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The GOP’s electoral trajectory is unaffected by Jan. 6 developments
A man an FBI agent identified as Ryan Kelley is among Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on the day of the insurrection. Kelley is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Michigan. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
The point of the House select committee’s investigation into the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is not explicitly to change minds. It is to understand what happened and how, with the aim of preventing similar events. But preventing similar events almost certainly demands changing minds about what occurred: about who was responsible for the day’s violence and why it was important.
This is why so much of the initial coverage of the committee’s new round of public hearings centered on possible impact. Members of the media were perhaps uniquely poorly suited to judge that impact, given that we are more likely than most Americans to already be familiar with some of the details presented, making them less surprising to hear. But that 20 million Americans watched the first hearing last week seemed significant: That’s substantially more people than watched the Oscars, for example.
None of those viewers were tuned to Fox News, however. Fox’s decision to shunt the hearing off to its lesser-watched subsidiaries had the expected effect of lowering viewership; instead, the flagship network aired misinformation about what had occurred on the day of the riot. It was a reminder that the group of Americans the House committee most hoped to reach — Republicans who accept Donald Trump’s claims about election fraud — were perhaps the least likely to tune in.
This week brought new political reminders of the extent to which the right and left diverge on views of Trump’s effort to retain power. In the first state primaries to follow the Jan. 6 committee’s more-public approach, Trump-endorsed candidates fared well, including some at the center of his efforts to spread false claims about the election.
But we should start with the biggest divergence on display.
On Tuesday, Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) lost the Republican primary to hold his seat in the House. Until the Capitol riot, that would have seemed unlikely; he is serving his fifth term in office and won his 2020 reelection by more than 20 points. But then he voted to impeach Trump after the insurrection, one of 10 Republicans to do so. Trump turned on him, and so did Trump supporters. His opponent, Russell Fry, managed not only to get more votes than Rice, but to get past the 50 percent mark to avoid a runoff. Rice was out.
About 20 percent of the votes in the race were cast early, many probably before the first prime-time hearing held by the House committee. But that means that 4 in 5 votes were cast on Election Day, after both the first hearing and the second, in which Trump’s claims about the election having been stolen were sliced apart. Yet, this does not appear to have convinced Republican primary voters that Rice’s vote for impeachment was warranted.
Contrast Rice’s fate with that of Ryan Kelley, a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Michigan. Kelley was not really a contender until a review of qualifying signatures for several front-runners led to their being disqualified from running. Suddenly, Kelley seemed like he had a shot … until he was arrested by federal agents last week on accusations that he had participated in the Capitol riot.
That arrest was on June 9. In the four days that followed, pollsters working for the Detroit Free Press asked Republican voters whom they planned to support in the governor’s race. Kelley led the field.
Granted, only barely — the field was pretty widely split. But Kelley’s far-right credentials probably were only bolstered by the arrest. In March, he joined Trump onstage during an event hosted at Mar-a-Lago. Kelley still may lose, of course, and there’s no saying that he would prevail in a general election fight. But there is not yet a significant sign that being arrested for having been at the Capitol is a deterrent to voters.
Nevada Republicans offered a similar hint in this week’s primaries. The contest for the nomination for the U.S. Senate was won by Adam Laxalt, the former state attorney general who joined Trump campaign allies shortly after the 2020 election at a news conference that elevated unfounded claims about voter fraud. One of the examples was of a Republican man who was startled to learn his deceased wife had cast a vote. That bereaved husband later pleaded guilty to casting the ballot himself.
By The Washington Post’s count, more than 100 Republican primary winners had embraced or accepted Trump’s false claims about the election. That was before the contests in Nevada and South Carolina; the Nevada GOP also nominated a secretary of state candidate who had spread unwarranted concerns about election security. And, again, those elections occurred after the new, public effort by the Jan. 6 committee to explain what happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
None of this means that the committee’s investigation will not have the desired effect on America’s understanding of the riot. But it may be too late. Republican voters are advancing a slew of candidates to November who have staked positions in alignment with Trump. Those candidates will be on the ballot in a general election that is expected to be unusually unfavorable to Democrats. The Trump-fraud position is baked in.
If the committee hasn’t convinced Americans by January, it probably will be too late. If, as expected, Republicans retake the House, the committee probably will not survive the week. | 2022-06-16T17:05:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The GOP’s electoral trajectory is unaffected by Jan. 6 developments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/gops-electoral-trajectory-remains-unaffected-by-jan-6-developments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/gops-electoral-trajectory-remains-unaffected-by-jan-6-developments/ |
Burkina Faso massacre highlights a strengthening insurgency
By Rachel Chason
Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, Burkina Faso's leader since a coup in January, speaks Wednesday in the city of Dori, where many fled when armed men descended Saturday on the village of Seytenga, killing at least 79 people. (Burkina Faso's Presidential Press Service/Reuters)
When Amadou Dicko heard the first shots, he knew he had to flee.
The 30-year-old told his family to leave their belongings and run as insurgents descended Saturday on Seytenga, a village in northern Burkina Faso. Gunmen killed at least 79 people in the attack that followed, government officials said, making it one of the deadliest since Islamist extremists gained a foothold in the West African nation seven years ago.
Dicko, whose best friend was fatally shot, described it as “total carnage.”
The massacre in Seytenga underscored the increasingly perilous security situation in Burkina Faso, where military leaders ousted the president in a coup in January. At the time, officers promised to restore peace to the country, where militants linked to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda have killed thousands and displaced more than 1.5 million.
But violence has only intensified under military rule. Attacks by insurgents have increased by 23 percent in the five months since Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba took power, compared with the five months before the coup, said Héni Nsaibia, a senior researcher at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). Fatalities — including civilians, militants and security forces — increased by 15 percent during the same time period, according to Nsaibia’s data.
“The militants have an interest in showing that it doesn’t matter if there is a new regime in place,” Nsaibia said. “They want to demonstrate that the previous president failed, but things aren’t going to change just because you have a military junta.”
Extremist violence was already on the rise under President Roch Marc Kaboré, rendering much of the countryside ungovernable. The death toll from insurgent attacks in Burkina Faso last year was higher than in Mali, making this landlocked nation of 21 million people the epicenter of the growing security crisis in the Sahel. Last summer, at least 138 people were killed in the northeastern village of Solhan in a massacre that was carried out mostly by child soldiers.
Although no group has claimed the attack in Seytenga, Nsaibia said a branch of the Islamic State, which is most active in that part of northern Burkina Faso, is probably responsible. In a sign of the government’s weakness, Nsaibia said, military police had withdrawn from the area last week after insurgents killed 11 officers.
Soon afterward, gunmen arrived in the village.
Many in the region were hoping the coup would bring improvements, said Alioune Tine, founder of the AfrikaJom Center, a human rights think tank based in Senegal.
“In fact," he said, “the situation is deteriorating. We’re really worried.”
Lionel Bilgo, a spokesman for the government, said the increase in terrorist violence “is in reality acts of reprisal due to the recent rise in power of the army.”
“The terrorists have suffered several offensives from our armed forces causing the loss of several of their fighters,” he said, adding that the country must come together to defeat extremism.
A security analyst based in the capital, Ouagadougou, said the new government should be supporting social and economic development in the country.
“We don’t have a clear strategy,” said the analyst, who was not authorized by his employer to speak to the media. “The strategy we do have is focused on using the military to fight terrorism. And every day we are losing.”
Eric Kinda, a spokesman for Le Balai Citoyen, a political grass-roots movement in Burkina Faso, said that many people are angry and that communication from the government is “totally out of step from reality.” Attacks like those on Seytenga, he said, undermine the official narrative that the army is in control.
“We wonder whether the state is capable of getting the country out of this situation of general chaos," Kinda said.
The escalating violence has led to mass job losses, at a time when the region is already grappling with historic inflation. Mines have been shut down because of security concerns and farmers are unable to work their land.
After the attack on Seytenga, thousands of people fled to Dori, a small city that’s the capital of Burkina Faso’s Sahel administrative region. Among them was Dicko, who said that people in Dori had welcomed them but that there were not enough resources for the displaced.
He said Tuesday that he was not sure where he would sleep that night, and hoped to return to Seytenga.
Above all, he said, he and his family just wanted to feel secure in their home.
Tall reported from Dakar, Senegal, and Chason from Washington. | 2022-06-16T17:06:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Massacre that left 79 dead highlights Burkina Faso's strengthening insurgency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/16/burkina-faso-massacre-extremists-coup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/16/burkina-faso-massacre-extremists-coup/ |
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — With a possible plebiscite on statehood or independence for Puerto Rico looming, one of the island’s two main parties said Thursday it will ask its members to reconsider or reaffirm its own stance on the U.S. territory’s political future by holding an islandwide vote on the issue. | 2022-06-16T17:06:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Puerto Rico party to hold vote on its political future - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/puerto-rico-party-to-hold-vote-on-its-political-future/2022/06/16/b39b1890-ed90-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/puerto-rico-party-to-hold-vote-on-its-political-future/2022/06/16/b39b1890-ed90-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
A quarter of Republicans view the Jan. 6 attack as justified
Republicans are also more likely to blame left-wing activists for the riot than Trump supporters.
Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (John Minchillo/AP)
For the most part, Americans have a shared view of the attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: It was an unwarranted attack for which Donald Trump and his supporters in Washington that day bear blame. But a substantial subset of Americans — including a large chunk of Trump’s own party — disagree.
The question of how Americans view the attack and its causes has been evaluated regularly over the past 17 months. This week, new polling conducted by YouGov for Yahoo News offers a new assessment, one of the first since the House select committee began its series of public hearings focused on the day’s violence.
What’s particularly useful about this new polling is that it breaks out the responses of a group salient to the issue: people who had watched the committee hearings. About half said that they hadn’t watched the hearings live or even later coverage of it. Among those who identified Fox News as their preferred cable news outlet, nearly half said they’d seen no coverage of the hearings. Given that this poll follows the Jan. 6 committee’s initial presentations, that group is broken out in many of the results below.
We can begin with the central question: Was the riot justified? Again, most Americans said no. But half of Republicans said either that it was or that they were not sure if it was. Interestingly, those who said that they didn’t watch coverage of the hearings were more likely to say that the attack was not justified than were Republicans.
On this question, though not others to the same extent, the views of the “didn’t watch” group mirror that of political independents.
YouGov also asked whether the attack was part of a conspiracy to overturn the election and, if so, whether Trump was at the center of it. Those who didn’t watch coverage of the committee hearing were less likely to view the day’s events as part of a conspiracy — but were more likely to say so than Republicans. Most Republicans said that the attack was not part of a conspiracy.
Perhaps the most remarkable finding centered on the causes of the riot. As noted above, most Americans point at Trump as deserving blame for the riot. But that’s true of only a quarter of Republicans and less than half of those who didn’t watch any hearing coverage.
Who do Republicans think deserve blame? Nearly three-quarters said that “left-wing protesters trying to make Trump look bad” deserved at least some blame for the attack — more than blamed Trump or even the Trump supporters obviously involved in the day’s violence. Among those who said they didn’t watch coverage of the House committee hearings, half blamed these theoretical leftists. (There is no evidence that anti-Trump protesters played any significant role in what occurred that day.)
One aspect of the poll that’s gained some attention since the Yahoo News-YouGov poll was released centered on Americans’ confidence in the future of democracy. More than half of the country is very concerned about the stability of our form of government; three-quarters have at least some concern.
In past polls, Republicans — triggered by Trump’s false claims about election fraud — have expressed more concern about the future of democracy. In this poll, though, Democrats are more likely to express concern, although by a narrow margin. Interestingly, younger Americans are less worried about it, mirroring other polling showing how age affects views of American democracy.
The goal of the House select committee’s work is to demonstrate to Americans what occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, and to make recommendations to prevent it from occurring again. One challenge is that less than half of Republicans think it could happen again. Unsurprisingly, so do less than half of those who didn’t watch any coverage of the hearings.
The events of Jan. 6, 2021, and particularly the processes and rhetoric that led up to that day, deserve broad explication. But many Americans aren’t watching and, overlapping with that group, many Republicans aren’t likely to be compelled by what the committee presents.
YouGov asked respondents if they thought the committee was “reporting the truth” about the attack. Only a third of Americans said they thought it was, with another 29 percent saying they weren’t sure. Sixty percent of Republicans said that the committee was not reporting the truth.
Analysis: Eastman telling Trump plan might be illegal isn’t new, but it’s important
5:26 PMJohn Wood, senior investigative counsel, to question witnesses
5:20 PMWhere is Pence?
5:19 PMRep. Cheney opens hearing by saying Pence ‘did exactly the right thing on January 6th’
5:18 PMCommittee chair: ‘We are fortunate for Mr. Pence’s courage’ | 2022-06-16T18:00:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A quarter of Republicans view the Jan. 6 attack as justified - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/quarter-republicans-view-jan-6-attack-justified/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/quarter-republicans-view-jan-6-attack-justified/ |
In Barre, Vt., granite is a way of life — and beyond
By Walter Nicklin
Outside the Vermont Granite Museum, a refurbished granite manufacturing “shed,” sits one of the locomotives that once transported the cut and shaped Barre granite. (Pat Nicklin for The Washington Post)
If one’s final earthly travel destination is a graveyard, then the penultimate stop might well be Barre, Vt., the self-proclaimed “granite center of the world.” Here, in the scenic foothills of the Green Mountains, are the quarries that produce many of America’s most sought-after tombstones.
Business is booming. The pandemic’s “excess mortality” has meant increased demand for quality granite to be quarried, then crafted into memorials. Moreover, as aging baby boomers realize they won’t live forever, they often embrace their own mortality by purchasing “pre-need memorials.”
Even if you don’t like the idea of picking your own tombstone, Barre (pronounced “Barry”) is worth a visit. You’ll gain an appreciation for what you may have previously taken for granted, or simply preferred not to contemplate — namely, gravestones. You’ll learn about their fascinating history, along with the remarkable industry and craft required in creating them. Most fundamentally, you’ll be exposed to the geological story behind the sturdy stone that carvers use to immortalize human transience.
In Vermont, a haven for dogs and the humans who love them
Although small (population less than 10,000), Barre is easy to find, just seven miles from the state capital of Montpelier. Signage for Exit 6 on Interstate 89 lets you know this is where the “Granite Quarries” are. You then might drive along Quarry Street or Stone Road on your way to a place called Graniteville. Along the way, you may pass the Cornerstone Pub & Kitchen, spot fence posts made out of granite and catch sight of what otherwise would be unremarkable commercial signs, such as for lawyers’ offices, engraved in granite.
Granite, granite, everywhere — highlighting the town’s economic raison d’etre and the stone artistry of its residents. In front of the public library stands a stone statue of Charles Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick. Another statue — of the poet Robert Burns, next to the Vermont History Center — was erected by the 19th-century Scottish masons who brought their stonecutting skills to Barre. On the other side of town is another, equally imposing statue personifying the Italian stonemasons who also brought their skills to Barre.
The European immigrants brought with them a tradition of organized labor, and Barre became the headquarters for the Quarry Workers’ International Union of North America. Still standing on Granite Street is the old Socialist Labor Party Hall, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
Rock of Ages — not the hymn but a quarry company with a visitor center of the same name — is perhaps Barre’s single biggest tourist draw, typically attracting more than 100,000 visitors annually. In the fall, when the leaves turn colorful, attendance peaks. But in mid-May, on the very first day it opened for the summer season, my wife, Pat, and I were pleased to find not much of a crowd. In fact, ours was one of only three cars in the caravan that Roger, the tour guide, led from the visitor center to the huge Rock of Ages excavation site called the E.L. Smith Quarry.
Still, Roger jotted on an index card the number of cars and the number of occupants in each car, so he could be sure that he could account for everyone at tour’s end — that no one had fallen and vanished into the massive hole in the ground. Covering about 50 acres and almost 600 feet deep, it lays claim to being the world’s largest operating deep-hole quarry for dimension stone. (Crushed stone — gravel — is the product of other quarries.)
Now retired after having worked most of his life in the quarry, Roger knew whereof he spoke. He explained that the granite quarried here — known as “Barre Gray” — is known worldwide for its fine grain, even texture and superior weather resistance. Its unique proportions of quartz and feldspar (granite’s main ingredients) make it especially hard while also exceptionally receptive to intricate carving and sculpting.
The granite was formed as intrusive igneous rock approximately 350 million years ago. Called a pluton by geologists, the Barre granite formation is calculated to be four miles long, two miles wide and 10 miles deep. Based on what had been extracted since the Barre quarries began operation in the 19th century, Roger estimated that “it would take 4,500 years to extract all the granite.”
Things to do in Burlington
Perched on the quarry’s edge was a chain-link fence to prevent visitors like us from falling in. I had seen many quarries over the years, but nothing like this. As if guarding a precious artwork, the fence barrier seemed to make the scene that much more spectacular, even otherworldly. The quarry’s sheer sides, where blocks and slabs had been cut away, looked like a huge canvas of abstract art, with oxidized water stains dripping like paint. At the very bottom was a turquoise pool, this seemingly out-of-place color created by granite sediments and crystals in the water when slabs of rock are cut. Framing the scene in the far distance, the distinctive outline of Camel’s Hump, Vermont’s third-highest peak, punctuates the horizon.
About five miles away is the Vermont Granite Museum, housed in a renovated manufacturing shed that dates from the turn of the last century. Although massive (about 30,000 square feet), it was called a “shed” for its open layout and cathedral-like ceiling. Machinery to cut and move the granite blocks was powered by a dam and turbines on the nearby Stevens Branch of the Winooski River. A railroad spur, leading directly to the shed, could then transport the finished stonework. Today’s visitors are transported back in time through hands-on exhibits and collections of rock specimens and old tools, even industrial rollers made of granite.
Nearby Hope Cemetery showcases local granite and the artistry it spawned. Established in 1895, the 65-acre, parklike setting is a splendid example of the 19th-century garden cemetery movement, which favored burials in rural, nonsectarian settings. The coincident, ever-more-popular use of granite for tombstones and memorials created an outdoor museum of sculpture. The once-prevalent sandstone slates and marble headstones proved much less enduring than granite.
I’ve been called a tombstone tourist for past pilgrimages to the dead-celebrity-populated burial ground Père Lachaise in Paris and Cimitero Acattolico, the Roman cemetery where the poet John Keats’s gravestone famously reads, “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.” But you don’t have to be a melancholic taphophile to appreciate the artistry on display in Hope Cemetery, such as a Pietà-like statue and realistic representations of violins and airplanes. It’s the “Uffizi of Necropolises,” in the words of Vermont folklorist Joseph A. Citro. All of the monuments are made of Barre Gray, and virtually all have been sculpted by Barre stonemasons — some for their own graves before they died.
For Pat and me, who had lost one old friend to covid-19, a lone granite memorial in Hope Cemetery seemed especially poignant. Erected on the centenary of the 1918 pandemic, it commemorated the many Barre residents who had died of the flu. They had suffered disproportionately because of their existing silicosis (called stonecutters’ disease) from inhaling granite dust while working in unventilated sheds.
Our visit to Barre was not all about death and granite, however. The trip easily included the Vermont fare of covered bridges, village greens, white church spires and maple syrup. Indeed, Pat insisted that we experience that quintessential summertime taste of the Green Mountain State: a frosty creemee. “What’s that?” I asked. The delicious answer came at the Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks: towering swirls of soft ice cream, especially creamy, served in a cup or cone, accented with a generous portion of maple syrup or straight maple sugar.
As granite is hard and enduring, a creemee is soft and ephemeral — a most harmonious balance.
Nicklin is a writer based in Virginia and Maine. Find him on Twitter: @RoadTripRedux.
Ladder 1 Grill and Pub
8 S. Main St., Barre, Vt.
ladder1grill.com
Located in an old firehouse, this grill and pub’s wide-ranging menu offers steak, burgers, soups, salads, pizza, pasta and more than 25 appetizers. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Hero sandwiches to honor firefighters from about $10.
Delicate Decadence
14 N. Main St. Suite 1006, Barre
delicate-decadence.com
Self-described as “Barre’s hometown bakery,” Delicate Decadence features an assortment of specialty coffees and fresh baked goods, such as cakes and croissants, as well as homemade soups and quiche for a light lunch. Open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Open Sunday by appointment only.
558 Graniteville Rd., Graniteville
rockofages.com/tourism
Exhibits, photos and a video presentation provide an informative look into the quarrying and manufacturing processes. The visitor center includes a gift shop with natural stones mementos. An approximately 40-minute guided caravan tour to the nearby quarry is offered four times daily, Monday to Friday, May to October. Tours $7 per adult, $6.50 per person 62 and over, $4 per child 6 to 13, and children under 5 free.
7 Jones Brothers Way, Barre
vtgranitemuseum.org/visit
Located in a granite manufacturing “shed,” the museum is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its purpose is to engage, educate and celebrate with the heritage and current accomplishments of Vermont’s granite industry. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., May to October. Admission $8 per adult, $6 per senior, $4 per child and $18 for families. Adult group rate $5; child group rate $3.
Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks
1168 County Rd., Montpelier
morsefarm.com
Free sugarhouse tours and tastings. Farm store with Vermont specialty foods and crafts. Open daily year-round, but hours vary seasonally. (Check website for hours.) Open daily 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in summer.
bit.ly/barre-vermont | 2022-06-16T18:31:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Exploring Barre, Vt., in the foothills of the Green Mountains - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/16/barre-vermont-granite-travel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/16/barre-vermont-granite-travel/ |
These polar bears have found a way to survive without sea ice
Polar bears in southeast Greenland are able to use glaciers to hunt for prey all year round, but their population is still not immune to climate change
An adult female polar bear (left) and two 1-year-old cubs walk over snow-covered freshwater glacier ice in Southeast Greenland in March 2015. (Kristin Laidre/University of Washington)
For centuries, sea ice was deemed essential for polar bears to survive. Generations of the Arctic bears ventured onto the slabs of floating ice to travel long distances and prey on unsuspecting seals. As climate change shrank sea ice concentrations, many of these populations struggled to thrive.
But now researchers have found a new genetic population of polar bears in Greenland that don’t rely on sea ice to hunt, rewriting how we think about the sea bears and their ability to adapt to a warming planet. Scientists described their discovery of this 20th subpopulation of polar bears in a study released Thursday in the journal Science.
“This was just a wholly unexpected finding,” said lead author Kristin Laidre in an interview. “They are the most genetically isolated polar bears in the world, and they’re different from all the other currently accepted 19 subpopulations around the Arctic.”
Much of the population’s uniqueness comes from their remote location in the southeast corner of Greenland. The Greenland ice sheet borders them to the west, while open ocean borders them to the east, limiting their travel and interaction with other polar bear populations. The team isn’t certain how the bears got there, but the data suggested they have probably been isolated in the region for hundreds of thousands of years. Their unique genetic makeup may have evolved over several hundred years of isolation.
Laidre said this new subpopulation — estimated to number in just the hundreds — lives at the most southern reaches of polar bear distribution, technically in the subarctic region. As a result, this region also experiences shorter sea ice seasons than other polar bear habitats on the island.
“They're very local bears. They don't move very far. They stay in the same fjord for years,” said Laidre. “They have sea ice on average about 100 days per year, and we know that's just way too short for a polar bear to survive.”
Instead of relying exclusively on sea ice, the polar bears adapted and hunt from glacial ice protruding from the ice sheet. While other polar bear populations must move to new locations during the ice-free seasons, these bears move to the back of the fjords against the glacier fronts. They use these glaciers as platform to hunt seals all year round.
The study’s authors say the discovery of this unusual behavior is enlightening, especially as climate change continues to shrink the region’s sea ice.
“When we’re looking to the future and we’re looking at an ice-free Arctic, we ask, ‘Where are the places that polar bears can hang on? Where might they be able to survive or persist?’” said Laidre.
Rising global temperatures have reduced Arctic sea ice concentrations by 13 percent each decade since 1979. Climate models project sea ice conditions in the heavily polar bear-populated regions in the High Arctic will deteriorate even further later this century. The sea ice season could become as meager as currently seen in this region of southeast Greenland, which is void of ice for more than eight months.
Earth is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. And it’s going to get worse.
“What’s neat about this population is that they’re really living in a habitat that we thought was beyond the physiological capacity of these bears to survive,” said Beth Shapiro, a study author and evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Shapiro said the team doesn’t know if the bears hold a specific genetic mutation that helps them adapt to this habitat, but would like to investigate any links in the future.
Despite this adaptation, the bears are not immune from climate change. Just as the Greenland ice sheet is losing mass each year, glaciers around the ice sheet are also retreating. However, projections show the southeast edge of the ice sheet and nearby glaciers not retreating as quickly as other highly bear-populated areas.
“Some changes that we anticipate with climate change may occur more rapidly than we expected, while others may occur more slowly,” Twila Moon, a study author and researcher at the National Snow & Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said in an email. “As sea ice continues to decline, glacial ice may remain available for longer.”
Greenland ice sheet experiences record loss to calving of glaciers and ocean melt in 2021
Even if glacier ice is available longer, the researchers said there are very few places in the Arctic where this type of glacial ice is accessible to polar bears. Such environments only exist in this region of Greenland and in Svalbard, Norway.
“There are a limited number of places in the Arctic where this type of glacial ice is available, however, so using glacial ice is not an option for many Arctic polar bear populations,” wrote Moon.
John Whiteman, who serves as the chief research scientist at nonprofit Polar Bears International and was not involved in the study, agreed that this finding does not change the fate of polar bears.
“This paper reinforces that polar bears are exclusively reliant on ice; what is unique here is that the source of the ice is a glacier rather than sea ice,” Whiteman said in an email. “This strategy does not offer a long-term home for polar bears.” | 2022-06-16T18:31:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Newly discovered polar bears found a way to survive without sea ice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/16/greenland-polar-bears-sea-ice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/16/greenland-polar-bears-sea-ice/ |
The cosmetics giant is attempting to get out from under its heavy debt load amid soaring prices and a snarled supply chain
Multinational beauty giant Revlon has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, court filings show, weighed down by heavy debt, disruptions to its supply chain network and surging costs. (Elise Amendola/AP)
The company said in a news release that it expects $575 million in financing if the plan wins court approval. The additional funds will support the company’s daily operations. Under the Chapter 11 filing, the company is able to continue operating while reorganizing its outstanding debt.
Before the coronavirus crisis, Revlon faced growing competition from start-ups backed by celebrities including Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics and Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, which siphoned many of its younger consumers.
But the pandemic only exacerbated those problems as sales of lipsticks — Revlon’s iconic product — curtailed when people masked up. Worldwide net sale fell 20 percent, from $2.4 billion in 2019 to $1.9 billion a year later. In November 2020, Revlon avoided a bankruptcy filing after receiving enough bondholder support.
While Perelman said during the March earnings call that the supply chain head winds are “temporary” and Revlon had sourced additional vendors for presented challenges to the global supply chain. Shipping from China to the United States doubled in time and quadrupled in cost compared with 2019, the company said.
Corporate bankruptcy filings have reached the lowest levels in early 2022, according to S&P Market Intelligence data, which excludes the smallest business filings. As of the end of May, 143 bankruptcies have been filed this year, compared with 203 in 2021 and 263 in 2020 during the same period. Among the 143 bankruptcies, only three are retail filings.
However, Revlon’s filing — the first from a major consumer-facing business in years — could signal a downtown in the consumer discretionary sector, which encompasses largely companies selling nonessential products and are sensitive to the business cycle. | 2022-06-16T18:35:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Revlon files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/16/revlon-bankruptcy-chapter-11/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/16/revlon-bankruptcy-chapter-11/ |
The excavation of the KaraDjigach site, in the Chu-Valley within the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan, in August 1886. (A.S. Leybin/AFP/Getty Images)
Today, he is known only by the inscription on his burial stone: “This is the tomb of the believer Sanmaq. [He] died of pestilence.”
That brief detail provided a tantalizing clue for historian Philip Slavin, an associate professor at the University of Sterling in Scotland. He wondered if Sanmaq—along with 117 other people buried with him in 1338 and 1339 at cemeteries in what is now northern Kyrgyzstan—could have been killed by the bubonic plague. Emerging in full force in Europe around eight years later, that pernicious pandemic claimed as many as 200 million lives across Europe, Asia and Africa during the 14th century.
“I was almost 100 percent certain it was the beginning of the Black Death,” Slavin told Science magazine
Now DNA research has confirmed his suspicion. Genetic material extracted from seven bodies shows that they had been infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for one of the largest infectious disease catastrophes in human history. This strain started a deluge of death that would devastate human populations for the next 500 years. The plague first reached the United States in 1900, where it killed 119 people during an outbreak in San Francisco.
In a study published Wednesday in the science journal Nature, Slavin and a team of international researchers claim to offer historical proof that Central Asia is where the late medieval bubonic plague actually began.
“Our study puts to rest one of the biggest and most fascinating questions in history and determines when and where the single most notorious and infamous killer of humans began,” Slavin said in a statement.
The historian said he always had been fascinated by the plague and began to wonder about its origins when he learned of the graves in Kyrgyzstan, a country located north of Afghanistan. The ancient cemetery had been discovered by Russian researchers in 1880s. Remains of 30 individuals had been moved to the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg.
“Despite the risk of environmental contamination and no guarantee that the bacteria would have been able to be preserved, we were able to sequence aDNA (ancient DNA) taken from seven individuals unearthed from two of these cemeteries,” said one of the study’s authors, Maria Spyrou of the University of Tubingen, in a statement. “Most excitingly, we found aDNA of the plague bacterium in three individuals.”
The plague first struck Europe in 1347 from ships sailing on the Mediterranean Sea after appearing beforehand around the Black Sea. It spread quickly, killing an estimated 60 percent of people in Asia, Europe, Middle East and North Africa. It ravaged populations globally for centuries until scientists discovered that fleas borne on rats were responsible for spreading the bacterium.
Initially known as the Plague or the Pestilence, people began to call it the Black Death in the 1750s, primarily because many victims exhibited tissue blackened by gangrene. The disease causes lymph nodes, or buboes—the source of the term “bubonic”—to swell and ooze pus. Most infected people died.
The 14th-century outbreak is remembered today as the Second Plague Pandemic, which followed another deadly disaster, the Great Famine of 1315-1317. The First Plague Pandemic occurred from 541 to 767 and is believed to have been an earlier form of the bacterium.
Researchers and historians have postulated about the origins of the second pandemic since it began. Some believed it started in China and moved westward with the invasions of the Mongol Empire about the same time. This new evidence disputes that theory, though.
In 2011, scientists sequenced the genome of Yersinia pestis from two bodies found in a burial pit in London. Using computer programs, they were able to determine the evolution of the bacterium from earlier versions dating back 5,000 years.
A war with Russia led Florence Nightingale to revolutionize nursing
“Just like COVID, the Black Death was an emerging disease, and the start of a huge pandemic that went on for some 500 years,” another of the study’s authors, Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, said in a statement. “It’s very important to understand actually in what circumstances did it emerge.”
The plague strain eventually evolved into a less lethal variety. Amazingly, the research team discovered that bacterium on wild rodents that still traverse the terrain near Sanmaq’s grave in Kyrgyzstan.
“What’s really remarkable is that today, in the rodents living in that region, we have the closest living relatives of that big bang strain (of plague bacteria),” Krause said at a news briefing. “We found not just the ancestor of the Black Death, but we actually found the ancestor of the majority of plague strains that are circulating in the world today.” | 2022-06-16T18:35:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black Death began in Central Asia, DNA analysis reveals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/16/black-death-kyrgyzstan-central-asia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/16/black-death-kyrgyzstan-central-asia/ |
An important Virginia criminal justice reform is threatened
By Jennifer B. Boysko
Jennifer B. Boysko, a Democrat, represents Fairfax in the Virginia state Senate.
The expansion of Earned Sentence Credits (ESCs), which I introduced in the 2020 legislative session, is again under fire in Richmond as the General Assembly awaits the governor’s amendments to the annual budget. Ideological opponents of criminal justice reform have made this data-driven reform into a political football since its passage.
The measure has been extensively debated and is finally set to take effect July 1. About 1,000 incarcerated Virginians and their families have been counting on the legislation to take effect as written. They have completed all the steps laid out for them and are now waiting for the commonwealth to uphold its side of the bargain.
The governor is using a budget amendment to partially repeal the ESC reform and revoke the commonwealth’s promise.
The idea behind ESCs is simple. When we send someone to prison, we do not do so merely for the purpose of punishment. The Department of Corrections is charged with providing opportunities so that the person convicted of a crime can reflect on what he or she did wrong and find a new path.
These credits are an incentive for people to make that progress while serving their sentences and to behave well while incarcerated. If an incarcerated person makes the progress the law asks for, they get a small reduction in their sentence. These credits also help people stay on the right path once they get out because they have built the skills needed to succeed in society.
Politicians hoping to make headlines by scaring voters want to frame the people being released as a threat to public safety. This could not be further from the truth. Those being released committed their offenses long ago and have proved themselves to have been rehabilitated. More serious offenses — crimes of serious violence, sexual assaults, kidnapping and the like — are excluded from receiving additional ESCs, meaning that most of those who have earned their release are charged with financial crimes and drug offenses.
For incarcerated people and their families, these small reductions are meaningful. A father comes home to his children a little sooner. A husband comes home to his wife a little sooner. Families are reunited. Redemption can be a long journey, but once someone comes to the end, you can truly say that he or she has earned freedom. Denying people that opportunity is another example of cruel and petty politics harming Virginia families.
Jason was convicted in 2013 of breaking into an unoccupied house and stealing some property stored there and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was scheduled to be released in 2025 without the change in the Earned Sentence Credit law. Expecting the new law to take effect in July, the Virginia Department of Corrections told Jason he would be released this summer. His family enrolled him in driving courses so he could get his license back and set him up with a job in a shipyard. They bought him clothes in preparation for his release, and he is excited to meet his new grandson this summer. Jason and his family have relied on the law as written and made plans according to the Department of Corrections notice. If the governor’s repeal takes effect, Jason will not be released until 2025, three more years after being told he would be released this summer.
Jason is only one example of many who would have their promise of release cruelly snatched from them by the governor’s amendment. There are many hundreds of people who are waiting in Virginia prisons. They have been rehabilitated. They have learned their lessons. These men and women have worked so hard to redeem themselves. They have done everything they can to follow the rules we lawmakers have set for them, and they now are threatened with having the rug pulled out from under their feet.
We cannot create a system of reform if the people we govern cannot trust the laws we have set in place. Earned Sentence Credits not only make it more likely that incarcerated people will come home with skills that will ensure that they do not return to prison, but they also give those in prison the incentive to follow the rules and change for the better.
If the governor and General Assembly change the rules for Earned Sentence Credits at the 11th hour, they will have sabotaged this important reform. We must not allow that to happen. | 2022-06-16T18:36:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | An important Virginia criminal justice reform is threatened - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/an-important-virginia-criminal-justice-reform-is-threatened/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/an-important-virginia-criminal-justice-reform-is-threatened/ |
Why some Americans want to destroy democracy in order to save it
(Caitlin O'Hara for The Washington Post)
Most of us grew up hearing that America is “the oldest democracy in the world,” an island of stability in a world of disorder. Other, less civilized countries endure coups and sham elections, suffer through dictatorship and dream that one day their systems might resemble ours. We might have our contentious moments, but through it all, the near-perfection of American democracy endures.
But we no longer seem to believe it. A new Yahoo News-YouGov poll asked people whether America is becoming a more or less democratic country, and 58 percent — including 60 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Republicans — said it is becoming less democratic.
Even more alarming, 55 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of Republicans said it was likely that “America will cease to be a democracy in the future.”
Underneath that agreement, Democrats and Republicans think about both the threat and the solution in opposite ways. And in the near term at least, Republicans — who want to actively accelerate the destruction of American democracy (even if they describe what they’re doing as just the opposite) — have the upper hand.
There are obvious limits to what such a poll can tell us. We don’t know what every respondent thinks when they hear the word “democracy,” and there will always be people ready to say everything is going to hell. But at the very least, the results suggest a deep well of pessimism about our political future.
I’ve seen it lately among my liberal friends, and perhaps you have, too. Even the ones whose work involves trying to improve the world are feeling something close to despair. What they see is a system that was already undemocratic, built on structures and practices such as the appalling inequality of the U.S. Senate (where 600,000 Wyoming residents have the same two votes as 40 million Californians), the filibuster, and gerrymandering, and is now under siege by a party that is eagerly nominating deranged conspiracy theorists and radical extremists to run that very system.
When liberals say they fear democracy will cease to exist, they’re responding to overwhelming evidence that the Republican Party, the beneficiary of all those advantages that enable its minority rule, has utterly abandoned any commitment to democracy, if they ever had one to begin with.
Under the leadership of possibly the most corrupt president in American history — still their god-king no matter how high his misdeeds pile up — they justify a violent attempt to overturn a presidential election, spin insane fictions of voter fraud conspiracies, pass law after law to make voting harder, and cheer the use of state power to target their enemies.
Worst of all from the perspective of liberals, it seems to be working. A strategy of chaos, it turns out, is easier to implement than a strategy meant to shore up vulnerable institutions.
Democrats work diligently to devise procedures to make partisan mischief less effective and assiduously fact-check every preposterous GOP claim. And they worry it all may be for naught.
As for Republicans, when they say “democracy” might cease to exist, what do they mean? It’s hard to discern much beyond the idea that if Democrats win an election and try to implement the policies they got elected on, then democracy has been destroyed.
Remember that when Barack Obama was president, Republicans cried endlessly that every policy decision he made was “tyranny,” driven by his secret desire to destroy the country. The fact that his eight years as an ordinary center-left Democratic president didn’t actually destroy the country did not change their minds. The “tyranny,” as far as they were concerned, came from the simple fact that Democrats were in charge.
When they say they fear for democracy’s survival, what they’re afraid of is the idea that we might continue to have a competitive system, in which elections are contested, sometimes Democrats win, and when they do they get to implement their policies.
One struggles to discern how much of this is sincere, and how much just a useful fiction. But my guess is that for the Republican elite it’s an act, and for their base it’s genuinely felt.
The rhetorical legal scam of “originalism” taught Republicans an important lesson: The more radical you want to be, the more useful it is to pretend your agenda is the truest manifestation of the divine will of the Framers. Grab a quote from the Federalist Papers or a letter James Madison wrote to his tailor, then brandish it as proof that the only course faithful to the Constitution is to destroy collective bargaining, flood the streets with military-style weapons, allow billionaires to buy elections, or whatever else it is that conservatives want to do.
If your agenda is the only living expression of the country’s sainted founders and sacred texts, then any political victory by your opponents must by definition be a blow against the country and democracy itself.
While Republican leaders know it’s a con, the rank-and-file bought into it. And today they’ve convinced themselves that “democracy” means having elections overseen not by non-partisan, independent civil servants but by the most partisan, conspiracy-addled right-wing extremists. Only that will ensure that Republicans always win, and only a system where Republicans always win is truly democratic.
And if they get their way, the liberals who fear democracy’s end will turn out to be right. | 2022-06-16T18:36:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Why some Americans want to destroy democracy in order to save it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/destroy-democracy-in-order-to-save-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/destroy-democracy-in-order-to-save-it/ |
FIFA set to announce host cities for 2026 World Cup
The 2026 World Cup will be staged in North America. (Mary Altaffer/AP Photo)
FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, will name at least 16 venues Thursday to host games in the 2026 World Cup, which will be played in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The announcement will come at 5 p.m. Eastern in New York. Fox Sports 1 and Spanish-language Universo will provide coverage.
At least 10 U.S. markets are expected to be selected from a field of 16, which includes a joint bid between Washington and Baltimore. Mexico and Canada have three candidates apiece.
Rarely in the tournament’s 92-year history has the nation’s capital (or its immediate area) not hosted World Cup games, but because FedEx Field in Landover, Md., received low grades from tournament officials, FIFA and the U.S. Soccer Federation this spring encouraged Washington and Baltimore to merge.
The World Cup draw is set. Here’s what that means for the USMNT.
Under the revised proposal, M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore would stage matches and the District would host large-scale watch parties on the National Mall and other ancillary events associated with the quadrennial men’s tournament.
Other contenders are Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, Cincinnati, Nashville, Kansas City, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
All except Orlando proposed NFL stadiums. The minimum seating capacity for the World Cup is 40,000, which rules out most MLS facilities. (NFL and MLS teams share large stadiums in the Boston, Atlanta and Seattle markets.)
Each of the proposed Mexican venues — Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City — are expected to make the cut. Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver are vying for at least two Canadian slots.
The number of first-round games each venue will stage, as well as the specific locations of elimination matches, has not been determined. Though the eight round-of-16 matches will be held in each country, the quarterfinals and beyond will take place in the United States.
The World Cup was last held in the United States in 1994. Mexico hosted in 1970 and ’86. The 2026 tournament will be the first featuring 48 teams, an increase from 32, a number that has been in place since 1998.
The 2022 World Cup will be played in Qatar, which upset the United States for hosting rights in a vote the U.S. Justice Department said was wrought with improprieties. Because of the Middle East’s summer heat, the competition was pushed from its usual summer months to November and December. | 2022-06-16T18:36:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FIFA to announce 2026 World Cup host cities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/2026-world-cup-host-cities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/2026-world-cup-host-cities/ |
Sue Bird will end her legendary WNBA career after this season
Sue Bird announced that she will retire at the end of this WNBA season. (Matt York/Associated Press File)
Sue Bird, one of the all-time great women’s basketball players, will retire after this season, her 21st in the WNBA.
“I’ve decided this will be my final year,” Bird tweeted, along with a photo of herself today next to an image of her as a little girl. “I have loved every single minute, and still do, so gonna play my last year, just like this little girl played her first.”
Bird, a five-time Olympic gold medalist and four-time WNBA champion, said she considered retiring after last season but signed a one-year deal with the Seattle Storm. The No. 1 overall pick in 2002, Bird, 41, has spent her entire professional career with the Storm and has been a 12-time all-star. During her college career playing for Geno Auriemma, Connecticut won two NCAA championships.
The timing “is what it is,” Bird said in a video tweeted by the Storm, explaining that the team has started what will be her last regular-season East Coast swing. Bird grew up in New York.
“I kind of knew this was going to be my last year, but I wanted to be for sure about it before I announced the retirement or did anything that was so, like, final,” said Bird, who is engaged to soccer legend Megan Rapinoe. “Once I saw the schedule and once I started packing for the trip a little bit, I was like, ‘this is going to be my last time playing in New York, my last time playing in front of my family and friends.’ That’s why the timing of this is what it is.”
The decision was “bittersweet,” she said with a sigh. The Storm plays Friday in Connecticut, Sunday in New York City and June 23 in Washington.
“I just really felt strongly about announcing my retirement and saying this was going to be my last year so I could share that with my family and my friends and all the people who watched me growing up, so they could come see me play for the last time in my home state.” | 2022-06-16T18:36:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sue Bird to retire from WNBA's Seattle Storm - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/sue-bird-retire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/sue-bird-retire/ |
‘Overwatch 2’ to go free-to-play, with three to four new heroes per year
(Washington Post illustration; Blizzard Entertainment)
This week, Blizzard wants to demonstrate that Overwatch, a fantasy team-based shooter franchise set in cities on a futuristic Earth, is adapting by launching “Overwatch 2” as a live service game with perpetual updates for fans to enjoy.
First in a trailer at the Microsoft showcase on Sunday and then in a longer than 30-minute broadcast on Thursday, Blizzard announced the upcoming “Overwatch 2” will be free-to-play, starting on Oct. 4, with a planned year-long road map of free updates for fans. The company’s decision to make “Overwatch 2” free-to-play represents a fundamental shift in the business model for the franchise, as more triple-AAA studios release live service games supported by in-game content fans can then pay for.
“I feel like the biggest change coming to Overwatch isn’t just what’s happening on Oct. 4,” Aaron Keller, the game director for “Overwatch 2,” said in a conversation with members of the media on Tuesday. “The biggest change that is coming is everything that we’re going to be releasing afterward. We are so committed to putting out more content than we ever have before.”
In a broadcast on Thursday, the team behind “Overwatch 2” revealed the game will operate around nine-week seasons. Starting on Oct. 4, the sequel will have three new heroes, six new maps and the new game mode, Push. At the start of every season, Blizzard will release another hero, map or game mode as a free update to the game. The three heroes coming in October will include Sojourn, who was first announced this spring, Junker Queen, an Australian hero Blizzard unveiled on Sunday, and an unnamed support hero. (Eagle-eyed fans may have noticed what appears to be a hint: a fox-like specter prancing through the trailer posted Sunday.)
Junker Queen, a seven-foot hero who wields a battle ax, represents Blizzard’s new philosophy for the tank role in “Overwatch 2.” Many of the tanks in the original “Overwatch” acted as movable walls, providing shields for teammates to cover against enemy fire. This, in turn, lead to defensive, back-and-forth stalemates in matches. More than half the Overwatch heroes have been reworked in the sequel and there’s one less tank position in the team lineup. Geoff Goodman, the lead designer for Overwatch, said Blizzard wants tanks to, generally, play more aggressively in the sequel.
It’s not about what’s new to ‘Overwatch 2.’ It’s what’s been removed.
In the conversation with members of the media on Tuesday, Keller said Blizzard is committed to releasing three to four new heroes, as well as three to four new maps, per year. Blizzard has only released a road map through 2023 but Keller said his team is dedicated to putting out new content for “Overwatch 2” “frequently and consistently in perpetuity.” Keller added that the free-to-play model is the easiest way for Blizzard to fund these ongoing updates.
“We’ve taken a lot of measures over the last few years to grow the team to be able to handle the amount of work it’s going to take,” Keller said. “We’re over three times the size we were when the game first launched.”
For the past year, Blizzard has been contending with accusations of harassment and toxicity at the studio, as well as a series of high-profile departures. It started last April when Jeff Kaplan, the longtime game director and the public face for the franchise, left the company, leaving Keller to shepherd the sequel to the finish line.
Last summer, Blizzard Entertainment was also named extensively in a lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed against Activision Blizzard, a conglomerate overseeing the studio and other companies, alleging that the giant video game publisher had a “frat boy culture.” Last year, 17 current and former Blizzard employees interviewed by The Post detailed a working environment where women faced multiple incidents of harassment. Blizzard later renamed a popular Overwatch hero McCree because the character’s name was originally a nod to a game designer, Jesse McCree, who left the company in the wake of the lawsuit.
Responding to a question about how the leadership changes at Blizzard and accusations of harassment have affected the team developing “Overwatch 2,” Keller said he was “so proud” of what the team has been able to accomplish this past year. Dion Rogers, the art director for Overwatch, followed up on Keller’s answer, adding that there’s “a lot of great positivity on the team” for the sequel.
“Aaron and I have worked together well over a decade and I couldn’t have been more excited to see him lead the game into the future,” Rogers said. “It’s like a group of friends building this big game together and I have a lot of trust in Aaron. And, I know the team does as well.”
In recent years, fans of the Overwatch franchise have been frustrated by the lack of updates to the original game. The heroes in Overwatch are the heart of the franchise, but prior to Blizzard’s introduction of Sojourn this spring it had been two years since the developer had introduced a new hero.
“We know that the top reason why some players have stopped playing Overwatch has been that they just want more content,” said Jon Spector, the vice president for Overwatch, on Tuesday. “We’re geared up to meet those player expectations and regularly deliver exciting new content.”
Going along with Blizzard’s season-long plans, battle passes will be replacing Overwatch’s loot boxes, providing players a way to pay for rare cosmetic items and other rewards. Though Keller declined to answer specific questions regarding how much the battle passes or other in-game content will cost players. A spokesperson for Blizzard said the company is preparing to release more regarding the battle pass system and the in-game shop for the sequel later this year.
Report: Video game developers want fair online games. Some players really don’t.
Millions of people tuned in on Twitch when the alpha for “Overwatch 2″ released in April on PC. But, as the novelty of the new five-on-five format wore off, some people started to question whether “Overwatch 2” was truly a sequel — or, rather, just a hefty overhaul of the original game. The campaign for the sequel, which is supposed to dramatically move forward the lore behind the franchise, isn’t planned to release until some time next year.
Keller says this is a natural question players may have after playing the alpha, but to him, the franchise has fundamentally transformed with “Overwatch 2.” Blizzard has made “across the board” updates to the nuts and bolts holding Overwatch together, from the audio engine to the game’s servers, Keller said. The hope is that the new tools for the game engine will allow the team to iterate and improve for faster updates. The plan is to just continue to build on the foundation that’ll release in October.
“Overwatch 2 is about everything that’s coming to the game later through seasonal releases,” Keller said. “ So, for us, it’s the same vision. We have the same vision for the game we have always had. We’re just releasing it differently.”
Blizzard’s decision to make “Overwatch 2” free-to-play represents a fundamental shift in the franchise’s business model. The sequel wasn’t always intended to be free at release. Spector said Blizzard decided to make the sequel free-to-play because it’ll remove barriers to entry, allowing the franchise to grow its audience. On top of that, “Overwatch 2” will allow for both cross-platform and cross-progression play, meaning that fans will be able to compete with other players across any console, all while using one Overwatch account.
“Free to play for us is about growing the audience,” Spector said. “This game is a game that is at its most fun when you can jump in and play with your friends.” | 2022-06-16T18:37:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Overwatch 2 will release free-to-play Oct. 4 with three new heroes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/16/overwatch-2-release-date-free/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/16/overwatch-2-release-date-free/ |
New D.C. fund takes $95 million aim at systemic health disparities
The first $10 million will focus on economic mobility and wealth-building
Imani Mark gives a dose of coronavirus vaccine last summer in Ward 8. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
A new fund in the District plans to dispense $95 million in grants, starting next month, to address health disparities.
But the Health Equity Fund, managed by the Greater Washington Community Foundation, is not primarily targeting clinical care. Instead, it will fund community-based nonprofits to tackle systemic factors such as income and access to housing — which research has shown drives 80 percent of population health outcomes.
“If we can change the prospects for how our Black and Brown neighbors generate and share wealth, we will ultimately improve the quality of life for everyone who works and raises a family in the city,” said Tonia Wellons, president and CEO of the foundation.
The Health Equity Fund was created last year, after the insurer CareFirst agreed to pay the $95 million to end a 13-year legal battle with the city. The initial round of grants will focus on funding 40 community-based programs that are working to improve people’s economic stability, including through access to food and safe-neighborhood initiatives. The last day for organizations to apply is July 24.
The remaining $85 million will be distributed in the following three years toward health policy advocacy, partnerships with hospitals and health systems, and behavioral-health and trauma-informed systems of care. Areas of the city with high needs and concentrated poverty, such as Wards 7 and 8, will be prioritized, Wellons said.
People’s most determinant experiences occur outside the health-care system, and interventions that focus only on health behavior cannot fully address health inequities, said Derek Griffith, co-director of the Racial Justice Institute and professor of health systems administration at Georgetown University.
“Whether somebody has equal opportunities as others to get a good education, get a good job, get fair employment opportunities, fair engagement with police and criminal justice, all of those things very much shaped the opportunities they have to be healthy,” Griffith said.
There is a causal relationship between poverty and poor health outcomes, Wellons said. Higher incomes, meanwhile, are linked to better health, and a 2018 D.C. Department of Health report found that the greater the gap that existed between the richest and poorest residents of an area, the greater the differences were in health outcomes.
In the District, an estimated of 14.4 percent of residents lived at or below $15,000 per year, higher than the national average of 12 percent, in 2015 inflation-adjusted dollars, the same 2018 study found. In 2019, the median D.C. household income for White residents was $149,734, more than three times higher than the $49,652 median income of Black residents, according to the D.C. Council Office of Racial Equity.
And more than two years into the pandemic, its economic stressors have only exacerbated people’s ability to stay healthy, maintain employment and have enough resources for their families, Griffith said. The fund, Wellons said, is not only an economic investment but also an opportunity to create partnerships with organizations that can inform the city about policy barriers that affect health.
The Health Equity Committee — a seven-member group appointed by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) — and the Greater Washington Community Foundation will review and approve proposals and oversee how the funds are invested.
Nonprofit organizations with operating budgets of $750,000 or less are eligible for grants ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 per year. Those above $750,000 are eligible for grants ranging from $150,000 to $200,000 annually.
“We know that our communities of color have been disinvested in for many, many years, for many generations, so part of our ambition is to target these resources toward the communities that need them, require them and deserve them the most,” she said. | 2022-06-16T19:01:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DC Health Equity Fund targets racial disparities in health care - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/dc-health-equity-fund-racism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/dc-health-equity-fund-racism/ |
Anti-vaccine doctor sentenced to prison for Jan. 6 trespassing
A federal judge blasted Simone Gold for using her legal woes to raise $430,000 for herself and her organization.
Simone Gold, shown here last year, was sentenced to 60 days in jail for trespassing in the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack. (John Clanton/Tulsa World via AP)
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Simone Gold, the founder of the anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Doctors, to 60 days in jail for trespassing in the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, blasting her for using her legal woes to raise $430,000 for herself and her organization.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper said that Gold, who pleaded guilty in March, failed to show remorse or accept responsibility for her actions during the riot. He noted she had claimed in an interview with The Washington Post that “where I was, was incredibly peaceful,” when video showed that the emergency room physician and Stanford-trained attorney did nothing as a mob she was with dragged a police officer to the ground.
The judge also called it a “disservice to the true victims that day” that Gold has given supporters the “misimpression” she was politically persecuted for giving a speech, and raised $430,000 for her personal and organization expenses.
“January 6 was about a lot of things, but it was not about the First Amendment, and it was certainly not about covid treatment or vaccines,” Cooper said.
“I find it unseemly that your organization is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for its operations, including your salary,” he added later, asserting that Gold was generating the funds “by mischaracterizing what this proceeding is all about.”
“People need to know this is not acceptable,” the judge said. “This is not what this process is all about.”
Simone Gold, noted hydroxychloroquine advocate, was inside Capitol on Jan. 6
In a tremulous voice, Gold told the judge that she was “shocked” that prosecutors believed that she was not remorseful, and that she did not intend to take part “in a situation that was so destructive to our nation.”
“I was misguided. I should not have entered,” Gold said, “Everything I did on January 6, misguided or not, was consistent with my effort to do my best for people.”
Unmoved, the judge noted he had heard more talk about how the case had restricted Gold’s travel, than about those affected by the riot.
“I have heard a lot about how you are not able to fly,” Cooper said, “but I haven’t heard anything about the five people who died. The four people who committed suicide afterward. Or the staffers” and others locked down in fear for their safety.
Gold attorney Dickson J. Young had asked for a sentence of community medical service, saying his client did not commit or incite violence.
“With the exception of seeing the broken window, and seeing the officer pulled down by a person other than herself at the east side of the Capitol, she simply entered the door,” Young said.
Young sought to distance himself from Gold’s fundraising. He said her legal expenses were nowhere near the $430,000 she raised for her purported legal defense, and she paid them out of her pocket. Her fundraising pitch did say that unused money would go to her organization.
Prosecutors April Ayers-Perez and Jason M. Manning asked Cooper to sentence Gold to 90 days in jail, and the court’s presentencing office — in a rare move — recommended six months. Both said Gold’s conduct was extreme for Capitol breach trespassers, because she helped direct and promote that day’s chaos, ignored police commands to leave, and gave speeches on her way out.
“The defendant has not shown remorse. She has not accepted responsibility for her conduct … that has remained consistent over time,” Ayers-Perez said. “She has continued to minimize and diminish her responsibility and her criminal conduct throughout.” | 2022-06-16T19:01:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anti-vaccine doctor Simone Gold sentenced for Jan. 6 trespassing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/simone-gold-sentenced/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/simone-gold-sentenced/ |
Myanmar junta vows to execute pro-democracy activists
Military set to use death penalty for first time in 30 years, defying international condemnation
By Rebecca Tan
Military handout photos show pro-democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu, left, and former lawmaker Phyo Zeya Thaw, both sentenced to death in closed-door trials last fall. (Myanmar's Military Information Team/AFP/Getty Images)
Myanmar’s military junta has doubled down on threats to carry out its first executions since seizing power, defying repeated appeals from the international community and outraging pro-democracy activists who have spent more than a year under siege.
Myanmar’s military has not used the death penalty for more than 30 years, but amid a violent — and so far unsuccessful — campaign to stamp out resistance, officials are turning to new forms of intimidation, experts say.
At least 14,000 people have been arrested — and at least 114 of them sentenced to death — in the past year, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a Myanmar nonprofit that tracks and attempts to verify the status of those detained by the junta. In early June, military officials vowed to follow through on the executions of four individuals on death row, including two high-profile activists: Kyaw Min Yu, also known as “Ko Jimmy,” who rose to prominence in a series of student uprisings in 1988; and Phyo Zeya Thaw, a hip-hop artist turned member of parliament widely admired among Myanmar’s youth.
“If they really execute, this is murder,” Ko Bo Kyi, an AAPP co-founder, said in a phone interview from Thailand. A pro-democracy activist himself, Ko Bo Kyi spent seven years in prison before fleeing Myanmar, and asked that his exact location not be identified for security reasons. He participated in the 1988 student demonstrations and has known Ko Jimmy for decades.
“He’s a really kind man who loves his family,” Ko Bo Kyi said of his friend, who has been arrested and imprisoned more than once since the 1980s. While the military thinks his execution will instill fear among residents and help it solidify control, Ko Bo Kyi added, “that’s an illusion."
“It will give many people determination to do whatever they can against the junta," he predicted.
Myanmar’s rebellion, divided, outgunned and outnumbered, fights on
Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington who studies Southeast Asian security issues, said the threat to execute renowned activists is part of a wider strategy the junta hopes will terrorize people into submission. Its tactics have been honed over years spent crushing ethnic insurgencies, and include razing villages and targeting civilians.
“The military leadership is truly frustrated,” Abuza said. “And they’re trying to send a clear signal that they are in charge.”
Phyo Zeya Thaw, 41, and Ko Jimmy, 53, have not been seen since they were convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to death in closed-door trials last fall. Ko Jimmy was tortured in custody, his family said.
Late Wednesday, rumors began to circulate that the two men would be hanged imminently at Insein prison in Yangon, spreading panic among family members and local human rights advocates, who scrambled to reach international groups and foreign representatives in a last-minute push for help. A spokesman for the prison department told a local news outlet that the rumors were untrue, though junta officials reiterated in a televised news conference Thursday afternoon that the prisoners would be executed soon.
The junta says it will also execute two other men, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, who were convicted of killing an alleged military informant.
Myanmar’s military has spent the year since the coup searching for international legitimacy. It has not found it.
“We have to do it for the sake of rule of law,” said military spokesman Zaw Min Tun.
Myanmar’s military first seized power in 1962 but gradually loosened its grip in 2010, allowing for democratic elections and an influx of international companies, which introduced the country to digital technology and social media. Led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, opposition politicians from the National League of Democracy rose to power in 2015, but their rule was short-lived. The military violently reclaimed control in February 2021.
Since then, the junta has been fighting a growing insurgency led in part by the People’s Defense Force, a civilian militia that has joined forces with some ethnic armies to prevent the military from capturing key areas.
The threats of execution serve as a form of “blackmail," said Manny Maung, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who focuses on Myanmar.
“The military is trying to gauge the temperature of both the international and domestic community to see how far they can push the Myanmar population into being obedient,” she said.
The United States strongly condemns the Burmese military regime’s reported plans to execute pro-democracy and opposition leaders, exemplifying the regime's disregard for human rights and the rule of law. We urge the release of all unjustly detained.
The United States and France have condemned the planned executions, as has Thomas Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur for Myanmar. On Friday, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, sent a letter to Myanmar’s military leader, Min Aung Hlaing, urging him not to enforce the death sentences.
The key question, Maung said, is whether ASEAN or other countries will meaningfully punish Myanmar with sanctions for defying their appeals. Thursday’s scare, she added, highlights the need for “urgent” action. | 2022-06-16T19:10:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Myanmar to execute pro-democracy activists Ko Jimmy and Phyo Zeya Thaw - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/16/myanmar-military-junta-executions-nld/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/16/myanmar-military-junta-executions-nld/ |
Members of World War II’s all-Black, all-female 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion get a long-deserved closeup at Arlington Cemetery, and a musical is in the works.
Maia Semmes holds a photograph of her aunt Pvt. Margaret Sales, a member of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-Black, all-female World War II unit honored Wednesday at the Military Women's Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. (Michael A. McCoy/For The Washington Post)
The country is at long last training a spotlight on a long-unsung World War II unit of Black women, with Congress bestowing its highest honor on them — and with a new musical on the way, too, to sing about their astonishing story.
They were the 855 members of the Women’s Army Corps’ 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female battalion sent overseas during the war. A handful, ages 98 to 102, are still alive. And though none could make it to an emotional ceremony on Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery, dozens of their sons, daughters and grandchildren were on hand to celebrate their courage and reflect on their trailblazing achievements as women of color.
“These ladies were leaning in,” Army Brig. Gen. Hope Rampy told their assembled descendants, “before leaning in was cool.”
The event at the Military Women’s Memorial was organized to recognize the women and acknowledge their collective receipt of the Congressional Gold Medal, one of fewer than 200 that have been awarded since the inception of the nation. (The first recipient was George Washington.) Spearheaded by a pair of retired Army veterans, Col. Edna Cummings and Master Sgt. Elizabeth Helm-Fraizer, and ushered through Congress by Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), the legislation authorizing the medal became law on March 14.
What made the contributions of the Six Triple Eight, as it’s affectionately known, so exemplary was both the scope of the unit’s mission, and the doors of the Armed Forces it cracked open to African American soldiers and other soldiers of color. As the audience was told by Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis R. McDonough, it was a direct result of their success that President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military in 1948. As for the Six Triple Eight’s wartime logistical triumph, the 6888th, dispatched to Britain under the command of Col. Charity Adams in 1945, managed to clear a massive backlog in undelivered mail to soldiers in the European theater of operations. Solving that severe morale issue and getting the letters and packages out was supposed to be an arduous task stretching six months at the least.
They did it in three.
“Only four women are buried at Normandy, and three are from the Six Triple Eight,” Cummings said during the ceremony, referring to the fact that the unit was subsequently sent to France as the war ended to clear another monumental postal logjam. They again completed it in record time.
It has taken decades for a widespread sharing of their story — indeed, Phyllis Wilson, president of the Military Women’s Memorial and a retired Army chief warrant officer, said she spent 37 years in the military and “never knew” of the 6888th’s heroics. But a recent documentary by filmmaker James Theres, “SixTripleEight,” helped raise the battalion’s profile. The Congressional Gold Medal, whose honorees include Thomas Edison, Rosa Parks, Bob Hope, Jonas Salk, the Native American Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen, is another important step in cementing the 6888th’s place in history.
A new musical-in-progress isn’t going to hurt, either. Actor Blair Underwood, executive producer of “Six Triple Eight — The Musical,” introduced the creative team before a video of a song from the show was played. Underwood is the son himself of a retired Army colonel, Frank E. Underwood Sr., who also attended the ceremony.
“A moment to a movement to a movie to a musical!” Blair Underwood recounted. “Like many people, I wasn’t aware of the Six Triple Eight until very recently. I said, ‘This is a phenomenal story the world should know.’ ”
This may very well have been the first time the initial peek at a commercial musical has occurred on the country’s most hallowed ground for the Armed Forces. (Fourteen members of the 6888th are interred there.) The musical’s book writer, Morgan J. Smart, songwriter Ronvé O’Daniel and orchestrator Jevares C. Myrick took the stage to unveil the video of the aspirational number, “All I Need,” four actors playing future members of the 6888th who sing about doing great things.
“There’s gotta be more than reading, there’s more to life than church,” sang actress Jasmin Richardson (now on Broadway in “The Book of Mormon”), playing Charity Adams. “More than wishing to spread my wings while I’m waiting on this perch.”
Among the relatives who packed the memorial auditorium wearing red, white and blue ribbons was Adams’s son, Stanley Earley, who seemed a bit taken aback by the attention. “My mother was wonderful,” he declared simply after the ceremony, as other audience members besieged Blair Underwood for selfies.
Families came to Arlington from across the country for the nearly two-hour proceeding, during which other speakers, such as Elwood L. Robinson, chancellor of Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, highlighted some of the women’s achievements after they returned stateside. One of them, Elizabeth Barker Johnson, was the first person to graduate from what was then called Winston-Salem Teachers College, under the first G.I. Bill.
“Their spirit elevates our humanity,” Robinson said, “as they take their rightful place in the annals of American history.”
The daughters, son, grandchildren and cousin of 6888th member Annie B. Knight of Washington, D.C., descended en masse on Arlington Cemetery to share in the joyful moment. Wearing matching yellow T-shirts emblazoned with a vintage photo of Knight in uniform, the family members proudly enumerated their own accomplishments, inspired in part by the woman on their shirts: They are doctors, college deans, American Civil Liberties Union staffers, Army officers.
“She always made us feel as a woman you could be whatever you wanted to be,” said one of Knight’s daughters, Karen Jordan, who holds both a medical degree and a PhD. Among the contingent was her sister Carmen Jordan-Cox and brother Harold.
They expressed their delight at the song from “Six Triple Eight — The Musical,” which was conceived by New York publicist Holly Garman, in partnership with colleague Joe Trentacosta, after she read an article about the battalion. The project gained important psychic momentum for the New York-based musical writers as a result of Wednesday’s celebration. Miming the act of typing furiously, Morgan Smart said, laughing: “Our train ride back will be … ”
The show has already established an avid fan base. “Let’s find a way to bring it to Washington, D.C.!” Phyllis Wilson declared. “But I’ll go to New York City for it!” | 2022-06-16T20:02:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World War II’s all-female 6888th postal battalion is honored - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/16/black-women-6888-gold-medal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/16/black-women-6888-gold-medal/ |
France and Spain are experiencing temperatures as high as 104 degrees, a record for this time of year
A public thermometer shows a reading of 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) on June 15 in Seville, Spain. (Marcelo Del Pozo/Bloomberg)
Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain, had one of its hottest days on record Thursday, with a scorching 109 degrees (43.1 Celsius). Saint-Jean-de-Minervois, France, hit 104 degrees (40 Celsius) on Thursday — the earliest the country has hit that high temperature in recorded history.
Scott Duncan, a meteorologist based in Scotland, tweeted that the event could be “one of the most profound heat waves in French history. An immense number of records are about to fall.”
Coping with the heat
In Spain, where significant heat is more common than in other parts of the continent, air-conditioning usage is as high as 1 in 3 for residential homes across the country, and up to 70 percent in a city like Seville. Estimates of access to air conditioning are much lower to the northeast.
Both France and Germany are reported to have roughly 5 percent or fewer residential homes with air conditioning, although percentages are probably growing given notable heat spells in recent years. In contrast, more than 90 percent of people in the United States have access to air conditioning at home.
These heat waves over the past month are only a few of a slew affecting the world in the past several years. This spring, India and Pakistan registered their hottest March and April on record amid a series of heat waves, which were 30 times as likely to have occurred because of climate change. In 2021, the Pacific Northwest hit record temperatures in a heat wave deemed “virtually impossible” without global warming.
“Climate change is bringing more frequent extreme weather events. Drought and water shortage are expected in France this summer, with direct damage to agriculture,” Marc Poumadere, a risk scientist in Paris at the Symlog Institute of France, wrote in an email.
“In 2003, the risks of heat waves were largely underestimated, causing that year in France some 20,000 excess deaths,” wrote Poumadere. “France now applies a heat wave plan to limit fatalities.” | 2022-06-16T20:02:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Spain, France to see historic June heatwave through weekend - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/16/europe-heatwave-spain-france-germany/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/16/europe-heatwave-spain-france-germany/ |
What’s Stagflation, and Why Is It Such a Worry Now?
Analysis by Matthew Boesler and Emily Graffeo | Bloomberg
A shopper inside a grocery store in San Francisco, California. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added to fears that began brewing in 2021 that the world may be revisited by something not seen much in decades: stagflation. Recent steps by the US Federal Reserve and other central banks to fight the highest inflation rates of the century have only added to stagflation worries.
1. What is stagflation?
A combination of the words “stagnation” and “inflation,” it describes an economy with high unemployment and little to no growth even as prices are rising faster than normal. Iain Macleod, a British politician, coined the term in 1965. Plenty of economists once doubted stagflation was possible. That’s because unemployment and inflation typically move in opposite directions, since price levels are usually driven by an economy’s level of demand, and unemployment generally falls when demand booms.
2. What causes it?
No one knows with any certainty, partly because it is a rare event. Most analysis is based on the most famous episode, in the US during the 1970s. Economists point to a combination of external shocks and policy missteps. In 1971, President Richard Nixon reacted to balance-of-payments pressures by taking the US off the gold standard — that is, letting its value float. The dollar’s subsequent fall added to inflationary pressures at home. Then in 1973, Arab members of OPEC placed an oil embargo on the US and other nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, leading to a surge in oil prices. As a result of what economists call a supply shock, US businesses not only passed along those costs but cut back on production — a step that added to inflation by making goods scarcer while also increasing unemployment. Some also point to mistakes by the US Federal Reserve, which waited to raise interest rates. By 1975, the so-called Misery Index -- the sum of inflation and the unemployment rate -- reached 19.9%. It peaked in 1980 at 22%.
3. Why was the term revived?
In early 2021, economies suppressed during pandemic lockdowns bounced back, led by strong consumer demand. That rebound was quickly met with shortages, given that supply chains were still in disarray. Prices started to rise, a trend that accelerated when energy shortfalls emerged late in the year, even as unemployment remained elevated in many parts of the world. That was less of a worry in the US, where a strong recovery led to labor shortages that by March drove inflation rates to levels not seen in decades.
The most immediate impact of the invasion of Ukraine was to drive already high energy prices higher. The possible loss of other Russian commodities because of sanctions imposed by the West led to price surges in food, natural gas and aluminum. Decisions by the Fed and the Bank of England to begin aggressive interest-rate hikes, and by the European Central Bank to prepare to raise rates, have added to stagflation. Interest rate increases are a blunt economic tool: they are meant to slow economic activity by making borrowing more expensive. Ideally, the efforts would result in a so-called soft landing, in which an economy slows enough that prices stop rising quickly but not so slowly that a recession ensues. After the Fed raised its main policy making rate by three-quarters of a percentage point in June, an increasing number of forecasters said that a recession would be hard to avoid.
5. Who’s most at risk?
To many analysts, the odds of stagflation were higher in the European Union and the UK than in the US, where the economic recovery from the pandemic had been stronger. Euro zone inflation in May hit 8.1%, while the OECD predicted that the UK would be the slowest-growing member of the G-7 countries in 2023. In June, the World Bank cut its global economic growth forecast, warning that the danger of stagflation was “considerable.” The bank’s president, David Malpass, wrote, “Even if a global recession is averted, the pain of stagflation could persist for several years — unless major supply increases are set in motion.” | 2022-06-16T20:07:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What’s Stagflation, and Why Is It Such a Worry Now? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/whats-stagflation-and-why-is-it-such-a-worry-now/2022/06/16/4e12e9f0-eda7-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/whats-stagflation-and-why-is-it-such-a-worry-now/2022/06/16/4e12e9f0-eda7-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America
The historical context, which a fair number of people are aware of, is that New York’s pandemic murder wave followed a long decline, with the city’s homicide rate in 2021 still less than a fifth what it was in 1990. The geographical context, which seems to be less widely understood, is that while homicide rates fell sharply all over the the US in the 1990s, that decline slowed in the 2000s and reversed starting in 2015. In Philadelphia the homicide rate is now worse than it was in the early 1990s, and in Chicago it’s close. Which means there’s a growing gap between New York City and most of the rest of urban America.
All these accountings leave out the September 2001 terrorist attacks. If included, those would push New York’s combined homicide and transport mortality rate for 2001 to 32. Remarkably, though, that’s still only slightly higher than the rate that year for rural and small town America — that is, in counties not part of metropolitan areas (which contained 86% of the US population in 2021).(1) Rural life, in particular driving long distances on two-lane roads far from emergency services, can be a high-risk activity.
The overall lesson seems to be that the more urban your surroundings, the less danger you face. High homicide rates in some cities mean that the central counties in large metropolitan areas are on the whole slightly more dangerous than the suburban counties, but that’s the only exception. The risk of death from truly external causes, as defined here, is three times higher in rural and small-town America than in the country’s largest city.
Data sources for charts
Safest of the Six Largest U.S. Cities: The main data sources here are the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer and Census Bureau annual population estimates that I got from the Data Commons Place Explorer (for pre-2010 numbers) and the Census Bureau (for 2010-2021). I could not find city population estimates for 1985-1989 so I calculated my own by just assuming the cities grew (or shrank) at a uniform pace between the 1980 and 1990 censuses. The FBI hasn’t released 2021 crime data yet so I got that year’s numbers either directly from police departments or from news reports based on police department data. Also, for some reason the FBI’s post-2014 homicide numbers for Philadelphia are different from (and lower than) those on the Philadelphia Police Department website, so I went with the latter.
Murder in the Cities, Suburbs and Country: This is downloaded straight from CDC Wonder’s Underlying Causes of Death database, but there are two different ways to get homicide totals from that. One is to look under “Injury Intent and Mechanism” and select “homicide” as the injury intent, the other is to look through the ICD-10 codes used to classify all causes of death and select “assault” under “External causes of morbidity and mortality.” The former includes deaths from terrorist attacks and the latter does not, because they are classified under a separate ICD-10 category of “Codes for special purposes.” When this piece was first published, the chart showed homicide deaths with the September 2001 terrorist attacks subtracted out (for consistency with the FBI data and because otherwise New York’s high 2001 rate would make the chart very hard to read); subsequently I realized it would be simpler and more consistent with the other charts to use the assault numbers, which are almost but not quite identical. Here they are by county urbanization status (I combined the two categories of nonmetro counties for the charts) and for New York City. Once you click through, you’ll have to agree to a couple of data use restrictions, then wait as CDC Wonder generates the data.
Car Crashes Change the Picture: This adds together assault plus transportation accident deaths as reported under “External causes of morbidity and mortality.” Here they are by county urbanization, and for New York City.
Safer in the Big City: This is all “External causes of morbidity and mortality,” by county urbanization, and for New York City.
Still Safer in the Big City: This is external causes minus the categories discussed in the text and the chart footnotes, by county urbanization and for New York City.
Safe States and Dangerous Ones: Selected external causes by state for 2020.
The Safest Counties in America, Sort Of, and The Most Dangerous Counties in America, Sort Of: Selected external causes by county for 2020.
America’s Safest Metro Areas and America’s Most Dangerous Metro Areas: Selected external causes by county for 2016-2020, which I then sorted into metro areas using the Census Bureau’s March 2020 core-based statistical area delineation file. Twenty metro areas had at least one county for which CDC Wonder suppressed the deaths data because there were fewer than 10, so I went in and selected all the counties in each of the 20 to get combined mortality totals for each.
(This column was corrected to point out that all the data referenced in the seventh paragraph leave out deaths from the September 2001 terrorist attacks.) | 2022-06-16T20:07:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-york-city-is-a-lot-safer-than-small-town-america/2022/06/16/2ba333b0-eda3-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-york-city-is-a-lot-safer-than-small-town-america/2022/06/16/2ba333b0-eda3-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
D.C. development has soared under Bowser. So have housings costs.
By Marissa J. Lang
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser speaks about affordable housing at the Spring Flats housing complex. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The first apartment Ursula McManus rented as a young German immigrant in the nation’s capital was a one bedroom in Friendship Heights. It cost $90 a month.
Sixty years later, the cost to live in the neighborhood has shot up more than 2,000 percent. A yoga studio occupies that building, and the $90 she spent on rent would today only be worth a four-class pass.
McManus, 84, owns a home and has a healthy nest egg to see her comfortably through retirement in Ward 3. But she worries, she said, for immigrants like her, for mothers who have worked hard but are still struggling.
Her longtime housekeeper, a Central American immigrant and mom of four, had been shelling out $2,300 a month for an apartment on Georgia Avenue NW. Appalled by the price and living conditions, McManus decided in 2021 to help her buy a home. “In D.C.?” she asked. “Oh, no,” McManus said with a laugh. “Have you seen the cost of homes in the city?”
Housing affordability has become one of the most widespread anxieties among Washingtonians regardless of ward, income, age, race or background. When asked to name the overall biggest problems facing the District, housing was the No. 2 most frequent response after crime, according to a Washington Post poll this year.
Mayoral approval rating drops amid rising concerns about crime
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) ran on a promise eight years ago to end homelessness and invest more in affordable development to rein in the local housing crisis. She has made record investments into the Housing Production Trust Fund, the primary tool the city has for financing affordable housing, and expanded programs that assist first-time home buyers. But a dire shortage persists.
“When you have the type of amenities, good-paying jobs that we have in this city, people want to live here, businesses want to locate here. And so that has made us a city where housing costs are challenging, and they didn’t just become challenging this year,” Bowser, who is now seeking a third term, said in an interview with The Post last month. “I have made it the hallmark of my tenure to build more affordable housing in the city.”
But her critics say her push for citywide development has accelerated the affordability crisis and contributed to the ongoing displacement of Black and Latino families. D.C. Council members Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) and Robert C. White Jr. (D-At large), the top challengers to Bowser for mayor, have blamed her policies for leaving the poorest residents behind and further eviscerating the middle class in the District.
A voter guide to the 2022 Democratic primaries in the District
Since Bowser took office, housing prices for both renters and buyers have increased by roughly 30 percent, according to real estate groups, driving up the cost of living in the District and driving some residents, including McManus’s housekeeper, out. McManus helped the family close on a three-bedroom near Rockville that cost $250,000, she said, about a third of the median home price in the District.
“I resent that the [District] is rich but we still have a situation where so many people who rent can never afford to buy their own home, so they get stuck paying more and more until they get pushed out,” McManus said. “With all this gentrification, I really worry about what the hell is happening here.”
An ‘impossible’ task
Bowser took office in 2015 at a time of transformation in the District. Luxury high-rises were going up. The population was growing and becoming Whiter and more affluent. Longtime residents now say they no longer recognize the city as their own.
The average rent in the District has risen from around $1,700 in 2015 to around $2,200 by the start of this year, according to a Post analysis of Zillow data. Other cities, like Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco, have seen similar increases in the same period. In Austin, Denver, Tampa and Phoenix, the data show, rent shot up over 50 percent.
Over her two terms, Bowser has put forth a number of plans to address the housing shortfall and rising costs. She pledged to invest $100 million a year into the Housing Production Trust Fund, a number meant to create 10,000 units annually.
In all but two years, fiscal 2015 during which Bowser took office and fiscal 2018, the mayor has met those investment goals. Each year since fiscal 2020, she has upped the ante, culminating in a record proposal of nearly $499 million in her 2023 budget.
In total, 21,915 new housing units have been created under the Bowser administration, according to her office. Just under 19 percent of those units are considered affordable to families earning 80 percent of the median area income or less. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the median family income in the District is $142,300.
Bowser said her administration has focused primarily on building and financing mixed-income apartment complexes, with a certain number of homes specifically earmarked for families earning below a specific threshold.
“Those are the kind of projects we feel that we have been able to invest in the last eight years,” Bowser said, noting the recent opening of the Spring Flats redevelopment in Petworth, which offers 185 new housing units, of which 149 are affordable and 88 are specifically designated for seniors.
Bowser promised to end homelessness and here is how it is going
Yet the need for affordable housing in the city continues to far outstrip the supply. According to the D.C. Policy Center, as of 2020, there were nearly 40,000 households in the District for whom paying more than $750 a month in rent would create a financial burden greater than a third of their household income. The city had fewer than 800 apartments with rents at that level.
Kimberly Cunningham, 56, grew up in Southeast but moved her family to Columbia Heights in the 1990s to raise her children. About a decade ago, a conflict with her landlord resulted in Cunningham losing her housing voucher. For the next 10 years, she did her best to hide the fact that she was homeless from her adult children.
She slept in her car, at her mom’s house, even at her daughter’s apartment when she could. “It has been 10 years, and for most of that time, I didn’t know the whole story because 10 years ago, I was just 21,” said Rashida Taylor, Cunningham’s daughter and the executive director of the local nonprofit It Takes A Village. “We have been looking left and right for her to live somewhere, but finding affordable housing in the District is impossible.”
Cunningham, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, is on a fixed income and unable to afford market-rate rent. She was approved for the rapid rehousing program, which is meant to lift homeless families and individuals into housing by providing one-year rent-subsidizing vouchers.
But while Cunningham has applied and even taken classes for a handful of city programs, she has struggled to find an apartment that is wheelchair accessible in a building with an elevator.
“There are housing programs, there are, but when the mayor starts a new program, she only shows you the tip of the iceberg. She doesn’t show you what you really have to go through to get it,” Cunningham said.
“Being a third-generation Washingtonian, it’s horrible to see people who have been here for so long struggling to live in the city. Something that my mom is going through is just needing a place to live, and we have been working on this for years,” Taylor said. “She’s in a position where she can’t get up steps and she’s sleeping on floors some nights.”
Last year, the Office of the Inspector General released a report that said city officials in fiscal 2020 misspent nearly $82 million of affordable-housing funds earmarked for extremely low-income residents like Cunningham, who relies on Social Security and disability as her main sources of income.
The report, which has been repeatedly cited by White Jr. and White Sr. in their primary challenges, detailed the District’s failure to properly monitor the vast majority of projects funded through the Housing Production Trust Fund and to recoup more than $10 million in past-due loans. It also raised questions about the District’s process in awarding contracts for affordable-housing development.
Robert White aims to win over the skeptics in his run for mayor
The report noted that although at least 50 percent of Housing Production Trust Fund spending is legally required to provide housing to households with incomes below 30 percent of the median annual family income — which in D.C. is about $42,700, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — most of the affordable housing created was instead meant to cater to higher-earning households.
According to data provided by the mayor’s office, the Bowser administration has not once come close to hitting that 50 percent threshold.
Homebuying support, and obstacles
Middle-class Washingtonians are feeling the squeeze, too. The median selling price for homes went from about $487,000 in January 2015 to about $650,000 as of last month, according to the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors.
Randy, a 33-year-old renter who has lived in Southeast since 2014, knows how tough it can be. Randy, who asked to be identified by his middle name because he works for the D.C. government and was not authorized to speak to the press, said he’s been wanting to buy a place of his own for a few years now. But the cost of purchasing has remained beyond his means.
In her first term, Bowser doubled the amount of down-payment assistance that potential home buyers could receive from the D.C. Home Purchase Assistance Program and created a program specifically for District employees, teachers and first responders. She also expanded resources for senior homeowners who need to renovate their homes or make them accessible via a program known as Safe at Home.
According to the mayor’s office, 2,579 home buyers since Bowser took office in 2015 have been assisted by the Home Purchase Assistance Program and a similar employer-assisted program that offers an additional $20,000 in financing for D.C. government workers, teachers and first responders. Prospective home buyers may qualify for up to $80,000 in gap financing and an additional $4,000 in closing-cost assistance, as determined by income and expressed need.
But participants in the program still have struggled to stay competitive.
Randy is eligible for a number of programs: to help first-time home buyers, Black home buyers and D.C. government workers. But their requirements, such as an approved home inspection, can be a disadvantage buyers when going up against others who can get faster financing or are willing to waive all contingencies.
“In a market that’s moving quickly, if you can’t check off all the same boxes, you’re just not competitive,” said Thomas Daley, president of the D.C. Association of Realtors.
Earlier this month, Bowser announced the 14 members of a new “strike force” aimed at boosting Black homeownership in the District and closing the racial equity gap. The group will issue recommendations by October that will guide how the city spends $10 million that Bowser has allocated for Black homeowners in her fiscal 2023 budget, according to the mayor’s office.
“We know that there is a disparity in our city between White homeownership and Black homeownership; there’s this disparity from east to west in our city on homeownership,” Bowser said, noting that building wealth and equity helps families find stability in areas beyond housing. “I have focused, quite frankly, on making sure that more D.C. residents and more D.C. government employees have access to financial products that are going to allow them to buy.”
In May, Bowser appeared at the Potomac Gardens public housing complex to announce a program to bring high-speed internet to low-income households.
As she spoke, a piece of paper began to make its way through the crowd. Residents had written a letter to the mayor outlining issues in the building, including mold, holes in the walls, floods, leaks, roaches and rats. The issues are emblematic of billions of dollars in backlogged repairs that primarily affect some of the District’s poorest families, who live in public housing.
“Wifi is a great concept,” said the letter residents passed up to Bowser, “but we face more tragic circumstances.”
Mayor Bowser did her press conference today at Potomac Gardens, a public housing complex in Capitol
Hill. It was about wifi expansion. This is a note residents passed her about serious concerns they have about living conditions pic.twitter.com/3W8g98BdRV
— jenny gathright (@jennygathright) May 16, 2022
Misha Pettway, 47, president of the Potomac Garden resident council, said she was shocked that the mayor had chosen the Housing Authority-managed complex, where Pettway has lived for 21 years, to roll out such a program when they had more immediate needs.
“Our community has had a number of shootings, deaths, the living situation inside is not the greatest,” she said. “So, while we appreciate the WiFi, we also want to live better — to be able to actually feel safe in our homes — so that we can enjoy the WiFi.”
After several security guards disappeared, leaving parts of the property unpatrolled, Pettway said, she’s taken it upon herself to patrol the hallway and the staircase where her daughter comes and goes. She works for a property management company and said it’s frustrating to know how a well-maintained property is run and then return home to her own building, overcome with problems. After unsuccessfully petitioning the management company for upkeep to her unit, she said, she’s done her own renovations.
Potomac Gardens is managed by the D.C. Housing Authority, which has been marred by scandal and accusations of mismanagement, including a $2 billion backlog in repairs. In her conversation with The Post, Bowser refused to discuss the note or interactions with Potomac Gardens residents following her May visit, and sought to draw a distinction between her administration and DCHA, which she described as “not a D.C. agency under the control of the mayor.”
This is how the regional housing market fared by Zip code last year
However, the director of the agency is a Bowser appointee and its board of directors is packed with mayoral allies, including Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio, who oversees planning and economic development. The city is also able to contribute money to fund repairs. The mayor and the D.C. Council began investing $50 million annually for repairs in 2021. Before that, according to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and analyses by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, District leaders approved $24.5 million for repairs in fiscal year 2020, up from less than $10 million the year before.
“We don’t want any residents living in substandard conditions. No one should be living with mold. No one should. Everyone should understand that if they have a complaint in their unit, how they can get it resolved,” Bowser said.
DCHA has not accepted any new families onto its waitlist since 2013, creating a starkly limited resource that has left families in limbo for years. Those who live in government-owned buildings, like Potomac Gardens, have sounded the alarm about crumbling infrastructure, safety hazards and health risks. Some units deemed too dilapidated to live in have sat empty for years.
Earlier this year, after the city’s recent infusion of money for repairs, the agency signaled that “hundreds of public housing units” would soon be available to “people who have been waiting for many years,” according to a statement from DCHA Director Barbara Donald.
That news was encouraging to Pettway, who said since the mayor’s visit some residents have been able to keep the conversation going with city officials. It feels, in small ways, like progress. But then she walks out her door and sees what still needs to be done: The building is still unsecured. Nonresidents sleep in the stairwell and loiter in the halls. Basic maintenance requests languish as problems get worse.
“We have people living in detrimental situations just like Potomac Gardens right now all over D.C., but no one has come back to say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do to abate or clean or fix it,’” Pettway said. “I want a mayor to be honest. When I say honest, I mean when you say you’re going to do something, do it.” | 2022-06-16T20:07:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. housing costs spiral as Muriel Bowser runs again for mayor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/dc-housing-muriel-bowser-affordability/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/dc-housing-muriel-bowser-affordability/ |
School flying BLM, LGBTQ flags can’t call itself Catholic, bishop says
A protester holds a Black Lives Matter flag at a demonstration in Rochester, N.Y., in 2020. (Libby March for The Washington Post)
The stark, dual-colored letters of the Black Lives Matter flag and the bright rainbow stripes of the Pride flag had flown above the Massachusetts Catholic school for more than a year before the local bishop registered his opposition.
The Black Lives Matter flag, Bishop Robert McManus said in April, has been “co-opted by some factions which also instill broad-brush distrust of police.” And the LGBTQ flag could be used to contrast church teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman, he added.
When Nativity School of Worcester didn’t budge, McManus issued a severe ruling. The tuition-free middle school, which serves boys facing economic hardship, can no longer identify itself as Catholic because the flags are “inconsistent with Catholic teaching,” he declared Thursday.
“The flying of these flags in front of a Catholic school sends a mixed, confusing and scandalous message to the public about the Church’s stance on these important moral and social issues,” McManus wrote. “Despite my insistence that the school administration remove these flags because of the confusion and the properly theological scandal that they do and can promote, they refuse to do so.”
That defiance, McManus said, left him no other choice but to strip the Jesuit-run school of its Catholic affiliation. The school also can no longer celebrate Mass or the sacraments or use diocesan institutions to raise funds.
The decision, which comes during Pride Month, appears to be a rare instance of a Catholic organization’s affiliation with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” becoming a flash point with its diocese. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a nuanced approach to the phrase, endorsing the concept of racial justice but not necessarily the organizations that attach themselves to that message.
Nativity School said its use of the Black Lives Matter and Pride flags was a response to a call from its students, most of whom are people of color, to make their community more inclusive. The flags symbolize that all are welcome at Nativity, school President Thomas McKenney said Thursday.
“Both flags are now widely understood to celebrate the human dignity of our relatives, friends and neighbors who have faced, and continue to face hate and discrimination,” he wrote. “Though any symbol or flag can be co-opted by political groups or organizations, flying our flags is not an endorsement of any organization or ideology, they fly in support of marginalized people.”
The bishop disagrees. The Pride flag represents support for same-sex marriage and “a LGBTQ+ lifestyle,” he said. And while the church teaches that all lives are sacred, McManus said the Black Lives Matter movement has used that phrase to contradict Catholic teaching on the importance of the nuclear family.
How the Black Lives Matter movement went mainstream
Nativity said it will appeal the bishop’s decision — but it has no plans to remove the flags, which it said show its commitment to solidarity with its students and families. McKenney said the administrators’ decision was informed by the Gospel, Catholic social teaching and the school’s Jesuit heritage.
The outcome follows months of dialogue between the school and the Diocese of Worcester. Around the same time that McManus took issue with the flags in March, a person tore down both flags, the school said. Two months later, the bishop warned the school that it would lose its Catholic label if it did not remove the displays.
In his letter to the community Thursday, McKenney reminded parents that Nativity School is funded by individuals and groups — not by the diocese — and that it would continue to operate as usual.
Outside the school building, he noted, the flags still fly. | 2022-06-16T20:08:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nativity School of Worcester flying BLM, LGBTQ flags can't call itself Catholic, bishop says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/16/school-blm-lgbtq-flags-not-catholic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/16/school-blm-lgbtq-flags-not-catholic/ |
Andre Burakovsky scored the game-winner in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals Wednesday night. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
DENVER — Colorado Avalanche winger Andre Burakovsky entered these Stanley Cup finals determined to write his own story.
Burakovsky, now four years removed from winning his first Stanley Cup with Washington, knew his past accomplishments in the District would be a popular talking point ahead of the finals. But, Burakovsky doesn’t want to talk about his past — he wants to focus on what’s ahead.
“It’s a new group; it’s a new opportunity … we want to write our own success,” Burakovsky said Tuesday. “Definitely feels kind of the same, super excited to be back in finals. It is the best time of the year. It is an unbelievable feeling. There is not a whole lot of people who reach the finals and to be here for a second time, it is something special for sure.”
Burakovsky was Colorado’s hero in Game 1 on Wednesday night at Ball Arena when he scored the game-winner only 83 seconds into overtime. The Avalanche face the Tampa Bay Lightning, the two-time defending Cup champions, in Game 2 on Saturday night in Denver.
Avalanche tops Lightning in OT to win thrilling Stanley Cup finals opener
Burakovsky has had an up-and-down postseason. He was a healthy scratch for two games in the second round and was injured during the Western Conference finals. He took multiple maintenance days ahead of the Stanley Cup finals and only had 12:34 of ice time in Game 1, but made his shifts count.
After his Wednesday night heroics, he admitted he had trouble sleeping the night prior because he was “too excited” to get up and compete. Nerves, he said, were also present. But on the ice? The nerves didn’t show.
“He’s been playing well lately and he sure deserves it,” Colorado winger Mikko Rantanen said Wednesday. “He has a great shot and overall nice play for that line.”
Colorado is now three wins away from its first championship since 2001. Burakovsky would be the first member of Washington’s 2018-winning Stanley Cup team to win another title.
A 2013 first-round pick for Washington, Burakovsky was traded to the Avalanche for draft picks in 2019, a move he had requested. The winger was coming off what Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan described as a “frustrating” season.
“I had an unbelievable time with Washington, and to be on the first team in team history to win the Cup was absolutely something special,” Burakovsky said. “When I reflect back on it, the team we had, we came together as a group, and I think that is very important this time of year and especially the finals.”
Tampa Bay built a hockey powerhouse, but is it Colorado’s turn for glory?
Colorado Coach Jared Bednar also praised Burakovsky’s all-around game.
“Managed the puck really well, didn’t have any turnovers,” Bednar said Wednesday night. “Checked hard. Was getting above pucks. Skating well. That’s what Burkie can do. You put him in a spot and he can finish.”
Burakovsky has a heightened role in Colorado, is getting time on the power play and said he feels like he was given more opportunities to grow.
“I have elevated my game a lot on the offensive side and definitely on the defensive side,” Burakovsky said. “It is all about defense, too, in the playoffs and the sacrifice you put down, sacrificing and blocking shots.”
He sees similarities between Washington’s 2018 team and Colorado’s current squad, but thinks the Avalanche has more speed and is more aggressive offensively.
“It is going to be a lot of fun to see what we have in store, and I’m super excited to do it with this team,” Burakovsky said. “ … We just have to put the focus on our group. We’re not going to focus on the outside that we are the favorites or the underdogs or things like that. We are here to play our game, find our own success.” | 2022-06-16T20:09:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Cap Andre Burakovsky shines for Colorado Avalanche - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/andre-burakovsky-colorado-avalanche-stanley-cup-finals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/andre-burakovsky-colorado-avalanche-stanley-cup-finals/ |
Smith discusses online disinformation and how the U.S. government and tech companies can address it
With the ability to spread online like wildfire, disinformation can have a corrosive impact on civil society. On Thursday, June 23 at 9:00 a.m. ET, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and vice chair, joins Washington Post Live to discuss online disinformation, what the U.S. government should be doing about it and how tech companies continue to assess their role in the fight against it.
President & Vice Chair, Microsoft | 2022-06-16T20:09:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Smith discusses online disinformation and how the U.S. government and tech companies can address it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/23/smith-discusses-online-disinformation-how-us-government-tech-companies-can-address-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/23/smith-discusses-online-disinformation-how-us-government-tech-companies-can-address-it/ |
President Richard M. Nixon gives a speech at the White House following his resignation in August 1974. (Stf/AFP/Getty Images)
Fifty years ago Friday, burglars broke into the Watergate complex — and the rest is more than just history. The scandal that ended in President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation from office helped shape our modern politics, reforming the government, revitalizing the press and redefining the parties. Now, the country confronts another generation-defining crisis, and events half a century old feel as relevant as if they happened yesterday.
The Nixon White House’s illegal sabotage of its opponents and the coverup that followed were examples of government going wrong. What happened after these crimes showed government going almost exactly right: Congress investigated, the news media reported, the people read, watched, listened and spoke — and eventually, enough members of the Republican elite put country over party to lead to the departure of a corrupt, dangerous president.
Today, Congress is investigating again: A select committee in the House of Representatives is examining what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, when an armed mob stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to overturn the results of a lawful election — in part because a president, Donald Trump, exhorted them to. Yet most members of the GOP appear afraid to utter a word against the ex-president, who continues to hold their party in his grip. Worse still, most refuse to engage at all in this truth-seeking effort, or even to put much stock in the concept of truth itself. Not only do the two sides today share little when it comes to policy or philosophy. In many cases, they don’t even share a reality.
Yet Watergate shook the nation as little else before and changed it — in some ways for better, by encouraging the press to hold government to account and the public to pay attention, as well as by ushering in legislation that served the same goals in areas such as campaign finance and intelligence, and in some ways for worse, by planting the seed of anti-government sentiment that has since grown like a strangling weed.
Jan. 6 has shaken the nation, too. The environment for needed change — whether updates to the Electoral Count Act and safeguards for voting rights, or a broader attempt by both parties to reconcile over common causes such as democracy and the rule of law — looks, admittedly, hostile. But enough people — from those in the chambers of Congress to those in any spot in the country near a television set or a newsroom desk — cared 50 years ago to make government work again when it appeared to have broken. The worst mistake anyone can make today is to give up on it because it has broken again. | 2022-06-16T20:24:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What Watergate can teach us today - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/what-watergate-can-teach-us-today/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/what-watergate-can-teach-us-today/ |
By Sharon Waters
When there's a flight delay, the news doesn't have to be all bad if you're up for some airport exploration. (iStock/Natalie Vineberg/Washington Post illustration)
When Arlington resident Doug Carr is delayed at the airport, he heads to a restaurant, finds a seat facing the terminal and enjoys the free entertainment. “Airports are hubs of creativity. You see a lot of amazing things,” said Carr, 54, senior vice president at the National Business Aviation Association who flew at least 200,000 miles annually for work before the pandemic. “People-watching at the airport is always fascinating.”
For fliers experiencing a delay or layover, waiting in an airport can be a test of patience. And with airline bookings up and unemployment down, there could be more delays during summer, the busiest travel season, as companies cope with crowds, weather and staffing shortages. Passengers stuck in a huge hub have more options to pass the time, such as an art museum (San Francisco), yoga room (Chicago O’Hare) or a virtual driving range (Minneapolis-St. Paul). But those captive in a midsize or small airport may need to be creative to run out the clock.
After trying to rebook their flight or negotiate compensation with the airline for the delay or cancellation, travelers can keep themselves occupied by following this advice from frequent fliers.
Conduct research. John Leoni, 53, a pilot for FedEx in Memphis, recommends viewing the airport directory to devise a plan. “That’s your whole world,” Leoni said. Peruse the list of shops, restaurants and services on your phone or on a board in the terminal. Airport websites and apps will list hours of operations for shops and services; some filter choices by whether the businesses are found inside or outside security checkpoints.
Take a walk. Bobby Esposito, 27, flies two or three times each month as a referee with the U.S. Hockey League. He uses delays to hit 10,000 steps, sometimes while making calls for his other job as an investment adviser.
“I know I will be sitting for a couple hours on a plane, so I might as well move before I get stuck in that metal tube of an airplane,” said Esposito, of Manville, N.J.
Lisa Williams, 51, who has been a flight attendant with a major U.S. airline for 31 years, keeps a pair of light sneakers in her bag. She changes out of her heels and walks around the airport while catching up on podcasts. If you only have dress shoes with you, Carr suggests looking for carpeted areas that will be easier on your feet.
Call someone. The first thing Bill Whiting, of Long Island, does during a delay is call his mother. The wine educator and producer has flown nearly 4 million miles over 25 years and has logged countless conversations with mom. Whiting, 54, phones friends, too, sometimes engaging in a 20-minute chat, other times leaving a quick voice mail. “It’s the thought that counts,” he said.
Shop strategically. Hilary Munson, a travel director for conferences, looks for a place to buy a puzzle magazine. “Each of those puzzles can take time and focus,” said Munson, 51. If there’s an electronics store or kiosk, she will do some research, such as learning about ear buds. “I’m not buying them, but I might as well educate myself,” the Tampa resident said.
Whiting looks for local goods, such as chocolates, magnets and T-shirts, to buy as gifts for future birthdays. Carr finds diversions in pop-ups or tables offering travel gear or local products. “It’s always fun to discover those opportunities when I’m in the airport,” he said.
Ride the airport train. If the airport has a train, D.C. resident Catherine McMahon finds it. Whether the tracks take her to another terminal or long-term parking, McMahon relaxes during the ride. “I’m fascinated by transport, and you can see other parts of the airport or a plane unloading luggage,” said McMahon, 52, who has traveled to 53 countries as an international development consultant.
McMahon prefers outdoor trains, such as Frankfurt, Germany’s, but is intrigued by the indoor rail line that runs through Concourse A in McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. At about one mile long, it is the second-longest terminal in the world. The ExpressTram can move almost 4,300 people per hour in each direction, according to Delta Air Lines, which operates the train.
Visit the chapel. Escape the bustle of the terminal at the airport chapel, which is usually nondenominational, relaxing and pretty. “It’s a really quiet place to catch your breath,” said Tiffany Thompson, a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline who lives in Louisville. Visitors “use those rooms for mediation and to get away from the general public,” said Thompson, 50.
Talk to strangers. Munson, who is outgoing, chats with people waiting at the gate. “You become, like, this team, and you’re sharing information. It’s very easy then to strike up a conversation,” said Munson, who lived in Bethesda for eight years.
Whiting looks for anyone dressed with the logo of his alma mater or his favorite sports teams, and he uses that as a conversation opener. “You can tell by their energy level if they’re into it or not,” Whiting said. “But it can be a mistake, because they may want to talk your ear off.”
Do an act of kindness. Helping someone may brighten both your moods. Thompson always has magazines with her. “If I see a parent struggling — we’ve all been there — I’ll hand the kids the magazine and say, ‘Tear out every picture of a dog in the magazine and give it to me,’ ” said Thompson, a mother of two.
Other ideas include loaning a phone charger, buying someone a cup of coffee or helping with a language barrier. “Just be a little more aware. You’re not alone here. You’re all in the same boat,” Thompson said.
Whiting approaches people in a military uniform or a Vietnam War hat to say thank you. “It makes those people feel good. It makes me feel good,” he said. “It’s tiny things that make a huge difference.”
Entertain your children. Many airports (including Boston Logan and Chicago O’Hare) have designated play areas for children. If you’re not lucky enough to be stuck in one of them, find the airport’s visitor center to ask about trinkets and toys. Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, for example, offers coloring books, crayons, playing cards and, recently, Slinkys. “We give them something to remember us by,” said Greg Kelly, executive director of the Savannah Airport Commission.
Leave. Munson takes the free airport shuttle to a nearby hotel and hangs out in the lobby. “It’s totally worth it to be more comfortable than sitting in a place where it’s hard chairs and they’re yelling over your head every few minutes,” she said. “Use that as your personal sky club, as long as your delay is long enough.”
Williams noted that the hotel restaurant may have better food at a cheaper price, be less crowded and offer free WiFi. For a very long wait, book a room at a day rate to nap, watch TV or allow children to hop on beds. “It’s expensive, but it is an option,” Williams said.
Thompson recommended checking with an airline agent to determine whether it’s safe to leave. Don’t exit if the delay is for mechanical problems, Leoni said. “I wouldn’t stray too far,” he said. “Things could change for the better very quickly.”
At least one can hope.
Waters is a writer based in New Jersey. Her website is sharonannwaters.com. Find her on Twitter: @sharonannwaters. | 2022-06-16T20:28:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stuck in an airport? Here are 10 ways to spend your time. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/16/airport-layover-delay-ideas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/16/airport-layover-delay-ideas/ |
Virginia lawmakers return to Richmond to take up Youngkin budget wishes
The Virginia House of Delegates reconvenes in a special session June 1. Delegates will meet again, along with the Senate, on June 17. (Daniel Sangjib Min/AP)
RICHMOND — Virginia’s General Assembly returns to the Capitol on Friday to take up 38 budget amendments proposed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), with time draining toward a June 30 deadline to get the state’s two-year spending plan in place.
Lawmakers of both parties had asked Youngkin not to tinker with the compromise budget that they spent nearly six months hashing out. But the new governor had other ideas — digging in on some issues and picking new fights, including his first substantive action on the issue of abortion.
“He certainly struck a whole lot of hot-button issues that people care about, and it will be interesting to see if any of them can survive both bodies,” said Del. Mark D. Sickles (D-Fairfax), who participated in budget negotiations.
Because the budget originated in the House, Youngkin’s proposals will go to that Republican-controlled chamber first. The items that survive will move on to the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats and could put the brakes on Youngkin’s initiatives.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether all House Republicans will go along with Youngkin’s renewed request for a three-month suspension of the state’s gasoline tax. Del. Barry D. Knight (R-Virginia Beach), who as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee was instrumental in shaping the budget plan, has said he would not revisit the compromises already struck by negotiators, who agreed not to include the gas tax holiday.
Knight could not be reached for comment Thursday. But Garren Shipley, a spokesman for House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah), said he believes the temporary cut is likely to pass regardless of whether Knight votes for it. Republicans have a 52-48 edge in the House.
Several of Youngkin’s proposed amendments are items that have little to do with spending — a case of “legislating by budget” that’s relatively uncommon in Richmond, particularly when it comes to the criminal code.
“It’ll be interesting to see how the Republicans react to some of this — are they going to fall in lockstep with the governor or see that he’s … trying to take some legislative prerogative away from us?” said Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax).
One item: a proposed new felony for protesting outside the home of a judge with the intent to intimidate. That’s a reaction to the situation last month when people demonstrated outside the Virginia home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. over a leaked draft opinion he wrote that would eliminate the federal right to an abortion.
Youngkin had faced criticism from some conservatives for not using the state police to break up those demonstrations; he cited a lack of authority.
Simon pointed out that changes to the criminal code usually go through an extensive legislative process, in which the Assembly’s many lawyer-members can vet any proposal.
“People are subject to losing their liberty on something that nobody has even had a chance to look at,” he said, calling Youngkin’s proposal “an obvious appeal to a Fox News audience that’s taken umbrage at people protesting outside Supreme Court justices’ homes. That seems to be going a bit far.”
Shipley, the House Republican spokesman, countered that Democratic governors have also introduced new items through budget language, though none of his examples involved establishing new criminal charges.
Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) characterized Youngkin’s amendments as dismissive of bipartisan budget negotiations — and the legislative process as a whole, noting that the General Assembly had soundly rejected some of the measures the governor is seeking to revive in the budget.
“Apparently legislative action, to him, is meaningless,” Saslaw said Thursday. “I don’t think we’ve ever dealt with this many amendments to the budget. … I don’t think he’s going to get his way on all of this, not by a long shot.”
In his message to lawmakers, Youngkin said that his “amendments primarily focus on expanding opportunities for education, keeping our communities safe, and making Virginia the best state for business. I believe that my amendments are necessary in order to continue the work that can unite Virginians, Republican and Democrat alike.”
Democrats have the power to thwart Youngkin’s amendments by simple majority votes in the Senate, which the party controls by a 21-to-19 margin. But there is some uncertainty whether they will stick together on a proposed amendment to tighten already strict rules about publicly funded abortions.
One Senate Democrat — Scott A. Surovell (Fairfax) — will be absent, narrowing the party’s advantage. Another, Joseph D. Morrissey (Richmond), describes himself as “pro-life,” although he has supported abortion rights in some circumstances.
The amendment would put additional restrictions on the use of public money to fund abortion services. Under the federal Hyde Amendment, federal money cannot be used for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or if the life or health of the mother is at risk. Under a state law adopted in 1982, Virginia allows state money to be used for abortion in one other circumstance: when the fetus has “incapacitating” physical deformities or mental deficiencies.
Youngkin’s amendment would eliminate state funding for those abortions, which are very rare. The state paid for 22 abortions in such cases last year, according to state budget records. His amendment would leave in place the exceptions allowed under federal law pertaining to rape, incest and the life of the mother.
“The governor’s reinstatement of the Hyde language makes it clear that Virginia taxpayers will not be forced to pay for abortions, except where it is required by federal law,” Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said Thursday.
Morrissey did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the amendment.
Lawmakers also plan to take up several judicial appointments, including naming two judges to fill open seats on the seven-member Supreme Court of Virginia. Simon said a deal was close to allow Senate Democrats to name one candidate and House Republicans the other, though specifics were not immediately available. | 2022-06-16T21:34:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia lawmakers return to Richmond to take up Youngkin budget wishes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/virginia-budget-general-assembly-youngkin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/virginia-budget-general-assembly-youngkin/ |
Home building declined in May; tech firms agree to battle disinformation
Home building declined last month
New U.S. home construction dropped in May, highlighting the impacts of ongoing supply chain challenges and sinking sales as mortgage rates rise.
Residential starts declined 14.4 percent last month to a 1.55 million annualized rate, the lowest in more than a year, according to government data released Thursday. The median forecast called for a 1.69 million pace. April construction was revised sharply higher to a 1.81 million rate, which was the strongest since 2006.
The monthly decline in starts was the largest since spring 2020 and suggests residential construction is coming under pressure as higher mortgage rates take an even bigger toll on demand. Still, with the pace of building permits exceeding starts, home building in the near term may hold up.
The figures come after the Federal Reserve raised rates by 75 basis points in a meeting Wednesday and held out the possibility of another such move next month to curb decades-high inflation.
The government’s report showed single-family housing starts declined 9.2 percent to an annualized 1.05 million rate, the slowest since 2020. Construction of multifamily dwellings plunged 23.7 percent to a 498,000 rate, the weakest since November.
Companies agree to battle disinformation
Meta, Alphabet unit Google, Twitter and Microsoft agreed on Thursday to take a tougher line against disinformation under an updated European Union code of practice that could hit them with hefty fines if they fail to do so.
The signatories agree to do more to tackle deep fakes, fake accounts and political advertising, while noncompliance can lead to fines as much as 6 percent of a company’s global turnover, an E.U. executive said.
The companies, which include TikTok and Amazon’s live-streaming esports platform Twitch, have six months to comply with their pledges and will have to present a progress report at the beginning of 2023. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Critics such as the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe said there were grave shortcomings in the revised code.
“The Review does not offer concrete commitments to limit ‘impermissible manipulative behavior,’” it said.
Cryptocurrency company Circle said Thursday that it will start issuing its first euro-denominated cryptocurrency, a stablecoin known as Euro Coin, later this month. It would be the first stablecoin in euros — the world’s second-most-important reserve currency after the U.S. dollar — backed by a large player in the industry and could become a major conduit for moving cryptocurrencies throughout Europe. The stablecoin, meaning it’s backed by hard assets, is launching at a time of major declines in the value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which has led crypto firms to fail and erase billions of dollars of digital wealth. Circle owns and operates USD Coin.
Kroger raised its expectations for 2022 profit on Thursday, betting on steady demand for its groceries and household essentials in the face of decades-high inflation. The U.S. supermarket chain forecast earnings per share in a range $3.85 to $3.95 for 2022, compared with its prior range of $3.75 to $3.85. Analysts on average expect $3.85, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
McDonald’s agreed to pay $1.3 billion to settle probes in France where the Big Mac maker was accused of dodging taxes by unfairly shifting revenue to Luxembourg and Switzerland. McDonald’s agreed to a 508 million euro settlement to end a French criminal probe into tax fraud allegations as well as the payment of an extra 737 million euros in back taxes and penalties. Under the terms of the deal, the company didn’t plead guilty. | 2022-06-16T21:38:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Home building declined in May; tech firms agree to battle disinformation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2022/06/16/3376e24a-ed5c-11ec-84c8-8690f7970e1d_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2022/06/16/3376e24a-ed5c-11ec-84c8-8690f7970e1d_story.html |
Police largely cleared over reporter's funeral
Riot police pushed and beat mourners at the funeral, causing the pallbearers to nearly drop the casket during the May 13 procession in East Jerusalem.
The violence drew international condemnation and added to the grief and outrage across the Arab world that followed the death of Abu Akleh, who was killed May 11 while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.
Witnesses and Palestinian officials say Abu Akleh was targeted by Israeli troops, while the Israeli military says she was killed during a shootout with Palestinian gunmen and that it is unclear who fired the bullet.
The Haaretz daily, citing unidentified sources, said Thursday that an internal police probe had found misconduct by officers. But it said police had determined beforehand that the commanders who oversaw the event would not be disciplined.
It was not clear whether any of the officers who beat the pallbearers would be punished.
Youth trips to Poland ended in history feud
Israel has canceled educational trips to Poland for thousands of high school students this summer, with the Israeli foreign minister accusing the Polish government of trying to control the Holocaust curriculum taught to Israeli children.
Yair Lapid’s announcement reignited long-standing tensions over Poland’s treatment of its Jewish citizens in the Holocaust.
Lapid said Poland has barred the young Israeli delegations from learning about Polish citizens collaborating with Nazis during the Holocaust.
However, researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who killed Jews fleeing the Nazis and Polish blackmailers who preyed on helpless Jews for financial gain. Six million Jews, including nearly all of Poland’s 3 million Jews, were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators, and major Nazi death camps were located in occupied Poland.
Young Israelis traditionally travel to Poland in the summer to tour those camps to learn about the Holocaust and memorialize those murdered.
Two Hezbollah members get life terms in 2005 Hariri bombing: Appeals judges at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Netherlands sentenced two members of the militant Hezbollah group to life in prison for their roles in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri and the deaths of 21 other people in a bombing in Beirut in 2005. The blast also wounded 226 people. The two convicted remain at large and were tried in absentia.
Iran seizes vessel with smuggled fuel: Iranian authorities have seized a vessel carrying about 24,000 gallons of smuggled fuel in the waters around Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The captain and five other crew members were issued criminal warrants and have been detained, IRNA added. Iran has been fighting rampant fuel smuggling by land to neighboring states and by sea to Arab countries in the Gulf region. | 2022-06-16T21:39:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: June 16, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-16-2022/2022/06/16/9be38efc-ed7d-11ec-84c8-8690f7970e1d_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-june-16-2022/2022/06/16/9be38efc-ed7d-11ec-84c8-8690f7970e1d_story.html |
China’s military expansion is reaching a dangerous tipping point
A photo by the Xinhua News Agency shows a fighter jet preparing to land on a Chinese navy's aircraft carrier on Dec. 31. (AP)
Top military leaders from the United States and China met last weekend at a forum in Singapore, where they attempted to manage mounting tensions between the superpowers. But throughout Asia, there’s growing fear that China’s drastic military expansion will soon result in Chinese regional military superiority, which could embolden Beijing to start a war over Taiwan.
That sense of urgency was palpable at last week’s Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual conference of diplomats, officials and experts from across Asia, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Over three days of discussions a common sentiment emerged: China is racing to become the dominant military power in Asia in the next few years — and if it succeeds, Beijing is likely to use force to attempt to subdue Taiwan’s democracy. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has dispelled any notion that revisionist dictatorships can be deterred by anything short of a superior opposing military force.
In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that China plans to achieve military parity with the United States in Asia by 2027. As the Chinese military advances in both technology and territorial presence, leaders in the People’s Liberation Army are now openly threatening to attack Taiwan and promising to fight anyone who attempts to intervene. Beijing is speeding up its plans, and the United States risks falling behind.
In Singapore, I interviewed Adm. John C. Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, who described what he’s seeing as “the largest military buildup in history” — with growing Chinese arsenals of both conventional and nuclear weapons. Aquilino said Beijing is attempting to establish regional hegemony and change the international order in Asia. China wants to be in a position to dictate the rules and use its military without fearing any constraints.
“I only see their efforts accelerating,” he said. “I see advanced capabilities that are being delivered more quickly than we would have expected. … Their goal is to have parity with the United States to ensure that they can’t be deterred.”
China is building the capability to use nuclear blackmail to deter a U.S. intervention if it invades Taiwan, following Russia’s model. China’s regional military presence is expanding, including a secret naval base in Cambodia and a secret military cooperation agreement with the Solomon Islands. China has developed new technologies, including hypersonic missiles and antisatellite lasers, to keep the U.S. military at bay in a Taiwan scenario. And now, China no longer recognizes the Taiwan Strait as international waters.
China’s increased military confidence is reflected in its ever more belligerent rhetoric. After meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Singapore, China’s Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe gave a speech in which he promised, “China will definitely realize its reunification” with Taiwan. If anyone tries to stand in the way, he went on, “We will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs.”
In his speech, Austin attempted to reassure the region that the United States was committed to maintaining its leadership in Asia. But diplomats and experts in Singapore could not help noticing a gap between what the United States is saying and the resources Washington is committing to the effort.
New research investments the Pentagon is making today won’t bear fruit for several years. U.S. shipbuilding plans are woefully underfunded. The United States’ new trilateral alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom (known as AUKUS) won’t result in providing Australia with nuclear submarines until the late 2030s.
China is working on a shorter timeline. Aquilino wouldn’t volunteer an exact date for when China might surpass U.S. military power in Asia, but he called the 2020s “the decade of concern.” His predecessor at Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in March that the threat of China invading Taiwan will become critical in “the next six years.” With 2027 being the final year of Xi’s expected (and unprecedented) third five-year term, it gives him a personal deadline for attempting reunification.
Indo-Pacific Command estimated in a May report to Congress that the region needs about $67 billion in new military investment between 2024 and 2027 to maintain the U.S. comparative military advantage over China. The budget is already behind schedule. In April, Indo-Pacific Command submitted a list of unfunded items that totals $1.5 billion for 2023 alone.
Maintaining the U.S. military advantage in the Indo-Pacific region will be neither easy nor cheap. Urgent tasks include dispersing more equipment and personnel to more places, hardening existing outposts such as Guam, increasing training and equipping of allies, and drastically increasing military support to Taiwan for its self-defense.
Meeting military escalation with escalation brings real risks that must be managed, not ignored. But the costs of war if China concludes it can take Taiwan easily would be exponentially higher. The United States doesn’t have the luxury of waiting until the next decade to counter China’s military expansion in Asia. As George Washington said in his first speech to Congress in 1790, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” | 2022-06-16T21:39:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | China’s military expansion is reaching a dangerous tipping point - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/china-expansion-indopacific-asia-taiwan-xi-aquilino/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/china-expansion-indopacific-asia-taiwan-xi-aquilino/ |
Innovation is driving breakthroughs in health care
Regarding the June 11 news article “Cancer drug trial success has researchers wondering what will come next”:
The outcome of a new colorectal cancer study in which 100 percent of patients who received treatment were cleared of the condition serves as the latest reminder of how innovation in health care is driving significant medical breakthroughs.
Medicines are helping patients live healthier lives by treating and curing diseases once thought to be a virtual death sentence. As of 2019, there were an estimated 16.9 million cancer survivors living in the United States, a number that is projected to grow to more than 22.1 million by 2030. Death rates from cancer fell 31 percent from 1991 to 2018, while overall U.S. life expectancy increased in 2018 in large part because of rapid advancements in cancer treatment. While still early in the clinical trial process, the colorectal cancer study gives us even greater hope that existing treatments in development can soon eradicate the disease, as well as fuel new treatments for other cancers.
It is because of an ecosystem that fosters medical advances that patients can have hope for a disease-free future. We must continue to foster a policy environment that values innovation, incentivizes further development of lifesaving treatments and drives scientific research and innovation, because patients can’t wait.
Debbie Hart, Trenton, N.J.
The writer is president and chief executive of BioNJ. | 2022-06-16T21:39:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Innovation is driving breakthroughs in health care - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/innovation-is-driving-breakthroughs-health-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/innovation-is-driving-breakthroughs-health-care/ |
A pedestrian takes a bottle of water at a Salvation Army hydration station during a heatwave as temperatures hit 115 degrees in Phoenix, June 15. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
When dangerously high temperatures become an inescapable part of life in Phoenix every year, people bring out a tired old joke: “It’s a dry heat.”
Sure, there’s some truth to that, but when the high temperature is well over 100 degrees for days on end, as it is now, low humidity doesn’t mean much: Each day is just brutally, menacingly hot. And, in any case, the line is amusing only if you’re privileged enough to confine your existence to a finely air-conditioned home, car and workplace, with the occasional dip in the pool.
Now consider the hundreds of people living — and trying to sleep — in tents pitched on the heat-absorbing tar and concrete surface along an off-the-beaten-path slice of downtown Phoenix. It is a dystopian scene that unfolds right outside the overcrowded central shelter, largely unseen by most city residents. Overall in Maricopa County, according to a count conducted earlier this year, more than 5,000 people are living on these now hellish streets.
Under an extreme heat warning, Thursday is expected to top out at 112 degrees. Friday: 109. The 10-day outlook? In the 100s all the way.
Amid a heat wave broiling Phoenix and much of the Southwest and Midwest, we can entertain ourselves by mocking the sun — frying eggs on the sidewalk, enjoying dashboard-baked cookies, posting memes — or we can choose to face heat for what it is: an urgent public health crisis.
The heat makes life a perpetual misery not only for those living on the streets but also for anyone with little money or trapped in substandard housing. Heat makes people sick. Heat kills. And more people in each of the past five years have been hospitalized and died in Arizona because of the heat, in large part because of climate change.
Nightfall hasn’t brought much relief. One night during the current heat wave, the temperature didn’t drop below 90 degrees — the earliest in the year that has ever happened in Phoenix, according to Isaac Smith, a National Weather Service meteorologist. But most of the 113 cooling stations in Phoenix and elsewhere in Maricopa County do not stay open overnight.
If your air conditioner breaks down — or if you’re like the four construction workers I met this week at the mobile home they share in West Phoenix, who can afford to run the A/C for only a few hours a day — you’re out of luck.
I sat down to talk to them about 5 p.m., when the heat is at its worst, beating down from above and radiating from the pavement. They were eating rice and eggs, their first meal since leaving home for work at 3 a.m., they said. The front door was open to let some fresh air in. The curtains were drawn on every window to keep the sun out. It felt as hot inside as it did outside.
Mobile homes make up 6 percent of the homes in sprawling Maricopa County, but people who live in them accounted for 30 percent of all heat-related indoor deaths between 2008 and 2018. David Hondula, who leads the Heat Response and Mitigation Office in Phoenix, told me that people who live in mobile homes “fall into interesting gaps of affordability of services.”
In less carefully bureaucratic words: The economic prosperity in Arizona that Gov. Doug Ducey (R) loves to tout hasn’t trickled down to them.
Phoenix is among the first cities in the country to have an office focused on heat response and mitigation, and Hondula, an environmental sciences professor at Arizona State University, is its first director. “The scale of the challenge,” he says, “is significant.”
One hurdle: The fiercely competitive real-estate market makes it tough for the city to find available buildings and land to open more cooling centers.
Then there is the plan to achieve 25 percent tree canopy cover by 2030. The project has fallen woefully behind schedule, though Hondula said there’s now money and political will invested in realizing that goal.
The city is also investing in “cool pavement” (an asphalt coating that reflects more sunlight and absorbs less heat), using federal dollars to weatherize mobile homes and working with more than 30 organizations to get relief — drinking water, cooling towels, hats and sunscreen — into the hands of those who need it.
Helping people get off the streets, and out of mobile homes, and into safe and reliable housing options would be a much bigger win than getting bottles of water into their hands. But weak tenant protections feed stubbornly high eviction rates in a state that has among the lowest stocks of affordable housing in the country.
“There’s a lack of political will, basically, to care for those who don’t have money,” said Stacey Champion, a community advocate who has volunteered her time over many years to address Phoenix’s disparities.
Of the city’s many disparities, the most dangerous one right now is the temperature gap between those in safely air-conditioned spaces and those left to the merciless sun. | 2022-06-16T21:39:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Extreme heat isn’t a joke. It’s a public health crisis. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/phoenix-deadly-extreme-heat-wave/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/phoenix-deadly-extreme-heat-wave/ |
There was heroism to be found in Uvalde
A police officer visits a memorial at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on June 9. (Eric Gay/AP)
In her June 8 news commentary, “After Tex. school shooting, a search for heroism in the face of failures,” Robin Givhan looked in vain for heroism connected with the Uvalde, Tex., school shooting. She castigated police officers who failed to do their jobs and portrayed law enforcement in Uvalde as fumbling and hesitant. While mistakes were undoubtedly made, she did not do justice to the courageous officers who eventually did storm the classroom where the shooter was hiding. At least one was reportedly wounded in the attack. Some accounts say the officers acted contrary to orders from the on-scene commander to hold back. Along with blame, we ought to be handing out some medals here.
Martin McLean, Bethesda
Members of Congress who refuse to take action on gun violence in our society are not cowards, as the media insists on calling them. They have nothing to fear or lose except for their position in Congress. To place that as a priority over the lives of Americans and the freedom for us to live in peace is nothing but greed for power and money. Greed.
Kathy D. Fisher, Harrisonburg
No other modern democracy suffers this epidemic — they have strict gun-control laws. Yet, they remain democracies. The National Firearms Act of 1934 successfully eliminated the Thompson submachine gun, a big problem during Prohibition. Later amended by the Crime Control Act of 1968, it also banned other military arms. It worked, it was constitutional, and we remained a democracy.
Later, the assault weapons ban of 1994 was passed after multiple shootings in California. It worked, it was constitutional and the United States remained a democracy. But a Republican-led Congress let it lapse in 2004. Sales of such weapons skyrocketed along with mass shootings. So, more guns did not make us safer, but the numbers of deaths and mass shootings did increase. Blood is clearly on Republicans hands.
No one is “coming for people’s guns.” That’s an empty distraction. Reinstituting a ban on assault-style weapons does not infringe on one’s Second Amendment rights because there are many other “arms” that can be owned. In fact, the “originalist” definition of “arms” meant swords and muskets. Those can certainly be legalized, if necessary.
If guns guaranteed a democracy, then Sierra Leone would be a model democracy and Canada would be a tyranny. It’s not pop guns stopping tanks from rolling over our houses. It’s separation of powers, the rule of law, a free press and free speech, free and fair elections, government transparency and one’s oath of office — all things Republicans are openly assaulting and undermining.
Jeff K. Smith, Jessup | 2022-06-16T21:39:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | There was heroism to be found in Uvalde - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/there-was-heroism-be-found-uvalde/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/there-was-heroism-be-found-uvalde/ |
Trump put Pence in more danger than we knew
A noose at the National Mall near the Capitol is displayed on a screen June 16, 2022, during a hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Tom Brenner/Bloomberg)
We now know that there were two moments when Vice President Mike Pence’s life was in particular danger on Jan. 6, 2021.
The first came shortly after Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber following rioters having gained access to the building. The vice president was hustled into a ceremonial office across a short hallway, just moments before a crowd of rioters climbed a set of stairs to arrive near the same spot. Had Officer Eugene Goodman not had the presence of mind to goad the rioters in the opposite direction, they would have passed down the hallway and past the door of the room in which Pence was sheltering.
We knew about that brush with danger. During the hearing on Thursday of the House select committee investigating the riot, we learned about the second — one that came after Donald Trump had specifically targeted his vice president with tweeted words of condemnation.
A lot happened between 2 and 2:30 p.m. on that day. At 2:12 p.m., a member of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group smashed a window with a stolen police shield and rioters began flooding into the Capitol. At 2:13 p.m., Pence was evacuated and, shortly afterward, arrived in that nearby office. Chris Hodgson, Pence’s director of legislative affairs, told the committee’s investigators that, soon after, “the noise from the rioters became audible.”
A few minutes later, Fox News aired an interview with a Trump supporter who expressed frustration at Pence’s by-then public refusal to accede to Trump’s plan to reject the electoral votes submitted by states. Shortly after that, Trump — quite possibly watching Fox’s coverage — tweeted a condemnation of Pence:
During Thursday’s hearing, the committee played several snippets of video showing Trump supporters reacting both to Pence’s initial refusal to play along with Trump’s plan and to Trump’s tweet about it. In a prepared video, the committee noted that the tweet was followed quickly by a new push from the rioters in multiple locations.
Around 2:25 p.m., the video stated, Pence was evacuated from the ceremonial office down some stairs to a more secure location. In an animation, the committee showed how close the rioters were as that evacuation was taking place: 40 feet.
This is important information for several reasons.
One is that it reinforces that the danger to Pence was ongoing. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) revealed in the hearing that “a confidential informant from the Proud Boys told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance.” Given that members of the Proud Boys were both among the earliest arrivals inside the building and had a demonstrated predilection for violence, that’s not an idle threat.
Another is that it reveals that Pence was in peril even after Trump’s tweet.
The crowd was already furious at Pence; Trump’s tweet seemed like “pouring gasoline on the fire,” as one former White House aide said in recorded testimony. That’s because the staff — and, almost certainly, Trump — knew about the violence that was already underway at the Capitol, another significant revelation that emerged from the hearing.
Ben Williamson, an aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, texted Meadows at 2:02 p.m. suggesting that “we may want to put out some sort of statement because the situation was getting a little hairy over at the Capitol,” as he put it. He then went down to see Meadows to reiterate the recommendation. Meadows quickly got up and left the room. In a separate bit of testimony aired during the hearing, Williamson described following Meadows to the Oval Office — suggesting he was going to speak with Trump.
Aguilar stated during the hearing that Meadows probably knew about the violence even before that. (By 1:50 p.m., rioters had reached the scaffolding in place for the inauguration.)
“We received testimony that the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was notified of the violence at the Capitol by 2 p.m. and likely earlier,” Aguilar said. “The testimony further establishes that Mr. Meadows quickly informed the president and that he did so before the president issued his 2:24 p.m. tweet criticizing Vice President Pence.”
Again, though, this was only the last point at which Trump intentionally directed the mob’s anger at Pence. In his speech during the rally at the Ellipse, Trump repeatedly insisted that everything hinged on the vice president’s decision — though multiple advisers had informed Trump and his team that Pence had no power to derail Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“Our investigation found that early drafts of the January 6 Ellipse speech prepared for the president,” Aguilar stated at another point, “included no mention of the vice president.”
So Trump’s excoriations of his vice president in that speech — for example: “Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country, and if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you” — were late additions meant either to put pressure on Pence directly or to spur the crowd to do so.
Pence’s team members had warned the Secret Service the day prior that they expected the vice president to be a focus of anger on Jan. 6; they understood what it meant to buck Trump on this. Sure enough, just before 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 6, Pence and his family were being hustled to a new, more secure position in the Capitol with rioters 40 feet away.
At that same moment, Trump was busy: trying to leverage the delay in the counting of the electoral votes to make phone calls pressuring senators to reject the submitted votes. In other words, to do what Pence had understood he had no power to do.
“Did Donald Trump ever call the vice president to check on his safety?” Aguilar asked Greg Jacob, a Pence attorney who testified on Thursday. | 2022-06-16T21:39:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump put Pence in more danger than we knew - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/trump-put-pence-more-danger-than-we-knew/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/trump-put-pence-more-danger-than-we-knew/ |
Tight end Cole Turner, a fifth-round pick by the Commanders, hauls in a pass during minicamp. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Sandwiched between a trip to Chapel Hill, N.C., where he’d scout a quarterback, and a day out west to check on a highly touted receiver, Scott Turner squeezed in dinner and a private workout in Reno, Nev.
In the Commanders’ short history with Ron Rivera as head coach and Scott Turner as offensive coordinator, they’ve learned to love the converts — the receivers who transitioned to running back, the cornerbacks who moved to safety, and especially the athletes of all stripes who switched to tight end — receivers, quarterbacks even international basketball players.
Ron Rivera is hopeful a Terry McLaurin contract is coming. When? ‘Don’t know.’
“It's kind of something we look for because my first year here, one of the things we talked about was position-flex guys, being able to move around and do different things,” Rivera said. “Well, it's one of those things that kind of applies to the tight end position.”
And as Thomas recovers from a serious knee injury he suffered last December, that young cast faces a critical training camp to prove their potential at a position Scott Turner — and his new quarterback, Carson Wentz — favor heavily. (Since 2017, Wentz has thrown to tight ends on 31.1 percent of his targets, the second-highest rate among quarterbacks behind Lamar Jackson.) The competition has provided optimism, but also uncertainty as Rivera and his staff attempt, yet again, to find a reliable corps of complete pass-catchers and blockers.
Cole Turner, a 6-foot-6, 240-pound former basketball player and receiver who switched to tight end two years ago, is the youngest of the group at 22, but perhaps the most promising. A fairly raw receiver coming out of Clackamas, Ore., Turner was a lanky 190 pounds when he started his college career. But in three years he filled out to 250, fitting the bill as a red zone weapon and a magnet for 50-50 balls. Like his one-handed back-shoulder catch on a fade route against Idaho State last year. Or his touchdown three weeks later against Boise State when he spun 180 degrees, falling almost parallel to the ground in the corner of the end zone.
“[Bill] Belichick used to talk about the tight end and say, ‘It’s the one position that changes every formation in football. When you move the tight ends around, the defense has to adjust,'” Norvell said. “So I always remembered that. I loved putting all our receivers on one side and flex Cole out of the backside. They would have to flip the corners over or they’d have to play a safety or linebacker on him, and every time they did it was a mismatch.”
Castillo could see the potential for even more. In the months ahead of the draft, he spoke often with his receivers and the tight ends coach at Nevada, Chad Savage (now the receivers coach at Colorado State). Castillo also met with Cole Turner at the combine and again in Reno for dinner, alongside Scott Turner and Washington executive vice president Marty Hurney.
To try to prove Castillo right, Cole Turner spent much of his offseason training for the draft in Irvine, Calif., with Joe Staley, the former 49ers offensive tackle, and John Garrett, the brother of Jason Garrett and previous head coach at Lafayette College. Their focus: blocking.
“It’s something that I know a lot of people always like to call that a knock in my game,” Cole Turner said. “I want to make it a strength and I want to be an all-around player.”
“They were like, ‘You look good and we feel like you switching over would be good for us and good for you as well. You should be able to make the team and make an impact,’” he said. “And I felt the same way. … My mom had always thought it was a good idea. She actually said this a couple years ago, which is crazy.”
“It’s very competitive, it really is,” Rivera said of the tight ends. “ … We are a little more athletic as we start getting into our depth and I think that can play very well into the things that Scott [Turner] wants to do with the different personnel groupings in not just being an 11 (one running back, one tight end) and 12 personnel team, but we can be 11, 12, 13.
For the Aug. 6 practice, fans can claim tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis. | 2022-06-16T21:40:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In a room of converts, Commanders find competition, potential at tight end - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/commanders-cole-turner-tight-ends/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/commanders-cole-turner-tight-ends/ |
NEW YORK — Luis Severino was scratched from his start for the New York Yankees against Tampa Bay on Thursday night and placed on the COVID-19 injured list.
“He’s just on the list now,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Last night he got sick, had a fever and chills and all that. Doing a lot better today but we’ll know (later). I think his original rapid stuff was negative but we’ll have a better idea probably sometime tonight.” | 2022-06-16T21:41:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Luis Severino scratched by Yankees, goes on COVID-19 IL - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/luis-severino-scratched-by-yankees-goes-on-covid-19-il/2022/06/16/c82bbf56-edba-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/luis-severino-scratched-by-yankees-goes-on-covid-19-il/2022/06/16/c82bbf56-edba-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
FILE - United States’ Tobin Heath, left, is congratulated by teammate Megan Rapinoe after scoring during the first half of an international friendly soccer match against New Zealand on May 16, 2019, in St. Louis. National Women’s Soccer League team OL Reign has acquired the rights to Heath from Racing Louisville on Thursday, June 16, 2022. The Reign signed Heath for the rest of the NWSL season, with an option for 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File) | 2022-06-16T21:41:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tobin Heath acquired by Reign, expected to report next week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/tobin-heath-acquired-by-reign-expected-to-report-next-week/2022/06/16/675482c2-edaf-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/tobin-heath-acquired-by-reign-expected-to-report-next-week/2022/06/16/675482c2-edaf-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Gun talks will continue after Senate negotiators miss Thursday deadline
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) speaks at a news conference after a weekly Democratic policy luncheon on Capitol Hill on June 14 in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The lack of firm agreement could foil leaders’ hopes of holding a Senate vote on a bill next week, and raised the prospect that a framework agreement released Sunday might not be able to be translated into an actual bill.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the top Republican negotiator, told reporters that he was “frustrated” about the lack of progress and tempered expectations that a deal could come together.
Later in the day, he left the Capitol to catch a flight back to Texas, indicating that the ball was in Democrats’ court: “At some point, you’ve just got to make a decision and when people don’t want to make a decision … you can’t accomplish the result. And that’s kind of where we are right now.”
But another Republican closely involved in the talks, Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.), struck a more upbeat note and said a bill could be written as soon as Friday. And Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democratic negotiator, told reporters he still expected a final deal to come together.
“It comes with a lot of emotions, it comes with political risk to both sides,” he said. “But we’re close enough that we should be able to get there.”
Many of those involved in the talks have viewed Thursday as a deadline to come to agreement on key provisions, allowing for final drafting to occur oversight and for a final bill to be filed Friday. That would allow Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to begin the process of setting up votes for next week, allowing the legislation to be passed ahead of a scheduled two-week recess.
But with no agreement on key sticking points Thursday, and most senators not returning to Washington until Tuesday, the timeline was in question.
“We need to work through the next 24 hours but … we are operating as if we’re bringing this bill to the floor,” Murphy said.
Among the toughest issues, senators and other people familiar with the talks said, is what is often called the “boyfriend loophole.” Under current federal law, domestic violence offenders who abuse their spouses or partners they have lived with or had a child with can be barred from purchasing firearms, even if the underlying offense was a misdemeanor.
The framework released Sunday proposed adding offenders who were in a “continuing relationship of a romantic or intimate nature” with their victim. But turning that broad definition into legislative language has proven difficult, senators said.
Republicans are wary of writing too general a definition out of concern that it could be used too broadly to deny people their constitutional right to bear arms. “This has got to be something other than, you know one date,” Cornyn said.
GOP negotiators have also pressed for a court process that would allow those who have been denied a firearm under the domestic violence provision to petition a judge to restore their right to own a gun. But Democrats are resisting attempts to water down the language, which has been a priority of gun-control and women’s advocates for years.
“Everyone who’s convicted of a crime has an ability to get that expunged or set aside in state court,” Murphy said. “But you know, I just — I’m of the view that if you beat the hell out of your dating partner, and you end up getting convicted for that crime, there should be consequences.”
Tillis said negotiators were examining state definitions of dating relationships and expressed optimism that a compromise was within reach.
Another contentious provision — creating a federal grant program that would help states implement red-flag laws that allow authorities to keep guns away from people judged to represent a threat to themselves or others — appeared to be back on track after Cornyn on Wednesday raised concerns that the program would disfavor states who choose not to enact those laws, which have been opposed by many gun-rights activists.
“The Republicans clearly want to make sure that there’s money available for states that don’t move forward with red-flag laws, and we’re going to find a way to do that in this bill,” Murphy said.
The bipartisan framework couples several modest gun provisions — the closing of the boyfriend loophole, the federal grants for red-flag laws and expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers — with new funding for mental health treatment and school security.
While the negotiators expressed optimism after the framework was released Sunday — with Murphy going so far as to say “the heavy lifting is done” — a final agreement was always contingent on producing draft legislation that comported with the framework.
The continuing clash Thursday over the thorny details vexed Cornyn, who said a failure to move on the bill next week would leave the fate of the entire framework in question.
“At some point, you’ve got to put your pens down — or at least you pick your pens up and write it and quit jawboning about it,” Cornyn said. | 2022-06-16T21:42:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gun deal in jeopardy after senators fail to agree on text - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/senate-gun-deal-text/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/senate-gun-deal-text/ |
D.C. attorney general sues city’s housing authority for discrimination
D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine speaks during a December news conference on Capitol Hill. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The office of D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) filed a lawsuit against the city’s housing authority on Thursday, alleging widespread discrimination against people with disabilities, some of whom have waited as long as a decade for housing that meets their needs.
The civil complaint, filed in the District’s Superior Court, is the latest in a host of problems for the D.C. Housing Authority, which operates independent of the city and serves about 50,000 low-income residents, about a fifth of whom are disabled.
Last fall, Neil Albert, the chair of the DCHA’s governing board, stepped down amid questions over conflicts of interest, including his vote for a resolution that included his partner’s business among architectural firms qualified to receive millions of dollars in contracts. A few days later, the D.C. Council’s housing committee called for an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General into “a troubling pattern” of unethical and “potentially criminal” behavior at the agency. That investigation is ongoing.
DCHA board chair steps down amid questions over conflicts of interest
In 2020, Racine’s office sued the authority over allegations it had failed to address drug- and firearm-related nuisances at 10 properties, an action that forced the agency to make security upgrades to those properties.
In Thursday’s suit, which seeks unspecified damages, Racine’s office alleges that the authority forced more than 250 disabled tenants to wait years for reasonable accommodations after they proved it was necessary.
In one case, a tenant who had requested a wheelchair-accessible unit in 2017 had to rely on others to carry her to and from her fourth-floor apartment so she could make her medical appointments, the suit alleges. The woman died last year, still waiting for her new unit, the complaint says.
In another case, a tenant who was bedridden and immobile requested a two-bedroom unit so her daughter could serve as an overnight caretaker. Though that request was approved a year ago, it has yet to be fulfilled, the suit says, forcing the woman’s daughter to install a camera in the home to monitor her mom while she sleeps.
“This complaint makes clear that DCHA has repeatedly failed to fulfill its legal responsibility to accommodate District residents who have physical disabilities with housing units that are safe and accessible,” Racine said in a statement.
DCHA spokeswoman Sheila Lewis declined to comment Thursday, saying the authority had not yet reviewed the complaint.
“After seeking to persuade DCHA to address these safety and quality of life issues, we had no choice but to file this case to ensure that the disabled tenants receive the accommodations that the law requires,” Racine’s statement said. | 2022-06-16T22:00:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DC Attorney General Karl Racine sues city housing authority, again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/dcha-dc-attorney-general-karl-racine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/dcha-dc-attorney-general-karl-racine/ |
Maryland health officials report possible monkeypox case in D.C. region
The health department does not recommend any additional precautions for the general public
Monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with a 2003 prairie dog outbreak. (Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC/AP) (AP)
Health officials reported the first presumed case of monkeypox in a Maryland adult from the National Capital Region on Thursday.
The individual experienced mild symptoms but did not require hospitalization and is recovering in isolation, Maryland Department of Health officials said Thursday in a news release. The agency said no additional precautions are recommended for the public.
The Maryland Public Health Laboratory conducted initial testing, and as of Thursday afternoon health officials were awaiting result confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Although human monkeypox is a rare infection in the United States, this Maryland case and other cases in the region and country remind us that we need to be prepared and take steps to prevent infection and its spread,” Deputy Secretary for Public Health Jinlene Chan said in the release.
Monkeypox is a potentially serious viral illness that typically begins with flu-like symptoms and swelling of the lymph nodes and progresses to a rash on the face and body. Symptoms generally appear seven to 14 days after exposure and usually clear up within two to four weeks. The virus can spread through direct contact with skin lesions, body fluids or contaminated materials, as well as through large respiratory droplets, which generally requires prolonged face-to-face interaction. The World Health Organization is in the process of establishing a new name for the virus.
The first case in the United States this year was identified last month in Massachusetts, since then, cases have been identified in at least 20 states, including Virginia as well as D.C.
U.S. public health officials say the cases appear to be concentrated among men who have sex with men, a trend also seen in European countries where the recent increase originated. | 2022-06-16T22:00:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monkeypox case identified in Maryland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/maryland-identifies-monkeypox-case/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/maryland-identifies-monkeypox-case/ |
USA Today removes 23 articles, says reporter fabricated sources
USA Today released a list of all removed articles written by breaking news reporter Gabriela Miranda between spring 2021 and spring of this year. (Steven Senne/AP)
USA Today removed 23 news stories from its website Thursday after an internal audit concluded that the reporter who wrote them misattributed quotes and, in some cases, may have fabricated interviews and sources.
The breaking news reporter, Gabriela Miranda, has resigned from the newspaper and could not be reached for comment. USA Today has removed nearly two dozen stories she wrote between spring 2021 (“TikTok bans ‘milk crate challenge’ from its app, citing concerns over dangerous acts”) and spring of this year (“'This is my land, I stay': These Ukrainian women are among thousands choosing to fight, not flee”).
USA Today released a list of all the removed articles, along with a brief account of its investigation into Miranda, which the company said began with an “external correction request” several weeks ago. The audit eventually broadened to encompass a wide swath of her reporting, which focused on trending topics and viral stories.
A spokesperson for USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, referred The Washington Post to the newspaper’s statement when asked for further details. The New York Times first reported that the publication had removed the stories.
Making up sources, quotes or anecdotes is considered journalistic malpractice by most news organizations, and it typically leads to the offender’s dismissal. Most newspapers correct the record as USA Today has, alerting readers to problematic work.
Such instances have often led to scandal. The Post gave back a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 after its reporter, Janet Cooke, admitted she had concocted a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict. The Times was similarly embarrassed in 2003 by revelations that reporter Jayson Blair had made up events in stories published under his byline and had plagiarized other reporters’ stories. USA Today reporter Jack Kelley resigned in 2004 after the newspaper couldn’t verify assertions he made in stories he reported from around the world.
Before joining USA Today, Miranda worked for the Gainesville Times, covering education and issues pertinent to the Hispanic community. The newspaper’s editor, Shannon Casas, did not return a request for comment.
While in college at the University of Georgia, which she graduated from in 2021, Miranda worked for a student publication, the Red & Black.
Her first story for USA Today was published in spring 2021, according to a news archive search. Her most recent, an April story about a cargo ship stuck in the Chesapeake Bay, has not been retracted.
During a panel discussion for the Stony Brook University chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists this March, Miranda said she had recently switched to the breaking news and enterprise beat, which she said “is what [she] really wanted to go into.”
USA Today also announced measures designed to prevent similar problems from recurring, including a promise to improve the process for making complaints and asking for corrections; a requirement that stories “have clear and sufficient identifying information for individuals quoted”; and a mandate to “apply additional scrutiny to sources found through blind connections on social media platforms, via email, etc.” | 2022-06-16T22:21:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USA Today removes 23 articles, says reporter Gabriela Miranda fabricated sources - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/16/usa-today-gabriela-miranda-retractions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/16/usa-today-gabriela-miranda-retractions/ |
Justice Dept. secures first guilty plea for threats to election workers
Travis Ford, 42, of Lincoln, Neb., posted multiple hostile messages on an Instagram page associated with the official, authorities said
Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a news conference June 13 at the Justice Department in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
“Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t. Do you think Soros will/can protect you?” Ford wrote in one August 2021 message, apparently referring to Democratic megadonor George Soros, who has long been the subject of false conspiracies from far-right and anti-Semitic groups.
In another posting, Ford wrote: “Your security detail is far too thin and incompetent to protect you. This world is unpredictable these days … anything can happen to anyone.” He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 6 and faces up to two years in prison, the Justice Department said.
“The Justice Department will not tolerate illegal threats of violence against public officials,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Threats of violence against election officials are dangerous for people’s safety and dangerous for our democracy.”
Elections officials say they fear for their personal safety: 'We are in harm's way'
In July 2021, the Justice Department launched a task force, led by Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, aimed at combating threats of violence against election workers, part of a broader effort to ensure the right to vote. In a memo to federal prosecutors, Monaco cited a “significant increase” in the number of threats against poll workers.
The task force has charged at least two other people with crimes.
Federal prosecutors in January charged a Texas man with threatening election and other government officials in Georgia, alleging that Chad Christopher Stark, 54, posted a message on Craigslist on Jan. 5, 2021, saying it was “time to kill” an official, whose name is not included in the court documents.
In the same week, Gjergi Luke Juncaj, 50, of Las Vegas was charged after allegedly telling an election official she was “going to f------ die” for stealing the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump — propagating a false conspiracy theory of widespread election fraud promoted by Trump and his allies without evidence.
In Ford’s case, federal authorities said he also posted similar messages on Instagram pages associated with President Biden and another public figure. | 2022-06-16T22:22:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Travis Ford pleads guilty to threatening elections official on Instagram - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/travis-ford-elections-threat-nebraska/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/travis-ford-elections-threat-nebraska/ |
By George T. Conway III
The Jan. 6 committee shows a photo of a gallows and noose during its hearing on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The hearings of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection have prompted a great deal of discussion about whether Donald Trump should be criminally charged for his attempted self-coup. You can count me as being on Team Prosecution, but there’s another important issue raised by the hearings: the effective operation of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to future presidencies.
Fortunately, the committee has been focused on that critical point from the outset of its work. Its earliest requests for materials asked for “all documents and communications related to the mental stability of Donald Trump or his fitness for office” and those related “to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
The 25th Amendment, in particular Section 4, is the constitutional provision that details what happens when a president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It could and should have been invoked to bring Trump’s calamitous presidency to an early and safe end.
The Fix: Why the 25th Amendment and pardons loom large for Jan. 6 committee
Think of it: Our president — the person in charge of the world’s second-largest arsenal of thermonuclear weaponry — was so apparently unstable that, as Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported in their book “Peril” and Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker recounted in their book, “I Alone Can Fix It,” the speaker of the House was compelled to call the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Jan. 8, 2021, to say about Trump, “He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.” She expressed concern that the crazy-man-in-chief could unilaterally launch a doomsday strike.
The chairman’s not-all-that-comforting response: “I agree with you on everything.”
No doubt the committee’s hearings will reveal a lot about Trump appointees’ understanding of the president’s mental state and their discussions of whether the 25th should be invoked. Section 4 provides that “whenever the Vice President and a majority of … the principal officers of the executive departments” declare that the president is unable to discharge the duties of his office, “the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
We already know from published reports that Trump’s Cabinet considered invoking this provision in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed it. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia called an aide to Pence to say that the Cabinet had to do something to keep the president in check. Just last week, Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, said she raised with Pence the possibility of triggering the 25th Amendment — but Pence said he’d have nothing of it. She then resigned.
Opinion: Team Normal? Better to call them Team Silent.
So it’s not surprising that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, promised in her opening statement last Thursday that the public “will hear about members of the Trump Cabinet discussing the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment and replacing the president of the United States.” As well we should: In January 2021, the 25th Amendment, not impeachment, was the most effective way to deal with Trump and the danger he embodied.
George T. Conway III: A federal judge said Trump probably committed a crime. The Justice Department can’t ignore that.
That’s because Section 4 provides for the immediate disempowerment of the president once the vice president and a majority of principal executive officers declare the president unable to serve. Even if the president objects, he doesn’t get his job back right away. The matter goes to Congress. And while Congress must assemble within 48 hours to consider the issue, Section 4 gives it three weeks to debate who’s right. On Jan. 7, 2021, Trump had less than two weeks left in his term. Congress could have run out the clock. With a single sheet of paper, the vice president and Cabinet could have sidelined Trump for good.
For all the credit he deserves for obeying the Constitution on Jan. 6, Pence deserves criticism for not taking this necessary step. But passing judgment on him really isn’t the principal point of the committee’s evidence. There’s an important legislative purpose at stake: Section 4 provides that Congress can substitute for the Cabinet “such other body as Congress may by law provide” — like, say, an independent group of experts who don’t owe their jobs to the president of the United States.
Max Boot: I thought the Jan. 6 committee wouldn't matter. I was wrong.
That should be an important focus of the committee’s continued work. Still, the evidence will help add to history’s verdict on Pence and the rest of the GOP. Trump’s disordered personality and his inability to carry out his duties didn’t suddenly manifest themselves in the days after the 2020 vote; as I’ve written at length, all that was out there for years, for everyone to see. Discussions within the Trump administration about sidelining the madman began as early as 2017.
They all knew. Yet they stood by and said and did nothing. Even at the very end, when the country was most in peril. Indeed, to my mind, the biggest falsehood of the Trump era wasn’t any of the 30,000-plus lies he told in office; it was the pretense maintained by GOP executive officials and lawmakers for four long years that he was in any way fit for the job.
As Cheney said last week, long after Trump is gone, Republicans’ “dishonor will remain.” We should add the refusal to invoke the 25th Amendment to the list of reasons why. | 2022-06-16T22:43:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Jan. 6 hearings point up critical role of the 25th Amendment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/25th-amendment-was-best-response-to-jan6-insurrection/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/25th-amendment-was-best-response-to-jan6-insurrection/ |
A mother and daughter walk past a residential building on Thursday that was destroyed as a result of shelling in Irpin, Ukraine. (Sergei Chuzavkov/AFP/Getty Images)
Finally, at some point, the combatants enter the final phase through one of two paths: Either the tide of war turns irreversibly in one side’s favor (as happened in 1918 and 1944), or an exhausted stalemate emerges (as in Korea in mid-1951). “At that point, the parties enter the endgame, and they start jockeying over the final settlement,” Rose noted.
In this middle phase that we’re in, the West must help Ukraine strengthen its position. Kyiv needs more weapons and training. While there are real limits to how much the Ukrainians can absorb, Washington (and its allies in Europe and elsewhere) must redouble their efforts. They also need to help Ukraine break the Russian blockade around Odessa. People have focused on the collapse of the Russian economy, which will probably shrink by about 11 percent this year. But Ukraine’s economy is likely to contract by a staggering 45 percent in 2022. Unless the country can export its grain out of its Black Sea ports, it could face economic calamity for years to come.
Most likely, this middle phase of the war will last for a while. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has the capacity to win decisively, and neither is likely to surrender easily. In the short term, this favors Russia. It has taken control of much of Donbas. And because the West hasn’t completely banned Russia’s energy exports, the Russian government has actually profited during this war. Bloomberg projects Russia’s oil and gas revenue for this year will be about $285 billion, compared with $236 billion last year. Meanwhile, it can now thwart Ukraine’s ability to export. In the longer term, one has to hope that the sanctions will hit Russia harder as the war goes on. At the same time, Ukraine has massive Western assistance, high morale and a willingness to fight to the end.
Even though we’re not in the final stages yet, it would be smart for Ukraine to start thinking about the endgame. That way, it can develop a coherent position, align its strategy around it and gain international support. Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger was criticized for suggesting that Kyiv should not seek to go beyond the pre-Feb. 24 lines on the battlefield. In fact, at this point it appears highly unlikely that Ukraine would even be able to regain all that territory by force, though it should keep trying. But it does seem wise to make that its goal — to reverse Russia’s territorial gains from this year. Then Kyiv can try to get back territories lost before that in 2014 through negotiations. President Volodymyr Zelensky has several times suggested something similar. And that goal — a return to the pre-Feb. 24 lines — would also be one that would garner the most international support.
In the final phase of the war, the West — and the United States in particular — become the pivotal players. Right now Russia is battling Ukraine directly. But if and when the conflict becomes something of a stalemate, the real struggle will be between Russia and the West. What will Russia give to get a relaxation of sanctions? What will the West demand to end Russia’s isolation?
So far, Washington has punted on this, explaining that it is up to the Ukrainians to decide what they want and that Washington will not negotiate over their heads. That’s the right message of public support, but Ukraine and its Western partners need to formulate a set of common war aims, coordinating strategy around them, gaining international support and using all the leverage they have to succeed. The goal must be an independent Ukraine, in full control of at least as much territory as it had before Feb. 24, and with some security commitments from the West.
The alternative to some kind of negotiated settlement would be an unending war in Ukraine, which would further devastate that country and its people, more than 5 million of whom have already fled. And the resulting disruptions to energy supplies, food and the economy would spiral everywhere, with political turmoil intensifying across the globe. Surely it is worth searching for an endgame that avoids this bleak future. | 2022-06-16T22:44:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | It’s time to start thinking about the endgame in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/ukraine-war-endgame-russia-europe-us-goals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/ukraine-war-endgame-russia-europe-us-goals/ |
Colin M. Greene is commissioner of the Virginia Department of Health. ( Culpeper Star-Exponent)
Colin Greene? Please, sit down and listen.
Racism in America is more than the “fire hoses, police dogs and Alabama sheriffs” you envision when you hear the word — a “politically charged” word you said White people shouldn’t have to hear.
It’s worst work is often done in silence. But you’d have to listen to understand this. Black women have been trying to explain it to you; they’ve been telling everyone for years.
Tensions over role of racism in public health strain Virginia department
They shouldn’t have to. And they shouldn’t have the new commissioner of Virginia’s Department of Health dismissing their work and their experience. They certainly don’t need him to “start fresh” on the public health crisis rooted in America’s systemic racism, as you told my colleague, Jenna Portnoy, you planned to do after your own excellent Office of Family Health Services team — led by a Black woman — tried to explain the concept to you.
Black women don’t need help understanding these ideas. They’ve been living them.
“I was home alone when I dialed 911,” recalled Lauren Powell, formerly a high-ranking director in the Virginia Health Department and an Ivy-league pedigreed professional who was living in a Richmond penthouse when two White paramedics responding to her urgent call for help hit her with one question: “Are you sure you can even afford this ambulance ride?”
But cases like this and ghastly health disparities weren’t enough to convince Greene that racism plays a part in health care.
This is what he told Portnoy, after she interviewed Black women who tried to talk to him about their work in health equity and access in Virginia, about the decades of data that help explain why Black babies and Black mothers die at two or three times the rate that White babies and White mothers die in infancy and childbirth.
He had already bleached their online presence before the meeting, ordering the removal of presentations studying institutional racism in the office that runs programs to improve maternal and child health. And he wouldn’t let the department mark the American Public Health Association’s awareness day acknowledging racism as a public health crisis.
Black women have been speaking for years. Is America finally ready to listen?
“It’s not just the word racism,” Greene went on to say. “For example, when people use the term ‘gun violence,’ I have a problem with that one, too. … Gun violence is, frankly, a Democratic talking point. When you use that term, every Republican in the room is going to walk out.”
I thought a doctor should be concerned with American health, not reading the room.
“It is offensive and severely out-of-touch to call ‘gun violence’ a Democratic talking point,” Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney said in a statement. “Especially when, on average, 1,065 people die by guns per year in Virginia.”
Another thing Greene doesn’t want to listen to? Education about racism in Virginia schools.
“If you say racism, you’re blaming White people,” Greene told Portnoy. “Enough of the world thinks that’s what you’re saying that you’ve lost a big piece of your audience. The fact that there are people teaching about Whiteness in schools in a very negative way doesn’t help.”
That Greene’s first concern is what White people might feel in conversations about racism should raise alarms.
These are supposed to be the views of bombastic podcast hosts, of politicians playing a room, of good ol’ boys who’ve never left the county. Audience? What about patients? People? Americans?
Greene, after growing up on Long Island and in Florida, spent three decades as a military doctor.
He wears bow ties, has a professorial demeanor, has visited 34 countries and “set foot on every continent except Antarctica” according to his résumé. He was director of the Department of Defense’s biomedical research institutes and he doesn’t hide the life-size cutout of “Bones” — Star Trek’s Dr. Leonard H. McCoy — in his office during Zoom meetings.
But talk to him about racism or the nation’s gun violence epidemic and he’s no more nuanced than the truck guy in my hometown who flies Confederate flags and uses the n-word as liberally as ketchup on all his food.
And that’s scary.
Not only is he continuing our nation’s sustained assault on Black women, whose skepticism of American medicine is deeply rooted and understandable, he’s continuing the disturbing injection of politics into the complex matters of people’s lives.
“It’s very clear the Youngkin health department doesn’t give a s--- about people of color, especially Black people,” State Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) said in a tweet after reading The Washington Post story. “Having this kind of racism in our public health department will lead to needless [B]lack deaths.”
Greene can’t possibly be making these statements out of a lack of experience or education. But it’s past time he said less and listened more. I doubt going to Antarctica will give him the enlightenment he needs to understand that Black women aren’t disagreeing with him — as he posited — because they’re angry.
They’re disagreeing with him because he’s wrong. | 2022-06-16T23:01:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Youngkin public health chief Colin Greene needs to listen to Black women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/colin-greene-racial-disparities-healthcare-youngking/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/colin-greene-racial-disparities-healthcare-youngking/ |
Youth, 16, fatally shot in Southeast Washington
The victim’s mother said she pleaded for help for her son, but received little
Deandre Coleman, 16, was fatally shot Wednesday on Hillside Road SE, shortly after 8:30 p.m. (Family photo)
A 16-year-old was fatally shot Wednesday night in the Benning Ridge neighborhood of Southeast Washington — the sixth youth killed this year in the District and the second this week.
Deandre Coleman, who was in the closing days of his freshman year in high school, was shot and killed just after 8:30 p.m. in the 4600 block of Hillside Road SE, a residential street about a half mile from his home.
“He was a joyful energized bunny,” said the teen’s mother, 37-year-old Dallas Coleman. “You couldn’t get him to sit down. Even when everyone else was sad, he was the life of the party. If he saw you in a bad mood, he was coming on joke time.”
D.C. police Chief Robert J. Contee III said it appears the 16-year-old was in a group that was targeted, but detectives do not know why. No arrest has been made. A man also was shot in the incident, and suffered an injury police described as not life threatening.
The youth was the city’s 92nd homicide victim this year, a nearly 14 percent increase over this time in 2021.
The violence has shaken District residents and thrust the debate over police and public safety to the forefront of the mayoral race, with a primary days away. On Monday, 17-year-old Xavier Spruill was fatally shot while in a vehicle on Wheeler Road in Southeast. Three 16-year-olds were killed in February, March and May, and a 15-year-old was slain in March.
On Thursday, Dallas Coleman sat on the couch of her home in Benning Ridge, talking about her slain son. She said he is survived by five siblings and his girlfriend, who is eight months pregnant with a girl they named Nevaeh, the backward spelling of heaven.
One wall of the family home is decorated with family photos, including one of the teen, with the words: “When life is beginning, love never ends.”
His mother said Deandre played youth league football and basketball. In middle school, she said, he attended Monument Academy Public Charter, a boarding school in Northeast Washington.
Most recently, Dallas Coleman said her son went to the Silver Spring campus of the Pathways Schools, for students who struggle in traditional classrooms. Officials at the school did not return calls asking to discuss the teen.
His mother said he had been recently arrested and charged with having a handgun, a case that was pending in the District’s juvenile court system at the time of his death.
Dallas Coleman said she does not believe that played a role in his shooting. But she criticized officials supervising Deandre while his case was pending, saying they were too lenient. She also said Contee needs to put more officers on the streets to restore order.
“He needs to do his job as the chief,” she said. “He’s not stopping the crimes.”
Contee said his department has made efforts to hire more officers and get guns off the streets.
“That’s what I’m doing, doing my job,” he said.
Because her son’s case had not yet been adjudicated, his supervision fell to the D.C. Superior Court’s Family Court Social Services Division, the juvenile equivalent of a probation agency. Dallas Coleman said she reached out to her son’s supervising agent and wanted her son put under GPS monitoring to keep him home. She said she was told that could only be done if Deandre was deemed a danger to the community.
“If a mother reaches out telling you that she needs help, why did you have to wait?” Dallas Coleman said. “Why does he have to be a danger to society? It doesn’t make sense.”
Juvenile records are sealed and a spokesman for the D.C. Superior Court, Doug Buchanan, said he could not respond to questions about a specific person.
In 2003, the Coleman family faced another tragedy when Dallas Coleman’s sister, Shameka Fludd, was killed in a domestic shooting in Columbia, Md. | 2022-06-16T23:01:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 16-year-old fatally shot in Southeast D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/teen-shot-southeast-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/teen-shot-southeast-dc/ |
Australia’s Grid Is Being Cornered by Its Own Generators
In commodity markets, there are few phenomena more feared than a corner.
If a few traders become too dominant, they can at times set prices at will by withholding supply, driving values to ridiculous levels. That’s what happened when the Hunt brothers cornered the market in silver in 1980, sending it to prices that are still a record. In equity markets, short squeezes like the one that caused Volkswagen AG to briefly become the world’s most valuable company in 2008 also represent a sort of corner.
That situation has been playing out this week in the market underpinning Australia’s main electricity grid. Regulators were forced Wednesday to suspend the spot market into which generators sell power, saying that trading was getting in the way of ensuring secure and reliable electricity supplies. That will temporarily switch the network from one run on capitalist principles of supply and demand, to something like a planned economy where the regulator directs utilities what to do.
It’s an extraordinary failure, especially considering that there’s no shortage of generation capacity out there. The best explanation is that the cornerstone players in Australia’s power market have seen the business model of their coal-fired assets incinerated. They decided YOLO, and chose to make a play for some short-term cash, rather than long-term stability.
Australia’s power market operates as a series of rolling reverse auctions. Generators bid to sell electricity into five-minute windows, with the price they all receive set by the highest-cost player. For wind and solar, those costs are effectively zero. Coal is relatively cheap too, so the marginal generator who sets the market price is typically gas-fired.
That’s the start of the problem. As the world’s largest LNG exporter, Australia’s gas tends to move in line with global prices that have soared thanks to the invasion of Ukraine. Russian exports of pipeline gas to Europe have declined by about a third over the past month, pushing up the cost of wholesale electricity in Australia to the point where it triggered government price caps.
In theory, the regulator can then direct generators to switch on and sell power into the market, but that’s not happening. Coal-fired power stations, which still account for about two-thirds of Australia’s power mix, have been absent. About a third of coal-burning capacity was offline during Wednesday’s evening peak, despite pricing that should guarantee hefty profits for every generator who sparks up.
What’s going on? The generators point to an unfortunate series of coincidences. Some units are down for scheduled maintenance. Others have been taken offline unexpectedly — a failed inverter or parts shortage here, some damaged boiler equipment there. Shortages of coal may also be playing a role.
At the same time, in Australia’s highly concentrated power market, those who leave some of their generators cold a little longer end up getting far higher prices for the units still running. Consumers and businesses end up cornered, and pay the price. “We have these dominant players who are actively withholding capacity from the market when we need it,” said David Byrne, a professor of energy market economics at the University of Melbourne. “They are enjoying very high prices in these extreme conditions.”
Carl Kitchen, a spokesman for the Australian Energy Council, the association for generators, rejected those claims and said workers had been doing their best to get plants back online. Three units with combined capacity of 1,200 megawatts have been brought back online in the past 24 hours, he added.
One constraint on market corners is typically that participants have an interest in their long-term standing, which encourages them to behave. That’s changing in Australia’s grid, however, as it transitions from its current roughly 75% fossil fuel-fired electricity network, toward the new Labor government’s target of 82% renewables by 2030.
“Some of them are feeling ‘We’re on the way out, let’s get as much as we possibly can,’ and that frames their approach to the market overall,” said Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre in Melbourne. “It becomes possible to get away with blue murder.”
In one sense, what’s happened has been a technical failure of market design, much like the circumstances that allowed 2021’s meme-stock frenzy to flourish and those which briefly drove nickel prices up five-fold on the London Metal Exchange earlier this year.
In another, even the most free-market power grid is ultimately governed by politics. This week’s disruption was a “game of chicken” between generators and the regulator, said Byrne. The likeliest short-term solution may well be for Australia’s Labor prime minister to get on the phone to the Labor premier of Queensland state, and encourage state-owned utility CS Energy — currently the worst offender, with just 30% of its coal capacity online during Wednesday’s peak — to start supplying more power.
Private-sector coal generators should do the same and start behaving not like commodity traders taking advantage of market disruptions, but suppliers of essential infrastructure to the nation. Australia’s coal fleet is dying — but like a wounded animal, that’s when it’s at its most dangerous.
• A Billionaire’s Windmill Tilt Is Breaking an Investment Drought: David Fickling
• After Pain at the Pump Comes the Electric Shock: Liam Denning
• These Are the Batteries We Need to Ease the Power Crunch: Anjani Trivedi | 2022-06-16T23:10:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Australia’s Grid Is Being Cornered by Its Own Generators - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/australias-gridis-being-cornered-by-its-own-generators/2022/06/16/7b0881fe-edc0-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/australias-gridis-being-cornered-by-its-own-generators/2022/06/16/7b0881fe-edc0-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Major flooding strikes Montana and Wyoming, while the Midwest suffers a record-setting heat wave
Pedestrians walk down a street washed away from Rock Creek floodwaters in Red Lodge, Mont., on June 15. (David Goldman/AP)
BILLINGS, Mo. — In eastern Montana and Wyoming, massive flooding has destroyed bridges, swept away homes, and forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 visitors from Yellowstone National Park. Half a million households in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley lost power earlier this week after violent thunderstorms swept through. And a record-setting heat wave pushed temperatures into the triple digits from Nebraska to South Carolina, leaving more than 100 million Americans under heat warnings and killing at least 2,000 cattle in Kansas.
The official first day of summer has not even arrived and already the country is overheated, waterlogged and suffering. Extreme weather is here early, testing the nation’s readiness and proving, once again, that overlapping climate disasters are now becoming more frequent and upending Americans’ lives.
“Summer has become the danger season where you see these kinds of events happening earlier, more frequently, and co-occurring,” said Rachel Licker, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research and advocacy group. “It just shows you how vulnerable our infrastructure is and that this is just going to get increasingly problematic.”
The Midwest is at the center of this shift. Hit with an unseasonably early heat wave in May that smashed records, the region has since been buffeted by more heat as well as severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Hundred of thousands of Midwesterners lost power earlier this week as temperatures soared into the upper 90s.
Licker, who lives in Madison, Wis., sought refuge at the library. But some of her elderly neighbors had to be helped out of their sweltering homes, where they had been trapped after finding they could not open their garage doors without electricity.
The power came back the following day, but by Wednesday, Licker was battling severe weather once again, sheltering from tornadoes in her basement. That afternoon, the National Weather Service issued 10 different weather advisories and notices for the region, including an excessive heat warning.
“It’s been really wild,” she said.
This deluge had deadly consequences: A 10-year-old boy was swept away in a Milwaukee drainage ditch following severe thunderstorms there.
More than 40 percent of Americans live in counties hit by climate disasters in 2021
Several experts say these types of simultaneously occurring disasters reveal the extent to which Americans remain unprepared for the escalating impacts of climate change. Downed power lines, homes swept away amid flooding and overwhelmed storm water systems highlight how little progress governments have made toward girding communities for extreme weather.
Yet, they caution, there are limits to how much the nation can adapt. The world has already warmed between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average. If countries continue emitting carbon pollution at historically high rates, the future will be hotter — and harder to bear.
“We cannot take a punch from one these hazards alone, forget about three or four of them simultaneously,” said Camilo Mora, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who studies cascading disasters. “The idea that we can keep emitting greenhouse gases and buy our way out of it later with adaptation just doesn’t make any sense.”
Mora and other scientists’ research suggests that by 2100, unless humans act quickly to cut greenhouse gas emissions, some parts of the world could experience as many as six climate-related disasters at the same time. Coastal areas will likely be hit the hardest, since they are affected not only by extreme heat and intensifying wildfires, but also by rising sea levels and increasingly devastating hurricanes.
Across the United States, climate change is already worsening the damage from extreme weather. Between 2017 and 2021, more than 8 million acres, on average, burned each year — more than double the average between 1987 and 1991, the Congressional Budget Office found in a report released Thursday. While much of the West endures an unprecedented drought, a study published last year found that the Northeast has seen a 53 percent increase in extreme rainfall since 1996.
See how much wildfire risk properties in your area face now, and in 2050
President Biden on Thursday approved Montana’s request for a major disaster declaration, a move that provides federal aid to three counties devastated by this week’s flooding. At a briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration was also closely monitoring the record temperatures affecting much of the country.
A significant heat dome has been crowding weather maps over the Lower 48 states for the past week, bringing blistering temperatures that have toppled records. Highs have risen 10 to 20 degrees above average in some parts, and some places have seen their hottest and most humid weather ever observed during June.
In Montana and Wyoming, heavy weekend rains converged with rapid snowmelt, resulting in devastating flooding that destroyed miles of roads and bridges in Yellowstone National Park and damaged hundreds of homes in surrounding communities. No one was reported hurt or killed.
With the Yellowstone River running at historically high levels, Billings, Montana’s largest city, was unable to operate its water treatment plant, which pumps water from the river. The plant shut down late Tuesday but, by Thursday morning, was running again. Further east in Livingston, the city’s hospital was evacuated after its driveway flooded, leaving no safe way to enter or exit the facility.
Meteorologists said the deluge was months in the making. While most of the country saw warmer than normal weather over the last 60 days, cooler air hovered over the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies, delaying snowmelt in the high mountains. An unusual late-season storm in May dumped even more heavy snow on the region.
Then, late last week, a 3,000-mile long jet of moisture called an atmospheric river began soaking the Pacific Northwest, delivering record-setting rainfall. When it reached the Yellowstone River Basin, it released a burst of rain and a pulse of warm air, deluging the region and simultaneously melting the equivalent of an additional 2 to 5 inches of water from the snow, according to the National Weather Service.
On the 1-to-5 scale for such atmospheric river events that’s used by Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, it was a 5.
Marty Ralph, who directs the center in San Diego, said it was “remarkably unusual” to see an atmospheric river so intense in June. Atmospheric rivers are most common in the West between late fall and early spring.
Business owners in Gardiner, a gateway community just north of Yellowstone National Park, are facing the possibility of a summer without tourists. Yellowstone remained closed Thursday. Though parts of the park may reopen next week, the northern portion of the park, which saw most of the damage, is not expected to reopen to visitors for months.
“The long-term health of Gardiner is going to depend on whether they get public access to the loop road in Yellowstone,” said Richard Park, owner of Parks’ Fly Shop. With large sections of road washed out between Gardiner and Mammoth just inside Yellowstone, businesses that cater to tourists will be strangled, he said.
For Alexis Bonogofsky — a sheep ranger and program manager for the World Wildlife Fund, an advocacy group — the flood represents only the latest in a series of disastrous events to strike her family farm just south of Billings.
Severe drought left her land parched last summer. Swarms of grasshoppers devoured what little grass grew and she had to sell some of her livestock because she didn’t have enough feed. Earlier this week, the Yellowstone River flooded 80 acres of Bonogofsky’s pastureland, damaging hundreds of feet of fence that kept her 30 ewes and 10 goats confined.
Bonogofsky said she fears residents are getting used to wave after wave of crises.
“Humans adapt quickly to these kinds of events and they’re becoming normal to us instead of seeing what’s going on,” she said. “We’re going to see these forms of natural disasters more frequently, and I hope that at some point people will realize what’s happening and start addressing the root cause.” | 2022-06-16T23:10:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A string of climate disasters strike before summer even starts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/16/summer-climate-disasters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/16/summer-climate-disasters/ |
Republican senators accuse White House of 'false information’; Biden officials say GOP keeps finding new objections to covid funding.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), said at a Senate health hearing that Biden officials had provided “patently false” information about their ability to meet the nation's covid needs without additional funding. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who brought the Senate to the brink of a bipartisan $10 billion covid funding deal in March, said the Biden administration had provided “patently false” information about its inability to buy additional vaccines, treatments and supplies. He cited a newly announced White House plan to repurpose some existing funds to cover the country’s most pressing vaccine and treatment needs.
Biden officials said last week they had no choice but to repurpose about $10 billion from other covid priorities, such as testing, to purchase more coronavirus vaccines and treatments, since Congress had not been able to reach agreement.
In interviews Thursday, three administration officials insisted the White House had been transparent about their needs and spending, and that Republicans had continually found new reasons to object to the efforts to secure additional covid funds.
“We’ve tried to meet Republicans on their requests, and they keep moving the goal posts,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to address the issue.
“Going back to January, we’ve been working with members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, on the funding needs for the covid response,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement, touting “countless” briefings and conference calls, and hundreds of pages of funding documents shared with lawmakers. “We’ve also been crystal clear about the consequences of a lack of funding … including the very real possibility that we would have to reevaluate the planned uses of existing funds.”
Biden administration officials had originally considered more than $80 billion in additional covid funding late last year and laid out a $30 billion request in February. That target was cut to about $22 billion in March, as Romney and other Republicans pressed the White House to account for trillions of dollars in prior coronavirus spending.
In a March 23 briefing, then-White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients warned of “severe” and “immediate” consequences if Congress failed to act, citing the near-exhaustion of funds to cover the costs of testing and treatment for uninsured Americans, reduced availability of treatments for the immunocompromised and longer-term questions about vaccine and testing capacity.
The following week, Romney, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other lawmakers announced a tentative agreement for $10 billion in new funding, but the deal collapsed as Democrats raised questions about the removal of international aid from the package and lawmakers of both parties objected to a separate plan to lift pandemic restrictions at the border.
Testifying on Thursday, senior Biden health officials warned that the virus is evolving to evade existing vaccine protections and the country needed to be prepared to invest in new vaccines and treatments. Millions of vaccinated and boosted Americans have been sickened by the latest wave of omicron subvariants that has swept the country — including Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, who was forced to testify remotely because of his own covid infection.
“I’m deeply concerned that a lack of additional funding for other response activities will end or substantially scale back critical covid response work,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the panel’s chair, argued in her remarks that preparing the nation for the next stage of the pandemic should be a top priority for Congress.
“Democrats have been hammering this home for months — we’ve been yelling from the rooftops, warning what’s at risk if we don’t get this done,” Murray said. “The fact the Administration has had to resort to allocating resources from our long-term needs to keep our short term response afloat — that’s not a solution. That’s a stopgap. And it should be a clear sign of how urgent it is that Congress take action.”
But Romney raised questions about why the administration hadn’t moved to repurpose funding faster, and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the panel’s top Republican, rebuked Biden officials for their testimony.
“This has been the most well-orchestrated event that I’ve seen in the 28 years that I’ve been here,” said Burr. “This was designed to pressure Republicans to open a checkbook, sign the check and let the administration fill in the balance.”
The Republicans’ comments resonated beyond Capitol Hill to Wall Street, where analysts expressed doubt the administration would be able to secure 60 votes for a funding package that would pass the Senate without Romney and Burr, both of whom had spent weeks trying to help secure prior compromises.
“New COVID Funding Probably Dead,” financial-services firm Raymond James wrote in a note to investors on Thursday. “We are very skeptical more COVID money will be made available and believe the Administration will now need to move more quickly toward a system where COVID vaccines, treatments, and testing are provided through the traditional supply chain and purchasing apparatus in the U.S. health system.”
The author of that note, former Trump administration health official Chris Meekins, said in an interview that Romney’s comments seems to foreclose the prospect of future compromises. “I do not see a path to get 10 Senate Republicans to support the bill,” Meekins said. | 2022-06-16T23:10:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Congressional covid funding deal appears ‘dead’ after GOP criticism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/16/covid-funding-deal-appears-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/16/covid-funding-deal-appears-dead/ |
Justice Dept. says Jan. 6 House panel hampering major Proud Boys trial
Prosecutors say a lack of access to committee evidence could delay a key seditious conspiracy trial
Video with the quote “Hang Mike Pence!” is shown at the House Jan. 6 select committee's third public hearing on Capitol Hill on June 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Tensions are rising between the Justice Department and the House panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, with prosecutors complaining their lack of access to committee interview transcripts may jeopardize the September trial of five alleged extremists charged with seditious conspiracy.
In a letter to the committee on Wednesday, the heads of the Justice Department’s national security and criminal divisions and the U.S. attorney for Washington wrote that not granting the department access to transcripts complicates the “ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct.”
The letter is the strongest salvo yet in the months-long back-and-forth between the committee and the department, whose parallel investigations have generally tried to steer clear of each other but now seem to be on a collision course.
On paper, the two high-profile investigations have separate and distinct goals. Prosecutors have charged more than 820 people with crimes stemming from the attack, and are pursuing criminal cases against hundreds of others. Lawmakers, meanwhile, are engaged in public fact-finding about the full scope and nature of the attack, including the actions of President Donald Trump and other public officials — and may make policy recommendations based on their findings.
The committee has held three nationally televised hearings so far, with several more scheduled.
Key takeaways from Thursday's hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee
While members of the legislative committee have made Trump their central focus, federal prosecutors and Attorney General Merrick Garland have refused to say whether the criminal probe might target the former president over his actions leading up to Jan. 6, pledging only to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), said after Thursday’s hearing that lawmakers on the panel “are not going to stop what we are doing to share the information that we’ve gotten so far with the Department of Justice. We have to do our work.”
“We will eventually cooperate with them,” he added.
Frustrations between the committee and federal prosecutors have been growing for months, with apparently little communication or discussion between them.
At times, committee members have publicly questioned whether the Justice Department is being aggressive enough in pursuing criminal cases against high-profile political figures. Some lawmakers also have made clear they think Trump and others broke the law in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Justice Department, in turn, since April has sought transcripts of more than 1,000 committee interviews to determine whether there is evidence relevant to the cases they have already charged or might charge in the future.
How Americans feel about Jan. 6 hearings so far
Two people familiar with the committee’s discussions said members were frustrated and have complained privately about the Justice Department, adding that many involved in the committee’s investigation believe Garland is proceeding too cautiously and slowly.
The top Republican on the panel, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), has urged the committee to talk publicly about Trump’s conduct in criminal terms, but has faced some internal pushback, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor, said he was surprised the committee hasn’t sent the transcripts to the Justice Department, because the information would presumably remain private even if shared with prosecutors.
“I can’t think of any good excuse from the committee’s perspective. … You would think the committee would want to be as cooperative as possible,” said Eliason, now a professor at George Washington University Law School. Prosecutors could also force the committee’s hand by issuing a grand jury subpoena, he said. “I’m sure they would prefer to proceed cooperatively, but if push comes to shove, [the Justice Department] can get those transcripts.”
Lawmakers’ tricky relationship with the Justice Department has also exposed a fissure within the committee. Earlier this week, Thompson said the panel shouldn’t try to make criminal referrals to the department — sparking quick disagreement from members who said it was premature to make that decision or suggested the committee would have an obligation to report any potential crimes. Thompson withdrew the comment, and some on the committee are continuing to push for a referral, people familiar with the matter said.
A referral would carry no legal mandate for the Justice Department to investigate or prosecute anyone, but could increase public pressure on Garland to more aggressively and publicly pursue Trump and those in his orbit.
Committee focuses on Ginni Thomas after emails with Eastman come to light
The criticism by prosecutors of the committee came during preparations for an expected September trial of five leaders of the Proud Boys extremist group charged with seditious conspiracy and accused of helping launch the attack on the Capitol. The Justice Department letter was included in court papers as part of a prosecutor’s notice to the judge that they agree with some defendants’ request to delay their trial because of lack of access to committee transcripts.
Lawyers for some of the defendants say they must have access to the committee’s evidence to ensure a fair trial. They noted that millions of Americans, including prospective D.C. jurors, watched and heard the committee hearing in which one defendant, Joseph Biggs, was repeatedly mentioned and another was shown on video.
“The words, sound bites and images of June 9 will influence some jurors who reside here in the District of Columbia,” Biggs attorney John Hull wrote in a court filing.
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly set a hearing on the issue for Wednesday after an attorney for co-defendant Ethan Nordean objected to a trial delay. Kelly gave former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and another defendant until Monday to say whether they also objected to the request by Biggs and another defendant, Dominic Pezzola, to reschedule the trial for December. | 2022-06-16T23:10:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 panel, Justice spar over transcripts ahead of Proud Boys trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/january-6-transcripts-justice-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/january-6-transcripts-justice-house/ |
Avenatti pleads guilty to fraud, tax charges
Avenatti, who is in federal custody and representing himself in the case, made the plea during a court hearing in Santa Ana where he acknowledged cheating his clients but disagreed with federal prosecutors on how much, saying the amount owed in restitution is “drastically less” than the $9 million stated by the government.
Prosecutors said the plea — which the 51-year-old lawyer offered without a deal — subjects Avenatti to as many as 83 years in prison. They said they will decide by Monday whether to try him on the remaining charges in a 36-count indictment accusing him of swindling clients by negotiating and collecting settlement payments on their behalf and funneling the money to accounts he controlled in addition to bank and bankruptcy fraud.
A sentencing hearing was set for Sept. 19 but will be delayed if the government pursues the other charges.
Man acquitted in admissions scam
Amin Khoury was not found guilty by jurors on all counts in the case that accused him of bribing then-Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst with cash in a brown paper bag in exchange for his daughter’s recruitment to the team. Khoury’s attorneys argued the girl was properly admitted to the school. They painted the government’s star witness — the middleman — as a liar who made up the story to save himself from potential tax crimes.
Unlike dozens of other wealthy parents convicted in the college cheating scandal involving elite universities across the country, Khoury wasn’t accused of working with admissions consultant Rick Singer, who used his sham charity to funnel bribes to coaches and others. Instead, authorities say Khoury used a middleman he was friends with in college at Brown University to bribe Ernst.
More than 50 defendants pleaded guilty, including “Full House” actress Lori Loughlin, her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, and “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman. Three others — two parents and a former University of Southern California water polo coach — were convicted at trial.
Five sentenced in fraternity hazing death
Jarrett Prizel, 19, of Olean, N.Y., Daylen Dunson, 22, of Cleveland, and Ben Boyers, 21, of Sylvania, Ohio, had all pleaded guilty to reckless homicide and hazing counts. Dunson and Boyers also pleaded guilty to obstructing justice, while Dunson also admitted to tampering with evidence. Niall Sweeney, 21, of Erie, Pa., and Aaron Lehane, 21, of Loveland, Ohio, both pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and hazing, while Lehane also admitted to obstructing official business.
The charges stemmed from the March 2021 death of Stone Foltz, 20, a sophomore from Delaware, Ohio. Authorities have said Foltz died of alcohol poisoning after a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity initiation event in which he was hazed into finishing an entire bottle of alcohol. Foltz died three days after he was put on life support. | 2022-06-16T23:10:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Avenatti pleads guilty to fraud, tax charges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/avenatti-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-tax-charges/2022/06/16/ed3acf78-e921-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/avenatti-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-tax-charges/2022/06/16/ed3acf78-e921-11ec-b037-e344f38e0a4f_story.html |
Threatened by a mob, and allegedly called a “wimp” by Trump, the former vice president spent much of his time during the riot sheltering in an underground parking garage in the Capitol.
An image on a screen at House Jan. 6 committee hearing Thursday shows Vice President Mike Pence reading a tweet from the president while sheltering underground on Jan. 6, 2021. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)
Before heading to the U.S. Capitol to preside over a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence undertook one last unpleasant task from his Naval Observatory home: a phone call with Donald Trump, the president to whom he had always been loyal.
Pence had told Trump repeatedly he would not use his ceremonial role overseeing the counting of electoral college votes that day to overturn Joe Biden’s election, but Trump had not listened. The call was “heated,” in the words of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, in new testimony revealed Thursday by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump called Pence a “wimp,” Trump aide Nicholas Luna testified. Trump’s badgering of his own vice president so distressed his daughter, that she walked the halls of the White House, expressing her displeasure to multiple aides, several testified. She told her chief of staff that “her dad had just had an upsetting call with the vice president,” the aide testified, noting that Trump had called Pence the “p-word.”
The day that began with the vice president being called a “p----” by his boss ended with him huddled in a parking garage with his family, as a violent mob intent on doing him physical harm rampaged through the seat of American democracy and a top aide read from a Bible nearby.
The Democratic-led committee unspooled new details of Pence’s terrifying day on Jan. 6, as it sought to explain how easily democracy could have fallen if the Republican vice president had not resisted an unrelenting campaign from Trump to ignore his legal advisers and his own conscience and use his role to give Trump a second term.
“Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong,” said Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.). “We are fortunate for Mr. Pence’s courage.”
The committee painted Pence as the hero of the day — but he was an absent one. While Pence’s former top lawyer Greg Jacob testified publicly and testimony from several of his top aides including former chief of staff Marc Short was played via video, the former vice president declined to provide testimony to the committee. The committee’s efforts to convince Pence to testify never went anywhere, though he blessed his aides’ appearances, according to one person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private negotiations. The committee did not ask Short to appear publicly.
Pence’s aides say he has not shied away from what he did that day — but he does not view talking about it incessantly as a politically wise move and is aware that he still faces considerable backlash from many Republican voters. He is considering a run for president, and has told others he would run against Trump, who is also considering running in 2024. Pence has said he does not plan to wage a scorched-earth campaign against Trump or to criticize him aggressively.
Pence was traveling in Ohio Thursday, where he was doing a roundtable on oil and gas issues with Gov. Mike DeWine (R). But as a measure of support, he texted a Bible verse, Psalms 37:6, to Jacob shortly before the hearing began, an aide said: “He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.”
Without his testimony, the committee relied instead on a speech Pence delivered to the Federalist Society in February. “The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone,” Pence told the conservative group. “And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion than any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election.”
The first half of the committee’s hearing Thursday focused on the mounting and frenzied pressure applied to Pence and his team in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including off-the-wall legal theories advanced by law professor John Eastman that held that the vice president’s role presiding over the joint session conveys on him the power to determine which electoral college votes to count. Testimony and emails showed that Eastman acknowledged his theory would violate federal law and would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court on a 9-to-0 vote.
The remainder of the hearing focused on Trump’s volcanic anger at his vice president at his refusal to go along — and what it meant for Pence as he attempted to carry out his constitutional duties.
Shortly after hanging up from berating Pence that morning, Trump headed to the Ellipse to address his thousands of supporters. According to early drafts of the speech obtained by the committee, Trump did not plan to mention Pence in the speech, said committee member Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.). “The president revised it to include criticism of the vice president and then further ad-libbed,” he said.
In the speech, Trump declared that Pence needed to have the “courage” to act. “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump said. “I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
Pence’s aides were enraged at the time that Trump let the crowd believe that there remained mystery about the vice president’s intentions given that Pence had repeatedly told Trump about his plans. They believed Trump’s tease stoked the crowd.
Pence announced in a statement shortly before the joint session was to begin at 1 p.m. that he did not believe the Constitution allowed him to follow Trump’s wishes. The committee demonstrated the crowd’s immediate reaction using video clips of rioters taken that day. “It’s real simple — Pence betrayed us, which apparently everybody knew he was going to do. And the president mentioned it like five times when he talked. You can go back and watch the president’s video,” said one woman, in a clip played by the committee.
At 2:11 p.m., the first rioters breached the Capitol. Two minutes later, Pence was hustled off the Senate floor by his Secret Service detail. Aides to Trump told the committee that they began agitating for the president to put out a tweet to try to calm the crowd. Instead, at 2:24 p.m., Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution … USA demands the truth!”
Former Trump aide Sarah Matthews testified that when a group of the president’s aides saw the tweet, they told one another that it had been “the last thing that needed to be tweeted at that moment.” Some of Trump’s most loyal and long-standing aides, including his daughter, said privately at the time they could not fathom Trump treating Pence as he did.
“The situation was already bad and so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that,” Matthews said.
Pence, his wife and daughter and closest advisers were then escorted by the Secret Service to a garage in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center. The committee revealed that the group came within 40 feet of the rioters as they wound their way through the underground complex. They then cited an affidavit from an FBI informant who has told authorities that rioters would have killed Pence had they found him that day.
Two Pence advisers who were with him at the time have previously told The Washington Post that they could not hear the crowd chanting “hang Mike Pence,” but they quickly saw footage of the disturbing images on Twitter as they all scrolled looking for updates.
Jacob testified that when they reached the garage, the Secret Service ordered the group into vehicles. He and others dutifully piled in but Pence refused, afraid the security detail might speed him to safety before he could object. “The vice president did not want to take any chance that the world would see the vice president of the United States fleeing the United States Capitol,” he said.
Photographs newly released by the committee showed Pence in the garage well into the 4 p.m. hour, making calls to congressional and military leaders. One photo showed Pence staring intently at his phone, as his daughter Charlotte looked on. The committee said the photo depicts Pence watching a video posted by Trump to Twitter at 4:17 p.m., in which Trump urged supporters to “go home” — but added, “We love you. You’re very special.”
Jacob testified that never once during the hours Pence was in danger did Trump call to inquire about his safety. Asked how Pence and his wife, Karen, reacted to Trump’s silence, Jacob said: “With frustration.”
Trump did not talk to Pence for five days, until Jared Kushner told Short that Trump would like to see Pence, The Post has reported.
Several people close to Pence said his anger died down over Trump’s actions that day, particularly after Trump showed regret privately in a meeting with Pence in the Oval Office a few days later and suggested they still be friends. But Pence’s anger at times has been rekindled in recent months as Trump has attacked him. The two have not spoken for about a year, aides said, and Pence does not have any plans to talk to Trump as he eyes a 2024 bid.
Short and Jacob’s testimony Thursday indicated that as the day wore on, both turned to the Bible for comfort. For Short, it was 2 Timothy 4:7, which he texted to Pence at 3:50 a.m., after Pence had reconvened Congress, concluded the counting of the electoral college votes and declared Biden the next president: “I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith.”
For Jacob, it was Daniel 6, which tells the story of a godly man serving as second-in-command to an immoral king, which he read to himself while huddled in the parking garage and still in danger.
“He refuses an order from the king. He cannot follow, and he does his duty and consistent with his oath to God,” Jacob testified. “And I felt that that’s what had played out that day.” | 2022-06-16T23:40:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 committee reveals Pence hid in parking garage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/jan-6-committee-reveals-new-details-about-pences-terrifying-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/jan-6-committee-reveals-new-details-about-pences-terrifying-day/ |
Refugees wait in a crowd for transportation after fleeing from Ukraine and arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, on March 7. (Markus Schreiber/AP Photo)
Over the past decade, levels of displacement have increased every year, the U.N. noted in its global trends report — with figures currently at the highest level since record keeping began. At the end of 2021, 89.3 million people were displaced, the agency said, citing war, disasters, violence, persecution and human rights abuses as some of the factors.
The invasion of Ukraine triggered the fastest forced-displacement crisis since World War II — which, in conjunction with other emergency situations in Afghanistan, Africa, and elsewhere, “pushed the figure over the dramatic milestone," the agency said. Over 5 million Ukrainian refugees have been recorded across Europe since Russia’s invasion.
Children make up almost half of the total global refugee population of the last decade, said UNICEF in a separate report Thursday. A record 36.5 million children were displaced by the end of 2021 amid cascading crises, including in Afghanistan, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Climbing trends of global displacement will continue unless the international community makes a “new, concerted push towards peacemaking," the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.
Last year, several conflicts began around the world, and existing ones escalated — with about two dozen nations, home to a total of 850 million people, experiencing medium- or high-intensity conflicts, according to the World Bank. “Fragility, conflict-related fatalities, and social unrest have increased dramatically,” World Bank Group President David Malpass said in March.
On top of conflict, food scarcity, inflation and the climate crisis have exacerbated hardship and stretched the humanitarian response, the U.N. noted.
With key ports in Ukraine blocked, U.S. and European officials have accused Russia of using food as a weapon in the conflict. “Disruptions to the Ukrainian agricultural sector and constrained exports reduce global food supply, further increase global food prices, and finally push up already high levels of domestic food price inflation,” the U.N. said. | 2022-06-16T23:44:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine war pushes global displaced to highest-ever recorded number, United Nations says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/16/refugee-displaced-ukraine-syria-afghanistan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/16/refugee-displaced-ukraine-syria-afghanistan/ |
Phil Mickelson had a first round to forget at the U.S. Open. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
BROOKLINE, Mass. — If Phil Mickelson has been cast as the lead villain in golf’s very real and nearly all-encompassing them-vs.-us conversation, he showed up Thursday afternoon looking the part: black hat, black shirt, black belt, dark gray pants, black shoes, wraparound shades. Yet as he arrived at the Country Club’s first tee to begin his U.S. Open, the catcalls were mostly embraces. He turned 52 on Thursday. Golf claps all around.
“Birthday boy!”
“What do you say, Lefty?”
Before, finally, the inevitable: “Phil, Celtics giving 3½. Who do you like? Zarba’s the lead official!”
He was beginning what would be an arduous 5½-hour round to open the only major he has never won. The dig referred to his penchant for wagering the money he has earned on athletic contests, not his newfound source of wealth. Chuckles throughout the gallery. No harm done.
Still, there’s no overstating the cloud that hangs over not just the 122nd version of the national championship but the sport as a whole. It has divided the 156-man field into three categories: those who have joined the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational Series, those who have pledged allegiance to the PGA Tour and those who have stayed for now but still might go.
Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, the 2016 U.S. Open champion who teed off 11 minutes before Phil and likewise received warm applause, are the shiniest objects to depart the PGA Tour. There will be more. Rory McIlroy, the four-time major winner who received adulation here with every confident stride, won’t be one of them. He is carrying the torch for the establishment — and aggressively so. On Sunday at the Canadian Open, he boasted that his 21st PGA Tour win was “one more than somebody else.”
Related: Greg Norman, the star of yesteryear whom the Saudis tapped to lead the LIV Golf effort, won 20 PGA Tour events.
“I’m just being me,” McIlroy said Thursday. “I’m living my life. I’m doing what I think is right and trying to play the best golf that I possibly can. I wasn’t asked to be put here. I wasn’t trying to be in this position. I’m just being me.”
The PGA Tour needs him to be him. If the U.S. Open is really cast as righteous vs. renegade, then the early advantage clearly goes to McIlroy — whose opening 67 left him one shot off the lead at 3 under par — over Mickelson, who four-putted the sixth and generally looked dazed and uninterested en route to an 8-over 78. A six-time major winner, he is an established star who has morphed into a maverick. He is also decidedly unlikely for the weekend.
But this isn’t Phil vs. Rory. It is, for sure, LIV vs. the world. What’s happening here — not on the course but in the discourse — is unprecedented in modern golf. In a normal U.S. Open week over the past quarter-century, a primary pretournament topic would be the form or the absence of Tiger Woods, the only true A-list actor the sport employs. Yet Woods’s name has been on essentially no lips here. (He’s not here because he needed more time to rest his ironclad leg after last month’s grueling PGA Championship, from which he withdrew after three rounds.)
When Woods does reappear — currently slated to be in July at St. Andrews for the British Open — there’s little chance this mess will be straightened out.
When has one of the major American pro sports leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA or MLS — been attacked by an upstart as the PGA Tour is being bombarded now? The 1980s, when the USFL tried to lure NFL talent — Herschel Walker and Steve Young come to mind — for a summer season? That venture lasted three seasons and died a swift death when the owner of the New Jersey Generals — some guy by the name of Trump — pushed to move the season to the fall to compete against the NFL. They never played another game.
LIV Golf? At the moment, at least, it feels like it has more legs. This is more than an existential threat to the way professional golf is staged and the way professional golfers make their schedules and their livings. This is an actual threat. To survive, the USFL needed to make money. Money to LIV Golf — and its oil-rich Saudi backers — is irrelevant. Need more? Put another drill in the desert. It’ll flow.
So part of the reason golf’s status quo is so shaken isn’t just LIV’s existence but its built-in viability. LIV Golf will go away not because the PGA Tour somehow triumphs by banishing talent that departed and keeping the rest in the fold. LIV Golf will go away if and only if the Saudis decide to turn off the spigot.
What McIlroy and some other prominent young stars — Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth — are doing in voicing their preference for the PGA Tour is admirable not because the tour deserves blind loyalty but because they’re not selling out to take money from a regime with an abhorrent record on human rights. The fans at the Country Club might be tepid in their angst over the move by Mickelson and others, but the division in the sport is genuine.
After just a single LIV Golf event, the disruption is so deep that it’s clear the powers that be — the U.S. Golf Association, the R&A, the DP World Tour (which used to be called the European Tour) and Augusta National Golf Club — must convene to figure out a way forward.
Is it realistic for the USGA and the R&A — which stage the U.S. Open and British Open, respectively — to ban LIV players? It wasn’t this week, and it isn’t next month at St. Andrews. The tournaments are billed as open, so how do they close?
“We did sit down and have a long conversation about a week before the U.S. Open [and asked], ‘Did where somebody else played and what promoter they played it with disqualify them for this event?’ ” USGA CEO Mike Whan said this week. “We decided no on that, with all the awareness that not everyone would agree with that decision.”
More decisions are ahead. It’s impossible to predict which way they’ll go. What’s already apparent is that guaranteed money and no-cut, 54-hole tournaments are appealing — just not universally.
“Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I’ve made and live a very happy life and not play golf again,” said Spain’s Rahm, the defending champion here. “So I’ve never really played the game of golf for monetary reasons. I play for the love of the game, and I want to play against the best in the world. I’ve always been interested in history and legacy, and right now the PGA Tour has that.”
The key phrase in all of that: “right now.” The sport is changing — and fast. Eventually this weekend will become about the golf, as a major championship should be. But after a champion is crowned Sunday evening, Monday morning will dawn with the same nagging questions: Who will leave next? How will the PGA Tour and its partners respond? And what will professional golf look like next year at this time? | 2022-06-16T23:57:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlory and the battle for golf's future - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/phil-mickelson-rory-mcilroy-us-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/phil-mickelson-rory-mcilroy-us-open/ |
Collin Morikawa, left, keeps an eye on playing partner Jon Rahm during the first round of the U.S. Open at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
BROOKLINE, Mass. — Buried in a mass of golfers who got below par but not all that far below par was one major winner who witnessed two kids running off with his ball on No. 18 and another major winner who got exasperated enough to golf 27 holes per day last week in the sunspot Las Vegas heat.
The 122nd U.S. Open was underway, and both defending champion Jon Rahm and reigning British Open champion Collin Morikawa reached early contention. Both shot 1-under-par 69 among the earlier finishers on the Country Club course with Adam Hadwin leading the way after one round with a 4-under-par 66.
Rahm did so with one of the stranger finishes going, a birdie on the last hole that involved a ball replacement after the initial one got pilfered.
“I’m pretty sure I know who it was,” he said. “I recognized the two kids that were running the opposite way with a smile on their face. I am 100 percent sure I saw the two kids that stole it.”
Well, the world’s No. 2 player got a new ball, got a drop from near a grandstand and got to 21 feet, from which he birdied. That came after a No. 17 on which he hit two drives, the second a provisional just in case his first had gone into a no-no zone, which it hadn’t.
He fought the crosswinds and the crosswinds often won, but he figures he can adapt to that from here. “There were about five iron shots that I shanked completely: 9, 10, 12, 15, and if I’m missing one there,” he said. “Yeah, no, they were just bad swings. In a situation where they were all, in theory, good looks, right? It’s just bad swings. That’s all I can tell you. I’m not too worried. A lot of times when you’re in competition and you have all these crosswinds, a lot of it was a bit of indecision and doubt in my mind because we weren’t exactly sure where the wind was coming from and not committing 100 percent of the time to the shot. That was the difference.”
He concluded, “I don’t think it was really anything I need to look too far into.”
Morikawa, meanwhile, has been wrestling with his own strong mind over the fact he has hit cuts since forever but finds himself now hitting draws. “It’s really hard,” he said of this odd funk in an odd sport.
His results had been dour for him of late, most recently a missed cut at the Memorial in Ohio, and his media session Tuesday sounded something like therapy. “I’ve been so worried about trying to hit this cut — like, almost forcing a cut,” he said then. So, he said Thursday, he went out in the outdoor incinerator of Las Vegas in June leading up to this, and “played multiple days of 27 holes, which I never do. Hit more balls than I ever have in the hot Vegas heat. I just wanted to figure it out.”
Then: “I hit a point Thursday afternoon where I said, ‘This is stupid. Why try and fight it? I can still hit the golf ball. It’s not like I’m not hitting it to where I want.’”
By the time he reached the turn Thursday, he stood at 3 under par and “thought I was going to go a lot deeper than three, I can tell you that.” He came to consider his 1 under par as “mediocre,” and said he found this U.S. Open course unusually “gettable,” with “birdie opportunities from hole 1 all the way through 18.”
It sounded encouraging for a massive talent enduring the weird.
“I played a lot of golf last week and a lot of holes to try to be able to trust it,” he said of the draw. “I haven’t played a draw since maybe freshman year of college. Definitely in high school. It’s different. It’s not the same trust, but this week I have to trust it. That’s the only way I’m going to hit shots.” | 2022-06-16T23:57:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa fight through the weird to begin U.S. Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/us-open-rahm-morikawa-contention/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/us-open-rahm-morikawa-contention/ |
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 23, 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Eastman’s disclosure came a day after The Washington Post reported that the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had obtained email correspondence between him and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist and staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump. Individuals involved in the investigation said the emails — which have not been made public — showed that Thomas’s efforts to help overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, The Post reported.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the House committee, said Thursday that the committee had sent a letter asking Thomas for an interview. Thomas told the conservative Daily Caller that she looks forward to speaking to the committee and “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions.”
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter last week ordered Eastman to release more than 100 emails and other records, overruling Eastman’s claims that those communications were privileged and should be protected. Among them were 10 documents related to meetings in December 2020 of a group that Eastman had described as “civic minded citizens of a conservative viewpoint who meet semi-regularly to socialize and discuss issues of public concern.” Two of those documents were emails inviting Eastman to speak at a Dec. 8 meeting of the group, Carter wrote. They were sent by the group’s “high-profile leader,” he wrote.
The other documents Eastman was ordered to turn over contained agendas for two more meetings of the group, the judge wrote. Carter wrote that the Dec. 9 agenda included a section entitled “ ‘GROUND GAME following Nov 4 Election Results,’ during which a sitting Member of Congress discussed a ‘[p]lan to challenge the electors in the House of Representatives.’” The Dec. 16 agenda included a section in which a Trump elector discussed “The Constitutional implications of the Electoral College Meeting and What Comes Next.” | 2022-06-17T00:19:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Eastman says Ginni Thomas invited him to speak to Frontliners group - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/16/john-eastman-ginny-thomas-frontliners-substack/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/16/john-eastman-ginny-thomas-frontliners-substack/ |
The Jan. 6 committee presented evidence that lawyers advising Trump knew the plan had no legal merit. But he pursued it anyway.
Video of Vice President Mike Pence during the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, is shown during the House select committee's hearing on Capitol Hill on June 16. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
President Donald Trump and his aides knew that it was not legal for his vice president, Mike Pence, to attempt to thwart Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, but they nonetheless mounted an unrelenting pressure campaign that did not abate even after rioters stormed the Capitol and threatened Pence’s life, according to new evidence presented Thursday by the House committee investigating the attack.
“I said, ‘John, if the vice president did what you were asking him to do, we would lose nine to nothing in the Supreme Court, wouldn’t we?' " Jacob recalled. “And after some further discussion, he acknowledged, ‘Well, yeah, you’re right, we would lose nine to nothing.’ ”
The committee also displayed a Jan. 11, 2021, email from Eastman to Trump’s lead campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, seeking a pardon from the outgoing president, though Eastman did not ultimately receive one. A member of the committee, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), said that in his deposition with the committee, the lawyer asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination “a hundred times.”
The House committee, which has spent a year investigating the Jan. 6 attack, continued making its case at Thursday’s three-hour afternoon hearing that the assault was the violent culmination of an attempted coup led by Trump.
With new details and never-before-seen video and photos, the proceeding focused on Pence and his largely ceremonial role presiding over the final step in the quadrennial process of declaring the winner of a presidential election: counting the electoral college vote in a joint session of Congress.
Committee members made the case not only that Trump and his advisers knew that Pence did not have the power to block Biden’s victory, but that their public statements to the contrary incited the rioters who invaded the Capitol that day, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” as they walked past a mock gallows erected outside the building.
“Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee chairman. “The former president wanted Pence to reject the votes and either declare Trump the winner or send the votes back to the states to be counted again. Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong.”
The committee presented new evidence of how close the rioters came to confronting Pence — within 40 feet — as his Secret Service detail escorted him to a secure location within the Capitol complex.
“Does it surprise you to see how close the mob was to the evacuation route that you took?” Aguilar asked Jacob, who was with Pence that day. “Forty feet is the distance from me to you, roughly.”
Jacob replied: “I could hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved, but I don’t think I was aware that they were as close as that.”
Several witnesses said there was never any question that Pence would not interfere with the count that day. The Constitution calls for states to establish how their presidential electors are chosen; all states follow the popular vote. As far as the counting of those electoral votes, the Constitution’s 12th Amendment instructs only that the president of the Senate — Pence at the time — “open all the certificates” and that “the votes will be counted.”
Jacob said Pence began inquiring about his powers and duties to oversee the count in early December.
“There was no way that our framers, who abhorred concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person, particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election, in a role to have a decisive impact on the outcome of the election,” Jacob said.
J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals judge and renowned conservative who advised Pence during the crisis, testified that what Trump was asking Pence to do amounted to “constitutional mischief” and posed a grave threat to American democracy.
None of that stopped Trump from ratcheting up the pressure as the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings approached. On that day, the effort began in the morning, when Trump called Pence at his official residence. Both Jacob and Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, recalled being with the vice president when the call came in, and watching Pence step out of the room.
Several Trump aides — including his daughter, Ivanka — were in the Oval Office at the time and could hear the president’s side of the conversation. In video testimony played at the hearing, Ivanka Trump described her father taking a “different tone” than she had heard him take with the vice president before.
Ivanka Trump also told others in the West Wing that her father had called the vice president “the p-word” and talked about Pence’s lack of courage, her former chief of staff, Julie Radford, testified Thursday. During the conversation, Pence made it clear to Trump that he did not have the authority to do what Trump asked.
The committee also detailed how Trump’s pressuring of Pence during his rally appearance on the Ellipse that day was not part of his original speech, and was instead ad-libbed.
Trump told those gathered that he talked to Pence before the rally about needing to have the “courage” to help him stay in office for four more years.
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump told his supporters. “I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
Later, with the attack at the Capitol underway, Trump “poured gasoline on the fire” by tweeting an angry message directed at Pence, Sarah Matthews, a former Trump press aide, said in a videotaped interview with investigators that was aired Thursday.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m. “USA demands truth!”
The committee showed footage of rioters reading the tweet aloud, and of others angrily demanding Pence’s head. Moments later, rioters inside the Capitol reached the eastern side of the Rotunda.
Several Pence aides testified that they were shocked and disappointed when Trump issued a statement the day before the riot that Pence and Trump were “in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act” in overturning the results of the 2020 election.
Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said the information in the statement was “incorrect” and he recalled an angry conversation with Trump aide Jason Miller, who separately testified that he wrote the statement with Trump’s input.
“I was irritated and expressed displeasure that a statement could have gone out that misrepresented the vice president’s viewpoint without consultation,” Short said he told Miller.
More than any other figure in the days leading to and including Jan. 6, Thursday’s hearing showcased Eastman, a Trump attorney who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in legal memos and in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Pence and Trump.
Eastman repeatedly sought to convince Pence and his lawyers that the vice president could unilaterally overturn the results of the election. A prolific emailer, Eastman fought for months to withhold emails the committee requested and only last week did a federal judge order that Eastman hand over an additional 400 documents to the committee.
Thursday was likely only the first hearing to feature Eastman as the committee continues its investigation behind closed doors, shaping the proceedings as new information rolls in.
Thompson said the panel plans to invite Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to be interviewed. The Post reported Wednesday that the committee has obtained email correspondence between Thomas and Eastman. The emails show that Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, according to two people with knowledge of the correspondence who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Jacob, along with former Trump White House lawyer Eric Hershmann, made clear in testimony Thursday they believe Eastman’s plan was ridiculous and illegal. Jacob recalled emailing Eastman after Pence had been evacuated to a secure location: “Thanks to your bull---t, we are now under siege.”
Eastman was unrepentant in reply, blaming Pence for not having gone along with the plot, and encouraging Pence’s team to consider a “relatively minor violation” of the law, by adjourning Congress for 10 days so state legislatures could reconsider their electoral college votes. Jacob said Pence described Eastman’s response as “rubber room stuff.”
Hershmann recounted speaking to Eastman the next day, when Eastman brought up a new idea to contest the result in Georgia, “And I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’ I said, ‘I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: Orderly transition,' " Herschmann said.
“Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life,'” Herschmann said he added. "'Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”
Separately Thursday, tensions ratcheted up between the Jan. 6 committee and the Justice Department, with prosecutors complaining their lack of access to committee interview transcripts is hampering their ability to complete criminal cases, as evidence is aired in widely watched public hearings ahead of key trials.
In a letter to the committee Wednesday, the heads of the Justice Department’s national security and criminal divisions wrote that not granting the department access to transcripts complicates the “ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct.”
The letter is the strongest salvo in the months-long back-and-forth between the committee and the department, whose parallel investigations have generally tried to steer clear of each other but now seem to be on a collision course.
The committee has repeatedly turned to Trump’s own aides, and Republicans generally, to make its case against the former president. Thursday’s hearing at times had the feel of a meeting of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group.
Jacob and Luttig are conservative lawyers. One of Thursday’s questioners was John Wood, a Republican lawyer who noted that he and Eastman clerked for Luttig. Eastman, Jacob and the vice chairwoman of the committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), received their law degrees from the University of Chicago, which is known for producing conservative lawyers.
Luttig on Thursday was unsparing in describing the harm that his fellow conservatives who have cast their lot with Trump could have done to the U.S. government — and still could do.
“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said.
Devlin Barrett, Matthew Brown, Rosalind S. Helderman, Eugene Scott, Mariana Alfaro, Amy Wang, Seung Min Kim and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed to this report. | 2022-06-17T00:23:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump aides told him that using Pence to overturn election was illegal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/trump-aides-told-him-that-using-pence-overturn-election-was-illegal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/16/trump-aides-told-him-that-using-pence-overturn-election-was-illegal/ |
Security personnel are seen outside the Supreme Court in June. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
“The combination of challenges and threats that the court is dealing with at one time is unprecedented in recent history,” said Gregory G. Garre, who argues regularly at the Supreme Court and was President George W. Bush’s solicitor general. “In that respect, the metal fencing surrounding the court symbolizes the challenges it is facing.”
Adds Columbia University law professor David Pozen: “I can’t think of a moment previously when there’s been such a confluence of signs of internal dissatisfaction and dysfunction, combined with external pressure on — and outrage toward — the court.”
The Washington Post reported that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is examining email correspondence between Ginni Thomas and lawyer John Eastman, who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Eastman, a former Thomas clerk, was an advocate for getting election issues before the high court in a last-ditch effort to flip the results of President Donald Trump’s defeat. In a statement Thursday, he acknowledged corresponding with Ginni Thomas on the effort but said there was nothing improper.
“I can categorically confirm that at no time did I discuss with Mrs. Thomas or Justice Thomas any matters pending or likely to come before the Court,” Eastman said in a statement. “We have never engaged in such discussions, would not engage in such discussions, and did not do so in December 2020 or anytime else.”
Eastman wrote he had told another lawyer involved in the effort to overturn the election results that he understood there had been heated exchanges among the justices about whether to take up an election challenge. But Eastman said he was not relying on inside information about the court’s private conferences but a thinly sourced report in conservative media. The report has been roundly criticized.
Ginni Thomas indicated to a conservative media outlet Thursday she would comply with the committee’s request for information. “I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them,” Thomas told the Daily Caller.
Ginni Thomas’s efforts — emailing former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about legal challenges to the election results, lobbying members of the Arizona legislature to similar ends — has prompted repeated calls for her husband to recuse himself from any election-related case that comes before the court.
Ginni Thomas apologizes to husband’s Supreme Court clerks after Capitol riot fallout
The Supreme Court did not entertain any of the challenges filed by Trump’s lawyers and advocates. But Thomas alone dissented when the court turned down Trump’s request to shield some White House documents from the Jan. 6 committee.
Threats to the justices have recently been put into sharp relief. A California man accused of plotting to assassinate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was indicted by a federal grand jury this week on one count of attempting to kill a U.S. judge. Nicholas Roske showed up at the justice’s Maryland home June 9 around 1 a.m. with a gun, burglary tools and 37 rounds of ammunition, according to the indictment.
After texting with his sister about his plans, she convinced Roske to call 911 and surrender, officials said. Roske faces a potential sentence of up to life in prison. Kavanaugh and his family were at home at the time of Roske’s planned attack.
Pozen notes it is not the first time a justice has been threatened over the polarizing issue of abortion. Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the Roe decision, regularly received death threats, Pozen said, and years later a bullet pierced the window of Blackmun’s Virginia apartment when he and his wife were at home. No one was injured and the FBI later determined it was likely a random occurrence.
Even before the incident at Kavanaugh’s home, the Senate introduced legislation to ensure security for the families of Supreme Court justices. Lawmakers were responding to concerns about the proliferation of protests outside the homes of justices after the leak of the draft opinion earlier this spring. This week, the House passed the bill and sent it on to President Biden.
The outcry over the court comes at the precise moment it wants to project a unified, or at least collegial, front. Instead, the court appears “deeply unsettled,” in the words of Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.
“It has a discretionary docket, yet in its first complete term as a new court it agreed to rule on abortion, carrying guns in public, climate change, and state support of religion,” Cole said. “At least thus far, caution has not been the court’s watchword. It has instead chosen to flex its newfound conservative muscle — and very possibly to make good on Trump’s promise to overturn Roe v. Wade. That can only contribute to the appearance and reality of a politicized court.”
Conservatives reply that such worries about the court’s legitimacy is simply code for protecting liberal outcomes such as Roe that the right has battled for years to overturn.
As is its custom, the court has said almost nothing about the controversies that surround it. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. denounced the leak of the draft abortion opinion, and said the court was conducting an investigation of how it happened.
“The chief justice faces an enormous challenge,” said Garre said. “He is the nominal head of the court, but has little authority to act on his own.” Garre was a clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who “used to refer to the job of the chief justice as herding cats.”
Some justices have spoken out on their own in public appearances. Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in speeches after the leak, denounced it and indicated it had taken its toll on trust among the justices. They skipped the chance to speak about their colleagues as respected friends who have learned to put their disagreements aside.
Clarence Thomas says Supreme Court leak has eroded trust in institution
Thomas in particular seemed to long for the days before the current court. “We actually trusted” each other, Thomas said at an appearance in Dallas. “We might have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family.”
Sotomayor said the court had the chance to lead the way to “regain public confidence” in institutions. In an interview with Tiffany Wright, a former clerk, she was not asked about nor did she refer to the leaked opinion or the coming slate of decisions likely to go against her and the two other liberals on the court.
She went out of her way to praise her relationship with Thomas. “I suspect I have disagreed with him more than any other justice,” she told the group, wandering among the attendees and answering questions. But she said he was a man who “cares deeply about the court as an institution, about the people who work there.”
Even though she criticized in an opinion last week the “restless and newly constituted court” eager for change, Sotomayor seemed intent on bucking up the assembled liberals.
Asked why she doesn’t lose hope, she said, “I don’t think I have a choice, neither do you.” | 2022-06-17T00:23:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ginni Thomas’s emails with Trump lawyer add to tumult at Supreme Court - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/ginni-thomas-john-eastman-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/16/ginni-thomas-john-eastman-supreme-court/ |
Black lawmakers ‘outraged’ over Va. health commissioner demand action
Gregory S. Schneider
Virginia Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan (D-Richmond) speaks during a special session at the Virginia Capitol in Richmond on June 1. (Daniel Sangjib Min/AP)
Black state lawmakers on Thursday demanded accountability from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin after his health commissioner, Colin Greene, dismissed the impact of structural racism on negative health outcomes for mothers of color and their babies, demoralizing a staff committed to protecting them.
Lawmakers, who said they were “nothing short of outraged at the actions and insular comments,” stopped short of calling for Greene’s resignation but requested a meeting with Youngkin (R), Greene and John Littel, secretary of Health and Human Resources, to determine how the administration will tackle health disparities.
“Greene’s actions and words cling to a worldview in which structural and institutional racism and white supremacy prevail,” members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus said in a letter, adding that Greene’s words “signal the intentional slowing down of lifesaving policies and actions” for mothers of color.
A spokeswoman for Youngkin said he reached out to Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico), chairman of the Black Caucus, but would not say if the governor plans to meet with lawmakers per their request.
“I was disappointed to hear that Dr. Greene did not effectively communicate our mission,” Youngkin said in a statement, adding that he was “outraged” about the rate of Black maternal mortality.
Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax) said Greene’s appointment as commissioner is subject to confirmation by the General Assembly, but he can serve at the will of the governor until the next regular legislative session in January.
In two interviews for a story The Washington Post published online Wednesday, Greene said invoking racism alienates White people. The view aligns with efforts by the Youngkin administration to purge equity initiatives in education through banning the teaching of critical race theory, in a state where about 40 percent of Virginians identify as something other than White.
Within the health department, one anonymous employee who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency, said Greene’s philosophy imperils their work and the people they serve and represents a full turnabout from policies prioritized under the administration of former governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat.
Tensions came to a head in March during a meeting between Greene and Vanessa Walker Harris, director of the Office of Family Health Services, and her team, which left at least one woman in tears and compelled Walker Harris to accuse Greene of gaslighting them.
State Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan (D-Richmond), a member of the Black Caucus, said almost dying during the premature birth of her second child gave her a heightened awareness of the dangers of pregnancy, especially for Black women. Greene’s comments reinforced a mind-set that undermines Black women and denies them quality health care, she said.
“First of all, I was just angry,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “It reminded me a lot of many of the stories I have heard … of Black women who say there’s a problem, and the medical establishment, particularly White male doctors, older, dismiss what they are saying.”
Although national unrest after the police killing of George Floyd two years ago awakened some White people to what Black Americans have known, McClellan said, many of the problems identified in a landmark 1968 report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, are still true today: generations of inequality and racist policies lead to disproportionate poverty and poor heath for Black people.
“The impact of decades and centuries of racist public policy under Jim Crow did not go away with a magic wand when laws were changed,” McClellan said. “I’m going to do something about it, I invite [the Youngkin administration] to join me in doing something about it or get out of the way.”
McClellan said Greene’s views made her question work done to try to reverse the disparities, including the state’s April 2021 Maternal Health Strategic Plan, which says “structural racism is at the root of maternal health disparities just as it is for many other health disparities.”
The maternal mortality rate for Black women is 2.5 times the rate for White women, according to data analyzed in the plan. Nationwide, college-educated Black women are at 60 percent greater risk of maternal death than a White or Hispanic woman with less education, the report says. Northam aimed to eliminate the racial disparity in maternal mortality by 2025.
“Part of what’s frustrating now is, how many different governors do I have to tell this to? This is the third governor I’ve had to tell it to and I’ve only served under four,” said McClellan whose tenure has coincided with Youngkin, Northam, Terry McAuliffe and Tim Kaine. Only Kaine understood without being told, she said.
She also praised Walker Harris, a Johns Hopkins-educated doctor, as “a consummate professional who is doing what Black women throughout history have done and that is see a problem and working to address it, trying to overcome pushback with grace and dignity.”
Walker Harris was director of the Office of Family Health Services from 2015 to 2020, when Northam appointed her deputy secretary of Health and Human Resources. She replaced Daniel Carey as secretary of the agency in the final months of Northam’s term, and returned to lead the office devoted to women, children and families under Youngkin.
By speaking out, she exposed a philosophical clash between Greene and the mission of the department, far more than a “work spat,” according to an employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the department. They said they worried that Greene’s comments, which they characterized as racist, could harm the people the agency is charged with serving.
In a 136-word general statement provided in response to nine detailed questions, Youngkin did not mention racism, but said the administration must address “access to medical services and screening, prenatal care, nutrition, and counseling, which play important roles in a mother and child’s health.” A spokeswoman for the health department referred questions to the governor’s office and did not make Greene available for an interview.
Greene in a prior interview days after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Tex., also dismissed gun violence as a Democratic talking point. Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney on Thursday called the remark “offensive and severely out of touch,” given that, on average, 1,065 people die by guns per year in Virginia and Black Virginians are eight times more likely than White people to die by gun homicide, he said, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The comments made by Dr. Colin Greene in the @washingtonpost yesterday are a threat to the public health of our Commonwealth. Virginia families are counting on him to do better. pic.twitter.com/OcdqvuwVQa
— Mayor Levar M. Stoney (@LevarStoney) June 16, 2022
“Hiding from these realities doesn’t make them go away,” he said. “Dr. Greene needs to stop being a coward and do something about them.”
Del. Candi Mundon King (D-Prince William), a member of the General Assembly’s Task Force on Maternal Health Data and Quality Measures, said she questioned in a May meeting why Youngkin’s administration had not included racism among factors for bad health outcomes, and did not receive an adequate response.
Mundon King, the mother of three, including an 11-year-old daughter with sickle cell anemia, said she was “completely outraged” that Greene raised the issue of the genetic disorder — which is related to one’s ancestry, not skin color — and suggested there could be a genetic reason for Black maternal mortality.
“I expect some accountability from the governor as well as the lieutenant governor who is a Black woman,” she said. “This is a reflection of the governor.” | 2022-06-17T00:36:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black lawmakers outraged by Youngkin's public health chief demand action - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/greene-racial-disparities-youngkin-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/16/greene-racial-disparities-youngkin-virginia/ |
A Russian serviceman keeps watch in front of a wheat field near Melitopol, Ukraine, on June 14. (Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
“When war is waged, people go hungry,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned last month. That’s precisely what’s starting to happen as the war in Ukraine ravages the world’s food supplies.
Global food shortages are a largely invisible consequence of the Ukraine war, whose combatants happen to be two of the world’s largest grain exporters. The ripple effect in global markets is just beginning. But a senior White House official warns that unless steps are taken quickly, the war could trigger “a potential mass starvation event.”
The numbers are frightening. Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, estimates that the conflict has blocked export of 30 percent of the world’s wheat and barley. The Center for Global Development predicts that price spikes for food and energy will push 40 million people into extreme poverty and food insecurity. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that global food prices are 30 percent higher than a year ago.
The world’s food supply “has quite literally been held hostage by the Russian military,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the United Nations last month. He described Ukrainian farmers attempting to harvest their crops wearing helmets and bulletproof vests.
President Biden this week denounced a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports that keeps 20 million tons of grain locked in silos. “It can’t get out through the Black Sea because it’ll get blown out of the water,” he told a labor convention in Philadelphia. For countries such as Egypt, which used to buy up to 80 percent of its wheat from Ukraine, this cutoff is a disaster.
This grim side effect of the war is finally getting some urgent attention. Biden this week announced a plan to build temporary silos on Ukraine’s land borders so that more grain can be exported overland. Blinken travels to Germany next week for a meeting with allies to discuss emergency measures to combat food shortages. “Everywhere we go, every country we talk to is preoccupied by this challenge,” says State Department spokesman Ned Price.
The war transformed Ukraine from a breadbasket into a free-fire zone. Ukraine normally exports 5 million to 6 million tons of grain per month, according to a State Department official. In March, that collapsed to 200,000 tons, and in April it was just 600,000 tons. Exports bounced back in May to 2 million tons, said the State Department official. And he hopes that by using land routes, Ukraine can export 3 million to 4 million tons a month through next April — but that’s only a little more than half of what it used to sell.
Shortages have brought sharp spikes in prices. A USAID official said Thursday that the agency is paying 10 to 20 percent more for commodities than before the war. The World Food Program’s operational costs have increased $29 million a month, the official said. Prices for fertilizers have doubled over the past year, according to World Bank figures cited by the USAID official.
In poor countries, more people are going hungry. A USAID project called the Famine Early Warning Systems Network cites 10 countries that will experience significant food problems because of the Ukraine conflict, including Somalia, Ethiopia and Yemen, which were already ravaged by their own internal conflicts.
Guterres has been working for weeks to try to lift the Black Sea embargo, in a deal that would facilitate Russia’s exports of food and fertilizer, as well as Ukraine’s. He has been negotiating quietly with Turkey, Russia and Ukraine, and he hopes to hold a meeting next week in Turkey with three countries to discuss plans for reopening the Black Sea to commerce, including escorts for cargo vessels.
This U.N. Black Sea discussion has been one of the few mediation channels that remain open. State Department officials support Guterres’s effort, and they hope that if next week’s discussions go well, Ukraine might begin shipping 2 million to 4 million tons of grain by sea every month. Russian President Vladimir Putin “is weaponizing hunger, willfully taking tens of millions of tons of food off the market when millions of lives in Africa and beyond hang in the balance,” Power said in an email.
The Ukraine war is taking place within that country’s borders. But increasingly, the consequences are being felt around the globe. Stopping the war might be impossible, but there’s an urgent need to end a cruel Black Sea blockade that is starving the world’s poorest people. | 2022-06-17T00:41:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Reduced grain shipments from Russia and Ukraine are creating global food shortages - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/russia-ukraine-gain-shipments-food-prices-famine-black-sea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/16/russia-ukraine-gain-shipments-food-prices-famine-black-sea/ |
Live updates Warriors take on the Celtics in Game 6 of NBA Finals
Warriors on cusp of title after Game 5 win
Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors are one win away from an NBA championship. (Winslow Townson/Getty Images)
Jerry Brewer
The Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics will meet in Game 6 of the NBA Finals on Thursday at TD Garden. Golden State leads the series, 3-2. Follow along for live updates.
How to watch: The game will be televised on ABC starting at 9 p.m. Eastern.
NBA Finals schedule: What to know about the seven-game series
Game 1: Celtics 120, Warriors 108 | Game 2: Warriors 107, Celtics 88 | Game 3: Celtics 116, Warriors 100 | Game 4: Warriors 107, Celtics 97 | Game 5: Warriors 104, Celtics 94
By Jerry Brewer8:30 p.m.
“It feels like it wasn’t this way when I first started coaching eight years ago,” Kerr said of NBA offenses that have evolved from finding mismatches to forcing them with their actions, screening and spacing. “Maybe over the last five or six years, it’s gotten more and more popular as we’ve had more and more three-point shooting, more five-out lineups, because the floor is so open. And all the switching, it’s hard to attack switches. I think that’s the reason for the hunting over the last few years.”
By Candace Buckner8:20 p.m.
By Ben Golliver8:10 p.m.
Golden State defeated Boston, 104-94, in Game 5 at Chase Center, taking advantage of the Celtics’ frigid first quarter and disjointed fourth quarter to grab a 3-2 series lead. With the victory, Golden State moved to the cusp of its fourth title in the past eight seasons. | 2022-06-17T00:42:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NBA Finals live updates: Warriors vs. Celtics Game 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/nba-finals-game-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/nba-finals-game-6/ |
Rory McIlroy, fresh off a closing 62 to win last week, stayed hot with a first-round 67 at the U.S. Open that had him one shot off Adam Hadwin's lead. (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
BROOKLINE, Mass. — So, whom do you like from that six-man tangle near the top of the U.S. Open leader board after opening round? Do you take the players known only to golf eggheads and ranked Nos. 592, 445, 296, 130 or 105? Do you take the English bloke ranked No. 445 whose clubs got stuck at the Toronto airport so he had to walk around here last Sunday with just a wedge? Do you take the Swede ranked No. 592 who hadn’t been in a major in five years but got into this one after playing his last three holes of qualifying in the Ohioan darkness, then not qualifying, then entering when Martin Kaymer withdrew?
Svrluga: Rory McIlroy drubbed Phil Mickelson, but golf's us-vs.-them era is just starting
It became the second straight major in which McIlroy announced contention early, following on his opening 65 at the PGA. (He wound up eighth.) “I’m going into tomorrow with the mind-set of, ‘Let’s keep it going,’ rather than, ‘Where is the cut line’ or whatever,” he said, having refrained from digging himself the chasm he has during some of the 28 long and blurry majors since his last major win at the 2014 PGA Championship.
Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa fight through the weird to start U.S. Open
Here came Dahmen, 34, ranked No. 130 and in his ninth major and savoring a course kind enough to refrain from demanding that everybody hit it like Hercules (or McIlroy). “If you look at my game and what I am,” he said, “for me to make it on tour for six years and play this well, that’s probably overachieving, some would say. I wasn’t all-American. I wasn’t the best . . . I knew I could compete here because it’s not overly long. Yeah, like the Winged Foot (in 2020) stood out to me. I didn’t have a fighting chance there.”
And here came Daffue, 33, whose life changed at 11 when he and his father played a round with two-time U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen, the fellow South African who encourages him still. “We never really talked about advice,” he said. “The one time I asked him, I said, ‘Hey, how do you do so well under pressure at U.S. Opens?’ He said, ‘I’ve just done it a few times.’ It makes a lot of sense, actually. The more you do it the more you get used to it.” | 2022-06-17T01:24:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adam Hadwin leads, Rory McIlroy in hunt at U.S. Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/us-open-golf-rory-mcilroy-adam-hadwin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/us-open-golf-rory-mcilroy-adam-hadwin/ |
UVALDE, Texas — The chairman of a Texas legislative committee investigating the nation's deadliest school shooting in a decade said Thursday that it’s unclear whether the small city of Uvalde’s local police department would testify before the panel voluntarily, raising more questions about when details will come out in a case where pressure is mounting for information to be released. | 2022-06-17T02:12:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chairman: Voluntary testimony from Uvalde police uncertain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/chairman-voluntary-testimony-from-uvalde-police-uncertain/2022/06/16/ca2131a2-ede1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/chairman-voluntary-testimony-from-uvalde-police-uncertain/2022/06/16/ca2131a2-ede1-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
DOVER, Del. — A bill outlawing firearm magazines capable of holding more than 17 rounds has cleared Delaware’s Democrat-led House with no Republican support.
Opponents have argued that the bill — which prohibits the manufacture, sale and possession of any magazine “capable of accepting, or that can readily be converted to hold, more than 17 rounds of ammunition” — will outlaw every magazine sold with modern semiautomatic weapons. | 2022-06-17T02:12:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Limit on gun magazines clears House, returns to Senate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/limit-on-gun-magazines-clears-house-returns-to-senate/2022/06/16/b05b39d0-eddb-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/limit-on-gun-magazines-clears-house-returns-to-senate/2022/06/16/b05b39d0-eddb-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Transcript: NEXT: Television Personality and Author Jonathan Van Ness
MR. JORGENSON: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I am Dave Jorgenson, senior video producer and TikTok guy here at The Post. Thanks for joining us for this edition of “NEXT,” a new series that brings together rising changemakers to talk about issues at the center of the conversation.
It's Pride Month, and I'm thrilled that the one and only Jonathan Van Ness is here to talk to us about that, his book, and a slew of other things. Hello, Jonathan. Thank you so much for joining us today at Washington Post Live.
MR. VAN NESS: Thanks for having me.
MR. JORGENSON: I try to reflect the person that I'm talking to so I wore the shirt that makes me happiest and most joyous, and my wife helped me pick it out. So, hopefully, this feels like you're seeing yourself reflected.
MR. VAN NESS: I love sunflowers, so it was a great choice.
MR. JORGENSON: Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you so much.
MR. VAN NESS: Yeah.
MR. JORGENSON: So, a quick note to our audience, we want to hear from you. So please tweet us your questions using the handle @PostLive.
Jonathan, I know in your book, you call Twitter "Yelp for humans." So we're only looking for five-star tweets people. So just give us your best tweets and questions, and we'll try to answer those as well as we're going through this.
But, first, Jonathan, you have become an icon for so many things. You are one of the "Fab Five" on "Queer Eye." You are a hairstylist with a new hair care product line. You have a successful podcast that has also inspired a series on Netflix. You're a bestselling author. There's a second book. There are so many things, I'm running out of fingers here. But my first question for you today in relation to that book is, how did you first tackle that challenge of writing your own story about who you are?
MR. VAN NESS: Yeah. I mean, "Love That Story," which is my second book, and "Over the Top" have been two of my greatest joys and experiences of my life. It was--I think at first, "Over the Top" felt a little bit more intense, I think, releasing "Over the Top," and talking about what I talked about in "Over the Top" felt relatively intense. But then I--it was really interesting in writing my second book, "Love That Story," because I really naturally turned back--turned back to the writing process to kind of process the experience of "Over the Top" coming out and also processing a lot of other things that I had been thinking about and taking the time to learn and ask questions and get to distill that into an essay book with still my voice. So it has like the tonality of "Over the Top," but it's interesting. I feel like I've grown up a lot since I wrote "Over the Top," which was back in 2019. So it's interesting to explore that as a writer and explore where I am now.
There's a lot--there's a little bit of that, "Getting Curious," my podcast vibe in "Love That Story," because at this point, I've gotten to interview like 270-something people, and my podcast has been going for six years. But I've interviewed, like, senators, cabinet members, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Emmy winners, Oscar winners, Tony winners, like prolific academics, incredible scientists from--I mean, like astronomy to zoology to like [unclear] to astrophysics, like just so much stuff I've gotten to learn and just incredible stories.
So I got to talk a lot about all the different stuff that I've learned and love that story, which is this book right here--
MR. JORGENSON: I think you got it. Yep.
MR. VAN NESS: --[unclear] cover there. [Laughs]
MR. JORGENSON: That was good. Well done. I don't have--I can't really do that. I just have a picture of SPAM here.
MR. VAN NESS: I was like [unclear]. Interesting.
MR. JORGENSON: You nailed it. I don't even know. I have the ocean over here, the Pacific.
But, yeah, I listened to the audio book, which was like basically a five-and-a-half version of--five-and-a-half-hour version of your podcast, so that was amazing. I definitely recommend the book in either format to people because it was a lot of fun to just hear you do that.
And kind of in relation with what you're talking about, the intro is such a good--it's really good glue between the two books because you're starting to reflect on the last book and sort of bring us into the new one. So I really appreciate that about it.
And one of the major themes of that book, "Love That Story," is identity in your discussion about coming out as nonbinary. We asked our audience if they had questions for you, and the first one I want to share is from Tasia/Poe, who wrote, "I discovered I was nonbinary last year during lockdown, and when I found out you were nonbinary as well, I felt incredibly reassured and seen. So thank you so much for that, and I wanted to ask, how did you discover you were nonbinary? How did you come across the term? So many people think it's a brand-new concept, and you have no idea how much you've impacted my life." And there's a nice little heart emoji.
MR. VAN NESS: Aw.
MR. JORGENSON: So a great little question there. Yeah.
MR. VAN NESS: That's so kind, and thanks for sharing that.
For me, I was really honored and blessed to be--you know, when I say "blessed," it's such like a reflex. I was very honored and very affirmed in my experience with meeting Alok. Alok is really the person who--I think I had heard nonbinary, and I think I had spoken--well, just I think I had obviously heard it and didn't really like--I knew about it but not really, and then Alok was really kind of my introduction into realizing that these were feelings that I've had my entire life, and these were things that I identified with my whole life. I just didn't have the language for it, and so that was a really interesting experience. And Alok has become one of my really close friends. I mean one of my best friends and someone who I reach out to for advice and who I look up to and respect so much.
So, yeah, just people like Alok and just--or the thought leaders of our generation, I love them so much, and so that was really who it was for me, but I do think--and that's one thing I was really excited to get to talk about and getting curious on Netflix. And it's Episode 2, the "Can We Say Bye-Bye to the Binary?" It got to have Alok. I got to have Joshua Allen, Geo Neptune. I got to talk to Nala Simone, who is just amazing, and I got to speak to so many people who were just incredible people that I think really got to show that nonbinary and genderqueer and trans people have been here for thousands of years. It's a historical fact.
MR. JORGENSON: It's a wonderful Episode 2 from beginning to end, and I really mean that because, even in the credits, you're doing this dance and that song has been in my head since I watched that episode.
MR. JORGENSON: And we're going to get to that more in a moment, but first, I have another audience question from Joanna in Massachusetts, and she asks, "How would you suggest best supporting grandparents who want to support their grandchildren but have trouble with pronouns?" And I want to add before you answer that that we--this is a question we got a lot. So a lot of people want to do this correctly, and they want to support other people who are making sure they're using pronouns correctly, and I think there's just this desire to do it correctly and go about it the right way and encourage others to do so.
MR. VAN NESS: Yeah. I think there's so many resources out there for us to seek out and learn about on how to utilize pronouns correctly. I do think that it's--you know, if it's a family member, no matter who it is, I think it's--as long as we're coming from an earnest, honest, respectful place, you can ask what someone's pronouns are because you want to do it in a respectful, great way. So you can say, "What are your pronouns?" and then when you make a mistake, it's okay to say I'm sorry and just move on. We don't want to get too much in a clog about like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I feel so bad," and bringing it up over and over because then it kind of becomes about your guilt.
And I also think that it does become a lot easier to understand the significance of the importance of correct pronoun usage when we think of--when we frame it less about the ally doing the right thing and more about what the trans community is going through at large. And so I think that when we educate ourselves to the things that our trans family members are going through, that will kind of make--I think if you do slip up on a pronoun here and there, but you're doing your best to be a really strong ally and you're having difficult conversations with people in corners of your life that may not want to be the ally that you want to be and if you've having those courageous conversations, I think your family member or your grandkid is going to forgive you for any slip in a pronoun here or there. So that's one thing. I think it's like a wider conversation than pronouns, but--yeah, so I hope that that helps.
I also think that I'm so grateful for your question, and I'm really grateful that you're a supportive ally and family member because we need more of those people, but I think what I am saying is that in addition to wanting to do really well on pronouns, I think that the way that you do really well on pronouns is by educating yourself to the issues at large that trans people are facing and focus on those two and make sure that that person in your life knows that you're aware of what they're going through on a more systemic level. And I think that that will help you make the right choice when you're using pronouns because it will be more front of mind.
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. And it's either in the Netflix episode or your book or maybe both that you bring up the term--you weren't really familiar with it until about five years ago, I want to say.
MR. JORGENSON: And for someone like me--yeah. And I--you know, I think I pretty much first heard of it, and I don't know when the episode was, but you talking about it on "Queer Eye" and just understanding that. So I thank you for that for me because that's something that I had to start educating myself on, and to your point, I think it's just about having those discussions more than anything that may be difficult at the moment but are going to benefit people largely in the long run, not unlike this episode we're going to play here in a minute from "Getting Curious," which was originally your podcast that got picked up as a show on Netflix.
I have to say really quickly, my Netflix icon is your face. So I realize I see it every week, every day. It's just that like fabulous picture of your hair.
MR. JORGENSON: So, even when I'm not watching your shows, I still click through to see your face every time.
MR. VAN NESS: Oh, that's so [unclear].
MR. JORGENSON: But we have a clip here. It's--thank you. It brings me joy. We have a clip here from a recent episode of it. It's called "Can We Say Bye-Bye to the Binary?" You just mentioned it. Let's take a look at that.
MR. VAN NESS: I looked amazing, though.
MR. JORGENSON: Okay. So I guess the clip was--we had some technical issues there, but as much as I can here, I'll try to move on from that. I know you know the episode really well.
But let's talk about how fashion has become part of your story and how it is a version of self-expression. I know that's at least part of the episode.
MR. VAN NESS: Yeah. Fashion is definitely a part of the episode. I think that in that episode particularly, there is like--it's a lot more than fashion, which is something that we talk about a lot because a gender nonconforming or trans experience or gender-diverse experience is so much more than your clothes and like how you present, and there's so much history. And, you know, there's just generations and generations and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of people who have come before us who have laid these pathways that, you know, we now stand upon, you know, in seeking trans liberation and gender and nonbinary recognition and, yeah, a world where we can be who we want to be and go into whatever field we want to go into and not face the same discrimination that our cis peers tend to not face. So, yeah, that's that.
But fashion is a really big deal. You know, I love a good or just a colorful moment. I also love to be comfortable. I love to feel good in what I'm in. So fashion is a really exciting thing for me to explore, and I'm really lucky that I get to explore it in the way that I do. So go fashion. I love learning about it. I love getting to express myself through the textures and through the colors and through putting things together, but then I also love like coming home and putting on a T-shirt dress and playing with my cats. So there's definitely, like, a part of me who likes to be comfortable and a part of me who likes to be glamorous and I guess a part of me who likes to be both, but yeah.
MR. JORGENSON: I love--I love that, and I have to say I was listening to the--there's an essay in your new book about your cat, and I'm so sorry about that. But that you told that story so beautifully, and as someone--you know, I got my dog at the start of the pandemic. And I was listening to that just imagining being in your shoes, and I really think that you told that so well. So I appreciate that story, and I hope that people will get to listen to that story about your cat, but there's other things I want to cover. So I just wanted to give you kudos and thank you for that story.
We have an audience question, though, from Patricia in New Jersey, and she wants to know, "What do you know about being queer and how your life"--sorry. "What do you know about now about being queer and how your life turned out that you wish you could tell your teenage self?"
MR. VAN NESS: At the beginning of that, I was like, dang, that's a direct question, like what do you know about being queer?
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah.
MR. VAN NESS: And I'm going, and are these questions [unclear]?
MR. JORGENSON: Tell us.
MR. VAN NESS: I think what I know now that I wish I could tell my teenage self is that--I wish I could have told myself how much more precious my life is than what I knew it was then. I felt so much more expendable and worthless, and I did not understand like what humanity was. And I think that that's a lot of the bullying and the abuse that queer people endure and think that that's so normal, and what I realize as an adult, that so much of what I went through is--that the idea of normal is like as individual as there are people in the world. And so for me as a queer person in this world that is, you know, very wired for cisgender, heterosexual people, especially for me coming from a relatively--well, very conservative town, I had a lot of trauma from that, and so it made me not like myself.
And I wish that I could tell my teenage self that that had a lot more to do with the community around me than it had to do with myself, and I think that's really what my adult like has been about has been about learning how to parent and nurture and take care of that kid that just did not get taken care of, and I think that's really what healing from trauma looks like. It's learning to be your own advocate and kind of the advocate for you that you didn't necessarily have, even though I had great advocates and coaches and parents and teachers, but I think still as a queer person, even if you do have amazing parents and, you know, family and teachers, it still can be a really isolating experience.
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. And you do a really good job in the book talking about that with Quincy, Illinois, growing up there. You know, I'm a fellow Midwesterner from Kansas City, so I can--I can appreciate how difficult that must have been.
MR. VAN NESS: Oh, Kansas City.
MR. JORGENSON: That's right.
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. When--Season 3 and 4 of "Queer Eye," I was like this is like the best ad for Kansas City they're ever going to get. It was beautiful. I was learning about places I had never been to. I was like I should really try that out, so thank you for that.
MR. VAN NESS: It's beautiful there.
MR. JORGENSON: It's beautiful, yeah, and it always has been, but you all did a really good job of highlighting that.
On the subject of self-esteem, you've said before that it catches you off guard when someone compliments you and says, "Thank you for being you," since that implies something about you is negative. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
MR. VAN NESS: I don't think I said that--that it's like when people say like thanks for being me that I think that it's negative. It's more like you're so brave--
MR. JORGENSON: Right.
MR. VAN NESS: --or you're so confident. It's like that--
MR. VAN NESS: --is kind of like the weird compliment that makes you assume like why wouldn't I want to be myself and like why am I brave for being myself. Why am I confident for looking this way or wanting to dress this way? So, yeah, I think it's just like a weird thing to say when someone--like you're so confident, like, you know, because like the reverse of that is like, "If I was you, I would never dress like that. I would never look like that if I was you." So I think that's really brave. It's just like such an intense thing to say to someone, so yeah.
But, I mean, on the other hand, I think one thing I always have to tell myself and I talk about it in "Love That Story" is that the support and the love is so much bigger than the negatively, at least on, like, my posts. Sometimes when I see, like, other posts about me, sometimes I'm like, oh, my God, this can be really intense, but that's why I don't read the comments. But sometimes I slip up sometimes.
But, yeah, at least the way I experience it, it feels like it's a lot more support than not.
MR. JORGENSON: Absolutely. And, yeah, I can appreciate--again, you know, you talked about Twitter in your book, but sometimes it's like how much of this do I take in and how much do I ignore. It's a really hard thing to balance, especially with someone where you've--as you talk about in the book as well, you shoot to fame, and nothing can really prepare you for that. And I think that--I think you've handled that quite well, and I really appreciate how you articulated that in the book.
MR. VAN NESS: Thanks.
MR. JORGENSON: Of course. And I have another audience question here. This is from one of my three sisters, Ellen, who submitted it, so shoutout to her. She says, "Jonathan works with individuals on "Queer Eye" of various generations. What common ground do they think exists within the generation gaps, and what are the blind spots they have observed in their interactions with Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X?"
MR. VAN NESS: Wow. That's a really good question.
MR. JORGENSON: She's pretty smart.
MR. VAN NESS: You know, I just don't think I can categorize it like that because, you know, sometimes I want to say, like, the kids are all right, like, young people really have it together, but we also see like there's a large amount of, like conservatism in young kids in certain pockets of the United States. There's still a lot of young people who don't know and have honestly been failed by the education system and like have not had the opportunities to learn. I'm talking a lot about in states that, like, have, like, abstinence laws in the--like as far as like sex education. So there's--we just have rampant issues with young people and, like, not knowing how to protect themselves and not knowing how to live adult lives that are safe and healthy for them and productive because we're not really preparing our kids for a future, especially queer young people, to be able to protect themselves. And that's why I went through so much of what I went through, and that's why I feel that it's important for me to talk about that because I went through so much, and there's nothing about not talking about LGBTQ issues or safe sex or societal issues. There's no amount of not talking about that that's going to make those things go away. So we have to empower people with knowledge so that they can make the best decisions for themselves and not pretend like it's not there, and so I think that's really important.
And so whether it's older people--you know, there's some older people that really have it together and really know and really get it, and there's some younger people that really do. And there's some in all of those categories that really, really don't.
So I think what our biggest areas that I could say collectively is--and myself included--is that we are not really showing up for each other. We are going into our own camps, and we are refusing to have conversations with people that we disagree with, and because of that, we are just not building bridges. And we really need to build bridges to each other.
So, if there's someone in your family who is like really conservative and they are just fully entrenched in their ways and we have cut them off and we're not talking to them anymore, it's like how can we reach back out? Or if it's not, those people that are firmly entrenched, how can we reach out to the undecided people? How can we reach out to people that maybe you just don't really talk about it? But there's a lot of people who just don't know, and we need to reach out and make those bridges because we just don't know. And I think we're all guilty of like kind of staying in our circles and like not really reaching out and trying to make inroads with new folks, and there's a lot of undecided people out there.
And this midterm election is like one of our most consequential elections that we're going to have in a really long time. There are state legislators that are literally investigating families for having gender nonconforming and trans youth and seeking mental therapy or hormone blockers or--which are completely irreversible, by the way, and completely endorsed and safe by like every single major medical association in America. They're not like easily given. These are choices that are made, highly individualized, specialized choices that are made between parents and kids, parents and their children and their medical professional. And we've got state legislators that are charging those parents and those medical providers with felonies right now. A lot of these states want to make these laws federal. That's what the GOP plans to do. Not only that, they want to take away health care. There's so--they want to like--when you look at what's going on in Florida and when you look at what's going on in Texas, that's the roadmap that they want to make national.
But when you look at what's happening with Roe v. Wade, that's a huge issue, and these are all results of everyone in every single age group refusing to have conversations with friends and family because it's easier to talk to people about things that you agree with or just go off on someone online, and we got to like have these conversations in real life. And it's because the people that are the most exposed, which is people living in poverty, queer people, people of color, women, gender nonconforming people, those people and especially the people of those--disabled people and those people who have those intersectional--those intersectional overlapping identities, those are the people who are the most vulnerable and stand to lose the most in these midterms.
And despite the lack of direction and unity that we see across the Democratic side, we all have to like understand what's at stake here and show up in our local elections and make our voices heard and say that we as Americans care about our fellows.
MR. JORGENSON: That was--
MR. VAN NESS: Whoo.
MR. JORGENSON: --a lot. [Laughs] Yeah. I didn't want to interrupt at any point. That was good. I felt like I just--no. That was--that was amazing and--
MR. VAN NESS: That was something [unclear] to a Twitter--I mean or in a TikTok. That felt like that--I was really--I felt engaged, and my brain was working.
MR. JORGENSON: It was working great. I have about 50 follow-up questions, so I'm just going to settle on one with that.
You know, a lot of work that I do, speaking of Tik--is focused on TikTok, and I do feel like exactly what you said, that people are kind of caught in silos, and they don't even know it, especially in a place like TikTok where it's sort of intentionally built, where you're just getting fed things and you don't actually know where they came from. Do you see any sort of--and this is a huge question, but a solution or a way to go about social media to--I think the word "education" kept coming up when you were talking. So to educate yourself on topics that perhaps your feeds aren't proactively giving you, something that you have to proactively do? Is there--is there a solution of that for people of any generation?
MR. VAN NESS: Well, I do think that seeking out information off of social media through, like, venerated news sources such as The Washington Post or whatever journalist that you follow--there's a lot of journalists on Twitter that you can follow. There's a lot of--I read a lot of Vice. I feel like I read a lot of Slade. I read a lot of New York Times, and there's a lot of different news--I also even will watch conservative news sometimes to see what they are saying. So we all need to be able to take information and process it.
I think that TikTok and Instagram can be valuable places to get information, but I don't think that they're places where I take that information full stop without vetting it and fact-checking it for myself.
I also know that for my podcasts, getting curious from interviewing public health--excuse me--public information experts that a lot of time on social media, if you're seeing a story that gives you an intense and immediate emotional reaction, you could be being exposed to misinformation. So a lot of times, I need--I think about that, and then I go and I will vet the source or vet the statistic and realize that maybe I have been exposed to something that's been like skewed by an influencer journalist. So there's a difference between like an influence journalist and like a journalist on social media. So it's important to like understand as a consumer of information how to distinguish between the two.
So, yeah, I think that what I was really trying to say, though, with every generation is that in the previous question and then, you know, to loop back to this one is that let's get off TikTok and like let's talk to your neighbor. Let's talk to your mom, your dad, your uncle. Let's talk to people who maybe you haven't spoken to in a while. Maybe TikTok isn't the best place to do it. Maybe it's like you go old school and you over back to that, you know, the artist formerly known as Facebook and you make a little post on there because that's a good way for you to reach out to people that are a little bit older--
MR. JORGENSON: I've heard of it.
MR. VAN NESS: --that may be even more [unclear] than on TikTok, you know?
MR. JORGENSON: Yep.
MR. VAN NESS: Or you can just reach out to your family. You can do a group message with your family. You can do a group message if you're a person of faith. Faith-based people are really dragging a lot of stuff through the mud right now for, you know, queer people, trans people. Also, climate change denial is a huge issue in communities of faith. So, if you're a person of faith who is really passionate about climate action or, you know, your God and Jesus like loving all people--I don't know--and like not wanting to judge them and investigate their families for child abuse if there's like a gender nonconforming kid. I don't know. Like, you could get more involved. So maybe it's like about utilizing TikTok but maybe not that being your end-all/be-all, like doing a both/and, like more in real life and on social is what I would say that we need to do more of.
MR. JORGENSON: I love that. I will--for you, I will venture outside of TikTok eventually one day. I think I will give it a shot.
MR. VAN NESS: But I think for all of u s--but I do think that that's a real thing.
MR. VAN NESS: It's like all of us. It's your parents. It's your family. It's like these people on the internet are literally these people on the internet, which are both--
MR. VAN NESS: --important because they are people, and what are the chances that they are really going to go to their local midterm elections and make their vote known in that way?
So maybe they will, and maybe they won't. So let's not discount the real relationships, the other types of real relationships, human ones that we have in life, with our friends and family, because there's a lot of people that--
MR. JORGENSON: Jonathan--
MR. VAN NESS: --we just don't talk to because we think that they disagree, and maybe they do, but let's be fearless in those conversations.
MR. JORGENSON: I think that is the perfect way to end this today. The best and worst thing has happened, which is that I have about 600 questions for you, but we're out of time. That means we had a great conversation.
MR. JORGENSON: So thank you so much for joining me here today, Jonathan. I really appreciate it.
MR. VAN NESS: Thanks, everyone. Bye.
MR. JORGENSON: And now I'd like to bring in a few of my colleagues here at the Post to continue the conversation, Helena Andrews‑Dyer, pop culture reporter, and Shannon Liao from Launcher here at The Post. Welcome to you both.
MS. LIAO: Hey, Dave. So good to be here.
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: Thanks for having me.
MR. JORGENSON: Of course, yeah. It's just like another work Zoom but a little bit more public.
MR. JORGENSON: So I'm going to‑‑I'm going to just start things off right the bat here. Elena, you have children, and you heard me talking with Jonathan earlier about how to discuss gender with younger generations. Can you talk to us about how you are or possibly plan to talk to your children about gender and sexual identity?
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: Yes. Well, I do have children. I'm a mom of two girls, a five‑year‑old and an almost three‑year‑old, and I will say my philosophy‑‑and I'm also the daughter of an out and proud lesbian woman. And I would say my philosophy has always been to be honest and age appropriate, right?
So my daughter, my oldest, who is in elementary school, one of her besties, her ace boon coon, has two moms who are married, and it's‑‑kids, they recognize difference. They see something that might be out of the ordinary, and they point to it. They like to point to it and be real loud like, "What's going on here?" Right? But it's embarrassing.
MR. JORGENSON: Very loud. Yeah. [Laughs]
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: And it could be super embarrassing, but at the same time, that is the teachable moment. That's the opportunity to say, like, "Yes. And you know him very well. That's your best friend, and he has two moms."
And literally, they'll sit with it and like, "Uh‑huh. Cool," and they'll be on to the next thing, right? And that was in the moment, age appropriate, and honest, and she moves on. And then when she has another question, because she will because all children have is questions, it's to answer it as honestly and as age appropriately as I can in the moment, right?
So we don't talk a lot about sexual identity. She's five, you know, but at the same time, I tell my oldest all the time, you know, people are who they say they are, right? If someone says "I'm a girl," "I'm a boy," that's it. You know, that's it. You take people at‑‑for their word. You identify someone, and I don't use the term "identify" with her, right? That's a five‑dollar word for a five‑year‑old, but, you know, you take people at who they are. And what matters most is that someone is kind, and that someone‑‑and that you are kind to other people. And I think you just keep building on that conversation with young people.
I thought something that Jonathan said that was so great when he was talking about what he would tell his teenage self, right, and talked about being an advocate for yourself, and that made me think about when you're a parent, you know, you are re-parenting yourself. You are‑‑I am re‑mothering myself constantly, and what I'm trying to teach myself is more acceptance, right? What I'm trying to teach myself is to be more knowledgeable of difference and making other people comfortable and all of those things, lessons that I may have gotten in the '80s and '90s that weren't as great as they are now. So I'm constantly thinking of those things and trying to impart them on myself and then my kids.
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. And I think the other thing that you highlighted that was also sort of a throughline with the conversation with Jonathan was sometimes those uncomfortable conversations, whether it's with your kid or your grandparents or whoever, those are the most important conversations ultimately because there's some actual progress there.
To pivot here now to you, Shannon, here, as a video game reporter, how does LGBTQ and Pride Month intersect with some of the reporting you've been involved in?
MS. LIAO: Yeah. Thanks, Dave. I mean, that was a great question. I also wanted to say, Helena, like that's super important too, and, you know, I would walk by Barnes & Noble, and I see now they have these books that teach children pronouns and more things like that. So I think stuff changed a lot from the previous decades when I was a child.
But, yeah, like when it comes to video game reporting we do at Launcher, our Washington Post brand for gaming, we actually‑‑I wrote a story about, you know, abortion rights and Roe v. Wade and interviewed, you know, trans workers who say that, you know, as trans women, abortion rights still matter to them because it's about the bodily autonomy of the individual, which is like still going to matter when it comes to trans rights and abortion rights, like so that's how they intersect.
And I'll slow down a little bit here.
But, also, you know, like electronic arts, which produces like Star Wars games. They have like Sims 4 and they have same‑sex marriage and relationships in Sims 4. At some point in February of this year, you know, they were going to put that out in Russia, but Russia doesn't allow that kind of content. So they decided to no longer put the game out in Russia.
And, of course, a month later or two months later, it was no longer relevant because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and then, of course, all these gaming companies pulled out of Russia entirely. But it's like one example of how these companies are thinking about representation inside their video games, inside their companies when it comes to like giving, you know, making sure that LGBTQ employees have the benefits they need. For instance, trans workers have been asking to get their, like, dead names erased from the system so like the name they used to use erased from like a computer system so that they can make sure that they are never called by that name again, and that's like one request Activision Blizzard workers had for their company.
And so a lot of times when we're covering these stories about video game companies and about the games they produce, we are also looking at, you know, over time it seems like there is more diversity. For instance, like in 2020, there was a game called Tell Me Why, which is featuring a trans character, and that was groundbreaking for the time because it hadn't happened for years.
And I talked to, you know, trans people who covered gaming as well and critics, and they said that, you know, that has a long time coming. It should have been years ago. So they were not really satisfied with that representation, but I think it's an ongoing discussion.
MR. JORGENSON: I have maybe a whole separate conversation I want to have with you about that because, once again, I have many questions.
It's funny. The Sims is luckily relatable to me. I'm not much of a gamer, but I had Sims 1 back in the year 2000, and I think it's‑‑to your exact point, back then it was two genders, and that‑‑it was very simple, the terms of how the game was made, and now the progress on that has been really interesting to watch and see as it's developed as along with society in terms of what we're talking about.
MS. LIAO: Yeah, absolutely. I remember there was coverage back in 2014 when, you know, there was like same‑sex relationships introduced into Sims 4 and‑‑into Sims, I mean, and that was really like game changing for a lot of people playing and following along, so‑‑
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. And sorry to keep pivoting back and forth, but I want to‑‑I want to talk to both of you a lot, so I'm going to do my best here to get as many questions as possible.
Helena, another thing that was so interesting about the interview with Jonathan was the topic of language itself, which is kind of what we've already been discussing here, and Lizzo was front and center this week when she came under fire‑‑or in the last week or so for a lyric that included language that was seen as ableist. She reacted very quickly, and she changed the lyric. And if you listen on the radio now, it's already the updated song. So can you talk to us about that response, and do you think it was the appropriate response to the concerns expressed by disability community?
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: Do I think it was appropriate? Absolutely. Right? And, obviously, Lizzo felt that way too. I mean, if you know anything about Lizzo‑‑I am a pop culture reporter. Love, love, love, love, love Lizzo. Who doesn't? But her music is about‑‑
MR. JORGENSON: Same.
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: ‑‑self‑acceptance. It is‑‑it is uplifting, empowering, and enlightening, all of the things, right? That's all‑‑that is the essence of who Lizzo is, and so when this was pointed out to her, I thought it was such an interesting example of this, right, because it was unintentional on her part, obviously. She wasn't trying to‑‑and we don't have to like repeat what the word was, but she wasn't trying to repeat an ableist slur against people who are disabled, right? That's not something she was intentionally trying to do, right? And that's not the meaning of the word that she was trying to put out.
But as soon as it was brought to her attention that that is what that word meant for a lot of people, whether or not she knew it, she realized, okay, this is not what I'm about. This is not the artist I am. This is not who I want to be, so I'm changing it. And, literally, the song was released on a Friday, and she changed it by Monday.
And if you listen to the new version‑‑I don't even think you can get the old version. It's gone. But the new version, it's‑‑it's like there‑‑you know what I mean? The word that they changed and how they changed it‑‑
MR. JORGENSON: Right. You never would notice.
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: ‑‑it's so seamless. Exactly. You would never notice. It's so seamless, and that was the perfect response, and her fans thanked her for it, right? Her fans were saying, "Oh, my gosh, Lizzo, this is not the way to do a girl," like, you know, with the original version, and as soon as she changed it‑‑and I think she came out with a great statement where she was basically like this is not the type of artist that I am.
And we're constantly getting these conversations. Let's go back to the fall and comedian Dave Chappelle in "The Closer" and all the controversy about how he has been attacking, essentially, the trans community or how the trans community feels attacked by the jokes that he's telling and him saying, "Oh, I'm an artist. I get to say what I want to say," basically, right?
And I think the artists like Lizzo‑‑and even today, I think there was an interview with Jerrod Carmichael, another comedian, who said, "Listen, we are artists as well, but this is not what we want our art to be about. We don't want our art and our legacy to be about punching down. We don't want our art and legacy to be about hurting people." Just find a new word, you know? Find a new word, and it's so easy, right?
And you have these people who say, well, why would this person have to do this, and why do they have to do so much to, quote/unquote, "appease a small minority"? Well, it wasn't a lot to do. It wasn't a lot do for Lizzo, right? That's what we see. Literally, it was a Friday.
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: Monday, it changed.
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. And I think that you saw a lot of that in‑‑by her having such a speedy reaction to it, it seemed like everyone else kind of followed suit and like, oh, okay, and as you've noted, I don't know if I even heard the song ahead of time. I heard it after the fact. So it was the best-case scenario in so many ways, where everyone is now hearing the song and they just know is that's how the song is now.
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: Exactly.
MR. JORGENSON: I'm going to pivot to more news, once again, a totally separate news story here, but‑‑and this one is, you know, even heavier, but the Buffalo shooting suspect was‑‑is facing multiple federal hate crime charges after his shooting rampage last month that killed 10 Black people. And, Shannon, in the aftermath of the Buffalo shooting, you know, Twitch was a big part of this story. What is Twitch doing now in response to that?
MS. LIAO: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the Buffalo shooting was livestreamed on Twitch, and then Twitch immediately took that down from their platform. But it was disseminated across a lot of, you know, hateful communities like places where they were looking for that kind of content to just spread around and dozens of times until, you know, even though Twitch immediately had taken down the video, it was still available elsewhere. And, at the same time, I think the New York Attorney General was going to investigate both Twitch, Discord, another online platform for talking to people, especially gamers, and 4Chan and also referred to all of these at the same time as, you know, hateful platforms, which is not like to‑‑which is missing the nuance of what the different platforms are.
So Twitch itself is, you know, always trying to like pull down like combat harassment and different kinds of like bad content, but of course, people can always post it really quickly; in that split second that can spread.
Same thing with Discord. We just put out an article today on Launcher about how Discord is adding an AutoMod feature, which would automatic moderation, which is similar to Twitch, using AI to just identify quickly what is violating their terms of service and conditions and just taking that down immediately instead of relying on humans to catch it, you know, which could take much more time, and of course, that doesn't scale if, you know, there are millions of people on this platform. You can have millions of humans also watching them. It's a lot of work, and it's also traumatizing. It can be very hard for them.
So these platforms are trying to rely on a mixture of both human moderation and artificial intelligence, but ultimately, this kind of thing keeps happening over and over again. So it's an ongoing question of how tech companies can address, you know, these kinds of, like, livestream shootings and other terrible content that does disseminate across their platforms.
MR. JORGENSON: Wow. That is, again, quite a bit. I could unpack any of these questions for a full panel, so maybe we'll have to do something in the future.
MS. LIAO: Yeah, I would love to.
MR. JORGENSON: I'd like to piggyback‑‑yes, please, even if it's just a friendly Zoom.
Helena, I have one more question for you, and I want to talk about mainstream TV shows, that they're integrating same‑sex storylines with frequency now. How does this help to normalize queer identities that Jonathan himself talks a lot about‑‑themselves‑‑excuse me‑‑a lot about in their book?
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: I would say one of the questions‑‑I believe it was like the first question that Jonathan received was from someone who was now identifying as nonbinary and saying that Jonathan was an inspiration, right? "I see you doing it, and now I don't feel alone," right? And that's‑‑I mean, that's what representation is all about. That's what we're talking about when we talk about representation and why it's so important and why it's important to see people of color in certain roles, why it's important to see women, why is it important to see people from all kinds of, you know‑‑all kinds of backgrounds, you know, on TV, in films, video games, and it's all the same thing we're talking about, which is when I see myself reflected in mainstream culture, I then feel validated, right?
And I thought it was so heartbreaking what Jonathan said about when he was talking about his younger self and just not knowing that his life was precious. You know, it's that, knowing that you matter, knowing that your story matters, right? And that is so incredibly important for everyone, from young people to old people.
And so when you have in these mainstream television shows like "Stranger Things," right, which is about kids in small town, Indiana, and one of the characters‑‑one of the main characters from last season and this season is coming out as a lesbian and is working through that, and that's just part of the storyline, part of who she is. And "This Is Us," you had the storyline where Beth and Randall, everybody's favorite couple, their middle child was coming into her identity, and it was her coming into her own and then the parents coming into their own and the grandparents trying to figure it out. And everyone can watch that story and take a piece of it and say, okay, if this is happening there, then this is kind of happening everywhere, right? That is the best part of art, if we're going back to this whole art discussion. The best part of art is when it reflects society, and society is so diverse.
And just as Jonathan said, normal is normal to the billions, each individual billion people on the planet, and when you see all of that reflected back, it's just‑‑it's such a validation, and I know it's happening in culture right now, which is so incredible. And I think as it continues, we can start having these conversations and not feel so uncomfortable, right, because we see it in art.
MS. LIAO: Yeah.
MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. I totally agree. I remember that "This Is Us" episode‑‑well, several episodes quite well, but the one specifically where they came out to‑‑I think it was Kate, and just the whole process of what it might be like to come out to different family members and how everyone starts to learn about it, and that was something that I had never seen on television before, and I really appreciated.
I also really appreciate both of you for being here, but we are out of time. Helena, Shannon, thank you so much for joining me here today. I really appreciate it.
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: Thank you for having us.
MS. LIAO: Thank you.
MS. ANDREWS‑DYER: It's a great conversation.
MR. JORGENSON: Of course. Let's do it again.
And thanks to all of you for watching, for joining us today, for this edition of "NEXT" on Washington Post Live.
I’m Dave Jorgenson. To learn more about our upcoming programs, please go to WashingtonPostLive.com. Thanks again. | 2022-06-17T02:13:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: NEXT: Television Personality and Author Jonathan Van Ness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/16/transcript-next-television-personality-author-jonathan-van-ness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/16/transcript-next-television-personality-author-jonathan-van-ness/ |
Paul Molloy, co-founder of housing program for addicts, dies at 83
J. Paul Molloy, a lawyer who was a founder and the principal driving force behind Oxford House, a program of housing recovering addicts and alcoholics in residential settings. (Jane W. Molloy)
In the early 1970s, J. Paul Molloy was a young lawyer on Capitol Hill who had a key role in drafting legislation that created Amtrak and other federal programs. He was also an alcoholic whose drinking would eventually cost him his job, his family and his home.
For a couple of months in 1975, he found himself living on the streets and begging strangers for money before he entered a rehabilitation program. He moved to a county-run halfway house in Silver Spring, Md., to recover but soon learned that the facility was about to close.
Instead of being left to their own fates, Mr. Molloy and other residents decided to take over the house themselves, paying the rent and utilities, cooking the meals and keeping watch over one another’s path to recovery.
They called their experiment in group living and joint sobriety Oxford House. It was the first step in a nationwide movement, now almost 50 years old, that has been credited with helping thousands of people overcome addiction and lead productive lives.
Mr. Molloy was chief executive of Oxford House until his death at 83 on June 11 at his home in Silver Spring. The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Jane Molloy.
A patient listener and persuasive speaker, Mr. Molloy was in some ways his own best example of the importance of a second chance in life. When he was working as Republican counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee, he said he would draft legislation on cocktail napkins while chasing shots of Canadian Club whiskey with Budweiser beer.
“I wrote everything on these napkins, and my secretary would bring them back to the Senate Office Building and type ’em up,” Mr. Molloy told The Washington Post Magazine in 1989. “And the sweat off the Budweiser bottles caused some inkblots on those napkins. And I’m sure it’s in those inkblots that were the words that would have made Amtrak profitable … But that’s what you get when you have a drunk writing laws.”
He also had a violent streak when he was drinking and could be bitingly sarcastic toward co-workers and his family.
“He was a really nasty, mean drunk,” Jane Molloy recalled in an interview.
After 15 years of marriage, she kicked her husband out of the house in 1975, filed for divorce and obtained a court order that landed him in a hospital psychiatric ward. During his homeless period, Mr. Molloy threw away his wedding ring, then in a moment of remorse, crawled through the gutters trying to find it. He never did.
“I’d ended up about as low as a Republican counsel to a Senate committee can end up,” he said.
Through Alcoholics Anonymous and the intervention of friends, Mr. Molloy quit drinking and began to reclaim his life. When he landed another job on Capitol Hill, he was warned, “One drink, and you’re fired.”
Perhaps the most important part of his recovery, however, was Oxford House, the group home in Silver Spring where he lived for more than two years. (The name derived from the Oxford Group, a religious organization whose ideas were embraced by AA.)
Mr. Molloy and the other residents devised the basic rules of self-government that have shaped Oxford House ever since. First, all decisions would be made democratically, with a group vote. Second, every resident would contribute equally to the rent and household duties. And, most important, anyone using drugs or alcohol would be expelled.
Another key element of the plan was that there was no deadline for moving out: People could live at Oxford House as long as they wanted, if they followed the rules.
Recovery worked best, Mr. Molloy found, when addicts cut all ties to the people and places that had tempted them in the past. For that reason, Oxford House locations were usually rented houses in stable, single-family neighborhoods.
“All the counselors said, ‘This is never going to work because the inmates can’t run the asylum. It’s going to be a drunk house,’ ” Mr. Malloy said in 1990.
But something about the simplicity of the program seemed to work. Residents accompanied one another to rehab meetings and treatment programs. Anyone who relapsed was booted out — but told how to seek help.
Within two years, other Oxford House locations were sprouting up in the Washington area. The houses often encountered opposition from residents concerned that they would be living near a group of men (and sometimes women) with criminal records and addiction problems.
When an Oxford House location opened near Chevy Chase Circle in Washington in 1977, Mr. Molloy “asked for patient tolerance,” Steven Polin, Oxford House’s general counsel — and a former resident himself — said in an interview. “For the most part, people find out we’re not going anywhere — and we’re good neighbors.”
The Chevy Chase house became a fixture of the neighborhood, and when the property was sold after more than 30 years, neighbors held a block party for current and past residents of the house.
In the 1980s, the Oxford House idea expanded to other states. It received a boost after Mr. Molloy successfully lobbied for passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which established a fund to help provide start-up loans for groups opening residential recovery locations like those of Oxford House. The group also receives funding from state agencies and foundations.
Oxford House officials cite a long-running study by Chicago’s DePaul University indicating that people completing one year of residency maintain a sobriety rate as high as 80 percent.
“I guarantee you it will work, and it will cost you nothing,” Mr. Molloy said as he drummed up support. “The houses work in each and every case if you put them in good neighborhoods and throw out anybody who relapses.”
When some communities tried to keep Oxford House from renting in their neighborhoods, Mr. Molloy and his lawyers went to court. Oxford House won a U.S. Supreme Court victory in 1995 against the city of Edmonds, Wash., on grounds that the city’s efforts to block the group home violated provisions of the Fair Housing Act.
There have been cases where Oxford House locations have been closed after local objections, but Mr. Molloy sought to be the voice of reassurance.
“Heck, all drunks and druggies are con artists,” he told the Portland Oregonian in 2020. “If a neighbor doesn’t like you, you mow her lawn every week.”
John Paul Molloy was born Aug. 3, 1938, in Bennington, Vt., and grew up in Arlington, Vt. His father was a grocery store clerk, and his mother was a homemaker who took in laundry.
Mr. Molloy was a 1961 graduate of the University of Vermont, where he met his future wife, Jane Wells, on the debate team. Both of them graduated from law school at Catholic University in 1965. She went on to have a four-decade career as a Commerce Department lawyer and policy analyst.
Mr. Molloy worked for the old Civil Service Commission before going to Capitol Hill, where he served on the staff of Sen. Winston L. Prouty (R-Vt.), then later on Senate and House committees. He worked for the law firm of Isham Lincoln & Beale from 1981 until it was dissolved in 1988, then continued to be the driving force behind Oxford House.
According to chief operating officer and incoming CEO Kathleen Gibson, Oxford House has more than 20,000 residents at more than 3,300 homes across 44 states and several foreign countries. Hundreds of thousands of people have been through the program.
In 1988, after 13 years apart, Mr. Molloy and his former wife remarried.
“The fact is,” she said when her husband was profiled on “60 Minutes” in 1990, “when he’s not drinking, he’s the nice guy that I married the first time.”
In addition to his wife, of Silver Spring, survivors include their five children, Elizabeth Molloy and Robert Molloy, both of Silver Spring, Mark Molloy of Winchester, Mass., James Molloy of Brookline, Mass., and Sarah Jackson of Arlington, Mass.; a brother; and eight grandchildren. | 2022-06-17T03:17:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Molloy, who co-founded housing program for addicts, dies at 83 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/16/paul-molloy-addiction-recovery-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/16/paul-molloy-addiction-recovery-dies/ |
Mystics take the train to New York, leave their flow in Washington
Natasha Cloud was one of the few bright spots for the Washington Mystics in a 77-65 loss at Barclays Center. (Scott Taetsch/For The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — The toll of a packed June schedule may finally have caught up with the Washington Mystics. Despite establishing themselves as one of the best road teams in the WNBA, the Mystics took a train to New York for Thursday night’s game at Barclays Center and failed to find their flow in a 77-65 loss to the Liberty.
New York never trailed in the second half and outscored the visitors 36-22 over the second and third quarters.
Afterward, guard Natasha Cloud summed things up: “My [expletive] feels like trash.”
Sue Bird will call it a career after this season. And that career has been the stuff of legend.
That’s the product of playing, essentially, every other day this month, she explained. “We play, we travel the way that we travel, which is trash,” Cloud said. “… It’s brutal right now on our body. So there’s going to be nights where offensively there’s going to be shots that are short, there’s going to be shots that are off.”
The Mystics were also playing without two-time MVP Elena Delle Donne, who was on a scheduled rest day.
Things don’t exactly lighten up for the Mystics (10-7), who started a five-game stretch that runs through next week and includes four of five away from home. Washington is 5-3 on the road and will play three games out west after Sunday’s home game against the Sun.
Cloud pointed out their train was delayed going to New York and all that time accounted for their so-called rest day.
Coach Mike Thibault said the goal is to be the best road team in the league, though they didn’t look like it in New York.
“The one thing we talked about in preseason was that if you want to be an exceptional team, that you have to be a good road team,” Thibault said.
The Mystics struggled offensively outside of Cloud, who had 17 points, seven assists and five rebounds. They shot just 36.9 percent from the field, 27.6 percent from three-point range and managed just 11 points in both the second and third quarters. Thibault was also blunt with his words.
“We kind of stunk tonight,” Thibault said. “We had a bunch of people not playing well at all offensively. We weren’t great defensively either. You can’t shoot 37 percent and think you’re going to win very many games on the road. We wasted a really good night by Natasha. ... Teams are figuring some stuff out about us and we need to figure out a way to combat it.”
Here’s what else to know about the Mystics’ loss;
Issues on the interior
The first quarter was basically a layup line for the Liberty (6-9), who seemed to get to the basket at will. All 20 of the Liberty’s points came in the paint, led by Natasha Howard, who finished with 27 points and nine rebounds. Sabrina Ionescu regularly was able to find open cutters and posted nine assists to go with 10 points and seven rebounds. New York finished with 44 points in the paint, rendering its 19.4 percent shooting from beyond the arc (6 of 31) moot.
“Defense, You could bring every single day,” said guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, who scored eight points off the bench, said. “Shots not falling, okay. But the defense and effort, you can always bring. Communication you can always bring. I don’t think we had that necessarily, at least not consistently for four quarters today.”
Minutes change
Four players off the bench played at least 16 minutes and Walker-Kimbrough and Kennedy Burke both played more than 20. Thibault has previously said the schedule was wearing players down and that he would look for chances to shorten the starters’ minutes, but he said that wasn’t the case Thursday.
“Part of it was the starters weren't playing very well,” Thibault said. “So for me, they didn't deserve to be out there, some of them.”
Delle Donne schedule
Delle Donne is scheduled to play Sunday against the Sun. Thibault said the current plan is for her to miss the game in Los Angeles, but to play in Seattle and Las Vegas.
Welcome to NY
Rui Machida made her first visit to New York as the Japanese star continues to explore the United States. She hit Times Square and took in other sights, saying Brooklyn Bridge and Battery Park were her two favorites.
Machida, as expected, has had an up-and-down rookie season has her minutes have dipped a bit recently after posting a career-high nine assists in a loss to Chicago on June 5. Thibault has been steadfast in the fact he just wants her to stay aggressive as a shooter.
“So there are a lot of things I need to improve on, specifically scoring,” Machida said through interpreter Micky Takei. “Always being in attack mode. ... Make or miss, just shoot as much as possible. And also, when I’m in court, trying to push the ball, keeping the tempo and playing high-paced basketball.” | 2022-06-17T03:17:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mystics take the train to New York, leave their flow in Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/washington-mystics-new-york-liberty-travel-woes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/16/washington-mystics-new-york-liberty-travel-woes/ |
On one hand, American democracy seems in an undeniably rough state. Polarization has intensified. Misinformation and mistrust are rife. The divided public response to the evidence and testimony emerging from Jan. 6 committee hearings in Congress shows a lack of national consensus over a fundamental element of democratic life: the ability to conduct a peaceful transfer of power from one elected government to the next.
Analysts warn that the United States’ aging electoral systems have — through gerrymandering and other anti-democratic practices — increasingly started to yield outcomes that foster further tribalism, deepening the sense of zero-sum, winner-takes-all antagonism that runs through the body politic.
Where there is bipartisan unity, it’s in the mounting despair and pessimism felt by most Americans about their political status quo. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that majorities of both Democrats and Republicans believe it’s “likely” that the United States will “cease to be a democracy in the future.” Two in 5 Americans, according to another study, would now support a military coup if they believed the circumstances justified such an intervention.
And yet the United States under President Biden can still appear to those elsewhere in the world as a bulwark of liberal democratic values. Many European officials have hailed the United States’ unique role in galvanizing Western governments to confront the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, by extension, defending the international order. Far beyond weapons transfers, the Biden administration sees its efforts as part of a broader struggle for liberalism and democracy around the world.
“America and all who share our values … must build on the unity that we have demonstrated in Ukraine to try to extend a broader revolution of dignity to people seeking to be free,” declared U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power in a speech last week.
The Jan. 6 insurrection followed over a decade of democratic decline in the US. The proposed bipartisan commission should not only investigate the root causes of the attack on the Capitol, but also identify remedies to strengthen American #democracy. 4/4
— Freedom House (@freedomhouse) May 19, 2021
The end of the road for American exceptionalism
That may even be a tall order at home, where all the talk is about democratic backsliding. No matter the outrage and inquiries that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the Republican Party as a whole appears to be doubling down on former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It’s pouring millions into new efforts in various states to recruit poll workers and watchers to spot irregularities and potentially challenge ballots and the legitimacy of certain votes.
As my colleagues reported, more than 100 GOP officials and politicians who won recent primaries appear to endorse Trump’s false fraud claims. “Many will hold positions with the power to interfere in the outcomes of future contests — to block the certification of election results, to change the rules around the awarding of their states’ electoral votes or to acquiesce to litigation attempting to set aside the popular vote,” they wrote.
Americans are raised on a belief that their nation’s constitutional checks and balances safeguard their democracy. But experts point to the underlying norms that help guarantee those safeguards. At a time of bitter polarization, those norms are eroding, with dire consequences.
“When those soft norms deteriorate; in other words, one party says, ‘We can’t win by these rules,’ and they start to act as a minority which seeks majoritarian power, that’s when you get the real risks to democracy in America,” said Harvard political scientist Pippa Norris in a talk hosted by Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank, earlier this year.
Norris was pointing to the visible “structural” flaws in the country’s politics that enable the Republicans to secure outsize power for their vote share, including the composition of the Senate, which skews disproportionately to rural America. At a time when the party’s base appears to be drifting toward what some scholars of comparative politics have dubbed a form of “authoritarian far-right” politics, it’s especially concerning.
This trend has been measured in various ways by political scientists. The latest offering came this month from Berggruen Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank, which published along with researchers from UCLA this month a “governance index” that tracked quality of life, governance and democracy in 134 countries over the past 20 years.
🧵Presenting the 2022 Berggruen Governance Index, a landmark project from the Berggruen Institute and @UCLA that analyzes why some countries fare better than others at providing a high quality of life.#ideasmatter #uclaluskin @thehertieschoolhttps://t.co/jDMLA7ayTf
— Berggruen Institute (@berggruenInst) June 1, 2022
Though its overall score per the index remains quite high, the United States’ assessed decline over the past two decades was one of the largest, on par with countries like Haiti and Hungary in that period of time. The think tank measured significant drops in U.S. “state capacity” and “democratic accountability” — the first measure could be defined roughly as the country’s ability to implement collective reforms and the latter a measure of the health of checks and balances, from electoral integrity to the efficacy of civil society and the media.
“The U.S. drop in state capacity and democratic accountability is not unique, but it is rare among advanced economies,” researchers Markus Lang and Edward Knudsen wrote me in an email.
“In democratic accountability, there has been some stagnation among developed countries,” they added. “Still, the steepness of the U.S.’s drop is unusual: its path parallels Brazil, Hungary, and Poland much more closely than that of Western Europe or the other wealthy Anglophone countries.”
Another study published this week tells a rather different story. A Eurasia Group Foundation survey of 5,000 respondents in nine major countries around the world — including Brazil, Nigeria, Germany and India — found optimistic views of U.S. democracy under the Biden administration. More than half of the respondents believed their country’s political systems should be more like the United States; 60 percent believed American democracy set a positive example for the world; and close to three-quarters of those surveyed said they would prefer the United States to remain the world’s leading power compared with China.
Some of these results can be chalked to the greater global popularity of Biden and earlier Democrats over-hard line figures like Trump. Those views could easily change in the wake of two upcoming election cycles where Republicans look to be building momentum.
“Everyone is grappling with the question,” Alexander Stubb, former prime minister of Finland, said to me last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Who is the footnote in history? Biden or Trump?” | 2022-06-17T04:18:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 hearings in global terms: Troubled paradox of U.S. democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/democracy-american-global-decline-backsliding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/democracy-american-global-decline-backsliding/ |
Ask Amy: We’ve been engaged for 11 years but his dad ignores me
Left Out: You aren’t wrong to want acceptance from your partner’s family — or anyone.
However — you and your “fiance” (to use your quote marks) are extremely passive in your response to it.
His children told me that they pray for my salvation. For my entire youth, he abused and tortured me physically, emotionally, and sexually.
We are both in our 60s now and for most of our lives have had very little contact. I don’t want to go to his wedding, however, my mother is putting a lot of pressure on me to go.
Confused: Do not give in to your mother’s pressure. Understand with compassion that she may be hoping to heal the rift between you and your brother, but, unless she has also urged your brother to atone for his behavior and ask for forgiveness, any contact should be up to you.
What I think was missed entirely is the fact that a close contact of someone who is covid-positive — even if they themselves have had a negative test — may still be infected and putting others at risk by getting on a flight.
Exhausted: Thank you for the clarification and advice. And thank you for the hard work trying to keep people healthy and safe. | 2022-06-17T05:11:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: We’ve been engaged for 11 years but his dad ignores me - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/17/ask-amy-fiance-father-ignores/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/17/ask-amy-fiance-father-ignores/ |
What to watch on Friday: ‘Spiderhead’ premieres on Netflix
Friday, June 17, 2022 I Savannah Guthrie interviews Amber Heard on NBC’s “Dateline” at 8.
Dateline (NBC at 8) Savannah Guthrie sits down with Amber Heard in her first interview since the defamation trial brought by Johnny Depp.
Great Performances at the Met (PBS at 9:45) Hosted by Isabel Leonard, Baritone Quinn Kelsey plays the title role in 'Rigoletto’ directed by Bartlett Sher.
Ghost Adventures (Travel Channel at 9) At the Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, Zak, Nick and Aaron experience paranormal activity; the crew explores a mansion that is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of George Washington.
The Lake (Amazon Prime) Justin returns from living abroad in hopes of connecting with his daughter, Billie, whom he gave up for adoption; he brings her to the lake where he spent summers as a child and discovers it’s not easy to forget the past in a small town.
The Summer I Turned Pretty (Amazon Prime) Based on the book from ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ author Jenny Han; A girl enters a love triangle between two brothers and experiences first love and first heartbreak.
Soul of a Nation Presents: Sound of Freedom — A Juneteenth Celebration (ABC at 8) Jimmie Allen hosts a Juneteenth celebration with performances and conversations with famous musicians; including Ciara, Patti LaBelle, Jon Batiste, Marvin Sapp, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis.
Watergate: High Crimes in the White House (CBS at 9) An in-depth look at the crimes and coverup that resulted in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon; guests include journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, FBI investigator Angelo Lano and former prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste.
Cha Cha Real Smooth (Apple TV Plus) The global premiere of the Audience Award winner at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival; a bar mitzvah party host, Cooper Raiff, starts a friendship with a woman, Dakota Johnson, and her teenage daughter.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Hulu) A retired schoolteacher and widow, Emma Thompson, hires a sex worker to finally fulfill her dreams of having a night of pleasure and self-discovery.
Jerry and Marge Go Large (Paramount Plus) This film, directed by David Frankel, is based on the true story of a retired couple who exploit a lottery loophole to win millions of dollars and help revive their small town.
Spiderhead (Netflix) Based on the short story “Escape From Spiderhead,” convicts are offered the chance to be medicinal subjects to shorten their sentences and one prisoner begins to question the purpose of the emotion-controlling drug he’s testing; the film stars Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett.
The Martha Mitchell Effect (Netflix) A documentary that profiles Martha Mitchell, the cabinet member’s wife who spoke out against Watergate, prompting the Nixon administration’s attempt to gaslight her into silence.
Tonight Show/Fallon (NBC at 11:34) Tracee Ellis Ross, Sara Bareilles, D.J. Demers.
Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC at 11:35) Martin Lawrence. | 2022-06-17T05:15:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to watch on Friday: ‘Spiderhead’ premieres on Netflix - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/06/17/what-watch-friday-spiderhead-premieres-netflix/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/06/17/what-watch-friday-spiderhead-premieres-netflix/ |
Student Loans in the UK Are About to Get More Complicated
In its latest attempt to shield us from the cost-of-living crisis, the UK government has announced that the rate of interest on student loans will be capped at 7.3% for the academic year beginning in September.
Had it not acted, the rate would have jumped to 12% for students still at university and for higher-earning graduates.
Before you head to the nearest bar to celebrate, though, I have some bad news: This change will make no difference whatsoever to most students, and future graduates are going to have it even worse.
Few students repay their loans in full — the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that as many as 83% will fail to — so capping the rate at which interest accrues will make no difference to them. For those expecting to earn enough to pay off their loan, the capped rate of 7.3% is still easily the highest since tuition fees were introduced in 1998.
For those considering repaying their loans early, the decision revolves around the repayment mechanism for the debt, which can now easily reach between £40,000 ($48,500) and £50,000 for an undergraduate. My daughter’s undergraduate loan is pretty typical and currently stands at over £46,000, for instance. Scared by such large numbers, many students and their parents mistakenly believe that they should repay the debt as rapidly as possible.
But the term student “loan” is something of a misnomer. Instead of a regular payment schedule, former students pay 9% of their pretax earnings above 27,295 pounds per annum. They pay the same regardless of whether they owe £10,000 or a million. Thus, for most people, it is more useful to view it as a graduate tax. Those earning less than the threshold pay nothing (although interest continues to accrue), and any remaining balance is written off after 30 years.
Therefore, if my daughter were to earn £30,000 a year, she would repay just £243 of her loan each year — that is 9% of the difference between 30,000 and 27,295. Over 30 years, that amounts to just £7,300, far less than she owes currently, let alone the accrued interest.
Even if she were to earn considerably more than 30,000 pounds initially, she might take a career break to raise a family, care for elderly parents (no pressure!) or simply find herself unemployed for a while. In all such circumstances, it probably makes more sense to pay the 9% than to clear the debt.
However, the government has a track record of altering the terms and conditions, seldom to the benefit of students. A combination of accelerating inflation and rapid rule changes means that, for many students, the calculus is not so simple.
The repayment thresholds are supposed to rise broadly in line with inflation. Instead, they have been frozen until 2025. Originally the rate at which interest accrued was the lesser of the Bank of England base rate plus 1% or the Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation. Today the formula, unless the government intervenes with an arbitrary cap, varies between RPI and RPI plus 3%.
The rules are set to change yet again in 2023/2024, although only for new borrowers. The interest rate will be capped at RPI instead of RPI plus 3%. However, the income threshold will be lowered to £25,000 and the loan will only be written off after 40 years, rather than the current 30.
While it is difficult to say exactly how much extra this will cost future graduates, paying the 9% tax surcharge on more of your income for an additional 10 years will be expensive. The government currently contributes 44 pence of every pound spent on student loans (because so many never fully repay their debt). That is set to fall to just 19 pence under the new scheme.
This will impact any student who might be ready to commence their studies this September but is considering delaying entry until 2023 to go traveling. That gap year could see them paying the 9% graduate tax well into their 60s.
Those contemplating postgraduate studies have additional tax penalties awaiting them. Many incorrectly assume that the cost of further study is simply added to their undergraduate loan, which most will never pay back. Unfortunately, funding a Masters degree leads to a whole new charge. This imposes an additional 6% tax surcharge, which kicks in at the much lower income threshold of 21,000 pounds. So by the time a master’s graduate earns above £27,295, they will be paying an additional 15% of income tax compared to their non-graduate colleagues.
A postgraduate loan also significantly alters whether it is worthwhile repaying your loan. My daughter has a hard-earned master’s degree, together with an additional £12,000 of debt. If she earns the same £30,000 from the earlier example, she will pay £24,000 for her postgraduate loan over its 30-year lifetime, double her current balance. It might be worth her (or us) repaying the master’s loan in full even if it makes no sense to repay her undergraduate loan.
With so many variables and uncertainties, navigating student loans is easily the most complicated personal finance calculation any of us will face. Yet three things are clear.
The first is that most students will never repay the principal, let alone the interest, on the sum borrowed. It therefore makes little sense for them to pay it off early, or even to make regular overpayments as you might with a mortgage. The second is, if you are going to pay it off in full, you should act sooner rather than later before the interest compounds out of reach. And third, if you are considering postgraduate study or delaying undergraduate studies until 2023, it will cost you a lot more than you might think.
Although it is often best to think of your student loan as a graduate tax and to ignore the spiraling balance, students of history know all too well that taxes have a nasty habit of rising.
• Boris Johnson Makes His Biggest Brexit Gamble Yet: Therese Raphael | 2022-06-17T05:15:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Student Loans in the UK Are About to Get More Complicated - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/student-loans-in-the-uk-are-about-to-get-more-complicated/2022/06/17/27c52af2-edfb-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/student-loans-in-the-uk-are-about-to-get-more-complicated/2022/06/17/27c52af2-edfb-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Russia-Ukraine war live updates Zelensky thanks European leaders for backing Kyiv’s E.U. ambitions; eastern battles rage on
French President Emmanuel Macron said during a visit to Kyiv with other European leaders on June 16 that Ukraine can count on its allies. (Video: Reuters)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania for their Thursday visit to Kyiv — the first trip to the capital by some of Europe’s most influential politicians since the Russian invasion. It was important that Western leaders “agree that the end of the war and peace for Ukraine must be exactly as Ukraine sees,” Zelensky said.
The leaders also offered coveted backing for Ukraine’s candidacy to join the European Union. France pledged six additional howitzers — key to the artillery battle against Russia in the east — while Romania offered to facilitate the transport of Ukrainian goods such as grain through its territory.
Conditions across the country remain bleak. Communication with the roughly 500 people trapped inside a chemical plant in the eastern city of Severodonetsk was unstable due to relentless Russian bombardment, a local official said. At least four people were killed by airstrikes on Lysychansk, a neighboring city that is likely to be Moscow’s next target, according to the regional governor.
Amid the devastation, however, Britain’s top uniformed officer told reporters Kyiv’s forces had inflicted so much damage on the invader that Russia would “never take control of Ukraine.”
The executive arm of the European Union is set to recommend that Ukraine be granted candidate status on Friday.
Marine veteran Grady Kurpasi is the third American who has gone missing in Ukraine, his family said. He had volunteered to fight against Russia and was last heard from in late April.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will address the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, sometimes called the Russian Davos, on Friday. He is expected to speak about the impact of Western sanctions.
The war has pushed global displacement figures to record levels, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday — more than 100 million people have been forced to flee their homes, up from 89.3 million at the end of 2021.
Former Marine Corps officer Grady Kurpasi is the third American missing in Ukraine, his wife, Heeson Kim, told The Washington Post Thursday evening.
Kurpasi, who had volunteered to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion, left the United States in early March and arrived in Kyiv on March 21, said George Heath, a representative for his family.
The State Department said earlier Thursday that a third American had gone missing several weeks ago, but did not name him. CNN first confirmed Kurpasi’s identity.
Kurpasi was last heard from on April 26, when he was tasked with holding an observation post in the Kherson region so civilians there could evacuate, Heath said. The veteran last spoke to family and friends in the United States a few days before the assignment.
Kurpasi served 20 years in the Marine Corps, including three combat tours, and was awarded a Purple Heart, according to his service record provided to The Post. Heath described him as a “great man” who had been motivated to help Ukrainian civilians and “fell into” a fighting role while he was there.
“He did end up … serving and getting some fights. But that wasn’t his priority,” Heath said.
Alex Horton contributed to this report.
By Loveday Morris, Rick Noack, Emily Rauhala and David Stern2:30 a.m.
The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania arrived in Kyiv on June 16, marking the highest-profile visit to Ukraine's capital since Russia invaded. (Video: Reuters)
BERLIN — The leaders of the European Union’s three largest economies on Thursday said they were backing Ukraine’s candidacy to join the 27-member bloc, a move that President Volodymyr Zelensky has fiercely advocated as his country loses ground in the face of Russia’s invasion.
The announcement came during the first wartime visit to Kyiv by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who traveled together from Poland on an overnight train. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis joined them in the Ukrainian capital.
“Every day, the Ukrainian people are defending the values of democracy and liberty that are the pillars of the European project, of our project,” Draghi said alongside Zelensky and the three other leaders at a news conference.
Scholz said he had come with the message that Ukraine “belongs to the European family.” Macron declared: “Ukraine can count on us.” Europe is “more united and stronger than ever,” Iohannis said. | 2022-06-17T06:42:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latest Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ |
Ad targeting Manchin on prescription drugs uses misleading math
“Joe [Manchin] cracked under pressure. Now he’s supporting Biden’s devastating plan to strip $300 billion from Medicare, leaving West Virginia seniors with even fewer treatments and cures.”
— Voice-over in a television advertisement, “The two Joes,” sponsored by the 60 Plus Association, released June 9
The 60 Plus Association, which bills itself as the “right alternative to the AARP,” is running this ad attacking Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. V.) in heavy rotation on shows like “Jeopardy.” It’s a great example of how complex policy debates can get boiled down into misleading sound bites for political purposes.
The group is not required to disclose its donors but it has received substantial funds from organizations linked to the billionaire Koch family, according to a recent review of tax filings by the Center for Responsive Politics. (The organization says it has not received any contributions of anyone in the Koch network for well over a decade.) AARP attacked the group in 2003 as a “front” for the pharmaceutical industry, but there appears to be little evidence of drug-company donations since then.
Let’s explore.
Manchin is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. The ad is framed around the idea that there are “two Joes” — one who “did the right thing for West Virginia by standing up and blocking Biden and Pelosi's liberal agenda” and another who supposedly switched positions and is now backing a plan to harm senior citizens.
The ad is too brief to get into much detail but it has two key points — one that Manchin would now “strip $300 billion from Medicare” and that this will result in “fewer treatments and cures.”
This rhetoric concerns a complex issue — prescription drug provisions contained in President Biden’s Build Back Better plan. Manchin blocked passage of Build Back Better earlier this year but has restarted negotiations with the Biden administration that may result in a new version being passed in the Senate. In any case, Manchin long has been a supporter of legislation that would allow the government to negotiate prices for prescription drugs.
The debate revolves around something called the “noninterference clause.”
When Part D of the Medicare program, which helps pay for prescription drugs, was created under President George W. Bush, lawmakers included a provision that prevents the federal government from having a direct role in negotiating or setting the prices for drugs in Medicare Part D, which are offered through pharmacies via private health plans. The prices currently are negotiated between manufacturers, private health plans, and pharmacies.
The version of Build Back Better that passed in the House would provide a limited exemption to the noninterference clause and empower the HHS secretary to negotiate prices for selected drugs — 10 starting in 2025, with the number growing to 20 over time — that have little competition and account for substantial spending. The drugs would be selected only after their market exclusivity period ends. In theory, government negotiation — which would take two years with manufacturers — would be limited to a subset of drugs that don’t have generic alternatives.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this provision would reduce government spending by about $80 billion from 2022 to 2031, a ten-year period. That’s because some drugs would be less expensive and the government would have to pay less to subsidize pharmaceutical companies. Consumers would also presumably experience lower costs.
Saulius “Saul” Anuzis, president of 60 Plus, said the ad was referring to a CBO estimate that all of the drug-policy proposals would reduce the federal budget deficit by $297 billion over ten years. “It’s completely accurate to describe this as 'strip[ping]” $300 billion from Medicare’ — as these are federal dollars that under current law would be dedicated toward Medicare outlays for seniors, but that won’t be dedicated to Medicare under the proposed legislation,” he wrote in an email. He even quoted from one of our previous fact checks — that reductions in spending “need to be measured against a current-services baseline in order to measure the potential impact.”
First, some context: $300 billion is just two percent of the nearly $12 trillion that CBO estimates that Medicare will spend in that ten-year period. It sounds like a lot of money by itself — and it is — but it represents a relatively small part of the overall budget.
It’s also a lot of Washington funny money. About half of the savings comes from not implementing a Trump administration rule that would have replaced protections for drug rebates in Medicare Part D with protections for discounts provided directly to consumers. That would have cost the federal government $145 billion over ten years. Since the regulation will not be implemented, the government “saves” $145 billion.
Imagine you had budgeted $145 next year to buy a hat, but decided not to do so. So suddenly you have $145 in savings to spend on something else. It’s not like you are “stripping” $145 from your family budget.
Anuzis conceded that “it is a bit odd to speak of pocketing ‘savings’ by ending a program that isn't yet in effect.” But he said “Congress plays these budgetary games all the time” and that “the wording in our ad is correct in both letter and spirit.”
Others disagreed. Not all reductions to the baseline are cuts in spending. Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said “it may be stretching the facts a little too far to characterize the $300 billion in savings from lower prescription drug prices as a $300 billion cut to Medicare.”
Cubanski said the “higher spending that we would have seen associated with implementation of the Trump Administration’s rebate rule wouldn’t have gone to better benefits or improved coverage for Medicare beneficiaries, so getting savings by calling off implementation is likely to mean beneficiaries overall are better off.” She said that with the loss of drug rebate revenue under Trump’s regulation, “Part D plans were expected to raise their premiums, leading to increased premium subsidies paid by the federal government, resulting in greater overall costs for the Medicare program as well as higher drug plan premiums paid by enrollees.”
The more substantive question concerns the impact of the policy and what it would do for drug innovation. CBO’s thinking on the issue has evolved over the years, while Democrats’s proposals have increasingly been downsized.
CBO estimated that the drug pricing provisions in the Build Back Better Act passed in the House will have a very modest impact on the number of new drugs coming to market in the U.S. over the next 30 years. Only one fewer drug in the 2022-2031 period would be created, CBO said, then four in the next decade and 5 in the decade after that. For context, that’s out of 1,300 drugs, or a reduction of 0.8 percent, Cubanski said.
Still, if drug prices are cut because of government pressure, then there will be an impact. To a large extent, the impact is unknowable. Health plans currently steer enrollees to their preferred medications, but the drug manufacturing market may adapt in ways not yet understood.
Anuzis pointed to a 2021 University of Chicago paper that predicts a much larger impact from the Build Back Better drug policy. The paper, whose lead author is Tomas J. Philipson, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Trump, calculated 139 fewer new drugs through 2039, a rate 27 times higher than CBO. He told the Fact Checker it’s unclear why the estimates are so different because CBO does not provide enough information to replicate its work.
CBO officials counter that they have incorporated feedback on their model from many experts, including Philipson, and published a working paper that explained their reasoning, based on perspectives from a range of policy experts. CBO’s goal is have an estimate that falls in the middle of a distribution of outcomes. While CBO has sometimes published the code to its models, such as in the tax area, officials said it is not practical to do so with every issue and still have the agency focus on its main job — providing analysis and information to lawmakers.
We are obviously not in a position to adjudicate the differences. In any case, we can hardly fault Manchin for relying on CBO, a nonpartisan organization whose forecasts often help shape legislation.
The ad “is blatantly lying about Senator Manchin’s record,” said Sam Runyon, Manchin’s communications director. “West Virginia seniors know Senator Manchin has worked tirelessly to protect Medicare and reduce prescription drug costs.”
The 60 Plus ad is certainly pushing the envelope. While technically the Build Back Better plan would reduce Medicare spending by $300 billion over ten years, it’s false to suggest that this means cuts to beneficiaries and programs. About half of the amount is simply a book-keeping maneuver.
As for the core policy question, no one really can predict the possible impact from government drug negotiation. CBO predicts some fewer drug approvals, but only on the margins. 60 Plus relies on a more pessimistic forecast.
But given the dispute in the academic community, 60 Plus cannot reasonably assert that the result will be “even fewer treatments and cures.” It’s especially strange that 60 Plus relies on CBO’s forecast of $300 billion deficit reduction — but then ignores its more positive report on drug innovation in the same report.
Three Pinocchios | 2022-06-17T07:38:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ad targeting Manchin on prescription drugs uses misleading math - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/ad-targeting-manchin-prescription-drugs-uses-misleading-math/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/ad-targeting-manchin-prescription-drugs-uses-misleading-math/ |
China's third aircraft carrier at a dry dock in Shanghai on June 17, in a photo released by state news agency Xinhua. (Li Gang/AP/Bloomberg News)
China launched its largest and most cutting-edge aircraft carrier Friday, according to state broadcaster CCTV, the first domestically designed and built vessel of its kind and a symbol of the country’s expanding military might.
In a ribbon-cutting ceremony held at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, officials unveiled the Type 003 warship. The Fujian — which, according to officials cited in state media, would not be battle-ready for five years — is an important milestone in Beijing’s ambitions to develop a “blue water” navy, capable of projecting power far beyond its shores.
The carrier has been the focus of intense interest among military observers and rival nations tracking the development of China’s navy. China’s first two carriers include a retrofit of an old Soviet model, the Liaoning, bought from Ukraine in 1998, and the Shandong, which was built in China but based on the Liaoning model and commissioned in 2019.
China secretly building naval facility in Cambodia, Western officials say
It is the first Chinese carrier to be equipped with an electromagnetic catapult for launching aircraft, including those with a heavier payload, faster and more efficiently. The technology leapfrogs the “ski jump” configuration for launching jets via a ramp at the end of a runway used on China’s other two carriers.
“The Fujian brings a whole new level of capability to the table compared to the Liaoning and Shandong,” said Collin Koh, an expert on the People’s Liberation Army Navy at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
While Chinese military analysts and blogs have hailed the carrier as “China’s answer to the USS Gerald R. Ford,” commissioned in 2017, much of its capabilities are still unknown. The Ford was the world’s largest and most advanced carrier when it was built.
“There’s extremely scant info emanating on the Fujian and, for that matter, the PLA Navy’s carrier program. The exact capabilities and their performance are shrouded in much secrecy,” said Koh, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.
China’s third aircraft carrier takes shape, with ambitions to challenge U.S. naval dominance
The launch of China’s most advanced carrier comes amid increased tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, where China and its neighbors have competing territorial claims. The recent signing of a security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands and the unveiling of a naval facility in Cambodia have raised further concerns about Beijing’s reach into Gulf of Thailand and the South Pacific. | 2022-06-17T08:09:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China launches its third aircraft carrier, the Fujian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/china-third-fujian-aircraft-carrier/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/china-third-fujian-aircraft-carrier/ |
A county approved Pride Month. In June, officials overturned the vote.
Last month, a South Carolina county council unanimously passed a slate of items before moving on to other business. There was no discussion — the vote took less than 10 seconds.
The items approved by the council included Resolution R-51-2022, which proclaimed June as Pride Month in Horry County, an area along the coast of South Carolina with about 365,000 residents.
“The month of June historically has been designated as Pride Month, which celebrates everyone’s right to live without fear or prejudice, discrimination, violence or hatred based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” read the resolution signed by Chairman Johnny Gardner on May 17.
Except none of the council members had read the full agenda.
“No one on council caught it because the resolution just said ‘pride month,’ ” Councilman Johnny Vaught told CNN in an email.
On June 7, three weeks later, the Horry County Council unanimously voted to rescind the resolution after receiving complaints from constituents who disagreed with the decision, Vaught told CNN.
“Councilmen got many emails expressing dismay that council would vote for an LGBTQIA month in such a conservative county,” Vaught told the network. “Councilmen voted the way their constituents demanded. End of story.”
Horry council members did not respond to messages from The Washington Post seeking comment.
pic.twitter.com/EO86cyai2x
— Grand Strand PRIDE (@GS_Pride) June 8, 2022
According to Terry Livingston, co-founder of the local LGBTQ advocacy group Grand Strand Pride, the item was first put on the agenda after his organization sent an email to the county clerk and council members calling for June to be recognized as the county’s Pride Month. The group included a draft resolution.
“I really expected them to change the wording a good bit and pass it that way, or possibly not at all,” Livingston told The Post.
But no one replied to his email before May 17’s council meeting, Livingston said.
After council members approved the item in May, Grand Strand Pride praised the decision on social media and prepared to celebrate the designation at a Pride event in Myrtle Beach.
“We were really excited,” said Livingston, who sat in on the May 17 council meeting with other members of his organization. “We thought progress was being made at the county. It felt like it was a victory.”
But Livingston’s excitement did not last too long. He said he found out the council had “quietly” revoked the resolution on June 7 after receiving messages from local reporters.
“It was rescinded and, for the most part, people were not aware of what was going on,” said Livingston, who had to watch the recording of the meeting to understand what had transpired.
He added: “To pass the resolution and then in the next meeting rescind [it], it’s just disheartening. It breaks your heart. We all can’t get along, I guess.”
Danny Hardee, the councilman who motioned to reconsider the resolution on June 7, told CNN he does not believe it’s the job of the county to declare June as Pride Month.
“I personally don’t think that councils should be doing any kind of thing like that,” Hardee told the network. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s gay months or confederate months or Juneteenth or whatever; that’s not my job to set aside those dates. Those are state and federal holidays.”
Hardee told CNN that although he did not agree with the initial Pride Month resolution, his intention was never to offend his constituents.
Livingston told The Post he has filed several freedom of information requests to confirm whether some constituents complained, though he has yet to hear back, he said. As of late Thursday, no council member had reached out to him to explain the cancellation, he added.
Still, Livingston’s organization went ahead with the June 16 Pride event it had planned at a Myrtle Beach park a block from the shore. On Thursday, about 250 people gathered at the park to enjoy a DJ, a food truck and several speakers, including Livingston, who urged people to get involved in local politics.
“If you want Pride Month to continue, you need to be involved in what’s happening in your government,” Livingston said.
His organization is urging people to gather outside the Horry County Government and Justice Center on June 21 to protest the cancellation of Pride Month. | 2022-06-17T08:18:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Horry County, S.C., council revokes Pride Month designation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/17/south-carolina-cancels-pride-month/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/17/south-carolina-cancels-pride-month/ |
BROOKLINE, Mass. — Adam Hadwin wasn’t officially in the U.S. Open until eight days ago. And then he walked off The Country Club with his best score ever in a major for a one-shot lead.
CLEVELAND — Their name changed, and now the Cleveland Guardians appear on the way to a switch in ownership. | 2022-06-17T08:18:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thursday Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursday-sports-in-brief/2022/06/17/94c021ca-ee0a-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursday-sports-in-brief/2022/06/17/94c021ca-ee0a-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
As nuclear test looms, North Korea reports intestinal epidemic
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, view medicines that the state media said were being sent to the city of Haeju to help with a disease outbreak. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service/AP)
TOKYO — As South Korean and U.S. officials repeated their warnings this week about a potential North Korean nuclear test, Pyongyang announced it is fighting a new intestinal epidemic that comes as the country grapples with drought, covid and ongoing food and cash shortages from its border lockdown.
During his visit to Washington this week, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin echoed U.S. assessments that North Korea apparently has completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test, which would sharply raise the stakes in the diplomatic standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. Park said he believes North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is waiting for the time to make his “political decision.”
North Korea fires artillery shells after arms pledge, South Korea says
Pyongyang has held an unprecedented volley of missile tests as it rapidly expands and diversifies its weapons program. It tested an estimated 31 ballistic missiles this year — surpassing its annual record in just six months and despite U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting such tests.
“I think that North Korea is at a crossroads now. It can go ahead with its nuclear test and isolate itself, or it can make a right decision and return to the diplomacy and the dialogue. I hope North Korea can make the latter choice instead of continuing on a dangerous course of action,” Park said.
The Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, which is affiliated with the South Korean Defense Ministry, estimated North Korea has spent as much as 2 percent of its gross domestic product this year — between $400 million and $650 million — on its missile tests.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s Central News Agency reported Thursday on an outbreak of the “acute enteric epidemic,” without naming the disease or giving a caseload. The term enteric refers to the gastrointestinal tract, and observers said the disease could be an intestinal illness like typhoid and cholera.
Waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid were rampant in North Korea before the announcement of the country’s first coronavirus infection. Ahn said the outbreak of intestinal disease is not an uncommon situation given the country’s poor health and sanitary conditions.
“The recent state media reports about the outbreak could be a politically motivated one to demonstrate leader Kim Jong Un’s efforts for his people,” Ahn said.
North Korean state media reported that Kim is distributing medical aid as part of “his noble outlook on devoted service for the people’s well-being.”
South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Thursday that it is willing to help North Korea battle the new outbreak. But Pyongyang has not responded to offers of coronavirus aid from South Korea and the United States and is unlikely to change course with countries the regime considers national security threats.
North Korea has asked for freight train service with China to be restored amid its shortage of food and medical supplies, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported this week, citing Chinese sources. It was the latest sign of North Korea’s growing dependence on Beijing, which has drawn Pyongyang closer amid rising U.S.-China competition.
U.S. and North Korean denuclearization negotiations fell apart in 2019. The United States has said it is ready to resume talks without preconditions, and North Korea has said it wants sanctions relief. The United States has not indicated it would be open to lifting any sanctions and has pushed for more in response to Pyongyang’s recent tests.
Last week, China’s envoy to the United Nations, Zhang Jun, said Beijing does not want to see another North Korean nuclear test and called on the United States to lift sanctions and end joint military exercises: “The United States is the number one superpower in the world. If the United States wants to engage in dialogue with anyone in the world, it’s not a difficult thing.” | 2022-06-17T09:40:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korea hit by intestinal epidemic as new nuclear test expected - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/north-korea-nuclear-intestinal-epidemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/north-korea-nuclear-intestinal-epidemic/ |
U.N. turns to crowdfunding to salvage decaying oil tanker off Yemen
A satellite image from Maxar Technologies shows the FSO Safer tanker moored off Ras Issa port, in Yemen, on June 17, 2020. (DigitalGlobe/ScapeWare3d/DigitalGlobe/Getty Images)
The FSO Safer tanker has been rusting away off Yemen’s coast since 2015. It threatens to release roughly four times the amount of crude oil spilled off Alaska in the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 into the delicate ecosystem of the Red Sea, world famous for its corals and fish.
Seawater has already seeped into the engine room before, according to U.N. officials who are sounding the alarm that a tank rupture would wreak havoc on marine life, vital shipping lanes and regional economies.
For years, the United Nations has sought to launch a rescue mission to transfer the oil and move the ship to a safer location for inspections or dismantling. But the vessel is anchored in waters northwest of Yemen’s port city of Hodeida near territory held by the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels. The 2015 war between them and the Saudi-backed government put an end to maintenance and preventing any offloading.
The two opposing sides have finally agreed to a plan to prevent a disaster, the United Nations said, but now it doesn’t have the money to implement it.
The U.N. announcement said it collected about three-quarters of the funds necessary to transfer the oil to another ship, after Saudi Arabia and the United States recently promised $10 million each, following pledges from the Netherlands, France, Qatar and others that brought the total in U.N. hands to $60 million.
To help pay for the remaining $20 million, the U.N.'s Yemen coordinator, David Gressly, is appealing online to people everywhere to raise $5 million by the end of the month so that work can start in July.
At a briefing on Monday, Gressly appeared to acknowledge that the call for $5 million from the public was unusual, describing it as “an ambitious goal,” but maintained that a disaster was looming and time sensitive. The increase of currents and winds in the winter will heighten the risk of the vessel breaking up and spilling the oil into the Red Sea.
The entire plan, involving first unloading the oil and later replacing the 1,230 foot-long vessel — one of the world’s largest tankers — would cost an overall $144 million, according to U.N. estimates.
A disaster in the Red Sea would only add to the plight of Yemenis who have already endured eight years of war, starvation and disease, and the livelihoods of many who rely on the sea’s resources. Gressly said it may take up to 25 years to restock fisheries.
U.N. officials warn an oil spill from the Safer would destroy the ecosystems of the Red Sea, an important biodiversity sphere, and take decades and at least $20 billion to clean up.
Calling the tanker “a ticking time bomb,” the U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking said this month that Washington was urging not only governments, but also private companies that use the Red Sea for commercial activity, to step up funding for the U.N. project.
Under the memorandum of understanding, signed in March, a short-term solution would transfer the oil from the Safer to another ship. But the MOU is contingent on mobilizing donor funds.
They also warned that any funding for the project in the absence of a U.N. commitment to implementing the terms of the MOU will risk a repeat of the fate of previous funds allocated, but did not expand further.
Lenderking told reporters it could take just “a cigarette butt, the discharge of a weapon, [or] a rough wave” to cause a spill, and said the supertanker also risked exploding.
A study commissioned by the U.N. in recent years found that a spill or blast could hike fuel and food prices, cause crop losses and contaminate thousands of water wells. It would kill marine mammals, sea turtles and seabirds, destroy pristine coral reefs and slash hundreds of thousands of jobs in the fishing industry.
Ali Al-Mujahed in Sanaa contributed to this report. | 2022-06-17T09:40:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.N. crowdfunds to prevent oil spill from FSO Safer tanker off Yemen's Red Sea Coast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/yemen-tanker-spill-red-sea-crowdfunding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/yemen-tanker-spill-red-sea-crowdfunding/ |
Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gather outside a court in London on April 20. (Alastair Grant/AP)
The British government on Friday ordered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States to face espionage and hacking charges. Assange has 14 days to appeal the decision, the British Home Office said.
The Home Office said in a statement that “the UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr Assange. Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression, and that whilst in the US he will be treated appropriately, including in relation to his health.”
Priti Patel, the British home secretary, signed the extradition order. The home secretary is the final authority on extradition in the British system — although Assange has other legal avenues he can pursue to block the move, and experts say his arrival in the United States is far from imminent.
The Home Office said Assange “will only be surrendered to the requesting state when all avenues of legal challenge are exhausted.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange charged with violating Espionage Act
Before his extradition, Assange could ask Britain’s highest court to hear more arguments, or he could pursue an appeal in the European Court of Human Rights. Each court would have to agree to hear Assange’s appeal, which is not guaranteed.
As part of the extradition proceedings, the top British court in December accepted the U.S. government’s assurances about specific safety measures it would implement for Assange. The court refused to hear Assange’s appeal on that point in March.
A grand jury in Virginia indicted Assange on 18 counts, including conspiracy and disclosure of national defense information. Prosecutors allege that he worked with former Army private Chelsea Manning in 2010 to obtain and publish thousands of pages of military records and diplomatic cables about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The release of the information, officials have alleged, put lives in danger. Assange says he was within his rights as a journalist and publisher in seeking out and disseminating information on controversial U.S. activities.
In January 2021, a British trial judge halted Assange’s extradition, finding him “a depressed and sometimes despairing man, who is genuinely fearful about his future,” and at high risk of suicide in the solitary or highly restrictive conditions he might face in U.S. custody.
The U.S. government then offered not to impose “special administrative measures” on Assange, and to keep him out of the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., pending trial, unless he did something in the future to merit such restrictions. The U.S. government said it would let Assange serve his sentence in Australia if he were convicted, and Australia agreed to it. The government also offered to provide him with clinical and psychological treatment, following medical recommendations, while he remained in custody.
Based on those assurances, the British high court allowed the extradition to proceed, noting that “the United Kingdom and the USA have a long history of cooperation in extradition matters, and the USA has in the past frequently provided, and invariably fulfilled, assurances.” The court also noted that a witness that Assange’s team called during the proceedings had conceded that the Alexandria Detention Center, where Assange might be held in Virginia pending trial, was a well-run jail with “a stellar record” on preventing suicide.
Nick Vamos, a London-based extradition expert, said that Patel’s decision was not really in doubt after the courts’ rulings because “she has very narrow discretion once the case has been sent to her.”
But Assange still may convince a higher court to weigh his arguments that the U.S. prosecution is politically motivated and an infringement on his freedom of speech, Vamos said, predicting this “won’t be the end of the road for a while.”
Karla Adam contributed to this report. | 2022-06-17T10:15:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain orders WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/17/julian-assange-extradition-home-office/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/17/julian-assange-extradition-home-office/ |
Walker says he didn’t try to ‘hide my children,’ as two more are revealed
U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks at a primary watch party on May 23 in Athens, Ga., near the University of Georgia, where he once played football. (Akili-Casundria Ramsess/AP)
Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker has faced a string of controversies this week — including that he has two sons and a daughter from different women that he had not spoken about publicly — that threaten to puncture his image as a larger-than-life football star among the state’s voters.
Walker, a Republican endorsed by former president Donald Trump, is running to unseat incumbent Democrat Rev. Raphael G. Warnock in one of the country’s most consequential races that could determine the balance of power in the Senate. Georgia, which President Biden won by less than half a percentage point, still leans Republican and could be an easy pick-up for the party in a difficult year for Democrats.
Walker also noted that when Trump appointed him in 2018 to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, he listed all four children on a background form.
Walker has been harshly critical of absentee Black fathers, once calling it a “major, major problem.”
Several years earlier, a woman petitioned Walker to prove his paternity and pay child support. The two had a relationship between 2008 and 2011, according to a 2013 petition from New York attorney Andres Alonso. The petition stated that the two separated about eight months before the child was born on May 31, 2012, in New York County. More than a year later, Walker was ordered to pay child support for his then-2-year-old son.
The news of Walker’s other three children came days after his oldest son, Christian, posted a TikTok video complaining about absentee fathers and men who have children with multiple women. “Get home and raise your kids and take care of the women you’re knocking up! Can you control your thing for three seconds?” Christian Walker said in the video. He frequently posts videos on social media, offering colorful commentary on a range of subjects.
Unlike Walker’s other children, Christian has been a presence in his father’s public life. In December 2021, he posted a video on Twitter from Mar a Lago, writing, “Had the honor of introducing my dad, @HerschelWalker, last night at Mar a Lago. I got to preach about how authoritarian and HORRIFIC Democrats are, then got to hug a future senator. Perfect night.”
Since Walker became a candidate, a long list of gaffes and misstatements have surfaced, including false claims about his education and alleged background working for law enforcement. He questioned evolution, asking, “Why are there still apes? Think about it.” He once promoted a “dry mist” that if a person walked through would “kill any covid on your body.”
Political strategists argue that for hard-line Republicans, questions about Walkers’ out-of-wedlock children and evidence of falsifying his record won’t have an impact. Not unlike the way many Republicans in 2016 dismissed Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood tape bragging about sexually assaulting women as just “locker room talk,” party leaders and voters will excuse a famous athlete for having children with multiple women.
Walker is scheduled to speak at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference of evangelical Christians on Saturday.
Inside the Republican push to stop Trump’s ‘vendetta tour’ in Georgia
“He’s not going to lose support of die-hard Republicans, and he must speak every day to independents — who swung to Warnock last time — with a simple, repetitive message: ‘I’ll vote right and I’m a choice for change on inflation, crime and gas prices,’ ” said Brian Robinson, a Georgia GOP operative.
Warnock’s campaign didn’t respond to request for comment about his children. The senator also faces a child-custody dispute with his ex-wife, who is suing him to have the child support payments “recalculated” based on his increased income since coming to the Senate.
Heath Garrett, another Republican strategist in the state, said Walker should be transparent and use his history and shortcomings as a way to relate to everyday voters.
“In Herschel Walker’s stories, there’s risk and opportunity and I think he’s been underestimated. I think he’s been marginalized at numerous points and times in his life, and he’s always overcome the challenges and turned those struggles into opportunities,” he said. “Voters are forgiving as long as they know and feel the sincerity.”
Matt Prestbury is the founder of the Black Fathers Foundation in Atlanta, which aims to end the stigma of the absent Black dad and help lift up those fathers who want to be there for their children but are struggling. His work is apolitical, and he declined to comment on Walker specifically, but said generally it’s frustrating when Black men denigrate Black fathers and might not be living up to those ideals themselves.
“It’s hurtful when anyone chastises us and comes at us as Black men and says, ‘This is what you’re not doing,’ and then it makes it so much worse if they are being a hypocrite,” Prestbury said. “I want every Black man in the world to be actively involved in the lives of their children, and it saddens me when I see anyone who is not doing that.”
Timothy Bella and Annie Linskey contributed to this report. | 2022-06-17T10:19:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Herschel Walker's Senate campaign has been dominated by controversy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/herschel-walker-secret-children/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/herschel-walker-secret-children/ |
Ignoring the Jan. 6 hearings? Michael Luttig explains why you shouldn’t.
J. Michael Luttig did more than demolish Trump’s claims that Pence could have stopped the electoral counting. He delivered a frightening analysis of American democracy on the brink and the former president’s role in bringing the country to the edge of further chaos.
Retired conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig testifies before the House Jan. 6 select committee at its third public hearing in Washington on June 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
J. Michael Luttig spoke softly and sometimes haltingly when he testified Thursday before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. His understated presentation belied the five-alarm fire that was his written statement — a loud and clear warning to a country whose democracy, he said, is on “a knife’s edge.”
Jan. 6, Luttig said, was a war within a broader war over the future of the country, “a war irresponsibly instigated by the former president and his political allies, and his supporters.” The war rages today, he added, and “as a political matter of fact, only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to this war.”
Luttig’s conservative credentials are unquestioned; he was twice seriously considered by President George W. Bush for the Supreme Court. His legal acumen has long been praised. His prepared testimony was written in language that is reasoned and thoughtful in its analysis, yet still piercing in its attempt to shake Americans not to turn away but to recognize the dangers and respond to them.
Follow The Post's ongoing coverage of the Jan. 6 House select committee
He spared few in public life. Though he is clear about Trump’s role in starting the war over the 2020 election that erupted into violence, he sees the broader internal political divisions, the war that preceded the insurrection, as the end result of the conduct of virtually the entire class of elected officials and their allies. In his telling, this war was “conceived and instigated from our nation’s capital … [and] cynically prosecuted by them to fever pitch, now to the point that they have recklessly put America herself at stake.”
Luttig described America as “adrift” and said he prays that it is only for a fleeting moment in the long span of American history. But his diagnosis of what he called “an immoral war” is frightening in its implications. He wrote: “We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society.”
Americans cannot agree on how to be governed or by whom or on a set of shared values, beliefs and goals. The attack that Trump instigated, he argued, was a natural “and foreseeable culmination” of the broader war for America. Trump was prepared to execute a plan to overturn the election to cling to power “that the American people had decided to confer upon his successor.”
The war launched by Trump that day has not ceased, and Luttig argued that the former president’s false insistence that he won the 2020 election has “laid waste to Americans’ confidence in their national elections” with potentially tragic consequences. He asserted that Trump’s insistence that he will not allow any future election to be “stolen” — an indication that he is prepared to subvert the 2024 election if he or a designated nominee loses — is “an affront without precedent” to American democracy.
Luttig offered some of his harshest words for those around Trump who advised and encouraged him in his pursuit to overturn the election, saying it was “the product of the most reckless, insidious and calamitous failures in both legal and political judgment in American history.” The legal theories presented to the president suggesting that Pence could legally block the counting were “frivolous and beguiling,” befitting a classroom exercise rather than advice offered to the nation’s highest elected official.
Trump’s Republican Party came in for special condemnation by Luttig. Even today, he noted, over a year and a half after the attack on the Capitol: “One of America’s two political parties cannot even agree on whether that day was good or bad, right or wrong, … needed or not.” He called claims that the attack was either “legitimate political discourse,” as the Republican National Committee said, or a visitor’s tour of the Capitol that went awry, as some Republican lawmakers have suggested, as cynical and embarrassing rationalizations.
Jan. 6 was the day America came “face to face with the raging war that it had been waging against itself for years,” he said. Many Americans have chosen to turn away, though in doing so they invite repeated episodes of Jan. 6 and the goals of those who incited it. Luttig said no American should turn away “until all of America comes to grips with what befell our country that day, and what we decide we want for our democracy from this day forward.”
He said the nation is facing a constitutional crisis and is at “a foreboding crossroads with disquieting parallels to the fateful crossroads we came to over a century and a half ago,” a reference to the Civil War.
This has been fed by what Luttig called “vicious partisan attacks” on democratic institutions by political leaders and citizens alike. He writes pessimistically that political campaign slogan “has become divisive political truth” and that one reason there is nothing on the horizon to change that is because few seem eager to find agreement with opponents. “In the moral, catatonic stupor America finds itself in today,” he said, “it is only disagreement we seek, and the more virulent that disagreement, the better.”
The country can begin to move back from the barricades in the way that reconciling all broken relationships begins, “by talking to one another and listening to one another as human beings and fellow citizens who share the same destiny and the same belief in America.”
To do that, Americans must try to overcome the “coarse, desensitizing, dehumanizing political vile” that has become the vernacular of public life. Politicians have shamelessly failed the citizenry, leading down a road in the opposite direction of trying to bridge political and cultural differences, and “living in a fictionalized world of divided loyalties between party and country.”
To end the wars that threaten American democracy, he argued, a critical mass from the leadership of both political parties must be prepared to show the way. But then he wrote: “The logic for reconciliation of these wars being waged in America today dictates that this number needs to include a critical mass of leaders from the former president’s party and that those leaders need to go first.”
American democracy can withstand attacks on its democracy from the outside, he wrote, but it is helpless in the face of attacks on democracy from within. If Americans do not learn the lessons from the attacks of Jan. 6, he warned, “we will consign ourselves to another Jan. 6 in the not-too-distant future, and another after that, and another after that.”
Luttig has joined Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, in applying his conservative convictions and his devotion to the Constitution to part ways with much of the Republican Party and to take on the former president directly.
There was one more sobering warning from his prepared statement, one set against the backdrop of those who continue to defend or appease Trump in his lies about who won the election. “To be undecided today as to whether to end this war over our democracy,” he wrote, “is to have decided how one wants this war to end.” | 2022-06-17T10:20:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ignoring the Jan. 6 hearings? Michael Luttig explains why you shouldn’t. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/ignoring-jan-6-hearings-michael-luttig-explains-why-you-shouldnt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/17/ignoring-jan-6-hearings-michael-luttig-explains-why-you-shouldnt/ |
Pusha T poses for a portrait at the Def Jam Records office in New York earlier this month. The veteran rapper, 45, scored his first chart-topping album with “It’s Almost Dry,” released in April. (Mary Inhea Kang for The Washington Post)
Pusha T considers himself a loner in hip-hop, surveying the landscape with skepticism from an aloof distance. Where some of his peers might enjoy the cumulative power of alliances, he takes pride in standing alone. He’s put off by the music industry’s smoke and mirrors, which he sees through with piercing clarity. “Truthfully, a lot of those guys are supposed to embody and stand for the same s--- that I stand for,” he says. “But I see that they don’t.” The isolation can be felt throughout “It’s Almost Dry,” the rapper’s most recent album, which was his first to top the charts, and one on which he often finds glee in the ruthless drug dealer persona he’s been embodying for his entire career.
The Virginia Beach native rose to fame with his brother as the brash half of hip-hop duo Clipse, and over the past two decades the self-proclaimed “Robb Report of the snort” has perfected his craft, finding a niche in the overlap between coke and luxury rap. Clipse’s run included two of the 2000s’ most-acclaimed albums of any genre — 2002′s “Lord Willin’” and 2006′s “Hell Hath No Fury” — and Pusha T’s star continued to rise when he signed with Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music label as a solo artist in 2010 as he picked up aesthetic polish from the notoriously particular rapper and producer.
At 45, Pusha T is well aware of contemporary hip-hop’s trends but unconcerned with them. As a Gen Xer who fell in love with hip-hop during its first golden era, he has a particular affinity for lyricism. “I don’t think being good lyrically goes out of style,” Pusha T says via Zoom call during a break from touring in support of “It’s Almost Dry.” His outlook isn’t rooted purely in rigid pedantry, either: It’s based on his taste, but it’s also tied to what he’s accomplished through a very specific approach.
Even with supreme confidence in his résumé (“I don’t think anything is better than ‘It’s Almost Dry’ — at all,” he says with conviction), Pusha isn’t content to rest on his laurels. He’s thinking about the future and wholeheartedly believes that he can rap at a high level well into it. Legacy is paramount to Pusha T, so every move he makes is in service of being remembered not only with reverence, but also in accordance with his principles. “I want everyone to be able to look back at my discography and go, ‘This guy knew exactly who he was,’ ” he says.
Meanwhile, Pusha T describes working with West as a “humbling” experience at times because West prods him to edit himself. This is unsurprising, considering West’s history of blowing deadlines and making last-minute updates to his work — even after it’s already been released. “Kanye could hear a verse from me and go, ‘Oh, my God, that was so great,’” he says. “Then he’ll live with the verse for two days and say: ‘Hey man, I think you could change like, three things.’ And I’ll go, ‘But you were just happy the other day,’ and he’ll say, ‘Yeah, but I lived with it and I think it could be better.’”
Still, it’s Williams who demands more out of Pusha T, constantly nudging him out of his comfort zone. “Me and Kanye are very similar in our love for hot 16s, mixtape rap, hard verses, and things like that,” he says. “Pharrell loves all those things, but he wants them in a hit record.” This led to debates between Pusha T and Williams during the making of “It’s Almost Dry,” but the clashes were productive because they challenged Pusha T to bring his best — in terms of lyrics, flow and delivery — to win Williams over. “And that’s where the tug-of-war comes into play, and we create a record like ‘Call My Bluff’ and you get to that point where we’re all just extremely satisfied,” he says.
“I think he strikes with karma and loves delivering it with heartless expression, in whatever fashion,” says Williams, who has known Pusha T since the latter was in high school. “So when you look at the music on this particular album, we allowed people in the other sections of his mind’s library.”
Pusha T believes that enlisting the two biggest figures in his artistic development is essential to staying sharp for as long as possible. He’s at a point in his career at which, traditionally, many rappers’ popularity has waned. “I feel like everybody who was great before me — and I’m talking about from the golden era, who I was a fan of as a child — you realize that it was only three or four albums,” he says. “The albums are amazing, but when you realize how short the window was, it’s crazy.”
This has shifted during the course of Pusha T’s career. He points to Jay-Z as an artist who has continued to have great success while retaining his skills in his 50s, but also considers Jay-Z part of an era of hip-hop that precedes him. Pusha T believes his particular generation of rappers can be the first to exhibit that they can be great, in a technical sense, for the entirety of their careers. “I actually want to be competitive in the space and match whatever it is that I’m doing to whatever is the most popular at the time and see how it mounts up,” he says. And naturally, he absolutely believes in the enduring presence of his music in comparison to what’s popular: “You can A and B them — set them side-by-side — and mine just stands the test of time.”
The Pusha T who’s irked by the mispronunciation of French fashion house Lanvin on the “It’s Almost Dry” cut “Dreamin of the Past” is far removed from the brazen younger artist who announced, “Playas, we ain’t the same — I’m into ’caine and guns” on the intro to Clipse’s major-label debut. However, the biggest critique of Pusha T is that he’s one-dimensional and that his arrogant drug dealer shtick has grown stale. A Variety review of the new album cited disappointment that Pusha T, who’s now a married father, remains so dedicated to coke rap when he has the capacity to tap into other subjects and display growth. Calling out his supposed arrested development overlooks the evolution that’s taken place out in the open.
“Lyrically, his rhymes have become more eidetic,” says music journalist and broadcaster Brian “B. Dot” Miller. “Sonically, he’s willing to experiment with new sounds like on ‘Numbers on the Board’ and ‘Infrared,’” songs from 2013 and 2018, respectively.
The Something in the Water festival, started by Williams in his native Virginia Beach back in 2019, will take over the National Mall as it returns this weekend. Williams elected to move the festival following his disapproval with the response from city officials after police shot and killed his cousin Donovon Lynch in 2021. “I just don’t think the powers that be were respectful of what Pharrell brought to Virginia Beach, so it called for a relocation,” Pusha T says. “D.C. has always been near and dear to Pharrell and I’s hearts.”
Pusha T was already included on the massive lineup of performers, but he says he received a special request from Williams’s team a little more than a week before the event. According to Pusha T, they wanted him to ask his brother, No Malice, to join him for a Clipse reunion. No Malice agreed, confirming the third iteration of a Clipse reunion this year after the brothers reconnected on Japanese streetwear icon and Clipse enthusiast Nigo’s “I Know Nigo!” compilation album and the climax of “It’s Almost Dry.” “Even though these are little one-off things, it’s just a reminder — especially those verses — that the Clipse could actually do an album tomorrow and people would love it,” Pusha T says.
Having served as the president of G.O.O.D. Music since 2015, he says he can see himself as a label head opening doors for other Virginia artists down the line. “I think there’s so much talent that’s come from Virginia, but just due to history, the landscape and the way things played out, I feel like we were really great artists, but never really built the infrastructure,” he says. “So it’s something I’d like to see and something I’m taking on.”
But first, he wants to release additional music with Williams and West as his maestros. “I’m not really trying to tap into new frontiers if we’re not making them together,” he says. “I’m not chasing the sound of the moment.” He also wants to release music more often because he thinks it would aid the conversation around how his work compares with the sound of the moment.
“I only want to do this one way,” he says. “I’m just thinking discography-wise now, and I want mine to have a certain feel. If I can’t do that, then yeah, I can be done.” | 2022-06-17T12:08:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pusha T could rap forever, but only on his terms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/17/pusha-t-interview-something-in-the-water/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/17/pusha-t-interview-something-in-the-water/ |
An ode to the power of CEOs and capitalism to cure America’s ills
Review by Daniel Souleles
A scene last month in the financial district of San Francisco, where many corporations have headquarters. “Capitalism has proven itself the best system mankind has conceived to organize human activity, to create prosperity, and to eliminate poverty,” writes Alan Murray. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
Forty years of business reporting have led Alan Murray to some pretty optimistic claims about capitalism in the United States. Drawing mostly on interviews with CEOs, the books that CEOs and business school professors write about CEOs, and CEO speeches, Murray feels confident that “capitalism has proven itself the best system mankind has conceived to organize human activity, to create prosperity, and to eliminate poverty,” and that we are entering a new era of stakeholder capitalism in which CEOs are combining a zeal for profits with a zest for solving our epoch’s great challenges: climate change, police brutality, public health emergencies — you name it, the CEOs are on it!
Lest you think that any of this is the prerogative of government, “the size and complexity of the issues facing society require the innovation and skill and dynamism that only business can bring to bear,” Murray writes. Each of the core chapters of his book “Tomorrow’s Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business” illustrates a different venue in which chief executive officers are triumphing and performing as the one functional, reliable, pragmatic institution in our otherwise fallen society. The book concludes with a sequence of chapters and bullet points to illustrate core tenets of stakeholder capitalism, with gems such as: “In the long run there is no tradeoff between purpose and profits,” and “Purpose must be authentic.”
Before we can evaluate the merits of these claims, it might be good to familiarize ourselves with how capitalism actually works and then with the parable of the All-American Orphan Crusher.
For an author who is pretty keyed up about capitalism, Murray offers little definition or description and only potted history. The most we hear is that markets and competition are involved, that government regulation is bad and scary, and that capitalism creates innovation and societal progress.
I get this. Capitalism is complicated, varies from place to place, and can be hard to describe. The best definition that I’ve come across comes from anthropologist Hadas Weiss’s work on the middle class, where she suggests that we might understand capitalism as a form of unplanned surplus value accumulation.
What this means is that there is an endless, competitive search for profit, and this profit-seeking is not centrally coordinated. States may create things like courts and currencies and regulation that allow the game to go on with some guardrails and without self-destruction, but generally speaking and ideally, states don’t dictate the outcome of market competition and, in turn, wealth accumulation.
Basic as it is, this definition helps us appreciate some of the more repetitive things that go on with capitalism: Industry profit margins tend to go down, leading to lower aggregate wages and increased investment in technology; competition also leads to consolidation of monopolies and of fortunes; monopolies and hoarded wealth in turn lead to plutocratic distortions of political systems, which then prioritize lower taxes on wealth, limited industrial regulation, imperialist conquest and cheap labor.
All this is to say that capitalism has some fairly predictable tendencies. More to the point, Americans also tend to write about capitalism in fairly predictable ways. An illustration:
On Sept. 24, 2020, Twitter user @pookleblinky wrote:
“Every heartwarming human interest story in america is like ‘he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine’ and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you’d need to pay to prevent it from being used.”
The thread goes on, but the point of the orphan-crusher parable is that Americans often don’t think about the structural realities that create their problems but focus instead on the micro actions of individuals seeking to mitigate them. Think of any viral, heartwarming story about a community fundraiser to pay for someone’s cancer treatment. The story is generally about people coming together to overcome adversity and rarely about why someone should have to go begging to avoid dying of cancer in the first place.
Reading Murray’s take on capitalism, written with Catherine Whitney, is like an extremely grand version of Americans ignoring the orphan crusher. Let me show two core examples: the discussion of the pandemic and the discussion of climate change.
Simply put, the discussion of the pandemic is baffling. Murray spends most of his time talking about how some companies saw the value in their workers and sought to keep them on despite temporary dips in productivity. He also notes that pharmaceutical companies thought they were able to overcome their tarnished reputation for price gouging by collaborating on developing vaccines. None of this is bad, but it completely ignores the real story of the pandemic, which involves unprecedented government coordination and spending (not corporate action) to subsidize vaccine development (hence a competition detente), to prevent small businesses from firing employees (the Paycheck Protection Program), to send people direct cash payments, to prevent evictions, to subsidize the purchase of personal protective equipment, to subsidize local public health authorities and so on.
Another large chapter of the book is taken up by businesses seeking to reduce their emissions and climate impact. The chapter reaches something of a crescendo when Murray seeks to show that even the attitudes of oil company CEOs are shifting and softening. However, what brings this about is not really a change of heart on the part of executives, nor the sublimated will of employees, but rather governments and activists taking power away from corporations and CEOs. Specifically, at Exxon, activist shareholders waged a successful campaign to oust climate-hostile board members; at Royal Dutch Shell, a Dutch court ordered the company to cut its emissions by 45 percent by 2030; and at Chevron, shareholders voted to recommend that the company reduce emissions. If the point of the book is that capitalism is changing because of the shifting attitudes of CEOs, this chapter would seem to illustrate the opposite — that CEOs need to be dragged kicking and screaming, by hostile activists and justice-minded courts, to get their to companies stop acting like unrepentant, world-burning sociopaths.
This is a deeply weird book. Murray seems pathologically incapable of offering any sort of contextual analysis or historically informed and accurate opinion of what CEOs say.
Why do we keep creating situations where we need CEOs and billionaires to act to keep the country semi-functional? Why don’t we have a generous welfare state with national health insurance, universal child care, and guaranteed sick leave and vacation time? And, if CEOs care so much about employee empowerment, why don’t they voluntarily recognize unions (looking at you, Jeff)? Answers to these questions you will not find in “Tomorrow’s Capitalist,” for that would admit the existence of the All-American Orphan Crusher.
Daniel Souleles is an anthropologist and associate professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He is the author of “Songs of Profit, Songs of Loss: Private Equity, Wealth, and Inequality.”
Tomorrow’s Capitalist
My Search for the Soul of Business
By Alan Murray with Catherine Whitney
PublicAffairs. 236 pp. $29 | 2022-06-17T12:08:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Tomorrow’s Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/an-ode-power-ceos-capitalism-cure-americas-ills/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/an-ode-power-ceos-capitalism-cure-americas-ills/ |
Centuries of innovations in Western music, presented at a fast tempo
Review by Martha Anne Toll
Terence Blanchard's “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” was staged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York in September 2021, becoming the first-ever opera by a Black composer to be produced by the company. In his book, Stuart Isacoff counts this as a milestone in Western music history. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Stuart Isacoff sprints through nearly two millennia of Western music in his latest book, “Musical Revolutions: How the Sounds of the Western World Changed.” It’s always a challenge to get music to live on the page, but Isacoff tackles it head-on, describing his project as a “book about moments in music history when things dramatically changed, a succession of bold leaps in the progress of Western culture.”
A pianist and composer who performs, writes and lectures on music, Isacoff delves deep into history to discuss the innovations in Western music that we take for granted today, such as musical notation, polyphony (simultaneous, multiple musical voices), opera and jazz. In the first chapter, “Singing from Symbols,” he points out that Saint Augustine (354-430) “was gripped with guilt”because music had distracted him from the word of God. The church as a whole had an ongoing challenge wrestling with the emotional and seductive power of music and, concerned about the variety of religious chanting across its realm, tried to standardize those chants.
But without musical notation, there was no way to do so. Saint Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) worried that “unless sounds are held in the memory by man … they perish.”King Charlemagne (742-814) took up the task without success. The turning point came when Italian monk Guido of Arezzo (990-1050) devised a written system to instruct his pupils. But instead of being celebrated for his breakthrough, he was met with “envy and scorn” by his fellow clerics. Not until Pope John XIX embraced Guido’s system was he rehabilitated.
If this leap through history leaves you breathless, fasten your seat belt for what follows.
Isacoff next considers the development of Western polyphony — indispensable to today’s music — which arose separately in various parts of Europe and the Byzantine Empire and was intimately connected to the mathematics of sound and increasingly sophisticated rhythms. As he does elsewhere, Isacoff points out that non-Western music — such as Indian raga and West African drumming — had deployed these creative concepts much earlier. The music of the Central African Pygmy people, he points out, “can involve eighteen separate interlocking parts.”
Isacoff takes readers through the birth of opera and its threat to throw off the church’s “prescription for emotional restraint.” He whizzes from the Medicis’ commissioning of an opera called “Euridice” in 1600; to the French tradition embodied in Jean Baptiste Lully’s collaborations with Molière to create comédie-ballet; to England’s operatic “watershed,” the 1728 “Beggars Opera” by John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch, based on popular ballads and revived 200 years later in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Three Penny Opera.” He pays homage to Mozart, then brings readers through to contemporary operas from Philip Glass and John Adams, as well as the first Met performance of an opera by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” last year.
Naturally, Isacoff has made choices about what to include on his musical tour. I loved the chapter on the Bach family, in part because the pace felt a little less rushed. He devotes two chapters to the development of jazz and its cross-pollination with “classical” music. Although Isacoff could have spent much more time on this multifaceted medium, in the context of this book, I was glad for the space he offered it.
Some choices feel like afterthoughts, however. Particularly jarring is his chapter titled “A Question of Sex,” which is introduced like this: “Only recently has a quiet revolution granted the fair sex a fairer status.” Really? The fair sex? In 2022? His description of Beijing-born pianist Yuja Wang, “who stirs nearly as much reaction with her short, tight-fitting outfits as she does with her flashy technique and deep musicality,” left me wondering why none of the flashy, foppish males in the book get the same treatment.
The trouble with books that speed through centuries of musical development is that they inevitably leave people out. While accurately noting that female conductors have faced the steepest climb — particularly in the United States — Isacoff omits Sarah Caldwell (1924-2006), who forged a career as a professional opera conductor a generation before Marin Alsop took the helm at the Baltimore Symphony in 2007.
A chapter called “Mozart Among the Lotus Blossoms” explores the piano and Western symphonic music’s forays into modern China, concluding, “Despite the historical obstacles, the marriage of East and West now seems irrevocable.” I wondered about this generalization. A “marriage” suggests musical influences traveling in both directions. Will the West embrace Eastern music with the enthusiasm that Isacoff suggests China has embraced Western music?
“Musical Revolutions” covers a staggering amount of material in under 300 pages. It is illustrated with wonderful photographs and comes replete with bibliography and index. Its prestissimo tempo, though, raises the question of who might be its ideal readers. The coverage of these critical musical revolutions seems thin for a music aficionado and overwhelming for a neophyte. Perhaps the readers best served by this book are the ecumenical music lovers who enjoy music through the centuries but who may be missing the context for their listening.
Martha Anne Toll’s debut novel, “Three Muses,” will be published in September. She completed 26 years running a social justice foundation in 2020.
Musical Revolutions
How the Sounds of the Western World Changed
Knopf. 308 pp. $30. | 2022-06-17T12:08:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Musical Revolutions: How the Sounds of the Western World Changed by Stuart Isacoff - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/centuries-innovations-western-music-presented-fast-tempo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/centuries-innovations-western-music-presented-fast-tempo/ |
How George Stevens Jr. bridged two worlds: Hollywood and Washington
George Stevens Jr. attends the AFI Life Achievement Award gala for Julie Andrews in Hollywood on June 9. (Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images for TNT)
By most lights, George Stevens Jr. should be a train wreck.
As the only son of legendary director George Stevens, having grown up in the Hollywood colony at its most rarefied, Stevens easily could have sledded through life on his father’s coattails, dining out on his family connections with the likes of Jean Renoir and Omar Sharif.
Okay, Stevens did literally dine out with Renoir and Sharif (and many, many others). But as he writes in “My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington,” he also forged a wholly unexpected and enduringly fruitful path of his own. As the title of his memoir suggests, Stevens has assumed pride of place in two cities that have become metonyms for aspiration, idealism and their own unique manifestations of power. Over the past half-century, Stevens has become a key figure in navigating those hothouses, sometimes behind the scenes, but always with a shrewd eye and bracing lack of cynicism.
Stevens begins his account with an introduction to his ancestors, all of whom were show people in the gloriously raffish tradition. His paternal grandparents, Landers Stevens and Georgie Cooper, were both actors; his maternal grandmother, Alice Howell, was one of the most gifted comediennes of the 1920s.
Growing up in the comfortable Los Angeles neighborhood of Toluca Lake in the 1930s and 1940s, Stevens led a charmed existence, taking swimming lessons at a nearby club (he was once saved from drowning by Olympian Johnny Weissmuller) and eventually attending the tony Harvard School with such peers as Robert Wagner, H.R. Haldeman and Buck Henry (then Buck Zuckerman). Meanwhile, his father was embarking on what would become one of the most consistent and stellar directing careers of the era with a string of masterfully crafted early films: “Alice Adams,” “Swing Time,” “Penny Serenade” and the criminally underrecognized “The More the Merrier,” to name just a few.
George Stevens père also went to war, heading up the motion picture unit of the U.S. Army Signal Corps toward the end of World War II. In other words, he cast an almost impossibly imposing shadow: Stevens fils, by then entering his teens, might have been forgiven for throwing an epic Oedipal tantrum.
Instead, he began assisting his father on his productions, observing as his elder gave Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift discreet notes on their performances in “A Place in the Sun” or blocked a climactic shootout in “Shane.” “Dad never seemed to instruct me, or to offer bromides or paternal pearls of wisdom,” Stevens writes. “It was his example that formed me.”
Although he never says it explicitly, Stevens sought to bring his father’s principles — a rigorous work ethic, integrity and respect for the audience — to bear on his own career. His path took a hairpin turn in 1962 when, at an impromptu meeting at Sam Goldwyn’s house, Edward R. Murrow invited him to join the U.S. Information Agency. As the head of the agency’s Motion Picture Service, Stevens formed a murderers’ row of visionary filmmakers, including Charles Guggenheim, Terry Sanders, Haskell Wexler, William Greaves and Carroll Ballard. Stevens oversaw the production of groundbreaking documentaries, including Guggenheim’s Oscar-winning “Nine From Little Rock” (1964), about the desegregation of an all-White high school. He also became part of Washington’s liveliest social circles, developing close friendships with Kennedy administration insiders Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Goodwin, Averell and Marie Harriman, and Robert and Ethel Kennedy.
Stevens relates his journey with a relaxed, anecdotal tone. Any other writer casually mentioning yet another fun evening with Elizabeth Taylor, or recalling when he introduced Carl Sandburg to Marilyn Monroe (“You’re not the trouble with the world,” the poet purred to the starlet), or sharing affectionate notes from Jacqueline Kennedy, might seem insufferable. But this is the life of George Stevens Jr., who as his narrative unspools seems to have been born to bridge cultures that might be miles apart — literally and figuratively — but have held each other in mutual fascination for more than a century.
Of course, both Hollywood and Washington have long since left their respective Golden Ages behind. As Stevens recalls forming the American Film Institute, helping conceptualize the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and later co-creating and producing the Kennedy Center Honors, it feels as if he’s conjuring a vanished age of collegiality and a certain kind of class in entertainment and politics. “Part of Washington’s charm in those days was that people weren’t preoccupied by money,” he writes of the early 1960s. “People were measured by their ideas, interests and accomplishments.”
“My Place in the Sun” is not a particularly tough or probing book: Stevens doesn’t settle scores, reward prurient curiosity or delve into any darker psychological dynamics that might have animated his relationship with his father, who died in 1975. But that might be altogether fitting for a filmmaker who knew that character is best revealed through action, not dialogue. Recalling when his father subtly gave his blessing for young George to leave L.A. for Washington, Stevens writes, “It didn’t occur to me at the time, but he was teaching me how to be a father.”
Ann Hornaday is The Washington Post’s chief film critic. She is the author of “Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies.”
Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington
By George Stevens, Jr.
University Press of Kentucky. 518 pp. $34.95 | 2022-06-17T12:09:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington by George Stevens, Jr. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/how-george-stevens-jr-bridged-two-worlds-hollywood-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/how-george-stevens-jr-bridged-two-worlds-hollywood-washington/ |
Sen. Warnock recounts his path from the projects to Georgia politics
Review by Tammy Joyner
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on Capitol Hill last month. “We are the latest generation that gets to decide whether we’re going to give in to bigotry and fear or push closer to our democratic ideals,” he writes in his new memoir. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A few years after becoming senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, Raphael Warnock invited a congregant to lunch. He had a pressing question for the older church member, someone he was hoping to get to know better.
“I’m thinking about running for office,” Warnock said. Then he asked his lunch guest to be his mentor.
“Oh, you don’t need it,” replied Rep. John Lewis. Warnock had cherished Lewis, the iconic civil rights figure, as his hero ever since he met him briefly while studying at Morehouse College. Years later, the two men worked closely together on voting rights initiatives. When Lewis died in July 2020, Warnock officiated at his funeral.
And Warnock, like Lewis, succeeded brilliantly in politics. Almost 18 months ago, he took office as Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator. Warnock has played a key role in changing the trajectory of Georgia politics, working with other activists like Stacey Abrams to register hundreds of thousands of voters, including many people of color. In late 2020 and early 2021, the nation watched spellbound as the state’s “new multiracial electoral majority” turned Georgia’s political landscape from red to deep purple and sent Warnock and another Democrat, Jon Ossoff, to the Senate, flipping control of the chamber. Warnock, who won his seat in a special election, is running for a full term this fall. Abrams is making her second bid for Georgia governor in November.
Warnock recounts his lunch with Lewis — and Georgia’s stunning political and social transformation — in his new book, “A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story.”
Warnock’s story is indeed the new American story. Only this time, Horatio Alger hails from the projects.
The 11th of 12 children of Pentecostal preachers, Warnock grew up in the Herbert Kayton Homes public-housing project in Savannah, Ga., and was the first in his family to graduate from college. He joined a long line of esteemed Morehouse alumni including filmmaker Spike Lee, Georgia state Sen. Julian Bond and Martin Luther King Jr., and took pride in his distinction as “a Morehouse man” after graduating from the historically Black men’s college.
Warnock’s American tale takes us from a housing project to Ebenezer Baptist, once King’s home pulpit, and now the halls of Congress.
Warnock had plenty of mentors who helped him find his “way out of no way.” His path was lined with influential ministers and civil rights leaders who offered advice and encouragement during his days at Morehouse and through his appointments at four of America’s most prestigious Black churches: Sixth Avenue Baptist Church of Birmingham, Ala., Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, Douglas Memorial Community Church of Baltimore and Ebenezer. Warnock is only the fifth pastor in Ebenezer’s 136-year history and the first one who was not a member of the King family. His memoir reads like a Who’s Who of Black America.
The book opens with a riveting account of the life sentence handed down in 1997 to Warnock’s older half brother. Keith, a rookie Savannah police officer, Warnock writes, had been “charged with aiding and abetting the distribution of cocaine by providing security for drug dealers”; he was one of 11 officers implicated in an FBI sting. Warnock was shocked. Keith was his “stocky, clean-cut older brother, the high school football player” who “proudly enlisted in the U.S. Army right out of high school.” His arrest confused Warnock. “Had we missed something,” he wondered.
When Warnock dug into Keith’s case, he discovered that all the defendants were Black. The police force was dominated by White officers, but “the FBI had targeted only African American officers,” Warnock writes. “As I learned more about my brother’s case, my disappointment in him was matched by my anger at the criminal justice system.” The FBI masterminded the operation, making sure the amount of drugs involved would meet mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for very long stays in prison. Warnock learned that “the operation had used a convicted felon to lure the rookie officers into a fabricated drug operation with the opportunity to make some easy cash.”
Warnock was angry with his brother, whose poor judgment got him into a terrible fix. But he also got a clear view into the inequities facing Black defendants and the harsh legacy of sentencing requirements.
“This was a stunning lesson about the unevenness of the criminal justice system and the racist implications of 1980s and 1990s federal drug laws that put in place the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines,” Warnock writes, “making such harsh sentences possible and rendering too many Black and brown lives disposable.”
The experience made Warnock see his ministry as a place for activism, “where ministry moves beyond the pulpit, where … the preacher actually becomes a sermon, embodying through example the gospel ethic of love and justice.”
Warnock kept pushing for his brother’s release, and in 2020, after 22 years in prison, Keith was one of tens of thousands of nonviolent inmates across the country permitted to serve the rest of their sentences at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Warnock also successfully worked for the 2007 release of Genarlow Wilson, a Georgia man who had received a mandatory 10-year prison sentence for engaging in consensual oral sex with a girl when they were both teenagers.
Warnock was devastated, however, when his efforts failed to get Troy Davis’s death sentence commuted. Davis, who maintained his innocence, was executed in the 1989 killing of an off-duty Savannah police officer. The case drew international attention as seven of the nine witnesses key to Davis’s conviction recanted or changed their stories. The execution brought attention to Georgia’s justice system, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in a country that leads the world in the number of people behind bars.
At times, the book reads like an exhaustive recounting of Warnock’s résumé. I would have liked to have seen more details about his personal struggles with various turns in his life, but limited self-analysis is to be expected when you’re living in a political fishbowl. Any weakness can be exploited by a competitor, especially during a run for reelection. Warnock faces Georgia football legend and Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee, in November.
Warnock’s first term has come at a time when America is embroiled in mass shootings, greater restrictions of civil liberties and voting rights, and social and racial upheaval. In his maiden speech on the Senate floor, Warnock urged his colleagues to pass a voting rights measure, the For the People Act, which he co-sponsored. But it has stalled in the Senate. Why would anyone want such a job?
In “A Way Out of No Way,” Warnock makes clear that the nation’s path to progress is long and difficult. “We are the latest generation that gets to decide whether we’re going to give in to bigotry and fear or push closer to our democratic ideals,” he writes. “I choose hope. I choose inclusivity. I choose equal protection under the law. I choose truth and justice. I choose the beloved community.”
Tammy Joyner is an Atlanta-based journalist.
A Way Out of No Way
A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story | 2022-06-17T12:09:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation and the New American Story by Raphael Warnock - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/sen-warnock-recounts-his-path-projects-georgia-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/sen-warnock-recounts-his-path-projects-georgia-politics/ |
Thomas Piketty’s optimistic blueprint for easing global inequality
Review by Gary Gerstle
The Bank of England in London. In his latest book, Thomas Piketty notes the inequality between the Global North and the Global South and lays out proposals to shrink it. (Hollie Adams/Bloomberg News)
Thomas Piketty’s monumental “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (2013) offered one of the most thorough and illuminating studies of capitalist economics since Karl Marx published the original “Capital” 150 years earlier. Despite the plainest of covers and roughly 700 pages of erudite and often dense analysis, Piketty’s “Capital” was a runaway hit — selling more than 2.5 million copies worldwide. The book appeared at a crucial moment. Economic discontent had been brewing since the financial crash of 2008-2009; many blamed economic elites and their allies in government for having pushed the world’s banking system (and the welfare of tens of millions) into an abyss. In 2011, Occupy Wall Street provided this anger with a focus and a movement, facilitated the emergence of political leaders such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and generated a hunger for understanding the mechanisms of capitalism capable of producing deep economic inequality and injustice. Piketty’s tome provided the insight into capitalism’s inner workings that many were so urgently seeking.
“Capital in the Twenty-First Century” focused most of its attention on the advanced industrialized world of Western Europe and the United States. Piketty’s even longer sequel, “Capital and Ideology” (2019), deepened that original analysis while expanding its scope to include much of the rest of the world, with a focus in particular on how slavery and colonialism abetted the triumph of the capitalist West. Piketty’s latest work, “A Brief History of Equality,” neatly summarizes the findings of his two original volumes in a “mere” 250 pages of text. Readers will find this work attractive for its brevity alone. But “A Brief History of Equality” is also a very different kind of book from the first two.
While not quite a manifesto, “A Brief History of Equality” offers a sustained argument for why we should be optimistic about human progress, which Piketty defines as “the movement toward equality.” Across the last 200 years, he notes, life expectancy has increased from 26 to 72 years. “At present,” he adds, “humanity is in better health than it has ever been; it also has more access to education and culture than ever before.” Piketty is acutely aware of the disparities in the welfare of individuals both within advanced industrial societies and between the Global North and the Global South. But his reading of the history of the 20th century allows him to think that these 21st-century inequalities can be narrowed, in part because “the march toward equality in all its forms” is irrepressible and in part because past generations of reformers lit a path that still illuminates the way forward.
Piketty focuses in particular on the revolution in government that liberal and left forces in the industrialized West propelled between 1910 and 1980. Across these decades, he writes, Western societies built robust welfare states, invested heavily in education and other public goods, and considerably narrowed economic inequality — and thus the gap in life chances — between rich and poor. Piketty calls this transformation an “anthropological revolution”; for him it represents a social democratic triumph. Taxation was the revolution’s key instrument. In country after country, total tax receipts exploded, from less than 10 percent of national income in 1910 to between 30 and 40 percent by the century’s middle decades. These tax regimes were highly progressive and redistributionist, with the United States (surprisingly) leading the way by imposing an average top tax rate of 81 percent on the highest-income earners between 1932 and 1980.
The triumph of social democracy in the 20th-century West has imbued Piketty with the confidence that humanity can transition to a new stage of equality. An engaged and clearheaded socialist thinker, Piketty sets forth in “A Brief History of Equality” one of the most comprehensive and comprehensible social democratic programs available anywhere. His proposals include public financing of elections, transnational assemblies to complement national legislatures, a global tax of 2 percent on all individual fortunes that exceed 10 million euros (about $10.4 million), involvement of workers in the management of large enterprises (to promote “participatory socialism”), and the revision of global treaties to ensure that the international circulation of capital will enhance rather than hamper the pursuit of key goals such as reducing greenhouse gases and easing economic inequality between the Global North and the Global South.
Piketty understands that none of his proposals will be easy to implement. But his reading of politics in the 20th-century West gives him reason to hope. Then, he argues, progressive movements — women demanding the vote, workers struggling for industrial rights, social democratic parties vying for victory at the polls, minorities fighting for civil rights — triggered a vast political transformation. Protest movements of this sort, appropriately adjusted for the needs of 21st-century citizens, can achieve similar results.
To make his case for the efficacy of progressive politics, however, Piketty ignores a sobering insight offered up in his “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” In that work, Piketty argued that the 20th century’s social democratic triumph did not arise from the work of progressive movements alone. Equally important, and perhaps more so, was the destructive force of two global wars. “It was the chaos of war,” Piketty then wrote, “that reduced inequality in the twentieth century. … It was war, and not harmonious democratic or economic rationality, that erased the past and enabled society to begin anew with a clean slate.”
The First and Second World Wars to which Piketty refers killed nearly 100 million people, destroyed production facilities on an immense scale, stripped European powers of their income-generating colonies, and everywhere destabilized both the fortunes and the thinking of economic elites. The catastrophe of war, Piketty argued in his 2013 work, gave social democracy its chance to triumph in the West.
Hence a key question for Piketty’s 2022 book: Can reducing inequality in the 21st-century world on the same scale as in the 20th-century West be accomplished without another large war, or a pandemic far more destructive than the one we are living through, or a climate catastrophe of the first order? One certainly wants to answer with Piketty that it can. He has laid out a plan that is smart, thoughtful and motivated by admirable political convictions. But a plan of this sort, as Piketty himself showed in “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” may not suffice, even when backed by a phalanx of progressive movements. Vast and cruel destruction of life and property, Piketty once wrote, was the critical prelude to the 20th century’s social democratic triumph. Let us hope the world will not require similar death and despair to thrust into existence a 21st-century era of economic and social reconstruction.
Gary Gerstle is the Paul Mellon professor of American history emeritus at the University of Cambridge and the author, most recently, of “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era.”
By Thomas Piketty
Translated by Steven Rendall
Belknap. 274 pp. $27.95 | 2022-06-17T12:09:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/thomas-pikettys-optimistic-blueprint-easing-global-inequality/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/17/thomas-pikettys-optimistic-blueprint-easing-global-inequality/ |
Older, stronger, grayer: These Warriors share a bond — and four titles
Stephen Curry, center, was named the MVP of the NBA Finals for the first time in his career. (Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)
BOSTON — So much has changed for the Golden State Warriors over the past seven years. Back in 2015, Klay Thompson had a pencil-thin goatee. There was no evidence of gray multiplying around Draymond Green’s facial hair. And Stephen Curry would have been lucky to grow even designer stubble; his was a face that would get carded if he ordered anything other than milk.
They formed the foundation of a young, likable team that was easy to root for and on June 16, 2015, they cemented their era of splashy basketball by winning their first championship together. They became the greatest traveling act in the NBA and more success followed. Teammates — and one in particular who helped them win a couple of more championships but left to help form his own empire in Brooklyn — came and went. Then, the injuries happened. A crash to Earth and the draft lottery followed. They heard, and noted, all the doubters who thought their reign had ended.
Yet, exactly seven years after their first crowning moment, there they were. The same three teammates, playing loose and free, yet still ravenous for another title.
On Thursday night, Green motioned to the TD Garden crowd to pipe down, informing them that their team’s third-quarter run would not be enough to stop the Golden State Warriors’ era. Even before that, Curry appeared to sense their legacy expanding. Midway through that period, after he pulled up from 29 feet and sank one of his six three-pointers, he turned to a stunned and mostly silent home crowd and pointed to his finger to let everyone know he’s going to put a ring on it.
In Stephen Curry's crowning achievement, Warriors win fourth NBA title in eight years
Exactly where he’ll have room to place this one, his and his buddies’ fourth together, who knows? All these diamond-encrusted championship souvenirs must be incredibly heavy for a human hand to bear. The only workplace hazard for creating the modern game’s longest-lasting dynasty, but one they’ll accept happily after sealing the 2022 NBA championship with a103-90 victory over the Boston Celtics in Game 6.
“I can say it now: I don’t know how many teams could carry that as long as we have with the expectations of comparing us now to teams of past and make it to the mountaintop again,” Curry said. “Then you go to these last two years, and conversations, narratives, we’re ‘too old,’ the parallel timelines of developing young guys and keeping our core together, all those tough decisions that we had to make, that weighs on you for as much time as we’re going through it.”
The Celtics formed the league’s first dynasty by winning championships through the 1960s — the infancy of the league. Michael Jordan’s Bulls clustered their six titles into a pair of three-peat eras in the ’90s — his era of domination when hand-checking and hard fouls were part of the NBA.
But over the past seven years, the revolutionary Warriors have compelled the most change within the game. These days kids, bless their little hearts, try to pull up from half-court.
“When I go back home to Milwaukee and watch my AAU team play and practice, everybody want to be Steph, everyone want to shoot threes,” Warriors center Kevon Looney said. “And I’m like, ‘Man, you got to work a little harder to shoot like him. I see him every day.’”
Even NBA decision-makers aren’t above the influence of Curry and the Warriors. Teams have tried to copy their DNA — prioritizing small-ball lineups, placing shooters all around the floor — but many of their attempts have been sloppy facsimiles.
The Warriors’ blueprint is unique. Few teams have someone like Green, who turned tweeners into desirable draft picks. Or Thompson, the chill sidekick who, if he possessed an ego, might have demanded a trade years ago so he wouldn’t have to play the role of Robin.
Above all, no team has a Steph.
Curry won his first Finals MVP by unanimous vote, averaging a series-best 31 points. He was the baddest man on the court. And he let Celtics fans know it.
He made threes, then feigned surprise at his own mastery at shooting a basketball by placing both hands on top of his head. By the fourth quarter, he made a sleeping gesture, his way of putting to bed all that chatter about the Celtics chasing an 18th title. Not this year, at least.
But near the end, Curry stopped trolling and grew nostalgic, letting his emotions take over.
The Golden State Warriors beat the Boston Celtics, 103-90, in Game 6 of the NBA Finals on June 16. (Video: ESPN via AP)
Just a few seconds separated him from his title, and Curry clutched his knees. His shoulders shook, and when he popped back up, his face was wet with tears. Overwhelmed by the moment, Curry fell to the hardwood to cry some more.
“These last two months of the playoffs, these last three years, this last 48 hours, every bit of it has been an emotional roller coaster on and off the floor,” said Curry, who started this playoff run while recovering from a foot injury. “And you’re carrying all of that on a daily basis to try to realize a dream and a goal like we did tonight. And you get goose bumps just thinking about, you know, all those snapshots and episodes that we went through to get back here, individually, collectively.”
Throughout the six games, Curry’s star blazed while his teammates stood watching like everyone else. On Thursday night, however, the Warriors finally showed their offensive depth as six players made at least one three-pointer (including Green!). Their defense, however, possessed no limitations as they forced Boston into turnovers (23 total in Game 6) or deep looks from the perimeter.
Though the offensive help came at just the right time, Curry has consistently had one of the best communicators and coaches on his side.
Steve Kerr has won five titles as a player and now four as coach of these Warriors, yet if you listen to his self-deprecation and deflection of all compliments, you might think he’s been a lucky passenger on the road to greatness, instead of the creator of the Warriors’ free-flowing offense and culture. Though other franchises lose patience with their coaches and cycle in fresh voices at the slightest hint of turmoil, Kerr, in his eight years, has kept his standing within Golden State’s locker room. His voice still resonates.
“I haven’t seen many changes, to be honest. I think Steve has pretty much been the same since 2015,” Thompson said. “I mean, Steve has had such an incredible, unique career, from player to coach, GM. He just knows how to gel talent together. Then he draws from his playing days, which is really cool to hear and talk about, playing with Mike and Scottie [with those Bulls teams], the Twin Towers in San Antonio.
“The man's knowledge for the game is second to none. That's why I love being around him,” Thompson continued. “He's got so many historical examples of how to get out of sticky situations. He's a great leader. He deserves every praise that comes his way.”
As for the Warriors Three, they deserve their flowers. But first, they took their shots.
“A lot of chatter. A lot of chatter. A lot of doubters. But you know what, you just put that in your fuel tank and you just keep going,” Thompson said. “I can’t wait! There is this one player on the Grizzlies who tweeted ‘strength in numbers’ after they beat us in the regular season, and it pissed me off so much. I can’t wait to retweet that thing. Frigging bum.”
In enemy territory, Curry heard M-V-P chants. Green, after a mostly pedestrian series, was brash and unbowed as ever. Thompson, the most chill guy in any room, expressed his astonishment: “Holy cannoli! This is crazy!” Then, he danced on the podium while his brother-in-Splash shimmied for the remaining few in the spectator stands.
They’re all men in their 30s and have cycled through the various tribulations and joys of life — Thompson aged by devastating injuries that forced him out of the two previous seasons, Green and Curry by fatherhood.
Still, after all this time, they like each other enough to sit together on the team plane. Eat together and rack up debts to each other in dominoes. Dance like idiots together onstage. And most importantly, still win together.
“I’m a four-time champion with my brothers,” Green said. | 2022-06-17T12:17:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Curry and friends can still win the Warriors an NBA championship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/17/golden-state-warriors-champions-dynasty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/17/golden-state-warriors-champions-dynasty/ |
Ryan Zimmerman on photo day at spring training in 2020. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
In a pregame ceremony Saturday at Nationals Park, Ryan Zimmerman will become the first Nationals player to have his jersey number retired. Washington’s first draft pick, who announced his retirement in February, established himself as the face of the franchise over the past 17 years while setting numerous team records and helping the Nationals win their first World Series title.
How well do you remember some of the biggest moments and accomplishments of Mr. Walk-Off’s career? Test your Zimmerman trivia knowledge with this expert-level quiz. (And don’t be discouraged by a low score; even Zimmerman failed to reach base more than 60 percent of the time.)
See the quiz here. | 2022-06-17T12:17:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ryan Zimmerman could possibly fail this quiz - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/17/ryan-zimmerman-quiz/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/17/ryan-zimmerman-quiz/ |
Bishop Lucas van Looy, foreground, attends the opening of the 15th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018. (Gregorio Borgia/AP)
When Pope Francis in May announced his intention to create 21 new cardinals, one name stood out to a group of clerical abuse advocates in Belgium: Lucas Van Looy. After facing weeks of pressure about his record of handling abuse cases, the would-be cardinal has now asked Francis not to receive the honor — a highly unusual request that the pope accepted.
The Belgian bishops’ conference said Van Looy’s request was made to “prevent the victims of such abuses from being hurt again.”
For a church badly bruised by years of abuse scandals, the episode showed the far-reaching repercussions that can come after a church leader is tied to the mishandling of cases. It also raises questions about the Vatican’s process for examining the records of individuals selected by Francis to become cardinal — a position that implies a lifetime of good service to the church.
Why the Vatican continues to struggle with sex abuse scandals
“Everybody in Belgium knew about it,” said Lieve Halsberghe, an advocate for victims of clerical abuse in the country. She emphasized that Van Looy’s request “did not come from his conscience. It came because there were protests from a human rights group.”
The Belgian bishops’ conference said that Francis’s initial decision to name Van Looy a cardinal had provoked “much positive reaction.” But there was also criticism, the conference said, “of the fact that he did not always react energetically enough” against “abuses in the pastoral relationship” while serving as the bishop of Ghent from 2003 until 2019.
Van Looy had been one of 21 individuals Francis selected for the honor, a move that will be formalized — for the other 20 — during a consistory in August. Even had Van Looy been made a cardinal, he would have been unable to participate in any future conclave as a result of his age, 80. (Only cardinals younger than 80 can help to select the next pope.)
The Belgian bishop’s conference did not provide details about any accusations of wrongdoing by Van Looy.
At the time when Van Looy was bishop, the diocese sent a Congolese victim $25,000. But the diocese reportedly did not intervene to stop the priest’s ongoing activities — working at a nonprofit to help orphans from the genocide in Rwanda.
Though Van Looy has personally spoken out about the cruelties of abuse, describing the “inhumane suffering” of victims, he has also admitted to not notifying justice authorities of six letters he had received pertaining to cases, according to a Belgian media account from 2010. Van Looy called those letters “less pressing” because the accusations pertained to retired priests.
Van Looy is part of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order. Belgium’s Salesians were involved in a scandal that resulted from a 2019 CNN investigation into a Belgian priest, convicted of abuse in a Ghent court, who was then sent to the Central African Republic, where he was accused of abuse again.
Belgium has faced a tsunami of damaging abuse-related revelations, many of them bubbling to the surface in 2010, in what leaders described as one of the most difficult crises in the history of Belgium’s Catholic church. A report released in 2010 described hundreds of cases over five decades, and noted that 13 victims had been driven to take their own lives in the wake of the trauma. | 2022-06-17T12:43:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bishop Lucas Van Looy declines cardinal honor from Pope Francis because of abuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/vatican-cardinal-bishop-belgium-abuse-van-looy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/17/vatican-cardinal-bishop-belgium-abuse-van-looy/ |
Analysis by Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe | Bloomberg
This weekend’s Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved Black people in Texas learned of their freedom, should also present America with a challenge: How to address the deep economic disparities that, more than 150 years later, still divide the nation by race?
As supply-chain disruptions make essential goods scarce and inflation renders them more expensive, and as the Federal Reserve responds by hitting the economic brakes, Black Americans yet again stand to bear the brunt of the suffering. At 6.2%, their unemployment rate remains almost double that of their White counterparts and more than twice that of Asians. With lower incomes and less savings, they’re much more likely to experience financial and food insecurity.
Such inequities persist partly because the people in power are too detached from the everyday challenges of marginalized populations. Top economic policy makers at the Fed and the White House have long been far more White (and male) than the broader US population. To his credit, President Joe Biden has sought to correct this, with the appointment of Cecilia Rouse to the Council of Economic Advisers and of Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Further progress, however, faces a big obstacle: a lack of Black people employed and trained as economists. In 2020, only 1.2% and 0.4% of all economics doctorates were conferred upon Black men and women, respectively, even though they comprised 5.6% and 6.2% of the U.S. population. This shortage not only confounds efforts to diversify the top ranks of economic policymakers, but also ensures a lack of role models for people aspiring to any of the positions that economics PhDs tend to fill.
To address racial inequities, America must do more to develop a cadre of future Black policy makers. Consider, for example, another event happening this Juneteenth weekend: the American Economic Association Summer Mentoring Pipeline Conference, which for more than 20 years has been the most extensive networking and professional development workshop for Asian American, Black American, Hispanic American and Indigenous American students who aspire to become PhD economists. The conference provides participants an opportunity to present their research and get advice about navigating the job market and graduate school. It’s the place to meet the next generation of underrepresented economists.
The conference is being held alongside the AEA’s Summer Minority Training Program, which is happening for the first time on the campus of a historically Black college, Howard University. The location is significant for many reasons. For one, it illuminates a clear path forward for participants: Howard, the only HBCU with a doctoral program in economics, is the country’s number one producer of Black economics PhDs. Also, it puts them in direct contact with accomplished mentors such as Dr. Omari Swinton, an alumnus of the AEA summer program who now chairs Howard’s economics department.
The program at Howard also includes innovations aimed at addressing two barriers to entering the profession: understanding what economists do and what’s required to become one. Participants will gain hands-on experience at federal agencies (such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) and other institutions (such as private consulting firms), to expose them to potential careers beyond academia. And they’ll have access to as much as three years of structured mentoring, advising and funding for GRE test prep and math courses (through a program that I direct).
Alumni of the summer program, which began in 1974, are visible throughout the profession: They account for an estimated one in five economists from underrepresented groups. This strongly suggests that expanding beyond the current 40 participants per year would be one effective way to produce more PhDs. To that end, philanthropic foundations could contribute to an endowment, and banks and companies could get more involved in providing mentoring and learning experiences to participants.
• Clarify what’s meant by diversity — in educational programs, at think tanks, in the private sector and at government institutions such as the Fed. The aim should be to include more people from groups that have been marginalized in the U.S., rather than simply to include more people who aren’t White males of European descent.
• Hold managers accountable for progress toward greater diversity. In academia, don’t give credit for “poaching” from other departments.
• Provide all students with timely information on what it takes to earn an economics doctorate, as a standard part of undergraduate advising. Often, students learn of the math requirements — which typically entail a double major — when it’s already too late.
• Be good mentors, by providing the advice and opportunities you wish someone had provided for you. Show young scholars what they need to be successful, rather than leaving them to figure it out on their own. Volunteer for programs such as the CeMENT Workshop, the Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics and the Pipeline Mentoring Program.
Diversity can’t be mandated. Progress will require myriad individuals in positions of power to change the way they think and operate — to move intentionally toward achieving greater equity. With concerted effort, on future Juneteenths we’ll be able to celebrate an economics profession that looks more like the people whose lives it purports to improve.
Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe is the founder and president of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race, and co-editor of the Review of Black Political Economy. Her research focuses on gender and racial inequality, diversity in science and the demography of higher education. | 2022-06-17T12:52:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Next Juneteenth, Let’s Have More Black Economists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/next-juneteenth-lets-have-more-black-economists/2022/06/17/084f3fd4-ee3a-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/next-juneteenth-lets-have-more-black-economists/2022/06/17/084f3fd4-ee3a-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Trump and His Allies Will Repeat Jan. 6 If Necessary
Michael Luttig is a highly regarded former federal judge with rock-solid conservative bona fides. Appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, his former clerks include Senator Ted Cruz and John Eastman, the lawyer who helped former President Donald Trump try to stage a coup after the 2020 election. He was also an adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence.
And at the end of the third day of testimony overseen by the bipartisan congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, Luttig issued a warning: “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
“I don’t speak those words lightly,” Luttig said. “Except that’s what the former president and his allies are telling us.”
Indeed. They have taken their messages to social media and to political rallies, memorializing their priorities in speeches, e-mail, interviews and other communiques. They want power for power’s sake, and they are willing to disenfranchise voters to acquire and keep it.
Those who say Trump is not anti-democratic, or ignore the ongoing dangers he poses, are in denial. After all, Trump’s preference for rule-breaking and law-breaking, along with his thirst for attention and attachment to power, have been evident for decades. The idea that Trump could become president without breaking things — such as the norms, institutions and laws of American government — has been proved deeply wrong.
The testimony and evidence presented in Thursday’s hearing laid it all bare. The theme wasn’t new. Trump, who was trying to corrupt federal agencies, the court system and the executive branch to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election, tried to force Pence to help him corrupt the electoral process as well. Pence, to his everlasting credit, refused.
But new details from the hearing about Pence’s travails were harrowing. Representative Peter Aguilar, a Democrat, revealed that a confidential informant told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the far-right militia group, the Proud Boys, would have killed Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 6 if they had found them. A Pence aide, Greg Jacob, testified that he read from the Bible while he and his boss hid inside the Capitol that day, uncertain if they would be assaulted and unaware that a mob armed with baseball bats and other weapons came within 40 feet of their location at one point. Trump was indifferent to Pence’s safety, taunting him in a speech he gave on the Ellipse before the Capitol siege began and then tweeting criticisms of him that stoked the mob’s fury.
“It felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that,” testified Sarah Matthews, a Trump deputy press secretary working at the White House during the siege. One rioter complained in a video taken that day that Pence might have “caved,” and said that if that turned out to be true the mob would drag “politicians through the streets.”
The hearings also made clear Trump’s state of mind before, during and after Jan. 6. Although Eastman had been told by many in the White House that his plan to overthrow the results of the election was “nutty,” “crazy” or illegal, he and Trump kept pushing. Even after Eastman conceded in front of Trump, Pence and Jacob on Jan. 4 that the plan was illegal, and later sought a criminal pardon from Trump, he and Trump kept pushing. Trump, frustrated by Pence’s unwillingness to go along, condemned him as a “pussy” in an Oval Office phone call with the vice president on the morning of Jan. 6 that was overheard by his daughter, Ivanka, and several other advisers.
Jason Miller, another Trump adviser, testified that the former president dictated most of a statement given to the New York Times on Jan. 5, 2021, that falsely claimed he and Pence were in agreement about the vice president’s ability to block certification of election results the following day. Trump knew at that point that his plan was illegal and that Pence didn’t agree with him — but still he lied about it.
All of this helps establish what lawyers call criminal intent, and will be useful evidence to the Justice Department if it chooses to prosecute Trump. There were already signs yesterday that federal prosecutors had begun targeting high-profile participants in the coup attempt. The New York Times reported that Eastman and Rudolph Giuliani, along with other members of Trump’s legal team, are subjects of a Justice Department probe of efforts to create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors in order to overturn the 2020 election results. The department has also contacted the Jan. 6 committee, seeking transcripts of witness testimony.
So America’s political representatives are doing their jobs, and law enforcement appears to be stepping up as well. US institutions appear to be holding their ground — proof, some say, that concerns about Trump’s attempted coup are overblown. It’s not like Trump got away with it, right?
Two years later, when an FBI agent transported one of the bombers to prison on a helicopter that flew past the buildings, he lifted the terrorist’s blindfold and told him to take a look — the World Trade Center was still standing. The terrorist responded that it wouldn’t be if his network had had more money. Terrorists took the buildings down six years later.
Threats to freedom and democracy don’t simply fade away. And avoiding one disaster doesn’t mean you’ve prevented the next one. Just ask Judge Michael Luttig.
• Don’t Ever Get Used to Trump’s Contempt for the Law: Jonathan Bernstein | 2022-06-17T12:52:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump and His Allies Will Repeat Jan. 6 If Necessary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-and-his-allies-will-repeat-jan6-if-necessary/2022/06/17/aae1f5e2-ee31-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-and-his-allies-will-repeat-jan6-if-necessary/2022/06/17/aae1f5e2-ee31-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Stop to smell the roses in an unsung corner of Paris
By Mary Winston Nicklin
A view of Parc de Bagatelle's classic rose garden, dotted with manicured boxwood. (Photos by Mary Winston Nicklin for The Washington Post)
In Paris, it’s the season for rose sniffers. As the days lengthen toward the summer solstice, the city’s roses unfurl their petals in an exuberant palette: coral, apricot, wine-red, lavender, sunny yellow. The colors are irresistible, but it’s really the scent that gives them away. The unmistakable perfume wafts over the cityscape and, for a brief moment, disguises less savory urban odors, luring passersby to plunge their noses into the roses and inhale with gusto.
These blooms aren’t just found in the major gardens, such as the Jardin des Plantes and the Parc de Bercy, with their dedicated rose gardens. Roses climb up old stone walls, brighten small squares and even perfume the Roland Garros stadium, where the French Open tennis tournament is held. But the best place to admire the “queen of flowers” is the Parc de Bagatelle, a western wonderland abutting the Bois de Boulogne that’s remarkably untouristed. In fact, I first visited Bagatelle only after a decade of living in Paris, and the taxi driver — when I alighted at the Pont de Neuilly metro stop — had never heard of my destination. (He resorted to GPS to navigate the remainder of the distance, which was less than two miles.)
While tourists have returned in full force to Paris, with crowds thronging the major monuments in the city center, Bagatelle offers intriguing heritage, a chateau born of a bet with Marie Antoinette, and 59 acres of verdure about five miles from the Notre-Dame cathedral. Not to mention the riot of roses: One of four locations for the Paris Botanical Garden, Bagatelle is planted with 10,000 rose bushes representing 1,200 varieties. This oasis is so alluring that some rose rustlers have even been caught sneaking clippings.
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It’s here in the classic rose garden where the International Competition for New Roses assembles a jury of experts — professional perfume “noses” and passionate enthusiasts — to judge new rose varieties in June. Established in 1907 as the world’s first such competition, it’s open to both amateur and professional breeders of noncommercialized roses. The competition has been canceled only once (during the Liberation of Paris in 1944), but coronavirus challenges meant adapting to virtual voting. Naturally, there’s a lot of excitement about the return of the in-person event. Alongside the garden’s strutting peacocks, the notebook-wielding jury members sniff and scope their way through the alleyways, the noses among them decrypting the precise litchi, citrus and clove notes of the flowers.
“Not only can breeders present their new varieties and see how they thrive here in Paris, but it’s also a showcase for the public to see the evolution of the rose: the new colors, the new shapes,” says Jean-Pierre Lelièvre, the head of horticulture for the Bois de Boulogne.
There’s a universal fascination with the rose. Laden with symbolism, it sprouts in literature and legend, including from Persian poets and bards of English literature. Indeed, the rose is rooted in the very soil of culture: It conjured divine paradise in the tombs of ancient Egypt; bloomed in ancient Greek legends; symbolizes “eternal spring” in China, where roses have been grown for 5,000 years; and represents the Virgin Mary for Catholics. The term “rosary,” explains novelist Alexander Chee in an essay of the same name, once meant rose garden in Middle English, and later became the term for prayer, associated with a “circlet of roses” offered to the Virgin Mary.
“Flowers are linked to our personal journey, from birth to death, and we’re instinctively drawn to the rose because it elicits emotions,” says Amy Kupec Larue, a garden guide and permanent jury member of the Bagatelle rose competition. “It’s a noble flower, elevated to a different category. You pick daisies. You cultivate roses.”
Undoubtedly, the allure is enhanced by the plant’s perfume and the memories grafted to our sense of smell. “In France, we have memories of roses in our parents’ gardens tied to the fragrance,” Lelièvre says. “The fact that these flowers give off an extraordinary scent contributes to their fame.”
Then there are the names, as poetic as the sagas behind them. Belle Hélène, York and Lancaster, Cuisse de Nymphe and — the oldest and perhaps most storied in France — the rose of Provins. It’s said that it was first brought back from the Crusades in the 13th century by Thibaud IV of Champagne, and — grown for perfume and medicinal remedies — contributed to the prosperity of Provins, now an immaculately preserved medieval town and UNESCO World Heritage site about an hour from Paris.
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But we really owe the French rose fad to a 19th-century trendsetter. Empress Joséphine Bonaparte amassed a collection of roses at the Château de Malmaison, about five miles west of Bagatelle, that awed visitors from all over the world. (On the bicentennial of her death in 2014, the chateau revived her garden of heirloom roses and introduced a new rose, “Souvenir de Joséphine.”) Roses were a part of Joséphine’s daily routine, perfuming her rooms and even adorning her dresses. Famously, she commissioned the painter-botanist Pierre-Joseph Redouté to illustrate a book of roses, a seminal work whose beautiful engravings remain in demand.
The origins of Bagatelle are linked to another rose fanatic, Queen Marie Antoinette. In 1777, she placed a bet with her brother-in-law the Count of Artois, who had recently acquired a country house in the woods between Versailles and Paris: Could he build a chateau worthy of a queen while the itinerant royal court traveled to the Château de Fontainebleau? Not about to lose the wager, the count enlisted about 900 workers and even confiscated building materials to complete it in just 64 days. The petite pleasure palace was designed for trysts and entertainment away from the nosy court, its neo-Palladian facade inscribed with the Latin phrase “Parva sed apta” (small but well designed).
Here the count cultivated la vie en rose — with erotic flair. The ground floor boasted two boudoirs decorated with frescos by Hubert Robert (now exhibited at the Met in New York). Water was pumped from the nearby Seine to supply the bathtub, from where a hidden staircase accessed the count’s bedroom, fashioned as a military tent. In fact, the word “bagatelle,” meaning “frivolous trifle,” has a double-entendre: It’s a slang term for lovemaking.
The hedonism continued in the surrounding park, conceived by Scottish landscape designer Thomas Blaikie in the Anglo-Chinese style popular at the time. “Bagatelle was the era’s Disney, with surprises at every turn,” Kupec Larue says. “Boats ferried guests on man-made streams all over the gardens, past an island with a black marble mausoleum, reminding guests to ‘seize the day,’ given the fleeting nature of life.” Many of the 18th-century follies, including an Egyptian obelisk and teepees with servants dressed as Native Americans, have long since disappeared, although grottoes, waterfalls and a reproduction of the pagoda still enchant visitors.
Following the French Revolution, Bagatelle was transformed by Napoleon into a hunting lodge, then acquired in 1835 by an English aristocrat and art collector, Lord Seymour, Marquess of Hertford. In turn, his heir, Sir Richard Wallace, lived at Bagatelle, famously donating to Paris the water fountains that still bear his name. It was in 1905 that Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, the visionary landscape designer and curator of the Bois de Boulogne, persuaded the city of Paris to save Bagatelle from developers. (More recently, the chateau again came under threat, falling into ruin, until the Mansart Foundation launched a restoration fueled by private donations. The exterior was completed in spring, and now the interiors will be renovated to become a museum exhibiting 18th-century decorative arts and paintings.)
And so it was that Forestier restored the park, interspersing bulb-planted lawns with prized horticultural collections, including peonies, irises and waterlilies, along with the classic rose garden. To this aim, Forestier called on the leading rosarian of the day, Jules Gravereaux, a former executive at the Bon Marché department store who had designed Europe’s first modern roseraie, or rose garden, at his country house in a village south of Paris known today as L’Haÿ-les-Roses. On a quest to re-create Joséphine’s long-vanished collection, Gravereaux assembled so many varieties that he soon surpassed the empress, even traveling to the Balkans on his mission to showcase all known roses on the planet. Gravereaux’s donation of 1,500 varieties of roses, alongside his expertise, is what created the triumphant botanical masterpiece that now draws rose aficionados from all over the world.
In the name of the rose
“With so many different colors, flower shapes, scents, growth patterns and flowering periods, there is a rose for everyone,” Kupec Larue says, “and new ones are painstakingly created every year to be displayed and judged here.”
International breeders send their varieties before March 15 of the preceding year to be planted anonymously for the competition. The average is 100 entrants, with creations coming from countries on five continents, including from South Korea and the United States this year. In the spring following their installation, the jury begins to note the number of flowerings until the day of the verdict. The permanent commission (which accounts for 50 percent of the score) is assisted by a diverse grand jury of rosarians. Among the pre-pandemic habitues: Susan Daniel, the Italian opera singer, wearing a magnificent big hat; Patricia Laigneau, co-owner of the Château du Rivau in the Loire Valley; and Stephen Scanniello, curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden.
Alongside the grand prize announced at the Bagatelle Orangery, there are awards given for perfume and the best landscape rose. A secondary prize is given by journalists, another by children and another by the general public. There are four criteria for judging: the plant (30 points), the flower (30 points), the perfume (10 points), and resistance to disease and pests (30 points). The use of chemical pesticides is forbidden in Paris parks, thereby valorizing the plants that are naturally disease-resistant.
“It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in “The Little Prince.” And each of these roses tells a story: of terroir, history and the people who cultivated them. A promenade through the Bagatelle roseraie is an invitation to contemplate the flowers bred for the pleasure and beauty of a garden, while admiring the novelty of horticultural creation. And why not make your own voice heard? The public is invited to assess the roses and cast their votes for the 2023 rose in the summer following the grand jury’s award for the 2022 rose.
“I think of Bagatelle as a sleeping beauty,” says Erik Benoit, one of the head gardeners. “We may be better known to foreigners than Parisians.”
Nicklin is a writer based in Paris. Her website is marywinstonnicklin.com. Find her on Twitter: @MaryWNicklin.
Bagatelle Park
Route de Sèvres à Neuilly, Bois de Boulogne, 16th arrondissement
bit.ly/parc-de-bagatelle
As one of four sites for the Paris Botanical Garden, the Parc de Bagatelle preserves rich plant collections in thematic gardens. There’s a jewel-like chateau, rolling meadows planted with bulbs and water features designed with boulders, grottoes and waterfalls. Alongside the classic rose garden, where the International Competition for New Roses takes place, there is also a landscape rose garden. Open daily, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., April to Sept. 30; earlier closure rest of the year. Admission about $3 per person April to Sept. 30. Park free the rest of the year.
Château de Malmaison
Avenue du Château de la Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison
011-33-141-290-555
bit.ly/chateau-malmaison
In the garden of her country estate, Joséphine Bonaparte assembled a famous collection of roses. The heirloom rose garden was restored in 2014. The chateau museum showcases period furniture and a Napoleon exhibit. Open every day except Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. (6:15 p.m. on weekends), April to Sept. 30. Closed for lunch, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Entry about $7 per person.
The Val-de-Marne Roseraie
Rue Albert, Rue Watel, L’Haÿ-les-Roses
bit.ly/roseraie-val-de-marne
Founded by Jules Gravereaux as the first garden dedicated to roses, the roseraie is situated just south of Paris. Open May 1 to Sept. 18. Daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Entry about $4 per adult; about $2 per person older than 60 and children 5 to 15.
us.france.fr/en | 2022-06-17T12:54:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Paris, the Parc de Bagatelle is a haven for rose lovers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/17/travel-vacation-paris-roses/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/17/travel-vacation-paris-roses/ |
The incident happened in Sanford, Fla., the city where Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012
Jermaine Jones, 16, said his family’s Mercedes was smashed by two White men in Sanford, Fla., on June 14. (Courtesy of Jermaine Jones )
A Black teenager was driving his family’s Mercedes-Benz this week through a neighborhood in Sanford, the Florida city known for the killing of Trayvon Martin, when he and his friend saw two White men angrily approach the vehicle with a traffic cone and a large stone.
The men accused the teens of street racing, which they denied, according to video recorded by the teen and posted to Instagram. After one of the adults tossed the orange cone at the side of the car and damaged the vehicle, the other man hurled the stone and shattered a window, according to a report from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.
“Tell them what you were doing!” one of the men yelled at the 16-year-old driver, accusing him of “burning out, racing” on the street.
“Get out of my neighborhood!” the other yelled at the teen, calling him an expletive.
After the teen — identified by authorities as Jermaine Jones — asked why one of the neighbors at the scene appeared to be carrying a gun, a White woman on the street responded, “You’re the one who would get a gun!”
“You don’t belong here!” she yelled.
Video of the confrontation Tuesday would soon go viral. Many praised the teen for handling a situation that could have ended differently had he not recorded it and called his parents for backup. Others also condemned the men’s behavior and accused them of racially profiling the teen.
“If I just were a White person driving through that neighborhood, I wouldn’t have been treated the way I was treated,” Jermaine, with his father’s permission, told The Washington Post in an interview.
Hours after the incident, Howard Hughes, 61, and Donald Corsi, 52, were arrested on felony charges of criminal mischief with property damage, according to reports obtained by The Post. Hughes also faces a misdemeanor charge of battery, and Corsi has been charged with a felony weapons offense of throwing a deadly “missile” into a vehicle.
Neither Hughes nor Corsi responded to requests for comment Thursday. A lawyer for Hughes did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday. Court records show Hughes has pleaded not guilty.
Corsi did not yet have a lawyer and had not entered a plea, according to court records.
C.J. Jones, the teen’s father, rushed to the scene with his wife shortly after his son called him. He told The Post the incident immediately brought up memories of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old Black man chased and murdered by three White men while jogging in a Georgia neighborhood in 2020.
“If we were not there, [law enforcement] would have never charged [the men] though we had evidence right there,” said Jones, 56. “We could have lost our son that day.”
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Jones deemed the charges “really mild” because, unlike in the Arbery case, no hate crime charges have been filed. Jermaine said it took law enforcement officers two to three hours to place the men under arrest after investigating, despite his account of what had happened and the shattered window, rock and cone as evidence.
“It seemed as [if] the case was going to go sour,” Jones said.
Sanford, about 25 miles outside Orlando, is perhaps best known as the city where neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman fatally shot Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in February 2012. Zimmerman claimed self-defense in shooting Martin, 17, in a case that was among the first to set the stage for the nation’s recent racial reckoning — and that helped give birth to the Black Lives Matter movement. Zimmerman was acquitted on all counts of second-degree murder and manslaughter in July 2013.
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Jermaine and his passenger were on their way to a friend’s house in the neighborhood Tuesday when the men later identified by law enforcement as Hughes and Corsi first yelled “verbal threats” as they approached the car, the arrest reports state. Jermaine said he stopped the car and apologized to the men in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. But the situation did not de-escalate, Jermaine told The Post.
Instead, one of the men, later identified by officers as Hughes, walked toward the car holding an orange cone and hit the driver’s-side rear door with it, which caused a large dent under the window, according to the report.
The other man, later identified by officers as Corsi, approached the car and threw a “large stone with sharp edges” into the rear driver’s side, shattering the window, the report states.
The rock was still inside the back seat when the officers arrived, the report states. Jermaine and his friend exited the car shortly after the objects were thrown because they feared for their lives, officers wrote.
Jermaine did not suffer any injuries, but his friend said one of the men hit him in the stomach with the cone, the report states.
Moments later, Jermaine began filming with his phone and then called 911 to report the incident, he said.
“They tried to pull guns on us, too,” he told the dispatcher, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Post.
Jermaine later added in a video posted to social media: “What one of them said, they was like, ‘Officer, we don’t tolerate none of that in our neighborhood,’ basically saying I ain’t belong in their neighborhood.”
“Don’t believe what he’s telling you!” one of the men is heard yelling in the background of the 911 call. “He’s lying!”
Jones said he will take care of the car’s repairs, something he considers to be minor collateral damage compared to the emotional scars the incident has left on his son.
“The night that it happened, I had a nightmare that I didn’t handle it the way that I handled it,” Jermaine said. “Last night, I couldn’t go to sleep until 3 or 4 in the morning.”
Hughes and Corsi have both been released on bond, according to court records. They are due back in court on Aug. 16. | 2022-06-17T14:01:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White men in Sanford, Fla., accused of smashing Black teen Jermaine Jones' car with rock - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/17/florida-black-teen-broken-window-sanford/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/17/florida-black-teen-broken-window-sanford/ |
Vince McMahon steps aside as WWE CEO amid probe of hush-money allegations
WWE CEO Vince McMahon. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Vince McMahon is stepping down as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment while the pro wrestling company’s board investigates claims that he made hush-money payments to a former employee over an alleged affair, the company announced Friday.
The company said in a news release that it was investigating alleged misconduct by McMahon and John Laurinaitis, the head of talent relations, after the Wall Street Journal reported that McMahon paid a secret $3 million to the former employee who was involved in an affair. The separation agreement signed in January prevented the unidentified employee “from discussing her relationship with Mr. McMahon or disparaging him,” according to the Journal.
“Effective immediately, McMahon has voluntarily stepped back from his responsibilities as CEO and Chairman of the Board until the conclusion of the investigation,” the company said in a news release.
The company did not specifically mention the allegations, and added it would not add further comment until the investigation is completed. It also did not mention whether Laurinaitis would step away from his role during the investigation.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
WWE noted that McMahon would “retain his role and responsibilities related to WWE’s creative content during this period,” meaning he would still be involved in USA’s “Monday Night Raw” and Fox’s “Friday Night SmackDown.”
“I have pledged my complete cooperation to the investigation by the Special Committee, and I will do everything possible to support the investigation. I have also pledged to accept the findings and outcome of the investigation, whatever they are,” McMahon, 76, said in a statement.
Stephanie McMahon, his daughter, will serve as the interim CEO and chairwoman, according to the company. She had recently taken a leave of absence from her role as chief brand officer to “focus on family.”
“I love this company and am committed to working with the Independent Directors to strengthen our culture and our Company; it is extremely important to me that we have a safe and collaborative workplace,” she said in a news release Friday. “I have committed to doing everything in my power to help the Special Committee complete its work, including marshaling the cooperation of the entire company to assist in the completion of the investigation and to implement its findings.”
She is on the company board, as is her husband, Paul Levesque, known by wrestling fans as Triple H. Vince McMahon still controls the majority of the voting power.
The Journal reported that the WWE’s board received an email on March 30 that alleged McMahon had hired the 41-year-old employee as a paralegal at “a salary of $100,000 but increased it to $200,000 after beginning a sexual relationship with her.” The email to the board accused McMahon of giving her like “a toy” to Laurinaitis, according to the Journal. Additional misconduct claims were made against Laurinaitis.
Since the investigation began in April, the probe had “unearthed other, older nondisclosure agreements involving claims by former female WWE employees of misconduct by Mr. McMahon.” The company has maintained that the relationship between McMahon and the female employee was consensual.
McMahon is married to Linda McMahon, who was the head of the Small Business Administration during the Trump administration.
Vince McMahon bought the then-World Wrestling Federation from his father in 1982. He has since morphed WWE into a pro wrestling juggernaut in business and pop culture, helping create stars such as Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock and John Cena. The publicly traded company’s shares have increased more than 30 percent since last year, according to CNN.
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WWE, which has been run by the McMahon family for decades, came to terms with Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming platform, on an exclusive rights deal for the WWE Network in January reportedly valued at more than $1 billion, according to the Journal. Its multiyear television deals with Fox Sports and USA Networks are at close to $470 million annually, more than triple the amount of the previous TV agreement.
Though WWE’s TV ratings are nowhere near where they were in the late 1990s and early 2000s when millions tuned in each week, the company has managed to make more money while being not as popular in traditional media, in large part because of its worldwide TV and media deals. The public company has also tried to improve its image after accusations of sexism in the portrayal of female wrestlers and shifted its programming from a TV-14 rating to TV-PG.
But some have been turned off by the company’s mistakes, including the mass firing of dozens of popular wrestlers during the pandemic; streaming issues on Peacock; and the company’s lucrative and long-term business relationship with Saudi Arabia continuing after the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Its most recent event in Saudi Arabia — “Elimination Chamber” — was in February, and the company will be back for another event in November.
Despite the announcement that he’s stepping aside as CEO, WWE tweeted that McMahon would be appearing on “SmackDown” on Friday night. | 2022-06-17T14:23:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vince McMahon steps down as WWE CEO as board investigates hush-money allegations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/17/vince-mcmahon-wwe-ceo-steps-down-misconduct/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/17/vince-mcmahon-wwe-ceo-steps-down-misconduct/ |
LOUISVILLE, KY - MARCH 17: A child puts her mask back on after finishing lunch at a socially distanced table in the cafeteria of Medora Elementary School on March 17, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky. Today marks the reopening of Jefferson County Public Schools for in-person learning with new COVID-19 procedures in place. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images) (Photographer: Jon Cherry/Getty Images North America)
Although U.S. public-school students faced plenty of challenges during the pandemic, most of them could at least count on one benefit: a free lunch. Waivers issued by the federal government in 2020 have enabled schools to serve meals free of charge to all students, regardless of family income. With the waivers set to expire later this month, many of those kids are now at risk of going hungry. For the sake of their health and education, it’s imperative for Congress to step in.
Prior to the pandemic, students from families with incomes at or below 130% of the federal poverty line qualified for free meals, while those with incomes at or below 185% of the poverty line received lunch at a reduced rate, thanks to the National School Lunch Program. In the last full school year before Covid, more than half of the country’s 50 million public-school students were eligible for such benefits.
In response to the coronavirus, the Department of Agriculture made numerous temporary changes to this system, including waiving income-eligibility rules, providing higher reimbursements to schools, and expanding a program that offers meals during the summer. The government also eased restrictions on the foods schools can buy and serve, which helped districts to cope with shortages of everything from chicken nuggets to milk. Due in part to a decline in enrollment, public schools actually served fewer lunches overall in the most recent school year than they did before the pandemic — but the proportion of children who ate for free increased by more than 20 percentage points.
With many districts still dealing with supply-chain problems, school leaders had reason to assume that Congress would extend the waivers beyond their June 30 expiration date. But a spending bill passed in March failed to do so. The issue has since become a source of partisan finger-pointing.
Politics aside, students will suffer the consequences. To comply with pre-pandemic regulations, districts may be forced to curtail free summer-meal programs, potentially jeopardizing access to food for 7 million children. Restoring income-eligibility rules would compound the administrative burden on schools, which now must scramble to process applications from families who haven’t submitted them in more than two years. With many schools already closed for the summer, low-income students who haven’t yet filed the paperwork could go hungry when they return to the classroom in the fall.
That would be an avoidable mistake. Even beyond its immediate benefits, the school-lunch program reduces food insecurity among low-income households, lowers obesity rates, and improves students’ overall well-being. It also improves classroom behavior and academic performance, since studies show that hunger impedes concentration and harms mental health. It’s no surprise that the program is popular among voters across the political spectrum; polling during the pandemic suggests that a majority supports making universal free meals permanent.
Policy makers should take notice. Creating a new free-lunch entitlement for all students, including those from affluent families, risks siphoning away resources from critical educational priorities aimed at disadvantaged youth. Yet maintaining uninterrupted access for students who can’t afford it is a basic government responsibility.
The wisest course is for Congress to extend the waivers for the upcoming school year, while requiring states to submit a plan for transitioning back to normal in 2023. Lawmakers should also expand the program’s Community Eligibility Provision, which allows schools with high numbers of disadvantaged students to provide free meals for all, a targeted approach that reduces paperwork and combats the stigma poorer students experience but avoids larding benefits on the rich. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s administration should reform the program to reduce the burden it places on schools — for instance, by simplifying the enrollment process for students from families that already receive federal welfare benefits.
More than two years since schools first closed their doors, America’s students are still struggling to recover. It shouldn’t be asking too much to ensure that they all have enough to eat.
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• How History Blazed the Trail to Baby Formula: Stephen Mihm | 2022-06-17T14:23:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Don’t Take Lunch From America’s Students - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-take-lunch-from-americas-students/2022/06/17/e97cf312-ee3e-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/dont-take-lunch-from-americas-students/2022/06/17/e97cf312-ee3e-11ec-9f90-79df1fb28296_story.html |
Ilana Diener holds her son, Hudson, 3, at an appointment for a Moderna coronavirus vaccine trial in Commack, N.Y., on Nov. 30, 2021. (Emma H. Tobin/AP)
More than a year and a half after the oldest Americans gained access to coronavirus vaccines, the nation’s youngest citizens are poised to start getting shots next week, a move made possible when federal regulators Friday authorized vaccines for children as young as 6 months.
For many parents and pediatricians, the Food and Drug Administration clearing of two vaccines — one by Moderna and the other by Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech — comes as a huge relief. Friday’s authorizations arrived two days after a panel of external advisers unanimously recommended that the agency greenlight vaccines for the last age group eligible for a shot of protection against the virus.
The vaccines for young children arrive at a critical moment in the nation’s quest to vanquish the virus, with vaccination levels overall flagging even as covid-19 hospitalizations reach their highest average level in more than three months. And they come a few months before the fall, which, along with the winter, could feature another deadly surge of covid cases.
Their first opportunity, if all goes as expected, will be early next week, following what are expected to be favorable recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday.
Yet indications are that initial uptake of the vaccines will be low. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, only 18 percent said they plan to get their children vaccinated right away, while 27 percent said they will “definitely not” get their child vaccinated.
“There’s a lot of information and trust building that needs to happen,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s going to take time to reach other parents, and they’re going to need to really develop confidence in the vaccine and hear it from their most trusted local health-care providers. … Hopefully, with time, people will have increasing confidence that it’s both effective and safe.”
Other experts advise setting realistic expectations about what the shots can do against a pathogen that can evolve quickly. Neither vaccine was tested against the fast-spreading omicron subvariants, called BA.4 and BA.5, that are circulating and have an exceptional ability to evade immune protections.
Vaccines tested against earlier lineages of the coronavirus “won’t hold up that well in protecting against infection by the new subvariants,” said Peter Hotez, a molecular virologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “But they will still be very effective in preventing children from going to the hospital or the intensive care unit.”
The Moderna vaccine is for children 6 months through 5 years old. It consists of two doses of 25 micrograms each — one-quarter of the adult dose — given four weeks apart. In studies, it was shown to be 51 percent effective in preventing illness in children 6 months to 2 years old and 37 percent effective in children ages 2 to 5.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is for children 6 months through 4 years old, is three shots of 3 micrograms each, one-tenth the adult dose. The first two shots are given three weeks apart, and the third at least two months later. Preliminary data suggests the vaccine’s efficacy against symptomatic illness is about 80 percent, but FDA officials said that figure was based on so few cases that it will probably change and may well decline. The vaccine is already authorized for older children and teenagers.
As information about the two vaccines emerges, physicians are sure to debate which is preferable. But many say it will require additional data accumulated during use of the two brands in the real world to determine which is more effective — and that other factors have to be considered, such as side effects. In many cases, parents won’t have a choice because pediatricians might stock just one of the vaccines — though big, hospital-based practices might offer both.
Some parents might prefer the two-shot regimen by Moderna, which can be completed more quickly than the Pfizer-BioNTech three-dose regimen. The Pfizer-BioNTech shot produces fewer fevers. That vaccine, with its lower doses, had low effectiveness after two shots, but it might ultimately provide more protection after three shots, given omicron and its subvariants. Moderna is testing a third dose and says it will have results during the summer.
In coming days, however, the Biden administration and others do not plan to emphasize the fine points of each vaccine regimen but instead underscore the importance of getting children vaccinated, regardless of which shots are used.
It’s expected some parents will opt against immunizing their children, saying they have some natural immunity because they had covid. As many as 75 percent of children have been infected since the beginning of the pandemic, many during the recent surge in infections driven by omicron, according to a new study.
Health groups are gearing up to promote the shots. The American Academy of Pediatrics is coordinating with another major medical group and the Biden administration to create a speaker’s bureau of doctors who can answer parents’ common questions about the vaccine.
“In regards to education, it really is going to take an effort at the federal level, as well as at the state and local level,” said Lisa Costello, a member of the pediatric organization’s committee on state government affairs. “We know that pediatricians and health-care providers are trusted sources of information.”
Julia Skapik, chief medical information officer at the National Association of Community Health Centers, said many health professionals intend to have conversations about the vaccine with parents during regular office visits, because many parents are not planning to get their child vaccinated. It’s getting close to the time when schoolchildren need their annual physicals, and “that’s a real opportunity for getting kids vaccinated.”
But Permar also raised questions about the traditional practice of first testing vaccines in healthy adults and then moving down the age scale should be adjusted.
But others said it was reasonable for the companies to do the “step-down” method to ensure they understand potential side effects before testing shots on children. Safety standards are especially high for healthy youngsters, particularly for an illness that does not usually make children seriously ill.
“It’s the classic approach, for safety reasons,” Hotez said.
Rachel Roubein and Katie Shepherd contributed to this report. | 2022-06-17T14:24:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FDA authorizes coronavirus vaccine for young kids with shots likely next week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/17/young-children-coronavirus-vaccine-fda-authorizes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/17/young-children-coronavirus-vaccine-fda-authorizes/ |
A century before Zimmerman, Walter Johnson transformed D.C. baseball
A statue of Hall of Fame ace Walter Johnson in front of Nationals Park. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
When the Nationals celebrate Ryan Zimmerman’s career this weekend at Nationals Park, they will pay tribute to a player who has been the face of Washington baseball in a way no one has in a century — since Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson.
Like Johnson, Zimmerman — who announced his retirement in February — played his entire career here, slogged through many years of bad baseball and helped lead his team to a World Series title in the twilight of his career.
Zimmerman made his debut at the age of 20, 98 years after Johnson’s first game with the Washington Senators at the age of 19. Johnson finally got a chance to play in the World Series when he was 36 and the entire nation rallied around the underdog Senators, who beat the New York Giants in seven games.
Zimmerman was 35 when the Nats upset the Houston Astros in the 2019 World Series, also in seven games. Those remain D.C.’s only World Series titles, 95 years apart. Zimmerman’s retirement comes 95 years after Johnson’s in 1927.
Johnson’s Senators and Zimmerman’s Nats were nearly equally bad at the beginning of their careers. In his first five seasons in the big leagues, Johnson pitched for a team that finished in last or second-to-last place in the American League every season; Zimmerman’s Nats finished in the bottom two in the National League East Division his first five years, too. Twice in those periods, their teams had the worst record in baseball. The Nats got to restock off those fallow years by drafting Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper with back-to-back No. 1 draft picks, but there was no draft back in Johnson’s day, making a rebuild much more challenging.
Both players dated back to the beginning of Washington’s teams. The Nats made Zimmerman their first draft selection after moving here from Montreal in June 2005, and he made his debut three months later. The Senators scouted Johnson playing semipro baseball in Idaho and signed him in June 1907, during their seventh season.
“SECURES A PHENOM,” a Washington Post headline declared on June 30, 1907. “Johnson His Name and He Hails from the Wooly West.” He debuted for the Senators on Aug. 2.
They both put up spectacular numbers in their first abbreviated first seasons — Zimmerman hit .397 in 20 games, while Johnson posted a 1.88 earned run average in 14 games.
Zimmerman’s feat of playing his entire career with one team is almost unheard of in today’s era of free agency, but it was more common in Johnson’s day. Zimmerman helped bridge generations of Washington baseball fans, many of whom lived 33 years without a local team. As he told me after the Nats’ 2019 title for my book on Washington baseball history, “You Gotta Have Heart”:
The team has been here long enough where I’ll have 20-year-old or 25-year-old guys or girls come up to me and be like, “Hey thanks, you know you’ve been my favorite since I was a little kid” — which makes me feel really old, but also it is really cool because you have that again now.
Being here for so long, I’ve talked to some people who said they used to go to Senators games with their parents. These people went to games with their dad or mom when they were four or five or six years old, but their kids are now grown, and they never had a baseball team to do that with their dad or mom. So you missed that whole generation.
One of the most important things this World Series did was restore baseball back to D.C. It’s almost like some closure to baseball coming back.
Both Zimmerman and Johnson knew when it was time to retire. Johnson, 39, went 5-6 with a 5.10 ERA in his final season — although he hit .348 and slugged .522 in 46 at-bats. Zimmerman, 37 when he retired, hit .243 last year, but he did have some pop left in his bat, homering 14 times and driving in 46 RBIs in just 255 at-bats.
Johnson had arguably the best career of any big league pitcher in history and still holds the record for most shutouts with 110. Zimmerman wasn’t that kind of transformational player, but he retired as the Nats’ all-time leader in homers, hits, RBI and games played. On Saturday, his No. 11 will be retired, the first time a Nationals player has received that honor.
Johnson remained a fixture in the D.C. region, as Zimmerman, known as “Mr. National,” plans to do. “Although my baseball career has come to an end, my family and I will continue to be heavily involved in the DMV community,” he said.
A couple of years after retiring, Johnson became manager of the Senators. In three of four seasons under Johnson, the Senators had a winning percentage of .597 or better, but they couldn’t make it back to the World Series. Later, he entered politics, winning a seat on the Montgomery County Commission and nearly pulling off an upset victory as a Republican candidate for Congress in 1940. Today there’s a high school named for him in Bethesda.
Both excelled in unassuming ways, without seeking the spotlight. When Johnson retired, he said he “simply does not want to be in the way next season.”
“Walter Johnson, more than any other ball player, probably more than any other athlete, professional or amateur, became the symbol of gentlemanly conduct in the battle heat,” wrote Washington Post sports columnist Shirley Povich in 1946, following Johnson’s death at the age of 59.
“The big fellow from Coffeyville, Kan.,” wrote New York Times sports columnist Arthur Daley, “was a gentleman of the highest type, a distinct credit to his sport.”
Although players today aren’t often described as “gentlemen,” the sentiments behind those comments describe Zimmerman’s conduct.
He told The Post that when people see him and thank him for being a role model, “I feel like I don’t know why you’re thanking me — all I did was play baseball. I got to play baseball for a job. That’s the best way to put it. I shouldn’t be being thanked. I feel like I should be thanking them.”
Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and sports historian, is the author of several books, including “You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals." Twitter | 2022-06-17T14:24:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Like Ryan Zimmerman and Nationals, Walter Johnson made Senators great - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/17/walter-johnson-ryan-zimmerman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/17/walter-johnson-ryan-zimmerman/ |
By John F. Seymour
A video recording of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is played in Houston on May 27 during the National Rifle Association's annual convention. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
John F. Seymour is a longtime resident of Arlington.
The National Rifle Association, considered among the most powerful and well-funded special-interest lobbying groups in the United States, has occupied its headquarters in Fairfax since 1993, when it left D.C. Recently, however, it announced its intent to move once again — this time to Texas. The proposed move is motivated, at least in part, by a series of scandals that caused regulators in New York, the NRA’s state of incorporation, to begin investigating what they described as long-standing greed, self-dealing and lax financial oversight at the highest levels of the organization. Faced with internal lawsuits, criticism within its own ranks and growing financial liabilities, the NRA sought to reorganize in bankruptcy and reincorporate in Texas, thus escaping “escalating government hostilities” in New York and relocating to a state that welcomes it “with open arms.”
Although the NRA’s bid for bankruptcy protection was denied, the organization continues to explore a move to Texas. It seems that Virginia is not the Virginia of 1993. In 1993, the successful Republican candidate for governor, George Allen, was endorsed by the NRA, which has, since then, consistently awarded him its coveted A-plus pro-gun rating. During the past several decades, however, the commonwealth has become less gun-friendly. During the 2019-2021 era of Democratic control of the General Assembly, legislators worked with then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D) — a former Army doctor and practicing pediatric neurologist with a deep understanding of the trauma of gun violence, particularly against children — to enact a package of gun-control measures. It included universal background checks, a red-flag law allowing authorities to temporarily seize handguns, limitations on the number of handguns that can be purchased monthly, and tougher laws requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms and keep firearms away from children. The new laws prompted rebukes from the NRA, an F rating for Northam and a massive gun rights rally in Richmond that drew more than 20,000 gun activists.
In contrast to Virginia, Texas is one of the most pro-gun jurisdictions in the country. The NRA supports Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s reelection this November and has awarded him an A-plus rating. Abbott, a Republican, recently signed a package of pro-gun laws, including a new permitless carry law, allowing nearly every Texan to carry a handgun in public without a license. His declaration of Texas as a “Second Amendment Sanctuary State” helps shield Texas from gun-control laws that might be passed at the federal level, and he even signed a law prohibiting state agencies from contracting with any entity that “discriminates” against the firearms industry or its trade associations. The latter law is directed at financial institutions with environmental, social and governance policies that, for example, discourage loans to businesses manufacturing assault weapons.
Texas’s history as a frontier state with a long tradition of gun ownership might also make it more palatable to the NRA. Although numbers vary, as many as 400,000 NRA members are said to live in Texas, the largest membership of any state. In its recent tweet responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., however, the NRA was forced to concede the presence in Texas of the occasional “lone, deranged criminal.” An anomaly, it seems, along with similar anomalies responsible for mass shootings in Texas in recent years (the El Paso Walmart shooting of 2019, during which a far-right gunman murdered 23 and injured another 25 victims; the 2017 First Baptist Church massacre in Sutherland Springs, Tex., during which a gunman murdered 26 worshipers and wounded more than 20 others; the Dallas shooting of 2016, in which a lone gunman murdered five police officers and injured 11 others; the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, during which a student murdered eight students and two teachers, and wounded 13). Regrettable, certainly, but still anomalous. Nothing, according to the NRA and Texas legislators, to suggest the need for new gun-control measures.
Texans might wish to know what they’re getting if the NRA moves its headquarters to Texas, other than executives mired in the nether regions of corporate malfeasance. Well, the NRA does host a shooting range where employees only occasionally shoot themselves by accident. Texas would also acquire a firearms museum devoted to promoting firearm ownership as a kind of secular religion. There, galleries are filled with ranks of highly polished weapons displayed under soft lights, floors cushioned by deep carpets, walls paneled in mahogany, and spacious brown leather couches placed at intervals to allow for quiet reflection — settings that, except for the objects of reverence, would not be out of place at the National Gallery of Art or even Washington National Cathedral. The America envisaged by the NRA in the museum’s historical tableaus is one in which modern Minutemen take up arms against a tyrannical government, where local militias, well-provisioned with assault weapons (the museum dubs the AR-15, the most common civilian assault weapon, as “America’s Rifle”), protect against those who do not look like them, where the myths of the Lost Cause are preserved as historical truths, and where — in a diorama of unintentional heartbreak labeled “A Child’s Room” — a 10-year-old boy’s bedroom is crammed with toy weapons, laid out as cherished playthings. Guns as “rites of passage,” for certain. But where to: honorable manhood, toxic masculinity or armed madness?
The NRA’s solution to mass shootings in Texas or Virginia, like those of the GOP and the gun manufacturers, is very simple: more guns. State and local officials are urged to “harden” soft targets such as schools, churches, shopping centers and, presumably, all communal settings in the United States, with more and better security devices and armed guards. “Blaming the target” might be less disgraceful than blaming the victim’s lack of firearms — a stratagem difficult to pursue when the victims are fourth-graders. But the “good guys with guns” approach has been tried, and has failed miserably, as weapons sales and mass shootings have risen in tandem. In 2020, firearm-related injuries became, for the first time, the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. The FBI recently documented 61 active-shooter incidents in the United States during 2021 alone. This year appears to promise new records.
As the current hosts of the NRA headquarters, Virginians can give no more fitting benedictions to Texans than those the NRA and its enablers in the Republican Party have used for decades to comfort the families of mass-shooting victims. Our thoughts and prayers go with you. If the NRA relocates to Texas, you’ll need them. | 2022-06-17T14:24:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, NRA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/17/dont-let-door-hit-you-way-out-nra/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/17/dont-let-door-hit-you-way-out-nra/ |
By Robert Borlick
(SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News)
Robert Borlick is an energy consultant with more than 40 years of experience with the electric power industry and is the founder of Borlick Energy Consultancy.
Offshore wind power is coming here! Maryland’s Clean Energy Jobs Act of 2019 (CEJA) mandates the procurement of at least 1,200 megawatts of in-state offshore wind by 2030. Because offshore wind is one of the most expensive forms of renewable energy, this requirement will increase the electric bills of Maryland’s residential and small-business electricity consumers (large consumers are exempt). Considering how expensive this energy is, wouldn’t the logical decision be to build just the minimum capacity required to comply with the CEJA? The Maryland Public Service Commission (MPSC) chose differently.
The MPSC approved two offshore wind projects totaling more than 1,600 megawatts of capacity — far more than the CEJA requires. Although the exact cost burden ultimately imposed on electricity consumers is uncertain, based on estimates produced by the MPSC’s own consultant, ICF, it will likely be about $4 billion in today’s dollars.
The CEJA conditioned its 1,200-megawatt target by limiting the increases in consumers’ electric bills. Those limits effectively determine the maximum subsidy authorized for the offshore wind projects, which is less than $1 billion in today’s dollars. So the MPSC’s decision effectively spent at least four times more than the CEJA authorized.
The contractual payments the MPSC approved are known with near-certainty and total about $8 billion in today’s dollars. In contrast, the revenue from selling the wind projects’ energy and capacity into the wholesale electricity markets, which will partially offset the contract payments, are highly uncertain because they largely depend on future natural gas prices. Forecasting natural gas prices up to 45 years into the future is speculative. In light of this asymmetric risk, one would expect the MPSC to take a conservative approach when valuing the offsetting revenue. It did not.
The US Wind project offered a price that is 32 percent lower than that offered by the Skipjack project. Given this huge price disparity, one would logically expect the MPSC to approve only the less expensive project, which satisfies the CEJA’s 2028 target, and to open a new proceeding to acquire the remaining capacity needed to meet the CEJA 2030 target. It did not.
In all fairness, the MPSC confronted a law that imposed two conflicting conditions with no guidance regarding how to reconcile them. Clearly, the legislature bears responsibility for enacting that flawed law. But that did not justify the MPSC making unrealistically optimistic assumptions in an effort to purportedly satisfy both conditions. Instead, it should have acquired only the cheaper project and informed the legislature of the irreconcilable conflict the CEJA created.
One objective of the CEJA is to create well-paying jobs within Maryland. But how much should the state spend to create a job? The approved offshore wind projects are projected to pay, on average, between $70,000 and $100,000 per year plus benefits for each full-time job. In stark contrast, each full-time-equivalent job the US Wind project creates will cost Maryland about $90,000. However, the Skipjack project will cost about $670,000 per full-time-equivalent job. Surely, the state can find cheaper, more cost-effective opportunities to create jobs.
This offshore wind award looks like a colossal, $4 billion boondoggle. To their credit, Maryland’s legislators effectively capped the subsidy for offshore wind. The MPSC then spent at least four times that legal limit. Guess who is going to pick up the tab? Not the five commissioners. | 2022-06-17T14:24:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maryland’s offshore wind project is a $4 billion boondoggle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/17/marylands-offshore-wind-project-is-4-billion-boondoggle/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/17/marylands-offshore-wind-project-is-4-billion-boondoggle/ |
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