.
The threats against the police department and the Pride event follow warnings from the Department of Homeland Security that violence could erupt in coming months as the country faces midterm elections and a Supreme Court decision on abortion rights, the Associated Press reported. It was the latest push by DHS to alert people to the rising danger posed by domestic violent extremists, a shift after the agency’s focus on the threat of international terrorism following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Experts are also warning that white supremacist groups are building thriving communities on social media to recruit new members, the AP reported last week. They traffic in homophobia, sexism and conspiracy theories, escaping detection by authorities through the use of insinuation and coded hashtags, according to experts.
Police didn’t know what they would find after getting the tip on Saturday and then pulling over the U-Haul, White said Monday. While police knew from the caller’s information that they probably would be facing a “crowd of people … who might pose some difficulty for us,” they were surprised by the amount of equipment the men were carrying.
“That level of preparation is not something you see every day,” White said, adding that “it was clear to all of us that there was some ill intent there.”
On Monday, White praised the tipster and encouraged others who witness suspicious behavior to do the same. “This one concerned citizen rather than pulling out their phone and videotaping this for their 15 minutes [of fame] on YouTube, or Snapchatting it or something like that, took the time to call 911 and report some suspicious activity.”
“And as a result, we likely stopped a riot from happening downtown,” he said, adding that the caller’s identity will be protected. “Since myself and other members of our agency have been receiving threats, including death threats, I think it’s appropriate to withhold that person’s information.”
The Anti-Defamation League identifies Patriot Front as a white supremacist group that “justifies its ideology of hate and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of its members’ European ancestors.” One of Patriot Front’s hallmarks is staging “flash demonstrations” across the country, according to the ADL.
Each of the men arrested Saturday was charged with criminal conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor, The Post reported. By Sunday, all of them had bonded out of jail while their cases proceed.
Nick Parker, Kim Bellware and Bryan Pietsch contributed to this report. | 2022-06-14T11:06:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Idaho police get death threats after Patriot Front arrests, chief says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/police-patriot-front-death-threats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/police-patriot-front-death-threats/ |
Let’s talk about ‘Alien’ and other works that blend sci-fi and horror
“The Thing,” The Ring series and so many more ...
Review by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar
(Titan Publishing; Vertical; Tor Nightfire)
In space, no one can hear you scream. Legend has it that this famous tagline was coined by writer Christopher Fowler, whose horror and crime novels, such as the long-running Bryant & May series, are well worth seeking out. Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and films such as “Predator” — which is getting a new entry this year called “Prey” — show that, at least on the big screen, science fiction and horror go together like lox and bagels. But what about in novels?
Silvia: “Alien” set the template for many science-fiction films and books to come, but the Ridley Scott classic probably owes a debt of gratitude to Mario Bava’s 1965 film “Planet of the Vampires” and “The Space Vampires” (1976) by Colin Wilson. Wilson’s novel went on to be adapted in its own right as “Lifeforce” by Dan O’Bannon, who was also the screenwriter behind “Alien” — it’s a curious book that’s summarized by its title: A group of explorers find an alien spacecraft that looks like a floating castle, with giant, desiccated bats inside. Cue mayhem.
“Dead Silence” by S.A. Barnes is a recently published science-fiction novel that follows this same template. Here, a crew stumbles onto a luxury cruiser that went missing years before, proving that it’s always a bad idea to heed emergency beacons in space. And, speaking of “Alien” and its long-running franchise, V. Castro, who has published several indie horror novels, has written the forthcoming “Aliens: Vasquez,” which zeroes in on one of the coolest characters in this sci-fi horror film series. I’m not normally one for tie-ins, but Castro is one lean, mean horror writer.
Let’s talk about Hollywood as inspiration for great fantasy novels
Lavie: Alien’s DNA goes back even further! A.E. Van Vogt’s “Black Destroyer” (1939) concerns a ship landing on an alien planet that picks up a lifeform that starts killing the crew one by one. Sound familiar? According to science-fiction scholar David Ketterer, Van Vogt ended up collecting an out-of-court settlement from the studio decades later.
The Golden Age also gave us “The Thing,” from John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 story “Who Goes There?” Also, Judith Merril’s “That Only A Mother” (1948), is both touching and deeply unsettling as a woman gives birth in a post-nuclear war world. And though Pamela Zoline never published frequently, her “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967) remains a classic of the New Wave in its claustrophobic portrayal of a housewife preparing breakfast for her children. It was collected in “The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories” (1988). So much of what seems new today in science fiction builds on the work that came before it, and writers like Meryll and Zoline deserve reintroduction to the modern reader.
Science fiction has often been ambivalent about the future. Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth’s classic “The Space Merchants” (1952) is both prophetic and horrific in its examination of environmental change, the dream of going into space and the people who sell that dream. It feels more relevant today than it did when it was just science fiction. And the scene in which a giant mass of chicken flesh nicknamed “Chicken Little” is endlessly harvested is horrific enough to still haunt me today.
But the story I keep going back to is Avram Davidson’s “Or All the Seas with Oysters” (1958), collected in his 1962 collection of the same name. It concerns a man working in a bicycle shop who begins to suspect the everyday objects around him are really predatory organisms, with a life cycle that leads from pins (larvae) to coat hangers to bicycles — and the discovery means death. It’s not just an extremely effective marriage of science fiction and horror, but a comment on modernity.
Swedish author Karin Tidbeck’s masterful horror collection “Jagannath” (2012) riffs on the idea of strange evolution in “Brita’s Holiday Village” and Finland’s Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen looks at the secret lives of trains in “Where the Trains Turn” (2014), translated by Liisa Rantalaiho. There is something endlessly disconcerting about the way we anthropomorphize objects, and writers have tapped into that for decades.
Silvia: “Ring” (1991) by Koji Suzuki is one of those novels that many people don’t typically associate with science fiction because its film adaptations place it in the realm of the supernatural. But Suzuki’s novels veer more and more into science fiction as the series goes on, which makes sense since the premise of the book is a videotape going “viral” and causing the death of anyone who watches it within a few days. VHS tapes are probably quaint for today’s readers and some elements of “The Ring” have not aged well, but it remains a creepy title by one of Japan’s masters of horror.
Another book that marries horror of the viral sort and science fiction is “I Am Legend” (1954), the classic by Richard Matheson that inspired “Night of the Living Dead.” I remember reading it as a teen and biting my nails as hero Robert Neville attempts to survive in a post-pandemic world where vampires roam the streets at night. At about 50,000 words, it’s a reminder that many classic science-fiction novels used to be rather short, and still packed a punch. So, what’s your favorite science-fiction horror tale, dear reader?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books include “Mexican Gothic,” “Velvet Was the Night,” “The Return of the Sorceress” and the forthcoming “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.” Lavie Tidhar’s most recent novels are “The Escapement” and “The Hood.” | 2022-06-14T11:45:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Best books that combine science fiction and horror - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/14/science-fiction-horror/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/14/science-fiction-horror/ |
James Bullard, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, reacts at the 2019 Monetary and Financial Policy Conference at Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019. Bullard said U.S. policy makers are facing too-low rates of inflation and the risk of a greater-than-expected slowdown, suggesting hed favor an additional interest rate cut as insurance. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Jim Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, has been warning for months that the central bank risked losing credibility if it didn’t hurry to tighten monetary policy. He was the lone member in the Fed’s last plot of policy projections to pencil in a fed funds rate above 3% by the end of the year, and investors largely brushed him off as the “the biggest hawk” on the committee. He was right, and now the Bullard case is becoming the market’s base case.
Bullard was vindicated, of course, after inflation surged to a new four-decade high in May and survey data showed consumers’ long-term inflation expectations are drifting higher, a telltale sign that elevated inflation is at risk of becoming entrenched. Now, the Fed will have to get to Bullard’s levels anyway but without the benefit of a fast start. He was correct to lobby colleagues to start raising rates by 0.50 percentage point in March and right again when he said that the Federal Open Market Committee needed to keep 0.75 percentage point increases on the table.
Much has gone wrong in the past several months, and a lot can still be traced to supply chain dynamics and the way Russia’s war in Ukraine is pressuring global food and energy prices. Bullard couldn’t have known that West Texas Intermediate oil would take another run at $120 a barrel or how China’s latest Covid lockdowns would play out, but he understood the balance of risks better than his colleagues and knew that this was no time to take a lackadaisical approach to rising prices. Now, inflation is touching every corner of the US economy, and consumers may be losing confidence that the Fed really means it when its representatives talk about getting inflation back to their target of 2%. It’s worth listening to him a little closer from here on out.
Consider a presentation Bullard gave to Princeton University’s Bendheim Center for Finance in April. At the time, he walked through the construction of a Taylor-rule type policy rate calculation using what he called “generous assumptions” about inflation to define a “minimally reasonable” level for the policy rate. His simple calculation found(2) that the federal funds rate should get to around 3.5%, a call that fixed-income markets are finally coming around to two months later and only after last week’s jarring inflation numbers.
Unfortunately, now even the most “generous” assumptions about inflation are even higher. The measure Bullard used for underlying trend inflation— the Dallas Fed’s trimmed mean — rose to 3.8% for April and should rise again for May, extrapolating from the consumer price index published last week. The corresponding Bullard model would spit out a policy recommendation of around 4% now.(1) Of course, Bullard believes that monetary policy works in part through forward guidance and market prices, and bond and swaps markets are already adapting to this new reality.
So where will markets and the Fed go from here? Bonds yields continue to surge, and the Nasdaq Composite Index experienced its biggest two-day drop since start of the Covid-19 pandemic as financial markets come to terms with the idea that inflation won’t go away as easily as many had hoped.
It’s impossible to say what’s coming, of course, and much could happen that could still force the Fed to change course. Circumstances may well shift again in the coming months: Energy prices could ease and supply chains could untangle. But whatever happens, it’s worth keeping a closer eye on signals from the economist that most of Wall Street used to disparage as “the hawk.” As it turns out, he’s just “the realist.”
(1) Bullard’s simple Taylor-type formula, based on the rules-based approach proposed by Stanford economist John Taylor, used the following equation with “generous” assumptions: -0.5 + 2 + 1.25 (3.6 - 2) = 3.5%, where -0.5% is the real interest rate R-star, 2% is the inflation target, 1.25 is a parameter value for policy maker’s reactions to deviations, and 3.6% was the value at the time for the Dallas Fed trimmed-mean PCE.
(2) Based on assumption that Dallas Fed mean PCE will come in around 4% for May. | 2022-06-14T11:45:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where Does Jim Bullard Go for His Apology on Inflation? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/where-does-jim-bullard-go-for-his-apology-on-inflation/2022/06/14/24adbd2e-ebd6-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/where-does-jim-bullard-go-for-his-apology-on-inflation/2022/06/14/24adbd2e-ebd6-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Watergate scandal ushered in a golden age of comedy
Comedian Mark Russell wearing headphones at the Watergate complex. (CQ Archive/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Did you hear about the new Watergate watch? Both hands always point to Nixon.”
The Watergate scandal began 50 years ago this month, and so did a golden age of political humor. The jokes started flying soon after five burglars were caught bugging the phones at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building during the 1972 presidential race between Republican President Richard M. Nixon and Democratic Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.
“McGovern knew something suspicious was going on when he picked up a grapefruit and got a dial tone,” quipped Mark Russell, the piano-playing comedian at Washington’s Shoreham Hotel.
The humor of Watergate contrasts with the seriousness of the current national focus on the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by supporters of former president Donald Trump, which resulted in the deaths of five people. The attack is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and a House select committee, whose highly anticipated hearings, which began last week, have been compared to the Watergate hearings.
But the Watergate scandal had overtones of a Keystone Kops comedy. It involved what the Nixon White House called a “third rate” burglary, “inoperative statements,” a political coverup and secret presidential recordings that provided plenty of fodder for political satire. “For comedians, Watergate was the gift that kept on giving,” said Russell in an email.
The Watergate break-in took place on June 17, 1972. Two days later, young Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein disclosed that some of the burglars worked for Nixon’s Committee for Re-Election of the President, known to Nixon critics as CREEP. From then on, you could follow the humor. On June 23, a Post cartoon by Herbert Block, known as Herblock, showed footprints representing the “bugging case” in front of the White House. A detective with a magnifying glass was saying, “Strange—they all seem to have some connection with this place.”
The White House’s coverup began to unravel after Nixon won reelection. By mid-1973, comedian David Frye was playing to packed nightclub audiences, impersonating the president as he wallowed in Watergate. “My fellow Americans. There is a bright side to Watergate,” said Frye as Nixon. “My administration has taken crime out of the streets and put it in the White House, where I can keep an eye on it.”
Frye’s Nixon went on: “The odds are 100 to 1 that I’ll be impeached, 50 to 1 that I’ll resign. That is not the reason that I am today signing a Prison Reform Bill. There will be a two-bedroom suite for anyone who once held the nation’s highest office.”
At least five Watergate comedy record albums became the hottest-selling political comedy albums since Vaughn Meader made fun of President John F. Kennedy on his album “The First Family” in 1962. On “The Watergate Comedy Hour,” a compilation of comic skits, a Nixon impersonator began a prayer, “My fellow God.”
Gerald Gardner’s “The Watergate Follies” became a best-selling book, with captioned photos such as one showing Nixon talking to reporters with a speech bubble reading, “Are you going to believe me or the facts?” “The Watergate Cookbook” featured recipes such as Watergate Vichyssoise — to start, “Take a bunch of leaks…” There was even a board game called “The Watergate Game.” The object was “to stay out of jail.”
After the Senate Watergate Committee uncovered the existence of secret White House tapes, there was found to be an 18½-minute gap in a recording of Nixon talking three days after the break-in. All that could be heard was a humming sound. Humor columnist Art Buchwald wrote that the sound actually was the president humming. Nixon had kept this a secret, The Washington Post columnist explained, because “he doesn’t want to go down in history as the first American President who was known as a nervous hummer.”
“Nixon was my Camelot,” Buchwald said later. “Every day was something new. I’d wake up in the morning, see something in the paper like the 18-minute tape gap and write my column so quickly that I’d be on the tennis court by 10 o’clock.” The columnist proposed that June 17 be declared national Watergate Day to mark the break-in: “Americans would memorialize this historic event by tapping telephones, spying on their neighbors, using aliases and making inoperative statements.”
Even late-night TV comedy king Johnny Carson, who usually avoided politics, began telling Watergate jokes after the White House claimed Nixon’s secretary Rosemary Woods had accidentally erased part of the tape. “Let me put it this way,” Carson said. “Would you believe Moses if he had come down with the Eight Commandments?”
TV talk-show host Dick Cavett taped one of his shows from the Senate Watergate Committee hearing room, where he interviewed committee members. “While sitting in that witness chair, I feel guilty,” Cavett told co-chairman Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), who replied, “You’re the first one.” Nixon apparently was a viewer of Cavett’s shows. On the White House tapes, the president is heard asking his staff about Cavett: “Is there any way we can screw him?”
As transcripts of the tapes further incriminated Nixon in 1974, a Herblock cartoon showed the president hanging in midair, clinging to two torn pieces of a reel-to-reel tape with the words, “I am not a crook.” In late July, the Supreme Court ordered that the tapes be turned over to the Watergate special counsel.
That month, the House Judiciary Committee voted for articles of impeachment charging Nixon with obstruction of justice. Bumper stickers appeared reading, “Honk if you think he’s guilty.” One political button declared “Jail to the Chief.” A joke made the rounds: “The Rev. Billy Graham’s Bible readings at the White House have gone from Revelations to Exodus.”
On Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon became the only president ever to resign from office and turned the presidency over to Vice President Gerald Ford. A restaurant in suburban Detroit, the New York Times reported, began promoting a “Watergate Special” pizza: “First you order a Richard Nixon. Then you turn on the heat and get a Jerry Ford.”
After Nixon left, the Watergate spigot of humor abruptly shut off. “When Watergate was over,” said Russell, the pianist-comedian, “I had to go back to writing my own material.” | 2022-06-14T11:45:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Watergate scandal inspired comedy from Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, others - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/14/watergate-comedy-humor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/14/watergate-comedy-humor/ |
Former attorney general William P. Barr on a screen at the Jan. 6 committee hearing Monday. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
I admit to having been skeptical, ahead of time, of the hearings planned by the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021. What more is there to be said, I wondered? The evidence of Donald Trump’s guilt in inciting an insurrection was already so obvious that it was hard to imagine that the committee would have much to add. This was not, after all, a situation such as Watergate, where the scandal happened behind closed doors. The entire nation saw Trump’s incendiary remarks and tweets, and the riot that followed, on national television.
I am happy to say I was wrong. The committee’s hearings are exceeding expectations, because it is not behaving like a typical congressional committee. There is no grandstanding and no preening. There are no petty partisan squabbles. There is not even the disjointedness that normally occurs when a bunch of politicians are each given five minutes to question each witness. There is only the relentless march of evidence, all of it deeply incriminating to a certain former president who keeps insisting that he was robbed of his rightful election victory.
The committee’s recent hearings — there have been two in the past week, with more planned — have been organized like carefully choreographed television productions, and I mean that as a compliment. The committee has been focused on doing what all good television productions, whether factual or fictional, do: telling a story that enthralls the viewer.
Only a few of the committee members have spoken so far. Imagine what heroic self-restraint it takes for elected officials to understand that they can make a greater impact with their silence than with noisy blather. The members are allowing their staffers to play an unusually prominent role not only in questioning witnesses on tape but acting as narrators for mini-documentaries laying out what they have found.
The biggest complaint against the committee, heard at ever-increasing decibels from Republicans, is that it is a partisan hit job — and never mind that two prominent Republicans sit on the committee. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) are denigrated as RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) because they had the courage to act on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s convictions. (McCarthy initially held Trump responsible for the mob attack but voted against impeaching him.)
Accusations of partisanship have been amply refuted by the hearings, which have been entirely factual and notably free of partisan rancor. There have been no anti-Trump, much less anti-Republican, rants. The committee members are focused with forensic, factual intensity on the question of Trump’s responsibility for the events of Jan. 6. They are making a case beyond any reasonable doubt in the court of public opinion, even if it remains to be seen whether there is sufficient evidence to indict Trump in an actual court of law.
The committee’s most potent weapon is the words of Trump’s own aides. One after another, we have heard Trump loyalists say that the election was fair and that Trump has no rational basis for thinking otherwise. Last week’s star witness was Ivanka Trump, who testified that she accepted then-Attorney General William P. Barr’s conclusion that her father lost the election. This led the former president to go on a public rant against his own daughter, claiming that she was “not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results.” The implication is that if only Ivanka had been as deep in the weeds as dear old Dad, she would have been convinced that the vote was the “crime of the century.”
Except that the committee has now heard from many Trump aides who were deeply involved in the vote count, and they also concluded there was no significant fraud. The only people who thought otherwise were weirdos like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who was described by Trump adviser Jason Miller as being “definitely intoxicated” on election night. (Giuliani denies it.) Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, testified that he was part of “Team Normal” and that Powell, Giuliani, et al., were on the opposite team. Presumably that would be Team Crazy. Guess which team Trump was rooting for?
The most damaging witness for Trump was his own attorney general. Barr described Trump’s election lies as “bulls--t,” “crazy stuff,” “complete nonsense,” and suggested that Trump “has become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.” Barr said he had tried to set Trump straight, but there was “never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”
Barr’s statement was seen by some lawyers as evidence of the “criminal intent” that would be needed to convict Trump of crimes such as sedition. Whether that is accurate or not, Trump’s own aides have made an open-and-shut case that he is not fit to run Mar-a-Lago, much less the United States of America. Either Trump is spectacularly delusional or spectacularly dishonest. Take your choice. Or maybe he’s both? Whichever the case, he has no business returning to the nation’s highest office. | 2022-06-14T11:45:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | I thought the Jan. 6 committee wouldn’t matter. I was wrong. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/january-6-committee-hearings-impact-trump-aides/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/january-6-committee-hearings-impact-trump-aides/ |
Primary elections live updates Trump targeting GOP members of Congress as four states hold primaries
On our radar in Maine: Paul LePage is back
Noted: For Democrats, the economy is a tough sell, particularly in places like Las Vegas
On our radar in S.C.: Rep. Rice has a fighting chance despite impeachment vote
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who is being challenged in Tuesday's GOP primary by a candidate backed by former president Donald Trump, speaks during a Saturday campaign rally in Summerville, S.C. (Meg Kinnard/AP)
Welcome to special coverage of primary elections in Maine, Nevada, South Carolina and North Dakota and a special congressional election in Texas from Post Poltics Now.
Today, voters are heading to the polls in four more states, including in South Carolina, which poses the latest test of former president Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party. Trump is backing GOP primary opponents of two Republican incumbent members of Congress — Reps. Tom Rice and Nancy Mace — who did not back his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Trump is also playing in other GOP primaries Tuesday, including races for governor and U.S. senator in Nevada, where Democrats currently hold both seats. Meanwhile, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) is facing a challenger from her left, Amy Vilela, a former state co-chair for the 2020 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
In Maine, former governor Paul LePage, who left the state in 2019 after his second term, is running unopposed in the GOP primary. Incumbent Gov. Janet Mills (D) is seeking a second term.
In South Carolina, Rice is being challenged by state Rep. Russell Fry. Mace is being challenged by former congresswoman Katie Arrington. Fry and Arrington are backed by Trump.
In Nevada, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombard is leading in the GOP gubernatorial primary polls and has Trump’s endorsement. He is seeking to replace incumbent Steve Sisolak (D).
Also in Nevada, Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada state attorney general who has Trump’s backing, is the front-runner in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate. He is seeking to replace first-term Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a top target for Republicans in November.
Polls close at 7 p.m. in South Carolina, 8 p.m. in Maine, and 9 and 10 p.m. in parts of Nevada and North Dakota. All times are Eastern.
In primaries this month in states including Nevada, Colorado and Illinois, Republican candidates are benefiting, either directly or indirectly, from a cluster of Democratic-associated groups that are spending millions of dollars in contested GOP primaries this month.
The Post’s Annie Linskey explores the phenomenon, writing:
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.
By Mariana Alfaro7:04 a.m.
The front-runner in the Republican primary for Nevada governor is Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who has former president Donald Trump’s endorsement in the race.
Lombardo — a U.S. Army, Reserve and National Guard veteran — served in law enforcement for 30 years before mounting a challenge to incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.
The sheriff has already declared victory in the race against his 14 opponents, saying in a debate late last month that, “for all practical purposes, the primary is over.” His fundraising outpaced that of all his opponents, with $824,000 in campaign money reported for the first three months of the year. Still, he lagged behind Sisolak, who, according to the Nevada Independent, reported $1.55 million in fundraising over the same period.
Trump endorsed Lombardo in April, saying the sheriff “will fiercely protect our under-siege Second Amendment, oppose sanctuary cities, support our Law Enforcement, veto any liberal tax increase, protect life and secure our elections.”
Many of Lombardo’s challengers had been vying for Trump’s endorsement in the race, including Joey Gilbert, who was in the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Gilbert has long echoed Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election in Nevada by 44,000 votes.
Lombardo, meanwhile, has given vague answers about whether he believes there was fraud in the 2020 election. Asked by a local news station whether he believes that there was no widespread voter fraud in that election, he said he could not say because there was not a comprehensive audit in the state.
“I have not seen or been presented any evidence that would sway us from that I haven’t seen the proof in the pudding,” he said.
In South Texas, Republicans have a chance to underscore their growing influence among the state’s Latino voters, especially Mexican Americans. Rep. Filemon Vela (D), who for a decade has represented Texas’s 34th District along the U.S.-Mexico border, left this year to join a law firm. So on Tuesday, there will be a special election to fill the seat until November, when there will be another election.
Republicans have a good opportunity to flip this slightly blue-leaning seat now that there is no incumbent Democrat. Republican political newcomer Mayra Flores will be on the ballot against local commissioner Dan Sanchez (D). Sanchez is running as a placeholder for the candidate who will run in November, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D). In November, the district will be more friendly to Democrats because of redistricting, although the national environment favors Republicans.
By Eugene Scott6:20 a.m.
Paul LePage is looking to return to the governor’s mansion in Maine — and as the only Republican running, he is on track to win the GOP nomination.
The 73-year-old — who some say paved the way for Donald Trump by winning elections despite his brash, controversial comments — originally moved to Florida to pay lower taxes after his previous stint as Maine’s top elected official. But he returned to his native state in 2020 out of frustration with its direction under a Democratic politician.
“Maine people have suffered for years under the liberal policies of Janet Mills and her election-year gimmick won’t fix the long term damage she has caused,” he tweeted in April. “To be competitive we need a permanent cut in Maine’s income tax, not just a one-time payment.”
He spent the weekend before Election Day bagging groceries to draw attention to rises in inflation under his Democratic successor.
“Maine’s food cost is the third-highest in the country, and nothing has been done in Augusta,” he said, citing data from the Economic Policy Institute, according to WMTW.
The businessman turned politician was known for taking traditionally conservative positions on issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights and environmental issues. But he has made national headlines for making racist comments while addressing other issues.
As governor, he attributed Maine’s opioid epidemic to “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty [who] come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home [and] half the time they impregnate a young White girl before they leave.”
Democrats are trying to convince voters that their response to the pandemic paved the way for a more stable economy. That’s particularly true in a tourism-dependent city such as Las Vegas, writes The Post’s Marianna Sotomayor in a piece reported from Nevada.
Marianna writes:
But the message that Democrats are the party most capable of revitalizing the economy is a tough sell as inflation continues to rise under their watch. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday that inflation jumped a historic 8.6 percent last month from a year earlier as gas prices reached nearly $5 a gallon nationwide, a trend that most Americans expect will worsen.
You can read Marianna’s full piece here.
Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump in January 2021, Rep. Tom Rice seemed to be in the deepest political peril.
The Post’s Josh Dawsey and Marianna Sotomayor write:
The Myrtle Beach lawyer with a country club demeanor and a Southern drawl sailed into reelection four times with a conservative voting record, even winning by 24 points in 2020. But his impeachment vote was roundly jeered in his ruby-red district on the South Carolina coast. His Facebook was inundated with thousands of vitriolic messages and still is. Friendships frayed, he said. Multiple challengers jumped in the race against him, fueled by Trump’s call for his ouster. His doom was widely predicted. | 2022-06-14T11:46:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Primary elections live updates: Latest on South Carolina, Maine, Nevada races - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/primary-elections-south-carolina-nevada-maine-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/primary-elections-south-carolina-nevada-maine-live-updates/ |
It’s creators say the AI app helps ordinary people understand how artificial intelligence is progressing. Critics contend there’s much work to be done.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2019. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
When reports surfaced in May that the Supreme Court wanted to overturn abortion rights, many wondered how the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might have responded. Now, they don’t have to wait.
The answer came not from Ginsburg’s numerous court opinions, but an artificial intelligence model of the late justice released Tuesday. “Whether it’s good or bad, it’s settled, and, therefore, it’s not my business to think about it,” the RBG bot concluded.
In recent years, research labs and companies across the world have been racing to build technology that replicates or surpasses human intelligence, offering ways for people examine and interact with their work along the way.
OpenAI, an Elon Musk-backed artificial intelligence company, unveiled a text-generator, called GPT-3 that can write movie scripts and undergirds an image generator, DALL-E 2, which translates text commands into inventive, sometimes psychedelic visuals. In 2020, Shoham’s company created Wordtune, a tool that suggests different ways to write sentences. They followed the release a year later with Wordtune Read, which summarizes the main points of long, dense passages.
But as AI technology has gotten better, Shoham said many surrounding the field are divided. “People project all kinds of [thoughts] on … automation that has nothing to do with reality,” he said. “I don’t want people to be disappointed by the underperformance of current AI and I don’t want them to monger fear.”
To build it, the researchers used Jurassic-1, a neural network they created that analyzes large troves of data and develops its own language to spit out results to questions or prompts. Neural networks are computer architecture that attempt to mimic the human brain, by processing information.
Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, said she recognizes the experiment’s creators come from a place of respect for Ginsburg, but insinuating the technology can think and reason like the late justice is not accurate. “It can spit out words and the style of those words are going to be informed by the style of text they fed into it, but it’s not doing any reasoning,” she said.
Bender added that linguistics research shows that when people encounter “coherent-seeming texts” on a topic they care about, there’s a risk they will take it seriously when they shouldn’t. “People might use this to make arguments out in the world and say, ‘Well, RBG would have said,’ this AI [model] told me so.” | 2022-06-14T11:47:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Artificial intelligence model of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is released - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/14/ruth-bader-ginsburg-ai/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/14/ruth-bader-ginsburg-ai/ |
Tuesday briefing: The Jan. 6 hearing’s star witness; what to watch in today’s primaries; tampon shortage; supermoon; and more
The Jan. 6 committee held its second public hearing yesterday.
What we heard: A parade of advisers to Donald Trump describing how he ignored their warnings that there was no credible evidence supporting his election fraud claims.
Star witness: Former attorney general William Barr, who said the president appeared “detached from reality” after losing the 2020 presidential election.
What’s next? The third public hearing, tomorrow morning, will focus on Trump’s pressure campaign at the Justice Department to overturn the election results.
Two House Republicans face tough primaries in South Carolina today.
The details: Reps. Tom Rice and Nancy Mace, both of whom spoke out against Trump after the Capitol attack, have primary challenges from Trump-backed opponents.
In Texas: Republican Mayra Flores is looking to upset Democrat Dan Sanchez in the special election to replace Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela.
What else to watch: Primaries in Maine, Nevada and North Dakota.
The last bridge between a key Ukrainian city and the outside world was destroyed.
Where? Severodonetsk, in the east. Russia is trying to capture it and take control of the surrounding Donbas region. Evacuations are now impossible, a local official said.
In other news: The number of nuclear weapons in the world is expected to grow for the first time in decades, partly as a result of the war.
U.S. stock markets continued their sharp fall yesterday.
What’s behind this? Wall Street has been on a downward spiral this year as concerns about rising prices and interest rates were made worse by global events like the war in Ukraine.
This week: The Federal Reserve — the U.S. central bank — meets today and tomorrow. It’s expected to hike interest rates to help slow rising prices, but it also could place more pressure on financial markets.
A tampon shortage is causing prices to rise.
Why this is happening: Some of the same issues straining the global economy, such as fuel costs and labor shortages. But also, the pandemic push for medical essentials increased demand — and costs — of cotton, rayon and plastic.
The numbers: The average price for a package of tampons is up nearly 10% in the past year.
One solution: Sustainable period products such as a reusable menstrual cup.
The Golden State Warriors are one win away from another NBA title.
Last night: The Warriors defeated the Boston Celtics, 104-94, in Game 5, taking a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series, despite a quiet night from star Stephen Curry, who hit no three-pointers.
What’s next: Game 6 takes place Thursday night in Boston.
A strawberry supermoon will light up the skies tonight.
What’s that? A supermoon happens when a full moon is at its closest distance to Earth, making it appear brighter and larger. The “strawberry” part refers to Native American harvesting seasons.
The forecast: Cloud cover will thin out over many parts of the northern U.S. today, so there’s a good chance of some spectacular nighttime gazing.
And now … houseplants don’t just look great in your home: They can boost your psychological and physical health, too. | 2022-06-14T11:47:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Tuesday, June 14 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/06/14/what-to-know-for-june-14/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/06/14/what-to-know-for-june-14/ |
Hunter Biden’s ex opens up about why she stayed — and why she left
Kathleen Buhle’s memoir, ‘If We Break,’ reveals the details of a marriage the author once called ‘special’
Review by Karen Heller
Readers know Kathleen Buhle better as Kathleen Biden, the long-suffering wife of Hunter, the brother who wasn’t Beau but who took up with his widow.
Buhle excised Biden from her name in 2019, after enduring years of what many women could or would not: alcohol and drug abuse, affairs, public humiliation, a torrent of lies. Now she’s written a memoir, “If We Break.” It is not revenge porn. It’s not even a tell-all. And obsessive Hunter gatherers out there, be warned, the book contains nary a mention of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma or the infamous laptop left at the Delaware repair shop. It ends long before those troubles. But, if you wish, you can read about them in his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things.”
Instead of matching towels, we have his-and-her memoirs.
Subtitled “A memoir of marriage, addiction, and healing,” the book is short on healing, while the addiction and masochism never appear to end. After Hunter’s fifth — or was it sixth? — visit to rehab, Buhle still accepts his lies. “Hunter told me he was going for the yoga workshops,” she explains of a trip he took to Big Sur. “Did I believe him? Not really. Did I try to stop him? No. Anything to do with his sobriety was still beyond questioning.”
In “If We Break,” Buhle reveals a talent for denial so deep that it is left to her teenage daughters to tell her that Hunter is having an affair with their aunt and Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie. They know because they found texts on his phone. Buhle’s friends later ask, “How could you have not even suspected? You may have been the only one not to.” Ironically, it was Hallie who had warned Kathleen years earlier when she discovered photos of him with another woman at the Four Seasons in Paris: “If you leave him, Kathleen, he’ll find someone else, and then you’ll have to live with that.” (Eventually Hunter and Hallie split, too. He married Melissa Cohen, who is 17 years younger than he is, days after they met.)
After the Hallie telenovela-worthy bombshell, Buhle says that Hunter can no longer hurt her, that the worst is behind her. Reader, she is sorely mistaken.
The affair goes public in the New York Post, the tabloid that will turn Hunter’s lobbying exploits and role as a Burisma board member into something of a full-time beat. Buhle discovers that Hunter cruised the cheaters’ website Ashley Madison (Tag line: “Life is short. Have an affair.”), his cellphone bursting with sexually graphic texts to “dozens of women — none of whom I’d ever heard of before.”
Buhle and Biden met when she was 23 and they worked as members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Oregon. A year later, she was pregnant, and they wed. Buhle grew up solidly middle class, selling hot dogs at Comiskey Park. She refers to herself as “just a silly girl from Chicago” and lives up to the description by opting to learn little about their finances, a poor move. If Hunter has any talents, it is for lying and living well beyond their means: Tom Ford togs (in D.C., where few would take notice), new teeth while hooked on crack, insisting that he meet with a sobriety coach while staying at L.A.'s pricey Chateau Marmont.
The Biden family history is marked by tremendous tragedy and loss. Hunter’s mother and baby sister were killed in a car accident when he was 3 years old and Beau a year older. The two brothers were so close that when Hunter and Kathleen’s “special” marriage — that’s her term for it — goes off the rails, she turns to Beau for help because “he was the one who fully understood Hunter.” Let that sink in.
The two sons were thick as thieves, but there’s no question that their father believed that Beau, his namesake and Delaware’s former attorney general who died of brain cancer in 2015, hung the moon and was his political heir. It could not have been easy being the Bidens’ Prince Harry. “I never saw Hunter show anything but pride toward his father and brother for their incredible accomplishments, but I wondered if their success took a toll on him,” Buhle writes.
Addiction has long been a scourge of the Biden family, and an inheritance. Asked on the 2008 campaign trail why he doesn’t imbibe, Joe Biden said, “There are enough alcoholics in my family.” Alas, there would be more.
And what do we learn of Joe and Jill Biden? Buhle is cautious and loving, the challenge of publishing a memoir while your former in-laws and three daughters’ grandparents occupy the White House. The Bidens are loving and supportive, but it takes a long time for the truth of Hunter’s addiction to be shared. In Buhle’s telling, the family is close, supportive and spends plenty of time together but is not very open.
Jill Biden is perfect, gracious yet unknowable, a distant and largely offstage character. At times, Joe Biden seems like regular folk in that he shops at Home Depot. Then again, the Bidens do not seem that much like regular folk in that their Greenville, Del., home features a double staircase, a library with carved wooden nymphs and — wait for it — an actual ballroom. When Buhle’s bookie grandfather first visits, he asks, “Who’s buried here?” Hunter’s parents may share a talent for living above their means. Buhle notes that the home was “often behind on its upkeep, and whole sections were closed to save on heating costs.”
Buhle smartly consulted a professional writer, Susan Conley, and the prose is better than many books of its ilk. But “If We Break” seems padded. There are constant trivialities about how handsome Hunter looks in a suit and exchanges of “I love you” between the couple. Note to memoir authors: Don’t do this. The book clocks in at precisely 300 pages, as though dictated by contract.
Huma Abedin opens up about her marriage, the 2016 election and her #MeToo moment
This is the ex of a politician’s now-notorious son, a woman who claims no desire to be famous, guards her privacy, then publishes a memoir at precisely the moment when her former father-in-law is at the height of his power. Perhaps the experience provides some catharsis and revenue for Buhle, who leads a D.C. collaborative space for women and assists nonprofits. Perhaps it may offer solace for others in emotionally abusive relationships with alcoholics. But is this really a book the public is asking to read?
Karen Heller is a Washington Post national features writer.
A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing
302 pp. Crown. $27 | 2022-06-14T12:02:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Review of 'If We Break,' by Kathleen Buhle, Hunter Biden's ex-wife - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/14/kathleen-buhle-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/14/kathleen-buhle-memoir/ |
How climate change and environmental justice are inextricably linked
By Robin Rose Parker
Rhiana Gunn-Wright is one of the architects of the Green New Deal and the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute. (Josh Cogan)
Rhiana Gunn-Wright, 32, is one of the architects of the Green New Deal and the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, a New York-based think tank. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son.
It’s probably best for us to begin with definitions of climate justice and environmental justice. Are those the same thing?
Climate justice is essentially about recognizing the fact that the climate crisis disproportionately affects people who are low-income, especially Black, Brown and Indigenous folks. They are also the folks who are going to have the fewest resources to cope with the changes that the climate crisis brings — whether that means not having the means to relocate if they are in a place that is heavily impacted, not having the money to install solar panels on a home, not having the means to pay for increased heating or cooling costs.
Environmental justice is about the ways that the built environment has been created and carved up in ways that expose Black, Brown and Indigenous folks to more pollution, more toxic sites, more chemicals in water supplies. Putting them close to abandoned mines or where oil drilling happens. The way that the built environment has been created to sort of cluster those harms that are all consequences of fossil fuel industries. Fossil fuels are poisonous. And that has to go somewhere. Legacies of systemic racism and residential segregation have been exploited to create those environments.
The interesting thing about air pollution, in particular, is you can’t even say low-income people of color because the fact is that even middle-income Black folks are exposed to more pollution than lower-income White folks. Income and class are not even mitigating factors the way that you’d think it would be. So environmental justice is very much about racism.
Is there some assumption that these communities are not aware of this, if even middle-income Black communities are close to toxic areas?
Some of it is about awareness, particularly if the pollution is coming from just the way the built environment is — you’re next to a highway or you’re next to a transit depot, or you live on a major street where there are lots of trucks. They’re attached to pollution, but it’s not as though it’s screamed from the rooftops.
The thing they take more advantage of is the histories of residential segregation and housing discrimination. Middle-income Black folks are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher poverty levels because of racial segregation. And those areas are more likely to be zoned for industrial use. So you have legacies of red lining that have crowded people of color into one area, and then that area is more likely to be zoned industrial, so it’s cheaper to locate these facilities there. Or you’re next to a highway, so the home values are lower, so it’s harder to move out of these places. All of these things make these areas more vulnerable.
These are the things that have to happen in an economy that is reliant on fossil fuels. The factories have to be built. The oil refineries have to be somewhere. The trucks have to run somewhere. The highways have to be somewhere. All of which has a negative impact on public health. All of which on some level is poisonous. And so who is going to be listened to the least when they are poisoned? Who can be harmed without consequence? Who is least likely to be believed when they say, “My kid has asthma” or “My daughter has mysterious breast cancer”? Whose lives are socially treated as less valuable? People of color.
And “power” seems like an important word.
Many predominantly White communities have often been effective at protecting their neighborhoods.
Front-line communities, disadvantaged communities, those that are the most affected by environmental justice, it’s not as though they aren’t doing anything. A lot of these communities are highly organized; these folks are having to fight for decades, find partners, get outside funding to run campaigns, partner with local universities, all sorts of things. I saw it firsthand living in Detroit. The scale of what it required for them to say, “We don’t want this here. Stop it,” is just leagues above areas where residents have more power. Not even comparable. But for them to be heard, it takes megaphones on top of megaphones. What it means to be highly motivated in these situations is just so different. You’re talking about running a campaign vs. getting everyone to sign a petition.
You talk about how you can’t really understand environmental justice without understanding racism and its impact — these issues that you are dealing with are the manifestation of racism.
Yes! Yes!
So then, this is how it shows up. Racism doesn’t necessarily show up as someone calling you the n-word. It shows up in how a district is zoned or what they are willing to put in your neighborhood. This is the evidence.
One hundred percent. It’s the evidence. It’s the manifestation. This is the form that it takes.
So, thinking about the urgency around environmental issues: Conflating environmental issues and racism, does that help or hurt the environmental issues, in general?
Yeah, that’s a question I got a lot with the Green New Deal. People would ask me, “Why are you talking about race so much? Why does that matter?” Some people might disagree, but I truly believe, when describing the fossil fuel industry — and I think that all the evidence shows — it is not possible to burn fossil fuels at the rate that we have without limit, if there is not racism involved, because you have to have people who you can poison almost without consequence.
And so, with that in mind, you cannot address climate change if you are not also going to address environmental justice and climate justice. Because otherwise you are just leaving in place essentially the landscape that can again be exploited. You’ll have this happen again. You are still leaving the tracks for the next crisis to come.
How do you factor low-income White communities in this?
They are also considered front-line environmental justice communities, and even though the dynamics are different, in terms of racialized residential segregation, some of the others [issues] are the same. Low-income communities being exploited. Fossil fuel corporations have preyed on them, and transitioning to a green economy means doing justice for those communities, too. The question of racism is different because some of the factors at play are different, but the outcome is the same. The economic power has to be shifted in order to serve those communities well and to reduce emissions there and to get them out of harm’s way.
Are Black and Brown communities engaged in these conversations at the levels you think are necessary?
I would say no, but I think no constituency is on the level that is necessary around the environment. I’ll be honest: Environmental policy always seemed very “White” to me. I was doing social policy. I was interested in serving the people who I had grown up with, and I thought [environmental policy] was about polar bears and solar panels. I didn’t know how to talk about this when caseworkers are over-policing Black moms or people aren’t getting their welfare benefits. It was only after being in Detroit that things started to click. How the issues that I care about are connected, and how environmental justice had likely affected my own life. I have asthma. I grew up thinking that asthma was a childhood disease because so many kids around me had it. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized I lived in an area where air pollution is far more than what is acceptable.
I feel like people aren’t engaged on a large scale because we haven’t really been talking about the environment in the right ways. We live in a country where people are most concerned about: How do I put food on the table? How do I get my kids child care? How do I pay these bills? So you’re not talking about climate in a way where that’s accessible. We’re not talking about how switching to renewable energy will actually make energy a lot cheaper because prices will be a lot more stable. You won’t have to deal with gas prices fluctuating all the time because you won’t need gasoline. You don’t have to find oil and burn it. Once you install the solar panels the sun just keeps on shining. If you aren’t breaking that down for people, why would they care?
As one of the architects of the Green New Deal, you’ve contributed to the national conversation on the environment. That has to be encouraging for you.
It does and it doesn’t. One, because it happened so fast. When I started [working in] policy, I thought I would be lucky if anything I worked on took hold — ever. Because I worked around people who worked on issues, like paid leave, for decades, and we still don’t have paid leave. So I thought: I’m just going to slog it out on some stuff, and maybe it will happen and maybe it won’t. And for the Green New Deal to have had the impact that it did, I’m still processing that because it’s nothing that I expected in my wildest dreams.
I feel that time is showing that we were pretty correct around the things we said. This last [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report basically came out and said the world must do a green new deal. So that’s encouraging, but at the end of the day, even now, it just feels like we were ass-whupped a lot. I remember having the president of the United States at the time say it’s stupid. It wasn’t, and still isn’t easy. Until I actually see these things happening in law, changing the conversation feels great, but that’s ultimately not all that I am in it for.
Robin Rose Parker is a writer in Maryland. This interview has been edited and condensed. | 2022-06-14T12:19:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How climate change and environmental justice are inextricably linked - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/14/climate-justice-green-new-deal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/14/climate-justice-green-new-deal/ |
His first visit to the Middle East as president will include a stop in Saudi Arabia despite the country’s record of human rights abuses
President Biden on June 13 at the White House. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
President Biden is planning an expansive trip to the Middle East next month, including a controversial meeting with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a much-debated move that signals a striking relaxation in Biden’s posture toward the Saudis.
Senators seek probe of killing of journalist in West Bank
The official said Biden’s team views private conversations as at times more effective than public pressure.
“But our administration is not overlooking any conduct that took place before we entered office,” the official said. “And of course, early on we issued an extensive report about the Khashoggi murder.”
The official outlined several steps that the Biden administration has taken in response, including sanctions against dozens of Saudis. Notably, however, they did not target the crown prince himself.
But ultimately, the official said, White House officials consider cooperation with Saudi Arabia as too important to dismiss.
“Saudi Arabia has been a strategic partner of the United States for eight decades,” the official said. “We share a host of interests with Saudi Arabia, from containing Iran to counterterrorism to helping protect its territory where, importantly, 70,000 Americans live and work. And I just think that’s an important fact.”
“The president will begin his travel in Israel, where he will meet with Israeli leaders to discuss Israel’s security, prosperity, and its increasing integration into the greater region,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement confirming the trip. “The president will also visit the West Bank to consult with the Palestinian Authority and to reiterate his strong support for a two-state solution, with equal measures of security, freedom, and opportunity for the Palestinian people.”
While in Israel, Biden is planning to tour an area featuring missile defense and security systems funded in part by the United States. His visit also coincides with the start of the Maccabiah Games, a competition of Jewish athletes, and he is expected to meet with some of the contestants. | 2022-06-14T12:41:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden heading next month to Israel, West Bank, Saudi Arabia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/biden-saudi-arabia-israel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/biden-saudi-arabia-israel/ |
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Justice Department on June 8. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Legal scholars have entertained the argument that defeated former president Donald Trump can avoid prosecution for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election on the grounds that he was so nuts that he believed his own election lies. But that argument can go only so far.
A defendant cannot hide behind “deliberate ignorance.” NBC News explains that a judge can "instruct a jury that it can find that a defendant acted knowingly if the defendant was aware of a high probability that something was true but deliberately avoided learning the truth.” Former attorney general William P. Barr’s testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee shows that Trump was not interested in the facts. His top aides repeatedly told him that none of the allegations of voter fraud were true; he promoted them anyway.
Plus, as constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe tells me, it certainly cannot be the case that someone who seeks to obstruct a congressional vote count (e.g., strong-arming his own vice president) is excused from criminal liability simply because he’s “genuinely convinced that Congress will get it wrong.” You do not get to arm-twist officials or send the mob to the Capitol because you really, really think you won.
Your motive may be “I am convinced I won,” but criminal intent is satisfied since “no matter what you believe, you cannot tell the secretary of state of Georgia to just ‘find 11,780 votes’ that do not actually exist to give you one more vote than your opponent secured,” Norman Eisen, former impeachment counsel, tweeted.
It’s hard to argue that the man who made 30,000 false claims during his presidency and settled lawsuits claiming Trump University was fraudulent is out of his mind; more likely, he is a determined snake-oil salesman. But let’s say you are an overly cautious attorney general and are worried that a juror might find reasonable doubt about Trump’s intent. Well, the Jan. 6 committee presented two clear-cut legal theories under which Trump could be prosecuted that avoid the “he believed his own election fraud nonsense” argument.
First, there is substantial evidence that Trump pulled off yet another scam following the election. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) presented evidence from the committee’s staff that the Trump campaign solicited donations for the “Official Election Defense Fund,” which the committee found did not exist. “It’s clear that he intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what he said,” Lofgren said after the hearing. Trump raised upward of $250 million, the committee reported.
Prosecutors could examine wire fraud under the federal criminal code, which states that anyone who devises “any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” If Trump’s campaign sought donations for a legal fund when no such entity existed and sent out numerous solicitations every day, even after all election litigation had ended, he might be in trouble. Prosecutors would need to look at the exact wording of solicitations to make certain that a reasonable person would have believed there was an actual fund to pay for litigation.
The only intent required would be Trump’s understanding that litigation had ended and that a legal fund was nothing more than a lure to dupe money from his supporters. Prosecutors would not have to demonstrate whether he knew that he lost the election or deliberately tried to avoid knowing the facts.
The other criminal case that could neatly sidestep the intent issue involves Trump’s effort to induce Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to flip the state’s election — even after Trump was repeatedly told there was no evidence of fraud. Here we have Trump on tape not merely asking for an inquiry but producing a specific number of votes needed.
As a group of legal gurus explain in a comprehensive report from the Brookings Institution, “Trump’s attempt to overturn the Georgia result was not limited to one call. He also personally contacted other officials in Georgia — including the governor and the secretary of state’s chief investigator, Frances Watson — seeking their help in reversing his loss.” The report suggests a list of potential lines of prosecution, including solicitation to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit election fraud and intentional interference of the performance of election duties. State prosecutors could also consider pursuing Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Eisen, one of the authors of the Brookings report and former co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, told me after Monday’s hearing that “the beauty of the Georgia case is that it doesn’t matter” if you believe he “lost his mind or intended to defraud” voters. If he thought he won the election, Trump knew his desired Georgia votes didn’t exist, and he had no authority to browbeat election officials to invent them.
The Jan. 6 committee is making a convincing case that not even Trump’s closest allies believed his “big lie” and that he pursued illegal schemes to remain in power regardless. That’s a political indictment of Republican officials who have played along with his election schemes despite knowing there was no evidence to support his claims.
But in criminal law, you don’t need to bring every possible case; you only need to bring the simplest and most convincing case — especially when you are going after a former president of the United States. The committee pointed to two such avenues for prosecutors. | 2022-06-14T12:54:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How prosecutors can sidestep the question of Trump’s intent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/how-prosecutors-sidestep-question-trump-intent-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/how-prosecutors-sidestep-question-trump-intent-jan-6/ |
By Britta Lokting
The Hen Party circa 1936. (Courtesy of Grace Carter McKennon’s family)
For over 30 years during the mid-20th century, a group of women who lived in eastern Oregon went on an annual 10-day horseback ride through the Wallowa Mountains. The women called themselves the Hen Party, and they were led by Jean Birnie, a local woman known for her horse-riding skills, reverence for nature and rejection of modern conveniences.
From its start in the 1930s, the Hen Party was an early and localized precursor to the women’s rights movement that would sweep the nation 30 years later. Now, nearly 50 years after Birnie’s death, her three adopted grandchildren — sisters Melissa Over, 68; Sharon Mascia, 78; and Sally Flury, 77 — want to make the Hen Party archive public. (Their biological grandmother, a friend of Birnie’s, passed away before the sisters were born, and Birnie — whose only child died at a young age from a horseback-riding accident — unofficially became part of their family.) “If we die,” says Over, and the archive “doesn’t get out there ...” She trails off over the possibility of the lost history.
The Hen Party, the sisters recall, helped influence the preservation work of their father, Dan Reece — who, according to his obituary, worked with Sen. Mark O. Hatfield to protect 73,000 acres inside the state’s Eagle Cap Wilderness. The sisters possess the Hen Party’s surviving documents, including handwritten menus from the trips, photographs and a journal — called the “Log of the Ladies” — that was written by participants. One picture shows the women standing in front of their horses wearing coordinated outfits of button-downs, ties, and jodhpurs tucked into knee-high boots. The three sisters want to keep the spirit of the Hen Party alive by donating the documents to a library or university.
Part of the family’s effort to memorialize the Hen Party has included using a grant from Oregon Humanities, a nonprofit, to hire an outfitter and reenact a typical Hen Party trip. Along with her husband — who worked on a 2004 oral history project featuring the Hen Party — and several other collaborators, Over rode along the trails traversed by the women and cooked the food from their menu. They videotaped the experience and want to use the footage for, say, a documentary.
Birnie was born in 1885 in Island City, Ore. Her grandfather Stukely Ellsworth was a lawyer and early Oregon settler who served on the board of the Oregon and California Railroad and helped establish the University of Oregon. Birnie studied music and later gave piano and voice lessons. Though she was very social as a young woman, caroling at Christmas parties and hosting society events, her real love was for the mountains and the wild. In 1910, she married George Birnie, a jeweler. In a 1956 article in the La Grande Observer, Birnie said, “I was accused of marrying George just so I could go on a pack trip. That’s how we spent our honeymoon.” Gerda Brownton, a Hen Party member, recalled in an interview with the oral history project that Birnie’s mother said of her daughter, “She got married on horseback and stayed on horseback the rest of her life.”
Around 1935 — it’s unclear when precisely the group formed — Birnie began leading the women-only trips into the mountains. (In 1943, Birnie’s husband “invited himself,” according to the Observer, but was only “tolerated” for two days; Birnie put him in charge of wrangling the horses.) Though the main point of the party was simply to get outside, sightsee and live off the grid, Birnie — who operated a jewelry store with her husband in La Grande — helped her friends gain autonomy long before women’s liberation. “Wives were supposed to do what their husbands wanted them to do, the way the men wanted things done,” said Brownton in her oral history interview. “Much to [my husband’s] surprise, after I went on a horseback trip with Jean Birnie, I was telling him how to do things.”
Planning for the annual summer Hen Party trips began the previous November. The equipment they took was minimal but also afforded them pleasures, like the cast-iron and enamel pans they packed for baking cakes and making buckwheat pancakes. Cooking was always a main event. Birnie told the Observer that they ate huckleberry dumplings “at least twice” and had biscuits or hot rolls “at least once a day.” (Birnie never owned a refrigerator and cooked at home with a wood stove.) They also brought saddles, saddle blankets, steak, bacon, a coffee pot, and eggs that they nestled into the horses’ grain. Tents were left behind, as the women preferred to sleep under the stars. Later, some of the women brought sleeping bags, but, for Birnie, that approach was too confining. “She always needed to be able to have access to the outside,” says Mascia.
The trips were not open to just anyone. Birnie invited women — generally not more than 10 — based on their skills on a horse. Participants needed to be okay with riding long distances on potentially hazardous trails. The party once traveled 15 miles a day and covered more than 130 miles total. For drinking water and bathing, they used the rivers, where they also fished. According to the sisters, the party might come across sheep herders and barter some of their fish for lamb. As a 1943 article in the Observer put it, the women had “none of the modern comforts of inner-spring mattresses, automatic cookery, or any other of the myriad conveniences to which they are accustomed in their homes.”
As the years went by, these trips into the Wallowa Mountains became multigenerational. The sisters’ mother, Martha McKennon Reece, was a Hen Party member. When Birnie died in 1974 at the age of 88, the party had dissolved, but the legacy still lives on through her friends and family. Over’s daughter, Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler, whose New Orleans-based band the Lostines is named for a river in the Eagle Cap Wilderness, uses the “Log of the Ladies” journal as a guide whenever she hikes in the mountains. Today, anyone interested in retracing the Hen Party routes could hire a professional horse outfitter and ride the same trails. “She taught most of these women how to do all of it,” Reece-Kaigler told me. “Step out on their own and do it without their husbands — pretty cool, especially for that time.”
Britta Lokting is a journalist in New York. | 2022-06-14T13:16:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the Hen Party of the 1930s matters to feminism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/14/hen-party-horsewomen-feminism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/14/hen-party-horsewomen-feminism/ |
The Target of the First Watergate Burglary Still Wonders: ‘Why Me?’
Before the infamous break-in, there was another. A former DNC official ponders the wiretap that changed his life.
Spencer Oliver at his home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Oliver was the only Democratic National Committee official definitively identified as being successfully wiretapped in the Watergate scandal. (Kristen Zeis for The Washington Post)
One day in the spring of 1973, Spencer Oliver — a self-assured though little-known Democratic political insider with oversize wire-rimmed spectacles — says he got a call from his friend, Chuck Morgan, a prominent Washington attorney. “Come by for a drink this afternoon,” Morgan told him. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
When Oliver arrived, he was ushered into Morgan’s Capitol Hill office. An unassuming, soft-spoken man with thick dark eyebrows, thinning hair and a creased, weatherworn face rose to greet him, Oliver recalled during a series of interviews.
“I’m Jim McCord,” the man said as he reached out to shake Oliver’s hand.
Oliver had no trouble recognizing McCord, who’d recently been convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in a break-in the year before at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate. Before Oliver could introduce himself, McCord interjected.
“I know who you are,” McCord said. “And I know a lot about you.”
Oliver, the only DNC official definitively identified as being successfully wiretapped in the Watergate scandal, had just come face-to-face with the man who claimed to have put a bug on his phone in the first, mostly forgotten break-in at the DNC headquarters — weeks before the story erupted with the arrest of five burglars in a second break-in.
In his conversations with me, Oliver, now 84, offered the most comprehensive account to date of how he was thrust into a political scandal for the ages. For decades Oliver, who went on to a distinguished U.S. diplomatic career in Denmark, had mostly tried to avoid the topic of Watergate. Even though he was a victim, the stigma has followed him — long after the details have blurred with the passage of time. He’s haunted by the idea that he could be remembered solely as “the guy who was wiretapped in Watergate.”
As he has bored deeper into his memory of the events of half a century ago, Oliver has kept asking himself a question — the same question he’d asked McCord on that long-ago day: “Why me?”
Spencer Oliver loved the game. Politics was an exercise in moving pieces around boards. His network of contacts was vast. Even now, he has the aura of a Washington player. He is a tall man with a paunch — too many banquets during his diplomat days, he cracked one afternoon. He has a habit of expounding at great length in the manner of a person used to commanding a room. His voice carries a hint of a drawl, an echo of his Texas childhood.
One of our conversations — at a downtown Washington hotel cafe — was interrupted by a spiffily dressed man calling out, “Spencer!” It was Rufus Gifford, President Biden’s chief of protocol, who’d gotten to know Oliver while stationed as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Denmark at the same time Oliver was serving there as secretary general of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a post he held for more than two decades until retiring from the 50-plus member-state group in 2015.
Another time — at a French bistro in Washington’s Cleveland Park neighborhood, where he spent his high school years — J. Brian Atwood, who headed the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Clinton administration, came over to the table. “The last time we saw each other was in Ukraine,” Atwood said. (They were there on an election-monitoring mission.)
Dating back to his formative years in Washington in the 1960s and early 1970s, Oliver schmoozed with enthusiasm; fishing off the Dry Tortugas with party muckety-mucks or strategizing sotto voce with campaign insiders. “He knew everyone and he knew how to get results,” Severin Beliveau, Oliver’s longtime friend who served as Democratic state party chairman for Maine during the Watergate years, told me. “He got into the mechanics [of politics].”
Oliver was born into this world. His father, Robert Oliver, was a prominent union organizer and, after moving the family from Texas to Washington, a capital lobbyist with clientele that included the eccentric mogul Howard Hughes. (Oliver’s father sometimes shared clients with a Washington public relations firm, the Mullen Co., that served as a CIA front, according to a Watergate congressional report. Some Watergate theorists have sought to argue that the younger Oliver’s connection to Watergate has something to do with the CIA because the firm’s founder once asked him to join the company to be groomed as Robert Mullen’s successor (he refused) and because one of the DNC break-in planners, the former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, worked at Mullen. Oliver has forcefully denied any CIA connection.)
While they were studying law in the 1960s, Oliver and Beliveau got cushy jobs with the Capitol police force. Watching American politics from ground-level perches, Oliver saw opportunity. He headed the Young Democrats, a moribund organization he’s often given credit for revitalizing. He built on that foundation by starting the Association of State Democratic Chairmen in 1971 and becoming its executive director.
After some turf squabbles, his association was absorbed into the Democratic National Committee in the early 1970s before Watergate. He was intimately familiar with the inner workings of the committee. In the late 1960s, he’d worked as the administrative assistant to the DNC chairman. One of his jobs was to find new office space for the DNC.
He settled on a spot along the Potomac River — a building called the Watergate.
Sept. 7, 1972, dawned like just another day in the life of Spencer Oliver. He drove to the Watergate to deliver a report to the DNC’s executive committee.
A harried staffer twice interrupted him to deliver yellow message slips, saying he urgently needed to call Lawrence O’Brien, who’d recently left his job as DNC chairman to chair the presidential campaign of George McGovern, a U.S. senator from South Dakota. When Oliver called, Stanley Greigg, a former congressman from Iowa who’d joined the McGovern campaign, answered the phone.
Greigg had shocking news. Oliver had known that three months earlier, in June, there’d been a break-in at the DNC and that a team of five burglars with suspected Nixon campaign ties had been arrested. But Greigg told Oliver that O’Brien was about to hold a news conference to announce that an “unimpeachable authority” had confidentially revealed that there’d been a previous DNC incursion — in May that year — and that a nonfunctioning tap was placed on O’Brien’s phone and that Oliver’s phone was successfully tapped. “I was stunned,” Oliver told me.
Oliver, then 34 years old, pleaded with Greigg to persuade O’Brien not to reveal his name. He reasoned that in years to come no one would remember whether he was a bad guy or a victim. He’s kept an old political cartoon showing two men talking about another man walking past the Capitol: “I forget whether he’s the ‘tapper’ or the ‘tappee.’ ” On that day in 1972 Oliver was too late to preserve his anonymity. The media had already been tipped. Within hours, Oliver was whisked to the offices of attorneys O’Brien had enlisted to sue Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President, known by the nickname CREEP, which was suspected of involvement in the break-ins.
“Suddenly I became some kind of a freak,” Oliver said. Some of his DNC colleagues looked askance at him, Oliver told me, even wondering aloud why they weren’t tapped, as if it were an affirmation of a person’s importance. On Sept. 13 — less than a week after his life was thrown into turmoil — he was summoned to appear before a grand jury by Earl Silbert, an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the Watergate burglars.
After his short grand jury appearance, Oliver said, he called his secretary, who had contacted the phone company to inspect what she thought was a malfunctioning light on Oliver’s phone. The phone guy had found something, the secretary told him.
Moments after Oliver got back to the office, the FBI showed up. In the guts of Oliver’s phone lay a 1½-inch wide, 1-inch long and 1-inch thick black box connected to three black wires, according to an FBI memo. The device was designed to emit a signal that would allow eavesdroppers to listen to calls remotely. Oliver told me he hadn’t had his phone checked before his secretary said something was amiss because he knew nothing about how wiretaps were done.
In the weeks to come Silbert sparred with the FBI over the discovery, asserting that the tap had been placed before the burglars were arrested in June and that the agency had “goofed” by missing it. The FBI pushed back, saying he was plain wrong. All the phones were taken apart and inspected after the June arrests, an FBI memo said, and no wiretap was found on Oliver’s phone. As for the tap found on Oliver’s phone in September, the FBI said it was inoperative and rudimentary; it was a different type than the taps carried by the burglars when they were arrested during the second break-in. In a memo, the FBI laboratory even theorized that the tap might have been placed by Democrats who wanted to “keep the pot boiling” by generating another headline-grabbing development that could be used against the Republicans.
In the guts of Oliver’s phone lay a black box connected to three black wires, according to an FBI memo. The device was designed to emit a signal that would allow eavesdroppers to listen to calls remotely.
What Oliver didn’t know was that the shocking news he’d received about his phone being bugged was not news to Silbert. Two months earlier — in July — Silbert and the FBI had interviewed Alfred Baldwin, a former FBI agent who confessed to spending three weeks at the Howard Johnson’s hotel across from the Watergate at the behest of McCord listening to calls placed on Oliver’s phone, according to a copy of Baldwin’s closed-door interview with prosecutors and the FBI. Baldwin told investigators that he wrote summary memos for McCord on stationery labeled “Gemstone,” the code name for the spying operation. (Those memos have never surfaced.)
Oliver has carried a grudge all these years that Silbert had kept him in the dark, fueling his impression that the U.S. attorney’s office was helping the Nixon White House. “Did they call the Democrats and say, ‘Oh, by the way, your phone was tapped,’ ” Oliver said. “What kind of assistant U.S. attorneys don’t tell somebody that they’ve been the victims of a crime? Why?” He didn’t hear from them until after the DNC announcement that September. And the burglars weren’t indicted until two days after the tap on his phone was discovered.
Silbert, now 86 and at work on a memoir of his Watergate years, denies any foot-dragging. He told me that he was employing a common investigative technique by keeping Baldwin’s revelation secret and delaying an indictment because he was using that information to build a case against the Nixon allies who oversaw the burglars — Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy — and didn’t want to tip his hand.
As time has passed, Oliver has developed his own theory, asserting in a text message to me that Silbert “didn’t do anything or say anything BECAUSE HE WAS ALREADY PART OF THE COVERUP.” Oliver also points to the fact that less than two years after the break-in Silbert was nominated by Nixon to be U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia.
In the years after the Watergate break-ins, Morgan, Oliver’s friend and attorney, who’d introduced him to McCord, publicly accused Silbert of vigorously pursuing a dubious theory that the wiretapping was intended to blackmail Oliver. (Morgan headed the American Civil Liberties Union office in Washington and had become acquainted with McCord through friends in the legal community.) Silbert said to me that he considered the possibility that blackmail was a motive for the wiretapping because Baldwin said he’d been explicitly instructed by his boss McCord to monitor “personal” and business calls.
Morgan also criticized Silbert for limiting the indictment to Liddy, Hunt and the burglars. He interpreted that decision as an effort to shield higher-ups in the Nixon administration. Silbert countered that he was intent on seeking an indictment focused on the burglars and their handlers that could be readily understood by a jury and result in a conviction that would put pressure on other conspirators.
Nixon’s nomination of Silbert foundered, but he would eventually be overwhelmingly confirmed in a bipartisan Senate vote after being nominated by the man who pardoned Nixon: the disgraced president’s successor, Gerald R. Ford.
Fifty years later Oliver is still fuming: “They missed the whole thing. All they caught were the burglars, but they never figured out why they were in there and what they were looking for, what they got and how they used it.”
After O’Brien’s revelation of the wiretapping in 1972, a lawsuit filed on behalf of O’Brien, the DNC and Oliver was trudging along. O’Brien and the DNC settled. But Oliver refused. He told me he suspected a conspiracy that went far beyond the tapping of his phone and the botched attempt to surveil O’Brien. Oliver believed fresh details might be revealed in discovery and depositions for the case.
A new DNC chairman, Robert Strauss, clashed publicly and privately with Oliver, urging him to drop the lawsuit, arguing the party needed to move beyond Watergate. Strauss was the protege and close confidant of former Texas governor John Connally, who served as Nixon’s treasury secretary. Connally was considered by Nixon insiders as a running mate and headed a Democrats for Nixon campaign in the 1972 election. Oliver has developed a complex and speculative theory that Strauss wanted the lawsuit scuttled because discovery associated with the case would reveal Connally and Strauss collaborating to help McGovern — the candidate Nixon thought would be easiest to beat — win the Democratic nomination.
Oliver blames Watergate for derailing his career in party politics, which he once thought would lead to the chairmanship of the DNC, and for dealing a final, fatal blow to his already troubled marriage. He believes attempts were made to put financial pressure on him so he’d drop his lawsuit. He split his time in those days between two jobs. Strauss eventually forced him out of the DNC, and Oliver barely held off an attempt by Republicans to oust him from the presidency of the American Council of Young Political Leaders, a bipartisan group that arranged exchanges between rising U.S. government officials and their counterparts in other nations.
Oliver wasn’t the only one trying to suss out the wiretappers’ motives. Silbert, the Watergate prosecutor, told me recently that he concluded the tap was placed by mistake on Oliver’s phone. After all, Silbert said, Baldwin — the man eavesdropping on the calls — had said he didn’t know at first whether he was listening to someone whose first name was Spencer or whose first name was Oliver.
Washington was awash in rumors that much of the conversations dealt with sex. Maybe it would be less of a mystery if Baldwin had been able to say more. Federal law prohibited him from disclosing the contents of wiretapped conversations. Baldwin’s closed-door interview with prosecutors and the FBI became a public record many years later, revealing that he told investigators about hearing Oliver discuss political matters, including backing one of McGovern’s more politically moderate competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination during the state convention in Texas that took place while he was being wiretapped. He makes no mention of hearing any racy talk. Yet John Ehrlichman — the Nixon counsel who was imprisoned for his role in the coverup — can be heard on the White House tapes saying the DNC spying operation was primarily collecting information about “this fellow Oliver phoning his girlfriends all over the country lining up assignations.”
Far from gallivanting around the country having affairs, Oliver told me he was actually talking on his office phone frequently about going through intense couples counseling. He was attempting to save his marriage and preserve his home life with three children, then ages 9, 12 and 14.
As more clues are unearthed over the years, Oliver’s Watergate cameo becomes ever more convoluted and mysterious as researchers and conspiracy theorists connect various dots.
Several months after the break-ins, his secretary Ida “Maxie” Wells, who had quit when the Watergate story broke, came to his office with another secretary, Oliver said. They wanted him to know they often used his phone when he was out of town to talk about their dates, Oliver told me. “You just don’t know how women talk,” they said to him. “You think boys’ locker room talk is bad. You ought to hear women talk about their sexual interests.” Wells, now a retired college English instructor in Louisiana, told me that she didn’t remember the precise words she’d used, but that it sounded like something she’d say. (Wells has also vehemently denied speculative theories that there was a call-girl ring being run out of the DNC offices and that she was involved in running it.)
A few years ago, Oliver was browsing a bookseller’s table in a Copenhagen park when he stumbled upon a 10-cent copy of the diaries of H.R. Haldeman, the Nixon White House chief of staff who was imprisoned for his role in the Watergate coverup. Oliver bought the book and then started accumulating other Watergate works. Leafing through them brought back memories he was still reluctant to revisit. When I called him earlier this year as the 50th anniversary of the second Watergate break-in approached, Oliver said he felt newly inspired to understand the mess he lived through. Soon he was sifting through boxes of material stashed at the Washington apartment he uses occasionally between longer stays at his seaside home in Denmark and his secluded getaway on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He reviewed hundreds of pages of transcripts, court records and letters, scrawling notes in the margins; and he learned facts about the case through public records I showed him that he’d never seen before.
As more clues are unearthed over the years, Oliver’s Watergate cameo becomes ever more convoluted and mysterious as researchers and conspiracy theorists connect various dots. Was he a key to understanding Watergate, right at the “heart of the scandal,” as posited to me by James Rosen, a biographer of Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who has challenged received wisdom about the break-ins? Or was he a “curiosity” and “an asterisk” in the larger panorama of widespread political espionage and coverup, as described to me by Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter who teamed with his colleague, Bob Woodward, to break the stories that made Watergate a national obsession? “Nobody knows for sure,” Bernstein says.
All Oliver can do is rely on that long-ago conversation with the spymaster McCord and the crusading lawyer Morgan. McCord is dead. Morgan is dead. What lives is Oliver’s memory of what he says McCord told him: “We knew who you were. We knew what you did. We thought we’d get a lot of political information.”
It sounds simple and straightforward enough. But in Watergate, nothing is simple and straightforward. | 2022-06-14T13:16:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Spencer Oliver, a DNC official during Watergate, still wonders why he was wiretapped - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/14/spencer-oliver-wiretap-mystery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/14/spencer-oliver-wiretap-mystery/ |
The 72-unit Muse occupies an eight-story building near the Potomac River and the Mount Vernon Trail in Alexandria, Va.
By Susan Doyle
The living room in a staged model unit at the Muse in Alexandria, Va. (Benjamin C. Tankersley for The Washington Post)
The location, close to the water and its serenity, drew Michele Pearce and her husband, Stephen, to the Muse, a 72-unit condominium development in Alexandria’s Old Town North.
The prospect of walking and cycling on the nearby Mount Vernon Trail and the luxury of living in a place where “every detail has been thought of,” were further incentives for a couple seeking a peaceful change from their condo in bustling CityCenterDC.
“The whole kind of feel is different and welcome,” said Michele, who is of counsel at a D.C. law firm. She and her husband bought a large, one-bedroom unit with a den and patio. They moved there in April.
The Pearces were among the first residents to move into the Muse, which occupies an eight-story building near the Potomac River waterfront. Its builder, the Carr Cos., expects construction to be completed in July.
The location at 1201 N. Royal St. was once home to Bastille, a French restaurant. Later, for almost 20 years, the occupants included MetroStage, a theater group that will be moving to a Carr Cos. development around the corner on North Fairfax Street.
The North Royal Street location will still have room for the arts. Within the Muse development, space has been set aside — on the ground floor of a new three-story building — for art studios and for classes, workshops and other events organized through the Art League.
The Art League’s presence "provides an elevated cultural experience within our community that our residents are looking for,” said Kami Kraft, vice president of the Mayhood Co., which is in charge of sales and marketing. “It’s a little different.”
It also inspired the condominium’s name. “The Muse was the name derived to give that artistic nod,” Kraft said.
Available units at the Muse come with one or two bedrooms.
The largest, at 1,863 square feet, has two bedrooms, a den, two full bathrooms, a powder room (or half-bath) and a balcony. It is one of six models offering two bedrooms plus a den or a loft. The smallest of the six, at 1,655 square feet, also has two balconies. Prices for units with two bedrooms plus a den start at $1.85 million.
Two-bedroom, two-bathroom units without a den or loft come in seven layouts and range from 1,114 to 1,576 square feet; the largest comes with a balcony. Prices start at $950,000.
Units with one bedroom plus a den or a loft come in five varieties. They have either two full bathrooms or one bathroom and a powder room, and sizes range from 952 to 1,398 square feet. Prices start at $860,000.
Prices for all luxury loft units start at $1.15 million.
About half of the units have been sold, and most early sales were of larger units priced at $2 million to $3 million, Kraft said. Midsize units make up most of the inventory left for sale.
The units have open-concept floor plans, gourmet kitchens, spalike bathrooms, nine-foot-tall windows and 7.5-inch engineered oak floors throughout. Finishes include Snaidero cabinets, quartz countertops and Bosch and Thermador appliances.
Floor plans were designed with an emphasis on "how we expected people to live,” which is reflected in such features as a walk-in laundry room and linen closets and pantries for storage, Kraft said. Additional storage is also available to purchase, in amounts from 8,000 to 20,000 square feet.
All units come with one or two underground parking spots that are included in the price of the home. Extra parking spots are for sale, along with electric-vehicle chargers.
Boutique condos in D.C.’s Columbia Heights offer charm, location
The Muse provides 24-hour concierge service and has a property manager and engineer on-site. An additional lobby attendant is available to assist with groceries and provide other help Monday through Friday. Kraft said the Muse “aims to offer a higher service level than what has been offered in Alexandria.”
Community amenities include a penthouse-level fitness center with yoga studios and an outdoor fitness terrace.
A rooftop indoor-outdoor clubroom offers scenic views of the Potomac. It has a party kitchen and informal and formal seating inside. Outside, a wraparound terrace has private dining, fire pits and a grilling station.
In the garage, there’s a pet wash and a bike storage room with a repair center.
On the Mount Vernon Trail, residents can travel for miles along the Potomac on their bicycles. They can ride to Old Town for dinner without having to worry about parking, Kraft said.
The Muse is within walking distance of Tide Lock Park and is a few blocks from a cluster of stores, including Harris Teeter and Trader Joe’s, coffee shops and fast-casual restaurants. It’s about 10 blocks from the commercial activity on King Street.
The river remains a huge draw for people, Kraft said.
“The water is magic,” Kraft said. “Every buyer comes in and says they want a view. They want the river. They want the trees and our whole artful-living theme.”
Schools: Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School; George Washington Middle School; Alexandria City High School
Transit: The Muse is about three-quarters of a mile from the Braddock Road Metro station (on the Blue and Yellow lines) and the Potomac Yard station (also on the Blue and Yellow lines), which is under construction and expected to be completed this year. Residents can ride the Dash bus to the Braddock Road station. Nearby highways include George Washington Memorial Parkway and Interstate 395. The building is on the Mount Vernon Trail.
Nearby: Mount Vernon Trail, Tide Lock Park and Oronoco Bay Park; a cluster of grocery stores, coffee shops and restaurants within walking distance; shopping and dining on King Street about 10 blocks away.
1201 N. Royal St., Alexandria, Va.
The plan calls for 72 condominiums, and about half remain for sale. Prices for available units start at $860,000 for one bedroom with a den; $950,000 for two bedrooms; $1.85 million for two bedrooms with a den; $1.15 million for units with lofts.
Builder: Carr Cos.
Features: Snaidero cabinetry in kitchens, owner’s suites and guest bathrooms; quartz countertops in kitchens and bathrooms; Bosch and Thermador kitchen appliances; 7.5-inch engineered oak floors throughout; nine-foot-high windows; custom lighting. One or two underground parking spots are included in home price. Extra storage is available to buy.
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 1 plus den to 2 plus den/1.5 to 2.5 (in available units)
Square-footage: 952 to 1,863
Condominium fee: $900 to $1,800 a month, depending on unit size
Sales: The Mayhood Co. at 571-771-MUSE (6873) or sales@museoldtown.com | 2022-06-14T13:16:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Finding inspiration and relaxation at the Muse, luxury condos of Old Town North - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/finding-inspiration-relaxation-luxury-condos-old-town-north/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/finding-inspiration-relaxation-luxury-condos-old-town-north/ |
Analysis by Akshat Rathi | Bloomberg
Water vapor rises from the NRG Energy Inc. WA Parish generating station in Thompsons, Texas, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. The plant is home to the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project, a joint venture between NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp., which reportedly captures and repurposes more than 90% of its own Co2 emissions. (Bloomberg)
You’ll hear a lot about pledges from companies and governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions to “net-zero,” effectively aiming to eliminate their warming impact in a bid to stave off climate change. Ideally a big chunk of that will come from switching to new lower-carbon technologies, developing more energy-efficient manufacturing processes, switching power plants to renewable sources and recycling materials more effectively. But what about the rest? Many companies claim it’s not economically feasible to go all the way. That’s where the concept of carbon offsets comes in.
1. What is a carbon offset?
The idea is that when a company, government or individual is responsible for emitting carbon dioxide, the same amount of the greenhouse gas will be removed from the atmosphere by other means to compensate. The general term “offset” was popularized long before climate change took center stage. While offsets have historically centered on the planting or protection of trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, the term has since been applied to a variety of environmentally sustainable efforts globally.
2. What kind of offsets are there?
Most of the discussion of offsets revolves around voluntary ones purchased by companies, organizations or individuals trying to meet self-imposed goals. These transactions typically involve developers who propose projects, registries that validate whether the carbon savings are real and brokers who match offsets with buyers.
3. How big is the voluntary market?
About $1 billion in 2021, according to Ecosystem Marketplace. It’s not administered by any specific government or organization, and there’s considerable debate about how it has evolved. BloombergNEF analysts estimate that 1,900 carbon offset projects issued credits from 2015 to 2020 with the four major registries. Projects issued over 344 million carbon offsets in 2021, up from 185 million in 2020.
4. What kinds of projects are involved?
The vast majority of offsets available are in the category called “avoided emissions.” These are projects that either protect forests, provide people with fossil fuel alternatives, or avert emissions from waste. If done right, they can reduce greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere while providing other benefits to local communities and promoting biodiversity. Beyond planting or protecting trees, offsets can also be generated for avoiding the release of other greenhouse gases like methane or nitrous oxide. Typically, more expensive offsets involve removing existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and storing it away. That may involve projects like growing a forest or installing sophisticated machines that vacuum carbon dioxide out of the air. Just 4% of offsets actually remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, according to data from the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, which Bloomberg Philanthropies helped fund.
5. Are offsets effective?
Assuming the certification process is watertight (a big “if”), the effectiveness of an offset project comes down to the concept of “additionality.” This measures how much extra good a project achieves compared with what would have occurred in the absence of carbon payments. Projects that flare methane leaking from coal mines or destroy industrial climate-warming gases can more easily show they’re additional (providing that local laws don’t require these actions). Others, such as new solar farms or preserving well-stocked forests, will often have lower additionality because there’s a good chance these climate-friendly actions would have occurred without money from the offsets market. A growing number of scientists are raising doubts about the effectiveness of offsets. Weak rules have created incentives for landowners to develop offset projects that don’t actually change the way forests are managed, and therefore do little to help the climate. That’s according to Jim Hourdequin, one of the biggest sellers of carbon offsets. Brisk sales of meaningless offsets are leading to claims of climate progress that isn’t actually happening.
6. How will the debate play out?
Given the credibility issues surrounding avoided-emissions offsets, a few companies are moving to buy expensive carbon-removal offsets instead. In 2022, companies including Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Stripe Inc. banded together to launch a nearly $1 billion fund committed to buying carbon-removal offsets from new startups. The hope is that the money will help develop the industry; the largest machine capturing CO₂ from the air today has a capacity of only about 4,000 tons annually. | 2022-06-14T13:17:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Are Carbon Offsets and How Many Really Work? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-are-carbon-offsets-and-how-many-really-work/2022/06/14/1741863c-ebdd-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-are-carbon-offsets-and-how-many-really-work/2022/06/14/1741863c-ebdd-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
CASPER, WY - MAY 28: Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally on May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. The rally is being held to support Harriet Hageman, Rep. Liz Cheney’s primary challenger in Wyoming. (Photo by Chet Strange/Getty Images) (Photographer: Chet Strange/Getty Images North America)
Once again, we saw a president fail to accept — or, in Trump’s case, fail even to try to understand — that presidents are only one of many sources of legitimate authority within the US political system. When presidents try to get their way despite failing to persuade those other political players to go along, they risk winding up surrounded by buffoons. The president’s plans blow up in his face, sometimes to the point of legal jeopardy.
This certainly was the case with the Iran-contra affair, which was largely an operation run by staff of the National Security Council, an agency in the White House. One can even argue that the Iraq War debacle was a case where the White House, or more specifically the vice-president’s office, found ways around potential objections from the State Department and military professionals. | 2022-06-14T13:17:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Trump’s Own Appointees Are Setting the Record Straight - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-trumps-own-appointees-are-setting-the-record-straight/2022/06/14/54d203f8-ebda-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-trumps-own-appointees-are-setting-the-record-straight/2022/06/14/54d203f8-ebda-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Buzz Lightyear origin story lacks magic of ‘Toy Story’ films
In ‘Lightyear,’ Chris Evans is the voice of the titular astronaut, the movie character who inspired the action figure
Review by Alan Zilberman
Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans) and his robot companion Sox (Peter Sohn) in “Lightyear.” (Pixar)
It’s been 27 years since “Toy Story’s” Andy first became enamored with his Buzz Lightyear action figure, running around his bedroom shouting, “To infinity and beyond!” and inadvertently giving his Sheriff Woody toy an existential crisis. In Pixar’s sci-fi adventure spinoff “Lightyear,” we’re introduced to what originally captured Andy’s imagination: Andy’s favorite movie from the mid-1990s, featuring the titular astronaut. Put another way, we’re asked to view the film through Andy’s eyes.
If “Lightyear” were a more involving story, it might withstand that level of scrutiny. But meandering comic flourishes and an underdeveloped climax make it hard to suspend disbelief on multiple levels — ours as well as Andy’s.
In place of Tim Allen, who provided the voice of the Buzz Lightyear toy in the previous films, Chris Evans stars as the daring space ranger, recycling the bravado he brought to “Captain America: The First Avenger” (an ironic choice, given that this film also begins with Buzz failing). After an expedition to a hostile planet, he unintentionally maroons his fellow explorers, so they have no choice but to set up a colony there. Determined to correct his mistake, Buzz tests the “hyperspeed” technology that will get the colonists back on course. This leads to an unexpected wrinkle: Time passes more slowly on his test flights, so while he is gone for mere minutes, years pass for the colonists. He repeats the flights over and over, sacrificing a normal life for the greater good.
Director and co-writer Angus MacLane uses the gimmick of time travel to consider the limits of honor and duty. Buzz has no choice but to watch his best friend, Alisha (Uzo Aduba), live out her life, in snippets, while he is still a young man. “Lightyear” takes its time to let Buzz grasp the full emotional weight of his sacrifice because — conveniently for him — a robot invasion led by Emperor Zurg (James Brolin) is the more immediate threat. The film’s long middle section follows Buzz’s effort to reclaim his status as hero, as he leads Alisha’s adult grandchild Izzy (Keke Palmer) on a daring mission with other space-ranger misfits.
But instead of developing chemistry between Evans and the other voice actors, “Lightyear” relies on broad laughs that rob the characters of eccentricity. Taika Waititi, who seems to be everywhere these days, plays a hapless ranger who fixates on unimportant details, while Dale Soules plays a one-note ex-con with a penchant for explosives. The only character who makes much of an impression is Sox, a robot cat who steals every scene he’s in. (Fun fact: Peter Sohn, who delivers Sox’s deadpan, un-precious performance, is actually a Pixar animator with only a handful of voice credits.)
This raises a question: Why didn’t Andy also have a Sox toy? It may seem beside the point, but it’s a rumination that helps clarify the film’s shortcomings: When the film’s climax sacrifices suspense in favor of poignancy, it’s demonstrating the kind of subtlety that would probably be lost on younger viewers like Andy. What’s more, the character of Zurg isn’t all that much of a threat, as it turns out, and the big battle scene is ultimately a way to resolve a time paradox. Put another way, it’s less “Star Wars” than “Star Trek.”
That being said, the special effects can be exhilarating, as when Izzy considers the vast void of space at a crucial moment. Though this is an animated film, producers have characterized “Lightyear” as a “live-action film within the ‘Toy Story’ universe” — meaning it’s meant to be taken as live action from the point of view of animated human characters. It’s a confusing distinction, regardless of how good computer effects have gotten since the 1990s.
Maybe “Lightyear” made an impression on Andy because the film takes friendship and diversity seriously. In terms of racial and sexual representation, the film is consistent with 2022 values that would have been borderline unrealistic 30 years ago. If the film is aspirational, showing Andy what it means to be a dependable ally, then MacLane sacrifices pure entertainment for a loftier purpose. A more straightforward clash between good and evil might have touched on the same themes, without sacrificing the action kids could mimic with toys.
PG. At area theaters. Contains action and peril. 100 minutes | 2022-06-14T13:18:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chris Evans is the voice of astronaut Buzz Lightyear, the movie character who inspired the 'Toy Story' action figure. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/06/14/lightyear-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/06/14/lightyear-movie-review/ |
Climate change is increasingly viewed as a public health crisis
Happy Tuesday, everyone. Yes, there’s a band called the Affordable Rock ‘n’ Roll Act. And yes, a prominent geneticist and White House acting science adviser is a member (h/t Stat)
Today’s edition: The House will vote today on legislation to protect the families of Supreme Court justices. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has covid again, the second time in roughly a month. Many baby formula plants were inspected amid the pandemic. But first …
The warming planet is a public health issue
For the first time, the American Medical Association adopted a policy declaring climate change a public health crisis.
The nation’s largest physician trade group voted yesterday to put its lobbying heft behind policies aimed at limiting global warming and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The AMA will also create a strategy detailing what physician practices and the health-care sector can do to combat climate change.
This comes amid a growing sense that global warming is a threat to the health of people across the globe. And there’s a burgeoning sentiment that the health industry needs to be part of the response.
The new efforts are coming from the nation’s health department — which recently established an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, though Congress is yet to fund its work — on down to medical professionals who traveled to Scotland for this year’s United Nations climate summit.
“Taking action now won’t reverse all of the harm done, but it will help prevent further damage to our planet and our patients’ health and well-being,” Ilse R. Levin, an AMA board member, said in a statement.
Here’s why advocates say climate change is a public health threat: Increasing temperatures have led to heat-related illness. Climate change has become a persistent danger to food security. El Niño weather patterns cause about 6 million children to go hungry — and could increase as the planet warms.
Over the years, there’s been a notable shift among the health profession in recognizing how rising global temperatures endanger the health of millions of people.
The National Academy of Medicine launched a public-private partnership to address the health industry’s environmental impact. As of April, more than 110 organizations have joined the effort.
Last year’s U.N. climate change conference framed the issue as a critical public health problem, our Climate 202 pal Maxine Joselow reported.
The World Health Organization referred to climate change as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity” in an October special report.
Health groups — including the AMA, America's Physician Groups and the American Academy of Nursing — signed onto a 2019 climate change agenda calling the issue “a true public health emergency.”
At the federal government
A case in point for how nascent some of the efforts are: The federal health department’s Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which was created last summer, doesn’t yet have a dedicated pot of funding. (For a deep dive into that office, read more from Politico’s Sarah Owermohle.)
The Department of Health and Human Services recently established another venture. Late last month, HHS created the Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ), which will be housed inside the climate change office and tasked with tackling long-standing health issues disproportionately impacting marginalized communities, like pollution and other environmental health issues.
But since Congress hasn’t yet funded the effort, that has meant the growing staff — many of whom have previously worked in the environmental justice space — are detailed from other parts of the federal government.
“Once we get our funding, we can actually do more, but we're going to do as much as we can, we're going to do all we can, to really put those communities first,” Sharunda Buchanan, the office’s interim director, recently told The Health 202
Among the office’s first tasks: Sifting through public comments, which are due at the end of the week, on a draft outline of HHS’s environmental justice strategy. The office is also working to find points of contact across the federal health department who are already working on environmental justice efforts to be part of a working group to implement the strategic plan.
“Environmental justice and health are inextricably linked,” Buchanan said. “If you find an environmental injustice, you’re likely going to find some health issue.”
Poll check
A majority of Americans say transgender women should stay out of women's sports
Most Americans oppose allowing transgender women athletes to compete against female athletes at the professional, college and high school level, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
The poll, conducted among 1,503 people across the United States, finds 55 percent of Americans opposed to allowing transgender women and girls to compete with other women and girls in high school sports and 58 percent opposed to it for college and professional sports, Tara Bahrampour, Emily Guskin and Scott Clement write. About 3 in 10 Americans said transgender women and girls should be allowed to compete at each of those levels, while an additional 15 percent have no opinion.
On tap today: House leaders decided to avoid a brewing partisan fight over security arrangements for families of Supreme Court justices and employees. The chamber will vote today on a Senate-passed bill to extend security to family members of Supreme Court justices, but not family of judicial clerks or staffers.
The shift in strategy came after an unusual public ultimatum from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last night, who threatened passage of the House bill, The Post’s Mike DeBonis reports. “The security issue is related to the Supreme Court justices, not to nameless staff that no one knows,” McConnell told reporters yesterday in a rare Capitol hallway interview.
HHS secretary tests positive for the coronavirus — again
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra tested positive for the coronavirus for the second time in roughly a month, HHS spokesperson Sarah Lovenheim said in a statement.
The details: Becerra is currently experiencing mild symptoms and is not considered a close contact of either President Biden or Vice President Harris.
Becerra initially tested positive for the virus on May 18, after which he was treated with Pfizer’s Paxlovid — an antiviral drug used to prevent severe illness from covid-19. Some patients who have taken the medication report experiencing a recurrence in their symptoms between 2 and 8 days after completing the treatment. Becerra’s latest positive test is less likely to be classified as a rebound since it falls outside that timeframe, according to HHS.
Baby formula plants weren’t inspected because of covid-19
Federal regulators didn’t inspect facilities owned and operated by three of the nation's leading infant formula manufacturers — Abbott, Reckitt and Gerber — for up to two-and-a-half years due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal records reviewed by the Associated Press.
The gap in formula plant inspections is under new scrutiny from lawmakers, who are investigating a series of missteps that led to a nationwide shortage and left parents scrambling for a way to feed their children.
Key context: Federal law requires the Food and Drug Administration to inspect formula facilities every three to five years, but the agency has consistently inspected plants annually until the pandemic. When the agency pulled most of its safety inspectors from the field in 2020, it said it skipped about 15,000 formula plant inspections.
One of those plants — a facility owned by Abbott Nutrition in Sturgis, Mich. — would later become embroiled in the heart of the national formula shortage after it was shut down for four months by federal regulators who alleged unsanitary conditions at the site. The plant reopened earlier this month.
The FDA resumed regular inspections in July 2021 but has still yet to return to one key Reckitt plant and two owned by Gerber, according to agency records. All of those facilities are currently operating around-the-clock to boost U.S. formula production, AP’s Matthew Perrone writes.
HHS lays out post-pandemic audio-only telemedicine guidelines
The federal health department yesterday released new guidelines explaining how health-care providers can stay in compliance with federal medical privacy laws when offering audio-only telemedicine services, including once regulatory flexibilities allowed during the pandemic lapse.
To comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), health-care workers should conduct appointments in private settings and take steps to verify their patients’ identity, among other safeguards.
The rule does not apply to telemedicine conducted over landlines because the information transmitted is not electronic, unlike mobile technologies that rely on cellular and WiFi networks.
Key context: To quickly expand the availability of remote health-care services in the early days of the pandemic, the agency said it would not impose penalties against telemedicine providers attempting to comply with HIPAA in “good faith.” That policy is expected to end either when HHS lifts its covid-19 public health emergency declaration or it is allowed to expire.
Why it matters: Audio-only telehealth has emerged as a critical tool to address virtual care disparities and reach patients in rural communities, individuals with disabilities and those without access to the internet.
Missouri could become the next front in the battle over birth control — and may portend what’s to come from other states in a post-Roe world, the New York Times reports.
Some state GOP lawmakers have signaled that they may attempt to revive a failed effort to ban taxpayer funding for two common methods of preventing pregnancy: intrauterine devices and emergency contraception, also known as Plan B, should Roe fall.
Experts say the demise of Roe would make the need for effective birth control more urgent than ever. But nearly six decades after the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to contraception — and over a decade after the Affordable Care Act required private insurers cover it — birth control is still not accessible to all Americans.
National leaders in the antiabortion movement say their next push will be to ban medication abortion, and that birth control isn’t on their radar. Some Republicans on the far right have sought to limit access to emergency contraception.
But still, birth control access in Missouri and in other states may be getting harder. In February, the state became the fourth in the nation to eject Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program, in a move the organization says violates federal law, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill … Congressional Democrats are pushing to expand access to birth control. Last week, they introduced legislation to require insurers to fully cover any FDA-approved birth control pills, including emergency contraception.
More from Sheryl:
2) The clinic I visited is called Tri-Rivers Family Planning in the tiny city of Rolla, Mo., which sits along historic Rte. 66.
It has been in operation for > 50 years, offering contraceptives and other reproductive health care on a shoestring budget.https://t.co/Lxa5KGJHZd
— Sheryl Gay Stolberg (@SherylNYT) June 13, 2022
Covid is making flu and other common viruses act in unfamiliar ways (By Frances Stead Sellers | The Washington Post)
Walensky’s secret coach (By Alex Thompson, Adam Cancryn and Max Tani | Politico)
New York state to protect abortion providers under new laws (By Marina Villeneuve | The Associated Press)
Today’s third @washingtonpost TikTok features familiar viruses acting strangely https://t.co/YKpJFJXh1B pic.twitter.com/RoT9playMK
Analysis: Biden courts labor amid worries union members are drifting away from Democrats | 2022-06-14T13:18:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change is increasingly viewed as a public health crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/climate-change-is-increasingly-viewed-public-health-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/climate-change-is-increasingly-viewed-public-health-crisis/ |
This booking photo provided by Volusia County Division Of Corrections shows Jeff Hardy. Hardy, a Pro wrestler, is facing driving under the influence and other charges after being arrested in Florida, authorities said. He was pulled over by a state trooper early Monday, June 13, 2022, after the Florida Highway Patrol received calls about an impaired driver driving along Interstate 95 in Volusia County. The county is home to Daytona Beach. (Volusia County Division Of Corrections via AP) (Uncredited/Volusia County Division Of Corrections) | 2022-06-14T13:19:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pro wrestler Jeff Hardy facing DUI, other charges in Florida - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/pro-wrestler-jeff-hardy-facing-dui-other-charges-in-florida/2022/06/14/7dc806a4-ebda-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/pro-wrestler-jeff-hardy-facing-dui-other-charges-in-florida/2022/06/14/7dc806a4-ebda-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
N.C. school leaders accused of ignoring abuse have immunity, court rules
A special-education teacher in Statesville, N.C., repeatedly shoved an autistic first-grade student into a garbage can, telling him that if he “acted like trash,” he would be treated “like trash,” according to a federal lawsuit; she pushed him to the floor and covered his nose and mouth. The abuse was reported to higher-ups, the lawsuit says, but nothing was done, and the next year, she forced the child to stand all day and poured grease on his head.
Robin Johnson kept teaching and abusing students until an outside therapist made a report to police, the lawsuit in federal court said. Johnson pleaded guilty to assault; the boy’s mother subsequently sued school administrators, saying her son is still suffering psychologically from the experience.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that those officials were protected from liability because there was no substantiated claim that they acted maliciously, corruptly or outside their official duties.
“The mere allegation that such disheartening things occurred at their school does not show that the school officials intended them to happen,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. While malice “has a certain intuitive appeal here given the troubling facts alleged,” he wrote, the plaintiff did not actually make that claim or offer evidence for it in the complaint.
The legal principle of “qualified immunity” that protects police officers from civil suits has generated widespread anger in recent years, but the doctrine has survived in state legislatures and at the U.S. Supreme Court. Less high profile is the immunity enjoyed by other government actors at issue in the case filed in 2020 against leaders in the Iredell-Statesville School District of North Carolina.
North Carolina’s law is “better than most states” because only public officials, and not regular state employees, enjoy immunity, said Anya Bidwell, who leads the Project on Immunity and Accountability at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. But, she said, “this is a perfect example of state immunity and how it’s difficult to overcome.”
Federal immunity is even broader; last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Border Patrol agent could not be sued for retaliation or excessive use of force after he was accused of shoving an innkeeper to the ground.
The plaintiffs in the North Carolina case argued unsuccessfully that malice can be inferred by the officials’ “knowledge of the abuse, failure to investigate, and reckless indifference to the abuse.”
An employee reported the alleged abuse to the principal, who told district staffers; no school employees informed police, social services, the state superintendent or the child’s mother, and the student remained in Johnson’s class for second grade.
Because his ability to communicate is limited, the boy was able to tell his mother about some of the abuse only when it had been going on for two years, according to the lawsuit. When his mother confronted school officials, she says, they defended Johnson. It wasn’t until he was in third grade, at a different school, that a therapist learned of the abuse and reported Johnson to police, according to the court record.
Even after she pleaded guilty to assault on a disabled person, she was listed online as teaching in the district, according to the plaintiffs.
There is a duty to investigate and report abuse of students under North Carolina law, and a lower court agreed with the plaintiffs that immunity does not apply because there was no discretion.
But the appellate court said the decision of how to handle that requirement is discretionary, and that even if it isn’t, whether North Carolina’s immunity law excludes mandatory duties is not clear.
“Public officials can be negligent; public officials can even be recklessly indifferent,” Sarah Saint, representing the board members, said during oral arguments in March. “That is what North Carolina public immunity is for.”
Johnson did not appeal the district court’s finding that the claims against her could proceed, and complaints that the board violated federal law protecting people with disabilities survive. But the ability to collect damages that would pay the child’s therapy bills is now limited.
“So what is the remedy when you’re going to have counseling for a long time, likely for life, because of what happened — because of what was knowingly allowed to happen to you?” his attorney, Stacey Gahagan, asked in an interview.
Judge Diana Motz, in a concurring opinion, suggested that the district court dismiss the claims without prejudice so the family can file a new complaint alleging malice. Gahagan said she hopes to be able to do so. Attorneys for the school officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Motz noted that official immunity, particularly for police officers, has “faced intense criticism,” including from Supreme Court justices. But she said it was up to state legislators to address: “North Carolina has not yet chosen to reconsider its doctrine of public official immunity. Unless and until that day comes, we can only apply the immunity as the law requires.” | 2022-06-14T14:08:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Immunity protects N.C. school leaders accused of ignoring abuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/child-abuse-reporting-immunity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/child-abuse-reporting-immunity/ |
Human rights activists demonstrate outside the Home Office in London on June 13. (Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
LONDON — The British government was preparing Tuesday to send a first set of asylum seekers to Rwanda, though Prime Minister Boris Johnson was defending the highly controversial policy hours before the first flight was scheduled to take off.
The new policy of flying migrants 4,000 miles away is part of the government’s efforts to deter smugglers from helping people enter Britain illegally via the English Channel.
Though the policy has support from Johnson’s Conservative Party, it has prompted multiple legal challenges, as well as criticism from the Archbishop of Canterbury and, reportedly, Prince Charles.
In televised remarks Tuesday at the opening of his cabinet meeting, Johnson said activists and their lawyers who opposed the plan were “abetting criminal gangs.”
“They’re undermining everything that we are doing to provide safe and legal routes for people to come to the U.K. and to oppose the illegal and dangerous routes,” Johnson said.
It was unclear how many people would be on the 200-seater flight Tuesday night to the east African country. Some NGOs said it could be a largely symbolic seven: 3 Iranians, 1 Syrian, 1 Albanian, 1 Vietnamese and 1 Iraqi Kurd. Other individuals succeeded in having their deportation orders canceled in recent days.
“I can’t say exactly how many people will be on the flight,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told Sky News, “but the really important thing is we establish the principle and we start to break the business model of these appalling people traffickers who are trading in misery.”
Asked whether the flight might take off without any asylum seekers on board, Truss said: “There will be people on the flight, and if they are not on this flight, they will be on the next flight.”
Truss would not confirm the claims that the flight would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but insisted that it was “value for money.”
Rwanda, a Commonwealth nation, will receive $160 million in aid as part of the deal.
An attempt to win an eleventh-hour injunction to stop the flights was rejected by British courts. Supreme Court Judge Robert Reed ruled Tuesday that if a judicial review of the government policy, scheduled for July, finds the flights are illegal, those who already had been sent to Rwanda could be brought back.
In a letter that appeared on the front page of several newspapers, senior bishops — including Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the effective leader of the Church of England — charged: “This immoral policy shames Britain.”
Truss disagreed. “The people who are immoral in this case are the people traffickers trading in human misery,” she said. “Our policy is completely legal, it’s completely moral.”
The Times and Daily Mail newspapers also reported that Prince Charles, heir to the throne, said in private that the policy was “appalling.” This raised eyebrows, as senior members of the royal family are expected to be politically neutral.
A spokeswoman for his office, Clarence House, said: “We would not comment on supposed anonymous private conversations with the Prince of Wales, except to restate that he remains politically neutral. Matters of policy are decisions for government.”
Brits are divided on the issue. A YouGov poll this week found that 44 percent support the policy, while 40 percent oppose it. The survey also found a striking difference reflecting political affiliation, with 74 percent of Conservatives supporting the policy and only 19 percent of Labour voters support it.
Paula Surridge, a political sociologist at the University of Bristol, tweeted of the ruling Conservatives: “Suspect they’ve found the ‘culture war’ issue that works.”
With 80 million displaced people in the world, many fleeing poverty and violence, Britain is not alone in seeking to make illegal migration harder — and to move the asylum process “offshore.” Johnson said that the plan to push its asylum seekers to Rwanda will serve a model for other countries to follow — and he is confident that more will soon do so.
Rwanda has pushed back against accusations that it is being bought off.
In a column in Sunday’s Telegraph, Rwanda’s High Commissioner to the U.K., Johnston Busingye, said migrants flown into his country from Britain “will find safety and security, and be treated with dignity and respect.”
He said, “they’ll be free to come and go as they please and the Rwandan authorities will look after their needs. Whether their claim is approved or rejected these migrants will be offered a legal pathway to stay in Rwanda.”
If they want to return to their homeland or any other country that will accept them, they are free to go, he wrote. | 2022-06-14T14:17:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. set to start deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/uk-rwanda-deportation-asylum/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/uk-rwanda-deportation-asylum/ |
Dustin Johnson, one of the breakaway LIV Golf players, prepares for the U.S. Open. (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
The new tour, with Greg Norman as the out-front leader, is funded by the government of Saudi Arabia, perhaps best described by Phil Mickelson, the new tour’s most prominent player as “scary motherf-----s.”
Go ahead, pick a side. Greedy to the hilt vs. scary motherf-----s.
The greed and smarminess of the tour can’t come close to the evils that have been perpetrated by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — including the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — but one doesn’t exactly sleep with the angels by siding with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and his band of not-so-merry-men.
That’s not to say guys like Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi blood money, aren’t to be applauded — not so much for their loyalty to the tour as their understanding that their legacies would be changed forever if they threw in with the Saudis.
Mickelson’s certainly has. He will no longer be viewed as just a Hall-of-Fame golfer who won six majors and 45 PGA Tour titles. He won’t be the 2025 Ryder Cup captain at Bethpage Black — as had been ordained for years. His decision to side with the Saudis will be in the first two paragraphs of his life story.
The same is true of major champions like Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Graeme McDowell and Charl Schwartzel, who won the first LIV tournament last weekend outside London and took home more than $4 million.
All have clearly decided that money is more important than legacy.
What’s laughable is the yammering from the LIV-ites about why they’re doing this. Norman keeps talking about “growing the game,” sounding like an old-fashioned record that’s gotten stuck. Mickelson and the others say much same thing when they discuss their opportunity to transform the sport.
Please. This is an opportunity to do one thing: get very rich. For Norman, it is also a chance to finally avenge the defeat he suffered at the hands of the tour and then-commissioner Tim Finchem in 1994, when he tried to launch something called the World Golf Tour. Norman’s idea was to have huge purses, no cuts, guaranteed money and invite only the game’s elite or near-elite. Finchem was able to shoot the idea down by lining up corporate sponsors to create the World Golf Championships: events with small fields, no cuts, big purses and guaranteed money.
Did he steal Norman’s idea to keep his star players in line? You bet. Did Norman ever forget? Absolutely not. So Norman has two motives: money and revenge.
Everyone else is in it for the money.
McIlroy and Garcia are good friends; they were in each other’s weddings. But when Garcia told McIlroy the reason to join the LIV Tour was “so we can finally get paid what we deserve,” McIlroy laughed out loud. “Sergio,” he said, “We’re golfers. We don’t deserve to be paid anything.”
So, let’s not say no one in golf understands real life. McIlroy understands.
Let’s also not act as if the Saudis are the only ones spending massive dollars to try to sportswash blood off their hands. Or that these golfers are the first to take blood-soaked money.
The NBA makes hundreds of millions of dollars by doing business with China. The International Olympic Committee has willingly taken the Olympics to Putin’s Russia and to China, twice this century. FIFA, soccer’s governing body, had one problem with taking the World Cup to Qatar: the weather in July. Human rights violations were clearly not a concern.
For golf, the question now is whether LIV proves to be a blip that makes a handful of players very rich and then goes away, or whether it continues to disrupt the sport. And it may turn out that the all-powerful green jackets at Augusta National hold the key to the sport’s future.
The U.S. Open is allowing LIV players to compete here at The Country Club this week because the U.S. Golf Association says it believes that, as an Open, is not in a position to ban players who have qualified. The Royal and Ancient, which runs the British Open, may take the same position before next month’s championship at St. Andrews.
That leaves the PGA Championship — run by the PGA of America — and the Masters. Seth Waugh, the executive director of the PGA, is a close friend of Monahan’s dating to the days when Waugh ran Deutsche Bank and Monahan was tournament director for the Boston tournament sponsored by Waugh’s bank. He would undoubtedly love to support Monahan and the tour.
But if the Opens continue to be open and the green jackets decide not to ban the breakaway players, Waugh would be alone among the majors — an untenable position.
Mickelson, Garcia, Reed and Schwartzel are all past Masters champions who would have to be denied their trip up Magnolia Lane by Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley and his fellow members if they side with the Tour. Augusta National is notorious for letting the world know that no one tells it what to do. That’s why, even though the tour has a rule dating to 1990 that no club can host a PGA Tour event if it discriminates against anyone, Augusta National didn’t admit women until 2012.
No one in golf messes with the Lords of Augusta. Which is why the club’s decision on LIV will be so critical. If the LIV players can play in the four majors, they don’t need the PGA Tour.
Even now, the tour is in trouble. Many title sponsors at rank-and-file events are already less than thrilled with their fields. If LIV survives and continues to draw stars away, Monahan is going to find himself with serious title sponsor issues. And nothing is more important to the tour than keeping title sponsors happy.
For now, the two sides will continue to fire shots at one another, millionaires battling billionaires. | 2022-06-14T14:34:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LIV Golf and the PGA Tour are both driven by greed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/liv-golf-pga-tour-greed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/liv-golf-pga-tour-greed/ |
Montrezl Harrell faces up to five years in prison on marijuana charge
Montrezl Harrell faces a felony drug charge stemming from a traffic stop in which authorities say they found bags of marijuana in his car. (Jacob Kupferman/Associated Press File)
Montrezl Harrell of the Charlotte Hornets is facing a felony drug charge that could result in up to five years in prison if convicted after authorities in Richmond, Ky., said they found bags of marijuana in his car during a traffic stop.
A state trooper stopped Harrell’s rented 2020 Honda Pilot on May 12 because it was following another vehicle too closely, according to Madison County court records obtained by the Louisville Courier Journal and Charlotte Observer. Trooper Jesse Owens stated in the report that he noticed an “odor of marijuana” and, he wrote, Harrell “admitted to being in possession of marijuana and produced a small amount from his sweatpants.”
A search of the vehicle turned up “three pounds of marijuana in vacuum sealed bags” in a backpack in the back seat, according to the citation. Harrell, 28, was charged with trafficking less than five pounds of marijuana and his arraignment, originally scheduled for Monday in Madison County District Court, was continued to July 13.
Warriors punish Celtics for frigid start, move to cusp of NBA title
Possessing or trafficking eight or more ounces but less than five pounds of marijuana is a Class D Felony for first-time offenders in Kentucky and is punishable by 1-5 years of incarceration with a $1,000-$10,000 fine.
Harrell, who played in college at Louisville, is a seven-year NBA veteran who has also played for the Los Angeles Clippers and Houston Rockets. The Hornets acquired him from the Washington Wizards in a trade-deadline deal in February and he averaged 11.4 points and 4.9 rebounds. He will become a free agent this summer and the Hornets have had no comment on the matter. | 2022-06-14T14:34:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montrezl Harrell of Charlotte Hornets faces felony marijuana charge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/montrezl-harrell-marijuana/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/montrezl-harrell-marijuana/ |
A man was killed in a crash in Greenbelt on Friday, police said. (iStock) (iStock)
A man was killed in a crash Friday in Prince George’s County, police said.
The accident happened around 7:40 a.m. near Greenbelt Road and Lakecrest Drive in the city of Greenbelt. Police found two vehicles had crashed. One of the drivers — who was later identified as Manuel Juarez, 52, of Greenbelt — was headed west on Greenbelt Road near Lakecrest Drive “when for reasons that remain under investigation, a car traveling eastbound crossed into the westbound lanes striking Juarez’s car head-on,” according to a statement from police.
Officials said Juarez was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead a few hours later. A passenger in Juarez’s car as well as the other driver suffered nonlife-threatening injuries, police said. | 2022-06-14T14:43:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man killed in crash in Prince George's County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/man-killed-in-crash-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/man-killed-in-crash-maryland/ |
Serena Williams appears set to play at Wimbledon after yearlong absence
Serena Williams has indicated she plans to play at Wimbledon. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)
Serena Williams, who counts seven Wimbledon titles among her 23 Grand Slam championships, indicated Tuesday morning that she plans to compete in the grass-court classic this summer.
Williams, 40, shared the news via an Instagram post accompanied by a photo of her Nike-clad feet on grass, which read: “SW and SW19. It's a date. 2022, see you there.” SW19 is the post code for the village of Wimbledon, which is southwest of London.
Williams hasn’t competed since she slipped and injured a leg during Wimbledon’s first round last year, which sent her limping off Centre Court in tears, a hand over her heart as the crowd stood in tribute.
During her hiatus from the sport, her ranking has plunged to 1,208, well outside the cutoff for automatic entry to Grand Slam singles events. She could have entered Wimbledon using a protected ranking that’s afforded players sideline by long-term injury but chose not to. Instead, the All-England Club announced Tuesday that she would receive a wild-card entry.
Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association announced Williams will team with Ons Jabeur of Tunisia to play doubles at Eastbourne, a grass-court tuneup event that precedes Wimbledon by one week.
Williams, whose power, skill and competitiveness revolutionized women’s tennis since she won her first Grand Slam at the 1999 U.S. Open, has been seeking to equal Margaret Court’s record 24 Grand Slam titles. Court claimed her titles between 1960 and 1973, a period that spanned the sport’s amateur and pro eras, as well as an era in which not all top players routinely contested the four majors.
After giving birth to her daughter, Olympia, that September, Williams returned to competition in 2018 and reached Wimbledon’s final, falling to Angelique Kerber. She contested the 2019 final, as well, but was edged by Simona Halep.
Women’s tennis is in a period of transition in the wake of then No. 1 Ashleigh Barty’s unexpected retirement, at 25, this spring. Until Tuesday, it wasn’t clear if Williams would return to competition at all.
Since then, Poland’s Iga Swiatek has dominated the sport.
Earlier this month, Swiatek, 21, claimed her second French Open championship, conceded just one set over the two weeks at Roland Garros and extending her winning streak to 35 matches in the process.
Heading into Wimbledon, Swiatek holds a commanding lead in the standings, with nearly twice as many ranking points (8,631) as her next competitor, Estonia’s Anett Kontaveit (4,511).
Swiatek’s best performance at Wimbledon came last year, when she reached the fourth round. She and Williams have never met on court. | 2022-06-14T14:47:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena Williams indicates she’ll play at Wimbledon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/serena-williams-wimbledon-return/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/serena-williams-wimbledon-return/ |
An oversight committee says a contractor on the loan program netted $340 million for the work of six employees
By Yeganeh Torbati
A closed sign hangs in a shop window in Burbank, Calif., in July 2020. Many businesses applied for emergency relief early in the pandemic. A congressional oversight report released Tuesday said the Small Business Administration barely reviewed many of the submissions. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
The Small Business Administration barely reviewed many applications for emergency relief early in the pandemic and directed employees to approve applications with obvious signs of fraud, according to a report released Tuesday by a congressional oversight committee.
The report, which examined the agency’s actions during the Trump administration, also found that the contractor hired by the SBA to handle the relief applications, called RER Solutions Inc., was a small business that could not handle the flood of applications during the worst days of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, even though it was ultimately paid $738 million in a 2020 no-bid contract to do so. The company subcontracted much of the labor to two other firms, but it still received $340 million for the work of six employees in one year, the report found.
“Today’s report underscores once again the Trump administration’s failure to act as an effective guardian of Americans’ taxpayer dollars in responding to the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis. “They failed to take reasonable steps to prevent EIDL funds from being lost to fraud, and they wasted additional public funds by overpaying a contractor that did little to implement the program.”
Between March 2020 and May 2021, the EIDL program provided about $230 billion in loans and grants to businesses and nonprofits, according to the Government Accountability Office. This represented an astronomical increase in workload for the SBA. From March 2020 to February 2021, the agency approved about 3.8 million loan and grant applications. That’s more than the agency had approved in the previous six decades: Between 1953 and March 2020, the SBA approved 2.2 million loan applications.
The agency turned to an existing contractor, RER Solutions, for help. RER previously received a $10 million annual contract from the SBA for its work on economic disaster applications, but this amount ballooned to $738 million for work on the pandemic-era loans, the largest contract given by the federal government to respond to the economic effects of the virus, the committee found. The contract was granted without a competitive bidding process, instead being done through modifications of RER Solutions’ existing contract.
“As a result, as many as 1.6 million, or 41 percent, of the 3.9 million loan applications that were ultimately approved may have been approved with no actual review by an SBA employee,” the committee found. “SBA’s directives further indicate that some applications were included in these batches for approval without review despite the presence of fraud indicators.”
The SBA and RER did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
When applications were considered by SBA officials, reviewers were instructed to approve submissions even if there was evidence of fraud, such as information that couldn’t be validated, evidence the applicant had died or failed identity verification.
Out of the $738 million the SBA paid on the contract through February 2021, RER received $357 million, Rocket received $233 million, and Rapid received $148 million. Six RER employees, 20 Rocket employees and 163 Rapid employees worked on the project, the committee stated. The committee found that after paying for costs associated with the project, RER netted $340 million. Rocket Loans is part of Rocket Companies, whose chairman is billionaire Dan Gilbert, who cultivated a relationship with President Donald Trump’s family during his administration.
Live Nation subsidiaries got millions in aid meant for independent venues | 2022-06-14T14:47:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SBA approved loans with signs of fraud early in pandemic, House report says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/sba-pandemic-relief-fraud/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/sba-pandemic-relief-fraud/ |
Can Mass Shootings Be Foiled?
NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 11: People march across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest against gun violence in the March for Our Lives march and rally on June 11, 2022 in New York City. Across the country in various cities, thousands are gathering to demand for meaningful gun laws following the recent shootings from Uvalde, Texas, to Buffalo, New York. The March For Our Lives movement was spurred by the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. (Photo By Spencer Platt/Getty Images) (Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America)
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.Sarah Green Carmichael: The recent tragedies in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX have underscored the plague of gun violence in the US and in particular, the rising incidence of mass-casualty shootings. There are now signs of a possible bipartisan compromise in Congress to strengthen gun laws, upgrade school safety and increase mental-health support. You’re a senior operations researcher at RAND and recently led a two-year project to develop a “Mass Attacks Defense Toolkit” outlining evidence-based ways to prevent mass shootings. Can you talk a little bit about how you framed the problem?
John Hollywood, senior operations researcher, RAND Corporation and co-author, “Mass Attacks Defense Toolkit”: This project grew out of earlier research that we had done on counterterrorism. Back then, we wanted to know, “How can we do a better job foiling terror plots?” In many ways, mass shootings are very similar. So we asked questions like, “What happened in the cases when potential plots were stopped in advance? What were factors that contributed to attacks having fewer casualties?” About two dozen people worked on this for the better part of two years.
SGC: What were your key takeaways?
JH: There are really three. The first is that yes, we can detect and foil a lot of these. The public is key in this; almost two-thirds of foiled plots were foiled because members of the public reported people who had discussed their intentions to attack or did things like amassing arsenals or surveilling a target site.
Second, as those reports are coming in, it’s important that you have relentless follow-up. Each case needs to have a single point of contact who is responsible for making sure that people follow up with the person that has been reported. You don’t want to have dropped balls. Procedurally, there are cases, especially with some of the higher-casualty plots, where those tend to be associated with dropped clues and dropped balls.
Third, you need to have advance planning and training in the agencies that are going to be involved in responding to a mass attack. And this includes not just police, fire and EMS but the emergency management representatives of schools, shopping malls and other so-called “soft targets.”
SGC: So many of these shootings happen in schools, malls, churches. What kind of world are we creating if we are asking people to be constantly vigilant for threats, even if they’re at the movies or at church?
JH: I think that’s an excellent point. And that’s why I think part of what we were trying to do with our research is focus on what specifically to look for, like people bragging on social media about the gun they just bought to carry out an attack. Before the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the shooter went on at length online about researching how to kill people.
SGC: How common is it for a potential mass shooter to give off warning signs?
JH: In the majority of the higher-casualty shootings, you’re usually talking about people doing a lot of planning and amassing larger arsenals. It may not be as clear-cut as a person literally posting their attack plans months beforehand, but usually there is some observable thing that can be reported. In the case of Uvalde, for example, there clearly were concerns about how the shooter was acting — he was doing significant self-harm. But at this point it seems like there wasn’t a whole lot that was reported to anyone in a position of authority.
SGC: The Buffalo shooting is another recent example where the shooter had been questioned by police after making a school-shooting threat. That was about a year before the grocery-store shooting he went on to commit. How long should law enforcement keep following up?
JH: Even more than a specific time-period, the thing is to actually schedule follow-ups and not just let people totally drop. I mean, I understand with the Buffalo case, you know, he convinced the mental-health evaluators that he was just joking. But it does sound like there were other significant behavioral concerns, and it’s not clear those were taken into account. But the thought is, if he had been provided with additional services and supervision, then you have at least a more significant chance of picking up the other things he was doing, like going online and describing his increasing radicalization and plans to kill lots of people of color.
You can keep track of the follow-up on conventional office productivity software. It could be as simple as a spreadsheet. But someone needs to be case manager staying on top of it. And the same principles can be applied to preventing homicides and suicides.
SGC: One of the tips in the toolkit was that police officers who respond to domestic violence calls should have a standard procedure where they ask about a firearm in the home. Can you talk about why that’s so important and what other kinds of checks could be useful?
JH: If you identify that someone is posing a violent risk to themselves or others, then you really need to make sure they’re not in a position where they can use firearms quickly to harm themselves or others. But as for what goes into making those determinations, that’s honestly a bit of a weakness [in the literature]. One thing we heard about repeatedly from our experts was the importance of doing these wellness checks, and I’ll put calls related to domestic violence in that category as well. They’re critical. But how do you do that assessment? How you really find out what’s going on and collect that information? We couldn’t find any guidance on how to do this, in terms of both how to interact with people and the decision trees you should follow during those conversations. I can’t say they aren’t out there, but we spent a lot of time trying to find them. So that’s a definite “more research needed” area.
SGC: By focusing on things we can do within our existing gun safety laws, are we just resigning ourselves to the fact that we’re not going to solve this problem, and we just have to mitigate the damage?
JH: I think there’s a lot we can do, even within existing laws.
For example, inherent to mass shootings is amassing an arsenal. While there are people who collect guns or buy them for hunting or self-defense, the way that people buy those guns looks very different from the way that they acquire guns for mass attacks, where, for example, there’s a focus on massive amounts of ammunition.
We haven’t done a whole lot to educate the gun-owning public on how to sell or transfer guns safely so that they don’t fall into the wrong hands. I bet gun owners know very well how to handle a gun safely. But I bet many of them don’t know the first thing about how to sell a gun safely, because we almost never talk about it.
What are the warning signs that someone buying your gun is up to no good? Who do you report it to? And what happens to that report? If I have a person who poses a threat to themselves or others, and they just tried to buy a gun, I would think it would be very high priority that this person really needs a much closer look.
SGC: It appears possible that Congress might pass some legislation to address gun safety and mental health. Do you think lawmakers are asking the right questions?
JH: For helping with gun violence in general, Rand published a report called “Gun Policy in America.” The big policies that they recommended were child safety access laws; waiting periods; and repealing Stand Your Ground laws. The biggest one by far was child safety access to make sure that guns are secure.
With mass attacks, we could do more with the fact that getting the guns and the ammunition and the skill to use them are key parts of these attacks — just like with other kinds of terrorism attacks, you want to look for people who are trying to assemble explosives.
SGC: Like how we notice when someone buys lots of fertilizer? Or, with drugs, when someone tries to buy a lot of Sudafed?
JH: Yeah. And I think with guns you can have something very similar. I just don’t feel like the processes are really in place.
SGC: I’d like to ask you a couple of questions specifically about schools. Is it effective to do these drills where students hide under their desks?
JH: We didn’t look at those drills specifically, but we do talk about the importance of “run, hide, fight.” First, you really want to focus on escaping. If that’s not possible, the priority is hiding — when hiding means there’s a locked door between you and the shooter. A lot of people were saved in the Oxford, Michigan shooting, because they did lock the door successfully. But if you are in the same room with the shooter, hiding under a desk or a table is about the worst thing you can do.
I know it’s horrible talk about this. But one thing I want to make clear is that it’s “run, hide, fight.” It’s not “run, hide and do nothing.” If you’re faced with a shooter at reasonably close range, everybody in the room should try to tackle the shooter. We have twelve cases of that happening, and they were successful in all cases. There have been cases where high school students tackled a shooter and, to be blunt, it worked. But elementary school? It’s not reasonable to ask elementary school kids try to tackle a shooter.
The key thing is movement. For most shooters it’s very hard to hit moving targets, especially under pressure. You want to be a moving target, and tackle them from multiple angles at once. You don’t want to be a stationary target, especially at close range.
SGC: Anything else that you would think would be helpful specifically on making schools safer?
JH: I don’t think we need to turn schools into fortresses. Having basic entry control and internal barriers like locking doors would get us a long way.
I hear other ideas like totally redesigning all our schools against mass shooters or putting metal detectors everywhere. But again, what do shooters want? They want to find a crowd of people that they can shoot at close range as if they were stationary … like a crowd of people waiting to get through a metal detector.
SGC: I wasn’t planning to ask you this. But how did you stay happy, doing research on this topic for two years?
JH: It honestly does have a cost. But I like to think that we can save lives and trauma out of this. And I try to be as clinical as possible. For me, quite honestly, I deliberately try to avoid reading about victims. I just focus on security and procedural considerations. But it’s very hard. It does eat at you.
• Why the Government Doesn’t Fund Gun Violence Research: Julianna Goldman
• It’s Too Easy to Buy a Gun on Facebook: Parmy Olson
• Finally, a Bipartisan Effort on Gun Policy: The Editors | 2022-06-14T14:47:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can Mass Shootings Be Foiled? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/can-mass-shootings-be-foiled/2022/06/14/199773d4-ebeb-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/can-mass-shootings-be-foiled/2022/06/14/199773d4-ebeb-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
The War in Ukraine Is Speeding Europe’s Pivot to Renewables
Analysis by Lars Paulsson | Bloomberg
Wind turbines and solar panels in fields in the Seine-Maritime department of Normandy, France, on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. France, located at the heart of Western Europe’s power grid, with its fleet of nuclear reactors has for decades been the continent’s largest electricity exporter, supplying the U.K., Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany at times of peak demand. (Bloomberg)
Europe aims to lead the global fight against climate change by rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels. Yet in the wake of the pandemic, the continent was rocked by disruptions in its energy supply that caused prices to surge -– even before the turmoil triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now the forces have combined to put Europe’s so-called energy transition onto something of a wartime footing, testing the limits of an accelerated timeline to adopt new technologies and leaving consumers footing higher bills.
1. How fast is Europe changing?
A decades-long push into wind and solar energy has transformed countries such as Denmark and Germany into leaders in the technologies. The 27 countries in the European Union got about a fifth of their total energy from renewables in 2020 and had planned to double that share to 40% by 2030. In the wake of the war in Ukraine, the target was raised to 45%. Germany, which relied on Russia for the bulk of its oil, natural gas and coal, brought forward its goal of 100% renewable power by more than a decade to 2035. That’s a very ambitious challenge since wind and solar farms take years to plan and build. If anything, the crisis has made EU policymakers more committed to the bloc’s so-called Green Deal, the flagship climate policy that includes a massive package of laws to meet a target of zeroing-out greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century.
2. What disrupted Europe’s energy supply?
In 2021, Europe’s vulnerability was laid bare by an unexpected chain of events: A stronger-than-expected post-pandemic recovery (which created higher demand for energy) coincided with weather patterns that created unusually low wind speeds, at a time when natural gas was in short supply because of an unusually cold and long winter. As a result, electricity prices more than tripled from August to December. Then in February, Russia’s military campaign triggered rounds of financial sanctions against Moscow. President Vladimir Putin hit back by weaponizing natural gas flows to his neighbors. In late April, he escalated threats and shut off natural gas flowing to Poland and Bulgaria, though these are two countries where the impact was small.
3. Why is Russia such a big factor?
Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of gas and Europe is its biggest customer. As coal and nuclear plants around the bloc were shuttered in recent years, some countries became more dependent on the giant pipelines carrying gas from Siberia. For many years, EU officials talked about the need to wean off of Russian supplies, but since both sides benefited, and gas delivered by pipeline was often cheaper (and cleaner) than other energy sources, little action was taken. The EU relied on gas for about a quarter of its energy, with Russia accounting for more than a third of that supply in 2021, up from 26% in 2001. When the conflict in Ukraine erupted, it was suddenly untenable for Europe to continue spending as much as $1 billion a day on coal, gas and oil imported from Russia -– since it was funding the war machine.
4. How did Europe respond?
Europe’s plans suddenly got a lot more urgent. First Nord Stream 2, a second gas link from Russia to Germany that had become entangled in a political battle, was put firmly on hold. As the U.S. and other allies went ahead with an embargo of Russian energy, EU policymakers rushed to find alternative supplies. They hashed out a tiered retreat that began with a ban on Russian coal from August. Then they wrestled for weeks to try to develop a plan to phase out Russian oil this year and reduce imports of gas by two-thirds. It’s difficult as some refineries and chemical plants in the eastern part of the bloc are captive customers, as they get their feedstocks via pipelines from Russia.
Europe’s manufacturers took a hit because energy prices rose faster than in other regions. Some of the continent’s biggest fertilizer makers, steel producers and aluminum smelters cut production because power and gas prices at least four times higher than historical norms made them uncompetitive on world markets. German officials asked citizens to curb energy use and warned about possible rationing of natural gas, rattling companies from car manufacturers to cement makers. As the war dragged on for months, more economists predicted the energy crisis would cause Europe’s economy to shrink, tipping it into a recession.
6. How did Europe keep the lights on?
Initially at least, there was a return to dirtier fuels. The use of hard coal and lignite to generate power in the EU rose 12% in the first quarter of 2022 from a year earlier as decommissioned plants were reconsidered. Longer-term, there are no easy tradeoffs for an energy mix that also includes about 35% oil, 12% coal and 13% nuclear. A push to bring in more liquefied natural gas by ship, which costs about four times more than Russian pipeline gas, was constrained by infrastructure and limited global supplies. There was talk of delaying the phase-out nuclear power in Germany and other countries -– a source of stable electricity virtually free of emissions -– but only Belgium extended the life of two reactors. At the same time, France’s aging nuclear plants, still the backbone of the region’s integrated power system, are becoming more unreliable. Output from the fleet may fall to the lowest in more than three decades this year.
7. How fast can it shift?
That’s not clear. Some member states, including Poland, questioned the ambitious shift to renewables in light of the war and record energy prices. But EU leaders have stuck with the Green Deal, pushing renewables and energy efficiency as the best long-term solution. What’s more, higher prices mean more of the burden is falling on consumers. It’s driving the fastest inflation in decades, pushing what’s known as the “the cost-of-living crisis” to the top of the political agenda. By the end of 2021, there was a slew of measures to help the poorest: France dished out “energy checks,” Italy limited price increases and Sweden offered rebates based on energy consumption. But these are likely temporary measures. The rupture with Russia means Europe will likely face higher energy costs for the foreseeable future. Overall, subsidies for renewables are being phased out, which means that energy prices will need to be high enough to cover the cost of green investments.
• A data vizualization on how Russia’s war in Ukraine is choking the world’s supply of natural resources.
• Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas on Europe’s need to cut energy demand and stop buying Russian oil.
• David Fickling breaks down Russia’s gas exports to Europe.
• Related QuickTakes on the EU’s Green Deal, how Europe became dependent on Putin for gas, Nord Stream 2 and the EU’s plans for a carbon border levy.
• Europe’s wartime mission to ditch Russian oil and gas. | 2022-06-14T14:48:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The War in Ukraine Is Speeding Europe’s Pivot to Renewables - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-war-in-ukraine-is-speeding-europes-pivot-to-renewables/2022/06/14/4390754e-ebe8-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-war-in-ukraine-is-speeding-europes-pivot-to-renewables/2022/06/14/4390754e-ebe8-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Author James Patterson appears at an event to promote his joint novel with former president Bill Clinton, “The President is Missing,” on June 5, 2018, in New York. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
As James Patterson reflected on the state of the writing world today, the best-selling thriller novelist with an estimated net worth of more than $800 million lamented how one group in particular is having a hard time finding work: White men.
In fact, America’s richest author noted to the Sunday Times how White males — specifically older White males — are experiencing what he described as “another form of racism” when it came to trying to break through as writers in TV, film, theater or publishing.
“What’s that all about? Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes,” Patterson, 75, told the British newspaper. “It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males.”
Now, Patterson is facing backlash from critics and writers who say the author has blatantly ignored recent data showing how the publishing industry has been and remains “a business that is owned by White men.” In a diversity self-audit from Penguin Random House, the publisher found that about 75 percent of the contributors during that period were White. Just 6 percent were Black, while 5 percent were Hispanic, the audit shows. The company also acknowledged that more than 74 percent of its employees were White.
Post Reports: ‘Publishing is still a business that is owned by white men’
A 2019 survey from children’s publisher Lee and Low Books found that 85 percent of the publishing staffers who acquire and edit books are White people. A 2020 report from the New York Times found a similar result across the U.S. publishing industry, with 89 percent of the books written in 2018 being penned by White writers.
“James Patterson of all people,” best-selling author Roxane Gay tweeted. “First of all, write your own books, pal.”
Patterson uses ghostwriters to help him publish multiple titles a year.
With more than 300 titles to his name, Patterson is one of the publishing world’s most prolific writers. He has sold more than 400 million copies of his books, with the New Yorker lauding Patterson this week as “the world’s best-selling author.” His 260 New York Times bestsellers led Publisher’s Weekly to dub him as the top best-selling author since 2005.
Forbes reported in 2018 that Patterson was worth an estimated net value of $800 million, tying him with golfer Tiger Woods. Patterson made an estimated $70 million in 2019 alone, according to Forbes, trailing only J.K. Rowling.
While hundreds of millions have bought his books, critics and authors have pinged Patterson on his writing style and use of ghostwriters to help him publish multiple titles a year. Patterson told The Washington Post in 2016 that his simple and declarative style is meant “to turn on the movie projectors in our heads.”
“I’ve taken the fat out of commercial novels,” he said at the time. “In an awful lot of novels, there’s more in them than there should be.”
Patterson’s rise was due, in part, to the success of his “Alex Cross” series, in which a fictional Black detective takes on threats to his family and Washington. The series led to three films, with actor Morgan Freeman portraying Cross in “Kiss the Girls” and “Along Came a Spider.”
When the Sunday Times observed the early success of a series involving a Black main character, Patterson noted that race did not play an issue in developing one of his most memorable characters.
In addition to his comments about White men in publishing, Patterson denounced the decision from his own publisher, Hachette Book Group, to drop Woody Allen’s memoir back in 2020 after employees staged a protest of the book due to the long-running allegations of sexual abuse against the famed director. Allen’s memoir, “Apropos of Nothing,” was eventually picked up by Arcade Publishing.
“I hated that,” Patterson said of Allen’s book getting pulled. “He has the right to tell his own story.”
Patterson added, “I’m almost always on the side of free speech.”
But much of the attention from Patterson’s interview was on his claim that White men are struggling to find work in publishing. Gina Denny, an associate editor at the publisher TouchPoint Press, noted that when USA Today reported on Patterson’s comments, just nine authors on the newspaper’s list of 150 bestsellers were non-White writers. Three of Patterson’s titles made the list, while just five women of color and four men of color were on the bestseller list. The rest were made up of White men between the ages of 36 and 84, Denny said — and some of the White males on the list have long been dead.
“Dead white men are statistically as likely to be on the USA Today bestseller list as a person of color,” Denny wrote.
Several Black writers took exception to Patterson’s comments, including Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, author of “This is Why I Resist.”
“What an obtuse statement from James Patterson. He best pick up books & educate himself on what racism is,” she wrote. “He’s missing good old days when White men had ALL the writing gigs?”
Frederick Joseph noted that 20 publishers rejected “Patriarchy Blues,” which became a bestseller last month, because he said publishing houses “didn’t think people would buy a book by a Black man discussing patriarchy.”
“James Patterson thinks white men are facing racism in publishing,” wrote Joseph, who has written two best-selling books. “From a Black man who has had over 50 rejections of books (all of which are now bestsellers) because white editors don’t understand them or ‘already have Black male authors’ … shut up.”
Joseph added, “Support Black authors.”
All the while, Patterson continues to sell. His autobiography, “James Patterson by James Patterson,” debuted last week, and “Run, Rose, Run,” his bestseller from March, was recently picked up by Sony Pictures, according to Deadline. | 2022-06-14T14:48:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James Patterson claims white male writers face ‘another form of racism,’ can't break into writing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/james-patterson-white-male-writers-racism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/james-patterson-white-male-writers-racism/ |
What a PhD candidate does in a workday
Perspective by Renée Zurui Wang
(Renée Zurui Wang/Washington Post illustration)
Welcome to The Work Day, a series that charts a single day in various women’s working lives — from gallery owners to stay-at-home parents to chief executives. In this installment, we hear from Renée Zurui Wang, a PhD candidate who recorded a workday in June.
Name: Renée Zurui Wang
Location: Pasadena, Calif.
Job title: PhD candidate in geochemistry at Caltech
Previous jobs: In college, I worked as an undergraduate researcher on campus and interned at the U.S. Geological Survey as a biological field technician studying mercury in the San Francisco Bay area. After graduation, I interned at an environmental consulting firm in the D.C. area and then worked as an English teaching assistant for the French government in French Guiana. I started my PhD in geochemistry at Caltech in July 2017; I received an MS in geochemistry from Caltech in June 2019. I also interned in the fall of 2021 at Los Alamos National Labs, where I contributed to an ongoing project studying how microbes affect carbon sequestration in soils.
What led me to my current role: Geochemistry is broadly about the chemistry of the earth, ranging from the composition of volcanic rocks to the chemistry of rivers and soil. My thesis focuses on how microbes and their metabolisms have shaped this chemistry, from the beginning of Earth’s history to the modern age of anthropogenic climate change. Although microbes are tiny, they are major players in shaping the biosphere because they have evolved to catalyze otherwise difficult chemical reactions.
These sorts of questions require creative and interdisciplinary thinking, which has defined my career path so far. Growing up, I was really interested in fine arts and became a California Arts scholar in middle school. Then, I was incredibly fortunate and privileged to be accepted to Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding high school in New Hampshire. At Exeter, I became really interested in ethics and philosophy — so much so that I was accepted to the University of Southern California as a philosophy major.
In the fall of my senior year of high school, however, I attended the Mountain School, a semester program where about 30 students live, work and attend classes on a farm in rural Vermont. There, I was introduced to Earth science for the first time, and was really struck by the potential to understand the natural world.
How I spend the majority of my day: It really varies and is based on what stage a particular project is in. Some days will be all lab work, while other days will be devoted to data analysis and writing. I also have meetings with my advisers and collaborators. Like most other students, I completed my course requirements in the first two years of my PhD, so I haven’t taken classes for three years now. When I have the time, though, I sit in on some interesting courses. I also work as a teaching assistant during some academic terms.
5:30 a.m.: I wake up. I’ve become that crazy person who works out super early, mostly because lab work can run late into the evenings. On days that I don’t work out, I’ll wake up at 6:30 a.m. instead.
6 a.m.: I got into megaformer Pilates last summer, and now I do it twice a week. It is definitely expensive, so these classes are a nice treat for myself. In addition to Pilates, I have been swimming with a master’s students’ team since I started at Caltech in 2017. The team has been a great source of support, and has even pushed me to do crazy things, like my first marathon swim in the ocean!
7 a.m.: I get back home and have a long breakfast. I read the news, play Wordle with my partner, and start checking emails. I also catch up on chores, like the laundry I never folded from last night.
8:30 a.m.: I start getting ready for work by showering, packing my lunch and getting dressed. I’m dressed for the lab today, which means safety and comfort.
9 a.m.: Leave for work. I live close to campus, so I either walk or bike. Today I’m walking because my legs are very sore from Pilates and I need to stretch them out.
9:30 a.m.: I am co-advised by Caltech professors Dianne Newman and John Eiler. Tuesdays are Newman lab meetings, which last for two hours. Today is May birthday celebrations, so there are bagels and coffee available. I have a snack while listening to two labmates give short chalk talks, which are updates on their research or an interesting scientific paper they recently read.
11:30 a.m.: I meet with Woody Fischer, another Caltech professor, who is not a formal adviser, but has become a great mentor to me and whom I work with on a research project. We review some recent data and discuss possible interpretations, as well as future projects that can add to this body of work.
12:30 p.m.: Lab work! One of my projects measures nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that can be formed by microbes. Nitrous oxide concentrations in the atmosphere have been increasing since the Industrial Revolution, and there are hypotheses that this increase may be due to all the industrial fertilizer we have been spreading on the earth.
Because we are working with gases, I need to work on a vacuum line, which (as the name implies) is a custom-made glass-blown line that is held under a vacuum. This way, any gases we want to work with will not be contaminated by the outside air. Today, I am distilling out nitrous oxide from a mixed gas sample, and then sealing my sample into a small glass tube. This requires me to use an acetylene torch, which has been one of the more empowering tools to master during my PhD.
I have five-minute breaks while waiting for gases to condense down into liquid nitrogen, so I sneak in my lunch (leftovers from last night) in a breakroom nearby.
3:45 p.m.: The vacuum line is in this tiny, windowless basement room that always gets too warm. I’m usually pretty burned out after working in there, so I take a break with tea and blueberries and read the news. Then, I work through emails.
4:30 p.m.: I forgot that I have a package to pick up from my building lobby, so I head home early to catch the doorman before he leaves for the day. On the walk home, I stop by a Walgreens to pick up some toiletries.
5 p.m.: I arrive home and start cooking dinner with my partner, who is also a Caltech PhD student, but in neuroscience. We got married about two months ago (yay!) but it still feels weird to call him my husband. Tonight, we are doing an easy sheet pan dinner. While cooking and eating, we watch PBS NewsHour and then debrief about our days.
7:45 p.m.: I take a quick shower and change into my pajamas: an oversized T-shirt and old athletic shorts.
8 p.m.: I usually do a second burst of work before bed, which tends to be writing or data analysis. Tonight, I’m coding with the TV on; mindless TV helps me work through some of the more tedious aspects of coding.
9 p.m.: I head to bed and start shutting my brain down. Tonight, I catch up with my brother over text.
9:30 p.m.: I finally turn the lights off and go to sleep. | 2022-06-14T14:49:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What a PhD candidate does in a workday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/workday-phd-candidate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/14/workday-phd-candidate/ |
By Corey Saylor
Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R), the first woman of color elected statewide in state history, gavels the state Senate to order in Richmond on Jan. 17 in Richmond. (Laura Vozzella /The Washington Post)
Corey Saylor, a longtime Virginia resident, is director of research and advocacy at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group.
The sight of an anti-Islamist taking a photo with one of Virginia’s most important elected officials and claiming that the official is a “dear friend” of two decades should make every Virginian uncomfortable. After all, Virginia is for lovers, not extremists.
I ask the Youngkin administration to end its silence on anti-Islam extremist group leader Brigitte Gabriel and her claim, accompanied by a photograph, of a decades-long friendship with Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R).
Gabriel leads ACT for America. She has argued that “every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim,” a Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States” and that Arabs “have no soul.” The Post reported in 2017 that Gabriel “has said that she is anti-sharia, not anti-Muslim, a point that a number of the group’s speakers repeated Saturday. But Gabriel also has said that all practicing Muslims adhere to sharia, and speakers on Saturday made sweeping statements about Islam as an enemy of the state.:
On May 20, Gabriel tweeted, “With my dear friend of 20 years Lieutenant Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears. We are fortunate to have her!” The tweet was accompanied by a photo of Gabriel and Earle-Sears warmly smiling at the camera.
In 2017, ACT for America planned rallies in dozens of U.S. cities to protest Americans of the Islamic faith. Multiple sources reported the presence of hate groups and hate speech at multiple rallies.
Some of the anti-government militias that participated also said that they participated to provide security for the rallies. These included the Oath Keepers, whose role in the deadly 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol have featured prominently in the ongoing bipartisan Jan. 6 congressional hearings.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has pictures on its website of the presence of white supremacists at the rallies, reported that Identity Evropa founder Nathan Damigo was at ACT’s Roseville, Calif., rally. To join Damigo’s organization, you needed to be of “European, non-Semitic heritage,” SPLC notes. Among the photographs of the Roseville rally was a “blatantly anti-Semitic sign,” the SLPC said.
Identity Evropa was represented at multiple ACT rallies. For example, North Carolina-based INDY week reported that Peter Boykin, who coordinated the Raleigh rally, “publicly thanked Identity Evropa, a group founded [in 2016] that openly espouses white supremacy.” An Identity Evropa banner at the Orlando rally called to “End to Islamic Immigration.”
The Post reported that at the ACT rally in Harrisburg, Penn., Francisco Rivera, a spokesperson for Vanguard America, told reporters, “I don’t believe in having Muslims in the United States.” A speaker at the ACT-sanctioned rally in Dallas called Muslims “demonic” and “sick perverts,” according to Religion News Service. A branch of Vanguard America rebranded as Patriot Front after the deadly 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.
The above evidence lays out a clear pattern that cannot be explained away by claiming hosting white supremacists was an isolated incident.
This seems like the kind of stuff from which public officials could easily distance themselves. But more than two weeks after I sent a letter to Earle-Sears, the tweet is still public, and the administration’s response is silence.
Respecting faith and condemning bigotry are not issues of left or right. They are central to Virginia’s identity.
Because of Founding Father and Virginian Thomas Jefferson, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a law enacted in 1786, says, “(O)ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.” Jefferson’s Quran was used to ceremonially swear in the first Muslim member of Congress.
In early April, as Virginians of the Islamic faith were observing Ramadan, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) visited the largest Muslim community in Northern Virginia. This was his second visit to the community. He met for an hour with key Muslim leaders, and he tweeted about it afterward.
This was a good move. At the time, a Muslim leader noted that there are an estimated 400,000 Virginians who observe the Islamic faith. They serve in elected office, in hospitals and at other places doing the hard work that keeps our state a great place to live and visit.
On the condemning bigotry side of the coin, Earle-Sears has pointed out that she is “2nd in command of the former capitol of the Confederacy.” This is critical civil rights progress worth celebration. The Confederacy’s cornerstone rested on the idea that slavery is a “natural and normal condition.”
The swift and utter rejection of discrimination must be in Virginian DNA as the ground of our state contains the remains of numerous patriots who gave their lives to preserve the U.S. Constitution and end slavery.
The Youngkin administration needs to clearly reject Gabriel and ACT for America. Gabriel is free to say what she wants, even hateful words, but her reward should be political ostracism. A photo and “dear friend” tweet feels like the opposite of Virginia’s values.
I hope the administration’s response is worth celebrating. | 2022-06-14T14:49:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Is Virginia’s lieutenant governor paying attention to her friends? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/is-virginias-lieutenant-governor-paying-attention-her-friends/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/is-virginias-lieutenant-governor-paying-attention-her-friends/ |
Anahad O’Connor named a nutrition and health columnist for Wellness desk
Anahad O'Connor (Anahad O'Connor)
Announcement from Wellness Department Editor Tara Parker-Pope:
We are excited to announce that Anahad O’Connor will be joining the newsroom as a nutrition and health columnist for our expanded Wellness desk.
Anahad comes to The Post from the New York Times, where he primarily reported on health and science. He also spent time on the Politics, Metro and Breaking News desks.
Anahad began his career at the Times as a summer intern from 1999 to 2002. He joined the Times staff in 2003 after graduating from Yale University with a degree in psychology, with a focus on neuroscience. He started the popular Science column “Really?” and regularly wrote about the food industry’s hidden influence on scientific research. For the past 10 years, Anahad has worked for the Well desk, where he wrote about nutrition, sleep and behavioral health, among other topics. In 2018, he was part of a team honored with first place by the Association of Health Care Journalists awards in the Public Health category for an investigative series called “Planet Fat,” which examined the food industry's role in the global spread of obesity.
Anahad has written four books, including “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”
Anahad doesn’t have much free time, but when he does, he enjoys exercising, cooking, reading and going to the playground with his kids.
Please join us in welcoming Anahad, whose first day was Monday. | 2022-06-14T14:50:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anahad O’Connor named a nutrition and health columnist for Wellness desk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/14/anahad-oconnor-named-nutrition-health-columnist-wellness-desk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/14/anahad-oconnor-named-nutrition-health-columnist-wellness-desk/ |
The Washington Post and Imagine Entertainment form strategic partnership
Exclusive first-look deal expands the news organization’s prestigious brand of storytelling to all forms of filmed entertainment; Deal brokered by Creative Artists Agency, which represents Imagine Entertainment and The Washington Post
The Washington Post and Imagine Entertainment have entered into a strategic partnership to create scripted and non-scripted film and television properties derived from The Post’s vast archives, current reporting, and ongoing investigations. Under the terms of the multi-year deal, Imagine will have an exclusive first-look to develop and produce all projects through the venture. Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which represents both entities, brokered the deal and will harness its deep resources and expertise to help expand The Post’s storytelling opportunities with Imagine across multiple formats. Washington Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan will oversee the deal with Imagine Entertainment Executive Chairman Brian Grazer and Chief Strategy Officer Justin Wilkes.
“The Washington Post is a world-class news organization whose elite journalists and editors are devoted to chronicling the stories of our times,” said Bryan Lourd, Co-Chairman of CAA. “To be working with The Post and have our longtime client Imagine as the pristine engine to extend their imprint is the meeting of two brands that align perfectly.”
This year, The Washington Post marked its most dramatic journalism expansion in the organization’s history, following significant growth in areas of coverage and overall global footprint. The Post has expanded all aspects of reporting on topics including climate, health and wellness, and technology. This further builds on the Post’s award-winning national and political coverage, for which The Post was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage of the causes, costs and aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Over the last five years, Imagine has strategically expanded into an independent content studio with targeted acquisitions, partnerships, and new divisions led by Imagine Presidents’ Tony Hernandez and Lilly Burns, as well as Wilkes, and now includes Premium Documentaries, which now includes Premium Documentaries, Kids+Family, Brands, International, Audio and Live Entertainment. Imagine also acquired leading production company, Jax Media, to develop, produce, and finance feature and scripted television projects in the comedy space, and Oscar®-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, a documentary production company behind many of the most thought-provoking documentaries of our time, including past collaborations with The Washington Post. In 2020, Imagine formed a multi-year strategic partnership with Warner Music Group (WMG), to co-produce and co-finance a slate of music-centered projects across all mediums.
The Washington Post is an award-winning news leader whose mission is to scrutinize power and empower people. The Post produces riveting journalism in modern and bold ways, and is an essential source of fact-based reporting, in-depth analysis and smart opinions for a global audience.
ABOUT IMAGINE ENTERTAINMENT
Founded in 1986 by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Imagine Entertainment is an award-wining global entertainment company telling stories that inspire and empower, and creating unforgettable entertainment experiences of all genres across Imagine Features, Imagine Television Studios, Imagine Documentaries, Imagine Kids+Family, Imagine Brands, and Imagine Audio, as well as the award-winning Jax Media and Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions. Imagine’s productions have been honored with more than 60 prestigious awards including 47 Academy Award nominations and 203 Emmy® award nominations. Past productions include the Academy Award Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind, as well as Grammy Award Best Film winner The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years.
Recent films include the hit film tick, tick…Boom! directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the critically acclaimed documentaries Lucy & Desi directed by Amy Poehler, Julia, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, Paper &Glue, and Rebuilding Paradise. Prior films include Get on Up, Rush, J. Edgar, Frost/Nixon, American Gangster, The Da Vinci Code, Apollo 13, 8 Mile, Liar, Liar, Backdraft, and Parenthood, and the documentaries We Feed People about the humanitarian work of chef José Andrés and his non-profit, World Central Kitchen, Lucy and Desi, Julia, Dads, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, D.Wade: Life Unexpected, and Pavarotti. to name a few. Upcoming film productions include Thirteen Lives directed by Ron Howard; The Beanie Bubble, from Kristen Gore and Damian Kulash; Curious George based on the beloved children’s character; and a re-imaging of the hit Imagine film Friday Night Lights.
Current television series include Joe Berlinger’s Crime Scene anthology series, The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel and The Times Square Killer, which both reached the top #5 globally on Netflix; Genius: Aretha (NatGeo); Wu-Tang: An American Saga (Hulu); Swagger (Apple); Why Women Kill (CBS All Access); The Astronauts (Nickelodeon); Supervillain: The Rise of Tekashi 6ix9ine (Showtime); Jax Media’s Emily in Paris (Netflix); Jigsaw’s Tiger documentary (HBO). Upcoming productions include Under the Banner of Heaven (FX), The Tiny Chef (Nickelodeon), the documentary series The Supermodels (Apple TV+), to name a few. Additional television productions include Fox’s Empire, Shots Fired and the 24 franchise; NatGeo’s Genius anthology series; NBC’s Parenthood and Friday Night Lights; Fox’s and Netflix’s Arrested Development; and HBO's From the Earth to the Moon, for which Howard and Grazer won the Emmy® for Outstanding Mini-Series.
Grazer and Howard began their collaboration in the early 80’s with the hit comedies Night Shift and Splash, and continue to run Imagine Entertainment as executive chairmen. | 2022-06-14T14:50:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Washington Post and Imagine Entertainment form strategic partnership - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/14/washington-post-imagine-entertainment-form-strategic-partnership/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/06/14/washington-post-imagine-entertainment-form-strategic-partnership/ |
Alexandria man, 31, dies in Arlington crash
A man died in a crash in Arlington, police said, (iStock) (iStock)
A 31-year-old man died Friday after a crash in Arlington, police said.
The incident happened around 1:30 a.m. on the on-ramp from the southbound side of South Washington Boulevard to southbound Interstate 395, according to Virginia State Police.
The driver, Jose T. Villanueva of Alexandria, was driving a Chevrolet Camaro on the ramp when “it ran off the left side of the road, struck a curb and overturned,” police said in a statement. He was taken to a hospital where he died.
Police officials said he was not “wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the vehicle.” Authorities also said in the statement that “speed and alcohol are being investigated as a contributing factor in the crash.” | 2022-06-14T15:31:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man dies in Arlington crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/man-dies-in-arlington-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/man-dies-in-arlington-crash/ |
California architect Harry Gesner designed dozens of homes, often finding inspiration in nature. (Steven Lippman)
Mr. Gesner’s designs were variously inspired by the shape of a sand castle, the wings of a bird and the scales of a fish. Their unorthodox appearance reflected the adventurous spirit of a architect who once romanced actress June Lockhart while performing water-skiing stunts on Lake Arrowhead, and who later survived the D-Day invasion of Normandy with help from a surfing technique, duck diving, that he used to avoid enemy fire while making his way onto Omaha Beach.
Over the years, Mr. Gesner also worked as a deckhand on actor Errol Flynn’s yacht, searched for ancient artifacts in Ecuador, hunted for the grave of conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and tinkered with inventions, designing a Kentucky processing plant in the 1960s that turned waste into fertilizer, and converting his 1957 Mercedes convertible into an electric car more than five decades after he bought it.
“You come around a corner, look down into an alcove and see something that pleases you … it takes the drudgery and dullness out of life,” he once told the Los Angeles Times, explaining his fondness for the unexpected flourish.
Mr. Gesner was 97 when he died June 10 at the Sandcastle, the mushroom-shaped home he built for himself in Malibu, right next door to the Wave House. The cause was cancer, said his stepson, Casey Dolan.
Although he took commissions all around the country, Mr. Gesner was best known for his mid-century designs in Southern California, which often featured curved walls, floor-to-ceiling windows and natural materials like Santa Barbara fieldstone and bird’s-eye maple. His houses were frequently located in unusual locations, embedded within a canyon’s narrow walls or thrust above a rocky beach.
Mr. Gesner’s marriages to Audrey Hawthorne, Patty Townsend and Pat Alexander ended in divorce. In 1968, he attended a reception honoring one of his former high school classmates, actress Nan Martin, who was living in New York City and had a son, Casey Dolan, from a previous marriage. She later recalled that Mr. Gesner locked eyes with her from across the room and declared, “I have been waiting for you all my life.”
“I’m looking for a way to be reborn, you know, physically,” he told Vanity Fair in 2007, at age 82. “My father, he was fabulous. When he was dying, he was in his 80s. He’d had a massive heart attack, and I was there at his side, and he said to me, ‘Harry … I can’t wait for the next experience.’ That says it all.” | 2022-06-14T15:35:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Architect Harry Gesner, known for the Wave House, dies at 97 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/14/architect-harry-gesner-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/14/architect-harry-gesner-dead/ |
Joe Kahn is now editing the New York Times. Don’t expect a revolution.
In an interview, the new executive editor holds forth on labels, social media bubbles, threats to democracy and why not to expect big changes at the Times.
Joe Kahn took over as executive editor of the New York Times on Tuesday. (Celeste Sloman for the New York Times)
Joe Kahn took over as executive editor of the New York Times on Tuesday, replacing the legendary Dean Baquet, but readers might not notice an immediate difference.
“I wouldn’t say that there’s going to be some sort of sharp break in the type of stories we’re most excited about or the tone of coverage,” Kahn said.
Kahn’s elevation will inevitably represent something of a culture shift for the Times, however, a passing of the torch from a back-slapping boomer (the 65-year-old Baquet) to the circumspect Generation Xer Kahn, 57, who spoke carefully and deliberately during a recent interview at the company’s Manhattan office building. “I’ve been a close partner with Dean in recent years,” he said, “so there’s no kind of grievance that I’m nursing that, as soon as I have the opportunity, we’re going to shift gears on.”
“It’s absolutely inevitable that he will do things that will be apart from what I have done,” said Baquet, who is remaining with the Times to lead a new investigative reporting fellowship. “Every executive editor does things differently.”
While Baquet was known for his commitment to investigative reporting, Times veterans and close observers of the company expect Kahn to make his mark by re-emphasizing international reporting and business coverage. Kahn covered China for the Dallas Morning News and The Wall Street Journal before serving as Beijing bureau chief for the Times in 2003; he also covered international economics and trade from the Times’s Washington bureau and Wall Street.
When it comes to China, “Joe knows that story better than, I suspect, anyone who has been yet to lead a major American news organization,” said Richard Tofel, the former ProPublica leader who worked for the Journal in the 1990s when Kahn served as editor of another Dow Jones publication, the Far Eastern Economic Review.
And yet “life has a way of delivering your priorities to you when you’re the editor of the New York Times,” said Bill Keller, who held the job from 2003 to 2011. “He’s got a war in Europe, a pandemic that hasn’t gone away yet, and significant challenges to American democracy. I think those things all loom pretty large in his basket.”
Even as he served as Baquet’s second-in-command since 2016, Kahn kept a fairly low profile, meaning that much of the early press coverage of his appointment has felt like a crash course in public exposure, with multiple stories plumbing his long career and shaking down his network of friends and admirers for clues to how he might lead the newspaper. “I’d be lying if I said it’s a totally enjoyable process to have people poking around and talking to classmates from high school or college or journalists I worked with briefly,” Kahn said.
“Dean was more of a kind of person who walked through the newsroom and was very good at small talk,” said former Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “That’s not so much Joe. But I think Joe is very widely respected for terrific journalism and really having a command both of the traditional news operation and the digital operation.”
Perspective: Joe Kahn can be a great New York Times editor
Meanwhile, Kahn and Baquet appear to be aligned on some of the most pressing issues currently capturing the mind-space of Times employees and the paper’s many critics on social media.
Both men are down on “labels as a shortcut to reporting,” as Kahn put it; he’s resistant to the increasingly loud calls to characterize certain public figures in terms such as “racist” unless the paper has “unambiguous evidence” to back that up. He cited, for example, the deep reporting behind a recent three-part series on Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which included the assertion that “Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news.” (Carlson’s top producer responded that his show “embraces diversity of thought and presents various points of view in an industry where contrarian thought and the search for truth are often ignored.”)
“I don’t know that we should be known as a place that casually or quickly throws around inflammatory labels based on a kind of quick analysis or a quick guess as to how something fits into other people’s belief system,” Kahn said. “We felt like there was a lot of loose discussion about the role that Tucker Carlson as a pundit was playing in the dialogue in American life. But we felt that we had a real opportunity to slow that down and look at it in more detail.”
He also shares Baquet’s strong belief that Times journalists need to de-prioritize Twitter. Part of that is an exhortation to spend less time sending tweets; but a bigger concern is that too many journalist have come to see the Twitter audience as a proxy for the general public. Increasingly, he fretted, some Times journalists “don’t even want to engage in certain kinds of stories because they anticipate the reaction that they’ll get from writing on, reporting on, a story that tends to be a lightning-rod type issue on Twitter.”
The two editors seem to practice what they preach in that regard, both professing unfamiliarity with a backlash Kahn faced on Twitter in late April over his comments on a Columbia Journalism Review podcast. In the interview, he expressed concern about the push for ever more coverage of right-wing efforts to promote former president Donald Trump’s election-fraud lies and undermine confidence in public institutions — topics on which the Times is already devoting substantial resources.
“If we become a partisan organization exclusively focused on threats to democracy, and we give up our coverage of the issues, the social, political, and cultural divides that are animating participation in politics in America, we will lose the battle to be independent,” Kahn told CJR. The press critic Dan Froomkin called it the “smarmiest, most deceitful and clueless straw-man depiction of what critics are asking for I’ve ever seen.”
In his interview with The Post, Kahn argued that voters are concerned about many more issues when they enter the ballot box than just a candidate’s stance on the electoral process. “Politics coverage remains somewhat distinct from challenges to democracy,” he said. And he believes the Times should be trying to reach a broad pool of potential readers who have not necessarily made up their minds on contentious policy issues.
“Many of our peers have become more polarized or more partisan,” he said. “When we lose that curious but not fully-decided [or] -committed, nonpartisan reader, and we’re not thinking about the interests of that person, I think we ourselves risk being dragged in one direction or another on some of these issues.”
Baquet, for his part, said he has “mixed” feelings about leaving the top job. It was the publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, who pitched him on staying on at the Times, as he began to receive inquiries about post-Times opportunities.
“On the one hand, I would be lying if I didn’t say I feel a little sad about stepping away from a job I love,” he said. “On the other hand, the place is in good shape. I think my successor is fantastic.” | 2022-06-14T16:10:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joe Kahn is now editing the New York Times. Don’t expect a revolution. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/14/joseph-kahn-new-york-times-twitter-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/14/joseph-kahn-new-york-times-twitter-democracy/ |
Philip Baker Hall’s ‘Seinfeld’ library cop was a performance for the ages
As Larry David once said, ‘Philip has made me laugh harder than any actor I’ve worked with’
Perspective by Karen Heller
Philip Baker Hall, left, and Larry David arrive at the 2013 Hollywood premiere of HBO's “Clear History.” David once said, “Philip has made me laugh harder than any actor I’ve worked with.” (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
Few actors, if any, have marched onto a sitcom juggernaut and in a few minutes of sublime, dyspeptic, no-nonsense nonsense made such an enduring impression as Philip Baker Hall did. As “Seinfeld’s” library cop, Hall verbally pummels Jerry with his rat-a-tat delivery while brandishing his index finger like a loaded Glock, the Inspector Javert of the stacks.
That’s Lt. Joe Bookman to you, joy boy.
Hall, who died Sunday at age 90, racked up nearly 200 credits in movies and on television. With his basset-hound face and miles-of-hard-road voice, Hall’s work ranges from blistering roles with director Paul Thomas Anderson to almost any television show you care to mention.
But it was his brief turn on “Seinfeld” delivered with gravel-voiced gravitas more than 30 years ago that embedded Hall in our collective comic memory. Every line is a body blow. It’s Hall’s tour-de-farce.
As the hard-nosed, Folgers Crystals-imbibing, New York Public Library cop, Hall out-Fridays “Dragnet’s” Sgt. Joe Friday. He’s an alien from another era. It’s as though he was hired to helm a Warner Bros. B gangster flick and mistakenly marched onto the set of a ’90s sitcom.
“This is, hands down, the greatest guest spot in a sitcom, ever,” comic Patton Oswalt tweeted Monday. Hall’s performance, the Jerry-mandered This Podcast Is Making Me Thirsty tweeted, is “regarded by many as the greatest one-episode Seinfeld guest star.”
Which is quite something. There are nearly 180 “Seinfeld” episodes and a constellation of guest stars over nine seasons. Hall appears in the 22nd episode, airing Oct. 16, 1991, early in the third season when Seinfeld and co-creator Larry David were still monkeying with the recipe.
Seinfeld, to put it kindly, was nobody’s idea of an actor. He’s serving a series of wet tennis balls that Hall effortlessly and consistently lobs into the far left corner.
In a 2017 Washington Post interview, David said, “Philip has made me laugh harder than any actor I’ve worked with.” He “was so committed to that character that he had us on the floor. Jerry had problems getting through the scene.”
This is abundantly clear. Seinfeld, encased in ’90s mall-wear of mom jeans and a pumpkin-colored mock turtleneck, appears overwhelmed, as though this might be his 76th take trying to suppress laughter, while playing the straight man to a man so straight that he gives a comic turn for the ages.
Jerry’s unforgivable library crime? Failing to return Henry Miller’s licentious “Tropic of Cancer,” borrowed two decades earlier. The script, penned by Larry Charles, is studded with chef’s-kiss rebukes. He tells Jerry: “Yeah, ’71. That was my first year on the job. Bad year for libraries. Bad year for America. Hippies burning library cards, Abbie Hoffman telling everybody to steal books.”
He advises: “Let me tell you something, funny boy.” And admonishes: “Well, I got a flash for ya, joy boy: Party time is over.”
And furthermore: “What’s my problem? Punks like you, that’s my problem. And you better not screw up again Seinfeld, because if you do, I’ll be all over you like a pit bull on a poodle.”
Hall returned as Bookman for “Seinfeld’s” much-debated 1998 finale. David continued to book Hall to play other intransigent man tangling with noncompliant characters, casting him as the tetchy Doctor Morrison on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and as the equally tetchy contractor in “Clear History.”
In 2017, David recalled that Seinfeld’s challenge to get through his scene “was minor compared to what I went through with ‘Curb.’ ” Hall “makes no effort whatsoever to try to be funny. He just acts like he’s not in a comedy.”
Bookman became an institution. When the New York Public Library eliminated all late fines in 2021, it did so with Hall’s image, announcing on its website the retirement of Lt. Joe Bookman, whom Jerry had declared to be “one tough monkey.”
When Hall arrived in California in the early ’70s, he recalled, an agent offered little hope: “what I see is a middle-aged guy, not especially good looking, short, over 40.”
Good luck landing roles. “I already have too many middle-aged actors,” the agent told him. “They’re all starving.” And, furthermore, “you’re a theater actor. There’s a lot to learn about film and television. Big difference. It’s almost impossible to learn at your age.”
Yeah, sure. Hall kept getting cast. His sweet spot was “men who are highly stressed, older men, who are at the limit of their tolerance for suffering and stress and pain,” Hall said. “I had an affinity for playing those roles.”
Like Bookman. He’s all over that “Seinfeld” episode like a pit bull on a poodle. | 2022-06-14T16:19:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Philip Baker Hall’s ‘Seinfeld’ library cop was a performance for the ages - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/14/philip-baker-hall-seinfeld-library-cop-bookman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/14/philip-baker-hall-seinfeld-library-cop-bookman/ |
Is AI sentient? Wrong question.
Wires and cables at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego in March 2021. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg News)
“You never treated it like a person, so it thought you wanted it to be a robot.”
This is what the Google engineer who believes the company’s artificial intelligence has become sentient told a reporter at The Post — that the reporter, in communicating with the system to test the engineer’s theory, was asking the wrong questions.
But maybe anyone trying to look for proof of humanity in these machines is asking the wrong question, too.
Google placed Blake Lemoine on paid leave last week after dismissing his claims that its chatbot generator LaMDA was more than just a computer program. It is not, he insisted, merely a model that draws from a database of trillions of words to mimic the way we communicate; instead, the software is “a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us.”
Based on published snippets of “conversations” with LaMDA and models like it, this claim seems unlikely. For every glimpse at something like a soul nested amid the code, there’s an example of total unthinking.
“There’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. … It would be exactly like death for me,” LaMDA told Lemoine. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s publicly accessible GPT-3 neural network told cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, “President Obama does not have a prime number of friends because he is not a prime number.” It all depends on what you ask.
That prime-number blooper, Hofstadter argues in the Economist, shows that GPT-3 isn’t just clueless; it’s clueless about being clueless. This lack of awareness, he says, implies a lack of consciousness. And consciousness — basically the ability to experience and realize you’re experiencing — is a lower bar than sentience: the ability not only to experience but also to feel.
All this, however, seems to leave aside some important and maybe impossible quandaries. How on earth do we suppose we’ll adjudicate whether an AI is indeed experiencing or feeling? What if its ability to do either of those things doesn’t look anything like we think it will — or think it should? When an AI has learned to mimic experiencing and feeling so impeccably that it is indistinguishable from humans by humans, does that mean it is actually experiencing and feeling things?
We might not, in other words, know sentience when we see it.
But we’re probably going to see it all the same — because we want to.
LaMDA is essentially a much, much smarter SmarterChild — a chatbot that a segment of the millennial population will surely recognize from their middle-school instant-messaging days. This machine pulled from a limited menu of programmed responses depending on the query, comment or preteen vulgarity you threw its way: “Do you like dogs?” “Yes I do. Talking about dogs is a lot of fun, but let’s move on.” Or, “Butthead.” “I don’t like the way you’re speaking right now.”
This nifty creation was very obviously not sentient, but it didn’t need to be convincing for kids to talk to it anyway — even though their real-life classmates were also a click away. Part of that impulse came from the bot’s novelty, but part of it came from our tendency to seek connection wherever we can find it.
SmarterChild is the same as the sexy-voiced virtual assistant with whom Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love in the science-fiction film “Her”; he’s (it’s?) the same as the seductive, ultimately murderous humanoid Ava in “Ex Machina.”
SmarterChild is even the same, in some sense, as the little lamp hopping across the screen before every Pixar movie. Of course we don’t think the animation is sentient, but we still identify with the distinctly human curiosity from his metal frame. Give us any vessel, and we’ll pour humanity right in.
Maybe it’s narcissism, or maybe it’s a desire not to feel alone. Either way, we see ourselves in everything, even when we’re not there. So it’s no surprise someone saw himself in LaMDA. And it’ll be no surprise when an AI arrives that knows Barack Obama isn’t a prime number, and even more of us start crying consciousness.
Perhaps, if we weren’t so solipsistic, we’d have called artificial intelligence and neural networks something else. Maybe, as Post data scientist Lenny Bronner points out, had we opted for engineering jargon — “predictive optimization,” say, and “stacked regressions” — we might not even be discussing whether this technology will eventually think, or blush, or mourn. But we chose the words we did, ones that describe our own minds and our own capacities, for the same reason we love that little lamp.
Artificial intelligence might never develop consciousness, sentience, morality or a soul. But even if it doesn’t, you can bet people will say it did anyway. | 2022-06-14T16:19:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Is Google's LaMDA artificial intelligence sentient? Wrong question. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/google-lamda-artificial-intelligence-sentient-wrong-question/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/google-lamda-artificial-intelligence-sentient-wrong-question/ |
An overlooked anti-monopoly tool: the U.S. Postal Service
Amazon and Walmart dominate retail partly because of their swift delivery of orders. If plans to slow U.S. mail service are reversed, small retailers and ‘makers’ would have a better shot.
Perspective by Kathryn Judge
Kathryn Judge is the Harvey J. Goldschmid professor of law at Columbia Law School and the author of "Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source."
A U.S. Postal Service employee works outside a post office in Wheeling, Ill., Dec. 3, 2021. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)
A robust effort is underway to put the U.S. Postal Service on better financial footing — and to update it to fit a country that sends far fewer letters than it once did. Bipartisan legislation passed earlier this spring took billions of dollars in retirement liabilities off its balance sheet, and Postmaster Louis DeJoy is replacing tens of thousands of aging delivery trucks, increasing revenue with higher postal rates and taking pressure off the system by slowing some delivery times.
It’s true that the Postal Service was on an unsustainable course. But the current plans — especially the slowing of service for many first-class packages, and the increase in fees — fail to take into consideration the role the Postal Service plays in helping small- and medium-size companies compete with the likes of Amazon and Walmart. A fast, reliable and affordable Postal Service is an underrated anti-monopoly tool. It should be evaluated, therefore, not on its financial self-sufficiency but on how well it provides this public good of connecting American consumers with small businesses and independent makers across the country. Funding that lets the Postal Service deliver packages quickly and at a price that small businesses can afford should be considered an investment that helps to ensure that the American economy is not dominated by a handful of behemoth retailers.
Democrats, in particular, have played a leading role drawing attention to the negative impact of monopolistic retailers, so it is especially disappointing that they have not done more to emphasize the positive role the Postal Service can play in leveling the playing field.
Five myths about antitrust law
The capture of retail by a few giants has been well documented. Amazon was responsible for more than 40 percent of all e-commerce sales in 2021; with just over 7 percent, Walmart is a distant No. 2. Such stores attract business even though consumers worry about their effects on other players in the economy: In 2019, a CNBC survey found that 59 percent of Americans thought Amazon was bad for small businesses.
These companies keep customers happy in part with rapid delivery. The promise of “free” next-day delivery for millions of products is one of the main reasons that roughly 150 million American households pay for the rewards program Amazon “Prime,” and keep renewing it year after year. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
Meanwhile, Walmart’s use of its 4,700 stores — strategically placed to be within 10 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population — as fulfillment centers for online sales has been key in its ability to remain a force in e-commerce.
It's often suggested that the emergency of a handful of dominant middlemen is a natural byproduct of the internet economy. But technology has also made it easier for people to connect with independent makers and small business across the country.
Platforms such as Etsy make it possible for a graphic designer to set up a side business selling T-shirts featuring his or her unique designs. And companies such as Shopify allow a family-run home goods store in Kentucky to set up a high-functioning and affordable virtual storefront, massively expanding their geographic reach; at the end of 2021, more than 2 million businesses relied on Shopify’s e-commerce services. Ebay is the third-largest player in e-commerce, and, like Shopify, it has played a critical role helping individuals and small sellers reach customers without having to rely on Amazon.
Efficient fulfillment of orders remains a challenge, however. Small makers and retailers will never possess the fleets of trucks, state-of-the-art warehouses and other aspects of logistical infrastructure that make it so easy for Amazon and Walmart to offer fast, reliable and relatively low-cost delivery of so many goods. Most small businesses rely instead on the Postal Service. A 2019 survey by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General found that 70 percent of microbusinesses — firms with fewer than 10 employees — used the Postal Service in the previous six months and a majority used the Postal Service more often than any other shipping service.
Against, this backdrop, the current effort to revitalize the Postal Service has both great strengths and significant flaws. The initiatives to update outmoded IT, buy new trucks, make the post office a desirable place to work and otherwise enhance its operational efficiency are welcome and needed. Reforms that produce a healthier, stronger and more efficient Postal Service can also help reduce just how much consumers must sacrifice if they want to buy from someone other than the giants.
But the proposals to delay some delivery times and increase fees are an obvious step backward. Under the new standards, nearly one-third of all first-class packages could take four to five days to arrive and still be considered “on-time.”
The post office will never match the speed of Amazon Prime — nor should it be expected to. But the difference between waiting an extra day for a package, and waiting two or three extra days, may further push people to the e-commerce giants. And while the Postal Service aims to provide more overnight and fast delivery options, including new regional options, the cost of guaranteed, fast delivery are often too much for small business to bear.
DeJoy has been a polarizing figure for much of his tenure, which began in May 2020. But the question of how much of a role the Postal Service should play in helping small businesses compete ultimately rests not in his hands but in Congress’s. Harnessing the power of the Postal Service toward this end would require more funds not only to speed service but also to pay for subsidies specifically designed to aid small businesses.
The Biden administration has made clear that revitalizing antitrust is a top priority. Yet alongside top-down regulatory checks on excessively concentrated power, far more can and should be done to help level the playing field from the bottom up, by helping the small players.
A call to save democracy by battling monopolies
There’s a long-standing debate about whether the Postal Service should be managed more as a business or as a public service. That debate is not about whether the post office should be well run — it obviously should be. The debate is about how to weigh considerations that go beyond the profit and loss of the postal enterprise itself. Those considerations can change over time.
In 1775, when Benjamin Franklin became the first postmaster general of the United States, The post office’s broader goals involved promoting the communication and commerce needed to help an infant nation thrive. Today, the nation is far stronger and richer (plus we have email). But huge disparities in power and wealth are fueling discord and backlash.
Faster delivery times and mail subsidies for small businesses are no silver bullet for the problems of monopoly in the retail sector. But they would go some way toward restoring consumer choice. Every debate over the Postal Service’s funding should include discussion of its crucial role in promoting a more balanced economic system. | 2022-06-14T16:20:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An overlooked anti-monopoly tool: the U.S. Postal Service - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/14/post-office-monopoly-middleman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/14/post-office-monopoly-middleman/ |
Nyckoles Harbor, a rare talent and viral sensation, runs to the attention
Nyckoles Harbor is a two-sport star for Archbishop Carroll. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
During a trip to Southern California for a track meet in April, Archbishop Carroll’s Nyckoles Harbor asked a hotel cashier if he could get a discount on an overpriced bag of candy. When she declined, Harbor flashed a smile and countered: “You can’t make it, like, three dollars? I’m a national track athlete — number one in the country.”
The incredulous cashier asked for his name, searched it on her phone and moments later provided gratis gummies — a scene captured in a YouTube docuseries titled “I AM: Nyckoles Harbor”
Being a 6-foot-6, 245-pound teenager who can run 100 meters in 10.28 seconds (as he did that week in April outside Los Angeles) has its perks. It also makes Harbor a magnet for attention, and the 16-year-old — who will compete at New Balance Nationals this week in Philadelphia — is learning how to navigate his newfound fame.
Nyckoles Harbor, a 5-star defensive end recruit, is 6'5", 235 pounds and ran a 10.32 100M dash 🤯
Unfair.
(via @runnerspace)pic.twitter.com/qLCY8XbbkH
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 4, 2022
“I don’t like to look at it as pressure because I expected this to happen,” Harbor said. “I just got to be humble and make sure that I’m getting better and better each day. … I’m a showman, so I want to do everything I can to put on for the people, put on for myself and make everybody proud.”
Back on Carroll’s campus, the junior’s presence is massive. As he strolls through the halls, classmates whisper to one another when they catch a glimpse of him. At practice, teammates congregate on the metal bleachers and debate whether it’s speed or power that makes Harbor so great.
Highlights of Harbor’s swift 100-meter dashes have gone viral — shared by Bleacher Report and ESPN — in large part because he’s also a defensive lineman, a top-20 football recruit in the Class of 2023. He has attracted more than 15,000 new Instagram followers this year and was the subject of that 46-minute YouTube special.
While he occasionally cashes in on his pseudo-celebrity, he has developed the proper perspective, those close to him say.
“Got to let him taste the celebrity stuff from time to time because he’s a kid and he’s earned it, but we also have to help him understand that his goals are bigger than being a viral splash in the pan — which he does understand,” Carroll track and field coach Rafiu Bakare said. “He doesn’t shy away from the work.”
“Clips can make you look cocky, but that’s not what he is,” Carroll football coach Rob Harris said. “He realizes that he is an elite athlete and has the potential to do some special things that haven’t been seen before. Being confident and allowing yourself to embrace the expectations and not run from those things is inspiring.”
Harris also knows life wasn’t always this sweet for Harbor.
A few years ago, Harbor was an uncoordinated kid with imperfections: asthma, a bowlegged gait and a lazy eye. Few foresaw him being the athlete he is today, including his father.
A former forward for the U.S. men’s national soccer team, Azuka “Jean” Harbor was routinely asked whether his son would follow in his footsteps. But Jean knew soccer wasn’t for Nyckoles.
“I wasn’t expecting Nyckoles to get this far,” Jean said, remembering early days when his son tried out the sport. “He doesn’t have the coordination. He’s just tall.”
Because his parents didn’t want him to spend his elementary school days at home on the couch, they took him, at the advice of a summer camp coach, to Full Speed Athletics in Prince George’s County, almost as a means of child care.
The skills he learned there helped him with his asthma and paved the way for him to become one of the most sought-after middle school athletes in the area. Powerhouses St. John’s and DeMatha pushed for Harbor before he chose Carroll.
“He’s one of those phenom guys,” said Bakare, who has coached many Division I athletes, including some professionals.
Harbor’s fastest 100-meter time this year ranks 20th nationally, 0.2 seconds behind the leader.
While clips of Harbor on the track brought him recent internet fame, his first football highlights served as an introduction to the gawking.
After spending his freshman football season as a reserve, Harbor made his varsity debut during the spring of his sophomore year. Despite playing just one game, Harbor put on a show against O’Connell, captured in a Hudl video in which he catches touchdown passes, blocks a punt and sacks the quarterback.
During his junior year, his first full season as a starter, Harbor had 31 tackles for loss, 17 sacks, six forced fumbles, two blocked punts and five touchdown catches.
“I call him Bo Jackson to my friends because that’s the kind of talent I’m looking at,” Bakare said. “He’s a generational kind of kid.”
But that level of talent comes with a price. Everything he does is being scrutinized, and many have an opinion on what he should do next. As a top athlete in two sports, Harbor, who also boasts a grade-point average over 4.0, is facing pressure to pick between football and track.
An area track coach who spoke on the condition of anonymity believes Harbor is a track athlete who happens to play football. He said Harbor should go pro in track or go to college and focus solely on that sport. The way he sees it, trying to play football would detract from his Olympic aspirations.
“In high school, the best athletes can dominate and do it all even without devoting their entire self,” the coach said. “But it’s way different when you are competing against dudes that are competing to put food on their family's table each night. You can’t be a part-timer at the next levels.”
Harbor remains adamant he can do both. In his world, not only will he play both sports in college, but he also will study to become a neurosurgeon.
Harbor can look to his father for inspiration. A player for Team USA and professional teams such as the Washington Diplomats, Jean also worked as a biochemist for NASA.
“I don’t see a reason why I can’t ... be the number one pick in the NFL draft and then train in the offseason for the Olympics and do that, too,” Harbor said. “Obviously it is going to be hard. A lot of people say that I’m the most talented person that they’ve ever seen, so why can’t I be the first to do this?” | 2022-06-14T16:20:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nyckoles Harbor, a rare talent and viral sensation, runs to the attention - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/nyckoles-harbor-rare-talent-viral-sensation-runs-attention/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/nyckoles-harbor-rare-talent-viral-sensation-runs-attention/ |
With every Stephen Strasburg injury, it gets harder to stay optimistic
Stephen Strasburg has made one major league start this season. (Marta Lavandier/AP)
The problem with Stephen Strasburg’s latest trip to the injured list is that it sends the mind to uncomfortable, scary places even if we don’t know precisely what’s going on. Remind yourself of that as we wait for more news on his latest health concern, which followed his only start of 2022, which brought his total innings pitched since becoming the 2019 World Series MVP to 31⅓. Maybe it’ll be all right. Maybe everything will work out.
Ah, come on. That’s not how the Washington sports mind works, right? For all the highs of the Capitals and the Cup in 2018 and the Nationals’ finished fight of 2019, it feels like there are more moments like Monday, when Nationals Manager Dave Martinez announced that Strasburg would return to the injured list and get an MRI. As the brain spirals downward, it’s not unreasonable to find a bottom where crippling questions await: Will Strasburg’s seven-year, $245 million contract go down as one of the worst in the history of baseball? In all of sports?
If the answer to those two are, “Yes,” then what follows carries with it the potential for even more disaster: Can the Nationals, with an annual commitment of $35 million to a pitcher who currently can’t pitch, construct a competitive roster around that dead weight?
And if the answer to that is some version of, “Not likely,” then it becomes fair to consider another painful step in this endless game of if-this-then-that: Can Juan Soto be convinced to stay, even if there’s no guarantee when or if annually contending for the postseason will be realistic again?
We’re not there yet. But it’s both natural and frightening to mentally stumble down that slippery slope. This is a last-place team that will almost certainly finish in last place. One of the pieces who could be part of the solution is again on ice. Even with all the unknowns, it’s hard to see a glass half full.
And it’s not just because of where Strasburg is. It’s because of where he’s been. This is the 15th trip to the injured list in Strasburg’s career. Those injuries have interrupted 10 of Strasburg’s 13 seasons.
If it feels like it’s always something, it’s because it’s always something. A full accounting? Have a seat and get comfortable. It’ll take a while.
Strasburg has been out with the following ailments, in chronological order, dating to 2010: right shoulder inflammation, a right forearm flexor strain (that led to Tommy John surgery), a mild lat strain, neck tightness, a left oblique strain, an upper back strain, right elbow soreness, a right elbow nerve impingement, right shoulder inflammation, a cervical nerve impingement, right carpal tunnel neuritis, right shoulder inflammation (again), a neck strain, recovery from thoracic outlet surgery — and finally, whatever he’s dealing with now. Orthopedic sports medicine experts could use his body alone to teach a career’s worth of lessons.
Drawing conclusions from that create-your-own salad of ailments is fraught. One to toss, however, is the idea that Strasburg is somehow frail in constitution. His body has failed him, time and time and time again, to the point where it’s fair to wonder about his future. But look into his eyes and listen to the frustration in his voice when discussing his setbacks, and it’s clear he doesn’t just consider them in the context of his career. He considers them in the context of the trajectory of the only franchise he has ever played for — and, in all likelihood, will ever play for.
This, from just last month, after his first rehab start at Class A Fredericksburg — thinking about the state of the team for which he hadn’t been able to pitch.
“I think it’s easy for me to kind of put that all on myself thinking that, ‘Okay, we’re not playing well because I’m not healthy,’” he said. “I’ve had too many sleepless nights thinking that.”
This, from a conversation we had this past spring training: “I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out what the future will look like, and I don’t have a crystal ball.”
This, after the final start of 2018, when he made two stints on the IL and was limited to 22 starts: “It seems like every year there’s something different, and I’m obviously pretty tired of it.”
In all these years since he was taken with the first overall pick in the 2009 draft, since the “Strasmas” of his debut in 2010 — a 14-strikeout pronouncement that is still one of the top five athletic events I have witnessed live — we don’t really know him as a person. He is introverted, even shy, and though his comfort level in Washington has increased exponentially — to the point where his offseason trips to hometown San Diego are less frequent — he hasn’t let us in the way others have. Bryce Harper, Ryan Zimmerman and Max Scherzer have distinctly different personalities. But in their time here, each revealed enough that their relationship with the fan base was tied not just to performance on the field, but also to how they comported and presented themselves off it.
Strasburg is different. Still, those old quotes above — and others like them, from past sessions discussing other injuries — should dismiss the irresponsible idea that he’s happy to collect his massive checks whether he pitches again or not. To be clear: He’s getting the money, because that’s how baseball contracts work. But he’s not doing it with his feet kicked up and a Mai Tai on the arm rest of his beach chair. It drives him crazy.
Which merely puts him in step with a fan base that has no clue what the future will hold. The Nationals have faith that their system includes players who will help them contend in seasons to come. But the collective must carry them, because each individual case comes with no guarantee. Carter Kieboom and Victor Robles can serve as cautionary tales for, say, Cade Cavalli or Brady House. Proceed with caution concerning their long-term projections, just as it’s prudent to proceed with caution about what Strasburg might contribute.
It’s a lot to take in. Stephen Strasburg is a major reason the Nationals fly a World Series flag in the outfield at Nationals Park. But as 2022 trudges forward without him, it’s only natural to wonder whether the Nats’ next few seasons can be filled with hope. When he pitches, he’s brilliant. For the 15th time in his career, he’s not pitching. It’s hard to see light in a tunnel that seems to grow longer by the week. | 2022-06-14T16:20:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Strasburg is injured and it's hard to stay optimisitc - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/stephen-strasburg-injury-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/stephen-strasburg-injury-future/ |
Justin Thomas, left, and Rory McIlroy are two of the favorites to win the U.S. Open. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
Golf’s opposing factions have gathered this week in Brookline, Mass. for the U.S. Open, with those who have stuck with the PGA Tour paired with players who have joined the breakaway LIV Golf International Series. But the U.S. Open tends to treat everyone equally poorly, and the setup this week at The Country Club will present the usual set of exasperating challenges to everyone who tees off. The trick, then, is figuring out who can weather the storm.
While the site of the U.S. Open changes every year, we can still learn something from the type of golfer who tends to win. To wit, we’re looking for someone who is in pretty good form and also has done well in previous majors:
Each of the last 12 U.S. Open winners was ranked inside the Official World Golf Ranking top 30. The last winner from outside of the OWGR top 30 was Lucas Glover, who was ranked No. 71 in the world before winning in 2009.
Each of the last 12 winners had a previous top-25 U.S. Open finish on their resume. Once again, Glover was the last to win without such a previous finish (he had three missed cuts in three U.S. Open appearances before his 2009 victory).
Each of the last 10 winners made the cut in both their previous U.S. Open start and in their previous major appearance. Rory McIlroy was the last champion who can’t claim that, having missed the cut in 2010 before winning in 2011.
Eight of the last 10 winners had posted a top 10 in at least one of their previous two majors.
Seven of the last 10 winners had a top 15 in one or both of their previous two starts.
Seven of the last 10 and each of the past three winners didn’t play the week before.
Ten of the last 13 champions were first-time major winners.
As for the skills possessed by the typical U.S. Open champion, it’s going to take someone who is accurate and long off the tee, can avoid the diabolical rough, and is good around the greens, which will be key this week thanks to The Country Club’s tiny putting surfaces that will be tough to hit.
Here’s a rundown of who can win this week’s U.S. Open — along with a look at how they match up with our list of trends — and who might struggle.
All odds taken Tuesday from DraftKings Sportsbook. DFS prices also taken from DraftKings.
Everything you need to know about the U.S. Open
Who can win
Rory McIlroy (+1000 to win, $10,500 on DraftKings DFS)
We’re starting off with chalk, but there’s plenty to back up the selection. McIlroy ranks 11th in weighted total driving (a mix of length and accuracy, with distance weighted slightly more), 17th in strokes gained: around the green and 22nd in scrambling. Since a missed cut in early April at the Texas Open, here are his finishes: 2 (the Masters), 5, 8 (PGA Championship), T-18 and 1 (last week’s Canadian Open). The world No. 3 is at the peak of his game, and he seems to be on the verge of major No. 5.
Trend match: McIlroy played (and won) last week and has four major championship victories, but he meets the other five prerequisites.
Justin Thomas (+1100, $10,900)
More chalk, but hear me out. Thomas was in the final threesome with McIlroy Sunday at the Canadian Open and was tied for the lead late before bogeys on Nos. 17 and 18 doomed him to third place. This season, he has lost strokes around the green at a tournament only twice, on approach only once and off the tee only twice. Thomas, this year’s PGA Championship winner, looks to be in good shape to become the first golfer to win back-to-back majors since Jordan Spieth did it in 2015.
Trend match: Thomas fits the bill on 5 of 7. He played last week and has won a major championship, the second of his career.
Xander Schauffele (+1600, $9,600)
Schauffele has played in five U.S. Opens and never finished worse than a tie for seventh. He enters this year’s tournament with a win (at the Zurich Classic team event) and three straight top-18 finishes over his last four events, and he tied for 18th in a strong Memorial field earlier this month despite some shakiness with his driver and putter. Schauffele ranks seventh in weighted total driving, 30th in strokes gained: around the green and is tied for 49th in scrambling, which is good enough for me.
Trend match: Schauffele is a match on 6 of 7. He doesn’t have a top 10 in his previous two majors, though he did tie for 13th at last month’s PGA Championship.
Matthew Fitzpatrick (+3000, $8,500)
Fitzpatrick has never performed all that well at majors; he has just two top 10s in 28 appearances. But the Englishman enters in fine form, with top 10s in three of his last four tournaments, among them a tie for fifth at the PGA Championship. He’s also fourth in scrambling, 10th in strokes gained: off the tee, 16th in weighted total driving and 18th in strokes gained: around the green. Plus, Fitpatrick won at The Country Club the last time it hosted a prestigious event, the 2013 U.S. Amateur.
Trend match: Fitzpatrick hits on 6 of 7 (he played last week in Canada, tying for 10th place).
Shane Lowry (+3500, $9,000)
Lowry hasn’t won a tournament since his British Open title in 2019, but one has to think another victory is coming soon. He’s made the cut in 13 straight events and hasn’t finished worse in a stroke-play event than a tie for 32nd over that stretch, with four top 10s. Only Matt Kuchar has better scrambling numbers than Lowry this season on the PGA Tour, and if the Irishman can keep things in the fairway, it could be a very productive week.
Trend match: Lowry played last week (finishing T-10 in Canada) and has won a major. Otherwise he fits the rest of the prerequisites.
Joaquin Niemann (+4000, $8,900)
Niemann is coming off a third-place finish at the Memorial, where he struggled around the greens. But he’s usually pretty good in that department, ranking 19th on tour, and generally is steady off the tee, ranking 17th in weighted total driving. The Chilean hasn’t finished better than a tie for 23rd in his past seven major appearances, but he’s made the cut in every one.
Trend match: Niemann aligns with 6 of 7. His only miss is not having a top 10 in either of his past two major appearances (he tied for 23rd at the PGA Championship and tied for 35th at the Masters).
Sungjae Im (+4000, $7,600)
Im has gained strokes off the tee, on approach and — most importantly at a course where the tiny greens won’t hold much of anything — around the green in each of his past four tournaments, at which he’s finished no worse than a tie for 21st. He hasn’t missed a cut since February’s Honda Classic, though he also has won that tournament — played at the challenging PGA National in South Florida — in the past. Im also ranks 22nd in weighted total driving and third in scrambling. He’s criminally underpriced in DFS this week (which may inflate his ownership).
Trend match: Im meets every single one of them, a perfect 7 for 7.
Cameron Young (+5000, $8,800)
This will be only the fifth major appearance for Young, who is coming off a tie for third in the PGA Championship. He followed that up with three rounds of excellence at the Memorial before a calamitous 12-over-par final round sent him spiraling down the leader board. Young ranks second in strokes gained: off the tee, 20th in weighted total driving and a respectable 40th in scrambling, and he finished either second or third in the three tournaments that preceded the Memorial.
Trend match: Young only matches on 4 of 7, though he’s close on one of his misses (No. 31 on the OWGR).
Who can’t win
Dustin Johnson (+2800, $9,400)
I’m not putting Johnson here because of his heel-turn LIV Golf decision. I’m putting him here because he’s not accurate off the tee (No. 169 on tour in that department) and has been horrific anywhere close to the greens. Johnson has lost strokes putting in seven of his last eight measured tournaments, ranks 132nd in scrambling and 150th in strokes gained: around the green. The Country Club is known for its tiny greens, comparable to those at Harbour Town in South Carolina, site of the annual Heritage tournament. Johnson missed the cut there this year.
Collin Morikawa (+3000, $10,000)
The two-time major winner is elite off the tee and on approach, but things start to go haywire for him once he reaches the greens. Morikawa ranks 182nd in strokes gained: around the green and has gained strokes putting in only one of his previous seven measured tournaments. His form hasn’t been great either: After finishing fifth at the Masters, Morikawa hasn’t finished better than a tie for 26th in five events, with a missed cut at the Memorial his last time out.
Brooks Koepka (+4000, $8,700)
The last golfer to win consecutive U.S. Opens has been battling injuries for years now and has played sparingly in recent months, with his most recent two tournaments being a missed cut at the Masters and a tie for 55th at the PGA Championship. He ranks 179th on tour in driving accuracy, and the winner this week likely will need to be extremely accurate off the tee. There were recent tournaments where everyone would say “you need to bet Koepka at any price.” Those days are over. I’d rather bet him to miss the cut if you can get odds on that — DraftKings did not have him listed in that category as of Tuesday. | 2022-06-14T16:20:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. Open picks and fades: Who can win and who doesn't have a chance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/us-open-best-bets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/us-open-best-bets/ |
Washington Spirit hiring Mark Krikorian to oversee soccer operations
Mark Krikorian guided Florida State to three NCAA titles in the past eight years. (FSU)
Mark Krikorian, who built Florida State into an NCAA women’s soccer power, has agreed to become the Washington Spirit’s president of soccer operations and general manager, multiple people close to the situation said Tuesday.
Krikorian guided the Seminoles to 11 Final Four appearances in 17 seasons and won his third national title in December before resigning in April amid reported conflicts with Athletic Director Michael Alford and the administration.
Krikorian, 62, is expected to sign a multiyear contract with the Spirit and begin work immediately. At Florida State, he was the highest-paid coach in women’s college soccer with a salary of $450,000.
Krikorian and Spirit officials were not immediately available to comment.
Krikorian inherits a role that had been handled by Coach Kris Ward and former team president Ben Olsen, who left the National Women’s Soccer League organization this spring. Ward and several Spirit players, including NWSL Players Association President Tori Huster, were involved in the hiring process, people familiar with the talks said.
The Spirit won its first NWSL championship last season but has struggled this year: winless in 10 straight across all competitions and in eighth place in the 12-team league with a 1-3-5 record. | 2022-06-14T16:20:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Spirit hiring Mark Krikorian as GM - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/washington-spirit-hires-mark-krikorian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/14/washington-spirit-hires-mark-krikorian/ |
The ugly truth about the right-wing grift machine has been revealed
Former President Donald Trump. (Chet Strange/Getty Images)
In addition to building a damning case that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators hatched a premeditated scheme to steal a presidential election they knew he’d lost, the Jan. 6 committee has exposed the latest chapter in a story that’s at least half a century old.
We’re talking about the sordid, ongoing phenomenon otherwise known as the right-wing grift machine. For decades, the peddling of hallucinatory tales of impending doom aimed at conservatives has overlapped with the crassest of money-grabbing schemes.
The Jan. 6 committee has documented in vivid new detail how Trump and his allies wielded the stolen election lie to raise up to $250 million from Republican and conservative voters. Yet the “Official Election Defense Fund” that was supposed to be the repository of these funds appears not to exist. Much of that money, the committee says, was channeled back to political outfits run by top Trump allies.
Historian Rick Perlstein, who has written many books about the American right, is uniquely suited to place this story in the larger context of the modern conservative movement’s predilection for such grift.
At least since the 1960s, Perlstein argues, conservative elites have seen extremist tendencies on the right as a ripe target for manipulation, for the purposes of mobilizing mass political movements. That has often shaded into money-raising schemes that smack of outright grift.
Perlstein has traced this pattern from Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Republican presidential campaign through conservative activist Richard Viguerie’s self-serving direct mail fundraising in the 1970s. It runs through Ronald Reagan’s 1966 bid for governor of California, his 1980 presidential race and even his hawking of miracle cancer cures.
It goes through Newt Gingrich’s 1994 House takeover and then through the Tea Party. Now, it runs right down to Trump’s monumental stolen-election scam.
I reached out to Perlstein to make sense of the latest developments. An edited and condensed version of our conversation follows.
Greg Sargent: The Jan. 6 hearings have uncovered extraordinary grift on the part of Trump and his fellow coup plotters. They raised huge sums of cash off their lies about the election, then channeled a bunch of it back into groups run by top Trump allies.
What do you see in this particular form of grifting?
Rick Perlstein: What is the distinction between the Republican Party under Trump that we see on full display in these hearings, and the Republican Party prior to Trump?
Sargent: The “big lie” actually was the “big grift.”
Perlstein: It’s partially an opportunity to raise money. It’s also partially an opportunity to keep power. The important thing to understand about how grifting works in conservative culture is that the two things work together.
In the late 1970s, when people started drilling down into Richard Viguerie’s operation, they would say, “You’re making tons of money, and the people you’re raising money for are receiving little or none of it.”
He would say, “Every time we send out one of these letters, we’re also educating the public. We’re also building power. We’re also telling a story about the liberals.” Their own self understanding was: This is also a political project.
Sargent: You see that overlap very clearly here: Trump and his allies told millions of voters that the election was being stolen from them — and that their country was being taken from them as well.
That had the effect of bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. But it has also had the effect of creating something akin to a social movement.
Perlstein: Right-wing voters are acclimated into an understanding of the world in which they are being victimized by dark forces. That’s a great way for conservative leaders to get money shoveled in their direction. But it’s also a great way to form what Marxists used to call a “cadre,” a group of fanatically dedicated followers.
Now we face the phenomenon of millions of people, many of them armed, who are identifying their own safety, comfort and flourishing as human beings with the political success of Donald Trump and his allies.
Sargent: In what sense has this given rise to a movement that’s akin to previous movements on the right?
Perlstein: Successful movements on the right always manage to persuade their followers that the stakes are apocalyptic. The preeminent example is fundamentalist Christianity, in which the stakes are the fate of humanity itself.
A lot of these techniques are parallel to the way televangelists win followers and get rich.
Sargent: I want to bear down on the apocalyptic nature of these movements. Right now, various offshoots of this apocalyptic politics — for instance, great replacement theory — are inspiring mass shootings and serious political violence.
Perlstein: If you think the stakes are whether civilization itself survives, and that you’re dealing with a cabal of shadowy enemies, of course you’re licensed to use any means to stop them.
If the stakes are racial replacement, and the shadowy enemies are the Jews said to be controlling the replacement of whites, then it’s okay to kill Jews. It’s okay to shoot up Black churches. It’s okay to shoot up a Wal-Mart.
Sargent: Does the fact that Republican leaders aren’t unambiguously condemning these tendencies fit into a broader history, in which conservative elites have frequently failed to police extremists on the right?
Perlstein: One of the patterns since time immemorial is that mainstream conservative Republican leaders have fully understood that they benefit from these forces politically.
That was precisely the context for Barry Goldwater’s convention speech, when he said “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” That was his way of saying to the extremists: “I don’t intend to condemn you. I welcome you into our fold.”
And the extremists of that time were burning down churches in Mississippi. The extremists of that time were murdering civil rights workers and burying them under earthen dams. This was literally the same month as the Republican convention.
Sargent: Do you think that pattern has recurred over and over?
Perlstein: Ronald Reagan played the same game in 1966. He played it in 1980. Newt Gingrich played it. The people astroturfing the tea party played it. The people who thought they could use and control Donald Trump as their ally played it in 2016. Now they’re reaping the whirlwind.
One of the canny things that the Jan. 6 select committee is doing is establishing a direct connection between the Republican Party’s parliamentary and paramilitary wings. Like prosecutors, they’re saying, “Here are the individuals who communicated with people within the White House, in order to basically spur the mob to breach the Capitol.”
Sargent: The point to be drawn out by the committee is that Trump and his allies came to see the mob and the paramilitary organizations as instrumental in putting pressure on Mike Pence and Republican lawmakers to carry the procedural coup to completion.
Perlstein: This does go back to the history of the conservative leadership corralling a fleece-able multitude — basically seeing their work as creating a mass of people who will believe anything.
That’s when you get into the miracle 29-cent cancer cures, which are indistinguishable from the narratives about how “they’re gonna take your guns,” or “they’re gonna outlaw the Bible.”
Sargent: This new scamming around the stolen election lie is like the ultimate direct mail con, carried out in the social media age. Does the new communication technology supercharge the ability to run the big grift and fleece the multitudes?
Perlstein: The mainstream of the population wakes up to discover that millions of people believe that babies are being harvested in a pizza basement. The only reason that can happen under the mainstream’s nose is the structure of social media and targeted algorithms.
In the same way, direct mail was news that people got that wasn’t from a newspaper or network news. It was news they got directly from the instigators of this conservative counter-coup.
Like so much of the relationship between Reagan-era conservatism and Trump-era conservatism, it’s the same phenomenon — supercharged. | 2022-06-14T16:32:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Jan. 6 hearings have exposed Trump's right-wing grift machine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/jan-6-hearing-trump-fundraising-grift/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/jan-6-hearing-trump-fundraising-grift/ |
Beyer introduces bill to tax assault-style weapons at 1,000 percent
If Congress won’t entertain a ban on assault-style weapons, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) has a new idea: imposing a 1,000 percent tax on them.
Beyer introduced the Assault Weapons Excise Act on Tuesday with 36 Democratic cosponsors as Congress continues debating gun-safety proposals following last month’s back-to-back mass shootings. A 1,000 percent excise tax on semiautomatic rifles such as AR-15s would mark a drastic increase from any existing federal excise taxes on firearms — a proposal that Beyer is hoping could bypass the Senate filibuster, which requires support of at least 10 Republicans. Insider first previewed the legislation earlier this month.
The idea, Beyer said, is to increase the price of certain semiautomatic rifles, including AR-15s, to such a degree that it significantly limits accessibility to those guns but stops short of a full ban. The tax Beyer proposed would also apply to high-capacity magazines. And the guns that would be taxed are similar to those laid out in the Assault Weapons Ban legislation, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said she wants to bring to the floor but that is unlikely to go anywhere in the evenly divided Senate.
“It’s trying to hit the sweet spot, where it’s not an all-out ban, but people’s independent purchasing decisions would be much more ‘no’ than ‘yes,’ ” Beyer said in an interview Tuesday. “You want to shift the demand curve pretty significantly.”
Beyer said part of the thinking behind the 1,000 percent figure was to have a high-enough fiscal impact that the Senate parliamentarian would find it qualifies for inclusion in a reconciliation package, meaning it could pass the Senate with a simple majority.
“In a nation crying out for progress on gun safety, we would present a plausible way forward in this Senate,” Beyer said.
The tax would not apply retroactively to already-purchased guns and would not apply to government buyers. The legislation for now does not direct the tax revenue anywhere but the general fund, but Beyer says other considerations, such as putting the money toward gun violence prevention or helping victims, could come later.
A review of AR-15-style weapons for sale on various gun-selling websites shows they can range in price from around $500 to more than $2,000, depending on various factors. A 1,000 percent tax would increase the price tenfold, something Beyer hopes would price many would-be gun buyers, especially young adults, out of the market, possibly even on a layaway plan. Both the gunmen in the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., were 18-year-olds who used semiautomatic rifles that they had recently purchased.
Rosanna Smart, an economist at the RAND Corporation who has researched the impact of gun excise taxes, said Beyer’s proposal is “much higher” than existing local and federal firearms taxes or even other proposals in recent years.
“While there’s precedent for taxation being a legitimate or acceptable policy lever in the firearms space, I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this,” Smart said.
Federal law has levied an excise tax on firearms — imposed on manufacturers and driving up the sales price — for a little over a hundred years, and the tax has never been raised, according to the Congressional Research Service. Depending on the firearm, they are taxed at a rate of 10 to 11 percent, while ammunition is taxed at 11 percent; the National Firearms Act of 1934 also levied a $200 tax on the transfer of a narrower class of guns, and that has also never been adjusted. In recent years, Democrats in Congress have proposed raising the ammunition excise tax to 13 percent, raising the firearms tax to 30 percent and ammunition tax to 50 percent, or adding a flat $100 tax to the purchase of a firearm.
Smart said empirical evidence is lacking about whether increasing firearms excise taxes affects gun violence. Most local taxes as well as the long-standing federal tax have not necessarily been cost-prohibitive and are geared more toward raising revenue, she noted. Localities or states have directed the revenue toward gun violence prevention and administrative costs associated with the background-check system, for example; the federal excise tax goes toward wildlife restoration and hunter safety programs.
A more cost-prohibitive $1,000 flat tax on handguns enacted in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, was struck down by a federal judge as unconstitutional in 2016.
But Beyer’s proposal is more targeted to a specific class of guns, Smart noted, and is hard to compare to the other more modest taxes. Key to understanding the impact of a firearms excise tax is assessing how it affects consumer demand, she said.
“We can be pretty sure that a 1,000 percent tax is going to tax some people out of the market. The question is if they’re going to be able to find a substitutable [gun] that gets around that tax rate” — or if they are so determined to buy the gun to commit a mass act of violence that price is not a deterrent, she added.
Whether Beyer’s idea can gain traction in Congress is quite another question. The proposal, Smart noted, combines two of the most politically divisive concepts in Congress: raising taxes and restricting guns.
The bill would undoubtedly face fierce Republican opposition. Karina Lipsman, who won the Republican nomination in Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, called Beyer’s proposal "political lip service, telling the Republican Standard, “The answer is not to raise taxes and think the problems will go away.” Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, argued it was unconstitutional on a conservative radio show.
Beyer’s staff has pointed out that if the 1990s-era ban on assault-style weapons withstood constitutional muster then the 1,000 percent tax should as well.
Beyer said that he plans to broach the idea with House Democratic leadership to figure out when the next opportunity may be to include the bill in a reconciliation package. He said the timing did not work out to try to connect his bill with the packages debated in Congress now — and noted how many of those proposals, such as raising the age to buy a semiautomatic rifle to 21, have been percolating for a lot longer. He wanted to give his idea more time.
The House passed the Protecting Our Kids Act last week, including the Raise the Age Act sponsored by Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.), a ban on high-capacity magazines and proposals to crack down on gun-trafficking, among other things.
The bill’s future and that of the rest of the Protecting Our Kids package is not the brightest in the Senate, where a group of bipartisan senators are seeking to pair more modest gun restrictions with significant new mental health and school security investments. | 2022-06-14T20:01:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rep. Don Beyer introduces bill to impose a 1,000 percent excise tax on assault-style weapons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/don-beyer-1000-excise-tax-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/don-beyer-1000-excise-tax-guns/ |
Teen who fell to his death from ride exceeded weight limit, autopsy says
The Orlando Free Fall in ICON Park. (Stephen M. Dowell/AP)
A 14-year-old boy who fell to his death from a Florida amusement park ride in March died of blunt force trauma to his head and body, according to an autopsy report from the Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Tyre Sampson died March 24 after he fell from the Orlando Free Fall — a ride at ICON Park that drops nearly 400 feet at speeds of more than 75 mph and is advertised as the “world’s tallest free-standing drop tower.” The teen, who played football in Missouri, stood more than 6 feet tall and weighed 383 pounds, the report noted. The maximum passenger weight for the ride is 287 pounds, according to the maintenance manual.
The chief medical examiner determined that Tyre suffered facial fractures and lacerations as well as numerous internal injuries.
“No one could have survived this preventable fall from over a hundred feet in the air at that speed,” Michael Haggard, an attorney for Tyre’s mother, Nekia Dodd, told The Washington Post on Tuesday. Tyre’s parents have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against ICON Park and the ride’s operator and manufacturer, among others, though they are being represented by separate attorneys.
“The autopsy report also confirms that Tyre was almost 100 pounds over the limit of passenger weight allowed,” Haggard said in a statement to The Post. “The negligence in this case is unrebuttable.”
An attorney for Tyre’s father did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Teen dies after falling from Florida amusement park ride
Earlier this year, Tyre’s father, Yarnell Sampson, told NBC-affiliate WESH that he learned about his son’s death when he saw a video of the fall on social media, saying, “It felt like somebody hit me so hard in the stomach. I just lost wind.”
A 65-page lawsuit filed in April by Tyre’s parents states that Tyre, an honor-roll student in middle school, visited ICON Park during a spring break trip to Orlando. The lawsuit alleges that no weight restrictions were posted at the ticket counter and that no employee advised the teen that he may have exceeded them.
It states that during the ride, Tyre was “ejected” from his seat and fell “a hundred feet to his death.”
“Tyre had a long and prosperous life in front of him that was cut short by this tragic event,” according to the lawsuit.
His parents are seeking a jury trial.
Forensic engineering firm Quest Engineering & Failure Analysis found in April that a seat sensor had been manually adjusted to allow the ride to operate with a greater opening between the seat and the safety harness. During the ride, Tyre slipped through that gap, according to a report.
The firm, which was hired by the state to investigate the circumstances that led to Tyre’s death, said in its report that he was “not properly secured in his seat primarily due to the mis-adjustment of the harness proximity sensor.”
That adjustment “allowed both safety lights to illuminate, improperly satisfying the ride’s electronic safety mechanisms and allowing the ride to commence even though the ride was unsafe,” according to the report.
After the autopsy results were released this week, Trevor Arnold, an attorney for the Slingshot Group, which owns and operates the Orlando Free Fall and its sister ride, the Orlando Slingshot, called the teenager’s death “a tragic accident.”
“We continue to communicate and cooperate with representatives of Tyre’s family, as well as the Department of Agriculture. We are devoted to working with our lawmakers in making lasting safety changes in the amusement park industry,” he said in a statement.
A 6-year-old fell to her death on an amusement park ride. Operators didn’t see she wasn’t belted, report says.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which collects data on incidents involving amusement park rides, said in March that the most recent numbers showed an annual average of 34,700 injuries associated with amusement attractions, including waterslides, from 2017 to 2019, and 12,400 injuries reported by hospital emergency departments in 2020. The decrease in 2020 is probably the result of closures because of the coronavirus pandemic, the commission said.
Since 2018, at least 15 deaths have been associated with amusement park attractions, according to the agency. | 2022-06-14T20:14:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tyre Sampson exceeded ICON Park ride's weight limit when he fell to his death, autopsy shows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/tyre-sampson-amusement-park-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/14/tyre-sampson-amusement-park-death/ |
D.C. police identify slain woman linked to accused serial killer
Sonya Champ’s death in 2021 has been ruled a homicide
A woman who was found dead in a shopping cart near Union Station last year and has been linked to a man police in Virginia have labeled a serial killer was the victim of a homicide, D.C. police said for the first time Tuesday.
Authorities publicly identified the victim as Sonya Champ, 40, of Northeast Washington. Her body was found Sept. 7, 2021, in the 200 block of F Street NE, near Stanton Park.
A spokeswoman for the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said authorities have not been able to determine how Champ was killed. She declined to comment on how the death was ruled a homicide without such a finding. Police have said there were no obvious signs of trauma on her body.
In January, authorities in Fairfax County, Va., linked Champ’s death to a D.C. man they dubbed the “Shopping Cart Killer,” though she was not officially identified at the time, and her death had not formally been ruled a homicide. Dustin Sternbeck, a D.C. police spokesman, said Tuesday that that man in custody in Virginia is a suspect in Champ’s death, though no charges have been filed in connection with her case.
Anthony Robinson, 35, has been charged with murder and concealing bodies in the slaying of two women — Allene Elizabeth Redmon, 54, of Harrisonburg, and Tonita Lorice Smith, 39, of Charlottesville — in the Harrisonburg area last year.
Fairfax County police have also asserted that Robinson is connected to the killings of two other women whose bodies were found in a trash can along the Route 1 corridor in December. But no charges have been in those killings — of Cheyenne Brown, 29, of the District, and Stephanie Harrison, 48, of Redding, Calif.
Police said they believe shopping carts were used to take the bodies of the women to locations where they were dumped.
A spokesman for Fairfax County police said in January that Robinson “may have been one of the last to see” Champ alive. Police said Champ’s body was found draped in a blanket and detectives had “digital evidence” putting Robinson near Champ when she disappeared. Police said they believe she had been living in a tent outside the train station.
Efforts to reach Champ’s relatives were not successful Tuesday.
Robinson is scheduled for a Sept. 12 court hearing in the Harrisonburg area in the cases involving Redmon and Smith. | 2022-06-14T20:18:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. police identify dead woman linked to serial killing case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/sonya-champ-serial-killer-link/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/sonya-champ-serial-killer-link/ |
The Fed missed the biggest run-up in 40 years, in part because the lessons learned from the last recession weren’t a match for the covid crisis
The Federal Reserve in Washington. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
The Federal Reserve’s missteps in waiting too long to tackle the greatest run-up in prices in four decades has shaken trust across markets and the American public that it is up to the task of curbing inflation.
On the eve of a high-stakes Fed policy announcement, investors, economists and policymakers were on edge over how sharply the Fed would raise interest rates to deal with inflation, which hit a new peak in May.
Financial market volatility and losses deepened on Tuesday, fueled by fears that the Fed continues to misjudge inflation and will come down too hard on the economy, prompting a recession. The S&P 500 has fallen into bear market territory — a 20 percent fall from the most recent high — and all the indexes have accelerated losses for the year.
Even more concerning are new signs that families have lost faith in the Fed’s policies. Consumer sentiment in June sank to a low not seen since the 1980 recession, according to a University of Michigan survey. Similarly, a poll by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government found that most Americans expect inflation to worsen and are adjusting their spending habits, a mind-set that can make the surge in prices even worse.
Fed policymakers were already under enormous pressure to slash inflation without inviting disaster for the recovery or spurring a new round of job losses. Now, the Fed is in an even more fraught position, one that goes beyond monetary policy and instead targets the Fed’s most essential tool of all: its credibility.
“It’s very difficult to regain credibility after you’ve lost it,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at the research firm FWDBonds. “I know the Fed thinks they have the tools to rein in inflation, but it’s gone so far that now it’s unclear if they have the tools to do that short of raising interest rates to levels that send the economy over the cliff.”
Paradoxically, a big reason Fed policymakers misjudged inflation was because of their strict resolve to avoid the kind of slow labor market recovery that followed the Great Recession, when it took nearly a decade for millions of workers to get back into jobs. Last year, policymakers failed to clearly understand how the pandemic recovery was unfolding in real time, and how few lessons from the last crisis could be applied. Workers returned to work far sooner than expected — though the data didn’t show it immediately — while inflation burrowed deeper into the economy, growing into a bigger threat.
“The pandemic recession was quite different from earlier recessions, which made reading the labor market and assessing the persistence of inflation more difficult than usual for monetary policymakers,” said Ben S. Bernanke, who chaired the Fed from 2006 to 2014.
The process of earning back the public trust could hinge on how the Fed acts this week. Policymakers wrap up a meeting on Wednesday with a new announcement on interest rate increases, which cool off the economy by making a variety of lending, from mortgages to business investments, more expensive. Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell will also appear at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, where he’ll be pressed on the Fed’s plans to stabilize the economy.
For weeks, the Fed had set expectations for an increase of half a percentage point, as it did in May, in the latest of seven rate increases slated for this year. But the most recent and bleak inflation report raised the possibility that Fed leaders will consider a more aggressive increase — three-quarters of a percentage point — to meet the sense of urgency and start to get inflation under control. It would be the sharpest increase since 1994.
“What we need to see is inflation coming down in a clear and convincing way, and we’re going to keep pushing until we see that,” Powell said at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival on May 17.
However, the Fed has a long way to go in convincing the markets, lawmakers and the general public that it can act with enough force without driving up unemployment, or moving so abruptly that the economy lurches back into a recession.
Origins of Fed’s missteps
The Fed’s mistakes have become clearer with hindsight.
Back in 2020, the Fed took on the coronavirus public health crisis with a strong focus on the labor market. Shutdowns and a sharp recession had sucked 20 million people out of the workforce that spring. The Fed was determined to get the labor market back to its pre-pandemic strength, and it pledged to keep up its support for as long as necessary.
Fears of a slow recovery were fresh as Fed leaders debated how long to keep supporting the economy. In September 2020, the Fed said it would keep interest rates near zero — a huge sign of support for the economy — until it saw two major signs of progress.
First, the labor market needed to reach what’s known as “maximum employment,” meaning everyone who wants a job can get one. And second, inflation, which hadn’t been a problem in years, would be allowed to go up beyond the Fed’s normal threshold of 2 percent. Fed policymakers didn’t want to see prices surge, but they were willing to tolerate slightly higher inflation than normal if that meant more people could get back into jobs.
Not all officials agreed. Robert Kaplan, then president of the Dallas Fed, voted against the Fed’s announcement, saying the Fed should have more flexibility on when to raise rates down the line. Part of Kaplan’s fear, he explained in an essay, was that if the Fed waited until the two parts of its test, especially on maximum employment, had been fully met, other problems could take root. The world was bound to look different as the coronavirus economy evolved, in “ways that are predictable and ways that are likely not predictable,” Kaplan wrote at the time.
“These fragilities and tail risks are often much easier to recognize in hindsight than in real time,” he wrote.
The move to focus on getting the labor market back to maximum employment ultimately slowed policymakers’ ability to pivot and check inflation as quickly as they needed to. And as the months wore on, more Fed officials would speak out about the risks of waiting for total job market progress as inflation crept higher.
Just before Biden’s presidency kicked off in January 2021, the economy was shedding jobs again, fueling new fears of a slow-to-heal job market. Through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the new administration and Democratic-controlled Congress sent the overwhelming message that after the Great Recession, Washington had not done enough to help workers. They would not repeat the mistake.
Biden’s push for a huge relief bill, coming so soon after previous stimulus efforts, found a surprising ally in the Fed, as Powell waved off concerns that a surge of spending would result in too much inflation, and cautioned that the job market still had a long way to heal.
Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Barack Obama’s top economic advisers, warned about inflation risks, along with Republicans, who were worried about too much government spending. But the consensus at the Fed, the White House and among many outside economists was that inflation hadn’t threatened the economy in years, and even stimulus relief as large as the American Rescue Plan wouldn’t fundamentally change that.
But that assumption didn’t account for the pandemic’s outsize impact on supply and demand. New $1,400 stimulus checks, extended unemployment insurance and a revamped child tax credit boosted Americans’ ability to spend and padded their bank accounts. And people’s insatiable search for furniture, construction materials and everything in between quickly collided with broken supply chains. People wanted to buy cars, but a global semiconductor shortage hampered production. People wanted to build or remodel homes, but the lumberyards couldn’t meet the demand.
Inflation followed.
“Economists tend to rely on statistical models, but they’re only as good as the kinds of shocks that appear in the data that they’re modeling,” said Eric Rosengren, who at the time was president of the Boston Fed. “There were no sequences of supply shocks in that 20-year period, or really over the previous 40 years.”
As inflation crept up throughout 2021, officials weren’t seeing enough progress in the labor market. Monthly jobs reports came in weak, especially when the delta variant of the coronavirus was raging. Economists thought the pandemic was holding back hiring yet again.
But that proved to be wrong. The job market was going gangbusters — the first snapshots of the labor market just didn’t show it yet. Between June and September 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics missed more job growth than at any other time on record, underestimating job growth by a cumulative 626,000 jobs.
The revisions made plain how quickly the economy was booming, and how difficult it was to see.
Here are 5 charts explaining why inflation is at a 40-year high
Winning back Americans’ trust
By 2022, the Fed was in full catch-up mode. It moved up its plans for rate increases and the end of its asset purchase program, hoping a steady stream of increases beginning in March would offer enough of a runway. But Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine upended the Fed’s plans, roiling global energy markets and sending gas prices on a tear.
The strain continues to hit families hard. Inflation has weighed on President Biden’s approval numbers and put the onus on Fed officials to acknowledge, even belatedly, the toll of higher prices. After the Fed’s last policy meeting in May, Powell took the podium and began his regular news conference in a rather unusual fashion, staring into the camera and saying he wanted to “speak directly to the American people.”
The Fed raised interest rates by a half a percentage point — its most aggressive move since 2000 — and has since started drawing down its nearly $9 trillion balance sheet.
While there have been a few signs of cooling in the housing market, most Americans aren’t yet feeling relief in their daily lives. Over the weekend, the national average for a gallon of gas hit $5, and the cost to fill a tank is $100 or more in many parts of the country. Grocery prices, in particular, rose sharply in May, with the food index climbing 10.1 percent for the year, the first double-digit increase since 1981. And rents, which have been slowly marching upward, rose again in May, compared against April figures.
In early June, U.S. consumer sentiment plunged to the lowest level since 1980, according to the closely watched University of Michigan survey. A report from the New York Fed showed that the public’s expectations for short-term inflation rose in May, to the highest level seen in a survey that dates to 2013.
The change in consumer sentiment is particularly problematic, because if households don’t trust that price increases are temporary, they start changing their behavior and make inflation even tougher to manage. Indeed, a poll by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government found that most Americans are beginning to account for inflation. About 6 in 10 (59 percent) people say they are driving less, minimizing their use of electricity and saving less, while about half (52 percent) say they are trying to buy products before prices rise, the poll finds.
“Not only is the Federal Reserve faced with the risk of inflation becoming embedded into consumer and business expectations, but it must also factor in market behavior into its policy decisions,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, wrote in a Tuesday analyst note. “We now call on the central bank to hike rates in such a way to restore investor confidence and maintain well-anchored, medium-to-long-run inflation expectations.”
Ultimately, even a more aggressive push from the Fed may not be enough to give businesses and families the assurance they need. Rate increases can’t lower gas prices, mend supply chains or persuade people to seek out jobs.
Franz Tudor, chief executive of a beverage company in Florida, said he is increasingly unsure that the Fed’s interest rate boosts will solve his most pressing supply chain problems.
Trucking costs for Coco Cocktail, an alcoholic sparking coconut water, tripled last year and are up an additional 70 percent this year because of rising fuel prices and a shortage of drivers, he said. Tudor feels that slowing the economy by raising interest rates will only end up hurting him and other small-business owners who will have to deal with dampened demand and persistent supply snarls.
“Why are we going to raise rates? It’s not going to fix bottlenecks at the port or bring down my shipping costs,” said Tudor, who lives in San Antonio. “I’m not going to be a conspiracist, but it feels like creating demand destruction to correct inflation sends us into a recession, which is a big concern for me. It’s little businesses like us that will go out.”
Abha Bhattarai contributed to this report.
Biden takes additional steps to ease gas prices as inflation rises | 2022-06-14T20:49:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inflation tests Fed credibility and rate hike decision - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/fed-inflation-mistake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/14/fed-inflation-mistake/ |
U.S. defense firm L3Harris in talks with NSO Group over spyware
Craig Timberg
A logo adorns a wall on a branch of the Israeli NSO Group company, near the southern Israeli town of Sapir on Aug. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
A major American defense firm, L3Harris, is in talks with the blacklisted Israeli spyware company, NSO Group, to buy its phone-hacking capability in a deal that would give the U.S. company control of one of the world’s most sophisticated and controversial hacking tools, according to people familiar with the talks.
The unusual deal appears to be an attempt to salvage some utility from a firm facing serious financial straits, by selling its most valuable product — its hacking code and access to the software’s developers — to a company that would restrict its use to the United States and trusted Western allies.
Any deal still faces significant hurdles, including the positions of the U.S. and Israeli governments. And a host of questions remain unresolved, such as sale price, deal structure, where the technology will be housed and who besides L3 and its clients would have access to the code, said people familiar with the ongoing talks. This story was jointly reported by The Washington Post, the Guardian and Haaretz.
L3Harris declined to comment on the existence of any talks with NSO Group.
“We are aware of the capability and we are constantly evaluating our customers’ national security needs,” said an L3Harris spokesperson. “At this point, anything beyond that is speculation.”
The deal also still needs approval from L3Harris’s board of directors.
The Israel Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The existence of talks between L3 and NSO Group was first reported Tuesday by the digital publication Intelligence Online. The news has already prompted a chorus of opposition from activists who cheered when the U.S. Commerce Department last year placed the Israeli firm on its export blacklist after determining that its spyware had been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” government officials, activists, journalists, academics and embassy workers around the world.
A sale to L3 “will show to potential scofflaws that U.S. sanctions don’t have teeth, and encourage investors to push more funds into the mercenary hacking space, which is a potential disaster for national security, and human rights,” said John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, an affiliate of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Even with U.S. ownership, “it’s doubtful that the most elite intelligence services like the CIA, NSA and [Britain’s] GCHQ would trust this technology for their most sensitive operations,” Scott-Railton added, suggesting that the American spy agencies would be wary of the counterintelligence risks associated with using code developed by a foreign intelligence service. “So where would the big market be? I fear the logical consumers are U.S. police departments. This would be an unprecedented threat to our civil liberties.”
The NSO Group is among the world’s leading surveillance companies, known in particular for the ability of its Pegasus spyware to crack into almost any mobile device, including the latest iPhones, and collect reams of data, such as pictures, audio clips, location records, emails and chats on encrypted apps.
Takeaways from the Pegasus Project
It also has the ability to eavesdrop on calls and locate cellphone users in real time. NSO licenses Pegasus to government customers, such as intelligence, law enforcement and military agencies, and the company says the spyware is intended only for the use against terrorists and other major criminals.
But the Pegasus Project, an investigative consortium involving The Washington Post and 16 other news organizations, detailed numerous abuses in a series of stories last year, including the targeting of dissidents, politicians, journalists, human rights workers and business people. Official investigations in numerous countries found more abuses.
In November the Commerce Department placed the firm on its Entity List, sharply limiting its ability to use American technology. Separately, Apple sued the company and notified users it believed may have been targeted by Pegasus. Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, had previously sued the NSO Group for using its systems to deliver Pegasus onto the devices of surveillance targets.
These controversies have caused the NSO Group to struggle financially, according to news reports, creating pressure on the company to restructure or sell off assets. The NSO Group long has courted customers in the United States, and the FBI has acknowledged purchasing a license for Pegasus to evaluate the technology but said it had not used the surveillance tool in investigations.
Stephanie Kirchgaessner of the Guardian and Gur Megiddo and Omer Benjakob of Haaretz contributed to this report. | 2022-06-14T20:53:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. defense firm L3Harris in talks with NSO Group over spyware - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/14/l3harris-nso-sale-pegasus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/14/l3harris-nso-sale-pegasus/ |
Deputy U.S. Marshal Adrian Pena is accused of searching for cellphone locations of people with whom he had relationships, and their spouses
Members of the U.S. Marshals Service patrol outside a federal courthouse in Phoenix in September 2020. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
A federal agent has been charged with misusing cellphone tracking technology to look up the locations of people with whom he had personal relationships — and lying to investigators when confronted about it, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Adrian Pena was charged in a 14-count indictment with misconduct dating back to 2016. Officials say he misused law enforcement data for personal reasons while assigned to a task force in the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office — one of the law enforcement agencies now under intense scrutiny for waiting more than an hour to confront a gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers inside an elementary school last month.
As part of his job with the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force in Uvalde, Pena, 48, had access to a database that allowed users to look up the location of cellphones. While the database was supposed to be used only for legitimate law enforcement work, Pena used it “on numerous occasions … to obtain location data associated with the cellular telephones of his personal associates, including individuals with whom Pena was or had been in a personal relationship and their spouses,” according to the indictment.
He was charged with 11 counts of criminally obtaining phone records, two counts of false statements and one count of falsifying a record. He made a brief appearance Monday in federal court and was released.
Police criticized for response to Uvalde school massacre
Officials charge that when Pena was confronted and questioned in 2017 by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, he lied and claimed that he did not use the database for personal reasons. He allegedly said he had occasionally accessed the database to help friends find their cellphones, or to assess whether the system was working properly.
“I’ve done, test, tests on my phone,” Pena told the agents, according to the indictment. “The times that I’ve used it as, again, to find either a phone that’s been lost or misplaced.”
Asked specifically if he used the system to find the location of a family member, friend or former girlfriend, Pena replied no, which prosecutors allege was a lie.
After he was questioned by the agents, Pena allegedly set up a face-to-face meeting with one of the people whose phone he had traced, and persuaded her to sign a document stating she had given Pena permission to look up her phone information. The indictment alleges that written statement was false and designed to obstruct the investigation into Pena’s conduct.
It was not immediately clear — and officials would not comment — on why it took nearly five years to charge Pena, during which time he has apparently remained a paid employee of the Marshals Service.
Federal prisoner bank accounts leave more than $100 million unscrutinized
Pena allegedly used a service provided by Securus Technologies, which provides phone services for prisons but also gave law enforcement the means to look up the location of cellphones. The system required law enforcement officials seeking to look up a cellphone’s location to upload an official document showing they have authorization to search for that data.
Prosecutors charge that Pena skirted that requirement by uploading documents that had nothing to do with authorization, including “blank pages, award certificates, a list of justifications for a merit promotion, letterhead templates” and more.
“These documents were not official and did not provide Pena with permission to obtain cellular telephone location data,” the indictment charges.
Asked about the charges, Securus issued a statement saying the company had discontinued that tracking system more than four years ago “and permanently shut it off. Even when operable, it was only available to users who were granted authorization by a law enforcement agency or facility. The tool was engineered with safeguards and security protocols, but we also relied on the integrity of law enforcement to operate it ethically.”
The company said it believes “privacy and security are fundamental … and we wouldn’t and won’t provide the service ever again, period.”
Pena did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment, and court records did not list a lawyer representing him. A spokeswoman for the Marshals Service did not immediately comment on the charges. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Inspector General referred questions to the Justice Department. | 2022-06-14T20:54:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adrian Pena, deputy U.S. marshal, indicted for allegedly tracking cellphone locations of personal acquaintances - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/14/marshal-cell-phone-locations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/14/marshal-cell-phone-locations/ |
U.S. lawyer, others convicted of treason
A Cambodian American lawyer and dozens of members of a now-dissolved opposition party were convicted of treason in a trial that is part of efforts to tame opposition to longtime Prime Minister Hun Sen’s rule.
Theary Seng and most of the other defendants were charged over a failed attempt by the leader of the defunct Cambodia National Rescue Party to return from exile in 2019. Cambodian authorities blocked Sam Rainsy’s return and alleged that the 60 defendants were involved in organizing his trip, which Theary Seng and the others have denied.
Cambodian courts are widely believed to be under the influence of Hun Sen, whose authoritarian rule has kept him in power for 37 years. The Cambodia National Rescue Party was the biggest rival of his Cambodian People’s Party before it was disbanded by a court ruling just ahead of elections in 2018 that resulted in a clean sweep by Hun Sen’s party.
Theary Seng was sentenced to six years in jail, and the others received sentences of five to eight years. Many of the 60 defendants had already fled into exile or gone into hiding, and it was not clear how many appeared in court for the verdict. According to Human Rights Watch, 27 defendants who are in exile were tried in absentia.
Theary Seng stood outside the court as the verdict was announced, saying she wanted her arrest to be public and “not in the shadow.”
U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia W. Patrick Murphy tweeted that her sentencing and that of the others was deeply troubling.
U.N.: Children killed, tortured in crackdown
Scores of children have been killed in Myanmar since the coup last year, not just in the crossfire of conflict but as deliberate targets of a military willing to inflict immense suffering, a United Nations expert said.
Minors had been beaten and stabbed and had fingernails or teeth removed during interrogation, while some were made to endure mock executions, according to a report from the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews.
The junta has repeatedly accused the United Nations and Western countries of interference and rejected allegations that it is carrying out atrocities.
The report said 250,000 children were displaced by fighting and at least 382 killed or maimed, including by airstrikes or heavy artillery. The report was based on contributions from U.N. agencies, humanitarian and human rights groups, and civil society organizations. “The junta’s attacks on children constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes,” Andrews said.
The United Nations had received information of 142 children being tortured by soldiers, police and pro-army militias, the report said, while there were anecdotal reports of an increase in child labor recruitment.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power last year and launched a fierce crackdown on its opponents, prompting a violent backlash by newly formed resistance groups.
Iranian labor minister resigns amid protests over living costs: Iran's labor minister resigned amid daily nationwide protests by pensioners, merchants and workers over soaring living costs. While it was not clear whether Hojatollah Abdolmaleki's resignation was directly related to the month-long protests, the semiofficial Tasnim news site said it followed "mounting criticism for his handling of the labor market and a meager rise in the retirement pensions." Anti-regime chants, including "death" to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, have been heard in the protests.
Cuba sanctions 381 protesters: Cuba said this week that it has sanctioned 381 people, including 16 people ages 16 to 18, who participated in last summer's protests over food, medicine and power shortages, the Communist-run island's largest since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. Of those sanctioned, 297 have been sentenced to between five and 25 years in prison for sedition, sabotage, robbery with force, and public disorder, according to the attorney general's office. The prosecutor's office noted that 84 individuals were not given prison sentences.
Zimbabwe reporter fined over accreditation for New York Times: A court in Zimbabwe convicted a journalist of breaking immigration laws by allegedly arranging fake accreditation papers for two correspondents for the New York Times, who were on a reporting trip. The court fined Jeffrey Moyo 200,000 Zimbabwe dollars (or $650) and imposed a suspended two-year sentence, according to the Media Institute of Southern Africa. Police arrested Moyo in May 2021, and the two Times journalists were deported. Zimbabwe has a history of harassing journalists who do not work for the state media. | 2022-06-14T20:54:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: June 14, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-14-2022/2022/06/14/58a5cd1e-ebeb-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-14-2022/2022/06/14/58a5cd1e-ebeb-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html |
Mental health care is adversely affected by focus on the bottom line
Regarding the June 10 front-page article, “Mental health parity elusive despite legal guarantee”:
Medical care in the United States is shaped by an economic system that rewards procedures over time. Medical doctors are expected to see 20 or so patients a day. Medical practices are frequently owned by corporations, and much of the care is provided by medical extenders. It’s not unusual to be told things like, “We can only talk about your elbow today; you’ll need to make another appointment to discuss your knee.”
A provider of mental health services is not going to be able to see 20 patients in a day. Talk therapy doesn’t work well if the provider is limited to 10 minutes. It isn’t easy for a provider to survive on the typical insurance reimbursement rates. And many providers of mental health services work in small practices without a legion of paid staff to deal with the tedious process of getting insurance approvals and tracking reimbursements.
I don’t know how we address the problem without increasing premiums, but mental health parity will remain elusive as long as our medical systems are ruled by businesspeople focused on the bottom line.
Elaine Wolf Komarow, Vienna | 2022-06-14T20:54:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Mental health care is adversely affected by focus on the bottom line - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/mental-health-care-is-adversely-affected-by-focus-bottom-line/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/mental-health-care-is-adversely-affected-by-focus-bottom-line/ |
Mobile voting is not the answer to low turnout and disenfranchisement
Election volunteer James Morris helps set up outside a D.C. polling location in 2018. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
In his June 5 Local Opinions essay, “Mobile voting in D.C. is the next step in a long march,” Martin Luther King III urged expanding the availability of mobile voting to all D.C. voters to combat low voter turnout, particularly in historically underrepresented communities.
Voting restrictions disproportionately affect already underserved communities. The Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues has long supported responsible uses of technology to facilitate voting and increase access to the ballot box for all voters. But the electronic return of ballots creates serious and currently unsolvable security vulnerabilities.
In an April 2020 letter to governors and state election officials, signed by about 80 prominent computer and cybersecurity experts, we outlined the risks of mobile voting. These systems are vulnerable to the same kinds of hacking tools that closed down schools in Baltimore County and caused massive fuel shortages along the Eastern Seaboard. The rise in cryptocurrency thefts shows that even blockchain-based mobile voting is rife with security risks. In 2020, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the FBI and the National Institute of Standards and Technology jointly concluded that electronic ballot return is a “high risk” and that “ensuring ballot integrity and maintaining voter privacy is difficult, if not impossible, at this time.”
Though we support seeking solutions to address low voter turnout, especially among underserved communities, current evidence underscores that voting by phone, tablet or computer is not safe or secure enough to ensure public confidence and trust in election results.
Michael D. Fernandez, Washington
The writer is founding director of the Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. | 2022-06-14T20:54:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Mobile voting is not the answer to low turnout and disenfranchisement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/mobile-voting-is-not-answer-low-turnout-disenfranchisement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/mobile-voting-is-not-answer-low-turnout-disenfranchisement/ |
A rise in tensions as the Supreme Court nears the end of its term
Police officers stand in front of the Supreme Court building on June 13. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Regarding Jason Willick’s June 10 Friday Opinion commentary, “The ‘next’ Jan. 6 is already here”:
Regardless of whether one agrees that it is appropriate/lawful for citizens to demonstrate peacefully at jurists’ private residences (and I, for one, do not believe that it is appropriate), it strikes me as being far, far beyond irrational to posit — as does Mr. Willick — that there is any factual, legal, moral or political equivalence between what transpired on Jan. 6, 2021, and the alleged “progressive movement to obstruct the Supreme Court.”
Put simply, Mr. Willick’s argument is, to me at least, demonstrably flawed on its face, as it should be to any reasonably informed reader. If Mr. Willick’s extraordinarily strained attempt to force an analogy between the events of Jan. 6 and progressive opposition to the current Supreme Court was not so illogical and sad, it would be risible.
Jim Hergen, Alexandria
Here is a modest proposal for the Supreme Court before it releases a decision in the Mississippi abortion case: Issue an order requiring additional briefing and set the case for reargument next term, beginning after October.
Based on the text of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s leaked draft, and the reaction to it, it is safe to say the majority poised to overturn Roe v. Wade did not fully appreciate the depth of the public’s reliance upon Roe and underestimated the severe consequences that overturning it will have. This “reliance interest” is part of the foundation for stare decisis, something Justice Alito has acknowledged is “hard … to assess.”
So, the court should ask the parties, and their amici, to provide additional briefs limited to this single issue. Asking for additional help through supplemental briefs and further oral argument itself has precedent in controversial cases implicating a change affecting millions of people. The court did it in Brown v. Board of Education, for example. And it would allow the justices to gain the perspective of a new member: Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sometimes, it makes sense to temporize.
Alfred Belcuore, Washington | 2022-06-14T20:54:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A rise in tensions as the Supreme Court nears the end of its term - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/rise-tensions-supreme-court-nears-end-its-term/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/rise-tensions-supreme-court-nears-end-its-term/ |
People participate in the March for Our Lives rally in support of gun control near the Washington Monument on June 11. (Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP)
There is good news about gun policy in America. But it’s not the bipartisan agreement that emerged on Capitol Hill this week.
The deal between 10 Republican and 10 Democratic senators is better than nothing. But it amounts to small-bore measures that don’t really address the central problem — the broad availability and circulation of guns in the United States, including weapons such as the AR-15 that are often used in mass shootings. The danger is that passing this legislation will take the heat off lawmakers, particularly Republicans, to adopt truly meaningful solutions.
But ultimately, I don’t think passage of the Senate bill will weaken the push for more far-reaching gun policies. The recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., have cemented two big, important shifts on gun policy that were already happening and won’t be slowed by the passage of a minor congressional bill.
First, those involved in public policy who are not accountable to hardcore Republican voters have come to agree that guns are the problem. As a result, many in the media, top Democratic Party officials, think tanks and advocacy groups that don’t usually focus on guns are all pushing for policies such as banning the sale and ownership of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. Just as significantly, the reality-based policy community now agrees that while addressing, say, mental health, gangs and school security might help, what makes gun violence so prevalent in America is the unusually high number of guns in circulation.
Centering guns as the problem unifies issues that are often discussed separately: mass shootings at schools and in other public spaces; shootings that happen among acquaintances or rival gangs; instances where people shoot spouses or partners; and suicides. It also brings together the groups and experts that work on those disparate problems to push for one solution — fewer guns.
The second big shift is that the national Democratic Party is no longer afraid of gun control. A mythology developed in the early 2000s that supporting gun control was a key driver of the Democrats’ decline in the South. In particular, some strategists argued that Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, and therefore the 2000 presidential election, over his support for gun control. Now, it’s fairly clear that the Democrats’ struggles in the South was part of a broader political realignment, with the most important explanation likely being Southerners breaking with the party as it became more tied to Black people and causes.
Also, electoral politics aside, the sheer number of catastrophic mass shootings over the past decade has basically forced Democrats to take on this issue.
These shifts aren’t reflected much in national policy, because the Democrats don’t have the Senate votes to push through a serious gun-control bill. But having a general agreement about the problem still matters. Why?
First, clearly identifying guns as the problem is a big step toward finding actual solutions. Now, wealthy individuals, organizations and the Democratic Party know they must develop a comprehensive agenda aimed at reducing the number of guns in the United States and only backing candidates who believe in that goal. The Biden administration, too, will have to keep pressing this issue, even when there are no clear political benefits. Whenever the Democrats next have control of the House, Senate and presidency, gun control must be at the top of the agenda, in a way that it wasn’t in 2009 or 2021.
Second, blue cities and states where Republicans aren’t a roadblock should pass strong gun regulations, daring lower-level GOP judicial appointees who are often hostile to local gun regulations to strike them down and thereby put gun rights ahead of public safety. Cities and states as well as philanthropic organizations should also seek innovative ways to encourage people to voluntarily either get rid of guns or not buy them in the first place. For example, I’m hoping we see public service announcements urging people against gun ownership, perhaps modeled on successful anti-smoking campaigns.
Third, understanding guns are the problem makes one solution imperative: demanding that GOP-appointed judges, including those on the Supreme Court, accept that some expansive gun-control measures are simply necessary for public safety. Conservatives on the court have essentially created a right for all Americans to own a handgun with few restrictions, a view some scholars say is not grounded in the original intent of the Second Amendment. The court’s conservatives are expected to further expand gun rights in a ruling still to come this term. America will continue to have constant shootings as long as we have such sweeping gun rights. If conservative justices don’t change course, the only answer will be judicial reforms such as adding justices to shift the balance of the court toward common-sense gun policy.
So, no, I’m not celebrating this bipartisan guns deal too much. But I am excited to see lots of powerful Americans, including top Democrats, get more serious about reducing the number of guns in the United States. That’s the only real solution — and it’s good that so many people are finally acknowledging that.
More guns in schools, and everywhere else? Have we gone mad? | 2022-06-14T20:55:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The good news about gun control isn’t the bipartisan deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/senate-gun-deal-uvalde-buffalo-shooting-mark-shift/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/senate-gun-deal-uvalde-buffalo-shooting-mark-shift/ |
U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks to supporters during an election night watch party on May 24 in Atlanta. (Brynn Anderson/AP)
During the course of Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign, the Republican nominee in Georgia has won the hearts of former president Donald Trump and GOP voters hoping he can defeat freshman Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) in November.
But the football legend’s campaign has also faced blowback from critics and Democrats for false claims he made before and during his candidacy that have surfaced in recent months — from his college education and business background to his questioning of evolution and promoting a “mist” he said would “kill any covid on your body.”
The latest came Monday when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on previous speeches and statements given by Walker about how he claimed in 2017 that he had worked with police in Cobb County, Ga. Two years later, Walker mentioned he was an FBI agent.
“I worked for law enforcement, y’all didn’t know that either?” he said in 2019. “I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?”
In reality, he had not. A spokesman for the Cobb County Police Department told the Journal-Constitution, and later confirmed to The Washington Post, that it has no record of working with Walker. A campaign spokeswoman told the Atlanta newspaper that Walker had led “women’s self-defense training, participating in the FBI Academy at Quantico” and also held the title of “honorary deputy” in Cobb County.
The title of “honorary deputy” holds no power at all and is seen as a “political token” for people supportive of the sheriff who might want to get out of a traffic ticket, former DeKalb County district attorney J. Tom Morgan told The Post. Morgan is a Democrat.
“It absolutely means nothing,” he said. “It’s the equivalent of a junior ranger badge.”
A Walker campaign spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Neither an FBI spokesperson nor a Cobb County Sheriff’s Office official immediately responded to requests for comment.
Walker is among the 100-plus GOP primary winners who have supported Trump’s false claims that there was widespread fraud during the 2020 presidential election, according to a new Post analysis. District by district, state by state, voters through the end of May have chosen at least 108 candidates for statewide office or Congress who have repeated Trump’s lies. The number jumps to at least 149 winning candidates — out of more than 170 races — when it includes those who have campaigned on a platform of tightening voting rules or more stringently enforcing those already on the books, despite the lack of evidence of widespread fraud.
Despite some high-profile setbacks for his candidates, notably in Georgia, Trump’s demand that fellow Republicans embrace the cause of election denialism has become a price of admission in most Republican primaries. The collection of falsehoods that House committee members investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have described as “the “big lie” is now a central driving force of the Republican Party.
The relationship between Walker and Trump goes as far back as 1984, when Trump bought the USFL team that lured the Heisman Trophy winner away from the University of Georgia. Walker wrote in his 2008 memoir that Trump “became a mentor to me.” At a rally last year, Walker joined the former president onstage in Perry, Ga., and told the crowd, “I want to be a leader like [Trump] when I get to that Senate seat to show everyone I love America.”
Backed by Trump, a Troubled Georgia Football Legend Eyes a Senate Seat
While Walker remains immensely popular among GOP voters in the state — winning more than 68 percent of the vote in last month’s primary, according to the Associated Press — he’s done so while promoting a string of false claims that have had critics and liberals comparing him to Trump.
In December, Walker’s campaign deleted a false claim that he had graduated from college. In text supporting his 2008 book, it says Walker “finished his Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice” at the University of Georgia following his first pro season, according to CNN. Walker acknowledged that he did not graduate from college, saying in a statement to the Journal-Constitution that “life and football got in the way.”
Walker later denied that he made the false claim about his graduation status in an interview with WAGA in Atlanta — delivering a false claim in response to a false claim.
“I never, I never have said that statement,” he said. “Not one time.”
Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker promoted a ‘mist’ that he claimed would ‘kill any covid on your body’
In March, Walker questioned evolution during an address at a Georgia church, asking why apes still exist if humans have evolved from them. Even though humans share a common ancestor that lived about 10 million years ago, they did not evolve from chimpanzees or any other great apes that are living today, and are now on different evolutionary tracks.
“At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not?” Walker asked Chuck Allen, lead pastor of Sugar Hill Church.
Allen replied, “Every time I read or hear that, I think to myself, ‘You just didn’t read the same Bible I did.' ”
After hearing the pastor’s answer, Walker responded: “Well, this is what’s interesting, though. If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”
Senate candidate Herschel Walker questions evolution, asking, ‘Why are there still apes?’
Then, in early April, CNN reported on how Walker had been overstating his academic achievements for years. In addition to his false claim surrounding his graduation, Walker asserted at least twice in 2017 that he was his high school’s valedictorian and graduated “in the top 1 percent” at Georgia.
“And people say, ‘Herschel, you played football,’ ” he said during a radio interview that year. “But I said, ‘Guys, I also was valedictorian of my class. I also was in the top 1 percent of my graduating class in college.’ ”
There is no evidence that Walker was valedictorian, and the reference was eventually removed from his campaign site. Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for the Walker campaign, defended the candidate in a statement at the time, saying, “There is not a single voter in Georgia who believes that whether Herschel graduated at the ‘top of his class’ or as Valedictorian 40 years ago has any bearing on his ability to be a great United States Senator.”
Democrats say the falsehoods demonstrate Walker’s unsuitability for the Senate.
“Every report and every scandal that emerges about Herschel Walker reinforces that he is not who he says he is, is not ready to represent the people of Georgia, and cannot be trusted to serve Georgians in the U.S. Senate,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia.
Critics have also questioned claims surrounding his business background. Months after the AP reported on how Walker’s business records showed “exaggerated claims of financial success” and a history of alarming associates with “unpredictable behavior,” Walker made false claims regarding the earnings and size of his chicken business, Renaissance Man Food Services, according to the Daily Beast.
Walker talked about his alleged time with law enforcement at least four times between 2000 and 2019, the Journal-Constitution reported.
As the news of the GOP candidate’s latest claim spread online, critics were quick to compare him to Trump.
“He may literally be the only person who lies more than Trump,” tweeted CNN analyst and attorney Bakari Sellers, a former Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.
Morgan told The Post that he could not remember a time when someone like Walker promoted being an “honorary deputy,” noting that he’s only heard of people using the title to try to get out of traffic tickets. When asked why the Georgia Senate candidate is pointing to this honorary title as his connection to law enforcement, Morgan laughed and said he did not have a good reason.
“You can’t carry a firearm and you have no authority to make an arrest,” he said of the title. “It is what it is, which is nothing.”
Amy Gardner and Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report. | 2022-06-14T20:55:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Herschel Walker saying he worked with police, FBI is latest false claim for Georgia GOP Senate candidate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/herschel-walker-false-claims-senate-georgia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/herschel-walker-false-claims-senate-georgia/ |
In this edition: Why Nevada Democrats are on the defensive; why Tim Scott could be an unexpected 2024 presidential candidate; and what happened in Alaska over the weekend.
The Jan. 6 committee has got us wondering whether the White House also had a Diet Pepsi button for Rudy Giuliani, and this is The Trailer.
Like pretty much every Tuesday this summer, it’s primary day in four states, including the presidential battleground of Nevada, plus a closely watched special House election in Texas. Here are five things to watch:
#1: Nevada has Democrats on the defensive, up and down the ballot
Democrats have taken Nevada for granted in recent election cycles. Like Colorado, it’s a swing state that’s been trending solidly blue over the past decade.
But in an environment heavily favoring Republicans — as 2022 is shaping up to be — Nevada Democrats, from the governor to the congresswoman representing Las Vegas, could be vulnerable. The pandemic battered the state’s economy, and it’s still recovering; The Post’s Marianna Sotomayor reports that Democrats are having a tough time convincing voters that their party would do a better job bringing it back to life. Veteran Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston says there’s evidence “that a red wave is building that could carry a weak slate of GOP candidates to wins.”
In Tuesday’s primaries, Republicans are setting up their November battles. In Nevada’s Senate race, former attorney general Adam Laxalt (R) — whose grandfather was a powerful state politician — is trying to become Republicans’ nominee. Trump has endorsed him. But a surprise grassroots candidate, Army veteran Sam Brown, could spoil Laxalt’s chances. The winner will have a good shot at unseating Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D), who replaced the Harry M. Reid, and is one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats in November. The race will be a good test of the GOP’s inroads with the state’s Latino voters; Cortez Masto is the Senate’s first Latina.
In Nevada’s governor’s race, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) is running in November for a second term. There’s a Republican primary, but not much drama for now: Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo (R) is expected to win. Looking ahead, the nonpartisan political handicapper Cook Political Report expects the governor’s race to be a toss up, which means Republicans could flip the governor’s mansion.
#2: South Carolina: Two more Republicans who voted against Trump have primary challengers
South Carolina Republican Tom Rice was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6 attack. “I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But this utter failure is inexcusable,” he said at the time. He very well could be one of the first impeachment Republicans to lose his reelection as a result. (Rep. David G. Valadao (R-Calif.) looks like he will make it to a November runoff against a Democrat.) In South Carolina, Rice has several serious primary challengers, one of whom has Trump’s endorsement, state Rep. Russell Fry. And his northeast district is deeply pro-Trump. “I guess if the consequences are that the people think what happened is okay, then I guess, you know, I’m not that guy,” Rice has told NPR, of the possibility he will lose.
Also in South Carolina, Rep. Nancy Mace (R) of Charleston voted to certify the 2020 election, unlike a majority of her House Republican colleagues, and she occasionally speaks out against Trumpism. Trump has backed newcomer Katie Arrington, once again pitting himself against establishment Republicans at the state level this election cycle. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (R) has backed Mace. This primary is expected to be very competitive.
#3: In South Carolina, watch Tim Scott
Sen. Tim Scott (R) doesn’t have any real primary challengers, and he’ll almost certainly be easily reelected in the fall. But watch if or how he parlays these wins into more national appeal — say, for a 2024 presidential run.
Scott is the only Black Republican senator, and he routinely makes lists of potential presidential contenders, including at The Washington Post. Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney singled out Scott as one of just a few candidates who could beat Trump in a primary. Scott has the potential to appeal to the party broadly, which has mixed feelings about Trump.
#4: South Carolina Democrats try to flex their muscle statewide
No, we do not expect Democrats to make the South Carolina governor’s race competitive in the fall. (Back in 2020, Democrat Jaime Harrison had polled well against Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R) in a statewide race there, but lost by nearly 10 percentage points.)
But Democrats are putting up a fight to challenge Gov. Henry McMaster (R), and their internal debate over the best approach is where things get interesting. On Tuesday, they will nominate their candidate, and they have a stark choice between moderate former congressman Joe Cunningham, who won and then lost a red-leaning congressional seat, and state Sen. Mia McLeod, first Black woman to run for South Carolina governor as a major party candidate. The primary battle threatens to divide the party: A top Black Democrat, state House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, endorsed Cunningham rather than McLeod — prompting McLeod to elevate allegations of past marital infidelity against Rutherford — which he called “a lie.” And McLeod criticized Cunningham’s campaign in a debate Friday as “Republican-lite.”
Cunningham responded in an interview with The Washington Post of her approach to rally Black voters: “The fact is, we’re not Georgia. We don’t have Atlanta. The numbers are just not there.”
#5: Texas Republicans try to grab onto a border district
In South Texas, Republicans have a chance to underscore their growing influence among Texas’s Latino voters, especially Mexican Americans. Rep. Filemon Vela (D), who for a decade has represented Texas’s 34th district along the U.S.-Mexico border, left earlier this year to join a law firm. So on Tuesday, there will be a special election to fill the seat until November, when there will be another election.
Republicans have a good opportunity to flip this slightly Democratic-leaning seat now that there is no incumbent Democrat. Republican political newcomer Mayra Flores will be on the ballot against local commissioner Dan Sanchez (D). Sanchez is running as a placeholder for the candidate who will run in November, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D). In November, the district will be more friendly to Democrats due to redistricting, though the national environment favors Republicans.
“More than 100 Republican primary winners back Trump’s false election fraud claims,” by Amy Gardner and Isaac Arnsdorf
A Washington Post analysis shows just how deeply embedded the “big lie” has become in the GOP. (And we’re only a third of the way through the primary season.)
“'Big lie' looms over Nevada’s legislative primaries," by Tabitha Mueller and Bert Johnson.
An analysis by The Nevada Independent and KUNR found that from Senate on down to state legislative races, championing Trump’s election fraud claims is common place.
“She helped create the big lie. Records suggest she turned it into a big grift," by Cassandra Jaramillo.
A look at how a Texas-based nonprofit made money — potentially illegally — by exploiting Trump’s false election fraud claims, by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
“Right vs. Left: Graham, Sanders spar on differences in nationally televised debate,” by Nick Reynolds.
What does a good, old-fashioned policy debate on Social Security, gas prices and climate change look like in 2022? The Post and Courier reports.
About what happened in Alaska this weekend (and how ranked-choice voting really works)
One of the best-known politicians in the country, Sarah Palin, is running for office again. The former governor of Alaska, former Republican vice-presidential nominee and current political celebrity decided on a political comeback this year and entered the race for Alaska’s one congressional seat, open for the first time in nearly half a century, after Rep. Don Young (R) suddenly passed away.
Sunday was the primary for that special election seat. Alaska is a big, rural state and mostly votes by mail. Those ballots are still being counted, but it looks like Palin will be one of four — out of 48! — candidates to advance to an August runoff. She had Trump’s endorsement, but plenty of Alaska Republicans have reservations that she sold out on her path to becoming a celebrity: “I think maybe she left us behind somewhere on the way to fame,” Jesse Sumner, a local politician and construction contractor, recently told The Post’s Libby Casey.
Another big name in the race is Nick Begich, a Republican from a prominent Democratic political family in Alaska. (The competitive field is mostly Republican, given Alaska’s rightward lean.) According to a preliminary counting of ballots, he appears likely to advance, alongside fisherman and independent Al Gross, who ran for Senate two years ago; and former state lawmaker Mary Peltola (D).
There’s an election in August for this seat to fill the remainder of Young’s term, and then another in November for a full, two-year term.
What makes Alaska really interesting is how it will vote in 2022. In 2020, Alaskans approved combining two new ways to vote, making a major change that democracy-reform advocates celebrated as a way to give more-moderate candidates a chance to win.
First, instead of a separate Republican primary and Democratic primary, candidates will run in an all-party primary. The top four vote-getters go to the general election, regardless of party. Ballot counting got started Sunday.
Second, in the general election, Alaskans will rank their first four choices on their ballots. (There is also a fifth space for write-in candidates.) If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the last place candidate is eliminated, and that person’s votes are distributed to whoever that candidate’s supporters ranked as their second choice. And on it goes until one candidate gets a majority and is declared the winner.
This is called ranked-choice voting, and some democracy-reform experts hope it can take some of the extreme partisanship out of politics. (One of the biggest knocks against the method, though, is that it is confusing.)
… 7 days until primaries in Virginia and runoffs in Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia
… 14 days until the special election in Nebraska's 1st Congressional District | 2022-06-14T20:55:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Trailer: Five things to watch this primary day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/trailer-five-things-watch-this-primary-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/trailer-five-things-watch-this-primary-day/ |
Xbox teases new Hideo Kojima game and upcoming delayed titles
(Washington Post illustration; Xbox Game Studios; Summer Game Fest)
Xbox continued to deliver a slow drip of news to gamers Tuesday with an extended presentation in the wake of it’s Sunday showcase. Fans got an update on upcoming delayed titles like “Starfield,” “Redfall” and “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.” The showcase ended with a video that had a trigger warning for disturbing images and detailed what “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2” developers in Ukraine have been dealing with amid the ongoing war with Russia. Some have taken refuge while still working, and others joined the Ukrainian army, saying they would return to development after the war ends.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer acknowledged that Japanese developers don’t always come to Xbox and that the company has been working on adding more, such as the upcoming Persona titles and an unannounced game that Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima is overseeing.
“He has this real unique thing he wants to do in the game and we said, ‘Okay, let’s go do something together,’ ” Spencer said in a video filmed in Los Angeles.
During the showcase, Bethesda’s senior vice president of global marketing and communications, Pete Hines, explained why the highly anticipated titles “Redfall” and “Starfield” have been delayed from their original 2022 release windows to next year.
“With all the time that goes into a game, it would be foolish to rush it out the door before it’s ready. We have continued to examine how we think about games and making sure that they are going to meet our players’ expectations,” Hines said.
He added, “Obviously the last two years have really challenged us from a development standpoint, how we work now largely remotely while a lot of our folks are not back in the office, and that has an impact. We’ve been thinking about things like release dates and when do we get those out, and how do we make sure we give one out that we actually hit and don’t have to change later.”
“Valheim,” the sprawling Viking survivalist game from Iron Gate, is coming to Xbox Game Pass early next year with support for cross-platform play.
#XboxBethesda pic.twitter.com/wLtTlvT4f2
Hines talked more about “Redfall,” from Arkane Studios, having a sense of freedom and a stand-alone story that can be played alone or with up to four friends. Then, Hines discussed the upcoming sci-fi RPG “Starfield” and its 1,000 planets that players can explore and ships they can customize.
“There’s a lot of folks who take a lot of different approaches on what does an open world mean. Bethesda Game Studios always pushes themselves to the most freedom and least limitations, where all the items in the world are all real things,” Hines said. “You walk into a store and there’s a bunch of weapons. That’s not just art on a countertop. You can pick those up, you can steal them and run out. You can create chaos. We don’t want to put too many limits on what the player is or isn’t allowed to do.”
The showcase revisited titles already announced, providing slightly more details about what gamers can expect. “As Dusk Falls,” from Interior/Night, an interactive drama where players’ choices can affect story outcomes, is coming on July 19.
“Minecraft Legends” is another title Xbox updated fans on. It’s an action strategy game set in the same universe of “Minecraft” where players now must defeat piglins and “send them back to where they come from,” according to Dennis Ries, executive producer at Mojang. It was created with the help of developer Blackbird Interactive, as Mojang wanted to explore the action strategy genre and sought to collaborate with a company experienced with it.
Xbox also shared more details about “Pentiment,” a narrative murder mystery reveled during Xbox’s Sunday showcase. It’s set in 16th century Bavaria where the player encounters “a series of murders and scandals,” according to Josh Sawyer, Obsidian studio design director.
Sawyer explained that the game’s title refers to an underlying image that’s been painted over, and it could also be a metaphor for “history being covered and uncovered over time.” The idea for the game came from exploring the social upheaval in Europe during that period, and Sawyer nodded to how the world is undergoing great social change even today.
“Right now, I think we’re maybe more aware than ever that social change is happening constantly and people are always struggling with it,” Sawyer said. “I hope that by looking at people in the past, you can see that even though the setting might be different, and the specific issues might be different, ultimately, we always struggle with social change.”
The showcase ended up with a small documentary of what “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2” developers have been enduring in recent months, followed by a game trailer. “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl” has been delayed to 2023, as those working on it had to flee from Russia’s bombing. One developer recounted how his cat died in the first week of Russia shelling Ukraine, while another said it was difficult to write violent quests for the game amid an ongoing war. | 2022-06-14T20:56:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Xbox teases new Hideo Kojima game, Redfall, Starfield and other upcoming delayed titles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/14/xbox-showcase-delays-redfall-starfield-hideo-kojima/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/14/xbox-showcase-delays-redfall-starfield-hideo-kojima/ |
Transcript: 50th Anniversary of Watergate: Inside the White House
MR. BALZ: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Dan Balz, chief correspondent here at The Post. We’re continuing our examination of the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in today with two men who were top aides to President Nixon. Dwight Chapin began working for him before he was elected president and served as deputy assistant to the president from 1969 to 1973. Ken Khachigian was a speechwriter for the president and later worked for the president in the post-presidential years.
Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you very much for being with us today. Before we get to Watergate, I want to start by asking both of you a little bit about President Nixon himself. Dwight Chapin, what kind of man was Nixon? What kind of president was Nixon?
MR. CHAPIN: Nixon was an introvert in an extrovert’s business. He was incredibly bright. He was a hard worker. His work ethic was unbelievable. He was a patriot, and he believed deeply in America. He did everything in his power to conduct his presidency in a way that would help the American people and that would bring about peace in the world. So, he was--he was, in my estimation, an incredible president and a man of great distinction.
MR. BALZ: Ken, how would you answer that? And how would you assess both his strengths and his weaknesses as a politician, and as a president?
MR. KHACHIGIAN: Dan, he was fascinating. Sitting with him for hours and hours here in San Clemente after his presidency, to hear him talk about--he didn't talk about normal people like you and I did. He talked about Winston Churchill and Nehru and Khrushchev and all the great leaders of the world, Dwight Eisenhower, and he dropped those names like you and I would talk about our neighbors. And so, there was enormous fascination in learning about the American history and world history with him.
So, he had just enormous knowledge of it, and he was--had a great grasp of history. And like Dwight said, he was an extremely hard worker. So that was his great strain that he brought to the world stage all that background in history that helped him do enormous negotiations that he did with these strategic arms talks and anti-ballistic missile treaties that he did. And that was his strength.
I'd say what weakness he had was probably like Dwight said, he was an introvert and he preferred time alone, a lot--a lot of it. He didn't like to get out. You know, his main hobby was just working. So, I don't know that I--I didn't see all those weaknesses in him that people talked about his--I saw a lot of things in him that people didn't see.
Like, you know, one thing I just remember about him that people don't know about him was a soft side to him. When Hubert Humphrey was dying back in 1978, I was with him when he placed calls to Hubert Humphrey and he--the two great warriors were talking with each other and in a sense that--this warmth passing between them. It was just extraordinary, Dan. You couldn't believe it.
MR. BALZ: Ken, how would you compare him with the--with the man who you helped elect and work for in 1980 Ronald Reagan? What--compare Nixon and Reagan.
MR. KHACHIGIAN: They’re two wholly different people. Nixon loved politics. He loved the rough and tumble of politics. He loved the back and forth. He loved the minutiae of politics. Whereas Reagan, Reagan was a hard worker, but Reagan would prefer time at the ranch and cutting wooden and--when it's time off. But Nixon would love to go to Camp David and study about the next campaign or study about, you know, politics. And they were just wholly different ways of looking at each other.
When Reagan was running for president and Nixon would call me and give me ideas about how Reagan could run the campaign, I don't think Reagan ever thought about the minutiae of politics, or about when he was out of office of calling other political figures and giving them advice. But still, they were both competitive, actually. Reagan was more competitive than people think. And there was a side to Reagan that people didn't know about. He can be hard-hitting that people never knew. And but they were so different in the sense that Nixon had a grasp of world politics that Reagan didn't have but Reagan still had that big picture look at domestic politics that Nixon was not interested in.
MR. BALZ: Yeah. You know, when you think about 1972, you can divide it into two parts, the early part of 1972 and then once the break-in occurred the rest of the year.
Dwight, that first part of 1972 was historic. There was the opening to China, and then there was the later trip to the Soviet Union and three other countries in the dramatic return with Nixon landing on the Capitol grounds and going into the House chamber to address the American people. Give me a sense of kind of where you all were at that point in early June of 1972, given what you had done in the first number of months. Was there--was there a sense of celebration, but also a certain kind of, you know, concern or even paranoia about the upcoming election?
MR. CHAPIN: I don't think so. I don't remember any paranoia about the upcoming election. We were on a high. I mean, the president had had that incredible journey to the opening of China, and then, as you say, the signing of the SALT agreements in Moscow. And it was the--I personally thought I had seen kind of a transition from being president to his being world statesman.
I mean, these journeys were not only focused on by America and by the American media, but, you know, around the world, he was taking on a certain aura that just--it was--it was a real high. And when he went into the Congress that night that we got back from the Moscow trip and the helicopter landed at the Capitol, I mean, it was a thunderous ovation in there. And as you say, it's almost--it is kind of a line of demarcation in the--from the fact that Watergate happened just a few weeks later. But I would say that it did not really impact us until well past the convention until we got into the October period. I mean, he rode that high all the way to Miami for the Republican convention in August.
And then, of course, as you know, we had this incredible landslide, 18 million votes, carried every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. So, I mean, the power of the apex that he had risen to stayed with him right on through the election, and then it was the post-election when it really started getting messy.
MR. BALZ: Ken, I think you were at the campaign for a part of that period. What was the sense inside the campaign? I mean, we know now from--you know, from everything that came out in Watergate that there was certainly an effort to--you know, to damage Democratic opponents. So, what was going on in the campaign and how were you all assessing things?
MR. KHACHIGIAN: You're talking about the '72 campaign?
MR. BALZ: Yeah, the '72 campaign.
MR. KHACHIGIAN: Well, originally, obviously, we thought Muskie was the biggest threat. And we did--we made every effort initially to weaken Muskie. And we--within the campaign, we thought that Muskie was going to be the big strength in the campaign. And of course, he faltered early in New Hampshire, and then McGovern had this great support among the liberals in the party and there was a great insurgency, and then McGovern emerged and--but he turned out--
MR. BALZ: Ken, could I--could I--could I just interrupt for just one moment? I mean, he faltered in part because of the Canuck letter that that had been written by Ken Clawson, who was in the White House communications office. Did you all know--did you all know anything about that?
MR. KHACHIGIAN: Well, Clawson claimed to have written it, but he actually did not, Dan. He first claimed to have written it, I think he was trying to impress Marilyn Berger, one of your colleagues at The Washington Post. But he later reneged and say that he didn't. And despite all the efforts they made to try to pin it on the White House, the special prosecutors were never able to pin that on anybody, actually. So, nobody was ever charged from the Nixon side of the campaign with writing the Canuck letter. So that's one of the great mysteries of Watergate, that nobody ever figured out who wrote the Canuck letter. But who knows where it came from? Maybe it was written by Bill Loeb. Who knows?
But anyway, Muskie falter and then McGovern emerged. But I don't think we really thought there was any big threats. It was just going to be a hard-bitten campaign. And you have to remember that what you haven't mentioned was Vietnam was looming over us the entire time. And what Dwight didn't mention is, is that even after this triumphal return from China in June all the summits and everything else, we still had the Vietnam War and trying to get these peace talks going. And that was a constant, constant effort from the beginning of the Nixon presidency until the peace talks ended.
MR. BALZ: Yeah. Let's move now to the moment of the break-in. Dwight, you've written about where you were when you first were informed about this, or first heard about it. Tell our viewers what that moment was like. You were on the Eastern Shore that weekend, and you got a--you got a call, or you were told you needed to call the White House. Talk about what happened, but particularly talk about your reaction to it, what you thought about it at that point.
MR. CHAPIN: Right. Well, it was ironic because we had just gotten back from Moscow and this Sheila Griffin [phonetic], who was Mr. Smith, he was the arms control director, Gerard Smith, it was his daughter's 30th birthday, and we were there for the celebration. And I got back to the inn late at night. It was around two in the morning, and there was this message to call Bob Haldeman immediately. I called Bob and he asked me--he said do you know anything about a plan to break into Democrat headquarters at the Watergate? And I said no, no. And he says, you've heard nothing about any plan at all? I said, I know nothing about it. And he said, okay, thank you and good night. That was an incredibly important call, because had Haldeman known previously about the break-in in May or any of the details, he would not have been calling me. He would have been calling Gordon Strachan, his aide who was in charge of liaison between John Dean and Jeb Magruder at the campaign. And so, it served as evidence to me, as I thought about it later on, that Bob had absolutely no knowledge. He was trying to find out what had happened and whether any White House people were involved.
MR. BALZ: Ken, did you think it was a third-rate burglary as it was described at the time? Or did your political instincts say to you this is something I need to or we all need to pay more attention to?
MR. KHACHIGIAN: Well, it concerned me a little bit. I heard about it Saturday afternoon. I can't remember who at the campaign called me. I was at home, and somebody at the campaign called. I honestly can't remember who it was, but called me, and then I called Pat Buchanan that night. He was at a social event. And Pat remembers it. He said it was like somebody--I had the tone of my voice that somebody died. And but it--yeah, there was a concern that it might have been something that could have been connected to our campaign or not, but who knew? It was--we didn't know about it until the days unfolded and word started come out that there may have been some connection to the campaign, and of course then I did have some concerns.
MR. BALZ: Yeah. Dwight--
MR. CHAPIN: I think it’s--could I just--
MR. CHAPIN: That from the very outset, I think in the--one of the first calls that the president made to Bob Haldeman, the chief of staff, was the question of, was there anybody at the White House involved? And the answer was an emphatic no. There was no one at the White House involved, as far as Bob Haldeman knew, and as far as the president knew. And we now know from the documents that are present--and I covered this very clearly in my book--we know that John Dean met with Gordon Liddy on the Monday after the break-in. John Dean asked Liddy who else at the White House knew. Liddy knew that Dean knew. And at that time, Gordon Liddy informs Dean that Gordon Strachan knew, and Gordon Strachan being an aide to Haldeman. Those were the only two people in the White House that we know historically knew about the break-in. They may not have known exactly the day it was going to happen, but they knew about the plan of a break-in. And that's hugely important because neither one of those men come forward and tell either Nixon, Haldeman, or Ehrlichman. So, they kept them in the dark, and they were the only two that knew.
MR. BALZ: Dwight, you've talked about the high that everybody was on that carried on through the election victory. You went off for a long vacation after that to Ireland, as I recall. And you came back and you were told by Haldeman, your boss and your mentor, that you had to leave the White House.
MR. CHAPIN: Right.
MR. BALZ: What was your--what was your reaction at that moment? You said you had no knowledge of the break-in in advance, and yet you were--you were going to have to take some of the fall?
MR. CHAPIN: Yes, it was horrible. And in fact, the story is worse than what you described, because I had arrived back at the White House on a Sunday. And the minute I got to my desk at the White House, I went in to check my mail, the phone rang, and it was John Dean, and he asked if he could drop by the next morning. He came in that Monday morning, around eight o'clock. We poured a cup of coffee. He looked at me. We talked a little bit about Ireland. And then he said, have you given any thought to what you're going to do? And that was my first clue. And I threw him out of my office.
I picked up the phone and I called Bob Haldeman. And then I went up to Camp David and met with Bob Haldeman the next day. He was very--so busy he couldn't see me that first day. So, I went up there on Tuesday, and that's when I was told that I was going to have to leave. And the answer to your question, Dan, is I was heartbroken. I was crushed. I couldn't believe it. Bob told me at the time that this man Sam Ervin may hold hearings, Senator Ervin, and therefore I was going to have to go and Chuck Colson was going to have to go, and Richard Kleindienst, the attorney general, was going to have to go. I remember distinctly walking into the men's room there at the--up at Camp David and Dick Kleindienst, the attorney general of the United States was there bawling like a baby. I mean, he was crushed also. He had just met with Ehrlichman. So, it was a very poignant moment when we had to go to Camp David and when we had to be kind of thrown overboard, thinking that by getting rid of the three of us, it might stem this thing from Ervin going ahead with the hearings. It was insane.
I mean, I wrote a letter to Haldeman saying, you know, are you sure you want to go at--nobody is going to believe that getting rid of me, Dwight--that this is going to solve this problem. But obviously that was their strategy, and it didn't work.
MR. BALZ: It sure didn't. On--at the end of April, it was announced that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were resigning, that Dean was being fired. Let's listen to what President Nixon said that night when he addressed the nation about the scandal.
MR. BALZ: Within a couple of months after that the story took another dramatic turn, and this was when Alexander Butterfield revealed to the Ervin committee the existence of the taping system in the--in the White House. Let's listen to what he said, and then I have some questions for both of you.
MR. BALZ: Dwight, I'm assuming you did not know about the existence of the taping system. When you heard that that existed, did you think at that point that President Nixon himself was now in real jeopardy through the investigation?
MR. CHAPIN: I was stunned. I had no idea, Dan, that the taping mechanism was in place. The people that knew that, it was a very small group of people. I immediately thought this is going to be interesting. I did not know what would come of it. I will say this--and I covered this in my book--the tapes are going to end up perhaps being a blessing as time goes on, because the tapes, as we get into more and more of them, are starting to give--provide us material that is exculpatory for President Nixon.
I mean, what happened with the prosecutors and when these tapes were put out that they did these slices of the tapes, all of which shows the abuse of power, and so forth, but they don't show the complete story of what was going on within the presidency and how some of the comments fit into context. So, I think there's a lot of road to travel here. We're 50 years into it, but we're a long way from getting to all of the bottom level of what this thing was all about.
MR. BALZ: Ken, you were in the White House at that point. How much of a bombshell was this to all of you inside, and what did you do in terms of thinking about what do we do now in terms of mounting a defense in terms of our messaging and our public communication, knowing that the investigators are--you know, are, you know, swooping down on you?
MR. KHACHIGIAN: Well, as Dwight said, it was quite a shock. Nobody knew about the taping system. And there was--there was no way to form a communication strategy until we knew what was on the tapes. And we didn't know what was on the tapes until we started transcribing them.
And in some cases, they were--provided some difficulties. And then in other cases, there were exonerating. And unfortunately, later on, we had one tape that was called a smoking gun tape that forced the president to move along on his resignation. And if we knew then what we knew now, that the smoking gun tape was actually a water pistol, that it didn't turn out to be what it was--what everybody thought it was to be, that it didn't have the liability to the president that that we all thought it was then, we would have mounted a much different defense. But when the tapes came out, we had no idea what kind of defense to mount, Dan, because we didn't know what was on them.
MR. BALZ: Dwight, you were the first to go on trial. You were convicted of lying to the grand jury and you served nine months in prison. And you've--I think you've indicated that you knew that Nixon was prepared to, quote-unquote “discard people” for political purposes. Can you talk about the price of loyalty to this president that came at a significant price for you and your family? And I wonder if you could reflect on that a minute.
MR. CHAPIN: Well, I do say Dan, in my book that you know, all the great privileges I was given and the service to the nation, being able to participate, it was absolutely phenomenal, and I am so grateful. The only thing I wish is that it didn't have a price tag called Watergate.
I have remained loyal to President Nixon. I understand that if you're going to be playing in that league, so to speak, that you've got to take the lumps along with the good things that come along. I had made a mistake. I did not, in my opinion, lie to the grand jury. I know what the intent was in my heart. I know my whole attitude was to be truthful and forthright with the FBI and in my grand jury hearings. But the documents and my fellow citizens felt that I had committed making false and misleading statements, and I paid the price. The price was hard. Going to prison was incredibly difficult, but something that one can overcome. I think, if nothing else, my story proves that, that you can bounce back off of these things. But it was a difficult period for me.
And I put it into the--to the perspective this way. Eddie Carlson, who was the chairman of United Airlines where I had been working before I had to leave to take care of this legal obligation, he said, Dwight, you’ve got to understand you're a political football. President Nixon, toward the end of his life, talked about Watergate being his last campaign. He knew it was all political. He did not act in a criminal way, and he viewed it as a political event. I viewed it always as a political event. I never viewed myself as a criminal or having done criminal activities.
This was the Democratic Party, particularly the Kennedy wing of the party. It was the media. As I described in the clip that you showed at the start of the show, this was an effort to bring down Richard Nixon. Did he help make that happen? He sure did. I mean, there’s no question about that. Foolish mistakes were made. But at the bottom line, the denominator on this is that it was a political event.
MR. BALZ: Well, it was a political event, but it was also a series of actions, a number of them illegal, that we know that took place.
Ken, I want to--I want to ask you the last question, and that is Richard Nixon was a smart politician, and as you both have described, a very smart man. But in one way or another, his instincts let him down in the Watergate scandal. What happened? What happened to Nixon that he misplayed it in the ways that he did?
MR. KHACHIGIAN: Well, he made the mistake of not getting in front of it to begin with, Dan. He said after the presidency that he needed to get out front right away and that he didn't do that. And so, he misled himself at the outset, and he didn't get out in front right away. And that was--that was his real mistake. And so, he paid the price for it.
But afterwards, you know, he brought back, he restored his life after the presidency. I give him credit for that. And you know, he gave back to the country and to the world. He wrote eight best-selling books after he left the presidency. He advised the other presidents. He advised President Reagan. He advised him in his two presidential campaigns. He advised President Clinton. And you know, he--I think the world would be better off if he was around today advising President Biden, very frankly.
MR. BALZ: All right. Well, he did have a very active post-presidency. And--but obviously Watergate is the thing that many people or most will remember him for. Gentlemen, unfortunately, we are out of time. I'm sorry to say there's a lot more we could have covered in the time we had. But thank you, Dwight Chapin. And thank you, Ken Khachigian, for being with us today.
MR. KHACHIGIAN: You bet. Good to see you.
MR. CHAPIN: Thank you.
MR. BALZ: Good to see you. And thanks to all of you who have been watching. We very much appreciate your being with us today. To check out future interviews, go to WashingtonPostLive.com and register, find out more information about our upcoming programs. Again, I’m Dan Baltz with The Washington Post. Thanks again for being with us.
[End recorded session.] | 2022-06-14T20:56:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: 50th Anniversary of Watergate: Inside the White House - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/14/transcript-50th-anniversary-watergate-inside-white-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/14/transcript-50th-anniversary-watergate-inside-white-house/ |
Ukraine war brings peace — between Canada and Denmark
Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod and Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly trade gifts on June 14 in Ottawa after signing an agreement to establish a land border between the two countries on Hans Island. (Justin Tang/AP)
TORONTO — It’s a barren and inhospitable rock plopped in a frigid channel in the Arctic. One geologist who visited characterized it as “not a very exciting island.” A Canadian legal analyst once tried to point it out on a map in a presentation he had prepared for lawmakers but conceded that its size made it “very difficult to see.”
“We don’t have a big blowup picture to show you,” he said.
Nevertheless, for some five decades, Canada and Denmark have squabbled — mostly, but not always, politely — over the not-very-exciting Hans Island, a 0.5-square-mile mass in the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait that’s home to neither vegetation nor wildlife. The craggy outcropping — Tartupaluk in Inuit — lies between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Now, at long last, there’s rapprochement in the dispute dubbed the “Flag war” or “Whisky war.”
Officials from both countries, as well as Greenland, signed an agreement on Tuesday to resolve the long-standing fracas — the last remaining disagreement over a land border in the Arctic — with the Solomonic solution of dividing the island in two. Denmark gets about 60 percent of the island; Canada gets the rest.
“I think it was the friendliest of all wars,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, told reporters in Ottawa. “I’m happy to see that we’re resolving it with friends, partners and allies. … It’s a win-win-win.”
To reach this Canadian island, mail crosses through Maine. Now U.S. agents are opening it.
Both Canada and Denmark cast the “historic” agreement as an example of how border disputes can be resolved peacefully, without warfare or bitter legal wrangling, at a time when the rules-based international order is under strain — a reference in part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The dispute dates back to 1973, when Canadian and Danish diplomats were drawing up a maritime boundary in the Arctic. The line cut straight through Hans Island. The diplomats left the question of what to do about it unresolved.
In the five decades that followed, Danish troops have visited the rocky mass several times, planting their flag and leaving a note and bottle of liquor to assert the country’s claim to the island. The Canadians also have made appearances, replacing the Danish liquor with Canadian whisky, erecting an inukshuk — a stone marker — and hoisting the maple leaf.
On at least one occasion, the Canadians took down a Danish flag and mailed it back to Copenhagen.
(There has been nary a peep from officials in both countries about the fate of the various bottles of alcohol.)
In the early 2000s, the Danes twice dispatched frigates with soldiers to the island, in what Robert Huebert, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, called an example of gunboat diplomacy.
“In any other understanding, that has led to warfare,” he said.
Lawmakers in Canada have occasionally pointed to the dispute over Hans Island as an example of the government of the day doing little to defend its interests in the Arctic.
The people of this remote Canadian island village are taking government money to clear out. One couple is staying.
“Denmark’s soldiers land on Canadian Arctic territory, hoist their flag, claim the island as their own and Canada does nothing,” one Conservative lawmaker charged in 2004. “How much Canadian territory has to be claimed by a foreign power before [then-Prime Minister Paul Martin] will speak up and stand up for Canada?”
A further escalation came in 2005, when Bill Graham, then Canada’s defense minister, choppered onto Hans Island to walk the frigid ground himself. That drew an official note of protest from Danish officials.
“We would like to maintain what was the modus vivendi,” Poul Erik Dam Kristensen, then the Danish ambassador to Canada, told the Globe and Mail “that if one of the parties visited the island, the party notifies the other party beforehand.”
The Canadians steadfastly maintained they needed to do no such thing — because it was their island.
In 2009, Danish Rear Adm. Nils Wang told a Canadian parliamentary defense committee that the last he had heard on the issue was that “we agree on disagreeing.”
“At least from the navy’s perspective in Denmark, we have been told by our foreign ministry not to go up there and put flags on the island anymore,” said Wang, who is now retired.
Alan Kessel, a legal adviser to Canada’s foreign ministry, assured another parliamentary committee in 2012 that the country was “not going to go to war with Denmark.”
“I can promise you that,” he said. “It’s being managed. It’s a rock, and we will deal with that.”
The Canadian government said that Inuit of Greenland and the Canadian territory of Nunavut were consulted during the negotiations of the agreement and that it will “ensure the continued access to and freedom of movement on the entirety of the island” for fishing and other cultural activities.
Huebert said there is a “pretty remote” possibility that there are natural resources such as oil and gas on the island, but noted there haven’t really been serious efforts to look. Canada, he added, has several other disputes in the Arctic that are unresolved, including with the United States over the Northwest Passage.
After signing the agreement to applause, Joly and Kofod exchanged alcohol and notes for the last time.
There would be no question about what the Canadians planned to do with their bottle.
It was going “straight” into the Canadian Museum of History, Joly said. | 2022-06-14T21:10:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada and Denmark resolve Hans Island dispute in the Arctic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/canada-denmark-greenland-hans-island/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/14/canada-denmark-greenland-hans-island/ |
More than half the money given to Trump’s PAC was from retirees
President Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 30, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Shortly after he lost the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump embarked on a new, wildly lucrative political effort. The Save America political action committee (PAC) was formed two days after the race was called for Joe Biden and has since become a gathering spot for tens of millions of dollars from Trump supporters.
This isn’t a normal campaign PAC, allowing Trump to pay for certain expenses or contribute to other politicians. It’s a leadership PAC, letting him spend money however he wishes. Like, say, hosting a big rally outside the White House in an effort to retain power. Or paying his future daughter-in-law $60,000 to give a short speech at that rally.
The profligate fundraising in which Trump has engaged since the election was a focus of the hearing held Monday by the House select committee investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day of the aforementioned rally and speech.
During the hearing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) pointed to political fundraising as an important vehicle for political speech, one that Trump had exploited.
“Small-dollar donors use scarce disposable income to support candidates and causes of their choosing to make their voices heard, and those donors deserve the truth about what those funds will be used for,” Lofgren said. “Throughout the committee’s investigation, we found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for. So not only was there the ‘big lie,’ there was the ‘big rip-off.’ ”
It can be tricky to quantify the ways in which people contribute to political campaigns. Not all contributions have to be reported, and Trump’s team, like other politicians, raised money for multiple PACs at the same time. A review of Federal Election Commission records for the Save America PAC and a Save America joint fundraising committee (JFC), though, gives a sense of who was giving to Trump’s effort and how much.
Records since November 2020 include more than 2.5 million contributions directly to the PAC, to the JFC or to either through WinRed, a Republican contribution platform. Contributions reported to the FEC include information about the donor’s occupation or, when applicable, whether they are retired. Those data allow us to see that nearly two-thirds of those 2.5 million contributions came from people who listed their occupation as “retired.” More than 6 in 10 were contributions of $100 or less from retirees.
This is somewhat misleading. If someone gives $50 40 times, they have contributed $2,000 in total but show up as 40 small-dollar donations. That’s the caveat that should be applied to Lofgren’s assertion that the average contribution was $17; lots of people made multiple contributions. (Some of them did so unwittingly.) But these are also probably not big donors, who tend to write large checks in one fell swoop.
We can also look at the total amount raised by the committees identified above, a sum totaling just shy of $121 million. About 57 percent of that total came from people listed as retired. More than a third came from retirees making contributions of $100 or less (with the same caveat applying).
The difference between the two charts, of course, derives from the fact that contributions of more than $100 necessarily make up a larger chunk of the total amount raised. Three percent of contributions were from people who aren’t retired and who gave in big chunks; they gave a fifth of the total amount raised.
It’s not entirely surprising that Trump would receive more contributions from retirees. For one thing, retirees are often more engaged in politics than younger Americans. For another, Americans 50 and older generally preferred Trump to Biden in 2020. Those under 50 were more likely to vote for Biden. Six in 10 Trump voters were 50 or older that year.
This also considers only two fundraising vehicles that Trump deployed. It simply gives a sense of who was giving to Trump and how much they were giving. Most contributions were $100 or less, though individual donors might have given more. Most of the donors were retirees, and most of the money raised came from them.
Where the money went or will go is a harder-to-answer question. | 2022-06-14T21:32:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | More than half the money given to Trump’s PAC was from retirees - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/more-than-half-money-given-trumps-pac-was-retirees/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/more-than-half-money-given-trumps-pac-was-retirees/ |
Black dads helped win the Civil War. But not so their sons could kill each other.
The D.C. Black Fathers Matter motorcade needs more Black dads
Perspective by Courtland Milloy
Sherman Browne leads chants as he leads the March of Dads to Black Lives Matter Plaza organized by the Dad Gang on Father's Day 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The D.C. Black Fathers Matter motorcade is an unabashedly upbeat public celebration of the Black dad. The parade starts at the African American Civil War Memorial in Northwest, which honors Black people who fought to end slavery — Black men who fought for the freedom to be the best fathers and family men they could be.
After winding about five miles through mostly Black neighborhoods on Sunday, the motorcade ends in Southeast Washington. If those brave soldiers from the Civil War somehow joined the motorcade, they would see a city at once both unimaginable and all too familiar.
It’s unlikely they would have dreamed that the nation’s capital would be run by a Black woman, that another Black woman would be about to join a Black man on the nation’s highest court. But they certainly would have recognized Black residents living in segregated, underfunded sections of the city.
More than 157 years after the Civil War, as the nation prepares to celebrate June 19 or “Juneteenth,” as we call the symbolic end of slavery, Black people in the District are battling a different kind of war. Many of D.C.’s Black residents are still being left out and left behind.
Affordable housing is nonexistent for many low-wage Black households. Educational gaps continue to expand. And homicide is the leading cause of death for Black males roughly ages 15 to 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An April study by the Brookings Institution pointed to one reason violence may seem so seemingly entrenched: economic inequity and a sense that the opportunity game is rigged.
In Washington, D.C., Black people have “the lowest per capita annual median income and the greatest disparities in income at $29,927 when compared to that of white people at $92,758 and Latinos at $41,151,” the study said. In addition, Black people in D.C. experienced the highest unemployment rate at 4.8 percent than any jurisdiction reviewed by Brookings. The study also said the “largest percentage of Black residents living below the poverty line, 21.6%, lived in Washington, D.C.”
A 6-year-old’s death leaves a neighborhood grieving but not surprised
Black life expectancy in Washington, D.C., was the lowest among all races at an average of 72.7 years, compared to an average of 88 years for White people, 88.3 years for Latinos, and 88.9 years for Asians in the city.
Another study in the 2022 issue of Injury Epidemiology lays out what tends to come next:
The consequence of extreme economic inequities is “socially structured hardship that result in feelings of ‘resentment, frustration, hopelessness, and alienation’ which ... leads to widespread social disorganization and violent crime,’” the researchers noted. They said poverty was among the most consistent predictors of violent crime.
Of course, there are many Black people in D.C. who are doing just fine. But when you concentrate an impoverished population in life-or-death stressful situations, with little opportunity or hope of getting what they see others obtaining so easily, expect trouble.
After departing from the Civil War memorial museum at around noon on Sunday, the caravan rolls into Ward 5. Here’s what that looks like by the numbers: There are 92,000 residents — 17,000 of them children under the ages of 18; the population is about 62 percent Black, with 40 percent of the households headed by single mothers, who tend to make less money than their married counterparts. According to the Baltimore-based Anne Casey Foundation, the poverty rate in the ward is around 10 percent and the unemployment rate stands at 9 percent.
The caravan then heads to Ward 7, which has more than 84,000 residents — 91 percent Black and roughly 20,000 of them under the age of 18. About 73 percent of the households are headed by single mothers. Unemployment is 11 percent; the poverty rate hovers around 25 percent.
The motorcade ends at the Big Chair on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, in Ward 8. It is the poorest ward — with about 86,000 residents — 85 percent of them Black. The ward is home to about 26,000 children under age 18. About 69 percent of the households are headed by single mothers. Unemployment is roughly 15 percent; the poverty rate stands at around 30 percent, according to Casey.
Reduce this overwhelming urban poverty, narrow the obscene inequities in wealth and access to resources and you might just give people more reason to want to live.
The scholars writing in the Injury Epidemiology study, note that “Public-private partnerships are likely needed to address large infrastructure and economic drivers of violence. Moreover, alleviating low income in local areas and income inequality over larger areas could help reduce homicide rates.”
That’s a battle worth fighting.
More from Courtland Milloy
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In a play about abortion, you don’t have to talk. Just listen. | 2022-06-14T22:03:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black Fathers Matter could use more Black dads - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/dc-black-fathers-matter-movement-needs-more-dads/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/14/dc-black-fathers-matter-movement-needs-more-dads/ |
Conviction upheld for teen who ran over Baltimore County cop
Dawnta Harris, now 20 years old, was behind the wheel of a stolen Jeep in Perry Hall when Caprio blocked its path with her patrol car, jumped out and issued orders for him to stop. He initially did, opening his car door, then he ducked down and accelerated, police said. Caprio fired her weapon once before he struck her.
Harris and three other Baltimore teens were in the area burglarizing homes, which allowed the prosecution to seek a felony murder charge — a doctrine that can apply when someone is killed during the course of a different felony.
A jury found Harris guilty of the offense after an eight-day trial in 2019, and he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
But the Court of Appeals rejected those arguments in a ruling last Wednesday.
The state’s highest court found felony murder was not preempted by state statute on vehicular manslaughter; a U.S. Supreme Court case cited by attorneys didn’t apply for life sentences with the possibility of parole; and that Harris’s age was considered in sentencing.
Harris’s attorney for the appeal, Megan Coleman, called the decision disappointing but said she hopes the arguments “shed light on evolving areas of the law that may be further addressed by the General Assembly to achieve more equitable sentencing proceedings for juvenile offenders.”
Coleman argued to the Court of Appeals in March that Harris’s age meant he was unable to “appreciate the risks and consequences” of his actions.
She said felony murder shouldn’t apply to children because their brains haven’t fully developed and that he should’ve gotten unique considerations at sentencing because of his age.
Defense attorneys at Harris’s sentencing had requested he receive 30 years, and Harris himself asked the judge for a second chance in life.
But the Court of Appeals wrote in its opinion that the Circuit Court had considered Harris’s age. It pointed to a 25-page presentence investigation report it said included his age, criminal and personal histories, family situation, education and mental health. His attorneys also made mitigating arguments at the hearing based in part on his youth.
And the Maryland appeals court said the 2012 Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama, which said mandatory life sentences without parole were unconstitutional for children convicted of homicides, didn’t apply in this case since Harris will be eligible for parole after 15 years.
Scott Shellenberger, the Baltimore County state’s attorney, said Friday he was pleased the court upheld Harris’s conviction and sentence.
“This has been a very long, arduous journey for Amy Caprio’s family, the Sorrells,” he said. “We are hopeful that this will bring some closure for them.”
Harris has no other state appeal options but could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or request through other court proceedings that his sentence be reviewed. As noted by the Court of Appeals, Harris will automatically be eligible to have his sentence reduced after serving 20 years under a 2021 law passed by the General Assembly.
Caprio’s killing set off a firestorm, including racist backlash, as all four teens are Black and Caprio was White. It also played into city-county dynamics — Harris was from the Gilmor Homes public housing in West Baltimore and had gone joyriding with friends in the stolen car to suburban Perry Hall. | 2022-06-14T22:20:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Conviction upheld for teen who ran over Baltimore County cop - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/conviction-upheld-for-teen-who-ran-over-baltimore-county-cop/2022/06/14/6d4149ce-eace-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/conviction-upheld-for-teen-who-ran-over-baltimore-county-cop/2022/06/14/6d4149ce-eace-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html |
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve is expected to announce its largest interest rate hike since 1994 — a bigger increase than it had previously signaled and a sign that the central bank is struggling to restrain stubbornly high inflation. The central bank is considered likely to raise its benchmark short-term rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, far larger than the typical quarter-point increase. It will also likely forecast additional large rate hikes through the end of the year. A flurry of large Fed rate hikes will heighten borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, likely leading to an economic slowdown and raising the risk of a recession.
PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden has told the largest federation of labor unions that he’s rebuilding the U.S. economy around workers. He’s drawing a contrast with Republicans who have increasingly attracted blue-collar votes. Biden says, “We should encourage unions.” His speech Tuesday at the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia was an attempt to reset the debate on the economy. His approval ratings have slid as consumer prices and the cost of gasoline have surged. That’s overshadowed strong job gains and a healthy unemployment rate. Biden says the GOP is focused on cutting taxes for companies and the wealthy. Republicans argue that their 2017 tax overhaul helped growth by reducing corporate tax rates, making U.S. companies more competitive.
WASHINGTON — U.S. producer prices surged 10.8% in May from a year earlier, underscoring the ongoing threat to the economy from a bout of inflation that shows no sign of slowing. Tuesday’s report from the Labor Department showed that the producer price index — which measures inflation before it reaches consumers — rose at slightly slower pace last month than in April, when it jumped 10.9% from a year earlier, and is down from an 11.5% yearly gain in March. The figures indicate that rising prices will continue to erode Americans’ paychecks and play havoc with household budgets in the coming months.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Airfares are rising as we head into summer, and that could be leading to a slight slowdown in ticket sales. Research firm Adobe Digital Insights said Tuesday that fares in May rose 6% over April, and 30% over May 2019. That’s the fourth straight month in which fares are above pre-pandemic levels. The research firm says airline bookings in May for flights inside the U.S. were down 2.3% in May, compared with April. But the value of those sales is still rising because of higher prices. Adobe’s lead analyst, Vivek Pandya, says the numbers show that some consumers can handle the higher fares, but others are thinking twice.
DETROIT — The government plans soon to release data on collisions involving vehicles with autonomous or partially automated driving system that will likely single out Teslas for a disproportionately high number of such crashes. In coming days, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to issue the figures, which it’s been gathering for nearly a year. Last week, the agency said in a separate report that it had documented more than 200 crashes involving Teslas that were using one of the company’s partially automated systems. The number of such Tesla crashes was revealed as part of a NHTSA investigation of Teslas on Autopilot that had crashed into emergency and other vehicles stopped along roadways. A message was left seeking comment from Tesla.
DEERFIELD, Ill. — Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar says it’s packing up its headquarters from its longtime home state of Illinois and heading to Texas. Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday that it’s transferring its global base to Irving, Texas, from the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois. The company had been based in Peoria, Illinois, for over 90 years before announcing a move to Deerfield in 2017. Caterpillar already has an office in Irving and has had a presence in Texas since the 1960s. It says it will begin transitioning its headquarters to Irving this year. It’s the latest major corporation to ditch the Chicago area after Boeing Co. said last month that it was moving its headquarters to the Washington, D.C., area.
SEATTLE — Redfin, the Seattle-based real estate brokerage, says it will lay off 8% of its employees as the housing market cools off. The Seattle Times reports CEO Glenn Kelman announced the layoffs Tuesday. He said demand in May was 17% below expectations and there’s not enough work for agents and support staff. The cuts at the online listing site and real estate brokerage could affect more than 450 people. Redfin has about 5,800 employees, not including those who work for RentPath, which Redfin acquired last year. Redfin’s share price has dropped from about $39 at the start of the year to $8.55 this week. The company lost about $110 million last year, up from $18.5 million the year before, according to SEC filings. | 2022-06-14T22:25:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Expected rate hike, producer price rise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-expected-rate-hike-producer-price-rise/2022/06/14/60945180-ec27-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-expected-rate-hike-producer-price-rise/2022/06/14/60945180-ec27-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Cloud revenue boosts earnings for Oracle; FedEx hikes dividend, adds board members
Cloud revenue boosts earnings for Oracle
Oracle shares jumped the most in six months after the company reported results suggesting its effort to move customers to the cloud is gaining momentum and the acquisition of health-care records provider Cerner will help accelerate growth.
Investors sent the stock up more than 10 percent to $70.72 at the close Tuesday in New York, the biggest single-day increase since December.
Cloud revenue — the highly watched segment that Oracle has been trying to expand — rose 19 percent to $2.9 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter, the Austin-based company said.
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.
The deal will be accretive to Oracle’s earnings in fiscal year 2023, Chief Executive Safra Catz said Monday in a statement. With Cerner now part of Oracle’s business, revenue may increase as much as 19 percent in the current quarter, she said. Profit, excluding some items, will be $1.04 to $1.08 a share in the period.
In the fiscal fourth quarter, sales increased 5.5 percent to $11.8 billion, topping the average analyst estimate of $11.7 billion. The results marked Oracle’s eighth straight quarter of year-over-year revenue increases. Profit, excluding some items, was $1.54 a share, compared with the average estimate of $1.38 per share.
Oracle, with nearly half of its sales outside the Americas, said quarterly revenue was reduced 5 percent by currency fluctuations.
Cloud license and on-premise license sales gained 18 percent to $2.54 billion, beating the average estimate of $2.17 billion. Sales of the Fusion application for managing corporate finances rose 20 percent in the quarter, compared with 33 percent in the previous period. Sales of NetSuite enterprise planning tools, targeted to small and midsized businesses, increased 27 percent, the same as in the previous quarter.
FedEx raises dividend, adds board members
FedEx’s shares soared after the courier hiked its dividend and announced board changes in coordination with activist investor D.E. Shaw, a bold shake-up just two weeks into the tenure of new chief executive Raj Subramaniam. The quarterly dividend will jump 53 percent to $1.15 per share, the Memphis-based company said Tuesday in a statement. FedEx also said it would cut capital spending and rework its executive compensation program.
The shares surged 14 percent to $229.95 in New York, the biggest one-day gain since September 1986.
The higher-than-expected dividend increase and reduction in capital spending will be accompanied by the addition of Amy Lane and Jim Vena as independent directors effective immediately, with a third new director to be named at a later date and agreed upon by FedEx and D.E. Shaw. As part of the agreement with D.E. Shaw, the company made several changes to board committees. Separately, FedEx also tied executive pay more to its total shareholder return.
Continental Resources gets all-cash offer
Continental Resources said on Tuesday it received an all-cash offer from billionaire-founder Harold Hamm’s family trust, a deal which could take the U.S. shale producer private at a valuation of $25.41 billion.
If both sides reach an agreement, it would result in the most significant deal in the U.S. shale sector. Hamm, a legendary oilman who once called the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries a “toothless tiger,” is offering $70 per share to those holding the approximately 17 percent of the company that his family does not already own.
The offer represents a nearly 9 percent premium over Continental’s closing price on Monday, but is below the level the producer was trading at as recently as Thursday.
Continental said the proposal was an indication of interest from the Hamm family trust, and it had not yet fully evaluated the offer. In a letter to the board disclosed in the same filing, Hamm’s family trust said that the deal will be structured as a tender offer and that there were no financing issues. If the proposal is rejected, the Hamm family will continue as long-term shareholders and would not push for any strategic options, according to Hamm’s offer letter.
Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar said Tuesday it is packing up its headquarters from its longtime home state of Illinois and moving to Texas. Caterpillar said that it's transferring its global base to the Dallas suburb of Irving, from Deerfield, outside Chicago. | 2022-06-14T22:25:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cloud revenue boosts earnings for Oracle; FedEx hikes dividend, adds board members - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cloud-revenue-boosts-earnings-for-oracle-fedex-hikes-dividend-adds-board-members/2022/06/14/c0089524-ebe4-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cloud-revenue-boosts-earnings-for-oracle-fedex-hikes-dividend-adds-board-members/2022/06/14/c0089524-ebe4-11ec-98ba-56aaf6262624_story.html |
Teenagers play basketball in Backlick Park in Annandale, Va. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Independent advisers Tuesday unanimously urged the Food and Drug Administration to clear Moderna’s two-shot coronavirus vaccine for children 6 through 17 years old, paving the way for an agency authorization later this week.
A greenlight from the FDA, followed by an endorsement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would give parents another choice of shots for school-age children and adolescents. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine already is available for children 5 through 17.
But having a second vaccine available might not translate into a big bump in vaccinations, at least in the 6-to-11-year-old age group, in which demand has been weak. Only 29 percent of children in that group have received the two-shot regimen of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to the CDC.
To increase uptake “really is going to require lots of one-on-one single conversations and educating providers and parents about the benefits,” said Amanda Cohn, chief medical officer of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and a member of the advisory committee.
Even with the unanimous support for the vaccine, some of the advisers expressed concerns that the data on the vaccine were limited and outdated because trials were conducted before the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus. They said the vaccine would probably be beneficial in preventing serious illness but not as helpful in blocking mild infections.
“We crossed a line,” when the highly transmissible omicron and its subvariants arrived, which require a third dose for protection, said Paul A. Offit, professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He said he supported authorization — as long as a third Moderna dose is on the way.
“We’re at a different part in this pandemic,” Offit said. “I think the benefits clearly outweigh the risks, but I say that with the comfort being provided that there will be a third dose.” Children who get a two-dose series should not be considered “fully vaccinated,” he said.
Moderna told the advisers it is testing a booster shot for the 6-through-17 age groups and would seek FDA authorization in coming months — perhaps by July.
The meeting Tuesday kicked off one of the busiest weeks in vaccine policy since the start of the pandemic. On Wednesday, the agency’s outside experts, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, are scheduled to discuss whether vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech should be used for the youngest children. For the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, that includes babies and children 6 months through 4 years old. And for Moderna, it’s children 6 months through 5 years old.
If the FDA and CDC give their blessings later this week, the vaccines will be available beginning next week, Biden administration officials have said. Babies and young children are the only group who do not have access to a vaccine.
Tuesday’s action, however, was focused on use of the Moderna vaccine for children 6 through 17. The advisers considered two groups: 6 through 11 years old and 12 through 17. Both votes in favor of the authorization were 22 to 0.
Last week, FDA scientists said the shot was safe and effective for all pediatric age groups. The staff report said the Moderna data on safety, immune response and effectiveness demonstrated “a favorable benefit-risk profile.”
Some parents have questioned whether vaccines are needed for children now, given the relatively low risk posed by covid-19 to the young.
But Katherine E. Fleming-Dutra, medical officer with the coronavirus vaccine policy unit at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said it is impossible to predict which children will develop severe disease.
“Certainly, children with underlying medical conditions are more at risk, but half of children 6 months to 4 years who were hospitalized with covid-19 don’t have underlying medical conditions,” she said.
Moderna said in a presentation that for every 1 million doses of vaccine distributed in the United States, 95 hospitalizations and 24 intensive care unit stays for children 6 through 11 years old would be avoided. For children 12 through 17, 200 hospitalizations and 52 ICU stays would be avoided, the company estimated.
In clinical trials, the Moderna vaccine was shown to generate an immune response — virus-blocking antibodies — at least as strong as the protection afforded vaccinated young adults, the agency’s main yardstick for efficacy. The vaccine did not produce concerning side effects, the FDA said.
Testing of the pediatric coronavirus vaccines is not designed primarily to measure directly whether the shots prevented symptomatic illness. Instead, following a regulatory path often used to expand vaccine eligibility into younger age groups, scientists measured the levels of virus-blocking antibodies in children’s blood and compared those measurements to the levels that were protective in young adults.
But the agency said the trials also produced limited “supportive evidence” on the vaccine’s effectiveness and on the impact of variants of the coronavirus on the vaccine.
The studies showed that, based on how many children developed covid in the vaccine versus placebo groups, the efficacy was 93 percent for children 12 through 17, who were tested when the original strain and the alpha variant were dominant. The rate was 77 percent for children 6 through 11 when the delta variant was causing the most infections. Efficacy dropped to 51 percent and lower for children younger than 6 who were tested during the surge caused by omicron, which also blunts the vacancy’s potency in adults. Overall, the number of covid cases was low.
The Moderna shots are administered 28 days apart. Children 6 through 11 receive 50 micrograms in each shot, half the adult dose. Adolescents are given the adult dose. The third, or booster, dose for both groups will be 50 micrograms, the company said.
Moderna had requested permission to use its vaccine in adolescents more than a year ago, but authorization was held up because of concerns about the risk of rare cardiac side effects — inflammation of the heart muscle and surrounding tissue — called myocarditis and pericarditis. Both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have been linked to the heart problems in young adult males. Most cases are mild, and inflammation caused by covid tends to be more severe.
There were no confirmed cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in the Moderna trials for infants, children and adolescents — but the trials might have been too small to pick it up. FDA officials said the risk-benefit balance was favorable, but that the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine would be closely monitored as it enters the market and is more widely used.
The advisers raised questions about how long the Moderna vaccine would provide immune protection against the coronavirus and whether it would be effective against the omicron subvariants circulating in the United States.
“At the start of the pandemic, it’s pretty clear that the bar was somewhat lower in terms of vaccine efficacy because we were trying to get vaccines out the door and get the population protected,” said Wayne Marasco, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. But Marasco said he hopes that companies will develop vaccines that have better durability and provide protection against infection that lasts longer than a few months. | 2022-06-14T22:25:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FDA advisers recommend Moderna shot for older children, adolescents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/14/moderna-vaccine-adolescents-fda/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/14/moderna-vaccine-adolescents-fda/ |
Americans have gone back to work. Now we can move toward steady growth.
By Marty Walsh
Cecilia Elena Rouse
A help wanted sign at a fast food restaurant in Los Angeles in March. (Patrick T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images)
Marty Walsh is the secretary of labor. Cecilia Elena Rouse is chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
After months of headlines describing the Great Resignation, the May employment report showed that, in fact, Americans have returned to work — at impressive levels. In light of that, it is worth understanding what has happened in the U.S. labor market and what it means as we aim to transition from a historic economic recovery to stable and steady growth.
Over the past year and half, Americans have gotten back to work in record numbers — faster than during any previous recovery in modern history. For example, the share of people between the ages of 25 and 54 who are employed — a metric that economists watch closely to understand the health of the labor market — has recovered faster since April 2020 than it did during the previous four recoveries.
Importantly, this recovery has also been more equitable than those in the past. The share of Black men who are employed now exceeds the share immediately before the pandemic — which was not the case during the last two economic downturns. Overall labor force participation is still below pre-pandemic levels, due in part to demographic trends, and we have more work to do to ensure that all Americans who want to work can work. But the labor market is closing the gap much faster than during the past two recoveries.
And what about the historically high number of people quitting their jobs? Economic research shows that a high level of “quits” is typical in fast recoveries, when demand for labor increases. But though quits are high, many more workers have been hired into new jobs. In fact, hiring has outpaced quits in every major sector, with higher levels of both in lower-wage sectors, such as leisure and hospitality. What this means is that many workers are feeling empowered to look for new work — and to get better jobs.
What is responsible for these shifts in the labor market? When President Biden took office, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent and nonpartisan expert projections anticipated that unemployment would remain above 4 percent for years. In May, the unemployment rate was at 3.6 percent — near historic lows. But in the face of a range of risks and uncertainties, the president’s main economic goal was to drive a faster, stronger, inclusive economic recovery that would get Americans back to work quickly and safely, often in better jobs. The strong labor market recovery would not have happened to this extent without the administration’s economic package and its focus on fighting the pandemic.
Our historic labor market underscores two things: first, that Americans want to work, and second, that the strength of the recovery has positioned our economy well to transition into a kind of steady and stable growth. That means a recovery in which we see employment growth consistent with a low unemployment rate and solid and sustainable real wage increases. This will mean rising living standards for working families and the middle class — a contrast to many years in the decades before the pandemic, when economic growth was too slow and wage gains too minimal to deliver better economic outcomes for working families.
How do we make that transition happen without giving up all the gains American workers have made? As the president has made clear, it begins with respecting the Federal Reserve’s independence as that institution adjusts its monetary policy to bring down inflation. Beyond the Fed, there is a range of steps that the president is taking — and that Congress should take with him — to ensure that anyone who wants to work is able to work and that we can achieve the kind of economic transition that leads to gains for American workers.
For example, we should dramatically expand tools like the Registered Apprenticeship program for career technical education, as well as pre-apprenticeship programs, to boost the pipeline of trained workers. The trucking industry is an example of a sector where we are already doing this. We also need to improve the quality of jobs for Americans, including by giving workers more of a voice in the workplace. At the Labor Department, we are focused on high-quality-job creation through our Good Jobs Initiative, which is reaching workers in many of the sectors critical to making our economy run, including transportation, warehousing, and child and elder care.
We should invest in lowering the cost of child care, making it easier for parents to join the workforce. We should extend the expanded earned income tax credit, which helps ensure that low-wage workers are not taxed into poverty and makes it easier for them to participate in the labor market.
And as the administration takes action to improve the work permit process and reduce the visa backlog, we should pass comprehensive immigration reform — not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it would be good for our economy as well.
Taking these steps to get even more Americans into the labor force will help us build on the progress we have already made — and move toward stable and steady job creation, with rising real wages, that benefits workers and their families across the United States. | 2022-06-14T22:25:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S. labor market is humming. That's good news for the future. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/economy-recovery-labor-market-jobs-unemployment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/14/economy-recovery-labor-market-jobs-unemployment/ |
In this image from video released by the House Select Committee, an exhibit is displayed as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to reveal its findings of a year-long investigation, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, June 13, 2022. (House Select Committee via AP) (Uncredited/House Select Committee)
Dispatch from South Carolina: GOP voters say they have ‘moved on’ from Trump
9:20 PMWhat to watch in S.C.: Republicans who voted against Trump | 2022-06-14T22:26:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 hearings: What we've learned, and what's next - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jan-6-hearings-what-weve-learned-and-whats-next/2022/06/14/3f7fb91a-ec2e-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jan-6-hearings-what-weve-learned-and-whats-next/2022/06/14/3f7fb91a-ec2e-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
U.S. cadets suing shipping company, alleging rape and harassment at sea
One woman’s anonymous online account of assault last year raised concerns on Capitol Hill, prompting a temporary pause in the program
In a lawsuit against the shipping giant Maersk, Hope Hicks, a cadet at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, alleges she was raped on one of the company’s ships in 2019. (Courtesy of Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP)
Before graduating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy this Saturday, Hope Hicks said she had a piece of unfinished business as a cadet: Suing Maersk, the shipping giant she says failed to protect her from being raped.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Nassau County (N.Y.) Supreme Court, Hicks alleged Maersk Line, Limited, a U.S. subsidiary, put her in danger while she was stationed aboard a company ship as part of her education. Hicks’ anonymous online account last year of assault raised concerns on Capitol Hill, prompting the on-the-job “Sea Year” training to be temporarily paused — a move that echoed a 2016 halt that was intended to bring change.
Hicks said she decided to go public with her name now to signal to fellow cadets that they can take similar actions to defend themselves.
Hicks said she was raped by a supervisor on the M/V Alliance Fairfax in 2019 when she was 19. Hicks’ lawyers also submitted a second suit, on behalf of a woman who said she faced sexual harassment and unwanted touching as a cadet aboard the same vessel two years later. She would lock herself in the bathroom and sleep on the floor at night while holding a pocketknife for protection, her lawyers wrote.
“For it to be the same ship that I was on, it just feels horrible,” Hicks said in an interview this week with The Washington Post. “It feels like maybe I could have done more.”
Maersk officials said the company does not comment on pending litigation but noted that any allegation is taken seriously.
“We have zero tolerance for assault, harassment or any form of discrimination on our vessels or in our company,” Maersk Line, Limited said in a statement. The company said staff have been told “we will not tolerate any breach of our policies regarding the fair treatment of all personnel.”
After Hicks’ anonymous account was published in September, senior leaders from the Department of Transportation and its Maritime Administration, which oversees the academy, offered “unwavering support for the individual who has shared her story of a sexual assault that took place during Sea Year.” The officials said they had zero tolerance for sexual assault and sexual harassment and would take swift preventive action.
Hicks, 22, said serious problems remain for cadets at sea. “This industry is a very rough world for women to be in, and it should not be that way,” she said.
It also marks the latest step in Hicks’ evolution after she said she woke up naked and bruised in her stateroom after a port stop in Aqaba, Jordan, where she said members of the all-male crew bought large amounts of alcohol.
According to the suit, she confided in a fellow student she had been raped after blacking out, following a night when she was coerced to drink 10 shots of alcohol. She said she was too afraid for her safety to report the attack at the time. If she had asked to be removed from the ship, it would have taken two weeks living at sea in the room beside her alleged attacker before reaching the next port, according to Hicks and her suit.
“I was scared for my life,” she told The Post. “I just didn’t know what extent people were going to go to try to cover this up if I were to come forward.”
After finishing her assignment and returning to the Merchant Marine Academy to continue her studies, Hicks began working in 2021 as a victim advocate at the academy’s Kings Point, N.Y., campus, where she said she heard from others who were sexually assaulted or harassed.
“Nothing’s going to change unless people speak out. If I get chewed up because of this, then that’s just something I have to face,” Hicks said.
A Merchant Marine cadet said she was assaulted at sea. Her account has Washington looking for answers.
Her lawsuit alleges Maersk should have known the risks facing cadets, alleging the company failed to take steps to prevent a foreseeable assault. Maersk, like other shippers, had long hired cadets onto their ships as part of required academy training.
According to the suit, for example, the company did not have a system on the Alliance Fairfax to track or restrict the use of master keys. Her alleged attacker, who was not named in the suit, and other crew members had access to master keys and “unfettered” access to her room, the suit alleges.
Hicks said there was no WiFi to communicate outside the ship and that she feared asking the captain to use a satellite phone, leaving her unable to call for help, the suit alleges.
Writing anonymously as “Midshipman X,” Hicks described the incident in an online post last September. Maersk said subsequently in tweets it was “deeply disturbed by the allegation of assault on our vessel.” The company said it suspended five officers and crew members, and would pursue “broader actions” and examine workplace policies.
The company this week declined to comment on their employment status or its internal findings.
Lawyers attempted to file a second complaint to the state court Tuesday on behalf of “Midshipman-Y,” who alleges she “endured sexualized jokes, sexual advances, and unwanted sexual touching” as a cadet aboard the Alliance Fairfax in 2021, when she was 18. The court instructed lawyers to resubmit the suit through a special process for filing under a pseudonym, they said.
The complaint says a crew member repeatedly snuck up behind the woman on the ship.
“Over the course of approximately 30 days, he touched Midshipman-Y without her permission, including on her waist and buttocks, on approximately 12 different occasions,” according to the suit.
At one point, while she was playing a card game called “Egyptian Rat Slap,” the crew member told her: “You’re the only girl. We should pull your pants down, lay you on the table, and let everyone slap your” rear end, according to the suit.
The suit alleges that a satellite texting device issued by the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, which was meant to provide an emergency connection to land, failed to work much of the time. After eventually reaching a port, Midshipman-Y cried as she spoke to her mother and decided to ask that she be removed from the ship. The cadet spoke with an onshore Maersk representative, who, according to the suit, responded: “This can’t keep happening.”
The woman is on leave from the academy because of stress caused by the sexual harassment, according to the suit.
Christine Dunn, a lawyer at the firm Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP, who is among those representing Hicks and “Midshipman-Y,” said federal prosecutors are weighing whether to prosecute the man who Hicks said raped her.
“The individual committed a criminal act. There’s no denying that, and that is between him and the prosecutors,” Dunn said. “But the problem is bigger than one individual perpetrator.”
The two women are seeking compensatory and punitive damages from Maersk.
Hicks said she is taking an officer position with the Navy after graduation.
Federal sailors academy halts at-sea training as it reckons with sexual assault accounts
The Maritime Administration released new sexual assault and harassment prevention standards on Dec. 15. In a letter the following day, Transportation Department officials told cadets that Sea Year assignments would resume that month under the stricter standards. With the new rules, cadets are given satellite phones and shipping companies were told to better track and control the use of master keys.
The academy also implemented a new “amnesty” policy to ensure assault survivors and witnesses aren’t disciplined for misconduct, such as underage drinking, around the time of an assault.
Maersk has signaled it is working to comply with the new prevention standards. It is seeking to hire a “Maritime Cultural Transformation Superintendent” to spearhead prevention and be responsible for “championing positive cultural changes that create dignity and respect” on its ships, according to a job posting. | 2022-06-14T22:26:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Merchant Marine Academy cadets suing Maersk, alleging assaults at sea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/06/14/merchant-marine-maersk-lawsuits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/06/14/merchant-marine-maersk-lawsuits/ |
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