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How Luke Barnett of ‘Floor is Lava’ would spend a perfect day in D.C.
Like many a child of the Nickelodeon generation, Luke Barnett grew up watching “Double Dare,” “Guts” and “Legends of the Hidden Temple,” all while fantasizing about navigating one of those gimmicky game show courses himself.
Eventually, Barnett got his shot — just a couple of decades later than expected. Earlier this month, the 39-year-old actor and screenwriter could be seen alongside fellow entertainers Chris Mann and Tanner Thomason in the Season 2 premiere of Netflix’s “Floor Is Lava.” And not only did Barnett compete — he and his teammates, who played with baby dolls strapped to their chests and billed themselves as “Team Bad Daditude,” navigated the faux magma with such aplomb that they edged two other trios to win the episode.
“It was genuinely insane,” says Barnett, who grew up in Clinton, Md., before relocating to Los Angeles in his 20s. “They don’t let you see the actual course whatsoever until you walk out there to do it, and it is way bigger than it looks on TV. But it was more fun than I even imagined — it really was. Like, 11-year-old Luke Barnett was living his fantasy.”
Keeping the Bad Daditude spirit alive, Barnett returns for an unabashedly touristy D.C. dream day that’s all about sharing his hometown with his wife, Emily, and their 3-year-old daughter, Penny.
I should preface this by saying that if you would have asked me 10 years ago, the article would be called, “What are the best bars in D.C.?” because that’s all that I would really do. But I have a 3-year-old now, so this trip would be oriented around their first time experiencing D.C.
We’d start out by waking up at the Kimpton Banneker hotel near Dupont Circle and jog-walking — because I’m very slow — down to the Lincoln Memorial. Then we’re taking the Metro everywhere, because it’s awful in LA. When we’re not on the Metro, we’re rollerblading. That’s right — in this world, rollerblading is very cool again. So we’d Metro and rollerblade to Ted’s Bulletin on Capitol Hill for breakfast. I went there for the first time during my last trip to D.C., and their homemade pop-tarts are possibly the best thing I’ve ever had — I had one on my first day there, and I came back every morning and got another.
Then we’re full-on tourists. We’re going to the National Mall, we’re riding the carousel, we’re at the National Museum of Natural History, we’re at the National Museum of American History, we’re at the National Air and Space Museum. And there are no lines anywhere — it’s just us and the museums. The thing about growing up in D.C. and then moving somewhere else is you really appreciate D.C. more than you did when you were a kid. Whenever I’ve gone back with family or friends who aren’t from D.C., I can look over at them and they have just this awestruck look. You just forget how beautiful the city is, and how much history is in D.C.
Next, we’d make our way from the museums to Ben’s Chili Bowl. We’re getting the biggest bowl of old-fashioned chili they have, then watching tourists watch politicians eat lunch. After that, we’d basically spend the entire afternoon at the National Zoo.
By this point, usually I’d want to go out to happy hour, maybe at Old Ebbitt Grill, and have an old-school Italian dinner at Caruso’s Grocery. Or maybe I’d end up at 9:30 Club or the Black Cat, since I try to hit those whenever I go back to D.C. But in this case, after all the rollerblading and the Metro and the museums, I’m asleep at 6. So it feels like my day is going to end — until my phone goes off. It’s a call from Jon, Ben and Jeff, a few of my D.C. friends, and all of a sudden we’re having dinner at the Waterfront and we’re going to Nationals Park. The Nats are playing the Dodgers. Who wins? Well, let’s not ruin a nice article. | 2022-06-20T12:27:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How 'Floor Is Lava' winner Luke Barnett would spend a perfect day in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/20/luke-barnett-dream-day/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/20/luke-barnett-dream-day/ |
The end of Roe v. Wade would disrupt abortion training for doctors
Aaron Campbell, an obstetrician and gynecologist who provides abortions, shows some of the instruments used in the procedure as medical student Lindsey Gorman watches at the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health in Tennessee on June 10. (Jessica Tezak for The Washington Post)
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — As he aborted 11 pregnancies at a clinic here one busy Friday this month, Aaron Campbell also was training a medical student in a procedure that soon could be outlawed in this state and many others. Case by case, he narrated the nuances of pelvic examination, pain-blocking injection, cervical dilation and, ultimately, the removal of embryonic or fetal tissue.
Lindsey Gorman observed throughout and participated when appropriate, under Campbell’s guidance. With her hands she checked the size and tilt of the uterus. She also practiced ultrasound techniques and used speculums, swabs and local anesthetic to prepare patients. The student from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pennsylvania was the seventh trainee to work with him in the past year, following medical residents from East Tennessee State University and the University of Tennessee’s teaching hospital in Knoxville.
Campbell and other abortion providers are racing to train the next wave of specialists in the field as the days tick toward a Supreme Court decision that could imperil the legal foundation of their practice and lead to upheaval across the country for education and training in reproductive health.
Barring a surprise ruling, a geographic split looms: Some states will provide full access to abortion training for medical residents and students. Some will have limited access. And some will have virtually no access without long-distance travel. That, in turn, could influence where many doctors, especially those focused on obstetrics and gynecology, choose to live and work.
The leak of a draft court opinion in May showed that justices are poised to overturn the 1973 precedent Roe v. Wade, which would be a monumental victory for the antiabortion movement. If the court strikes down or narrows Roe, an array of medical institutions will face state scrutiny over how abortion is taught.
While abortion-rights advocates worry and wait, Campbell performs elective abortions for as many patients as he can at the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health and trains as many medical students and residents as he can.
“We can pass as many laws as we want, for or against access,” Campbell said, “but at the end of the day, if you don’t have trained providers, you don’t have choice.”
The trainer and trainee shared a sense of mission as they worked in this city where an arsonist on New Year’s Eve destroyed another clinic that provided abortions.
Campbell, 31, whose father was an abortion provider, has an image of a wire clothes hanger tattooed onto his right forearm — a reminder, he said, of “what happens when abortion is illegal.” Gorman, 25, has a wire-hanger tattoo on her left wrist. “As long as I am legally able to provide this care,” she said, “I know I will.”
Abortion training is common in obstetrics and gynecology and can play a role in other medical fields. To maintain accreditation, OB/GYN residency programs are required to “provide training or access to training in the provision of abortions,” according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Residents are allowed to opt out for religious or moral reasons.
“All programs must have an established curriculum for family planning, including for complications of abortions and provisions for the opportunity for direct procedural training in terminations of pregnancy for those residents who desire it,” the council said.
In many places, compliance with that requirement soon could prove difficult. The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion laws and policies, finds 22 states have “trigger laws” or other statutes to ban abortion, with limited exceptions, if the Supreme Court allows. Another four states are likely to seek abortion bans as soon as possible, according to the institute.
The latest action on abortion legislation across the states
In April, researchers with the University of California at San Francisco and UCLA reported in a study that 44 percent of about 6,000 OB/GYN residents nationwide would be certain or likely to lack access to in-state abortion training if Roe falls.
Those figures probably understate the issue. Abortion intersects with the curriculum in various ways, experts say, during medical school and afterward in medical residencies and fellowships. Family medicine residents often seek abortion training. So do doctors who pursue advanced training for complex pregnancy situations. So do medical students, like Gorman, who might be exploring aspects of reproductive health before they apply for a residency.
Kavita Vinekar, one of the study’s authors, is an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA. She predicted significant ripple effects if abortion training is curtailed. “Those skills are applicable to so many other aspects of reproductive care,” Vinekar said. Hands-on experience in terminating pregnancy helps doctors counsel patients in many situations and treat complications of miscarriage, she said. “This is not just about abortion.”
Doctors who oppose abortion rights disagree. “Abortion isn’t health care, and I don’t believe it has a place in health-care training,” said Christina Francis, who is on the board of directors of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and will become its chief executive next year.
Francis, herself an OB/GYN specialist in Fort Wayne, Ind., said she never observed or participated in abortion during her residency. But she said the training she received in managing miscarriages — particularly the uterine-emptying procedure known as dilation and curettage — would have enabled her “very easily” to perform an elective abortion if she had chosen to do so.
Dilation and curettage, or “D and C,” which typically uses an instrument to suction tissue from the uterus, is a standard option for aborting early pregnancies. Dilation and evacuation, or “D and E,” is a similar procedure for second-trimester abortion that uses additional tools, such as forceps.
New limits on abortion would not impede the training of OB/GYN residents, Francis said. All that would be diminished, she said, is “the capability of ending the lives of preborn children.” Francis said she doesn’t want patients to be scared of such changes. “This narrative that really is being pushed by the abortion industry and its allies, that physician training is going to suffer significantly if a state happens to restrict abortion in some way, is a complete lie,” she said.
However the Supreme Court rules, it seems almost certain that abortion training will be affected. Roe legalized abortion nationwide until the point of fetal viability, now generally considered to be around 23 or 24 weeks.
If Roe is narrowed to protect abortion only up to 15 weeks — the threshold under the Mississippi law before the court — there are likely to be fewer opportunities for medical residents to learn methods of second-trimester abortion.
If Roe is overturned, residents and residency programs in states that ban abortion may have to scramble to find abortion training slots in states where it is still legal. And there is no guarantee that enough slots would be available to meet demand.
The potential end of Roe won’t stop this abortion provider-in-training
There is another wild card: the rise of medication abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The two-drug combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, taken as pills, accounts for slightly more than half of abortions in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Many states allow only doctors to provide mifepristone. Those doctors must learn how and when to dispense the pills and monitor outcomes, a process likely to draw growing scrutiny.
But procedural training is shaping up to be a major challenge. Here in Tennessee, there are OB/GYN residency programs at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and hospitals associated with the University of Tennessee and East Tennessee State, among other institutions. A state abortion ban, which would be triggered if Roe is overturned, could force medical residents who want abortion training to travel to Illinois, North Carolina or Virginia.
Nikki B. Zite, an OB/GYN professor at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine and former director of the residency program here, has been a vocal opponent of abortion bans. She spoke with The Washington Post on the condition that an article would note Zite does not speak for the university.
Worried about the fallout of a Supreme Court ruling, Zite drafted a statement about what may happen to OB/GYN programs. She said she was consulting with academic leaders in the state to see if they would sign onto it.
“We fear that both resident education and patient care for miscarriage will be compromised by the abortion ban,” the statement said. “We also acknowledge that we will be unable to offer the mandated training in our state and this will likely compromise the ability to recruit future doctors to train and practice in Tennessee.”
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, which oversees teaching hospitals in Knoxville and elsewhere, declined to comment on possible disruptions to abortion training. So did the Vanderbilt medical center. East Tennessee State said it will follow state laws and accreditation requirements.
Representatives of Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) did not respond to email and phone messages seeking comment. He has backed multiple abortion bans, including a 2019 law that would make it a felony to perform an abortion if Roe is overturned. There would be exceptions for cases in which a pregnant person is at risk of death or serious injury.
North Carolina, which is not expected to ban abortion, could become a hub for abortion training in the South. Matthew Zerden, an OB/GYN specialist, coordinates training efforts in the state for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. “There will be a huge surge of patients coming our way,” Zerden said, referring to possible bans in nearby states. With that surge would come a demand for specialists to perform abortions. “We are committed to training the next generation of providers,” Zerden said.
In the future, Zerden said, he worries aspiring OB/GYN specialists will shun residency programs in states with limited or no abortion training. Such a trend, if it occurs, could have far-reaching consequences. Doctors tend to settle near where they completed their residency, Zerden said. “Eventually you’re going to set up almost a two-tiered system,” he said. “States able to provide the full complement of obstetric and gynecological care, including abortion care … and places that just don’t.”
To some extent, views among medical students and residents over abortion echo divisions in society. A group called Conscience in Residency supports trainees in biomedical sciences “who object to performing certain procedures or providing certain services,” including abortion. “You’re not crazy, and you’re not alone,” the group says on its website.
A video on the site advises applicants to OB/GYN programs who oppose abortion and contraception on moral or religious grounds. “In your application I would not recommend … mentioning your stance on those things directly because I think it’s a better conversation to be had in person,” one doctor says.
Some residents who support abortion rights are fearful of speaking out. One doctor who trained under Zerden said she plans to provide abortions for patients from the Southeast. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared professional repercussions. You never know, she said, how a particular clinic manager, department head or academic dean might react to the publicity if she applies for a position. “How will having my name out there as an abortion provider affect the kind of work I can do?” she asked.
But this doctor also seemed confident in her path. “Abortion care I find extremely meaningful. I’m really proud to be able to provide that care in a safe and acceptable way.”
Shelbie Fishman, 24, from Rockville, Md., is the co-leader of a group called Medical Students for Choice at Washington University. Missouri has a “trigger ban” that puts abortion rights in jeopardy. But Fishman said she and her classmates feel comfortable on the St. Louis campus talking about abortion as health care, “depoliticizing it, trying to strip it down to what it really is.” She is also glad a state that protects abortion rights, and abortion training, is just across the Mississippi River. “We definitely view Illinois as a safe haven,” she said.
The Washington University School of Medicine said in a statement that it offers abortion training to OB/GYN residents in accordance with accreditation standards and state law. “It is too early to know how our training programs would be affected by the upcoming Supreme Court decision,” the school said.
Gorman came to Knoxville for abortion training with financial help from Medical Students for Choice. She grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh and is entering her second year of medical school. Gorman was a technician in labor and delivery at a hospital while she was an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh. She also worked for a time as an assistant for Planned Parenthood.
Those experiences showed her “complex social situations,” she said, as well as the high stakes of difficult pregnancies. She saw one woman die of a rare condition during childbirth and comforted her husband afterward. Another time, she met a 13-year-old who got an abortion after convincing a judge she needed one. “She was the strongest person I think I’ve ever met,” Gorman said.
She views her weeks as a trainee in Knoxville as a potentially fleeting opportunity. “This might be the bulk of my family planning training that I ever have,” Gorman said.
The Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health, an outpatient clinic, occupies a modest two-story building near the University of Tennessee campus and just across the street from a Civil War memorial honoring peace and reconciliation. The clinic provides various services, including medication abortion and abortion procedures for pregnancies up to 18 weeks.
After nearly 47 years of operation, the clinic is preparing to shut down if the Supreme Court ruling allows the state abortion ban to take effect.
Aaron Campbell’s father, Morris Campbell, was the center’s medical director for several years until he died in 2012. Campbell took over a year ago, after finishing medical school at East Tennessee State and his residency in Pittsburgh.
Working with Campbell is an 80-year-old doctor named Richard Manning, who counsels patients and dispenses abortion medication. Manning said he has provided tens of thousands of abortions in various states since performing his first one in 1975, two years after Roe. He can’t believe abortion rights may soon vanish here. “Disaster,” he said. “Just a disaster.”
Before seeing their first patient on June 10, Campbell and Gorman showed visitors one of the treatment rooms. A music player with headphones was perched on a window ledge. Tacked onto the ceiling, where patients would be looking up during the procedure, a small sign said: “It is OK to cry. It is OK to feel relief. Never apologize for having an abortion.”
After he finishes training Gorman, this month or next, Campbell is mulling where to go if the clinic shuts down. He is considering Charlotte and Las Cruces, N.M., which draw numerous abortion patients from out of state.
He’s also thinking about future trainees. But they would have to wait.
“My first step has to be to establish someplace to be able to help people before I can train people,” he said. | 2022-06-20T12:28:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dobbs case spurs race to teach abortion procedures in medical schools - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/20/abortion-training-medical-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/20/abortion-training-medical-school/ |
After school shootings, teachers struggle for years with trauma
They must often cope even while teaching students who are recovering, too
Abbey Clements, a former second-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, checks out a new tattoo that says “One Tough Mother.” A gunman killed 26 students and employees at the Newtown, Conn., school in December 2012. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
One teacher from Connecticut stretches out her arms when she recalls what it was like to hold and corral her second-graders as they fled from a shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A social studies teacher from Florida still remembers seeing three students’ bodies in the hallway as a SWAT team led her class out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. A principal from Ohio can still hear the high school junior who told the teen who had shot him, “You don’t have to do this; you haven’t killed anybody.”
Across the country, roughly 311,000 students who have experienced gun violence at school since the Columbine High shooting in Colorado in 1999, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post, including those in Uvalde, Tex., last month. But hundreds of educators, too, have come through this catastrophe. Afterward, they return daily to the site of their trauma, forced not only to cope, but also to teach children who are healing in different ways. Some educators leave their schools or the profession entirely.
“It changes the dynamic of your psyche,” said Abbey Clements, a teacher who survived a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. “It really does.”
Teachers often put their students’ recovery process ahead of their own, sometimes delaying their healing for months or years at a time, several said in interviews. Some find solace in advocacy.
Ivy Schamis was teaching her class on the Holocaust when a gunman started firing at Stoneman Douglas High in February 2018. The Olympics were coming up, and she and her students were discussing Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Games when they heard gunfire.
The students bolted out of their chairs and scattered around the room, but there was no place to hide. Seconds later, the gunman shot through the classroom door’s glass panel. Bullets flew around the classroom, and everyone tried to lie low.
“We were learning history; we weren’t learning how to fight AR-15 bullets,” Schamis said.
Two of her students were fatally shot. Four others from her classroom were injured.
The school reopened two weeks after the shooting. An organization offered therapy dogs for teachers who were healing, and Schamis received a golden retriever named Luigi. He attended her class every day until the summer break.
Schamis stayed at the high school for another year, up until the last student in her classroom that day graduated. She says she wanted to prioritize them before her healing could take place.
She went to therapy after the shooting and realized she needed a break. Even though teaching was her passion, she didn’t want to be back in the classroom. Schamis and her husband, who had visited D.C. for the first March for Our Lives protest in 2018, found an apartment and moved here without knowing a soul in 2020, she said. She works now as an office manager at a Jewish day school.
Talking about what happened at Stoneman Douglas helps, Schamis said. She and her former students have a text-message group chat and talk regularly. In late May, one of them reached out because he was in a terrible mental state. In the chat, the group reassured and helped him, she said. They also share milestones, like their college graduation announcements.
“They can lean on me; they can lean on each other,” Schamis said. “We help them get through, because there’s always something good around the corner.”
Clements, too, stayed at her school for as long as she could. Clements remembers arriving early to Sandy Hook on Dec. 14, 2012, to prepare for a PTA luncheon. She was planning to make paper snowflakes later in the day.
After class began, she heard a cacophony from the hallway that sounded like falling chairs, she said. She realized it was gunshots. Some students began weeping. Others told Clements to barricade the door. She and 17 students huddled around one another as they listened to 20-year-old Adam Lanza patrol the hallways and enter classrooms, killing children and adults. She knew her students would never be the same.
Roughly six months after the rampage at Sandy Hook, she started going to meetings of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun-violence-prevention nonprofit, and met other survivors who could understand what she had gone through. She attended therapy sessions to talk through what she witnessed. In 2015, she took a job at another elementary school, 40 minutes away. Later, she moved away.
“It was challenging to live and work in Newtown post-horrific tragedy,” Clements, 53, said. “It was the best thing for us to move out.”
At a Student Gun Violence Summit in D.C., she met Sarah Lerner, who had survived the 2018 shooting in Parkland.
Lerner was handing out a quiz for one of her senior English classes when the fire alarm went off. She gathered her students and started following a fire drill’s protocols. Once she was downstairs, she heard what sounded like firecrackers and saw students running.
She ran back to her classroom. Five of her students made it with her, along with 10 others from the classroom next door. As they hid, Lerner got a text from another English teacher that she had been shot.
“When you see someone say, ‘I’ve been shot,’ like in my head, I’m screaming, but you can’t make any noise because you’re on lockdown,” Lerner said. After three hours, a SWAT team came to retrieve them.
Lerner soon realized she was in shock. While she was on the phone with a relative that evening, the relative started laughing. Lerner couldn’t understand what was so funny until her relative explained that she had repeated the same thing three times.
That year, she helped students assemble the yearbook and memorialize the victims.
Lerner still teaches at Stoneman Douglas. In 2018, she was approached by Random House to put together a book, “Parkland Speaks,” that showed students’ poetry, prose and photography.
“Working on that really helped me. Talking about my experience has helped me,” Lerner said. More than that, she said, “the activism piece has helped tremendously.”
Lerner and many school shooting survivors have sought healing through advocacy work. After the shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford, Mich., that killed four students last year, Clements texted Lerner and Sari Beth Rosenberg, a New York City teacher and gun-violence-prevention activist. They had to do something, they agreed; they were tired of seeing massacre after massacre. Together, the three founded an advocacy group, Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence. Lerner and Clements say speaking out has helped them cope.
Another group, the Principal Recovery Network, was formed in 2019 by survivors to help provide school administrators with guidance on navigating a shooting’s aftermath. The group of roughly 20 principals try to support one another, calling to check in and discussing the trauma they felt — and feel.
Principals who survived school shootings mobilize to help Texas educators
Greg Johnson was in the main office West Liberty-Salem High School in Ohio on Jan. 20, 2017, when an assistant got a phone call from her husband, who was a high school math teacher. She turned to Johnson and said, “Greg, there’s a shooting in the high school.”
Johnson hoped it was mistake. The building was being remodeled, and he hoped someone mistook construction for gunfire. But he ran over to the high school wing. It was quiet, and the hallways were empty, except for an assistant principal, Andy McGill, who had also rushed there.
The two walked around; McGill smelled gunpowder. Near the restroom, they heard a student say, “Why don’t you just put the gun down? You don’t have to do this; you haven’t killed anybody.”
The two administrators held up their hands and warned the students they were coming in. On the floor was a high school junior who had been shot twice at close range. The shooter was in a bathroom stall reloading.
“Hey, bud, what happened?” McGill asked the injured student.
The shooter heard McGill’s voice and recognized him as his football coach. He slid the gun under the stall, handing it to the administrators. “I’m sorry, Coach,” he said. The victim survived.
After the episode ended, Johnson thought he was coping well. When school reopened, he hosted talks with students about what they had seen and how the felt.
But he was in trouble. “Relationship-wise, I was really pulling away from people,” Johnson said. “I was really taking on the responsibility and letting it be a burden. I was pretty critical of myself if a student or teacher was struggling with the effects of trauma, like, ‘That’s my fault, because we didn’t do enough right afterward.’ ”
On the second anniversary of the shooting, a counselor asked him if he was okay and told him he wasn’t acting like the principal he used to be. She recommended he seek therapy. There, he got better at dealing with the effects of the shooting. He later apologized to his students and staff members.
“As I was singing their praises about how gritty and how resilient they are, I think I maybe said it in a way that praised that toughness without acknowledging that it’s okay to show weakness,” he said.
One thing that helped, he said, was hearing from other Ohio officials who had faced shootings, including Michael Sedlak, who was an assistant principal in Chardon, Ohio, when a gunman killed three students at a school there on Feb. 27, 2012.
Sedlak heard the gunshots when they fired, initially thinking they were fireworks. He recalled seeing helicopter footage of Chardon High School while he was still inside on lockdown. At one point, he ran through a building with SWAT team members to unlock a room police couldn’t get into.
“It’s a surreal moment when you turn the corner and see all-black, riot-whatever gear and guns,” Sedlak said. “It’s not a school.”
Now Sedlak tries to help other survivors through the Principal Recovery Network. Since the group met for the first time in Weston, Va., in 2019, it has become like a family, he said.
Each time a new shooting happens, members lean on one another for support. After the killings in Uvalde, Sedlak recalled sending the former principal of Sandy Hook Elementary a quick text that said he was thinking about her and offered to chat.
“It’s just a different bond,” Sedlak said. “No one wants to be there. No one wants that bond, but nonetheless, we all have it.” | 2022-06-20T12:28:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How school shootings traumatize teachers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/20/teacher-trauma-school-shooting-uvalde-parkland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/20/teacher-trauma-school-shooting-uvalde-parkland/ |
‘Forever chemicals’ linked to high blood pressure in women
Polyfluoroalkyl substances have been found in everything from fish to drinking water. (iStock)
Drinking water. Food. Air. Fish. It seems there isn’t any part of the globe that isn’t touched by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), man-made “forever chemicals” that are slow to degrade and whose dangers to humans and animals are being studied.
Now, researchers have linked PFAS to high blood pressure in middle-aged women, adding to the long list of health risks associated with the pollutants.
A study published in the journal Hypertension looked at the health of 1,058 women between ages 45 and 56, analyzing data from annual checkups between 1999 and 2017. All had normal blood pressure when the study began, but over time, 470 patients developed hypertension.
Researchers measured PFAS in the women’s blood at the start of the study period. Women with higher blood concentrations of the chemicals were more likely to develop hypertension than their counterparts.
The risk varied depending on the concentration of different chemicals in the blood. Women with detectable perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), a pollutant once found in products such as Scotchgard and still present in some semiconductors, paints and industrial products, were 42 percent more likely to have high blood pressure than those without exposure. Perfluorooctanoate, also known as C8, was associated with a 47 percent higher risk. It is found in everything from upholstery to clothing and food wrappers.
Exposure to multiple PFAS chemicals had a stronger effect on blood pressure, and the higher the concentration, the higher the risk. Women in the highest third of PFAS blood concentrations were 71 percent more likely to develop hypertension than those in the lowest third.
The dangers of PFAS, often called ‘forever chemicals’
The study coincides with increased warnings about the danger of PFAS. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency advised aggressive action designed to combat the compounds, which are associated with everything from cancer to infertility.
“Women seem to be particularly vulnerable when exposed to these chemicals,” said Ning Ding, a postdoctoral epidemiology fellow at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the study’s lead author, in a statement. She said exposure could be an “underappreciated risk factor” for hypertension.
Although more work is needed to explore links between the chemicals and high blood pressure, the researchers write that PFAS are a “potentially modifiable” risk factor. But given that they are both ubiquitous and long-lasting, modifying risk could be a massive challenge. | 2022-06-20T12:28:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PFAS linked to high blood pressure in women - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/20/pfas-hypertension-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/20/pfas-hypertension-women/ |
A family’s journey from a school prayer dispute to the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court Building in the nation's capital. June 24 will be the 30th anniversary of Lee v. Weisman, the high court's 5-4 decision prohibiting clergy from leading graduation prayer in public schools. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
It was Merith Weisman’s middle school graduation ceremony, and a Baptist minister stood at the front of the auditorium, announcing, “Please rise and praise Jesus for the accomplishments of these children today.” The Weismans, who are Jewish, exchanged glances. Should they stand?
Merith, in a teal dress and new black patent high heels, sat in front with the other graduates of the public Bishop Middle School in Providence, R.I. She whispered to a friend, “I don’t think that’s legal.”
Sitting in the middle of the auditorium, Merith’s parents, Daniel and Vivian Weisman, were having a similar conversation as her younger sister, 11-year-old Debbie, looked to her parents for guidance.
Daniel, a social work professor at Rhode Island College, whispered to his wife, “They can’t do this, can they?”
“No, but they are,” responded Vivian, who was confident the school was in the wrong. She was assistant executive director of the city’s Jewish Community Center and had for years volunteered on a committee of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island concerning church-state issues.
It was 1986. The Supreme Court had ruled against allowing prayer in public schools in the early 1960s. The line, in Vivian’s view, was clear, and the school had just stepped right over it.
The Weismans, though, stood during the prayer. Daniel and Vivian didn’t want to draw attention away from the graduates. But afterward, they spoke to a school administrator and sent the school a letter — seemingly benign actions that would soon place them at the center of the nation’s culture wars and in front of the Supreme Court.
“I always felt like this was something that happened to us, not something we did,” said Merith Weisman, now a director of community engagement at Sonoma State University in California. “They wrote a letter. That’s all, and it just took on a life of its own, and we got dragged along. Providence kept appealing.”
June 24 marks the 30th anniversary of the family’s triumph in the landmark Supreme Court ruling Lee v. Weisman, a 5-4 decision prohibiting clergy from leading graduation prayer in public schools. It comes as the Supreme Court is about to decide a new school prayer case that could reverse some of the protections from school-backed religious displays that the Weisman case enshrined.
The court heard oral arguments in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District in April. The case concerns a former football coach in Bremerton, Wash., Joseph Kennedy, who claims the school district unjustly fired him for praying at midfield after each game. Kennedy contends he was exercising his right to free exercise of religion. The school district argues the coach was a representative of the school whose public prayers put pressure on players to join him.
Given the conservative makeup of the current Supreme Court, the justices are widely expected to support the coach, undercutting Lee v. Weisman and similar Supreme Court decisions prohibiting school prayer.
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Like the Kennedy case, the Weismans’ saga began with actions they never thought would make national headlines.
After Merith Weisman’s graduation, her parents approached the assistant principal in the hall. Vivian said the invocation did not belong in a public school. The assistant principal replied that he did not know what the pastor was going to say and offered no reassurance that prayers would be eliminated from future graduations. So Daniel mailed a letter to Bishop Middle School administrators, noting the apparent violation of the separation of church and state.
“Part of my Jewish identity and civic identity is you don’t force religion on people, and you don’t force other people’s religion on people,” said Daniel in a recent interview. “I felt violated because I had to stand and bow my head.”
No one at the school responded to the letter. As Debbie’s graduation approached in 1989, Vivian periodically mentioned her concerns at PTO meetings. One evening, during parent-teacher night at Bishop, a teacher approached the Weismans in the hall and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Weisman, you won’t have a problem. We got you a rabbi.”
After speaking with Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island, the parents decided to sue, as long as their daughters approved and the school district still refused to stop the prayers. The teens were in.
With only a week left before Debbie’s graduation, the parents met with the school’s new principal, Robert E. Lee, who did not dissuade them from suing. “My feeling was, there would be nothing wrong with the ceremony and I made the decision to go ahead,” Lee later told a C-SPAN interviewer.
Four days before graduation, the ACLU, on behalf of the family, sued Lee and Providence schools in the U.S. District Court in Providence and sought a temporary restraining order to prevent prayers at the district’s upcoming graduations. The chief judge denied the family’s request because he wanted more time to review the case.
On graduation day, June 20, newspapers, TV and radio reporters gathered at the school. Rabbi Leslie Gutterman of Temple Beth-El in Providence delivered the prayers to the 127 graduates. He said he made the prayers nonsectarian. His benediction, as one of the Supreme Court justices would later point out, included a passage from the Book of Micah. Gutterman, now 79 and retired, said he saw nothing wrong with the prayers he delivered.
Daniel Weisman talked to the gaggle of reporters outside. “This is the kids’ day. Weren’t they great? It’s not up to me anymore. It’s up to the courts,” he recalled saying.
In January 1990, the chief judge of the Providence federal court ruled that prayer at public school graduations violated the First Amendment. The Providence School Board announced it would appeal. That July, the Weismans won again in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Boston. Three months later, the school board appealed again.
The administration of President George H.W. Bush and a handful of states sought to persuade the Supreme Court to hear the case. Utah’s State Board of Education even offered $10,000 to pay for Providence’s legal costs. “The machinations that went into the appeal — this whole Utah thing, it was just sort of stunning to see what was going on beneath the surface,” the ACLU’s Brown said.
In March 1991, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and the family, as it did every time its case made the news, received hate mail and threatening phone calls. Debbie, who often opened the mail, remembered one letter that read, “Hitler should have finished the job.”
After the 1990 ruling, all Providence schools stopped graduation prayer. The principal, Lee, did not hide his disappointment in his interview with C-SPAN. “It’s not so much a religious message but it’s an inspirational message,” he said.
At the Supreme Court oral arguments on Nov. 6, 1991, ACLU-appointed attorney Sandra Blanding squared off against the lawyers representing Providence: Charles Cooper, a former assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, and Kenneth Starr, then the U.S. solicitor general. In his 2002 book “First Among Equals, The Supreme Court in American Life,” Starr wrote of his involvement, “I thought it would prove to be terribly important for the country and its traditions.”
When the Weisman family entered the Supreme Court for the oral arguments, it was with a sense of awe. Debbie thought the nine justices’ chairs looked like thrones.
Cooper argued that because students do not have to attend graduation ceremonies, they aren’t coerced into displays of religion. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who Cooper and others thought would support ceremonial prayer, poked holes at that notion. “In our culture, a graduation is a key event in the young person’s life,” he said.
Writing for the majority, Kennedy said schools placed “subtle and indirect public and peer pressure on attending students to stand as a group or maintain respectful silence during the invocation and benediction.”
Bush bemoaned the decision, saying in a statement, “The court has unnecessarily cast away the venerable and proper American tradition of non-sectarian prayer at public celebrations.”
The Weismans held a party at their home — at 3:55 p.m., or five to four, a reference to the 5-4 ruling — and did a media circuit. Family members appeared on “Nightline,” CNN and “Good Morning America.” Debbie was asked to write an essay about her experiences for Seventeen magazine. On “The Jerry Springer Show,” she watched in horror from the audience as her father, sitting onstage with Springer, was booed by the people around her.
She has no regrets, though. “We made a difference for the people who couldn’t speak up,” Debbie said. | 2022-06-20T12:28:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court school prayer ruling in Lee v. Weisman and family's quest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/20/weisman-supreme-court-school-prayer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/20/weisman-supreme-court-school-prayer/ |
By Cynthia Landesberg
Abortion rights advocates and antiabortion advocates demonstrate outside the Supreme Court after a leak of a draft majority opinion overturning abortion rights on May 3. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Cynthia Landesberg is a Korean adoptee and a lawyer in the D.C. area.
Everyone loves a good adoption story. You know: the rags-to-riches tale of a baby found on the street and placed in a loving home, who becomes a lawyer, or a teacher, and one day has a family of their own. I’m well-acquainted with this story because it’s the narrative people imagine when they hear about my life. But it’s far from the whole truth.
I’m a Korean transracial adoptee and mother of two Korean adoptees. I’ve seen adoption fables used for entertainment, profit and politics, most recently by the Supreme Court as it debates the constitutional right to abortion — and as some of its members exalt adoption as a righteous and practical alternative.
Those justices are wrong. Adoption is not an answer to a problem, but a result of two choices: the choice to remain pregnant and the choice not to raise a child.
Both are choices I wish my birth mother had.
My biological mother became pregnant in the 1980s in South Korea, where abortion was illegal except in the rarest circumstances (and remained so until 2021). When she gave birth to me, there was no social safety net to help her.
Although I’ll never know the details of how I ended up on a street at 7 weeks old, I do know my mother’s lack of choice played a large role. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, pregnant people in the United States will face a similarly unconscionable lack of choice. And the consequences could be grievous for them and their children.
In 2019, there were about 630,000 reported abortions in the United States. Now imagine hundreds of thousands of pregnant people forced by new restrictions to give birth. If they choose to raise their children, they will do so in a country devoid of sufficient support, where the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and affordable child care measures are stalled. If they opt for adoption — a choice that is in fact rare — they still risk long-term physical, psychological and social challenges. This is not a real choice.
Then there are the adoptees. In 2019, there were roughly 115,000 domestic adoptions in the United States. In the same year, more than 122,000 children waited in foster care for adoption; the average wait for a child to be placed in a home was 31 months. By the numbers alone, we are already failing our most vulnerable children.
Among those who oppose abortion, the children’s very existence is often cast as a happy ending. But it’s not that simple.
Children in the foster system often experience the disruption of multiple placements and are likely to contend with significant mental health problems. Studies have shown that adoptees — who struggle with attachment, identity and the trauma of institutionalization — are four times as likely to attempt suicide as non-adoptees.
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In addition, transracial adoptees like myself often encounter racism and ethnic bullying, and do so without the protective insulation of ethnic socialization. Most adoptive parents are White. Transracial adoptions account for about 40 percent of all adoptions and 28 percent of adoptions from foster care. With laws restricting abortion access more likely to affect people of color, it is not difficult to imagine an increase in non-White adoptees, and thus more children grappling with crises of identity.
When antiabortion advocates ask abortion rights advocate adoptees, “Would you rather have been aborted?” the intent is to coerce us into saying no. But for some of us, the answer is yes.
My adoptive parents raised me the way many White parents of transracial adoptees do — as White. The mismatch between my inside and outside, my face and my name, left me disoriented and unmoored.
After a half-hearted attempt to become pregnant, I chose to adopt. When asked my race by the adoption agency, I wrote “American.” I couldn’t write White, but I also couldn’t write Asian. It took four trips to Korea to connect with my birth culture for me to finally be able to declare: I am Korean American.
Later, when I became pregnant with my daughter, the crushing grief of all I had lost — my birth mother, my identity, my history — became too heavy. My mental health suffered.
Perhaps if my birth mother had a real choice, I’d have been aborted, unknowingly absorbed back into the earth. Perhaps she would have raised me, and I’d be navigating the ordinary challenges of life without the adoption baggage.
Or maybe I’d be exactly where I am now — but I would know this was her decision. I wouldn’t be left wondering if I’d been coerced into existence, bought or stolen into adoption. I wouldn’t be left carrying the pain I’m sure she felt.
To those who oppose abortion, I say: Don’t hide behind stories like mine. Adoption isn’t a fairy-tale solution. And adoptees aren’t here to be the balm on your pro-life conscience. | 2022-06-20T12:28:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Adoption is not a fairy-tale answer to abortion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/adoption-not-fairy-tale-alternative-to-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/adoption-not-fairy-tale-alternative-to-abortion/ |
The Jan. 6 hearings show urgency of Electoral Count Act reform
A damaged door inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Bloomberg News)
The Jan. 6 committee has uncorked a gusher of terrifying details concerning Donald Trump’s attempted coup. Given how easy it was for devious attorneys such as John Eastman to conjure up a scheme to overturn elections with the thin veneer of legality, it behooves the bipartisan group of senators working on Electoral Count Act reform to step up the pace. Lives may depend on it.
The ECA reforms that negotiators have discussed, if in place in 2020, could have acted as a tripwire — if not a complete barrier — to the efforts to overturn the election. Specifically, there are four fixes that would have stopped Eastman and Trump from exploiting the current law.
First, Congress can explicitly state that the vice president’s role is purely ceremonial and has no power to reject, return or in any way affect the counting of electoral votes. This would have spared Mike Pence from Trump’s dangerous pressure campaign.
Second, the ECA’s “safe harbor” provision currently states that when states submit their electoral slates by a certain date, it is deemed “conclusive.” A later date for the safe harbor would allow court challenges to conclude. In addition, the ECA should clarify that only the slate of electors submitted by the state official designated to certify the election results would qualify (i.e., any “alternative slate” would be invalid). This clarification would have cut off attempts in 2020 to encourage state legislatures to submit alternative slates.
Third, the Electoral Count Act should specify that all states must use the popular vote in selecting delegates. The legislature could not, then, overturn the people’s selection. The provision allowing state legislatures to pick the electors in case of a “failed” election should be limited to extraordinary situations, such as a devastating natural disaster or terrorist attack. That would prevent the next John Eastman from using unproven claims of fraud to declare that an election had “failed.”
Fourth, Congress should increase the number of members needed to raise an objection to electoral votes from one member in each chamber, as the law currently prescribes, to a third or a half of each body. It should also specify that objections should be limited to cases in which the selected candidate is constitutionally unqualified (e.g., they are not yet 35 years old) or in which the slate was forged or obtained by bribery or extortion. If these changes had been in place, a handful of Republicans would not have been able to throw the electoral count into disarray with baseless claims of fraud.
Election law expert Rick Hasen tells me: “There were enough good people who did the right thing in 2020. We can’t count on that for 2024, especially with election deniers poised to take power in 2022.” He adds, “ECA reform, along with other anti-subversion measures, are essential, and Congress’s window to act is closing.”
The additional measures must also address the "epidemic of violence,” as the Brookings Institution’s Norm Eisen puts it, that infected our electoral system in 2020. The violence culminated at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but local officials faced threats of violence against them and their families throughout the election season. This is unacceptable. Just as Congress recently passed a measure to increase security for Supreme Court justices, it must increase funding to protect election workers and officials.
Threatening, extorting, bribing or cajoling election officials to “find” or “fix” votes must be strictly prohibited. Likewise, penalties must be increased for attempting to disrupt or interfere with the administration of an election or preventing an official from carrying out his or her lawful duties. Raising objections to election results in court must be the only means of addressing complaints.
The harrowing account of the events surrounding Jan. 6 necessitates strong bipartisan support for these measures. Does any Republican or Democrat want to see future vice presidents of either party, members of Congress and their staffs as well as ordinary election workers go through the torment of 2020 again? It’s in everyone’s interest to eliminate the temptation for future coup attempts.
Let’s not forget that while Congress has its role, so does the executive branch. The criminal sentences handed down for the participants in the violent insurrection on Jan. 6 should help deter others from storming the Capitol after future elections. But if Trump, Eastman and others at the heart of the plot to overthrow the election do not face accountability for their chicanery, they or others will do it again. | 2022-06-20T12:28:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Jan. 6 hearings show urgency of Electoral Count Act reform - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/jan-6-hearings-show-urgency-electoral-count-act-eca-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/jan-6-hearings-show-urgency-electoral-count-act-eca-reform/ |
A home listed for sale in Albany, Calif., on May 31. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
As recently as March, a 30-year fixed mortgage looked like a very good deal. The average interest rate was under 4 percent, even though inflation was more than twice that.
That divergence couldn’t last forever, and it didn’t. Just last week, mortgage rates surged by more than a half a percentage point, finishing at 5.78 percent. That’s the biggest single-week increase in more than three decades, and it is going to push the housing market into some uncharted territory. Buyers, sellers and the Federal Reserve are all going to have to learn to navigate this strange new landscape.
Most U.S. homeowners have only known a world where mortgage rates were generally in steady decline — ticking up modestly when markets roiled or the Fed got restive, but still trending downward over time. Rates hit their all-time high in the early 1980s, when Fed Chairman Paul Volcker drastically constricted the money supply to bring America’s last great inflation to a halt. After that, however, came a long downtrend that accelerated after the financial crisis, thanks to an ultra-accommodating monetary policy that the Fed never really unwound even after the economy recovered.
Now suddenly we’re witnessing the kind of surge that hasn’t been seen since the 1970s. Rates are thankfully still lower than they were back then, but they’re increasing fast — more than doubling since January 2021. The last time mortgage rates were this high was in late 2008, which means that almost 15 years of home purchasers likely got a better deal than what’s now available.
Some of those people would undoubtedly like to move — to downsize or upsize, to get growing children into a bigger yard or a better school district, to shorten their commute or add a proper home office. But mortgage rates complicate that decision.
Take an average middle-class household with a $240,000 mortgage on a $300,000 house they bought in 2018. If the homeowners have decent credit and refinanced at 3 percent during the pandemic, they’d have a payment of about $1,000 a month. If that family now moves to a house at roughly the same price point, their new monthly payment will likely be a little over $1,400.
Those with money to burn will move anyway, and so will people who really have to; if your new job requires you to be in California, you’ll sell the house in New Jersey and eat the damage. But many who just want to move will probably opt to stay put, instead.
A 2012 paper by economists Fernando Ferreira, Joseph Gyourko and Joseph Tracy estimated that “for every additional $1,000 in mortgage debt service costs, mobility was about 12 percent lower.” The homeowners in the example above would see an increase in their debt service of nearly $5,000 a year.
Now, not every household will find itself in that position. Older households have often paid their mortgage down or off; others will have adjustable rate mortgages, or older loans at higher rates that they were unable to refinance for some reason or another. Nonetheless, the effect is likely to be significant — and it means we’re not just facing declining home prices, but declining homeowner mobility.
The last time the United States faced these kinds of “lock-in” dynamics, in the 1970s, the effect was mitigated by a feature few mortgages now have: the ability for a buyer to “assume” the loan of the current owner, taking over the payments along with the property. Because buyers would pay a premium for a property with a low-interest loan attached, homeowners could monetize their lower rate and use that money to help finance a new purchase.
Banks, of course, didn’t like sitting on those older low-rate loans when inflation was pushing up the rates they had to pay on savings accounts, so they started inserting “due on sale” clauses that all but put an end to the assumable mortgage. Government loans made through Veterans Affairs, the Federal Housing Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture still offer this option, but they account for a comparatively small fraction of outstanding loans.
This will complicate life for homeowners, obviously, and for employers trying to lure desirable employees from far-off places. But it will also complicate life for policymakers, who cannot easily predict the effects of their interventions on a key sector such as housing. This will make it harder for the Fed to engineer the soft landing we’re all hoping for.
And this, in turn, is just one example of a broader challenge for policymakers and ordinary citizens alike. The best comparison we have for our current situation is the 1970s, but the economy has changed in all sorts of ways since then.
Taxes and government benefits are indexed to inflation, which exacerbates inflationary pressures. More people now work in services, fewer in capital-intensive, debt-heavy manufacturing. Broader swaths of the economy are exposed to trade, which means being subjected to the actions of other governments and central banks. And as noted above, we’re now more than a decade into an unprecedented increase in the Fed’s balance sheet, which has undoubtedly contributed to inflation — and will limit the Fed’s options if we end up in a recession.
So however familiar this might feel to those of us with memories of the 1970s, we are in fact on novel ground. And unfortunately, no one has a good road map telling us exactly what comes next. | 2022-06-20T12:28:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A generation of homeowners encounters a strange new market - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/rising-mortgage-rates-new-experience-for-homeowners/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/rising-mortgage-rates-new-experience-for-homeowners/ |
U.S. aid to Ukraine is good — but not good enough
U.S. soldiers fire a howitzer in Afghanistan in 2011. (David Goldman/AP)
U.S. military assistance to Ukraine has been good — but not good enough. In part, that’s because of a conceptual error we keep making. We keep thinking it’s their war. We should understand that this is our war — and act accordingly.
Russia didn’t just attack one country. It attacked the very foundation of the rules-based international order the United States and its allies have been building since 1945. If Russia gets away with its aggression, that will send a signal to dictators around the world that they can do what they want and that the West is too weak to stop them. Look for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to set his sights on the NATO-member Baltic republics, which, like Ukraine, were part of the Russian Empire at various times in history. Look for China to set its sights on Taiwan. An attack on either the Baltics or Taiwan would be likely to draw the United States into a conflict that could easily spiral into World War III.
The best way to keep the peace is to help Ukraine throw back the Russian invaders with devastating losses. That would send a powerful message not only to Putin but also to every tinhorn dictator on the planet: Don’t mess with the West. But that’s not what we are doing. We are providing the Ukrainians with just enough weaponry to avoid defeat — but not enough to win. The Ukrainians are outgunned 10 to 1 in artillery in the critical battle being fought in the eastern Donbas region. That’s unacceptable.
We would not be so stingy if U.S. troops were on the front lines. According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has spent more than $3 trillion on the war on terror, which encompassed the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. (That doesn’t count trillions more for veterans’ care and homeland defense.) That’s an average of $12 billion every month for almost 21 years.
By comparison, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the United States has committed only $5.6 billion in security assistance, with the latest tranche of $1 billion announced last week. That’s an awful lot of money if measured by foreign aid, but it’s a pittance compared to what we spend on our own wars. If this had been a U.S. conflict, we might have spent $48 billion or more since February.
That’s nearly an order of magnitude difference, which helps explain why our aid packages fall so short of what the Ukrainians are requesting. A top aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky says that to achieve “heavy weapons parity” with the invaders, Ukraine needs 1,000 155mm howitzers, 300 multiple-launch rocket systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones. The United States has so far pledged 126 155mm howitzers, four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 200 armored personnel vehicles and 121 Phoenix Ghost drones. Our allies have made some critical contributions of their own but, taken together, it’s not enough.
The United States has entirely failed to provide any tanks or aircraft. Not only has the Biden administration not sent F-16 fighter jets or A-10 ground-attack aircraft, it also refused to facilitate a transfer of MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula says that the United States has more than 200 MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones in storage that could be shipped to Ukraine. Armed with Hellfire missiles, these drones could help turn the tide in Donbas. But the Biden administration so far hasn’t sent a single Gray Eagle.
“We are supporting the Ukrainian military as rapidly as humanly possible,” says Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That’s simply not true. You can bet all the cryptocurrency in the world that if the United States were losing upward of 100 soldiers a day in combat (losses we haven’t sustained since World War II), we would be throwing a lot more air power, armor and artillery into the battle. We wouldn’t be telling our troops, “Tough luck. Do the best you can.” But that’s essentially what we are telling the Ukrainians. Do Ukrainian lives matter less than American lives? They shouldn’t.
The Biden administration and its defenders have many excuses for not doing more. We don’t want to be drawn into a war with Russia. The situation isn’t as critical as the Ukrainians claim. They can’t absorb too much equipment too quickly. The Russians will simply destroy or capture our systems. The United States has limited stockpiles. It takes time to move heavy weapons and set up supply lines for them. While we can’t match the Russians in quantity, our equipment is of higher quality — so we don’t need to deliver it in the numbers the Ukrainians want. And so on.
Most of these explanations are valid, but none is really adequate to explain our failure to do more. Policymakers should keep asking themselves, “What would we do if GIs were dying in Donbas?” and act accordingly. That doesn’t mean that we should directly attack Russia. It does mean that we should be providing Ukraine with the resources to win the war that Russia is waging against the entire West. | 2022-06-20T12:28:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | U.S. aid to Ukraine is good — but not good enough - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/us-military-aid-ukraine-tanks-planes-drones-kyiv-russia-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/us-military-aid-ukraine-tanks-planes-drones-kyiv-russia-war/ |
More kids are ingesting melatonin. Here’s what parents should know.
A report from the CDC documented an alarming spike in ingestions of melatonin by children. Most of the cases involved children 5 or younger. (iStock)
But even the research team, which was made up of pediatricians and toxicologists, was surprised by the results: From January 2012 through December 2021, the annual number of pediatric ingestions of melatonin reported to poison control centers across the United States rose a whopping 530 percent, with a total of 260,435 ingestions reported over that time.
“None of us really anticipated it being that large of a surge,” Vohra said.
The report, based on information reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System about patients 19 or younger, said that most children who had taken melatonin (82.8 percent) were asymptomatic, most were 5 or younger and most cases (94.3 percent) involved unintentional ingestions, defined by the system as “exposure resulting from an unforeseen or unplanned event.”
Most cases were managed at home, but 10.7 percent of patients were seen at a health-care facility. Among them, 14.7 percent were hospitalized and 1 percent (287 patients) required intensive care. Five children were put on ventilators and two children died.
While the ICU cases and deaths are concerning, “We at this time are not asserting that melatonin directly led to serious outcomes, including death,” Vohra said, because of the limitations of poison center data and the lack of individual case narrative reviews.
“We don’t want to set off alarm bells among parents, since the majority of melatonin ingestions are relatively benign and resolve without complications,” Vohra said. He added that the intent of the paper was to describe the increase in pediatric melatonin ingestions and to start a discussion. The research team and other experts have called for more study.
“It is unusual to see somebody become seriously ill after taking melatonin,” said Kevin Osterhoudt, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Injury, Violence, Poison Prevention and the medical director of the Poison Control Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“I think we need to look at the data more,” Osterhoudt said. “And we still have to define how big of a dose is dangerous, and if there are any people who might be at particular risk.”
“I think that this is the sort of data, where you’re actually getting into hospitalizations and fatalities, that I think underlines the importance of this issue,” said Craig Canapari, a pediatrician and director of the Yale Pediatric Sleep Center.
While research has not definitively determined that taking melatonin can help with chronic insomnia — there is more data to support its use in treating jet lag and sleep issues caused by shift work — it is generally considered safe and non-habit-forming, which is part of its appeal. Nielsen estimates that sales of melatonin nearly tripled in the United States from 2018 to 2022, and research conducted before the pandemic found that usage was up among adults and children.
The CDC report noted that “the largest annual increase in pediatric melatonin ingestions coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The researchers said this uptick could be connected to the documented pandemic-related rise in sleep problems, which probably led to more melatonin being available in households where kids were spending more time than usual, because of lockdown orders and remote schooling.
How to use melatonin for sleep
“Children developmentally are naturally curious,” Osterhoudt said. “The more that products are sold, and the more accessible they are in the home, the greater the likelihood that children will get into them.”
That melatonin is regulated as a dietary supplement in the United States rather than as a medication could be contributing to the problem in several ways, experts said. First, “That may lead some parents to store it in different ways in their house than they might if they thought it was a medication,” Osterhoudt said. Second, children may be able to get into melatonin more easily than other products because supplements often lack child-resistant safety caps. Third, the Food and Drug Administration does not regulate the manufacturing of supplements as rigorously as it does medications.
An oft-cited study in Canada, which, like many other countries, has since banned over-the-counter sales of melatonin, found that the melatonin content in OTC products can vary widely and does not always match what’s on the label.
Do not give melatonin to a child under age 3, and do not do so without consulting a medical provider. “I wouldn’t recommend that kids get melatonin really, unless [parents are] working closely [with] their pediatrician or more likely, honestly, a specialist,” Canapari said. He added that the supplement can have efficacy in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or autism. Also, do not exceed the dosage recommended by your provider.
Store your melatonin safely. Melatonin should be “kept out of sight, out of reach and out of mind of young children,” Osterhoudt said. Vohra also said it’s important to keep medications in their original containers.
Be intentional about your purchase of melatonin. Buy melatonin products that bear the label USP Verified. “That means that that supplement manufacturer has gone through extra procedures to assure that their quality control is good,” Osterhoudt said. He also encourages parents to buy from companies that use child-resistant safety caps on their products.
Know the phone number of America’s Poison Control Centers. The number is the same across the country — 800-222-1222 — “and there will be a nurse, a pharmacist or a doctor on the other end of the line that will be happy to talk to any family through the situation,” Osterhoudt said.
Do not turn to medication first. Melatonin can have side effects and sometimes can make sleep issues worse, Canapari said. In many cases, what’s needed is a simple behavioral change, such as making sure a child has an age appropriate bedtime and a good nighttime routine. “These things are very powerful,” Canapari said. “They don’t cost anything, and they’re very safe as well.”
Take sleep issues seriously. “If your child has sleep problems, it is absolutely worthy of talking about it with your pediatrician,” Canapari said. Some signs are if your child frequently takes a long time to fall asleep, wakes up in the middle of the night or is difficult to rouse in the morning (excluding teenagers). “I think in general as parents we do well to listen to our little inner voice if we feel like something is a problem or just a persistent pain point, a source of conflict,” Canapari said. “It doesn’t hurt to pick up the phone. That’s why us kid doctors are there.” | 2022-06-20T12:29:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What parents should know about kids and melatonin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/06/20/melatonin-kids-ingestion-safety-parents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/06/20/melatonin-kids-ingestion-safety-parents/ |
Greg Norman calls for players to earn ranking points from LIV Golf events
“OWGR points should be granted,” LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman said, “and if we get the OWGR points, then everything else takes care of itself.” (Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images)
With the U.S. Open completed, the golf world may again find itself focusing on the LIV series, given that its second event — and first on American soil — is set to tee off in less than two weeks.
LIV Golf already has trumpeted the coming additions in Portland, Ore., of Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed, and additional notable names are expected to defect from the PGA Tour before that event begins. But another struggle is taking place behind the scenes, with LIV executives working to have their tournaments become eligible for Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points.
That effort became more public over the weekend, when LIV Golf Investments CEO Greg Norman made an appearance on Fox News in which he pointed out that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan sits on the OWGR’s eight-member governing board. Monahan has indefinitely suspended PGA Tour players who signed with LIV Golf, and last week he vehemently defended that decision, stating on CBS that such players would not be allowed to “free-ride” off the cachet of his organization.
“It’ll be interesting to see if Jay Monahan recuses himself from that vote because of what he said on television with [CBS’s] Jim Nantz the other day,” Norman said Saturday on Fox News. “So it’s very interesting and it’s sad to be putting that additional exerting pressure on it, because our tour is a good tour. It’s supported, it’s got an incredible field.
“OWGR points should be granted, and if we get the OWGR points, then everything else takes care of itself.”
Svrluga: Matt Fitzpatrick — head down, blinders on — beats all comers at U.S. Open
It’s a crucial matter for the upstart, Saudi-funded venture because the world rankings are a major factor in determining eligibility for the four majors. Without OWGR accreditation, players who focus on the eight LIV events over other circuits will slip in the rankings, which could diminish the lure of the series’s massive purses and signing bonuses.
“We’re actually applying for OWGR points right now,” said Norman, who added that it was a “very compelling” application. “We’ve worked very, very closely with the technical committee, understanding all the components of what you need to apply for it.”
While the star power assembled by LIV Golf, including Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia, undoubtedly has the attention of OWGR officials, other hurdles remain. LIV’s intentionally unorthodox approach includes 54-hole tournaments contested by just 48 players, with no cuts. Those changes to standard professional golf formats could make it difficult for the OWGR board to determine how much weight to give LIV events.
The biggest issue for LIV Golf, though, could be the OWGR’s decision-makers, all of whom are deeply connected to the existing structure of top-level golf and some of whom have expressed discomfort with the Saudi-backed venture. In addition to Monahan, others on the governing board include USGA CEO Mike Whan, PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh, International Federation of PGA Tours official Keith Waters and DP World Tour (formerly known as the PGA European Tour) chief executive Keith Pelley.
The USGA allowed LIV Golf players who were suspended by the PGA Tour but had already qualified for the U.S. Open to compete in it. But Whan recently said it was a fluid situation and he could “foresee a day” when players banned by the PGA Tour might have a harder time making major fields.
“What we’re talking about [LIV Golf] was different two years ago, and it was different two months ago than it is today,” the USGA CEO told reporters during a pretournament media session. “We’ve been doing this for 127 years, so I think [the USGA] needs to take a long-term view of this and see where these things go.”
“I’m saddened by what’s happening in the professional game,” Whan added. “Mostly as a fan, because I like watching the best players in the world come together and play, and this is going to fracture that. I’ve heard that this is good for the game. At least from my outside view right now, it looks like it’s good for a few folks playing the game, but I’m struggling with how this is good for the game.”
Waugh echoed those remarks last month when he said his organization was “a fan of the current ecosystem and world golf ranking system and everything else that goes into creating the best field in golf.” Asked if LIV golfers were likely to be included in the 2023 PGA Championship field, he replied, “I don’t know what it’ll look like next year. We don’t think this is good for the game.”
In his comments on Fox News, Norman said his conviction that “golf is a force for good” made him comfortable partnering with the Saudi regime, which has been criticized for human rights violations and was implicated in the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
“To me, if golf is good for the world, golf is good for Saudi [Arabia],” he said, “and you’re seeing that growth internally there. It’s extremely impressive.”
The two-time British Open winner and former world No. 1 was shown a clip of Turner Sports’s Bob Costas declaring recently on CNN that LIV Golf players were taking “Saudi blood money.”
“Look, I’m disappointed people go down that path, quite honestly,” Norman said on Fox News. “If they want to look at it in that prism, then why does the PGA Tour have 23 sponsors doing 40-plus billion dollars’ worth of business with Saudi Arabia? Why is it okay for the sponsors?”
“Will Jay Monahan go to each and every one of those CEOs of the 23 companies that are investing into Saudi Arabia,” Norman continued, “and suspend them and ban them?
“The hypocrisy in all this, it’s so loud, it’s deafening.” | 2022-06-20T12:29:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Greg Norman calls for players to earn points from LIV Golf events - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/20/greg-norman-liv-points/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/20/greg-norman-liv-points/ |
Five British men released from Taliban custody
KABUL — Five British men held by the Taliban have been released, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office said in a statement Monday.
Taliban leaders in Kabul did not immediately comment on why the government released the men after holding them for months. One American was also held, and it is unclear if he has also been freed.
Arrests of foreigners by the Taliban began late last year and continued for months as its leadership cracked down on activists and foreigners accused of working in the country without proper documentation.
The official charges against the detainees were never made public, but a Taliban intelligence officer said most were arrested on suspicion of espionage or involvement in helping Afghans flee the country, an activity that is charged as human trafficking. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
“This is good news,” a senior Taliban member told The Post. “We are not aiming to detain foreign nationals,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject ahead of an official statement from the group’s leadership.
The senior Taliban member said the foreign nationals “were detained for breaching the law and violating Afghan culture,” but he said he was not aware of any further details on specific charges or what secured their release.
“We have had ongoing conversations” with the United States and Britain about the detained foreigners, and “we came to some sort of a compromise,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Two other foreign nationals held by the Taliban were released earlier this year. A Canadian woman was freed in March after roughly a month in custody, and two journalists working for the United Nations were released in February after being held for about a week. | 2022-06-20T12:40:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Taliban releases imprisoned British men - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/british-released-taliban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/british-released-taliban/ |
Four inmates escape from low-security corrections facility in Virginia
Four inmates walked away over the weekend from a corrections facility in Hopewell, Va., according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The incident happened about 1:45 a.m. Saturday at the Federal Correctional Complex Petersburg’s satellite camp where roughly 185 male offenders stay at a minimum-security facility, officials from the BOP said in a statement. The four men walked away from the facility, officials said, and an investigation is underway.
Officials said the inmates who escaped were Corey Branch, Tavares Lajuane Graham, Lamonte Rashawn Willis and Kareem Allen Shaw.
Anyone with information about these individuals should contact the U.S. Marshals Service at 804-545-8501. | 2022-06-20T13:24:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inmates walk away from low-security corrections facility in Hopewell, Va. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/20/prisoners-escape-hopewell-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/20/prisoners-escape-hopewell-virginia/ |
(Alex Green)
Music is my sonic haven from a world that wants to destroy me
Perspective by Daric L. Cottingham
As a child, I spent hours listening to CDs and the radio — sitting in front of a green and black stereo while I’d complete my homework. I got lost in the sounds of Whitney Houston and Tiffany Evans, which allowed me to float along, escaping reality for a few moments of sonic release.
Now, music is still my lifeline, whether it’s frequenting record shops, spending hours hunting for musical gems across genres or delving into a newfound discography.
That has been true as I’ve navigated unprecedented crises — the pandemic, an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation, racial injustice and turmoil in my personal life. Looking back, my journey these past two years has repeatedly revealed one thing: Music is what I’ve clung to for joy.
In 2020, the pandemic hit the United States a couple of months after my 24th birthday. I’d made earnest New Year’s resolutions to grow in my craft as a media professional, but things took a turn as the world shut down.
At the time, I was finishing the first year of my master’s program at USC Annenberg. Classes went remote, and I was thousands of miles away from my loved ones back in Texas. I’d lie awake at night listening to music, hoping to make it through without spiraling out. And, eventually, I was lucky to keep doing what I loved: I joined Spotify as a remote intern that summer and got to start turning my audio passion into a career.
That same year, a lot of great albums were released — Ariana Grande’s “Positions,” Aminé's “Limbo,” Kehlani’s “It Was Good Until It Wasn’t” — which would guide me through this odd, unexpected chapter of my adult life.
And through this music I consumed almost every second of the day, I learned more about myself — what brought me joy, peace and a sense of security. Over the next two years, what it gave me was the ability to meditate, explore and figure out that I am nonbinary.
I’d been out since I was 17 as gay, but something still felt incomplete. Growing up, I always gravitated toward femininity while still feeling masculine energy, and music was an avenue where that manifested: I always liked artists who were both soft and rough around the edges, who didn’t quite fit in specific boxes — Janet Jackson, Queen Latifah, Fefe Dobson, Janelle Monaé and Teyana Taylor. They innately pushed the boundaries of what music could be and how life could be perceived.
These artists taught me a lesson: that a listener may not get it right away, but it doesn’t make the music any less valid. The same is what I realized about gender and my interpretation of being nonbinary. I was just creating the soundtrack to my life in the most authentic way I knew how.
In the last two years, I’ve seen that reflected in new music — in that shift in ideology, specifically, I owe a lot to the musical duo Chloe x Halle. I’d been a fan of their vocal range and unique contemporary approach to music for years. But on June 12, 2020, they released their sophomore album “Ungodly Hour,” a 13-track body of work that beautifully showcased their style and charted becoming adults in their 20s. The project was edgy, brutally honest, but vulnerable and soft like me.
The intro to the album spoke a sole line that stuck with me: “Don’t ever ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.” Yes, I realized, I didn’t need permission to be my whole self openly. And the forgiveness I felt was to myself for the death of the person I had been — the facade I used to be out of a sense of duty.
Other tracks like “Do It,” “Catch Up” ft. Swae Lee and “ROYL” sparked new self-confidence to be my unapologetic self, while “Overwhelmed” and “Lonely” perfectly described my anxiety and the overwhelming isolation I felt through that first year of the pandemic. Verse one of “Lonely” resonated the most.
Who are you when no one’s watchin’?
You close the door to your apartment
Are you afraid of the silence?
Are you afraid of what you’ll find in it?
I was afraid — afraid of what the reception would be to my true identity as I slowly stepped away from the binary. For the first time, I felt lonely in that fear. But the time to figure myself out while the rest of the world was on pause was necessary to become who I am today.
In 2021, music continued to guide me like a flame in the darkness — this time as an escape from the continuous grief caused by the constant police brutality that targeted the Black community, all while anti-LGBTQ legislation continued to rear its bigoted head.
Because these intersections of my identity were under attack, everywhere I turned felt void of safety. But music allowed me to be a world away. This time, I turned to pop/punk rock via Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” to deal with the angst I felt daily.
To be Black and queer is to have multiple targets on your back. I’m not someone who gets angry or even shows it when I am; it takes a breaking point for me to react. But I was suffocating as my anger toward the world’s ignorance only grew. When “Sour” was released, I sang each lyric at the top of my lungs around my apartment, stomping and playing air guitar and sometimes screaming into a pillow.
Later that year, Lil Nas X’s “Montero” tapped in, taking over as my musical diary that perfectly captured my experience as a Black queer Southerner.
Toward the end of 2021, I sunk into a deep depression after leaving a journalism job and was generally feeling unsure about my future. In some ways, it felt like my life had run its course, and a part of me readily accepted that. But Adele’s “30” saved me. I grieved. I spent hours crying and shedding the deep jaded sadness that consumed me while listening to that album on repeat.
In late October 2021, as the air cleared of depression, I had a realization: Music hasn’t just been my lifeline since childhood, it’s also powerful enough to spark change in other people. So I began brainstorming how music and my passion for journalism could provide some form of service to combat the constant erasure of queer folks. I pitched my first-ever music column, Playlist Q, to Xtra magazine. Platforming queer folks became cathartic for me, my small form of protest against our erasure.
These days, Playlist Q is still going strong. In February, I came out as nonbinary, finding myself through more gender-affirming clothing and advocating for myself and other queer folks in public forums. I’ve come out on the other side of this journey, the whole while guided by music.
And I know stepping into this next chapter, music will continue to be my sonic haven of hope that recharges my depleted spirit crushed by the world — my joy, my peace, my serenity.
Daric L. Cottingham is a culture and entertainment journalist. | 2022-06-20T13:41:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pride essay: Music is my haven from a world that wants to destroy me - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/20/pride-month-queer-music-influence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/20/pride-month-queer-music-influence/ |
This Monday, Americans should recognize their newest federal holiday, Juneteenth, as more than just another three-day weekend.
Also known as Emancipation Day, the name blends “June” and “nineteenth” — the date in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced General Order No. 3, declaring freedom for those in bondage in the last Confederate state with institutional slavery. While pockets of slavery would persist elsewhere, the moment gave rise to what became the oldest African American holiday, with celebrations held as early as 1866.
Last year, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, creating a new national holiday and inviting all Americans to reflect on its significance: The day commemorates America’s early efforts to right a tragic wrong — and challenges the nation to confront the unfinished business arising from its original sin. In effect, it asks Americans to reconcile their national aspirations with the reality of persistent inequalities.
As the abolitionist Frederick Douglass noted in the stinging 1852 address commonly known as “What To The Slave is the Fourth of July?,” the revolution of 1776, glorious as it was, had failed to confer the blessings of liberty on all Americans. After praising the signers of the Declaration of Independence — “they were statesmen, patriots and heroes” — and the freedoms they had secured, Douglass added a brutal qualification:
What, to the American slave, is your fourth of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Little more than a decade later, President Abraham Lincoln would issue the Emancipation Proclamation, formally conferring freedom on 3.5 million enslaved people. The African American story from that day forward was one of halting progress — from the 15th Amendment, to Brown v. Board of Education, to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, to the election of President Barack Obama. It was painful, hard-earned and fitful progress, to be sure, but progress all the same.
It’s not hard to understand why, though, a century and a half later, Douglass’s words still sting. Even as shocking incidents of police violence — like the murder of George Floyd in 2020 — have galvanized a generation of Americans to fight for racial justice, stubborn inequities still permeate national life.
Not only have academic achievement gaps persisted, they’ve been exacerbated by the catastrophic learning loss brought on by the pandemic. Even as the national unemployment rate sits at a near-historic low of 3.6%, Black joblessness lags at 6.5%. The racial wealth gap — a pronounced failure of social policy — has only increased over the past 40 years. Meanwhile, America’s epidemic of gun violence continues to take a grimly disproportionate toll on African Americans, who experience 10 times the number of gun homicides as white Americans do.
Slavery’s formal end was a grand achievement for the nation, and should be celebrated as such. Juneteenth marks the day when America at last began living up to its founding creed. It’s right to cheer that moment, while recognizing that, as far as the nation has come, much unfinished business remains.
Next Juneteenth, Let’s Have More Black Economists: Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe
Progress Toward Racial Equity Is Under Threat: Trevon Logan
The US Needs a Better Reparations Plan: A. Kirsten Mullen | 2022-06-20T13:59:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Juneteenth Is a Day for Cheer — and Unfinished Business - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/juneteenth-is-a-day-for-cheer--and-unfinished-business/2022/06/20/b3dd9dbc-f099-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/juneteenth-is-a-day-for-cheer--and-unfinished-business/2022/06/20/b3dd9dbc-f099-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
By Eileen Bjorkman
Eileen Bjorkman with an RF-4C that she flew in the back seat of at Edwards Air Force Base in 1988. (Courtesy of Eileen Bjorkman)
Eileen A. Bjorkman is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and executive director of the Air Force Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Phoenix is, significantly, not a love interest. She’s one of a group of handpicked F/A-18 “Super Hornet” pilots whom Maverick trains for a mission to bomb a target in an enemy country. (Kelly McGillis’s strong character in the original “Top Gun,” based on a true-life woman, was a civilian defense analyst at the Navy’s fighter school, not a pilot.)
Phoenix’s position as a combat pilot would have been impossible when I began my Air Force career, in 1980. The military had been training women as pilots only since 1973, and none flew in combat or trained for combat missions. The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, passed by Congress in 1948, prohibited that.
A few women managed to skirt the combat exclusion laws during the 1970s and ’80s. Some female naval aviators flew the A-4 and other combat-capable aircraft, but only to train male pilots.
As a flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base, I flew in the back seat of F-4 and F-16 fighters to support test missions. I pulled 9 G’s and ran navigation systems, radars and jamming pods. The flights were demanding and fun, but nothing that resembled combat.
My desire to fly in combat, and that of other women, wasn’t just about chasing equality. It was about fairness to some of the best pilots trained by the military — pilots who happened to be women — and about making sure military leaders had the best people to fill very important jobs.
Pilots who graduate at the top of their class normally get to fly the hottest fighters in the inventory. But when Air Force Capt. Connie J. Engel graduated at the top of her class, in 1977, she settled for being an instructor pilot in a training aircraft. Other top female pilots suffered a similar fate, pushed into cargo airplanes, refueling tankers or other support aircraft.
Meanwhile, male pilots without these women’s skills became fighter pilots.
By the late 1980s, talented women were fed up with being relegated to the junior varsity. It was also obvious that the combat exclusion laws didn’t keep women from harm’s way, as intended.
In Grenada, Panama and Libya, women were flying into hostile areas to deliver cargo and troops, refuel airplanes, evacuate wounded personnel, direct air battles, or eavesdrop on enemy communications. But letter-writing campaigns by the aviators and lobbying by supporters failed to sway Congress to make policy reflect reality.
The Persian Gulf War in 1991 changed everything. The nightly news made it clear that to function, the U.S. military needed women. And the public realized that women were already being exposed to combat.
Within months of Operation Desert Storm’s end, Congress repealed the laws excluding women from combat flights. But a presidential commission created to further “study” the issue kept women out of combat cockpits for nearly two more years.
Finally, on April 28, 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin announced that the services would open combat aircraft to women. That same day, the Air Force introduced the first three women who would become fighter pilots.
Nearly all the female aviators who had helped kick open the door never got the chance to fly in combat. By the time the laws changed, they were too old to switch careers. But the younger women proved they belonged.
Jeannie Flynn, who in 1994 became the first woman fully qualified as an Air Force combat pilot, is now a two-star general. Martha McSally, who in 1995 became the first U.S. woman to fly a combat aircraft in combat, retired as a full colonel and later served in Congress.
To remain the best military in the world, the United States must draw on the talents and capabilities of all service members. Yet although women make up nearly one-quarter of U.S. Air Force officers, they make up only about 8 percent of Air Force pilots.
The adage that “you can’t be what you can’t see” continues to get in the way. With “Maverick,” I hope little girls will see Phoenix flying her fighter and realize they, too, can take to the skies.
And while I’m thrilled that Hollywood has finally acknowledged women as full team members in today’s military, it still has some work to do. Although Phoenix represents the best of Navy pilots, she’s just one of Maverick’s students.
Meanwhile, in the real world, on Aug. 19, 2021, Navy Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, a helicopter pilot, became the first woman to command an aircraft carrier. Maybe the star of the next “Top Gun” sequel will be an aircraft carrier commander who just happens to be a woman.
More on culture from Opinions | 2022-06-20T13:59:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Finally, ‘Top Gun’ has a female pilot. Real life should catch up. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/top-gun-female-combat-pilot-outdated-sexist-rules/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/top-gun-female-combat-pilot-outdated-sexist-rules/ |
Terrified my son will get shot, also terrified he’ll be the shooter
Adjacent to my 3-year-old son’s left eye is a barely visible dark spot. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were eye level with him, which means, unless you’re also a 3-year-old, you wouldn’t notice it. It looks like a birthmark, which is a change from five months ago, when it was a bloody gash after he lost his balance bouncing on our living room couch and fell face first into a coffee table.
He needed stitches to close it. Three, I think. I wasn’t at the hospital with him — my wife went while I stayed home with our daughter — but I was told he was a trouper. Stayed still, barely sniffled and watched “Encanto” afterward. I was also told that if the gash were a quarter-inch to the right, he might have lost his eye.
I’ve been a dad for six years now, which means my relationship with the concept of luck has become more intimate. More tactile. I think sometimes we like to think of luck as something that we’re immune to. We want to believe that if something happens to us, it’s a consequence of our own decision-making. It feels good to feel that way. But parenting is a ceaseless reminder of the fallacy of control. We still try, of course. My wife and I dictate, among other things, our children’s diets, their bedtimes, their media consumption, their education, their play and their relationships with people outside the family. We do this because we want them to be healthy, happy, well adjusted and safe. But none of that vigilance mattered when my son slipped off that couch. Luck is the only reason he still has both eyes today.
I keep coming back to the fallacy of control when attempting to process my feelings about the shooting in Uvalde, the school shootings preceding it and the school shootings that will proceed after it. Much of what makes this distinctly American phenomenon so disconcerting is how counterintuitive it is. When I drop my children off at school in the morning, them coming back home that afternoon is such a perfunctory expectation that I never bother to consider alternatives. If I walk in the rain, I expect to get wet. If I take my kids to school, I expect them, at the very least, to not get shot. It’s not just the lack of a substantive motive that makes these shootings “senseless.” It’s also that a kid getting shot in a classroom makes so little sense that it breaks your brain.
I think most parents of school-age children are where I am with this, which is terrified that America’s devotion to guns could get their kid killed. But I’m also terrified that America’s devotion to guns could make my son a killer. And yes, this anxiety is specific to my son, to our sons. As long as guns and violence and the potential to be violent remain essential to American male-making, our sons are more at risk to be seduced by it.
A consistently perverse aftermath of these school shootings is the inevitable public examination of the traumatized parents of the shooter. Which is always ineffectual, because nothing they say can be satisfying or even clarifying. If they knew their kid was dangerous, why didn’t they do more to stop him? What did you do to make him that way? And if they didn’t know he was dangerous, well, why didn’t they know? You raised him — how could you not have known?
Either way, we need them to be bad at parenting, because that makes sense.
Of course, her son did what he did. Look at where he came from.
Just blaming a culture or an institution is too abstract to be immediately satisfying. With a person, though, we can always tell ourselves that we’re better people.
My kid would never do what that bad parent’s kid did.
As long as guns and violence and the potential to be violent remain essential to American male-making, our sons are more at risk to be seduced by it.
But how sure of that can I be? Each time I hold my son close to my face, and I see that spot next to his eye, I see a reminder of the limitations of good parenting. Which is also a reminder of the limitations of personal responsibility. As much as I can prepare him to enter and engage with the world with empathy, with perspective, with discernment and with what it means to truly be a citizen, I can’t control what happens when he’s out there. What he has access to. And even less control over the predictably messy impulses of a still maturing young man, who might believe that a bout of heartbreak or a bad fight with a bully is the end of the world, and might be tempted to harm himself or someone else.
My son could get killed in his classroom. My son could kill his classmates. I think most parents think we have little control of the former, and all control of the latter. But as long as guns are everywhere — always accessible, always deified, always coveted, always protected, always lusted over, always American, always cool — we have no real control of either. | 2022-06-20T14:34:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damon Young: Terrified my son will get shot, also terrified he’ll be the shooter - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/20/damon-young-terrified-my-son-will-get-shot-also-terrified-hell-be-shooter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/20/damon-young-terrified-my-son-will-get-shot-also-terrified-hell-be-shooter/ |
(Van Saiyan for The Washington Post)
How 2022 became the year of over-the-top masculinity on the campaign trail
If you look at the campaign ads for this year’s Senate races, the message is clear: Real men live in Missouri. In the heart of America. On the ruby red plains, where the pickups are large and the flags fly high.
In late April, Republican Senate candidate and former Missouri governor Eric Greitens posted on Twitter a rather unsubtle video that captured him visiting a shooting range with Donald Trump Jr. As the clip opens, Greitens and the former first son are already hunched over their semiautomatic rifles. One second in, we watch as the shooters fire a hail of bullets — two hails, actually — until they pulverize and then fell a body-shaped metal target. “Liberals, beware!” Greitens soon intones with a grim “Terminator”-like finality.
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Greitens is, of course, taking cues from the elder Donald Trump, who gave us all a master class in unbridled machismo. Trump said of the Islamic State, “I’m gonna bomb the s--- out of them,” and when football player Colin Kaepernick took a knee, Trump pronounced, “Wouldn’t you like to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b---- off the field right now, out? He’s fired.’ ”
American politicians have almost always been obliged to display manliness to win elections, but our 45th president heightened masculinity to absurd, comic-book levels. Many have posited that Trump was old-school, taking us back to the days of John Wayne and guys-only steak dinners, but cultural critic Susan Faludi — author of “Stiffed,” “Backlash” and other books on gender — argued persuasively in a 2020 New York Times opinion piece that, no, Trump introduced us to a new, Internet-age masculinity, a “Potemkin patriarchy” specially tailored for “an image-based, sensation-saturated and very modern entertainment economy. … Contemporary manliness is increasingly defined by display — in Mr. Trump’s case, a pantomime of aggrieved aggression: the curled lip, the exaggerated snarl.”
In political races nationwide this year, Republicans are clamoring to get the snarl and the swagger just right as they seek to out-Trump one another. During the Super Bowl, Senate candidate Jim Lamon of Arizona ran an ad that was styled to look like an old western movie and starred himself as a gun-twirling sheriff firing at a sheepish actor dressed to resemble Joe Biden. In Georgia, Mike Collins, a Republican in a U.S. House race, trundled a wheelbarrow full of paper into the forest, then shot at it as viewers realized he was turning “Nancy Pelosi’s Plan for America” into a cloud of confetti and smoke.
The Senate race in Missouri has arguably emerged as ground zero for the manliness question — and Greitens isn’t the only candidate shilling his virility. Do you remember Mark McCloskey, that vigilante in St. Louis who brandished an AR-15 military-style rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters? He’s now seeking the GOP nomination for Senate, too — touring Missouri in a custom campaign vehicle, an SUV appointed with a giant photo that captures his gun-toting moment of fame. “Never back down!” reads the adjacent text.
Nationwide, all of this GOP chest-beating appears to be working, as Democrats seem poised for a thrashing in the midterms. In Missouri, though, one Democrat volleyed back early, serving up his own brand of manhood. Last June, Lucas Kunce released a Senate campaign video that showed him locking and loading an AR-15. In the ad, Kunce bends over the gun’s sight. He squints. Will he shoot?
No. Instead, Kunce smirks and says, “Forget it. ... Stunts like that? Those are for those clowns on the other side. Like that mansion man Mark McCloskey.” There’s a bounce in his voice; Kunce, who’s 39, is enjoying this caper. And he speaks with a certain authority: The guy is shredded. His pecs bulge beneath his blue T-shirt, and his implicit message — that he’s a real man and McCloskey’s a dingleberry — gains steam when we learn that Kunce is a 13-year Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kunce’s campaign isn’t about masculinity, but it certainly invokes the theme. “All they care about,” he told me, referring to Greitens and McCloskey, “is looking tough, looking strong. For me, masculinity is taking care of people — your family, your community — and making sure that you actually stand for something.”
What Kunce stands for is radical economic change. He’s a self-described populist, and for him, re-creating America is a military mission. “I’m a grenade,” he told an audience not long ago. “Pull the pin on me and throw me into the U.S. Senate so I can change things.”
There are other Democratic Senate candidates who exude some of Kunce’s brawn: for instance, John Fetterman, the 6-foot-8, heavily tattooed Pennsylvania lieutenant governor who favors hoodies over business suits. But Jackson Katz, creator of the 2020 documentary “The Man Card: White Male Identity Politics From Nixon to Trump,” is particularly excited about Kunce. “For decades,” says Katz, “the Democrats have been seen as the non-masculine party, and they’ve done nothing about it. They’ve been clueless. And now here’s a guy who can’t be written off physically or personally as soft.”
Can Kunce actually win? Can a political novice sell a revised, anti-Trump version of manhood in a once-centrist state that, in the past six presidential elections, has consistently voted Republican? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for one, is worried that the race “could end up being competitive,” as he told CNN in April, before advising Missouri Republicans: “You better nominate a fully capable, credible nominee or you’re in trouble.”
But perhaps the bigger question about the rise of an ultra-macho style in Missouri’s — and America’s — politics isn’t whether it’s effective; it’s what it all means. If this new exaggerated masculinity proves consistently appealing to voters on both the right and the left, then what does that suggest about the kinds of candidates who can, and cannot, realistically seek office in the future? About what types of issues we can debate and on what terms? About what kind of people we want to lead us — and what kind of country we want to be?
Lucas Kunce is 6-foot-2, and he wears his clothes tight, so that even in repose, he seems athletic, his muscles hardened by a regimen that involves running, swimming and weightlifting. His automobile is less impressive. It is a well-loved 2013 Ford Focus. The paint is chipped; the passenger-side front door sticks a little and sometimes needs a special shove.
For three days this May, I plied the campaign trail with Kunce. We moved — the candidate, his press officer and I — west to east across Missouri, from Kansas City to St. Louis, the three of us passing innumerable highway signs for adult bookstores and fundamentalist churches, on a trip that seemed loose-limbed, unofficial. There’s a boyish abandon about Kunce. The onetime Marine major is half-inclined to address every audience he encounters as though it were made up of leathernecks convoying with him through Fallujah. “Lucas has no filter,” his press officer, Connor Lounsbury, will tell me. “None. I can’t tell him how to act. He’s just Lucas.”
Sometimes the no-filter approach works its intended magic. Like when we travel to a school for apprentice ironworkers in North Kansas City. When Kunce enters the classroom, he finds 30 apprentices, all male, in grimy orange and yellow T-shirts. They are sinewy and bearded, and they slump in their chairs, their arms crossed as their helmets, plastered with stickers, sit before them on tables, bearing slogans such as “Rat Poison Ironworkers. Local Union #10.”
“I’m a grenade,” Lucas Kunce told an audience not long ago. “Pull the pin on me and throw me into the U.S. Senate so I can change things.”
For most politicians, it’d be a hard room, but Kunce begins with, “We got any veterans in here?” Soon, he’s talking about how, when he was growing up in Jefferson City, in the ’90s, his family was so broke that his mom “begged the grocery store manager not to cash the check until the end of the month.” The manager complied. “People cared for each other,” Kunce says, “but today that grocery store is owned by some private equity a--hole, and if you don’t have money, you’ve got to go down to payday loans. That’s f---ed up, right?”
The ironworkers nod. They snicker knowingly. They’re listening, and Kunce continues, now talking about how the United States has spent $6.4 trillion on wars since 2001. “The thing that p---es me off,” he says, “is how they spent almost nothing for the communities of the people who served in those wars. The first house I ever lived in was bulldozed. The house I joined the Marine Corps from is boarded up.” The problem, Kunce says, is “politicians who make decisions based on their stock portfolios. I want to take power back in this country. I want every damned one of you to have power.”
Eventually, the apprentices begin moving toward a practice construction site. In the corridor, Kunce’s aides hand them a new helmet sticker, a piece of campaign propaganda that reads, “Make S--- in America Again!” Thirty-year-old Matthew Luckey tells me, “I’m going to clean my helmet off so this sticker will stay on there.” A father of four who voted for Trump in 2020, Luckey says of Kunce, “He seems like a pretty down-to-earth guy.”
Outside, the apprentices are building the iron bones of a three-story building. The instructor takes Kunce aside to teach him how to tie rebar with wire — a step in the manufacture of concrete — and as Kunce bends over the rebar, he is intently focused.
But then there’s a distraction. Off in the corner of the job site, one by one, apprentices are roping into harnesses to pull their way up a 35-foot-high iron beam. It’s a challenge that involves hugging the beam close and angling your feet just so into a 12-inch-wide gap. One guy struggles his way to the top and triumphantly rings the bell there. Another makes it only 10 feet up, then falls. I hear the grisly sound of the man’s feet slapping the pavement. There’s a collective sigh of relief (he’s all right), and then there’s a hush. And I realize that the plan, all along, has been to give Major Kunce a crack at the beam.
Kunce climbs into the harness. Then everyone waits for a boom lift to maneuver into place, to save the candidate if he gets stuck. No one else got such backup, and the machine ups the ante: Either Kunce will prove himself a hero here, or he’ll leave known as the weenie who needed the boom. No one is working now. The apprentices are all gathered at the base of the beam, making sardonic jokes and spitting chewing tobacco.
When Kunce starts out, his grip is firm, but his hips are canted back, too far from the beam, and his feet slip in the slot. About a dozen feet up, though, he finds his groove, and then he’s just flying, hand over hand, toward the top. He’s moving more quickly than anyone else will all day, and the assembled ironworkers are loving it.
“Hell, yeah!” someone yells.
“Don’t look down. Keep going up!” shouts another apprentice.
Kunce reaches the top; he smacks the bell.
“Yes,” one ironworker cries from below. “That’s my senator!”
This nation was founded on great acts of brawn. George Washington stood in a boat, crossing the Delaware, towering and mighty in his rough-hewn breeches, his broad chest to the wind. He was strong enough to hurl a silver coin across the Potomac, and he once broke up a brawl between soldiers by seizing both combatants by the throat.
Or so the story goes. In his forthcoming book, “First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity,” Maurizio Valsania, a history professor at the University of Turin in Italy, writes that our first president was in fact not a hulk, but rather a “coifed” upper-class gentleman who wore a corset to ensure that his back was, per the fashion of the day, ramrod straight, like a ballet dancer’s.
Valsania doesn’t gloss over the ruggedness of Washington’s life — he did cut down trees; he did fight in wars — but the professor stresses that Washington, who was potbellied, with a concave chest, only became a he-man in the American imagination decades after his death, when Andrew Jackson made pushing west and fighting Native Americans the national mission. “As the symbolic father of a nation prizing strength and territorial expansion,” Valsania writes, “Washington must by necessity remain the tallest, strongest, most athletic, and most virile of men.” For the actual Washington, however, the highest values were “self-effacement and making sacrifices for the common good,” Valsania told me. “He was a communitarian.” Valsania says all of our early leaders were.
Jackson was a radical departure. A loudmouth who liked to brag about his brawls and his duels, he brought to the White House a bumptiousness that spoke to an ambitious, rising middle class. He was an individualist and, ever since his early-19th-century presidency, Valsania says, “there’s been a tension between two American masculinities, between the individualist and the communitarian.”
America’s consummate communitarian, probably, was Franklin Roosevelt, who in one 1932 speech tried to convince his audience that the time for burly Jacksonian individualism had passed. “The man of ruthless force had his place in developing a pioneer country,” Roosevelt said, but his modern equivalent — “the lone wolf, the unethical competitor, the reckless promoter” — threatened to drag our nation “back to a state of anarchy.”
As a refined aristocrat, Roosevelt wasn’t inclined to drive his point home with muscular heft, but there have been communitarians who’ve done so, the prime example being President Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ pushed through his Great Society agenda partly via the “Johnson Treatment,” which saw the beefy 6-foot-4 Texan lobbying congressmen by jabbing his finger at them, grabbing at their lapels and leaning threateningly into their personal space.
Since Johnson, though, Republicans have largely been able to castigate Democrats as weak. In his film “The Man Card,” Jackson Katz argues that this winning strategy took root in the 1968 presidential election when Richard Nixon media adviser Roger Ailes, who would go on to found Fox News, first tapped the “fear, anxiety and anger of the White middle class.” Ailes helped land Nixon the “hard-hat vote” — the support of the White working class — and thereby aligned Republicans inextricably with White male virility.
In the years since, Democratic candidates have tried to project strength, but the efforts have largely fallen flat. Think of 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis riding around in a military tank, looking like a little boy in an oversized soldier’s costume, or of Barack Obama deciding, in 2013, that it was a good idea to release photos of himself shooting skeets.
Even when Democrats seem poised to win the manliness game, they lose. In the 2004 presidential election, their candidate, John F. Kerry, was a decorated Vietnam War veteran, his military credentials far stronger than those of incumbent George W. Bush, who’d dodged the draft and instead joined Texas’s Air National Guard. Still, some 200 former naval men emerged to form Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, which sought to poke holes in Kerry’s naval résumé. We winced at footage of Kerry windsurfing while Bush repeatedly got himself photographed cutting brush at his Texas ranch; it was Bush who managed to establish himself as the “real man” in the race.
Joe Biden has tried to be manly, certainly. In the run-up to the 2020 election, he released a video called “That’s a President,” which starts by telling us that being commander in chief is “about protecting Americans.” A medley of tough guy pics ensue — Biden convening with camo-clad soldiers, Biden playing Joe Cool in dark sunglasses — as a deep male voice extols the Democrat’s virtues: “Strength. Courage. Compassion. Resilience.”
But none of that has stopped Republicans from trying to portray him as unmanly. In March, after Biden decided not to risk establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) went on Fox News and told Sean Hannity that the president’s Ukraine policy constituted a “wimp fest.” Hannity heartily agreed. “We saw Donald Trump using modern warfare,” he said, now focused on Afghanistan, “to kick the living Adam Schiff out of that caliphate and [fiefdom] that was grown under Obama and Biden.” No shortage of testosterone in that sentence!
It would be impossible to call Lucas Kunce a wimp, or to tar him with the label “elitist” — another, related slur beloved by Republicans. As the candidate tells us in “Home,” a two-minute campaign ad thick with tear-jerking violins, he grew up on “an old cracked street in Jeff City, Missouri.” His father was an IT specialist for the Missouri Department of Conservation. His mother was a teacher. Or, rather, she was until Kunce, the oldest of four children, was 8. Kunce’s sister was born then, with cardiac issues that required three open-heart surgeries. His mother had to stop working to care for the girl. Medical bills piled up, and in 1990 his parents filed for bankruptcy.
But the family patched through. “Our neighbors and friends lifted us up,” Kunce says in the ad. “They gave me the chance to make something of myself.” Slowly, lovingly the camera zeroes in on Kunce, standing in profile on a gritty street. “So I did,” Kunce continues. “I went to Yale and became a U.S. Marine to honor those who had given me so much.” Kunce goes on to lament that, once he came home from Iraq and Afghanistan, he found “the community I had loved had been hollowed out … the wealth of our state sucked dry.”
For anyone who missed the video’s masculine motifs, “Home” soon delivers a hopeful medley of macho visuals as Kunce promises to “Marshall Plan the Midwest.” We see an auto garage where wrenches hang gleaming on a pegboard. We visit a boxing gym and hang out for a second or two of sparring, and we follow a young bro shouldering a load of lumber out to his pickup while Kunce enthuses about investing “in the heartland, where we’ve been making things for generations.”
As Kunce and I cross Missouri, I ask him how he took the unusual path from Yale to the Marines. He tells me that after finishing college and attending law school at the University of Missouri, he returned to Jeff City and found a mentor in Al Mueller, a Marine and Vietnam vet who ran the soup kitchen that Kunce’s parents launched in the late 1980s, in the basement of their Catholic church. “Al,” he says, “always put others before himself. He thought the Vietnam War was a mess, but he enlisted. He decided, ‘If it’s not me, it’s going to be somebody else.’ ”
In 2007, when Kunce was 24, Mueller took him several times to the Marine Corps League, a sort of VFW hall, in the community of Apache Flats, just outside Jeff City. A singer-songwriter named Ron Saucier was often on hand, warbling patriotic songs playing tribute to soldiers. “There were World War II veterans there, and Korean War vets,” Kunce remembers, “and they told me their stories.” Like Mueller, these older men seemed noble to Kunce. “I already knew that I wanted to do public service,” Kunce says, “but that’s when I decided how I would serve.” Here was a communitarian alpha male in the LBJ tradition — and he was jumping into the fray.
Kunce has been on Fox News numerous times, and also on MSNBC and Bloomberg Television. He’s out-fundraising all other candidates for the Senate seat, including Republicans, bringing in $3.3 million as of March 31, the last time such figures were available. Most of his donations have come from outside the state — from Democrats hoping for a ray of sunshine in the midterms. Ninety-eight percent of the gifts have been for less than $200 — a stat that puts him in the same league as John Fetterman, widely regarded as a grass-roots folk icon. Still, it’s not a sure bet that Kunce will win the primary. His opponent, beer heiress and nurse Trudy Busch Valentine, 65, has made very few political appearances, but in recent polls she was just behind Kunce in a race that still isn’t on many Missourians’ radar screen.
What’s clear is that if Kunce does face Greitens in November, he’ll be up against someone who trumpets his own intense machismo. Before he was governor, Greitens, now 48, was an intelligence officer in the Navy SEALs. He has published four books about his SEAL experience, among them “Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life.” In appearing on TV to promote these brisk sellers, he has reflected on questions such as, “How do people deal with hardship and become heroic?” In his winning 2016 gubernatorial campaign, he worked the SEAL motif relentlessly, even going so far as to sell bumper stickers that read, “ISIS Hunting Permit.” Not everyone appreciated his virile strutting: That same year, 16 of his fellow SEALs joined forces to produce a sharply critical video that accused Greitens of “stealing the valor and sacrifice of our brothers who actually fought, died, and dedicated their lives to taking the fight to our nation’s enemies.”
Greitens is, like Kunce, a toned physical specimen. He has run a marathon in under three hours and has an impressive boxing résumé. But he has faced a welter of ethical issues. In 2018, he stepped down as governor, accused of violating campaign finance laws — a charge that was deemed unfounded in a 2022 Missouri Ethics Commission ruling. In 2018 he was also accused of terrorizing his hairdresser. He allegedly tied her up, blindfolded her, stripped her, forced her to have oral sex, took photographs and then threatened to distribute them if she ever spoke publicly of the episode. More recently, his ex-wife has accused him of knocking her down and smacking the couple’s young son so hard the boy’s tooth jiggled loose.
In 2018, Greitens was indicted on one felony count for invading the privacy of the hairdresser. The charge was later dropped, though, and the Missouri Supreme Court is now looking at claims that the prosecutor in the case, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, withheld evidence. In a March statement, Greitens called his ex-wife’s allegations “completely fabricated” and “baseless.”
I sought an in-person interview with Greitens; for weeks, he did not reply to my emails. Eventually, though, his campaign sent me a written statement attributed to the former governor. “I fight for what I believe in and I stand on principles,” the statement read. “Far too often, especially in politics, we see weak-kneed politicians who are afraid to stand up and do the most difficult things. When I am U.S. Senator, my sole purpose will be to defend this country from all threats, domestic and abroad, just like the oath I took when I first enlisted with the Navy.”
The rhetoric was manly, no doubt, but I’d eventually discover that, in the Senate race in Missouri, you don’t have to be a man to talk like a honcho. One evening, while visiting the St. Joseph Country Club for a Republican fundraiser, I speak to U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, who was polling in third place in her party’s crowded primary, behind Greitens and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. She offers me a solution to the use of drones for carrying drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. “In Missouri,” she tells me, “there’s a lot of gun owners. We do a lot of target practice. I know we could shoot them down.”
Nearby, hunkered over a white tablecloth, is the figure who first got me thinking about Missouri and manhood: Mark McCloskey. McCloskey is, okay, polling in fifth place among Missouri’s 21 Republican Senate candidates, but there’s something archetypal about this personal injury lawyer who, in 2020, patrolled his lawn with an AR-15 as his wife, Patricia, stood beside him waggling a smaller, more ladylike Bryco .380-caliber pistol at Black Lives Matter protesters.
McCloskey is the aggrieved White male, so one afternoon I meet up with him and Patricia at a bar in St. Joseph to ask what compelled him to brandish his gun. Like many conservatives, McCloskey sees our nation as an impending catastrophe in need of hard male energy. He tells me that the Black Lives Matter protesters were “screaming death threats and arson threats.” Audio recordings of the incident don’t support this claim — their wording is hard to decipher — but McCloskey says that the activists pointed and told him, “That’s where I’m going to have my breakfast after we kill you and take the house.”
What McCloskey perceived as a Black Lives Matter siege on his home was just another chapter in a long-running siege on American liberty that “goes back to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1905. The forces that created the Soviet Union and Red China,” he tells me, “have a program of trying to undermine free society.” Today, he says, “the CDC is using our phones to track us. There are people sitting in holes in D.C. with no hope of a trial” — Jan. 6 protesters, he means. “This country has the smallest remnants of freedom left,” he continues, “and my campaign is a movement to restore freedom, to restore individuals as the masters of their own lives.”
McCloskey tells me that the impulse to “stand up for God and country” resides in his DNA — and for a moment he transports me to long-ago Fort Dodge, Iowa, where, one day, his elderly great-grandfather was crossing a “bridge over a creek. Some young punks were coming the other direction saying, ‘Out of my way, old man,’ ” McCloskey recounts, “and he just knocked them off the bridge, into the water.”
Mark McCloskey says his “campaign is a movement to restore freedom, to restore individuals as the masters of their own lives.”
As I sit there listening, I marvel at how different the raw streets of Fort Dodge were from McCloskey’s manicured lawn — and how the myth of frontier masculinity keeps enduring in America, no matter the context. But we’re an hour into the interview now, and I’m cognizant of Patricia, who’s been sitting silently by her husband’s side the entire time. I look over to her, finally, and note that she’s a lawyer too; she also patrolled the lawn that day in 2020. Why isn’t she the one running for Senate? “I wouldn’t think about running,” she says. “He’s the dude.”
A couple of hours after scaling the iron beam, Kunce is slated to meet the photographer for this story. The plan is to take pictures of the candidate in Independence, where he lives within sight of the house that Harry Truman called home for over 50 years. Lounsbury, the press officer, thought Kunce was going to shower and change for the shoot. But when we meet him, Kunce has done neither.
We shoot the photos. We get on Interstate 70 and press east. Just outside of St. Louis, in well-heeled Chesterfield, Kunce meets 60 or so local Democrats gathered in a large gazebo set in a sumptuous grassy park.
When Kunce speaks, his arm gestures are coiled, taut, emphatic. He talks about onerous student loans, which, he says, obliged his law school classmates to abandon their save-the-world ideals and work instead for those “white-shoe law firms that help payday loans squeeze more money out of us.” Then he skewers the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, who perpetrated the war in Afghanistan. “They lied to our faces,” he says. “They told us, ‘Give us your sons and daughters. Give us your trillions of dollars. We’re building something real and lasting in Afghanistan.’ And it all fell apart in 11 days.”
Afterward, Kathy Coe, an IT specialist, stands up to tell Kunce, “I love that you have fight in you. My huge frustration with the Democrats is that we’ve been too polite. Right now, we’re bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Eventually, I’ll speak to Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a history and gender studies professor at Calvin University in Michigan, and learn that she too appreciates Kunce’s force. “He’s exactly the sort of candidate the Democrats should be running right now,” says Du Mez, author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.” “He’s a strong, ripped White male who knows how to use a gun. Who better to reveal how much of the right wing’s masculinity is performative?”
Du Mez adds, “There can be other real-deal candidates capable of subversion: strong women of color, for example. But right now, when masculinity is the motif of the season, Kunce seems right. It’s going to be hard for the Republicans to say he’s not a real man.” Still, she continues, “Kunce is a test case. Republican masculinity is about defending White Christian nationalism. Think of Mark McCloskey on his lawn. Kunce is doing the muscle thing, but he’s extricating the Christian nationalism. We’ll have to see if it works.”
It’s likely to be an uphill battle. The Cook Political Report has rated the Missouri Senate race as “solid Republican,” and Terry Smith, a political scientist at Missouri’s Columbia College, isn’t inclined to doubt that prediction. Smith sees Greitens as the man to beat in Missouri. “In 2016, I learned my lesson on writing certain kinds of candidates off,” Smith says, alluding to Trump’s shocker victory. “I would never count Eric Greitens out. He’s a bad boy, and that resonates with voters. And he has access to a lot of money.” Billionaire shipping magnate Richard Uihlein last year gave $2.5 million to a super PAC supporting Greitens. “Kunce has a long way to go,” Smith tells me.
Kunce doesn’t deny that opposing Greitens would be tough, but he’d relish the challenge. “If it’s me against Greitens, it’s going to be bloody,” Kunce says. “It’s going to be a very bloody, nasty fight.”
Politics as slugfest is exciting, and it makes for killer tweets. But what if we lived in a world where bravado and masculinity weren’t the prime criteria for political success? Kelly Dittmar, a political science professor and the director of research for the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, argues that we should strive for such a world by reimagining political campaigns. “We should expand the credentials we seek, value, and reward among candidates and officeholders,” Dittmar wrote in 2020 on the center’s blog. “Disrupting the gender power imbalance in U.S. politics requires not only shifting power away from men but also from masculinity.”
Dittmar doesn’t just disdain macho saber rattlers like Greitens and McCloskey. She gives low marks to all politicians, male and female, who drench their rhetoric in machismo, for this, she argues, “only maintains power in those credentials.” She laments how, in 2016, presidential candidate Carly Fiorina told Trump to “man up,” and she even takes a swipe at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who decried Trump’s boorish treatment of Fiorina by calling him “a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl.”
Is Kunce just another politician misguidedly using tough-guy rhetoric to take down Trump and his heirs? The answer is complicated. Kunce is a lot more than a gunslinger. When I think of him now, I place him back at Apache Flats, at the Marine Corps League, mixing with the sort of World War II vets that ’40s-era correspondent Ernie Pyle valorized when he savored the communitarian spirit those soldiers shared in combat. “We are all men of new professions,” Pyle wrote, “out in some strange night caring for each other.”
With the rise of ultramasculine candidates in this election cycle, the tone of menace underlying American politics is getting more pronounced.
But then there’s Kunce’s tight T-shirts, the easy and knowing way that he handles a gun for the camera, his happy embrace of the f-bomb as a go-to campaign trail adjective. With his arrival — and with the rise of other ultramasculine candidates in this election cycle — the tone of menace underlying American politics is getting more pronounced.
I could feel this as we crossed Missouri on I-70. One afternoon, as we were driving east in the Focus, Kunce told me about his last military posting, in which he was on staff at the Pentagon, leading arms negotiations between NATO and Russia — and growing increasingly tired of how the Russians violated treaties. He said, “Power and coercion is the only language they understand. If you talk about hugs and kisses, you’re just going to get abused.”
Then, abruptly, he shifted topics, now zeroing on his Senate race. “Eric Greitens, Mark McCloskey,” he said, “all these fake populists on the right, these guys who oppose unions and higher wages, who don’t actually want to end corporate control in our country? They are the Russians, and you’ve got to fight them with firepower.”
Bill Donahue has written for Men’s Journal, GQ and Outside. | 2022-06-20T14:34:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Rise and Cost of He-Man Politics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/20/he-man-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/20/he-man-politics/ |
“In the end, this is an emergency," the president’s top domestic climate adviser said.
TOPSHOT - US President Joe Biden reacts during a meeting on "the Build Back Better World (B3W)", as part of the World Leaders' Summit of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 2, 2021. - World leaders meeting at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow will issue a multibillion-dollar pledge to end deforestation by 2030 but that date is too distant for campaigners who want action sooner to save the planet's lungs. (Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
With his climate legislation stalled and a Supreme Court case threatening his ability to regulate carbon, President Biden has been leaning more heavily than ever on his own authority to tackle climate change and address what he has called an “existential threat."
“It’s been challenging,” Gina McCarthy, Biden’s national climate adviser, said in a recent phone interview. “But he’s been acting boldly and he’s not just been waiting around for Congress to act.”
“The bottom line here is that you’re starting from scratch, with no game plan and a lot of bureaucratic hurdles you can jump through,” said James Lucier, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners, an independent research firm.
The difficulty of using executive powers on climate could be brought into even sharper relief this month if the Supreme Court rules against rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. If conservatives on the Court rule against the EPA, it would be a major setback for the federal government’s ability to limit greenhouse gas emissions with its own authority.
Biden’s recent use of a Cold War-era law to address today’s warming planet illustrates the difficultly of turning a president’s latest crop of ideas into reality when acting alone.
The White House announced earlier this month that it intends to allow the Energy Department to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic manufacturing of solar panel parts, heat pumps, building insulation, fuel cells and other equipment needed to cut emissions from the nation’s power grid.
But Biden still needs Congress to fund the clean-energy spending he wants to do under the law. The White House declined to say how much money it would request from lawmakers, but McCarthy said the plan “will require that Congress take action to actually cement additional increases in our budget.”
Any budget request needs to negotiate a nearly evenly divided Congress where Democrats cannot afford to lose any of their own party’s votes. One of the next funding opportunities will be the annual appropriations bill toward the end of the year.
“The Biden administration’s expansive use of emergency authorities under the DPA is less about strengthening national security and more about subsidizing an anti-American energy resource agenda," Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said after Biden’s announcement.
“His use of the Defense Production Act to accelerate all this domestic production is really, I think, going to be one of the ways in which this president makes it clear to people that he is going to keep driving the change that’s necessary,” McCarthy said.
“The Defense Production Act is suddenly the flavor of the month,” Lucier said.
The Solar Energy Industries Association, a lobbying group that represents the U.S. solar industry, has offered ideas to the White House about using the Defense Production Act in the past, such as a low-cost loan program.
But John Smirnow, the association’s vice president of market strategy and general counsel, said last week he hasn’t talked to the Biden administration about its plans since the announcement.
“Triggering the authority of the Defense Production Act is not in and of itself going to lead to a whole host of investments in the United States in manufacturing overnight,” he said. “It’s going to take time.”
Stephen R. Yurek, president and chief executive of the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, a trade association, said makers of heat pumps are still waiting for the White House’s plans to take shape.
“They don’t have much detail on what they’re thinking or where they’re going to go,” Yurek said.
Now that they have this new authority, White House officials said they plan to hold meetings with industry groups, labor unions and others to determine how to ramp up production rapidly and regain some of the manufacturing capacity ceded to other countries.
A big focus of the Biden administration’s executive actions is making more heat pumps, which can warm and cool homes more efficiently than traditional furnaces and air conditioners.
One major challenge to manufacturing them today is a global shortage of microchips, which has forced some manufacturers to leave almost-finished units sitting in warehouses, waiting for one or two parts to arrive before they can be shipped. CEOs are spending most of their day on the phone “begging and pleading for different parts,” Yurek said.
But even if the government boosts supply, it faces other obstacles to widespread adoption. While more energy-efficient than traditional air conditioners and furnaces, electric heat pumps are typically more expensive, limiting their appeal. And if the U.S. is going to have more heat pumps, it’s going to need more installers, currently in short-supply.
“If we ramp up, we need to make sure there’s a market,” Yurek said. “The question is: Where do those extra heat pumps go and how do they get installed?”
One idea favored by climate advocates is to send them to Europe, where they could slash the continent’s dependence on Russian gas. But when asked about the chances of this happening, Yurek said “zero.”
American and European heat pumps are built to different specifications, he said. While heat pumps made in the United States are usually designed for ductwork, European models are typically ductless. Moreover, many U.S. heat pump manufacturers already have facilities in Europe that produce units designed for those country’s markets. Making them in the U.S. and shipping them overseas would drive up the cost, Yurek said.
Despite the challenges, the administration’s announcement was a victory for Biden’s environmentalist allies after months of disappointment.
“I think it was really important that the climate movement have a win,” said Leah Stokes, a senior policy counsel for the climate advocacy group Rewiring America and a professor of environmental policy at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “This was very politically smart and it addressed a big problem.”
That problem was a Commerce Department investigation into alleged dodging of tariffs by Chinese solar panel makers. The inquiry had paralyzed much of the industry and threatened to go on for months, leading to canceled or delayed projects that would severely hamper the country’s ability to transition away from fossil fuels. To get back on track, the president’s order exempted certain imported solar panels from tariffs for two years.
Whether the president’s use of executive authority to spur clean-energy manufacturing lowers emissions remains to be seen. Experts have said that if the United States were to meet its goal of cutting emissions in half by 2030, it will need record-breaking construction of new solar and wind farms each year. Temporarily suspending the solar tariffs allows the industry to grow.
But for transformational change, advocates said they are focused on trying to pass the $555 billion in climate programs that were originally in the Democrats’ “Build Back Better” bill.
“If this was a little appetizer or an amuse bouche, that is the main course, that’s the big meal right there,” Stokes said.
“That’s what would lead to a renaissance in U.S. solar manufacturing,” Smirnow said.
Talks between Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and other Democrats over passing Biden’s $2 trillion “Build Back Better” bill fell apart bitterly at the end of last year. For now, negotiations over the clean energy tax credits have restarted slowly.
“Everything’s been respectful," Manchin said last week. "There’s not a whole lot going on.”
Other presidents have turned to executive actions after hitting roadblocks in Congress. After a cap-and-trade bill died during its first term, the Obama administration issued the Clean Power Plan to set the nation’s first limits on carbon pollution from the power sector.
But it didn’t last. In 2016, the Supreme Court blocked the EPA regulation. Three years later, the Trump administration finalized its rollback.
“There are many ways in which we can achieve the goals that the president has set out,” she said. “No matter what the Supreme Court decides, we’re going to have a plan.”
Collin Rees, a campaigner at Oil Change U.S., said Biden’s recent use of the Defense Production Act is a “step in the right direction,” but he would like to see Biden formally declare climate change as a national emergency.
“The president and the executive branch have tremendous power,” he said. “To date we have not seen the president use that power. That has been a big mistake.” | 2022-06-20T15:30:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden team sees climate ‘emergency’ but powers are limited - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/20/biden-team-sees-climate-emergency-powers-are-limited/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/20/biden-team-sees-climate-emergency-powers-are-limited/ |
Covid vaccines for young kids are here. So is a new approach to the pandemic.
Marc Lashley gives brothers Aaru Diaz, 5, left, and Taylan De Gale, 8, the coronavirus vaccine at Valley Stream Pediatrics on Nov. 3, 2021, in Valley Stream, N.Y. (Jackie Molloy for The Washington Post)
With coronavirus vaccines finally available to the youngest Americans, the United States has reached an important turning point. Finally, children between 6 months and 4 years of age and their families can join the rest of the country in the new normal. And this campaign marks the beginning of treating covid-19 as an endemic infection handled through the routine health-care system.
Amid the pandemic in 2021, adults and older children thronged mass vaccination sites and trawled the internet for pharmacy appointments. By contrast, the White House envisions that most young children will be vaccinated at their pediatrician’s office.
There are logistical reasons for that shift, as well as emotional ones. Many states don’t allow pharmacies to provide any vaccinations to children under age 3. And even where pharmacists are technically permitted to give shots to very young children, not all have smaller needles on hand or staff who feel comfortable vaccinating babies and toddlers.
Even more important, though, are questions of comfort and trust.
While there are parents eager to get their young children vaccinated immediately, they are very much a minority: They represent just 18 percent of parents of children under 5, according to polling the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted in April. That figure has actually fallen from 31 percent earlier in the year. The parents who consistently say they would not vaccinate their young children for the coronavirus under any circumstances — between a quarter and a third of such parents in Kaiser’s surveys — are also a minority, and might not be reachable.
The largest pool of parents of young children consists of those who want to wait and see how they feel about the vaccination. But health-care providers have one major advantage in the vaccination campaign for these children: They see the doctor much more frequently than older children and adults, so their growth and development can be assessed. The Biden administration hopes that even for parents who don’t want to vaccinate their small children right away, frequent well-child visits will allow parents plenty of opportunities to ask questions, get updates on new data about vaccine safety and efficacy, and to build trust with their providers.
If the vaccination campaign for the youngest kids goes as planned, the result would be a difference that, while quiet, is significant. Rather than treating coronavirus vaccination as a wartime effort, administering the vaccines would become part of the primary-care regimen. The number of shots delivered to young children might start slowly at first but rise over time as babies advance through their six-, nine- and 12-month visits, and as slightly older kids go in for annual appointments to get their health certifications for school.
“This is going to be the group that leads that transition” toward treating covid as a more normal health risk, the physician and White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha told me on Friday. “There are still some real barriers to doing that. We’re not quite there yet. But that is certainly the aspiration, to get to a place where vaccinations, treatments, staying up to date with your immunity, are all part of how you take care of yourself with your physician, with your health-care provider.”
After more than two years of extreme precaution, treating covid the same way we assess other risks will inevitably be a major shift for a lot of Americans.
It’s true there’s a great deal we still don’t know about the prevalence, persistence and impact of long covid — or even about the numerous ways covid itself affects the body in people who don’t stay sick for months after their initial infection. The virus is still mutating. And certainly for people who are uniquely vulnerable to covid, prevention measures will stick around.
The opportunity to eliminate covid was probably lost long before many people even knew the disease existed. Given inadequate control measures and an uneven global vaccination campaign, the chance to stop its mutation is gone, too. Absent a master vaccine for all coronaviruses, moving toward primary-care treatment is the only sensible way to respond to a disease that is now a permanent part of the health landscape.
The lack of vaccines for young children meant they and their families lived with uncertainty and burdensome bureaucracy for longer than any other group of Americans. The youngest only know a world with masks and quarantines; for many, their first years have lacked the carefree attitudes and commonplace experiences that once helped define childhood. Given the relatively low risk covid poses to most children, kids were burdened for the good of their communities as much as for their own protection.
The vaccination campaign for young children should show us not just how to treat covid as part of routine health care, but why to accept that it will be with us and to plan accordingly. It’s a big world out there. The time is long past for the youngest kids, and the rest of us, to get out there and explore it. | 2022-06-20T15:30:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Covid-19 vaccines for kids under 5 mean a new phase of the pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/covid-vaccines-under-5-change-how-we-approach-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/covid-vaccines-under-5-change-how-we-approach-pandemic/ |
Most Americans think Trump should be prosecuted. It’s not that easy.
Police spray Trump supporters on the day of the riot at the U.S. Capitol. (John Minchillo/AP)
There’s no question that there would not have been a riot at the U.S. Capitol were it not for President Donald Trump.
The Jan. 6, 2021, riot depended on the presence on Capitol Hill of a lot of people who believed that Trump should remain in power, either because they thought the election was unfairly determined or they didn’t want Joe Biden to be inaugurated. For weeks before the riot, Trump had encouraged his supporters to come to Washington that day and, for months prior, had repeatedly made false claims against the sanctity of the election process.
On the morning of the riot, Trump spoke to the tens of thousands of supporters he’d summoned, reinforced their grievances about his imminent departure and its causes, and then told them how and why to head to the Capitol. After the violence began, Trump let it continue without interruption.
The House select committee investigating the riot has spent the past few weeks publicly elevating the evidence that makes this pattern obvious and contextualizing the riot within Trump’s broader effort to retain power. It has been adding useful complexity to the picture, though at times risking making things more complicated than they actually are.
What Americans have taken away from the recent public discussion about the riot spurred by the committee’s work, it seems, is that Trump should face criminal charges for his role in spurring it.
There have been several polls conducted since the riot that have measured the extent to which Americans think Trump should face this very specific form of accountability. In the most recent, ABC News and Ipsos found that nearly 3 in 5 Americans think Trump should face criminal charges. That follows a poll conducted at the end of April by The Washington Post and ABC News that put the figure at just over half, which is about where things stood shortly after the riot, too.
You can see the recent shift below. While Democrats have consistently thought Trump should face criminal charges, only about 1 in 10 Republicans did in that April poll. In the new ABC-Ipsos poll, that jumped to nearly 1 in 5. Margins of error are important here; the shift may be more modest than the top-line numbers make it seem. But there’s little question that most Americans think Trump should face criminal charges.
This is important for two reasons.
The first is that shift. This is a change seen in two polls on a specific question, so we can’t directly state that it’s a function of the House committee’s work. But if broader public sentiment on the Capitol riot shifts as a result of the committee’s hearings, that’s notable. This is a “let’s wait and see” issue.
The other reason the polling is important, though, is because it establishes a baseline of expectations. Americans generally think Trump should be charged. But even with the apparent shift among Republicans, the subject is deeply polarized along party lines. And that, of course, colors the question of whether it would happen.
Writing for the New York Times, former assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith walks through the questions facing Attorney General Merrick Garland when it comes to charging Trump. Garland might need to appoint a special counsel, Goldsmith argues, to isolate the decision from the political complexities of filing charges against Garland’s boss’s most likely 2024 opponent. He notes that, from the viewpoint of a prosecutor, the evidence at hand might not make a conviction likely — that, unlike the House committee’s hearings, a criminal trial with standards of evidence and cross-examination would necessarily give jurors a much less clear-cut picture of Trump’s guilt.
One important question here is whether Trump actually believed his assertions that he thought the election was stolen. There’s a surfeit of evidence to suggest that he didn’t, of course, and Trump certainly has an established record of saying things he obviously doesn’t believe to be true. But if the Justice Department wanted to charge Trump with obstructing an official proceeding — a crime the House committee has argued it thinks the former president committed — he might be able to convince jurors that he was simply trying to defend what he thought was the true will of voters.
That sentence alone can be spun off into a range of other directions. For example, the Justice Department might charge Trump with something other than the charges that the House committee appears to be targeting, such as fraud for his efforts to fundraise off his false election-fraud claims. Former U.S. attorney Harry Litman has argued that Trump’s culpability for the riot on Jan. 6 isn’t necessarily moderated by any argument that he believed the election was stolen: He still brought them to Washington, stoked their anger and pointed them at the Capitol.
Where Goldsmith’s essay closes, though, is probably the most important point. Not indicting Trump if Garland believed a prosecution was warranted would indicate that presidents are above the law, emboldening future presidents, including, possibly, Trump himself. But prosecuting him would be seen by a large segment of the public as itself an abuse of presidential power and would “further enflame our already-blazing partisan acrimony.”
What abstract discussions of the possibility of charging Trump often avoid is the practical reality of doing so. What’s at issue is not simply a white-collar sort of finagling by a president, not simply a secret Nixonian plot to quietly undercut political opponents. What is at issue is specifically a violent attack conducted by Trump supporters! Not only is Goldsmith’s concern about “enflaming” warranted, we’re talking here about a situation in which violence has already erupted in Trump’s defense. The threat of violence following potential criminal charges is not at all theoretical; if anything, it would be likely.
One imagines that, even as it gathers evidence and considers its path forward, federal law enforcement finds itself in a position similar to the one the Republican Party’s establishment faced for the past seven years: hoping things just sort of fade out in an acceptable way. Do nothing and hope it works out.
It has so far not worked out for the Republican establishment. | 2022-06-20T15:31:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Most Americans think Trump should be prosecuted for the Capitol riot. It’s not that easy. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/20/most-americans-think-trump-should-be-prosecuted-its-not-that-easy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/20/most-americans-think-trump-should-be-prosecuted-its-not-that-easy/ |
Summer solstice 2022: A guide to the longest day of the year
By Justin Grieser
Golden sunset over the Key Bridge from Roosevelt Island on June 4. (Diane Krauthamer/Flickr)
Early dawn, late dusk. If you’ve been enjoying these enchantingly long, bright days, Tuesday is a day to savor. June 21 is the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
The 2022 summer solstice arrives at 5:14 a.m. Eastern time. At this precise moment the sun appears directly over the Tropic of Cancer — as far north as it appears in the sky all year. Around the solstice, the sun’s northward movement in the sky appears to pause briefly before reversing direction for the next six months.
The sun traces its longest and highest path through the sky, and you can observe sunrise and sunset at its northernmost points along the horizon.
What causes the solstice?
Solstices, equinoxes and seasons occur because the Earth doesn’t orbit the sun completely upright. Instead, Earth’s axis is tilted by about 23.5 degrees, which causes each hemisphere to receive different amounts of sunlight throughout the year.
“The Earth’s axis always points the same direction, so as the planet makes its way around the sun, each hemisphere sees varying amounts of sunlight,” Capital Weather Gang’s Jeremy Deaton explained in a 2019 article.
In June, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, bringing us more direct sunlight and warmer temperatures. Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere, June 21 marks the first day of winter and the shortest day of the year.
How much daylight do we see on the solstice?
Daylight hours on the summer solstice depend on latitude: The closer you move toward the North Pole, the more time the sun spends above the horizon. The sun is up for 16 hours in Seattle, but only 13 hours and 45 minutes in Miami.
Every season except summer is getting shorter, a sign of trouble for people and the environment
Washington, D.C., sees about 14 hours 54 minutes of daylight on the summer solstice, with sunrise at 5:42 a.m. and sunset at 8:36 p.m., according to timeanddate.com.
To experience the midnight sun, you would have to head toward the Arctic Circle, where the sun continuously circles the sky all day.
Yet while the summer solstice has the longest day length, we don’t see our earliest sunrise or latest sunset on June 21. Calculated down to the second, the earliest sunrise in Washington was at 5:42 a.m. on June 13, while the latest sunset occurs at 8:37 p.m. on June 27. The misalignment happens because of Earth’s tilt and our elliptical orbit around the sun.
Every location in the Lower 48 had a later sunrise this morning that they did yesterday. pic.twitter.com/PTIzuB18MY
Why do we celebrate the solstice?
Humans throughout history have celebrated the solstices with rituals such as bonfires and ceremonial dances to mark the passage of the seasons. Some ancient cultures, such as the Maya or the Aztecs, even built special monuments to mark the sun’s changing path in the sky.
Stonehenge, which was built more than 5,000 years ago in modern-day England, is perhaps the best known of these prehistoric landmarks. Some historians think the large circle of free-standing stones was once a solar calendar used to track the seasons. That is because on the summer solstice, the rising sun aligns perfectly with the structure’s Heel Stone, positioned outside the structure’s main circle.
Today, thousands gather at Stonehenge each year to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes and the changing of the seasons.
When does summer actually begin?
Many people consider the summer solstice as the first day of summer, but there is no official definition for the start and end dates of the season. Meteorologists and climatologists define summer as the warmest three months of the year, from June 1 to Aug. 31.
Summerlike heat often arrives before the solstice, as we’ve already seen over a large portion of the Lower 48 and parts of Europe this month. However, the hottest day of the year typically doesn’t arrive until the second half of July for much of the U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This seasonal lag happens because the amount of solar energy arriving at the ground is greater than the amount leaving the Earth for several weeks after the solstice. It’s largely driven by the oceans, which take longer than land to warm up and cool down, and release heat slowly over time.
But even though the dog days of summer are still upon us, the solstice signals a turning point toward shorter days and longer nights over the coming months. | 2022-06-20T15:52:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | First day of summer: Longest day, shortest night on June 21 solstice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/20/solstice-summer-longest-day-june/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/20/solstice-summer-longest-day-june/ |
The production platform of the Leviathan natural gas field is seen in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Haifa, northern Israel, on June 9, 2021. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)
TEL AVIV — With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s burgeoning natural gas sector has set its sights on energy-desperate Europe, but it’s also using its newly acquired energy wealth to achieve its long-sought goal of integrating itself into the region with its once-hostile Arab neighbors.
While the cooperation is not entirely new — Cairo has hosted the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, including Israel, the Palestinian Authority and six other Mediterranean countries, since 2019 — “the world economic prices is creating a lot of motivation for a lot of players to accelerate,” Albo said. | 2022-06-20T16:31:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Israel's natural gas deal with Europe and Egypt binds it closer to the Middle East - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/israel-egypt-turkey-gas-europe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/israel-egypt-turkey-gas-europe/ |
People on Monday demand the release of protesters arrested in Colombo amid Sri Lanka's economic crisis. (Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters)
NEW DELHI — Schools and government offices in Sri Lanka’s major cities were shut Monday for at least a week as a severe fuel shortage nearly brought the country to a standstill, the latest chapter in a slow-moving economic crisis that has led to protests, political turmoil and mounting food insecurity.
Many streets in the normally bustling capital, Colombo, were largely deserted. Armed forces stood guard at gas stations as lines of vehicles extended for miles. The hours-long waits have led to tense standoffs and violent confrontations in recent days between frustrated Sri Lankans and security forces.
In a blunt statement, the energy minister asked the public to refrain from lining up for gasoline for the next three days. Authorities announced last week that government workers, barring those in essential fields such as health care, would work from home given the “current fuel shortage and issues in transport facilities.”
Chandima Madusanka, an auto rickshaw driver in Colombo, said he waited two days to get seven liters (less than two gallons) of gasoline, which he estimated would last only a day. He said it was becoming impossible to feed his family.
“How can we live like this?” he asked angrily.
Crucial talks between the Sri Lankan government and the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package are being held in Colombo this week. In April, the country suspended payments on its foreign debt, which stands at $51 billion.
The talks are an important first step in averting economic ruin, experts said, but are only a starting point. “Even with an IMF program, the money from the loans will not be enough to restore everything that is needed to put Sri Lanka in a turnaround situation,” said Lutz Röhmeyer of Capitulum Asset Management, a German investment firm.
Life has become a daily struggle for many in this island nation of 23 million, as it endures its worst economic crisis in decades. Food inflation reached 57 percent last month, and a recent survey by the World Food Program conducted in 17 of 25 districts found that most families are feeling the effects of hunger.
The “big red flags” were found among the poor, who had resorted to “skipping meals, eating much smaller meals or buying cheaper food that is not nutritious,” said Anthea Webb, the WFP’s deputy regional director for Asia and the Pacific.
“We have to rely on handouts, and even those are not as frequent now,” said Lalitha Jayasundara, 58, who cleans roads and collects garbage in Colombo. “Surviving each day is a battle.”
Public anger over economic mismanagement has spilled out onto the streets. Months-long protests resulted in the May resignation of the prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, but his brother Gotabaya continues to serve as president.
Sri Lanka’s neighbors are lending a helping hand: India has sent food, fuel and medicine, while Australia announced $50 million in assistance, including food and health services.
Sri Lanka’s president scrambles to end protests over economic turmoil
But a lack of foreign reserves and high global food prices have made it difficult for the government to import essential items, while runaway inflation and widespread unemployment mean most families can’t afford what’s on the shelves.
Akalanka Punchihewa lost his food delivery job recently after the restaurant he worked for shut down. The 32-year-old has a young child and an ailing parent but no way to provide for them.
“We cook with firewood and had to stop giving milk to our child,” he said. “We just can’t afford these prices.”
Government programs have also been hit. The federal nutrition program for women was suspended recently because of a lack of resources. In an effort to fill the gap, the WFP started a food voucher program for pregnant women in Colombo and launched a crowdfunding campaign for meals.
“Between now and the end of the year, about 3 million are going to need [the WFP’s] emergency food assistance,” Webb said. “It is a lot for a country this size. There is no time to lose.”
Farisz reported from Colombo. | 2022-06-20T16:31:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sri Lanka shuts schools, offices as it nearly runs out of fuel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/sri-lanka-economy-crisis-fuel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/sri-lanka-economy-crisis-fuel/ |
Massive wildfire in New Jersey has tripled in size since Sunday
A wildfire burning through southern New Jersey’s pine lands has nearly tripled in size since Sunday, growing to 7,200 acres, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.
No injuries have been reported since the Mullica River Fire broke out Sunday afternoon in a remote section of the Wharton State Forest, officials said, but the blaze has forced road closures and shutdowns of recreation areas.
It was 45 percent contained as of mid-Monday.
The Wharton State Forest is in the heart of an ecosystem known as the Pine Barrens, about 20 miles northwest of Atlantic City.
By Monday, fire crews were fighting the blaze in four townships — Washington, Shamong, Hammonton and Mullica — after dry and breezy conditions helped the fire spread, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service (NJFFS).
The fire service said crews were working to contain the blaze with backfiring operations, a firefighting tactic in which fires are intentionally set along the inside edge of a fire line to burn fuel in the wildfire’s path so it doesn’t grow.
Fire crews are focusing their efforts on protecting structures in the Wharton State Forest campgrounds and the Basto Village, a historic site in Washington Township, according to Larry Hajna, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The wildfire forced the two closures, including portions of U.S. Route 206, a north-south thoroughfare.
“The fire is in the southern section of the state forest that runs along a state highway, Route 206, which is also near woodlands where there aren’t private residences that are in any immediate danger,” Hajna told The Washington Post.
The vast Wharton State Forest is home to various outdoor recreation areas that were closed Monday as a result of the fire. | 2022-06-20T16:35:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Jersey wildfire scorches more than 7,000 acres - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/20/new-jersey-wildfire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/20/new-jersey-wildfire/ |
As one Republican reels from threats, another’s grotesque ad stokes them
A still from Eric Greitens' campaign ad. (Greitens for U.S. Senate) (Greitens for U.S. Senate)
There’s nothing subtle about former Missouri governor Eric Greitens’s new ad for his U.S. Senate campaign.
In it, Greitens (R) — a former Navy SEAL, as he mentions at the outset — joins a group of camouflage-clad men in conducting an armed raid on a house. Their target? RINOs: Republicans in name only.
“Join the MAGA crew,” Greitens says in the ad. “Get a RINO-hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”
Ads in which conservative or right-wing Republicans excoriate their opponents as insufficiently partisan are not new, of course. The idea that “RINOs” should be removed from office is a long-standing one, particularly in the Donald Trump era when traditional Republican politicians have often found themselves targeted by Trump’s more extreme supporters. Such ads hope to capture anger at perceived political weakness by the insufficiently partisan to demonstrate a candidate’s strength.
Usually, though, those ads are explicit that their targeting is only conceptual. Greitens’s ad ignores any such caveats. In fact, it goes further, combining the increased Republican fetishization of firearms in campaign spots with the idea that some Republican legislators should be taken out. It intentionally blurs the dual meaning of that expression: “taken out” of office — or “taken out” in the Mafia-movie sense.
In the abstract, it’s just tone-deaf tough-guy shtick, conflating physical toughness with political toughness. But Greitens’s background is salient here. He has been credibly accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife, and he left office as governor following revelations of an affair that included allegations of abuse. He is a person trained to use violence who has been accused of using violence and is now suggesting that violence be used against people who fail to adhere to his right-wing worldview.
The timing of the Greitens ad is particularly striking, given news reports that emerged this weekend about a threat to Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). Kinzinger has become a prominent target of the right, particularly Trump supporters, after he both voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and because he serves on the House select committee investigating that attack.
Kinzinger posted the message he received on social media. It includes a threat against him, his wife and his infant son.
“How worried are you about your personal safety?” Kinzinger was asked by ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. Kinzinger replied that his concern was more for his family than himself. This echoes the sentiment expressed by Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio) when he announced his decision not to seek reelection last year. Gonzalez, who also voted to impeach Trump, realized the scale of the threat he faced when he was met by security at an Ohio airport.
“That’s one of those moments where you say, ‘Is this really what I want for my family when they travel, to have my wife and kids escorted through the airport?’” Gonzalez explained to the New York Times.
“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” Kinzinger told Stephanopoulos at another point in his interview on Sunday. “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”
Greitens has been one of those who is not interested in telling people the truth on the specific issue being investigated by the House committee. He has amplified false claims about the security of the 2020 election and has downplayed the scale of the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on Jan. 6. That he is doing so as he seeks the endorsement of the Republican Party in Missouri is exactly the point: He is betting that there’s more electoral reward in being the anti-establishment, anti-reality tough guy than articulating any nuanced view of Republican politics.
The result is an ad in which Greitens encourages people not to vote other Republicans out of office or even to vote for him instead. It’s an ad in which he explicitly says that Republicans like Kinzinger should be hunted with guns. Usually, guns are a metaphor that serves as subtext to calls for voting a certain way. In this ad, the voting is at most subtext — if it can be extracted from Greitens’s message at all. Greitens is pledging to fight everyone to the left of Donald Trump in as literal and as forceful a way as can be imagined.
In April, he welcomed Donald Trump Jr. to Missouri for a day of shooting. He posted video of the fun, saying that it would strike “fear into the hearts of liberals, RINOs, and the fake media” — all perceived enemies who deserved to worry about gun violence.
Striking fear into the hearts of liberals, RINOs, and the fake media.
Great day of shooting in Missouri with .@DonaldJTrumpJr! It's time to Make America Great Again, Again. pic.twitter.com/urMdIS7KX4
— Eric Greitens (@EricGreitens) April 25, 2022
The message, once again, was unsubtle. | 2022-06-20T16:36:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Adam Kinzinger reels from threats, Eric Greitens's grotesque ad stokes them - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/20/eric-greitens-grotesque-ad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/20/eric-greitens-grotesque-ad/ |
Israel leader to dissolve Knesset as coalition fails and new elections planned
In this photo taken on May 29 Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (R) and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, attend a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced on Monday that they plan to dissolve the Knesset next week, triggering the path for a fifth round of general Israeli elections in less than four years.
If the vote passes, Lapid will become the interim prime minister, though Bennett will continue to be in charge of the Iran file, as was outlined in the power sharing agreement. Elections will likely take place on Oct. 25, according to Israeli media.
Bennett and Lapid said in a joint statement that they had “exhausted options to stabilize” their coalition, which is made up of an ideological kaleidoscope of parties — including left wing peaceniks, right wing pro-settlers, and, for the first time in Israeli history an Arab Islamist party — which united a year ago by their desire to oust then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
For weeks, that coalition has been teetering on the brink of collapse as members, including in Bennett’s Yamina party, have been defecting, stripping the government of its majority and its ability to pass legislation.
In an effort to accelerate the coalition’s demise earlier this month, Netanyahu rallied his party and other usually pro-settler members of the opposition to vote down a usually uncontroversial measure that enables civilian law to be applied to Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. | 2022-06-20T16:57:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Naftali Bennett to dissolve Israel government hold new elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/israel-knesset-coalition-dissolve-bennett/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/israel-knesset-coalition-dissolve-bennett/ |
The unprecedented agreement gives five tribes more input in the management of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah
The sun sets over Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Biden administration has reached a historic agreement to give five Native American tribes more say over the day-to-day management of a national monument in Utah, marking a new chapter in the federal government’s often-fraught relationship with tribes.
“Today, instead of being removed from a landscape to make way for a public park, we are being invited back to our ancestral homelands to help repair them and plan for a resilient future,” Carleton Bowekaty, co-chair of the Bears Ears Commission and lieutenant governor of the Pueblo of Zuni, said in a statement.
Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement that the agreement is “an important step as we move forward together to ensure that tribal expertise and traditional perspectives remain at the forefront of our joint decision-making for the Bears Ears National Monument.”
The move comes as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet member — works to repair the federal government’s relationship with tribes, which has been tarnished by instances of federal officials removing Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands.
Humans have inhabited the southeast corner of Utah for 13,000 years, carving arrowheads from stone, farming corn, painting images on rocks and creating communities on the mesa tops. But in recent years, Bears Ears has been at the center of a fierce political battle over America’s public lands.
In October, President Biden used executive orders to protect 1.36 million acres in Bears Ears — slightly larger than the original boundary that Obama established. The orders also reversed Trump’s cuts to the 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument. And they reestablished the Bears Ears Commission, which comprises one elected officer from each of the five tribes.
Biden expands Bears Ears and other national monuments, reversing Trump cuts
Pat Gonzales-Rogers, executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which represents all five tribes, said Saturday’s agreement could set a precedent for arrangements with other tribes and communities of color across the country.
“Some of the things that we’re doing are portable to many other entities in Indian country, and in some ways they can provide a paradigm for other BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] groups,” Gonzales-Rogers said in an interview.
In the coming weeks, the five tribes plan to submit a land management plan for Bears Ears to the Bureau of Land Management. The agency will then incorporate the tribes’ recommendations into its own plan, which could take up to 18 months to finalize.
Federal officials, including at the Interior Department, have often had fraught dealings with the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes across the Lower 48 and Alaska. In the late 19th century, federal officials removed Native Americans from their ancestral lands, including from Yellowstone, the nation’s first national park.
In 1983, Interior Secretary James G. Watt blamed the problems on U.S. reservations on Indigenous culture. “If you want an example of the failure of socialism, don’t go to Russia,” Watts said. “Come to America and go to the Indian reservations.”
Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, has sought to address this troubled legacy since taking the helm of the Interior Department last year. In May, she announced plans to meet with survivors of Indian boarding schools across the country in a tour called “The Road to Healing.” Native American children who attended these schools were forcibly taken from their families to be “assimilated,” and those who died were often buried in unmarked graves. | 2022-06-20T17:02:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Native American tribes to co-manage Bears Ears national monument - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/20/bears-ears-national-monument-tribes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/20/bears-ears-national-monument-tribes/ |
Liz Cheney, Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 scandal’s Potent Quotables
By Benjamin Dreyer
A recorded deposition by Jared Kushner is played during a Jan. 6 committee hearing last week. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
Benjamin Dreyer is Random House’s executive managing editor and copy chief and the author of “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.”
The House select committee’s Jan. 6 hearings are generating quotes and sound bites almost faster than the internet can memeify them. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) was first out of the gate, in the initial televised hearing, with “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
I do not join the chorus asserting that Cheney’s admirably steadfast presence on the committee — and disinclination to join her fellow Republicans, insofar as the attack on the Capitol is concerned, in sticking their fingers in their ears while chanting la-la-la-la-la-la — warrant her immediate ascension to the White House as our next president. But she undeniably has a way with an ultimatum.
Grammar and punctuation aficionados who can recall the difference between a restrictive clause and a nonrestrictive clause will, moreover, take particular note of the absence of a comma in Cheney’s comment as it was presented in the committee’s own transcript: not the blanketly nonrestrictive “my Republican colleagues, who are defending the indefensible,” which would imply that all her fellow party members are pro-insurrection (or at least pro impromptu Capitol visits that include smearing excrement on walls and baying “Hang Mike Pence”), but simply the restrictive “my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible.” That points a merciful finger at only a select few. Well, a lot more than a few, but not all.
Political scandals have a way of generating what the “Jeopardy!” people might well dub Potent Quotables. Media coverage last week of the Watergate break-in’s 50th anniversary dusted off President Richard M. Nixon’s notorious “Well, I’m not a crook.” Republicans and Democrats practice bipartisanship when it comes to scandal PQs: It was President Bill Clinton, in the depths of a sex scandal, who contributed the monumentally evasive “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
But enough nostalgia. The Jan. 6 hearings are offering up plenty of lines contending to become permanently evocative of this particular scandal.
There was professional son-in-law Jared Kushner’s comment concerning White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s threat to resign — “I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you.” And testimony from J. Michael Luttig, an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence and former federal judge, that “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”
Luttig was presumably alluding not to Tom Clancy’s 1989 novel, or the 1994 Harrison Ford film thereof, but to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s 1919 remark in Schenck v. United States concerning Congress’s ability to restrict words “used in such circumstances and … of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” Well, that was about the 1917 Espionage Act, and this is now.
Or consider Trump adviser/schemer John Eastman’s plaintive email request of presidential whatnot Rudy Giuliani, which seemed ready-made for the umpteenth online adaptation of William Carlos Williams’s poem “This Is Just to Say” (“I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox …”):
I’ve decided / that I should be / on the pardon list / if that is still / in the works.
Then there were Trump’s own immortal words on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, addressed to his vice president: “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.” Though I’m reasonably certain I haven’t uttered anything in that vein since I was 12, I’m more than reasonably certain that I didn’t utter it because the thing that one of my friends refused to do was to overturn a national election and instigate a constitutional crisis.
But let’s get back to one key word and the key question that dominates the Jan. 6 hearings: the meaning of “insurrection.” Noted constitutional scholar and lexicographer Tucker Carlson informed us the night after the first committee hearing (not that Fox News aired it) that “an insurrection is when people with guns try to overthrow the government. Not a single person in the crowd on Jan. 6 was found to be carrying a firearm. Not one.”
Working back to front, one might agree that, yes, not a single person in the crowd was packing heat, because, as PolitiFact reports, “Many of those involved in the attack were armed, and several had guns that police later seized.”
And an insurrection, if your dictionary of choice is not whatever Fox News is using but Merriam-Webster, is “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.” In the dictionary, unlike on Jan. 6, 2021, not a gun in sight.
Opinions on language
The pandemic has scarred our language
This is not the time to change how we talk about abortion
Kyiv vs. Kiev, Zelensky vs. Zelenskyy, and the immense meaning of ‘the’ | 2022-06-20T17:02:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Liz Cheney, Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 scandal’s Potent Quotables - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/liz-cheney-donald-trump-jan-6-quotes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/liz-cheney-donald-trump-jan-6-quotes/ |
Filipino government lawyer fatally shot while vacationing in U.S.
His mother said in a Facebook post that she was wounded by shrapnel. It’s unclear whether the driver, who was working for Uber at the time, was injured.
Police said officers responded to the scene about 4 a.m. Saturday. It’s unclear whether the shooting was a targeted or random attack, and the investigation is ongoing. As of Monday afternoon, police had not made arrests or identified a suspect.
Elmer Cato, the Philippines’ consul general for New York, urged Philadelphia police to “do everything to bring [the] perpetrator to justice” on Twitter on Sunday.
“I said a prayer for him and assured him that we will do everything we can to bring him home as soon as possible,” Cato tweeted.
“We traveled together and we are supposed to go home together!” Laylo said in the post. “I will bring him home soon in a box!”
“He was so young and still full of dreams,” she wrote.
Ex-Philadelphia officer charged with murder in killing of 12-year-old
This year, up until Saturday, there had been 1,939 shooting incidents in the city — a 7 percent increase compared to the previous year.
Between May 23 and Saturday, there were 349 shootings, according to weekly data from the Philadelphia Police Department, an increase of just below 5 percent from the previous month.
The White DA, the Black ex-mayor and a harsh debate on crime
“The violent attack that took Mr. Laylo’s life is heartbreaking and our thoughts are with his family during their time of grief,” the spokesperson told the outlet. “We hope the police are able to quickly arrest those responsible.” | 2022-06-20T22:37:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Albert Laylo of the Philippines is killed in Philadelphia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/20/philippines-lawyer-killed-philadelphia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/20/philippines-lawyer-killed-philadelphia/ |
Hong Kong's Jumbo Floating Restaurant is towed away on June 14 after the vessel hit adverse weather and capsized near the Paracel Islands. (Kin Cheung/AP)
One of Hong Kong’s most famous landmarks — a large floating restaurant known for its lavish banquet halls and neon lights — capsized in the South China Sea, its parent company said Monday.
The Jumbo Floating Restaurant — also known as Jumbo Kingdom — was towed from the city last week after closing down during the pandemic. The vessel hit adverse weather Sunday and capsized near the Paracel Islands, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises said in a statement, adding that no crew members were hurt.
The sprawling 260-foot-long boat spent nearly half a century in Hong Kong’s waters, playing host to “numerous international dignitaries and celebrities,” including Queen Elizabeth II and Tom Cruise, according to the Jumbo Kingdom website.
Coronavirus binds Hong Kong even closer to Beijing as the mainland takes lead on pandemic response
Earlier this month, before it was towed, the restaurant’s 130-foot kitchen flotilla snapped off the back of the boat and sunk in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter.
It was unclear exactly where Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises planned to take the restaurant before it sank. A spokesperson for the company told South China Morning Post that the vessel was being towed somewhere in Southeast Asia. | 2022-06-20T22:37:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hong Kong's Jumbo Floating Restaurant sinks at sea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/jumbo-floating-restaurant-hong-kong/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/jumbo-floating-restaurant-hong-kong/ |
18-year-old killed after crash in Oakton
An 18-year-old man died Sunday after his car sped off an Oakton area road and crashed into a tree, Fairfax County police said.
Franklin Aquilino, of Chantilly, lost control of a Mazda 3 as he drove in the 3200 block of Fox Mill Road around 11 p.m.,Fairfax County police said in a statement Monday. He later died after being transported to a hospital, police said.
A juvenile passenger, who police did not identify by age or gender, suffered injuries not considered to be life threatening and remained hospitalized Monday, police said.
The Mazda veered off the right shoulder as Aquilino crested a hill while traveling south,, police said. Investigators believe speed contributed to the cause of the crash, according to the statement. | 2022-06-20T22:41:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 18-year-old killed after crash in Oakton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/20/teen-killed-oakton-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/20/teen-killed-oakton-crash/ |
Three takeaways from France’s legislative elections — and what could be next
By James McAuley
French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday. (Nathan Laine/Bloomberg)
Macron’s ability to govern smoothly is now in question
The French left is by no means dead
Le Pen’s far-right camp fared well
The French legislative elections, which concluded their second round on Sunday, spell trouble for President Emmanuel Macron. Though he won a decisive victory in April’s presidential election, he may now struggle to govern with ease, facing off against strengthened camps to both the left and right of his nominally centrist coalition.
His party lost the absolute majority that it had enjoyed for the past five years, in a seeming rejection of the status quo that brought him to power in 2017. The results are a window into what happens when the faction that styles itself as new and different becomes the establishment. As he had promised to do, Macron has remade the French political system. But the inevitable price he paid is that he is now the one against whom others rebel.
Here are some key takeaways from the results:
In April, when Macron won a second-term victory against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, the conventional wisdom was that one of the few French presidents in recent memory to win a coveted second term had done it again, pulling off a political triumph amid challenging odds. But it turns out that, in the minds of many voters, Macron’s victory was more a rejection of his opponent.
With the far right kept out of the Élysée Palace, voters are now expressing their discontent with Macron. Although abstention was high, Macron’s alliance, Ensemble, lost its absolute majority, winning 246 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly. Granted, Ensemble remains the largest voting bloc in the chamber, but its totals this year mean that Macron will likely encounter more turbulence governing during his second term. The kinds of controversial proposals of his first term, such as pension reform, will now likely meet more resistance, especially given the emergence of a new left-wing coalition and an even more muscular far right.
Perhaps the most interesting storyline of the legislative elections has been the emergence of a left-wing political force — one that has materialized from an ideological camp assumed until recently to be dormant. The New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES), a constellation of left-wing parties spearheaded by the firebrand politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, had as of Monday won 142 seats in France’s National Assembly, according to Le Monde.
For months — and even years — a frequent refrain of political commentary has been that the “left is dead,” a storyline seemingly confirmed by the disastrous end to François Hollande left-wing administration in 2017. But what the rise of NUPES has shown — following on the heels of Mélenchon’s strong presidential campaign in the spring — is that a muscular left is possible. The appeal of NUPES so far lies in its promises of a lower retirement age and a higher minimum wage. How NUPES will function as a bloc in Parliament remains to be seen, but the preliminary results show that the left as a political force is far from dead; it was just previously fragmented.
Though Le Pen was rebuked once again in her quest for the presidency, her party — now called Rassemblement National — continues its march toward legitimacy in the eyes of the French public. According to Le Monde’s calculations, the party won 89 seats in the National Assembly, the largest share in its history.√
“The people have spoken,” Le Pen proclaimed in the northern town of Hénin-Beaumont, her constituency. “Overcoming the obstacle of a particularly unfair voting system unsuited to the values of our time, the people have decided to send a very powerful group of Rassemblement National MPs to the Assemblée Nationale, which therefore becomes … a little more national.” Never before has her party had this much legislative visibility, which certainly counts as a first in the postwar history of France.
In his second term, Macron may still be able to find his way despite the strengthened factions to his right and left; he has certainly navigated himself out of political quandaries before. But the president, who once promised a “revolution” in French politics, may soon find himself facing a revolution of a different sort.
At the Cannes Film Festival, I saw the future of French cinema | 2022-06-20T23:08:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Three takeaways from France’s legislative elections — and what could be next - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/france-legislative-elections-takeaways-macron-melenchon-le-pen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/france-legislative-elections-takeaways-macron-melenchon-le-pen/ |
The Lone Star State does not have the best track record as a sovereign power. The Republic of Texas survived only 10 years from independence to annexation by the United States in 1845. Texas seceded during the Civil War — and, with the rest of the Confederacy, was crushed.
But, as the saying goes: If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. The Texas GOP now wants the state to vote on declaring independence.
And the United States should let Texas go! Better yet, let’s offer Texas a severance package that includes Oklahoma to sweeten secession — the Sooner the better.
Over the weekend, while many Americans were celebrating the 167th anniversary of Juneteenth (when Union Gen. Gordon Granger, in Galveston, Tex., delivered the order abolishing slavery) the Texas Republican Party voted on a platform declaring that federal laws it dislikes “should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.”
The proposed platform (it’s expected to be approved when votes are tallied) adds: “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.” It wants the secession referendum “in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”
Yee-haw!
Of course, protections would have to be negotiated for parts of Texas that wish to remain on Team Normal. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and parts of South Texas would remain in the United States, and they will need guaranteed safe passage to New Orleans or Santa Fe, along with regular airlifts of sustainable produce, accurate textbooks and contraceptives.
But consider the benefits to the rest of the country: Two fewer Republican senators, two dozen fewer Republican members of the House, annual savings of $83 billion in defense funds that Texas gets. And the best reason? The Texas GOP has so little regard for the Constitution that it is calling for a “Convention of the States” to effectively rewrite it — and so little regard for the United States that it wishes to leave.
In democracy’s place, the Republican Party, which enjoys one-party rule in Texas, is effectively proposing a church state. If you liked Crusader states and Muslim caliphates, you’ll love the Confederate Theocracy of Texas.
The Texas GOP platform gives us a good idea what such a paradise for Christian nationalists would look like. Texas would officially declare that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” It would redefine marriage as a “covenant only between one biological man and one biological woman,” and it would “nullify” any court rulings to the contrary. (The gay Log Cabin Republicans were banned from setting up a booth at the convention.) It would fill schools with “prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments” but ban “the teaching of sex education.” It would abolish all abortions and require students to “learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child.”
The Texas Theocracy, which maintains that President Biden “was not legitimately elected,” would keep only traces of democracy. It wants the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “repealed,” and it would rewrite the state constitution to empower minority rule by small, rural (and White) counties. It would rescind voters’ right to elect senators and the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.
The Texas Theocracy would probably be broke; it wants to abolish the federal income tax, “Axe the Property Tax” and do away with the estate tax and various business taxes. Yet it is planning a hawkish foreign policy! The platform argues that Texas is currently “under an active invasion” and should take “any and all appropriate measures the sovereign state defines as necessary to defend” itself. It imagines attacks by a “One World Government, or The Great Reset” — an internet-born conspiracy belief — and proposes “withdrawal from the current United Nations.” The Theocracy would put the “wild” back in the West, abolishing the minimum wage, environmental and banking regulations, and “red-flag” laws or waiting periods to prevent dangerous people from buying guns.
Above all, the Confederate Theocracy of Texas would be defined by thought police. It would penalize “woke corporations” and businesses that disagree with the theocracy over abortion, race, trans rights and the “inalienable right to refuse vaccination.”
Government programs would be stripped of “education involving race.” Evolution and climate change “shall be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change.” There would be a “complete repeal of the hate crime laws.” The Texas Revolution “shall not be ‘reimagined’” in a way the theocracy finds “disrespectful.” Confederate monuments “shall be protected,” “plaques honoring the Confederate widows” restored, and lessons on “the tyrannical history of socialism” required.
In their platform, the Texas Republicans invoked “God” or the “Creator” 18 times and “sovereignty” or sovereign power 24 times. And the word “democracy”? Only once — in reference to China.
Historically Black colleges should no longer have to do more with less
The gun-violence plague is evolving, dangerously | 2022-06-20T23:08:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Texas GOP platform calls for secession? Good riddance. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/texas-gop-platform-secession-theocracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/20/texas-gop-platform-secession-theocracy/ |
Colombia President-elect Gustavo Petro celebrates his victory with his vice-presidential candidate Francia Márquez at the Movistar Arena in Bogotá, Colombia, on June 19. (Mauricio Duenas Castaneda/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — For more than two centuries, Colombia was considered a conservative stalwart in Latin America. Even as leftist governments came and went across the region, a center-right political establishment remained in control — a continuity that cemented the country’s role as a key U.S. ally.
On Sunday night, everything changed.
Gustavo Petro, a senator and former guerrilla, was elected the country’s first leftist president, galvanizing millions of poor, young, struggling Colombians desperate for someone different.
His victory, unthinkable just a generation ago, was the most stunning example yet of how the pandemic has transformed the politics of Latin America. The pandemic hit the economies of this region harder than almost anywhere else in the world, kicking 12 million people out of the middle class in a single year. Across the continent, voters have punished those in power for failing to lift them out of their misery. And the winner has been Latin America’s left, a diverse movement of leaders that could now take a leading role in the hemisphere.
“Election after election, the right tries to scare people into thinking the communist monster is coming,” said Alberto Vergara, a political scientist at the University of the Pacific in Peru. “And election after election, it has lost.”
It happened in Peru, where voters last year elected Marxist schoolteacher Pedro Castillo. It happened in Chile, the free-market model of the region, where 36-year-old former student activist Gabriel Boric brought the left back to power.
And now it has happened in Colombia, a country where the left has long been associated with guerrilla movements over decades of bloody internal conflict. Leftist candidates who dared to run for office in the past were often assassinated. This time around, the conservative establishment’s chosen candidate failed to even make it to the second round after his message about the dangers of a Petro presidency fell flat.
Gustavo Petro, former guerrilla, will be Colombia’s first leftist president
All eyes are now on Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, where former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva leads polls to unseat President Jair Bolsonaro in October. A Lula victory would mean all of the largest countries in the region, including Mexico and Argentina, are led by leftist presidents. From Bogotá to Santiago, many voters are no longer buying the argument that a swing to the left will mean a government run by the likes of Hugo Chávez or Fidel Castro.
And that’s partly because today’s leftist leaders look and sound very different from those of the past, at least in the case of Petro and Boric. Instead of building an oil-rich economy — the basis of neighboring Venezuela’s ruinous socialist revolution — they’re looking to build a unified front against climate change. They’ve tried to distance themselves from the machismo of previous leftist eras, winning power by promising to protect the rights of women, LGBTQ people and Afro-indigenous communities. And they’re backed by a young, politically engaged electorate that took to the streets in massive numbers in recent years to protest inequality.
Their success also reflects a social transformation in a predominantly Catholic region, where feminist movements have spurred Colombia, Argentina and Mexico to decriminalize abortion. Some countries are following Colombia’s lead in advancing euthanasia rights, and Chile last year recognized same-sex marriage.
Petro said in an interview with The Washington Post earlier this year that he envisions a progressive alliance with Chile and Brazil. If Lula wins and Petro succeeds, this coalition could be a powerful force in the hemisphere — and could leave the United States on the sidelines.
“This may be just one of those times where Latin America is taking the lead,” said Bernard Aronson, who served as the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Aronson, who was also a special envoy to Colombia’s peace process, described Petro’s win as “a kind of earthquake in Colombia.”
On Sunday night, Petro called for a “dialogue in the Americas without exclusions … with all of the diversity that is America,” a clear reference to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles earlier this month. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador skipped the summit after President Biden declined to invite three authoritarian countries — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. While Boric attended, he also criticized Biden, telling The Post the United States is missing opportunities to advance its democratic goals for Latin America by refusing to engage with its adversaries.
In a sign of how widely accepted that view has become in the region, both Petro and his rival in the final round of the Colombian election, construction magnate Rodolfo Hernández, supported normalizing relations with Venezuela, a country long invoked by the right as a cautionary tale about the dangers of left-wing governance.
In his acceptance speech, Petro said his foreign policy would put Colombia at the forefront of the global fight against climate change. He said the time had come to sit down with the United States and talk about its emissions of greenhouses gases, which are being absorbed by “one of the largest sponges,” Latin America’s Amazon rainforest.
“If they are emitting there and we’re absorbing here, why don’t we dialogue?” Petro said to a packed arena in Bogotá. “Why don’t we find another way to understand each other?”
With the United States preoccupied by Ukraine, Iran and North Korea, it could see its influence continue to decline in Latin America, said Cynthia J. Arnson, a distinguished fellow and former director of the D.C.-based Wilson Center’s Latin American Program.
“The U.S. is just less and less a part of the conversation,” Arnson said.
The United States has long seen relations with the region through a lens of competition with Russia and China, said Adam Isacson, of the Washington Office on Latin America.
“If they have this Cold War 2.0 view of competition of the great powers in the region,” Isacson said, “they just lost a grip on their keystone.”
The United States has sent billions of dollars in aid to Colombia over the years, much of that to combat transnational crime and drug trafficking. Some worry a Petro presidency could strain that long-running partnership.
Petro argues that counternarcotics policies over the past several decades have been a failure and that aerial eradication of coca has done nothing to reduce the flow of cocaine to the United States. He has vowed to focus instead on crop substitution. He has also suggested changing the extradition treaty and foreign trade agreement between the two countries.
But in his acceptance speech, Petro made no comments suggesting he would take a hostile approach toward the United States, and experts doubt he will.
The United States has a history of successful relationships with some leftist presidents in South America, such as Uruguay’s José Mujica and Brazil’s Lula, Aronson said. But “very few countries in the world have enjoyed the enduring bipartisan relationship Colombia has built with the United States.” If Petro is wise, he added “he’ll try to preserve that.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quick to congratulate Petro on Sunday night, while Brian Nichols, subsecretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said in a radio interview on Monday that the Biden administration has “many points of agreement with the leftist government that is coming in Colombia,” including a shared commitment to tackle climate change.
Among them is 22-year-old student Erika Andrea Nuñez, who can barely afford her tuition for child-care classes. While she lives with her partner and 2-year-old daughter in a working-class neighborhood of Bogotá, she often stays with her parents to cut costs on food.
She doesn’t consider herself a Petro supporter, but she chose to vote for him because of “what he claims he’ll do for young people,” especially his proposal for free universal higher education.
“I don’t know if he’ll really do it,” she said. “But it’s the one thing that made me give him the chance. … I have hope that he’ll at least do something different.”
Diana Durán contributed to this report. | 2022-06-20T23:20:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gustavo Petro's win in Colombia is latest leftward shift in Latin America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/petro-latin-america-left/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/petro-latin-america-left/ |
For Malaysia, This Is No Game of Chicken
Chickens inside a poultry farm in Sungai Panjang, Selangor, Malaysia, on Wednesday, May 25, 2022. Malaysia will halt exports of 3.6 million chickens a month from June 1, and investigate allegations of cartel pricing, Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said Monday. The move is likely to hit Singapore, which sources a third of its supply from Malaysia, as well as in Thailand, Brunei, Japan and Hong Kong. (Bloomberg)
Yani Hardinata, who runs marketing and branding at Safina Food Sdn. Bhd, recognizes some of the same problems as his global peers: a surge in inflation that’s driving fertilizer costs, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a chronic shortage of labor. Then there’s the longstanding, bungled domestic price ceilings imposed by the Malaysian government, which discouraged production because the squeeze from higher costs couldn’t be offset by raising prices.
Similar sentiments were expressed by people up and down the food supply chain in Malaysia during a trip last week — from vegetable wholesalers in Kuala Lumpur to farmers in the lush Cameron Highlands and fisheries of Penang on the country’s northwest coast. While the chicken saga has unique characteristics, not least of which is Singapore’s extreme dependence, the country isn’t the first to engage in food protectionism. India has moved to restrict sugar exports after barring wheat sales. Indonesia halted, then revived, exports of palm oil.
• World’s Food Baskets Need a Better Safety Net: David Fickling
• The World Can Stave Off Putin’s Food Fight: Clara F. Marques | 2022-06-21T00:39:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For Malaysia, This Is No Game of Chicken - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/for-malaysia-this-is-no-game-of-chicken/2022/06/20/8658848e-f0ed-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/for-malaysia-this-is-no-game-of-chicken/2022/06/20/8658848e-f0ed-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Opn designs software that helps merchants set up payments on their mobile or desktop websites. Its biggest market is Thailand, home to Hasegawa’s co-founder Ezra Don Harinsut. The firm’s clients include True, one of Thailand’s largest telecommunications conglomerates, and Total Access Communication Public Co., or DTAK.
Despite increasing competition in mobile payments, Hasegawa says Opn’s years-long experience in Southeast Asian markets and ability to adapt to complex local regulations give it an edge against rivals. | 2022-06-21T00:39:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Japan’s Latest Unicorn Is a Thailand Mobile Payments Firm - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/japans-latest-unicorn-is-a-thailand-mobile-payments-firm/2022/06/20/f6343ff4-f0ee-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/japans-latest-unicorn-is-a-thailand-mobile-payments-firm/2022/06/20/f6343ff4-f0ee-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Virginia "Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking in National Harbor, Md., in 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The group said it operated in what was understood to be a “cone of silence,’” Eastman wrote in a May filing. He quoted an email he had received from the group as saying, “[W]e are careful about who is on the phone and who is in the room and we do not leak what happens, what is said or who is in the meeting — ever!”
Arnold-Jones said the group maintains strict confidentiality, “so people can say what they need to say.” She said the group serves a critical networking function, connecting activists across states to lawmakers and other decision-makers. But such details are shared discreetly, she said. “When the information is shared, they don’t send out a big old letter that says, ‘Here’s their phone number.’ ”
The banner at the top of the page read: “The enemy of America … is the radical fascist left.”
Coleman’s personal Facebook page featured pictures of herself with Ginni and Clarence Thomas and other high-profile Washington figures, including Trump’s former White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon. In a 2015 photo, Coleman poses with Ginni Thomas, who is wearing a pin that says “I [heart] my husband” and a name tag identifying the event they were attending as “Thomas Clerk World Retreat.”
Bryant, urging the crowd to action, asked: “What are you prepared to do?” He added: “I believe Ginni asked this question. Are we just going to leave here with the rah rah, go on about our business? … When you leave here tonight, what are you prepared to do?”
Other attendees included former state lawmakers, political candidates and conservative activists such as Ron Armstrong, a Michigan businessman who rose to national prominence for leading protests against covid-19 restrictions, and Brian Camenker, president of MassResistance, which has been designated as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
A Frontliners event in October featured an appearance by Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), one of the leading election deniers in Congress, according to a photograph he posted to Twitter. Merissa Hamilton, identified as a FreedomWorks grass-roots director on LinkedIn, tweeted another photo on the same day, apparently from the same event. It included an image of three other Republican members of Congress who played key roles in pushing falsehoods about the 2020 election: Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.).
Alice Crites and Amy Gardner contributed to this report. | 2022-06-21T00:39:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Speaker at meeting of Ginni Thomas group called Biden’s win illegitimate long after Jan. 6, video shows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/20/ginni-thomas-frontliners-john-eastman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/20/ginni-thomas-frontliners-john-eastman/ |
George Lamming, renowned Caribbean novelist, dies at 94
Barbadian author George Lamming in 1951, the year after he moved to London to launch his literary career. (George Douglas/Getty Images)
George Lamming, a Barbadian author who placed the legacy of colonialism at the center of his lyrical novels and essays, acquiring a reputation as one of the finest Caribbean writers of his generation, died June 4 at a retirement center in Bridgetown, his country’s capital. He was 94.
His death was announced by Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados. “Wherever George Lamming went,” she said in a statement, “he epitomized that voice and spirit that screamed Barbados and the Caribbean.” Mr. Lamming’s daughter, Natasha Lamming-Lee, said he had been ailing but did not cite a cause.
Along with novelists and poets such as Kamau Brathwaite, Wilson Harris, Edgar Mittelholzer, V.S. Naipaul, Andrew Salkey and Derek Walcott, Mr. Lamming helped define a new West Indian literature in the middle decades of the 20th century, exploring issues of history, politics, language and freedom at a time when colonial rule was giving way to independence.
Raised on a former sugar plantation outside Bridgetown, he wrote books that highlighted the experience of people who were marginalized because of their race, language, gender or income, and spread a message of liberation and inclusion in his essays and speeches. “I’m a preacher of some kind,” he said in a 2002 interview with the journal Small Axe. “I am a man bringing a message.”
Like Naipaul and many other Caribbean writers of their generation, Mr. Lamming launched his literary career in London, where he wrote his semiautobiographical first novel, “In the Castle of My Skin” (1953), at age 23. He later examined the experience of migration in “The Emigrants” (1954), a grim, fragmentary novel about West Indian expats in England, and in his essay collection “The Pleasures of Exile” (1960), which a New York Times reviewer described as “a neo-Gothic piece with ideas arcing like flying buttresses.”
“My subject,” Mr. Lamming wrote in the latter, “is the migration of the West Indian writer, as colonial and exile, from his native kingdom, once inhabited by Caliban, to the tempestuous island of Prospero’s and his language.”
Mr. Lamming returned to the Caribbean for novels such as “Of Age and Innocence” (1958) and “Season of Adventure” (1960), which were set on the fictional island of San Cristobal, where African, Indian and Chinese ethnic groups struggled to overcome mutual suspicions while uniting against the White establishment.
It was difficult, he noted, to forge a new identity after years of colonialism. “I had always lived in the shadow of a meaning which others had placed on my presence in the world,” an independence leader observes in “Age and Innocence,” “and I had played no part at all in making that meaning, like a chair which is wholly at the mercy of the idea guiding the hand of the man who builds it.”
Mr. Lamming had delved into issues of race and ethnicity ever since the publication of his first and best-known novel. Named after verses by Walcott, “In the Castle of My Skin” toggled between the third- and first-person while chronicling the upbringing of a young man called G, who joins his friends in fishing, diving for coins thrown by tourists at the beach and wondering how the king’s face winds up on pennies.
He also witnesses a labor riot, develops a budding awareness of racial inequality (“No black boy wanted to be white, but it was also true that no black boy liked the idea of being black”) and travels to Trinidad to work as a schoolteacher, just as Mr. Lamming did after high school.
“I tried to reconstruct the world of my childhood and early adolescence,” Mr. Lamming wrote in the introduction to the novel’s 1983 edition. “It was also the world of a whole Caribbean society.”
The book won the Somerset Maugham Award for young writers in Britain and was praised by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o and American novelist Richard Wright, who wrote the introduction to the U.S. edition.
Critics were also impressed: “Mr. Lamming is a poet by instinct rather than a novelist, a man with an individual and almost private approach to the English language,” Orville Prescott of the Times wrote. “His prose is poetic, sensuous, imaginative, adorned with fanciful figures of speech and surprising twists of language.”
In part, Mr. Lamming’s prose style was shaped by his belief in acquiring “a spiritual possession of the landscape in which you live.” For him, that meant developing an understanding of “the rhythm of the wind … the smell of the sea … the texture of the stone and rock.”
“These are not objects outside of you,” Caribbean Beat magazine quoted him as saying. “They are part of your consciousness.”
George William Lamming was born in Carrington Village on June 8, 1927. His parents were unmarried, and he scarcely knew his father. His mother was a homemaker who later married a police officer.
Mr. Lamming grew up during a period of social upheaval, foreshadowing Barbados’s independence from Britain in 1966, and said he and his peers experienced a form of colonial cruelty that was more psychological than physical. “It was a terror of the mind; a daily exercise in self-mutilation,” he wrote in a 2002 essay. “Black versus black in a battle for self-improvement.”
After winning a scholarship to prestigious Combermere high school, he studied under literary editor Frank Collymore, who welcomed him into his home library and encouraged Mr. Lamming’s interest in writing poetry and prose, publishing some of his early work in the Caribbean magazine BIM.
Mr. Lamming later worked at a boarding school in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, teaching English to Hispanic students, before moving to England in 1950, sailing on the same ship as Trinidadian writer Samuel Selvon. “If I had not gone to England,” he told The Washington Post in 1999, “I would have written, but you wouldn’t have heard of me.”
After working at a factory in London, Mr. Lamming landed a job at the BBC Colonial Service, where he was an announcer for shows including “Caribbean Voices,” an influential platform for writers from the West Indies. He also became active in the city’s literary community, encountering Dylan Thomas and other poets at the Mandrake Club in Soho.
His conversations with English writers were more about business than literature or politics, he recalled: “One very fine short-story writer, forever in purple corduroy, advised me never to visit a publisher’s office to talk business without a little weapon in my pocket. He gave examples of his success in such encounters.”
Mr. Lamming was soon traveling abroad, visiting the United States on a Guggenheim grant and speaking in 1956 at the Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris, where he impressed an audience that included James Baldwin and Frantz Fanon.
“Lamming is tall, raw-boned, untidy, and intense,” Baldwin wrote in an essay about the event, “and one of his real distinctions is his refusal to be intimidated by the fact that he is a genuine writer.”
With his booming, gravelly voice and crown of graying hair, Mr. Lamming acquired a wide array of admirers, including Canadian novelist and short-story writer Margaret Laurence. They had a brief affair, according to her biographer James King, and she moved to London with her children in an unsuccessful bid to settle down with Mr. Lamming. (His one marriage, to artist Nina Ghent, had previously ended in divorce.)
By 1967 Mr. Lamming had launched a career in academia, lecturing and working as a writer-in-residence at schools including Brown, Duke, Penn, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He returned to Barbados in 1980 and lived for many years at the Atlantis hotel, near the fishing village of Bathsheba, where he said his writing was invigorated by daily swims in the ocean.
Mr. Lamming received the Order of the Caribbean Community in 2008 and a lifetime achievement honor from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in 2014.
In addition to his daughter, Lamming-Lee of Silver Spring, Md., survivors include his longtime companion, Esther Phillips; seven grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren. His son, Gordon, died last year.
Mr. Lamming’s final novels included “Water With Berries” (1971), a political allegory centered on a West Indian revolutionary living in London, and “Natives of My Person” (1972), about 16th-century explorers and the origins of colonialism. Late in life, he was working on a book about Christopher Columbus, imagining that the explorer was arrested and put on trial by an Indigenous community in the West Indies.
He spent years working on the project, but in a 2002 interview with Caribbean Beat, he declined to say when it might be published: “The point is with these things, you never finish.” | 2022-06-21T01:39:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Lamming, renowned Caribbean novelist, dies at 94 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/20/barbadian-writer-george-lamming-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/20/barbadian-writer-george-lamming-dead/ |
FILE - In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, visits a pharmacy in Pyongyang, North Korea on May 15, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File) (Uncredited/KCNA via KNS)
SEOUL, South Korea — It’s only been a month since North Korea acknowledged having an COVID-19 outbreak, after steadfastly denying any cases for more than two years. But already it may be preparing to declare victory. | 2022-06-21T02:10:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'It always wins': North Korea may declare COVID-19 victory - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/it-always-wins-north-korea-may-declare-covid-19-victory/2022/06/20/ed1f8042-f100-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/it-always-wins-north-korea-may-declare-covid-19-victory/2022/06/20/ed1f8042-f100-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Transcript: 50th Anniversary of Watergate: Inside the Story
MR. RYAN: Well, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to The Washington Post for this very special event. Fifty years ago today, a break‑in took place at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building, just two miles from here.
The White House press secretary at the time referred to the incident as nothing more than, quote, "a third‑rate burglary," and that may have been how history would have recorded it but for the reporting of two men who are about to take the stage.
A former publisher of The Washington Post, Phil Graham, once said, "Journalism is the first rough draft of history." Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote their first draft of this story and then a second, and under the guidance of legendary editor, Ben Bradlee, whose wife, Sally, is here with us today, and the support of publisher Katharine Graham, whose son, Don, is here with us today, they exposed a tale of cover‑up and corruption at the highest levels of government. The totality of their work changed journalism and politics, earned recognition from around the world, and led The Washington Post to be honored with the Pulitzer Prize for public service.
But the significance of their work extends well beyond Hollywood tributes and prize committee accolades. Through their relentless, painstaking efforts to bring the truth about the Nixon administration to light, Bob and Carl epitomized the Founding Fathers' vision of a free press. There could be no such thing as self‑government, the Founders understood, if there were no independent scrutiny of government officials and no way for the Americans to hold those in power to account. That is precisely what the Watergate story was about: men in power who thought they were beyond accountability. Bob and Carl's journalism proved them wrong.
Their reporting fueled a massive Senate investigation that led to 48 criminal prosecutions and Richard Nixon's resignation, showing the world that our democracy, even the most powerful person in the land, the president of the United States, is not above the law.
Here at The Washington Post, we are incredibly proud of the reporters who worked every day to uphold this legacy and to provide the transparency and accountability that democracy requires.
It is now my pleasure to introduce you to three journalists who represent the very best of The Washington Post: Dan Balz, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein.
MR. BALZ: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm Dan Balz, chief correspondent here at the Post.
Before we get right into the program, I just want to say how nice it is to see real live human beings at a Washington Post Live event. Our live team has done spectacular work over the course of the pandemic to provide remotely an amazing array of programming, and they will continue to do that. But to see everybody here in the seats for this moment is incredibly gratifying, and I can think of no better day and no better guests to have than we have here today.
This is the third of three sessions that we have done marking the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break‑in, and today we have the two reporters whose names are synonymous with that story, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They obviously need no introduction. They've been rather well exposed recently to go over the history, but we're thrilled to have them here today. And I just want to say both are longtime friends of mine, and so for me, it's a double pleasure to have both of you. So, gentlemen, welcome, and thank you.
MR. WOODWARD: Thank you.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Thanks.
MR. BALZ: One other note, remember that you can‑‑we want to hear from those of you in the audience. You can tweet to @WashingtonPostLive, and if we can, we'll try to get to some of the questions.
So I want to start by reading something and then get you to respond to it. "Bernstein looked across the newsroom. He thought Woodward was a prima donna."
MR. BALZ: "Yale, a veteran of the Navy officer corps, lawns, greensward, staterooms, and grass tennis courts, Bernstein guessed, but probably not enough pavement for him to be good at investigative reporting. Bernstein thought that Woodward's rise, rapid rise at The Post, had less to do with his ability than his establishment credentials. Woodward knew that Bernstein occasionally wrote about rock music. That figured. Bernstein looked like one of those countercultural journalists that Woodward despised."
MR. BALZ: All right. So this was obviously taken from the pages of the book, "All the President's Men," that you wrote. Carl, let's start with you. What made this journalistic marriage work?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Almost immediately, I think each of us came to recognize that the other brought to the story experience in different areas of life. I had worked for 12 years in the newspaper business. I started when I was 16 across town at The Washington Star, but Woodward also brought with that a lot of journalistic experience, a kind of drive. That I thought I had drive, I'd never seen anything quite like it.
And almost immediately‑‑and I think, incidentally, the skepticism we had of each other, I think, helped motivate us, certainly early in the coverage of this story. But then we both came to realize‑‑and you tell me if you think I'm wrong.
MR. WOODWARD: You're wrong.
MR. BERNSTEIN: That's right. I rest my case.
MR. WOODWARD: I'm kidding you.
MR. BERNSTEIN: But we both came to realize that we would flip roles, the expected role. I was supposed to be the better writer. Often, he could write amazing paragraphs. You know, I'm supposed to be the guy who's running and persevering all the time, but we know what kind of perseverance Woodward has. So it worked.
Today there's that overused word, "seamlessness." I think that was a kind of seamlessness, and yet there was that tension, always an element. Even now, when we wrote the 50th anniversary foreword for the book, there's a little bit of the old stuff going on.
MR. BALZ: Bob, let me ask you this. You guys were covering a story where the stakes were enormous, not just for you personally but for The Washington Post. How in those early days did you two learn to trust one another, trust each other's reporting? You'd never worked together, and this story had such great consequence.
MR. WOODWARD: Well, first of all, you've got to establish the environment that we worked in. It was crucial. Katharine Graham was the owner‑publisher of this Post, of this newspaper, and she was a large presence in everyone's life, even if you didn't have much interaction with her. It turned out that we did.
But I think it's best illustrated by her candor and her willingness to push. For instance, after Nixon resigned and we got a personal letter from Katharine‑‑I think you have the original.
MR. BERNSTEIN: I have the original on a yellow legal pad.
MR. WOODWARD: And it was on yellow legal papers. You know, she has more stationery than any 500 people in Washington, but she chose to write on it, because I think it was a spontaneous thought that said Dear Carl and Bob, now that Nixon has resigned, you did some of the stories. Fine. And then I'm going to quote her. She said, "Don't start thinking of yourself too highly."
MR. WOODWARD: "And let me give you some advice," and the advice is beware of the demon pomposity. Beware the demon pomposity. And at lunch earlier, we were just talking about that, and her son, the great publisher, Don Graham, said to me, he said, "You know, she was talking to herself also."
MR. BERNSTEIN: Yeah. I want to add one thing since we're talking about Katharine Graham and the legacy, which goes on here at the newspaper, but the best example I think of during all of our reporting of Katharine was there had been a day when a subpoena server‑‑the guard at the desk downstairs on 15th Street called up to me and said, "There's a subpoena server here with a subpoena for all your notes," and I said, "Well, keep him downstairs. Don't let him up to the newsroom."
MR. BERNSTEIN: And I went to Ben Bradlee, and I said, "Look, I got a call from the guard. They got a subpoena for our notes. He's downstairs. The subpoena is from the Nixon reelection committee. What do we do?" Bradlee says, "Be sure that he stays down there. I'm going to go see Katharine."
So he goes upstairs to Katharine Graham's office, and he comes back to me five minutes later, and he says, "Katharine says they're not your notes. They're her notes, and if anybody is going to go to jail, it's going to be her." And to me, it's one of the historic moments in American journalism history, and it told you everything about her and the institution that we worked for and the kind of backing that we had, the running room that we had throughout the two years we worked on it in the office.
MR. WOODWARD: And after that happened, of course, Ben had a natural sense for the theatrics of the moment, and he said, "Wow. Katharine is going to go to jail."
MR. WOODWARD: And so he thought visually. He said, "Can you just see that picture of her limousine pulling up to the women's detention center, and out our gal gets to protect, to go to jail to protect the First Amendment?" And Ben who never thought small said, "That will be a picture that will run on the front page of every newspaper in the United States and the world."
MR. WOODWARD: Of course, the subpoena people backed down because they didn't want to really confront Katharine Graham, and the people who didn't get subpoenas, Bradlee again would refer to this as "subpoena envy."
MR. BALZ: I want to show everybody another clip from the movie, "All the President's Men." There's a seen in which Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing you guys give us a sense of the tension in the relationship. Let's take a look at that.
MR. BALZ: Carl, was‑‑
MR. BALZ: Is that accurate?
MR. BERNSTEIN: I'm glad you gave me the chance to answer this question as opposed to him, but go ahead.
MR. WOODWARD: I think it's love at first sight.
MR. BALZ: I wondered about that.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Go to the next question.
MR. BALZ: All right.
MR. WOODWARD: No, no. I mean, I think that literally happened.
MR. BERNSTEIN: It did.
MR. WOODWARD: I mean, over a period of time, but, you know, you're‑‑
MR. BALZ: And it sounds like it happened when you did the new foreword to the book.
MR. WOODWARD: Yes, exactly.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Well, a little bit, but the collaboration goes on with the same dynamic, except 50 years of doing things together.
MR. BALZ: But here's a question.
MR. WOODWARD: And a lot more love right now.
MR. BALZ: How did that actually improve what you were doing? I mean, if you're working in a tense environment, how did that improve it?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Well, you're working, not‑‑first of all, you know that somebody is checking everything you do, and is it right? Have we tried hard enough? Have you thought of something that I haven't thought of? You know, at the time, team reporting was not anything standard like it is today, and I think we discovered very fast that the idea of two of us working together, it really was two added up to three, that it gave a solidity and a confidence, I think, that each of us had in where the story was going, how it was being reported.
I said earlier when we were at lunch, you know, one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, a reporter or an editor does is to decide what is news, and even that was a question we asked each other every day. So what you see there is this tense beginning. Then it relaxes some, and yet there always is an element, "Well, maybe you ought to take another look at what I'm doing here," et cetera.
MR. WOODWARD: But a theme here is you asked the question of what can you bring to a partnership, but you also have to ask the question, what is it you can't bring to the partnership? What is your weakness? And you've got to understand that, and I‑‑nine months at The Washington Post. Carl had been here since 1817, actually.
MR. WOODWARD: But 12 years, you know, and your wonderful book, "Chasing History," about working at the Star and learning and becoming who you are as somebody who never once took the surface. We were answering some question earlier today digitally with The Washington Post readers and so forth, and we're going through it. And I'm saying that's fine, that's fine. Carl said, "Whoa. Wait a minute. I'm going to be myself here."
MR. WOODWARD: And himself is let's read it, let's check it, let's be careful.
MR. BALZ: I want to show one more clip from the movie which, in my mind, it's cinematically a brilliant shot, but journalistically, it's utterly prosaic. Let's look at this, and I want to ask you about it.
MR. BALZ: So Robert Caro in his book called "Working" said that one of the first lessons he learned as an investigative reporter was to turn every page, and what you guys were doing here was turning literally every page, every slip of paper, looking for evidence that the White House had requested information about Ted Kennedy, as I recall.
But it seems to me that this so well describes the tedium of investigative reporting, I mean, the degree to which you can drill and drill and drill and wait a long time until you get a gusher. Talk a little bit about how you learned those techniques, how you applied them to Watergate, when they began to pay off. Bob?
MR. WOODWARD: Well, I mean, my answer is, again, the environment, which you know well, Dan, that you have Bradlee, "What have you got for me tomorrow? What goes next?" Howard Simons, the managing editor, calling a meeting on Watergate, "Where are we on it?" Barry Sussman, the city editor, who was the most hands‑on editor, a brilliant conceptualizer and agitator, and you know what? I mean, it is such an important lesson, one, he taught us. We'd work all day. We'd work, you know, sometimes till nine or ten o'clock on a story, and then Sussman would say, "Let's meet," and we'd say, "What? You want to meet?" He said, "We have to meet and think about the next day. We just don't go blindly into the next day. Where are you going? What are the leads? What's the story?" And that ability to kind of get a tenth wind and say let's meet was really important to the story and the sense of pacing the story and making sure he was involved in directing us but also we were self‑directing in many ways‑‑
MR. BALZ: Carl, can I‑‑
MR. WOODWARD: ‑‑particularly you. You were the most self‑directed person I ever met.
MR. BALZ: Carl, let me ask you this, and that is, of all the stories you did in that early stretch when you guys were basically out alone on this story, are there a couple that stand out in your mind, either for the significance of the revelation or the sheer shoe leather that went into producing it?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Sure. There are two stories. We had discovered early on by going to the person. You know, we knocked on doors at night. That was the basic methodology, and it's what I had learned at the Star. You don't get to people in their offices where they're under pressure. You go see them in their homes. You get them to go to a restaurant, but no, don't go to their offices.
And so we started knocking on doors at night, and I found the "bookkeeper," as she's called in the book. She knew where the money was dispensed. I didn't know that when I got there, but I managed to get in the door and start talking to her, and it all started to become apparent.
And from that introduction to the‑‑you know, it is the basis of follow the money, and she started telling us that there were five people that controlled the secret fund that paid for Watergate, and she wouldn't name them. And it took us a while to get it, but we quickly learned that John Mitchell, the former Attorney General of the United States, Nixon's campaign manager, former law partner, had been among the five people who controlled that fund.
And so we got ready to report the story, and we told Bradlee, and he said, "Are you sure you're right? You know, you're going to call the Attorney General of the United States a crook, and there's never been a story like this." And so we put it in the paper. So that's the first‑‑that took it and put Watergate in a whole other realm.
And then on October 10th, we did a story that said that the Watergate break‑in was just part of a vast campaign of political espionage and sabotage aimed by the White House at Nixon's Democratic opponent.
MR. WOODWARD: But, you know, again, it's method, if I may‑‑
MR. BERNSTEIN: Yeah.
MR. WOODWARD: ‑‑of what happened before. On October 9th, I had gone to see Deep Throat, Mark Felt, in the underground parking garage, and he was agitated, and he was pushing me. And he said, "You've got to look at the overall"‑‑and it was kind of "Don't you understand what you have here? This is not just the Watergate burglary. It's dirty tricks." Carl had tracked down Donald Segretti who is the dirty trickster, and Mark Felt kind of laid it out and said, "No. This is a much bigger thing. Are you dumb? Don't you understand what you have?"
MR. WOODWARD: And I typed up my notes, and I had been up all night on this, and we came into the office on that day. And you looked at the typed notes, I remember, and this is one of these‑‑sometimes there are epiphanies in journalism, and you had one. And you said‑‑because no one knew except us that Mark Felt was the deputy director of the FBI, and so you just typed on and said, "FBI files show that there was this massive campaign of sabotage and espionage," and people for 35 years wondered, you know, who was Deep Throat? And there it was in the headline of The Washington Post, the FBI.
MR. WOODWARD: It was‑‑it was‑‑but the amalgam of the information and your sense of let's not hide the FBI in‑‑
MR. BERNSTEIN: But was not only that, though. It was the picking the words, "political espionage" and "sabotage" raised this thing to a new level. The White House kept talking about a third‑rate burglary. Both the contents of the story and the language of the lead and including the FBI, but this notion of a vast conspiracy took it to a whole other level.
MR. BALZ: So every reporter likes to be ahead of the pack, which you guys were. Every news organization likes to say, okay, we're setting the pace on the story, but it can be lonely. And when nobody else is following up on it, it can be especially lonely and a little bit nerve‑racking, and we know from her memoirs, Mrs. Graham was wondering if this is such a great story, why aren't other people reporting it?
There was a moment in October, I think just after you published this story, where there was an enormous boost that The Post got, and that was when Water Cronkite devoted a significant part of two broadcasts to the Watergate story. Bob, talk about what the significance of that was to the reporting that you were doing and to The Post.
MR. WOODWARD: Well, I mean, what Cronkite did, it was utterly amazing. They did a 15‑minute segment. It was going to be a‑‑and essentially put our stories in the front page of The Washington Post up, and it was the whole basis for the 15‑minute part. And then he had a second 15‑minute part prepared. It was cut down to seven minutes, because what Bill Paley‑‑
MR. BERNSTEIN: Had been approached by Colson, actually.
MR. WOODWARD: Yeah. And an approach by Colson means a hammer and a screwdriver.
MR. BERNSTEIN: That's right.
MR. WOODWARD: And he folded a little bit but not completely, and Sally Quinn was saying Ben was just ecstatic about that story, and Katharine Graham in her memoirs says at that point, The Washington Post was the local paper. Walter put us on the map.
MR. WOODWARD: And she's right. It was the local paper. You couldn't buy The Washington Post in New York or L.A. Only in Washington. You could get it in Rockville. You could get hundreds of copies in Rockville.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Still sitting there.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Piled up at the newsstand.
MR. WOODWARD: None in New York. And so that sense of that CBS validated‑‑and Sally again was telling the story about the CBS people were saying, "Well, where are the documents?" and Ben said, "Documents? We don't have any documents. There are no documents. We are counting on the trust of our sources and reporters.
MR. BALZ: And our two young reporters.
So that's October. You know, a month later, Nixon wins in a landslide, and the story kind of‑‑you know, the trail kind of goes cold for you guys. I mean, for not just a few days but for a couple of months. You guys are scraping, and you're under a lot of pressure. Talk about this aspect of it, which is you've had this story. You've kept it alive, and suddenly, there's nothing there to keep it moving forward. What's the pressure you're feeling, and overall, what were the pressures you felt about, you know, the need for absolute accuracy whenever possible and to keep the story moving to demonstrate that this wasn't going to go away? Carl?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Well, it was really difficult. Nixon had just won this enormous victory. Part of what the Nixon strategy was, to make the conduct of the press the issue in Watergate, particularly ours at The Washington Post. Ben Bradley, Katharine Graham, Woodward, myself, that added to the pressure because almost daily out of the White House would come these attacks on us.
And one of the things that, again, it's so good to have two of us doing this is the danger of trying to overreach and desperately thinking, "I got to get something in the paper." And we didn't do that. We waited. But I would take two scenes together. That first scene that you played of we go to Bradlee's house in the middle of the night and we tell Bradlee he's got to come outside, that we're under surveillance, Deep Throat has said we're under surveillance, come on outside at 3:00 in the morning in your bathrobe. And then in that clip, Bradlee, a little bit of hyperbole in the movie, but Bradlee outlines the stakes, and then at the end, he says, "Nobody gives a damn. You saw what happened in the election."
I want to go to today. I want to go to the most important story, perhaps since Watergate, about a seditious criminal president of the United States, who also almost won reelection, who won election to the presidency, who continues to attempt to cover up, who staged an attempted coup such as you would see in a junta, in a banana republic or somewhere in the Middle East, the president of the United States refusing to allow the orderly transition of a free election, the most important thing we do in a democracy. And so we have a situation today where something similar has happened to what Bradlee is describing on that lawn.
MR. BALZ: I want to come back to this in a few minutes, but finish your thought.
MR. BERNSTEIN: But let me just say, so what do we as reporters do in this situation? The people of the country, by and large, the Republican Party, which really the heroes in Watergate to some extent or a large extent were Republicans on the House committee, in the Senate, who insisted that Nixon be held accountable, and at the same time, we have this situation today. Keep doing the reporting. The fact that the country, half the country doesn't give a damn, perhaps, doesn't matter. The lesson in there, you keep doing the reporting to get the facts and get the facts out.
MR. WOODWARD: Your next question.
MR. WOODWARD: Just in case there's mystery, Carl is talking about Trump.
MR. BALZ: I have to say I was a little‑‑
MR. WOODWARD: He didn't name him.
MR. BALZ: Thank you.
MR. BALZ: I was a little confused about what‑‑
MR. WOODWARD: Yes, I know.
MR. BALZ: ‑‑Carl was talking about.
MR. WOODWARD: I saw confusion in the audience.
MR. BALZ: Carl is‑‑I mean, sometimes Carl is a little opaque and a little oblique.
MR. BALZ: And has been for as long as I've known you, Carl.
MR. BALZ: So the next question is unanswered questions. We have a question that a viewer sent in, Andy Barr from Washington, D.C., and he says, what is the one question about Watergate you still want the answer to? Bob?
MR. WOODWARD: Well, the unanswered question that pulses through all of this is why. Why would Nixon, who was president, who‑‑you know, he worked to attain‑‑he lost to John Kennedy in '60. He lost the run for governor of California, and then he rehabilitated himself, reengineered himself, and won in 1968. And he had, you know, the brass ring. He found it, and so what is the psychology, which I think we never cracked really, of somebody who's attained their goal and fails to ask the question, which I think is the question presidents need to ask is what do the people need? What's the next stage of good for a majority of people in the country?
It's not hard to get an answer to that, but for Nixon, it really didn't come up. It was always‑‑I mean, can I read my thing from the‑‑
MR. WOODWARD: You know, he loves it when I get paper out to read.
MR. WOODWARD: But this‑‑but this is so relevant. This is from Nixon's tapes after‑‑six weeks after he's won that reelection, and, you know, he stuck it to everyone, to the Democrats, to The Washington Post, to the press, and so he's in the Oval Office with his aides. "Remember we're going to be around and outlive our enemies," Nixon said, "And also never forget the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard a hundred times and never forget it." That's somebody who can't let go of his grievances, who can't‑‑who has‑‑I mean, here the press‑‑we were on the Colbert Show, and I was tempted to read that and then ask Stephen Colbert, you know, "You weren't there at the time in '73, but are the late-night television hosts upset that they didn't make the cut?"
MR. WOODWARD: The people who are enemies. But, you know, this‑‑wow. It's‑‑
MR. BERNSTEIN: Well, the enemies list.
MR. WOODWARD: Yeah.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Nixon maintained‑‑the White House had an enemies list of people, as there are on the tapes, the word, to be "screwed," to have their tax returns audited, et cetera, et cetera.
MR. BALZ: So the story turned in the summer of '73 when Sam Ervin and the Watergate Committee started their hearings. We have a clip of the opening of those hearings, and then I'll follow up after that. Let's take a listen to that.
MR. BALZ: Carl, did it become harder or easier for you to report this story once the Watergate hearings were underway? How did that affect what you guys were doing?
MR. BERNSTEIN: I don't know that it was a question of harder or easier. I think that in some ways, it became possible for us to be a little more interpretive in what we were doing because they were now getting through subpoena power and through witnesses and through the great witness, John Dean. A picture was coming together, such as had never existed before, and we were able to expand on that.
We also were able to get to John Dean's lawyers, and so we knew that Dean was going to implicate the president before it happened, and so that knowledge, again, what was being developed by the committee was almost as if there was a source out in the open that enabled us to perhaps go to the next step.
MR. WOODWARD: Also, I think it got harder, not because of what we had to do, but I think a little bit, we were exhausted. We were going to write a book about this.
MR. WOODWARD: It wasn't clear, and so we knocked on fewer doors than we used to, and I think the lesson always is never stop knocking on doors.
MR. BALZ: Yeah. You mentioned Dean. We have a clip of his testimony that I want to show and then talk about his role in all of this. Let's watch that, and then I'll turn to you, Bob.
MR. BALZ: How should we think about John Dean in history, the role he played, the, you know, pros and cons of what he did long before he got to that moment and then that moment?
MR. WOODWARD: Well, he was the orchestrator. Nixon really was the orchestrator of the coverup, but he was playing many instruments in the orchestra, Dean was. And he‑‑as Carl said, we got to his lawyers, and we had the story the day before his testimony saying that he would implicate the president in the coverup and from, I think, 20 or 25 meetings and discussions. And the only thing that broke our heart that day is that Seymour Hersh and The New York Times had the exact same story.
MR. WOODWARD: But Dean was critical here. But the real break was the Nixon tapes and Alexander Butterfield disclosing that.
MR. BALZ: Right. And, Carl, if Butterfield had never been asked and answered the question of was there a White House taping system, if those tapes were buried to history throughout the administration, would Nixon have served out his full term? Were they the factor that drove him out of office?
MR. BERNSTEIN: We don't know. It's "if history," and at the same time, you have to think that without those tapes, it's the tapes that ultimately made it impossible for Richard Nixon not to be held accountable.
And one of the things, I think one of the awful legacies of Watergate‑‑and there aren't too many awful legacies, though‑‑it is the notion of the smoking gun, the idea that it was necessary to have a smoking gun when, in fact, there was so much evidence without that tape, that last tape, from John Dean's testimony, from some of the stuff we had reported, from what the Watergate Committee was able to do from the "Saturday night massacre," it was called. You didn't need the smoking gun.
And that also goes to today, and so I think this idea that you've raised about did you, you know, really need‑‑or would he‑‑he might have escaped. He might well have escaped, and yet the Supreme Court of the United States in a unanimous decision said the president of the United States must turn these tapes over.
Let's look at today's situation with the Supreme Court of the United States. In this really‑‑and Bob will probably talk about this investigation of January 6th. It is a really magnificent investigation in which this committee has gotten the goods, and we're going to see a lot more. But one of the things that's developing that's very different that happened in Watergate is that the wife of a Supreme Court justice is now part of the story, and it looks very much like‑‑and certainly, it is the opinion of a number of people on that committee‑‑that she is caught up in the conspiracy and very likely is a coconspirator.
So it's raised all kinds of questions about the justice himself and what has she told Justice Thomas.
MR. BERNSTEIN: I mean, if I may, I mean, there's the possibility of that. This is Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, and there are, indeed, questions. And Bob Costa and I did a story in The Post and CBS about those 29 emails‑‑or I'm sorry‑‑text messages, which were stunning because Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, texts back and says, "You know, we are in a war. It is good versus evil." That is a stunning point in all of this.
But I think we just don't know‑‑
MR. BERNSTEIN: No, we don't.
MR. WOODWARD: ‑‑about this, and we need to keep an open mind. She said she's happy to cooperate or will answer questions and so forth, and so there are big questions marks there. And that's tender territory, you know, somebody's wife who's on the Supreme Court and so forth, and The New York Times has a story about the letter the committee wrote to her and saying, "We'd be happy to talk to you. How about January‑‑or July 6th, 7th, or 8th? But if that isn't convenient"‑‑so they're treading very carefully and I think wisely.
MR. BALZ: Can you pick up on what Carl was alluding to, which is your kind of analysis of the January 6th Committee investigation and the degree to which‑‑I mean, how you analyze the work that they have done and what they might produce.
MR. WOODWARD: Well, I think in terms of material, it's amazing, and at the same time, as has been pointed out, Nixon, what he did was concealed, and it's open from his secret tape recordings. But a lot of what Trump does‑‑has done is out in the open. He said the election was stolen. It turns out‑‑and we've all spent a lot of time looking for the evidence to suggest that this was a stolen election.
And I've spent a lot of time with Robert Costa looking at is there evidence, and it turns out two of Trump's biggest supporters‑‑Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, Mike Lee from Utah‑‑both conducted independent investigations and went to the Senate floor. And as Lindsey Graham said, "Count me out. There's no evidence. There is no evidence," and so the real marker here is what are they going to be able to show, and they have demonstrated a lot. It is a crime to subvert a legitimate function of government according to 18 USC 371, Supreme Court decisions going back a hundred years. This is a clear, lay‑down case of obstructing an essential and necessary function of government, and what's more necessary than certifying who is the next president?
This is a‑‑I mean, the diabolical genius of Trump and his associates in this, they found the weak point in the system. January 6th, there's just the votes are presented and counted, and then a thousand people violently descended on the Capitol.
MR. BALZ: So we learned during the Trump administration that the main instrument for holding a president accountable, which is impeachment, no longer seems to work because it is now a purely political enterprise with party‑line votes. The constitutional system worked during Watergate. The press played its role. The investigators played their role. The Senate Watergate Committee played its role. The House Judiciary Committee played its role. The Republican elders went to Nixon and said, "You don't have any support up here." He ultimately resigned. Impeachment doesn't work.
Both of you have said in recent days that this is not‑‑that the Trump presidency is not just a criminal presidency but a seditious presidency. So what is the solution to a seditious president? Is it through strictly the legal system? Carl, I want you to answer this first. Is it through the political system, i.e., the ballot box in which the public will render an ultimate judgment?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Well, first of all, Bob has just pointed out about Title 18 and the section of the law in which Trump clearly, as Bob has said, has committed a crime.
But the next level up, as you suggest, is sedition. What is sedition? It is to encourage, foment an insurrection against the government of the United States. We have the first president in history who has attempted to engage and produce an insurrection, and so what do you do with that? One would hope that, yes, there had been‑‑you know, we failed in impeachment before. There ought to be, I think‑‑Merrick Garland, the Attorney General of the United States, now has a huge decision to make. Is Donald Trump going to be prosecuted as the leader of this conspiracy? And, indeed, the question of sedition comes into it.
But I think we need to look at what has happened in the Trump presidency, just as we looked at in the Nixon presidency. This isn't just about the press. It's not just about the president. It's not just about the Senate and the House. It's about the people in the country.
And one of the things that happened in Watergate was by the time of Nixon's impeachment, his approval rating, the number of people, the percentage of people who wanted to see Nixon either convicted in the Senate or resign from office had gone from 19 percent a few months earlier to 57 percent, if we believe the polls, and it's somewhere in that. And we don't have that situation today. It's about not just the politicians, not just media. It's about the people of the country.
We have a media situation in which, unlike at the time of Watergate, so many more people today are not open to the best obtainable version of the truth, which is what Woodward and I said for 50 years have really called the objective of reporting. People in this country today are looking for information, in the media, particularly, to reinforce what they already believe and to buttress their prejudices, their religious beliefs, their political beliefs. So we have a different country today.
And the question in my mind is, is the country, people of this country, are they willing in sufficient numbers to say, look, we do not want an authoritarian presidency, et cetera, et cetera, we do not want to see this past president given kid gloves?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Okay. But, Dan, your beat, if I can describe your beat, is really leadership, isn't it, in the Congress and the executive branch in the political party?
MR. BALZ: Yeah. That's a good way to describe it.
MR. WOODWARD: And the leadership beat is a bit one now, and the question is going to be‑‑it has to be put in context. I remember for the series of 10 hours of interviews with Trump in 2020. I mean, he would call any hour, or I could call him at any hour. And my wife, Elsa, would‑‑the first time picked up the phone, and there's a voice says, "Is Bob there?" "Well, may I ask who's calling?" "Donald Trump." Nobody from the switchboard, nothing. I think no one in the White House‑‑he spent 10 hours on the phone with me or in meetings.
Now, I remember sitting in the Oval Office interviewing him for this, and we were talking about this, you know. What happened to the country in 2016? What was going on? And my summary of it was that, you know, President Trump‑‑the old order was dying in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party, and I think 2016, that's exactly right. The old order, the old way of doing things was dying or being phased out, and there's a big grandfather clock in the Oval Office. I point and said, "You seized history's clock," and Trump‑‑I wish I had a video of it only, and he said, "Yes. That's exactly right." And, you know, he doesn't‑‑you know, historians talk about history's clock. He doesn't think that way.
But it stunned me, and he said, "I'll do it in 2020." Of course, he didn't. 47,000 votes change in three states, as you well know, and he's elected. But somehow a leader or group of leaders or a redefinition of leadership has got to emerge to fix this problem because it is a giant problem, and the divisions in this country are such‑‑I made this list of 13 problems in the country, and Carl added one, race. But if I get out the card and read it, I mean, we‑‑this place is a mess.
MR. BALZ: If you read the written testimony from J. Michael Luttig yesterday before the January 6th Committee, it is a clarion call about the risks for democracy, and this is a very conservative, distinguished jurist. And that written statement is stark in its warning.
We have a Twitter question from Emma Hadden in Minneapolis that I want to ask you, Carl. If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice in 1972, what would it be?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Be a good listener.
MR. BALZ: Ah.
MR. BERNSTEIN: I think there's a big problem with too many reporters that they're not good listeners, and that too often, what we do as reporters, particularly in the age of electronic media, of other configurations that weren't there, is that we see our jobs sometimes as manufactured controversy. So you'll very often get a reporter with a microphone or without who goes to someone who is the subject of the story and says, "What about this? Why did you do that?" then goes to somebody on the opposing end and says, "What do you think about what he said? Why did you do this? Why did you do that?" Doesn't go deeper. The idea is to produce a story that may get on the front page or lead the news rather than finding out and listening. Look at the movie of "All the President's Men." Read the book. We listen. We see that we've got somebody who knows somebody, and then we listen. I think it's a terrible failure, and it goes way back, but I think today, especially in the age of social media‑‑and you can't look at social media in isolation from methodology. You've got to listen.
MR. WOODWARD: Good, patient listening. Write it on the blackboard a hundred times and never forget it.
MR. BALZ: I'll make one reference to a project that Bob and I worked on after the attacks on 9/11, and it's the closest that I've ever worked with Bob. And one of the things‑‑I learned two things during that. One is that Bob has ultimate patience. If you go into an interview with Bob, it doesn't matter how many handlers are there saying last question, last question. Bob will continue to ask more and more questions. He won't get up. He has an iron rear end.
MR. BALZ: And the second is he always asks for documents, "Do you have memos? Do you have journals? Do you have files?" That's the technique.
I want to close on a couple of questions about Watergate characters. One, start with you, Bob, the obviously question about Mark Felt as Deep Throat. How essential was he in the reporting that you did? In other words, in the way the question of would Nixon have survived without the tapes being revealed, what would have happened if there was no Mark Felt or Deep Throat? And was he as maddeningly cryptic in real life as he was on the screen?
MR. WOODWARD: Oh, oh, yes. Definitely. I mean, Carl and I went to see him after, and he was elderly, and he was in a red sports jacket, remember? And we‑‑but, you know, one of the things Carl and I learned about this partnership‑‑and we only framed it this way recently‑‑each of us did 60 percent of the work.
MR. WOODWARD: It's like a good marriage. You have to both give 60 percent, and Felt was‑‑some people say he was the key. Some people say he was irrelevant. He was another source, but what was important, as I had mentioned, if you read Katharine Graham's memoirs or Ben Bradlee's, they knew--they did not ask for that identity. They knew we had a secret source in the government in a sensitive position in the executive branch, and that gave them great comfort. And I think it's quite possible some of these stories wouldn't have got in the paper or wouldn't have got in the paper as soon as they did.
So it was 60‑60, wasn't it?
MR. BERNSTEIN: Yeah, it was. And the instance of Deep Throat, I think‑‑tell me if you agree‑‑that more often than not, his importance was not in giving us original information but confirming things, maybe taking them a little bit farther, than we had already learned from other sources. But we knew where he worked and what information he had access to. So, if we‑‑if he said that's right, it gave the story a kind of solidity.
MR. WOODWARD: But it wasn't specifics. It was‑‑
MR. WOODWARD: ‑‑you know, that it was the overall‑‑
MR. BERNSTEIN: Context.
MR. WOODWARD: Well, but it's kind of everyone's involved. Everyone's involved.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Well, that's‑‑yeah, right.
MR. WOODWARD: Your lives are in danger. You know, you can't‑‑so, you know, it happened the way it happened, and sometimes I look back on it‑‑I think Carl looks back on it‑‑as I wish we had been smarter and realized and that where it was going because we didn't know where it was going. Carl did early on. I mean, you had an instinct for this is going‑‑going the whole way. I didn't. I was more reluctant to reach that conclusion, but that conclusion was‑‑whether right or wrong, it's a great structure for doing the reporting.
In other words, we're not here to‑‑when I went on vacation during the summer of '72, Mr. Elbows here called me and said, "What the hell are you doing on vacation? There's a story to work on here." It's true. It's true.
MR. BALZ: Carl, who was Frank Wills, and what is this doorknob doing here on the stage?
MR. BERNSTEIN: None of us would be on the stage were it not for Frank Wills. Frank Wills was the security guard at the Watergate the night of the break‑in, and he noticed something, that the door in the Watergate office building had been left ajar. And there was a piece of tape on that lock. That is the real lock.
And he is an unsung hero of Watergate because he then realized that there had been something amiss because of that piece of tape on that lock.
MR. WOODWARD: But what happened is he took it off.
MR. BERNSTEIN: That's right. He took the tape off.
MR. WOODWARD: And then he came back again, and the tape was‑‑
MR. BERNSTEIN: Was gone.
MR. WOODWARD: ‑‑there again, and he said, "Wait a minute."
MR. WOODWARD: "Something is off here."
MR. BERNSTEIN: And so what's happened is we were just at a little ceremony at lunch with Fred Ryan, publisher of The Washington Post, and he had this, had a sheet over this thing and didn't know what the hell it was, if there was going to be some kind of unveiling. And I just hoped nobody was dead.
MR. BERNSTEIN: And he very ceremoniously went "whoof," like that, and that is the lock from the night of the burglary that Frank Wills put tape‑‑took the piece of tape off of.
MR. WOODWARD: And Jeff Bezos bought it at an auction.
MR. BERNSTEIN: At an auction. Right, right.
MR. WOODWARD: And we're trying to find out how much Bezos paid.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Right.
MR. BERNSTEIN: Come back next week, and we'll have the answer.
MR. WOODWARD: And Fred Ryan is taking the Fifth and saying he doesn't know.
MR. BALZ: This is the last great unanswered question from Watergate.
MR. BERNSTEIN: We're going to get it. We are going to get the answer.
MR. BALZ: We're going to have to leave it there. Sadly, we are out of time. We could go on for a long time.
I want to thank both Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward for a fabulous conversation. Thank you very much.
MR. BERNSTEIN: I don't think they can hear you.
MR. BALZ: And I just want to say thank you to all of you for being here. Thank you everybody who was watching either on the Washington Post site or on C‑SPAN.
For those of you who want to know more about what we have coming up, you can go to WashingtonPostLive.com. You’ll see all the future programs. We have a lot more in the works, but this concludes our trio of Watergate stories. Thanks again.
MR. WOODWARD: Thanks, Dan. Thank you.
[End of recorded session] | 2022-06-21T02:11:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: 50th Anniversary of Watergate: Inside the Story - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/20/transcript-50th-anniversary-watergate-inside-story/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/20/transcript-50th-anniversary-watergate-inside-story/ |
Transcript: Race in America: Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.)
MR. CAPEHART: Good morning. I’m Jonathan Capehart, associate editor of The Washington Post. Welcome to Washington Post Live and another in our series on race in America co-produced with the “Capehart” podcast. “A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation and the New American Story” is the new book from Georgia’s junior U.S. senator who also happens to be the senior pastor--excuse me--the senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He is Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock. Welcome to “Capehart” and Washington Post Live.
SEN. WARNOCK: Great to be with you. Thank you so much, brother.
MR. CAPEHART: Great to be with you as well. I'm glad I wore the light blue tie because I usually wear a tie like yours. We would have been twins.
SEN. WARNOCK: That would have been all right with me, Jonathan.
MR. CAPEHART: All right. So let's get into your--into your book. Your book opens with a chapter entitled "Boys Like Us," and you write about two searing moments. I'll start with the one that involves you. You, your sister and other pastors' kids were frisked after being suspected of shoplifting. And you write, quote, it was, quote, "my first brush with the myriad ways in which Black people experience hurtful and demeaning racial stereotyping and discrimination in everyday life." Talk about how that incident shaped you.
SEN. WARNOCK: Thank you so much again. It's great to be here with you. And you know, that Sunday afternoon, we were doing what church kids, particularly PKs, preachers' kids do. We were--we had a little break in between services. You stayed in church all day long. And we were in the grocery store. My sister and I and some friends who were also PKs--and I was about 12 or 13 years old. I had a habit then of kind of walking around with my hands in my pockets, normal kind of adolescent awkwardness. And a man appeared out of nowhere and said come walk with--come go with me. He was dressed in army fatigues. And my sister being taught to obey authority, started walking. I said, well, wait a minute, who are you? And he said the police. I said, well, you mind showing me a badge. And he flashed a badge. To make a long story short, they marched us through the store, up the stairs, where they've been watching us in an observation--mirrored observation booth. And you know, we were all frisked. And of course, they found nothing because we hadn't taken anything. We were--we were just good kids in between two worship services. And that was my experience, my first experience with the kind of humiliation and everyday aggressions that people experience.
MR. CAPEHART: The other more painful moment came later in life, and that involved the arrest of your older brother, a police officer. What happened, quickly, and how did that impact your life's work?
SEN. WARNOCK: Well, what I tried to do in that first chapter, Jonathan, the book "A Way Out of No Way," which, by the way, is a phrase that comes out of the church, right? You're not in a church for long, a Black church, and when we say the Black church, let me not assume that people know--I want you to know that we have never, ever meant anything racially exclusive about that. We're talking about the church literally born protesting racism, protesting discrimination, and saying that we--of one blood God has made all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth. So, it is the church born really affirming our humanity and the ways in which all of us are part of the human family.
But in that first chapter, I juxtapose my story with the story of my own brother. I come from a large family. I'm number 11 out of 12. I'm the first college graduate. And I have an older brother who went to prison for a nonviolent drug-related offense. He was a police officer at the time. And you know, he committed serious crimes for which he has expressed deep remorse, and I think he's rehabilitated. But part of what you see in that chapter is, you know, with he and I are sharing the same bunkbeds in the same room growing up in public housing. I'm a United States senator today, but it's not lost on me the thin line between how my life showed--turned out and how his turned out, and it's given me a sense of compassion, a kind of tender heart as a pastor, and I think it informs the way in which I engage issues as a legislator.
MR. CAPEHART: Right. And as you write in the book, I mean, you worked very hard--after your brother's arrest, you've worked very hard to make sure he was supported, that the justice system treated him fairly as it's supposed to do in our--in our judicial system. And you talk about the care and love that you had for your brother, while at the same time, quote, zeroing in on and focusing on the disparities in our criminal justice system. And when your brother was sentenced to life, you--where did I--where did I put my notes--you write "Life--nobody had died, nobody had gotten physically hurt. Nobody even got high. Yet my brother, then a 33-year-old man and Army veteran with no prior criminal history was sent to prison for the rest of his life without the possibility of parole."
I want to go back to something because you anticipated a question I was going to ask, and that is about the title of the book, "A Way Out of No Way," which was not unfamiliar to me, because I heard it said by the late great Congressman John Lewis a lot, but for a lot of people who don't know specifically, what "a way out of no way" means, talk about that and why that phrase is so resonant for you.
SEN. WARNOCK: Yeah, it's a very common phrase in the Black church experience. And again, I'm talking about the church that slaves created, and it's been passed on from generation to generation. It is a phrase born of suffering, of travail and oppression. And yet keeping the faith in the midst of that struggle, never giving in to hate, never giving in to the kind of bitterness that destroys you, but putting one foot in front of the other. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say that faith is taking the first step when you can't see the full stairwell. And you're not in a Black church long before you hear either the preacher or somebody in the choir or some mother in the church giving a testimony as she talks about how God has walked with her through life's valleys and difficult spaces. She says, you know, the Lord makes a way or God makes a way out of no way. It's a phrase also that acknowledges the importance of human agency. The truth, the unspoken, part of that is that as we make our way, God makes a way out of no way. We do the work and we partner with God to make our lives better and I think to make the lives of other people better. And it's a phrase by which I've tried to guide my own life and my own journey.
MR. CAPEHART: Can you talk a little bit about the importance of Congressman Lewis to you? Not just because he was a civil rights icon, but you were his pastor.
SEN. WARNOCK: Right. Yeah, John Lewis was a giant of a man. I'm deeply honored to have served as his pastor. There he is. We're standing there--and standing there also is Xernona Clayton.
MR. CAPEHART: Yeah, Xernona Clayton.
SEN. WARNOCK: Lieutenants of the movement. They both worked very closely with Dr. King. And it's one of the honors of being at Ebenezer Baptist Church and serving as pastor. These are folks that I that--that I've moved in and around for the last several years.
But I first met John Lewis when I was but a student at Morehouse College. We had an event at the school. We'd invited a number of public officials to come. And John Lewis was the only one who showed up. I don't really remember what he said that night, but the fact that he was there with us meant the world. His presence spoke volumes. And I think of him a lot. I was able to work with him on a number of Sundays. We did something called souls to the polls, where we would take people to vote and we'd wrap the bus in the--you know, in paraphernalia. So, we'd encourage other people on our way to the polls to make their way to the polls. He never gave up the fight, and I think about him especially in these dark and difficult days when there is the temptation to give into cynicism and despair. I think of John Lewis because, you know, when he was crossing that Edmund Pettus Bridge with nothing but a backpack and a trench coat, you know, he had no reason to think that he could win.
And I remember thinking about that, Jonathan, as I was preparing to officiate his funeral. I said to myself what was John Lewis thinking when he was crossing that bridge. Here's what I'd note. He was not thinking that one day at his funeral three American presidents will show--would show up to pay homage, on both sides of the aisle. He was not thinking that one day he'd be the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom. I suspect that he was just hoping to stay alive that day so that he could fight the next day. But somehow by some stroke of destiny mixed with human determination and courage, he crossed the bridge and built the bridge at the same time to the future, bent the arc a little bit closer to justice. And it reminds me that what we have to do is get up every morning, make our way. And we don't know when the light, when the sun will break through, but it's our job to wake up, show up, and do the hard work.
MR. CAPEHART: I want to talk about another man who was instrumental, pivotal in your life, who made you get up early on Saturday mornings not knowing exactly what you--why you had to get up early on a Saturday morning, but he said get up, and you did. And you write about this in your book, but it was also in an essay in The New York Times yesterday. And I want to read this, because it is among the most beautiful tributes I've read from one person to another, but especially from a son to a father. Your father passed away years ago, but you write, "My father represents the salt of the earth, blue collar brother, brilliant despite not having a college degree or prestigious credentials, innovative enough to create miracles with his hands, the kind of Black man whose life doesn't make the headlines for either shooting hoops or shooting bullets, for breaking out or for breaking in. So like most among us, he remains unseen. He loved his wife. He took care of his family. He shepherded the people in his church. He endured racism without becoming bitter, and he loved his country. He was a walking sermon." That gave me chills just reading it again. Talk about your dad.
SEN. WARNOCK: Oh, that was my dad. And look, I was born in a poor family but I feel like I hit the jackpot because I had two great parents. And you know, I don't say that--if that's not your story, I get it. And you know, all of us are blessed in various ways people show up in our lives. But I had two great parents. My dad was an older father, born in 1917. He was 52 years old, the age I am now when I was born. And you know, my experience was this man waking me up every morning. He didn't believe in sleeping late. He had a fierce work ethic which he passed on to us. And his idea was you wake up and you get dressed and you put shoes on. And one morning as I say in that essay, I asked--you know, he said there's something for you do. I said do what? He said, I don't know. I'll figure that out later. Just get dressed, put shoes on. And that was his sermon every Sunday morning.
And I say sermon because he was a preacher. But during the week, my dad who was not seminary trained and learned like a lot of Black preachers, in an apprenticeship model, during the week he was an entrepreneur, a small businessman who fed his family by picking up old junk cars that he would load up on the back of a truck, the mechanisms of which he designed himself. I--you know when you're young you don't have sense enough to appreciate fully the genius in front of you. I don't know where my dad learned to weld to put those things--he wouldn't even write it on a piece of paper, but he would create these mechanisms and load these cars, stacking one on top of the other on the back of an old truck, take them to Chatham Steel. That's how he took care of his family. During the week, the junk man picked up old broken cars that other folk had thrown away. On Sunday morning, I saw him lift broken people, reminding them of their value. And that was my dad, and his life inspires me to this very moment.
MR. CAPEHART: Is that what then, no pun intended, drove you to the pulpit to become a preacher?
SEN. WARNOCK: He certainly was my first example. And my mother, by the way, is also a pastor.
MR. CAPEHART: Right, yeah, she's also a pastor.
SEN. WARNOCK: They have been wonderful examples. But they never pressured me to go into ministry. There was no pressure at all. After all, we're a very large family. But it became clear early on that that that was my path. That's something I figured out early on. My parents were my earliest examples. But pretty early on, there was another voice that absolutely captivated my imagination, and that was the voice and ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr. I was born a year after Dr. King's death. He died in 1968. I was born 1969. But early on in my childhood, I remember--I remember I think the first time I probably saw Dr. King's face--Jonathan, you might relate--was on one of those fans that you have [unclear].
SEN. WARNOCK: It comes from the funeral home. There's usually a picture either of Martin Luther King, Jr. or the three Kennedy boys, or Mahalia Jackson with a kind of beatific look on her face on that fan. And I remember asking who is that. And I learned as I grew up--and I was a part of that generation of kids whose parents were fighting for Dr. King's birthday to become a national holiday. So, before they actually signed it into a national holiday, which happened, I think, maybe when I was in middle school, my parents were among the group of parents who were already pulling their kids out of school. And I remember spending all day at the Main Street Y learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. And something about his voice and his courage and his ability to move people to stand up on the side of what is good and noble and just and true captured my imagination. I often say that I was recruited to Morehouse College by the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr.
SEN. WARNOCK: I just wanted to go to his college. I didn't know I'd become the pastor of the church where he served.
MR. CAPEHART: Well, right. And I was about to say, even though you were born the year after Dr. King was assassinated, he was a mentor of yours, and you've been following in his--in his footsteps. Actually, you've exceeded his footsteps, because now you're a member of the United States Senate. But--
SEN. WARNOCK: I was [unclear].
MR. CAPEHART: Well, ever since then. But one of the--one of the ways you followed in his footsteps was going to Morehouse College. And that brings up a question that we got submitted by--from the audience from Emanuel Payton here in Washington, D.C. What did your Morehouse experience provide you for where you are today?
SEN. WARNOCK: Morehouse is a special place. You know, this last month I was invited to give the commencement address for the class of 2022, and there's no higher honor that you could give to a Morehouse man. It is a place that emphasizes the training of the head and the tuning of the heart. You know, Benjamin Elijah Mays, who was president of Morehouse during Dr. King's matriculation as a student, said that he was disturbed in the language of the days--that I'm disturbed about man; I'm disturbed that when we train a man's head, we have no way of knowing for sure that we will--we will--that his heart will be tuned. And so he was concerned that--about that, and he wanted to build students who would bring their knowledge and their expertise to the public square, regardless of their discipline, in order to create what Dr. King would later call the beloved community.
There's something about being on that campus, walking every day under the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s statue, pointing with his finger resolutely into the future, that inspired me every single day. Howard Thurman, another graduate of that school, said that over the heads of her students, Morehouse holds a crown that she challenges them to grow tall enough to wear. So, every day, every year of my life, I've been trying to stretch to reach the crown not out of any sense of self-aggrandizement but a deepening commitment to building a humanity and building a world that embraces all of our children.
MR. CAPEHART: Let's talk about some current events, and in particular, your race for reelection. Although we should remind people that when you won election last January, January 2021, you were filling out--you were--you were filling out the remainder of a term from the previous senator, a Republican senator. And now you're facing a bit of a tough reelection to a full-term, full six-year term in the Senate. Why do you think your race is so competitive?
SEN. WARNOCK: Well, I--look I'm honored to serve first of all. It's a real honor when the people of your state say that we would like for you to represent us and our children at the highest levels of the American government, and so I'm filling out a term. But I think the people of Georgia did an amazing thing in a moment in which the country is divided and there are those who are trying to stoke up the old fires of division. The people of Georgia stood up and in one fell swoop sent their first African American senator, and their first Jewish Senator, to the United States Senate. And I think somewhere in glory Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel are smiling, because they marched alongside one another. Rabbi Heschel said when he marched alongside Dr. King, he felt like his legs were praying.
And that's what we need in a moment like this, people who put their body in this fight and in the struggle, which is why a pastor--and I enjoy being a pastor--there's a reason I've decided to get involved in something as messy as politics. I'm not in love with politics. I'm in love with change. And politics, for me, is a tool to try to advance the work that I've been doing for years--Medicaid expansion, something I've fought for for years, here in the state of Georgia, because I believe healthcare is a human right. I've been fighting for voting rights. We passed the single largest tax cut for middle- and working-class families in American history. And now I'm trying to address the pressure that hardworking families are feeling right now amidst this global inflation. I'd like to see us pass--suspending the federal gas tax, and I'd like to see us cap the cost of insulin for people who are struggling right now in a state where one in 12 people have diabetes. And I'm pushing the president of the United States to do substantial student debt cancellation.
MR. CAPEHART: Is the president's low approval rating a drag on your reelection? How concerned are you that the president of your--of your own party is unpopular and could hurt you in November?
SEN. WARNOCK: Maybe because I'm a pastor who got elected to the Senate, and not a senator who used to be a pastor, I honestly don't spend a lot of time thinking about those things. I am actually worried about our politics. I'm worried that we have created a context right now where too much of the politics is about the politicians, where their poll numbers are, who's up and who's down, who's in and who's out. And as a result of that, we have no shortage of transactional politicians who are so focused on the next election that they're not thinking about the next generation. It is my honor to do this work on behalf of my children. I have a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, and I know that although their dad is a United States senator, there's a way in which my children won't be okay unless other people's children are okay, and I'm honored to do that work.
MR. CAPEHART: So, this focus on politicians as opposed to policy, is that the reason why two years after the nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd we haven't seen anything done--despite your very powerful speeches on the floor of the Senate, many of them on voting rights or even on criminal justice reform?
SEN. WARNOCK: You know, think about that. Voting rights, criminal justice reform. Politicians need to center the people they were sent to represent, rather than their own interests. It is the reason why, even after watching 19 babies slaughtered in a school, I'm hopeful that we are going to get something done this time. But why are we concerned? Why are we worried? It's because we've seen this terrible movie, this tragedy before, where we saw after Sandy Hook, no movement after Columbine, 30 years, no movement, even to do the things that 80 to 90 percent of the country agrees with.
SEN. WARNOCK: Still no movement in the Senate. If we don't get anything done this time, it will be a single moment of moral failure on our behalf, and it will suggest that politics is more important than the people. And I just refuse to accept that premise. And I have a lot of respect and appreciation for my colleague Chris Murphy, and I know that he and others are pushing. And I'm doing everything I can. We've got to get something done here for the American people.
MR. CAPEHART: Let me get you to reflect here, because you were a sponsor of the legislation that made Juneteenth a national holiday last year. And along with July 4th, I'm wondering, what do the two holidays say not just about the arc of American history but also about the values this country has stood for but not always lived up to?
SEN. WARNOCK: I think of America as a freedom caravan. Freedom is not a destination. It's a journey. And we have been on this journey to try to push the country closer to its ideals. You point out, rightly, there's July the Fourth, and then there's Juneteenth. Frederick Douglass, who was a great patriot, loved the country, and an abolitionist, had a famous speech in 1800s before the Emancipation Proclamation, entitled, "It Is Yours, Not Mine." And he talked about the contradiction between the celebration of Independence on July 4th and the fact that people were still in slavery in a free country. And so there's always been this tension. And I see it played out in the American story.
And as I point out in my book "A Way Out of No Way," I am an embodiment of that complicated story. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world. I love this country, and that's why I keep fighting for its ideals. I won a hard-fought race which made me Georgia's first Black senator--by the way, only the 11th Black senator in the whole history of the country. The next day, I was feeling great. I was on all the morning shows. It was a hard-fought race. I was on "Morning Joe." I was on "CBS This Morning." I knew I had arrived because I was on "The View" talking to Whoopi Goldberg. It was a--it was a great morning. It was the morning of January 6th.
And so by lunchtime, we could see that something was unfolding in the Capitol. And by the end of the day, we'd all witnessed the most violent attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812. Antisemitic and racist and xenophobic signs trafficked through our Capitol. And so on January 5th, think about that. Georgia, a former state of the Confederacy, sends a powerful message to the nation, regardless of your politics or political party. It sent an African American and a Jew over against the ugly side of our history, from the South to the United States, January 5th. January 6th, violent assault on the Capitol, animated by the big lie, the premise that, really, some people's voices and certain people's votes ought not count. You don't get to determine the direction of the country.
And so here's where we really live. We live somewhere between January 5th and January 6th, between the forces that would divide us for short-term political gains, because people who have no vision engage in division, and the forces that are going to push us closer towards our ideals. I choose January 5th time and time again. Even when I'm disappointed, I choose the U.S. I choose us, "E Pluribus Unum", "Out of Many, One."
MR. CAPEHART: Senator Reverend Warnock, we're going to--I'm letting the control room know right now we're going to go a little bit over because I had to get you on two things. One, the January 6th hearings are ongoing. Have you learned anything that's--that has surprised you? And do you think--you--have you seen enough evidence that Donald Trump should be charged with a crime?
SEN. WARNOCK: Well, I'm going to let the committee do its work. And I think what I've learned, again, what all of us ought to be learning, is that democracy is not a noun, it's a verb, and that it is the most precious thing we have, and we have to fight for it. We have to fight for it over and over again. And what I--what this has done for me is deepened my resolve to remain vigilant, to remain focused, to register as many people as I can, to vote and make sure everybody--every eligible voice is heard in our democracy. That's what's at stake.
MR. CAPEHART: All right. So, the number-one thing, the best thing I learned about you in reading "A Way Out of No Way" comes on page 29. You write, "We children grew up playing a game called 'the dozens,' during which participants try to outwit one another with the best insult, and we played about--played it about as much as we played--as much as we prayed."
SEN. WARNOCK: Yeah.
MR. CAPEHART: "Everybody got teased mercilessly. So, I learned to dish it out as well as I could take it." And this is the part that I love, "and even became somewhat of a master of the yo mama jokes." You gotta get--you gotta give me one. You gotta give me one.
SEN. WARNOCK: [Laughs] I'm not gonna do that, Jonathan.
MR. CAPEHART: Come on. Not even one?
SEN. WARNOCK: It would take a little while for me to--
MR. CAPEHART: Hey!
SEN. WARNOCK: You and I will have to sidebar but--about some of that.
MR. CAPEHART: I'm going to--I am going to hold you to that. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock of Georgia, author of no way out of no way--"A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story," thank you so much for coming to "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.
SEN. WARNOCK: Great to be with you. Take care.
MR. CAPEHART: All right. And thank you for joining us. To check out what interviews we have coming up, head to WashingtonPosLive.com. Once again, I’m Jonathan Capehart, associate editor of The Washington Post. Thank you for watching “Capehart” on Washington Post Live. | 2022-06-21T02:11:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: Race in America: Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/20/transcript-race-america-sen-raphael-g-warnock-d-ga/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/20/transcript-race-america-sen-raphael-g-warnock-d-ga/ |
Transcript: World Stage: Global Refugee Crisis with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi
MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist at the Post.
Today is World Refugee Day. There are over 100 million people in the world who are displaced by violence and persecution, and I'm joined today by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, who is going to talk with me about this problem.
Mr. High Commissioner, thank you for joining Washington Post Live again.
MR. GRANDI: Thank you very much.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, Mr. High Commissioner, your office last week issued a detailed report on the refugee problem noting that more than 100 million people are displaced and that that number had grown by 10 million people in the last year, thanks in part to the war in Ukraine.
I want to begin by asking you, why is this number growing so fast, and how should the world begin to start thinking about how to deal with it?
MR. GRANDI: That's a big question, and it's a big problem. I think the fundamental cause when we speak about refugees, forcibly these displaced people, is that, as you know very well, conflicts multiply, literally accumulate themselves, one on top of the other, and very few, if at all, get resolved. If you don't solve the root causes of a crisis, especially a man‑made crisis like a war, like violations of human rights, discrimination and violence of different kinds, people will not go back. People, first of all, will seek refuge in safer places, sometimes in their own countries‑‑we call those "internally displaced people"‑‑sometimes across borders. Those are the refugees. But they won't go back, and this is fundamentally why this figure that you mentioned has been growing every year for the past 10 years.
MR. IGNATIUS: I noted in looking at your report, Mr. High Commissioner, that the number has doubled in the last decade. It's an awful thought, which is that the number might be even higher if it wasn't for the COVID crisis, which has kept borders closed and perhaps has reduced the flow of refugees. What about that? Could this number be even higher than the 100 million figure that I mentioned?
MR. GRANDI: It could be in some cases where borders remained closed, but, you know, there have been many instances, in Africa, for example, where I am right now, where in spite of COVID, states kept their borders open because they didn't want to shut out people fleeing from war. I can give you several examples, but one that comes to mind is that of Uganda, for instance. Uganda never closed the door to people fleeing from Eastern Congo, one of the most beleaguered places on earth from the point of view of conflict.
So the figure has unfortunately continued to grow, and I'm afraid that with Ukraine continuing to be a very violent conflict and displacing so many people and with many other places being affected by conflict, this figure is going to continue to grow.
MR. IGNATIUS: Mr. High Commissioner, you mentioned that you're in Africa, and I understand from your team that you're in the Ivory Coast on World Refugee Day. I'd be interested in hearing what you're seeing in Ivory Coast. I gather that's one of the rare success stories in terms of repatriation of refugees. Tell us about what you're seeing and hearing there.
MR. GRANDI: Yes, precisely. I made this decision a few months ago. The president of Ivory Coast, of Côte d'Ivoire, President Ouattara, a few years back told me that he thought that conditions in his country were conducive for the peaceful, stable, sustainable return of more than 350,000 refugees that had left many years back because, again, once again, of internal conflict, very vicious internal conflict that prevailed here at that time.
So we started working on that and we've managed together with governments in the region and, of course, the government of Ivory Coast, of Côte d'Ivoire to repatriate more than 90 percent of those that were refugees in the region.
And last year, we did something that we rarely do. We invoked a legal clause that is called a "cessation clause." So we recommended to countries in the region to declare as of now, next week, end of June, what we call the "cessation clause" for Ivorian refugees. After that date, these countries have agreed those people still remaining‑‑there's not many, but still remaining will not be considered refugees anymore.
Now, they will be protected in other ways. They will be able to stay where they are. So, there's a whole construction around it, which is very safe for people, but what is very interesting, it's a symbol that it's possible that that growth of the 100 million figure is not inevitable. And that's why I decided to celebrate World Refugee Day here today, speaking about this positive situation, rare as it may be.
MR. IGNATIUS: That's fascinating, and I assume that you think that similar efforts could be undertaken in other countries beyond Ivory Coast perhaps with a similar cessation clause mechanism. Am I right?
MR. GRANDI: Sure, but remember the cessation clause comes after other efforts are made. We could not have declared this clause without the government of Côte d'Ivoire not doing what it has done in terms of political stability efforts toward reconciliation. There was a very harsh political conflict here years ago. That's what caused the refugees to flee. Without appropriate investments in the economy, in the wealth of the nation that has really provided more prosperity here than in many other countries in the region, all of this is the foundation on which you can build a cessation clause because, without that, it would not be safe. We could not encourage people to do back.
So the message here is yes, let's try to invoke this clause elsewhere, but more importantly, countries of origin of the refugees in these places need to follow the virtuous plan of Côte d'Ivoire and put in place the conditions for them to go back.
MR. IGNATIUS: It's a powerful point that if destination countries want people to go back to their home countries, they need to do everything they can to support economic development in those countries. Perhaps we'll return to that theme.
I want to ask you about a troubling refugee issue, and that's one that involves Great Britain, and Britain's attempt to send migrants, refugees to Rwanda as a way of getting them out of their borders and somewhere else. Last year, a plane was scheduled to take 130 migrants to Rwanda. In the end, I don't believe any of the migrants actually flew there because of various legal challenges. I want to ask you whether this plan, as it was framed by the British government, in your eyes violated international law.
MR. GRANDI: This plan has, in our opinion‑‑and we've said it very openly in discussions with the British government‑‑has flaws in different ways. It has some legal flaws for sure, although it's not illegal for countries to share the responsibility of adjudicating refugee status, but it can only happen if the two countries in question have systems, both of them functioning systems, systems that are able to do that adjudication process.
Now, ostensibly, the agreement between the UK and Rwanda means that Rwanda will have to do the work of the UK in adjudicating refugee status. And Rwanda, which is a very good refugee hosting country, however, does not host refugees that require that individual determination. For that, Rwanda is not equipped or not yet equipped, anyway. So there's a legal impediment there or limitations. There's a practical one. Many of the people that we heard would be put on those hypothetical planes would be people from other parts of the world without any real incentive or possibility to integrate in Rwanda should they stay there.
And, finally‑‑and this is what worries me most‑‑this creates a huge precedent if it happens. It hasn't happened, but if it did happen, it would create a huge precedent. It would mean that a country with resources as the United Kingdom, with systems and institutions that are able to manage the process of granting asylum, that this country renounced some of these responsibilities and exports them to another country, and by the way, a country with less resources and less capacity to do so.
So, if this were to happen, what would I then be able to say to leaders, to governments, in countries that are not receiving, you know, refugees in the thousands as the UK does but in the millions, countries in Africa, countries, in Africa, in Latin America. What if one of those governments said, "We don't want to take them anymore. It's too complicated. Let's export them to another country." That would be the end of the practice of asylum as we know it, the practice that is so important to save millions of lives every year.
MR. IGNATIUS: Mr. High Commissioner, the Guardian newspaper in London wrote that you said that the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, had been wrong in saying that critics had failed to propose alternative policies because‑‑and here I'm quoting you‑‑the UN had offered many, many suggestions instead of sending people to Rwanda and East Africa, which as we have discussed in your view violates international principles for refugees.
I want to ask you what suggestions you made to Liz Truss and whether those are suggestions that you're continuing to discuss with the British government?
MR. GRANDI: I want to say two things to this. First, that nobody should get me wrong. I'm the last person to say that these issues are simple for governments to deal with, including the United Kingdom. They're very complex because there's many limitations to what governments can do if they want to do the right thing.
But what we are telling these governments is that there's many improvements in the procedures that can be brought about to make them more effective, less cumbersome, less costly, more quick, more efficient. We've been talking a lot in Europe about a fast and more fair and fast procedures, proceedings that are faster than the ones that are currently prevailing that are very lengthy and complex but that maintain the fairness, maintain‑‑uphold the rights of the asylum seekers. So it would become very technical if we went to the details, but we have made proposals regarding that. We have asked governments to multiply what we call "legal pathways" to encourage or to help more refugees that are already in some countries, often fragile, to move to more stable countries through legal pathways, secure, safe, orderly, and so forth.
We have reinforced what other colleagues in the UN are doing to try to convince governments to manage migration better, economic migration better. A lot of economic migrants that are, nevertheless, needed in rich countries use asylum as a channel to go there because the migration channels are not well managed, are insufficient, and take a long time if they manage to go through them.
So these are some examples, and then there's, perhaps, the most difficult of all, what to do with the many people that go through the systems in Europe, in North America, in Australia and other places, and are not recognized as refugees, but there are impediments to their return, to their repatriation to their own countries. Rich countries receiving these people must establish more effective mechanism for return. It's not simple, but we should all work on that. These are all or some of the suggestions that we have made to the government of the United Kingdom.
And, by the way, if I can add, this is not unique to the United Kingdom. We've had this, a very similar discussion with Australia for many years. We've had it with the United States in respect of the southern border. So this is something that I believe would deserve some strategic discussion between states concerned, but there are tools that can be applied to improve the situation without violating the principles.
MR. IGNATIUS: Before we leave the question of Britain and flights of refugees to Rwanda, I want to just ask you whether so far as you know based on your conversations, there are plans for any additional flights to Rwanda and the continued use of this mechanism. The first flight, as I mentioned, of 130 never happened, but what's your understanding? Will there be another flight?
MR. GRANDI: I do not know. These are matters that are dealt bilaterally between the United Kingdom and Rwanda. I suppose, but this is my assumption, that some of the legal objections that the European Court on Human Rights has moved to the United Kingdom will have to be addressed if flights have to resume.
So let me ask you, Mr. High Commissioner, to turn to Ukraine, which is an issue that has been dominating the headlines but also dominating attention in terms of the refugee flow. It's estimated there are seven million Ukraine refugees. I want to ask you for so many of us, these scenes evoke memories of World War II and the flow of refugees at that time. I'm curious what lessons you as a UN official, as a European draw from the experiences, the past, some terrible events of the previous century that are helpful now in trying to think about the refugee crisis in Ukraine and in related countries.
MR. GRANDI: This has been the most severe refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. So it has‑‑it's difficult to make comparisons with other crises, and in my own memory‑‑I go back quite a bit‑‑it is the first time in decades that in Europe, if ever, since the war--that in Europe this is a crisis generated by the invasion of one country, the invasion of one country by another country and the war that has ensued. So it has some specificities, but a few lessons that I can think of and I think are interesting to share.
First of all, we tend to think of humanitarian refugee crisis as something that happens or that starts happening far away. It can happen closer or in the rich world, and therefore, I think it's important to appreciate that we can all be affected by this type of events.
Second, Europe‑‑or, rather, the European Union did something very important in‑‑I think it was the 3rd of March, so 10 days after the Russian invasion or even less. The European Union declared that all refugees from Ukraine would benefit from what is called‑‑again, the technical name‑‑"temporary protection." This allows them to move freely in the Schengen space, to have access to services, to live with the relatives, to receive some benefits and so forth. This was done very quickly, very unanimously in the European Union, and I believe that this has allowed the European Union to absorb, even if perhaps temporary to an extent, but to absorb millions of people in very few weeks.
So the lesson there is how come we have heard for so long that Europe was full, that nobody could be taken in any more, that we had to build‑‑that walls have to be built, that people had to be pushed back in the Mediterranean, and when there is unity of intent, political will, a good discourse by politicians in respect of the refugees, it is possible to do it, not simple but possible.
Which, of course, brings us to the last point: Are there different standards? And, unfortunately, I think that there are different standards. I think that we all appreciate and understand why this enormous attention was given to the crisis in Ukraine, and I don't think it should be less than that. I'm just saying that people who flee the bombs in Mariupol or Severodonetsk are not different from people that flee bombings in Ethiopia or severe violations of human rights in Myanmar or very difficult situations, security situations and action by armed groups in Sahel, nearby here. I think the same compassion, the same attention, the same resources must be given to all.
MR. IGNATIUS: And if I understand it, you're saying the concern here is that these White European refugees, to be blunt, from Ukraine may be getting better treatment from European nations than other refugees?
MR. GRANDI: But if you say this, it looks like I'm saying they should get less good treatment. I'm saying the opposite, but I think I'm saying the same thing, that others too should get at least the same attention and the same response. Unfortunately, we see quite the opposite.
You know my organization deals with refugees all over the world, and in many of our large operations in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia, in Latin America, we're struggling financially this year, which was not the case to this extent in prior years, and the reason is that many resources have been moving to help people fleeing or affected by the war in Ukraine. And this we must avoid at all costs, not least because the environments in which these other crises are happening are affected also in another way, as we all know, by the war in Ukraine, by food insecurity, by inflation, by energy challenges. So it's a double impact that they're having, and I am worried about this growing disparity in responses.
MR. IGNATIUS: We have just a minute left, Mr. High Commissioner, and I want to use that time to ask you about another very prominent refugee crisis now for decades, and that's Afghanistan. It's a year in August since the fall of the government in Kabul, the takeover by the Taliban. I want to ask you whether the refugee crisis surrounding Afghanistan, the flow of refugees from Afghanistan has been less than you might have expected and how you think the Taliban government is doing in dealing with these issues of keeping people at home by giving them work, not by force. How are they doing?
MR. GRANDI: To your first question, I would say yes. It is less than let's say we feared at one point, but I think that this is also due to the fact that in the last few months and particularly through the last winter, humanitarian organizations were able to set up a very substantive response inside Afghanistan.
We have to say that with the end of the conflict between the Taliban and the previous government, the security situation in the country has improved. It's never been as relatively stable as this in decades. I worked, myself, in Afghanistan 20 years ago in a relatively positive moment, but security was more challenging back then. So, paradoxically, we have a situation of improved security that allows us to distribute food and other resources to help with water, to help with older fundamentals, older life‑saving issues.
Now, your second question is more complex: How have the Taliban done? First of all, I think that one positive thing that happened last August was the decision, in particular, by the United Nations and its organizations to continue to engage with the Taliban. This is not recognition. This is engagement on humanitarian grounds. That has allowed us to have them as an interlocutor, and we've seen over the last few months some progress, like I said, in security terms, for example, but also some stagnation and some bad decision such as the one made recently not to allow girls in high schools.
But, by and large, there is dialogue. There is engagement, and this must continue. I know that there's been a lot of focus in the United States on let's get people out of Afghanistan, save women, save people at risk, and some of it has been done. But I think there should be equal focus on helping people that will stay in Afghanistan and will stay in Afghanistan‑‑there's no choice at the moment‑‑under a Taliban government.
So we must continue to engage. We must continue to talk to them about rights of minorities, about rights of women, and about access to all people in need, and we will continue to do that. It's going to be lengthy. It's going to require a lot of patience, but it's not possible to move slowly in a more positive direction.
MR. IGNATIUS: Unfortunately, we're out of time. I want to thank the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, for a fascinating discussion of this issue on World Refugee Day. Thank you for joining us from the Ivory Coast, and we hope we'll see you again on Washington Post Live.
MR. GRANDI: Thank you.
MR. IGNATIUS: So thanks to all of you for watching and joining us today. To check out what interviews we have coming up on Washington Post Live, please go to our website, WashingtonPostLive.com. Look for our programming. Register for the ones that interest you. We’ll look forward to seeing you again soon. | 2022-06-21T02:11:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: World Stage: Global Refugee Crisis with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/20/transcript-world-stage-global-refugee-crisis-with-un-high-commissioner-refugees-filippo-grandi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/20/transcript-world-stage-global-refugee-crisis-with-un-high-commissioner-refugees-filippo-grandi/ |
Dave Chappelle declines having Duke Ellington School theater named for him
The comedian had faced backlash from students for his comments about the LGBTQ community in a recent Netflix special
Comedian Dave Chappelle addresses students and faculty at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in D.C. on Sept. 29, 2017. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
In a surprise move, comedian Dave Chappelle announced that the student theater at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Northwest Washington will not bear his name.
Chappelle, one of the school’s most famous alums, was in town Monday night for a dedication ceremony for the venue.
It will instead be called the Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression.
The dedication had initially been postponed last November after critics blasted the comedian’s high-profile Netflix special, “The Closer,” as transphobic. Ellington students also raised concerns. Chappelle told the audience Monday that while he felt the backlash against him lacked nuance and wasn’t about his work, he didn’t want a theater bearing his name to distract from students focusing on the meaning of their art.
At the time of the controversy last year, Duke Ellington Principal Sandi Logan said she had had formal and informal meetings with students to discuss Chappelle’s comments, including a month of weekly meetings with an advisory committee of student leaders that included representatives from the school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance.
Duke Ellington school delays naming of theater after Dave Chappelle until April
Established in 1974 with a mission of providing a free, first-class arts education to children in the nation’s capital, Duke Ellington attracts students from across the city and is one of the few area art schools that educates a mostly Black student body.
Chappelle, who pledged to donate $100,000 to the school’s theater, said last October that having the theater named after him was “the most significant honor of my life.”
“I used to skip school. I would hide in there when I was skipping class. Who would have thought that that theater would one day be named after me?” Chappelle said in a speech to donors to raise money for Ellington before a screening of “The Closer” at the Angelika Pop-Up theater at Union Market. “But I understand it because sometimes when you love things, they love you back. And I loved that school.” | 2022-06-21T03:15:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Duke Ellington School theater won't be named for Dave Chappelle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/20/dave-chappelle-duke-ellington-school-arts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/20/dave-chappelle-duke-ellington-school-arts/ |
Miss Manners: My grandkid says she has one grandma and it’s not me
I distinctly heard her reply, “Who's Babs?” My son said, “She's my mommy and she's your grandmother.”
To my surprise, I heard her say, “She's not my grandma. Bobbie is my grandma” (referring to our daughter-in-law's mother).
My son just let this stand, uncorrected. If one’s son lets this sort of statement stand, is there a way for a grandparent to respond within the bounds of etiquette? Obviously, the “maternal grandmother advantage” is at work here. Or perhaps even firmly entrenched. But how to handle this is a real puzzle.
Have you considered asking to be called “Grandma?” That should fix it in your granddaughter’s mind, and incidentally give you an edge over Bobbie. Not that Miss Manners wants to encourage competition.
And someone needs to explain family relationships and nomenclature to the child. Are you able to do that without seeming insulted and without making comparisons to her relationship with the other grandmother? Perhaps by telling charming stories of your son’s childhood?
In this situation, I’m the mom of the groom. I’ve been dating a guy for more than two years, and he accompanied me to my son and future daughter-in-law’s posh engagement party. I gave them my own card with a substantial monetary gift. I did not sign my date’s name, assuming he would bring his own card and gift. I haven’t said anything because I’m not sure what the protocol is.
Is he well-acquainted with this couple? Would they have invited him if he were not dating you?
So you neither had to put his name on the card nor should you dun him for a contribution of his own, unless he is so moved. | 2022-06-21T05:13:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: My grandkid says she has one grandma and it’s not me - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/21/miss-manners-granddaughter-grandma-one/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/21/miss-manners-granddaughter-grandma-one/ |
Japan has always been refugee-averse. Then Ukraine happened.
Ukrainians who have fled the war in their country arrive at Tokyo's Haneda Airport in Tokyo on April 5, 2022, following a visit to the Polish-Ukraine border by Japan's foreign minister. (KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images)
TOKYO — Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refugee-averse Japan has accepted more than 1,300 people fleeing the conflict and provided an array of social services to help them assimilate — a rare and surprising move that could mark a turning point for the country’s long-standing restrictions on those fleeing violence and persecution.
Since Japan’s prime minister formally announced the change on March 2 — just days after the invasion — the country has welcomed not only Ukrainians with relatives or acquaintances in Japan, but also anyone seeking shelter because of the conflict. Government agencies have been uncharacteristically generous in providing allowances, mental health support, language classes and housing to help Ukrainians adjust to their new lives.
Now, refugee groups are wondering if this swift response could serve as a model for future humanitarian crises and conflicts. Japan, one of the world’s richest countries, has some of the most restrictive policies toward refugees and asylum seekers. According to the Vatican’s refugee website, Japan has the lowest asylum intake ration in the developed world.
In Japan and across Asia, an outpouring of support for Ukraine
“We feel that the current situation, could potentially become a turning point for the future acceptance of refugees,” said Eri Ishikawa, board chair of the Japan Association for Refugees. “We hope that the government will take into consideration the public’s heightened interest in accepting refugees, and that they quickly proceed to fundamentally review the entire system.”
The conflict has triggered a dramatic response by Japan, amid concerns that Russia’s invasion could embolden China’s growing military assertiveness in the region. There is also broad public support for Ukrainians — which is unusual given the tepid Japanese interest in other crises that triggered an outflow of refugees, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan, military coup in Myanmar and the Syrian war.
But this time, Japan has become creative to work around its own restrictive laws that narrowly define refugees by instead labeling them “evacuees.”
Of the 1,316 Ukrainians who have entered Japan since March 2, the biggest share, 236 of them, have gone to Tokyo, the largest prefecture and the nation’s capital, according to Immigration Services Agency. Tokyo’s services include a help desk, free temporary housing and long-term public housing with free utilities, discount for public transportation and language support.
Since 1982, when Japan enacted its laws to accept refugees, 85,479 people have applied for refugee status and just 841 have been accepted. In 2021, Japan granted 74 applicants refugee status.
Key Asian nations join global backlash against Russia, with an eye toward China
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said there was momentum coming off the summer 2021 Tokyo Olympics, with its emphasis on human rights and the inclusion of marginalized communities, including refugees. The dramatic evacuation to Japan of two Afghan Paralympians who fled Kabul amid the Taliban takeover in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal also helped raise awareness about the plight of refugees.
“The invasion by Russia this time hit the people of Japan very strongly, especially with such vivid information reaching people directly, which strengthened people’s feelings to accept the evacuees,” Koike said in an interview.
While Koike said the public mood has become more open to such efforts to aid foreigners, she stopped short of saying it was a sign of lasting change: “We must follow the national government’s decisions and framework, so as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, we would like to closely watch how the government will make any changes [in accepting more refugees long-term].”
It remains unclear whether the national government will take meaningful steps toward revising refugee laws. In April, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Japan would consider a “quasi-refugee system” to accommodate certain evacuees, including Ukrainians.
There is some indication that the public would back an expansion of support. In a March survey by Nippon Research Center, 51.9 percent said the acceptance of refugees should be increased, up from findings in 2020 where respondents were more wary of such a move.
But life in Japan is difficult even for those who are granted refugee or asylum status under cumbersome and often opaque immigration laws. The lengthy review process has led to applications pending for an average of four years, advocates say, with limited to no government subsidies or the ability to work. During that time, migrants can be detained and subjected to inhumane treatment at detention centers, at times resulting in harrowing cases of violence and even death.
Russia’s invasion prompts more assertive foreign policy from Japan
The Japan Association for Refugees helps more than 300 people per year applying for refugee status, majority of whom are from Africa. In 2021, just six people fleeing Africa were accepted as refugees and many continue to live in poverty without residency status and no clear way of obtaining employment and housing in Japan, said Ishikawa, the board chair. The organization is funded mostly by donations, but it has not seen much of an uptick in financial support since the Ukrainian conflict.
The Japanese Support for Ukrainian Students, comprising nearly 100 language schools throughout Japan, has provided free language classes and raised money to help offset expenses and travel costs. There are about 800 language schools in Japan, and previously, only about five have helped refugees.
Norito Hiraoka, principal at Seifu Institute of Information Technology, one of the participating schools, said the effort has been possible because of the uniqueness of the conflict. In particular, the threat of nuclear weapons by Russian leader Vladimir Putin has sparked fear in Japan, the only country to experience the devastation of a nuclear attack.
“I don’t really think that this will be turning point. The extraordinary support that we are seeing is because it was Ukraine,” Hiraoka said. “I find it hard to imagine that there will be the same kind of outpouring support if another tragedy unfolds overseas.”
But other organizations are hopeful that they are laying the groundwork. For example, the Japanese Organization of Mental Health and Educational Agencies is recruiting Japanese volunteers, including university students, counselors and athletes, and showing them the importance of supporting those who are experiencing the traumas of war and conflict.
Last month, the organization launched a Ukraine Interaction Center to help families, especially with young children. At a recent event, Japanese volunteers taught Ukrainian evacuees how to make sushi, and the evacuees showed the volunteers how to cook Ukrainian dishes and make embroidery art.
“I hope that this can become a turning point. If the Ukrainians who come to Japan can settle well and create a real community here, through communication and interactions with them, I think the feelings of the Japanese people will change,” said Mariko Ukiyo, the organization’s director. | 2022-06-21T07:45:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Japan's refugee policy could be changed by Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/japan-ukraine-refugees-immigration/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/japan-ukraine-refugees-immigration/ |
Colbert explains story behind staffers’ arrests on Capitol Hill
CBS’s “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert didn’t wait long Monday night to discuss the bizarre topic that everyone was waiting for him to address — the fact that multiple members of his production team, including the voice behind one very famous puppet, were arrested last week in Washington at the Longworth House Office Building and charged with unlawful entry.
“How was your weekend?” Colbert greeted his studio audience as he arrived onstage. “I certainly had an interesting one, because some of my staff had a memorable one.”
The host launched into a quick recap: Last week, a group of Colbert staffers — along with Robert Smigel, who voices the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog puppet that originated on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” in the 1990s — traveled to the District to interview members of Congress to highlight the hearings investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Democratic and Republican congresspeople agreed to talk to Triumph. He's a bipartisan puppy. He's so neutral, he's neutered,” Colbert said. “Triumph and my folks shot for two days in congressional offices across the street from the Capitol building. They went through security clearance, shot all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, invited into the offices of the congresspeople they were interviewing.”
Thursday evening, the group was doing some “last-minute puppetry” in a hallway, Colbert said, when they were approached and detained by Capitol Police. (This echoed the statement that CBS released last Friday when the news became public; The Post reported that police said the building was closed to visitors at the time and the group had earlier been directed to leave.)
The host said everyone was “very professional” and “very calm”: “My staffers were detained, processed, and released. A very unpleasant experience for my staff, a lot of paperwork for the Capitol Police. But a fairly simple story.”
“Until the next night,” Colbert continued. “When a couple of the TV people started claiming that my puppet squad had ‘committed insurrection’ at the U.S. Capitol building.” Though Colbert didn’t name names, that quote came from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.
“This was first degree puppetry,” he added. “This was high jinks with intent to goof. Misappropriation of an old ‘Conan’ bit. It’s really Conan’s fault.”
Colbert said such quotes were “predictable”: “They want to talk about something other than the January 6 hearings on the actual seditionist insurrection that led to the deaths of multiple people, and the injury of over 140 police officers,” he said. “But drawing any equivalence between rioters storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of everyone who died. And it obscenely trivializes the service and the courage the Capitol Police showed on that terrible day.”
Colbert remarked that the incident occurred on the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, so it could have been a conspiracy; he joked it was similar to such “puppet lawlessness” as “The Great Muppet Caper” and “the ‘Fraggle’ riots of the 1980s.”
“But in this case, our puppet was just a puppet doing puppet stuff. And sad to say, so much has changed in Washington that the Capitol Police do have to stay at high alert all the time because of the attack on January 6,” he said. “And as the hearings prove more clearly every day, the blame for that actual insurrection all goes to Putin’s puppet.” | 2022-06-21T07:58:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Colbert explains why staffers were arrested on Capitol Hill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/21/colbert-explains-staffers-arrested-capitol-hill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/21/colbert-explains-staffers-arrested-capitol-hill/ |
How Kaliningrad, Russian territory surrounded by NATO, is tangled in the Ukraine war
Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave isolated from the rest of the country, historically shared close economic ties with European neighbors. (Patrick Hertzog/AFP/Getty Images)
The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, located hundreds of miles west of the rest of the country, is the latest flash point between Moscow and the rest of Europe as the fallout from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war reverberates beyond Ukraine.
Sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland — both of whom are European Union and NATO members — Kaliningrad sits on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. It receives much of its supplies via routes through Lithuania and Belarus.
Lithuania said in mid June that it will bar the transit of Kaliningrad-bound goods sanctioned by the E.U., including coal, metals and construction materials, through its territory. The Kremlin called the move “unprecedented and illegal,” and is reportedly set to summon the E.U.'s top diplomat in Moscow to complain.
Here’s what to know about this isolated Russian exclave and how it is tangled up in the war in Ukraine.
What is Kaliningrad’s history?
How has the war in Ukraine affected Kaliningrad and neighboring Lithuania?
What does the situation in Kaliningrad mean for NATO? | 2022-06-21T08:11:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is Kaliningrad, the Russian Baltic exclave surrounded by NATO? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/kaliningrad-lithuania-eu-blockade-russia-nato/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/kaliningrad-lithuania-eu-blockade-russia-nato/ |
LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 20: Trains arrive and depart from Clapham Junction station on June 20, 2022 in London, England. Tomorrow is the first of a three-day strike action this week by more than 40,000 rail workers whose unions are protesting job cuts, pay and working conditions. Nearly all train lines around the country will be affected, including the London Underground on Tuesday. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) (Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe)
It is starting to feel even more like the 1970s in the UK as the threat of nationwide rail strikes this week amplify the already unsettling feeling stemming from high inflation and slowing economic growth. While there are some important differences with the 70s, these are unlikely to be enough to preclude a “summer of discontent,” with a particularly heavy burden imposed on the most vulnerable segments of the population.
An important question is whether the disruptions will have adverse secular consequences, aggravating long-standing economic and social fragilities.
The latest monthly macroeconomic economic numbers are far from encouraging. Ahead of this week’s data for May, inflation was already at 9% for April and is on the way to 11%, according to the Bank of England. Monthly gross domestic product growth has turned negative, falling 0.3% in April after its 0.1% contraction in March. This is fueling a general decline in confidence as mounting worries about future income growth compound what is now commonly referred to as the “cost-of-living crisis.” Led by the surge of food and energy prices, it is a crisis that hits the poorest and underprivileged members of society particularly hard.
Labor unions are fighting back against the realized and expected decline in real wages and, more generally, the erosion in standards of living. Wage demands are intensifying as are threats of disputes. This week, the nation is bracing for a near-total paralysis of the rail transport system because of the threat of three days of strikes starting Tuesday, compounded in London by a one-day stoppage in Underground service.
The comparisons to the Britain of the 1970s are many, with its winter of discontent, stagflation, real wage resistance and labor strikes. There are some important differences, however. For example, and unlike during the 1970s, automatically tying wages and salaries to a price index is not widespread; labor union membership is lower; and the credibility of the Bank of England is stronger.
As important as these differences are, they are likely to play out in the magnitude of the economic disruptions rather than their general characteristics. Indeed, there is little to suggest that the worrisome economic and social developments of the last few months will moderate in the short term. If anything, the expectation is for the situation to worsen before it begins to improve.
It is also important to remember that although many of the current causes of malaise are external to the UK and global in nature, they compound existing fragilities. These include years of low productivity growth, a growth model that is diminishing in effectiveness and has been further undermined in the last few years by disruptions to the trade relationship with the European Union, and significant inequalities among regions and along the income ladder.
The British economy is facing both immediate and longer-term challenges. Success in addressing them needs to be anchored by a medium-term vision centered on a new growth model that is designed for the changing structure of the economy, the need to counter the inequality trifecta — income, wealth and opportunity — and global secular changes related to technology, climate, population and health.
Without such a vision, there is an uncomfortable probability that a summer of discontent would aggravate secular headwinds to inclusive and sustainable growth that have long been in the making and have significant consequences. | 2022-06-21T08:16:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK’s Discontent Risks Deepening a Longer-Term Malaise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/uks-discontent-risks-deepening-a-longer-term-malaise/2022/06/21/d32b2c58-f11f-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/uks-discontent-risks-deepening-a-longer-term-malaise/2022/06/21/d32b2c58-f11f-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Homes in Hercules, California, US, on Wednesday, June 15, 2022. The number of home sellers lowering prices has reached the highest level since October 2019, the latest sign that the housing market is slowing from its once-frenzied pandemic pace. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
When people look back on the market euphoria of 2021, there’s plenty to pick over: Meme stocks, SPACs, digital coins — all of them capture the zeitgeist. One candidate for poster-child of the era, though, can be easily overlooked amid all the exciting new financial contraptions: the otherwise-staid mortgage sector. Mortgage stocks avoided the headlines, but they reflect no less of the hype.
Up until 2020, there weren’t many mortgage stocks listed on US exchanges. The last publicly traded standalone mortgage company of size was Countrywide Financial Corp., which was taken over by Bank of America Corp. in July 2008 amid mounting losses as the global financial crisis neared its climax. After that, mortgages were handled mostly by the big banks.
But virtually all at once, they went public. In a six-month period starting with Rocket in August 2020, a clutch of mortgage companies collectively valued at almost $60 billion came to the stock market. For the first time since the peak of the housing boom, public-market investors were given an opportunity to share in the upside – and downside – of the residential mortgage market.
Unlike the electric-vehicle companies that went public at about the same time, mortgage firms had no problem making money. The issue was rather the sustainability of their profits. Few industries are as cyclical as the US mortgage industry, and these companies were selling at the top.
Mortgage companies take a cut of the value of loans they originate and so when volumes go up, so do earnings. Incentivized by generationally low mortgage rates, millions of borrowers refinanced, driving record volumes. From $2.3 trillion of mortgage originations in 2019, volumes ballooned to more than $4 trillion in both 2020 and 2021. Three mortgage companies — LoanDepot Inc., UWM Holdings Corp. and Home Point Capital Inc. — succeeded in timing their market debuts to coincide with the all-time low in mortgage rates – 2.65% at the beginning of January 2021, per Freddie Mac data.
But it’s not just volumes that drive the cycles of mortgage profits – margins inject another layer of cyclicality. A lag between volumes and industry costs means that margins tend to rise when volumes go up and shrink when they fall. So 2020 and 2021 were characterized not only by high mortgage-origination volumes but also by high margins. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, independent mortgage banks earned over $4,200 per loan in 2020, compared with a long-term average of $1,460.
Since then, the market — to put it mildly — has shifted. Mortgage rates are heading toward 6% and there’s no one left to refinance. Credit Suisse Group AG analysts estimate that only about 1% of mortgages are at least 50 basis points “in the money” to refinance – and it’s uncertain, given they haven’t already done so, whether these borrowers will refinance at all. The Mortgage Bankers Association forecasts that mortgage-origination volumes will collapse to $2.4 trillion this year. Meanwhile, mortgage companies remain staffed up for a $4 trillion market.
“Mortgage is a cyclical business,” Home Point Chief Financial Officer Mark Elbaum reminded investors last week. “It never seems to be just right, it’s always a little bit too hot or a little bit too slow. What we’re experiencing right now is what I would describe as somewhat of a hangover from the hot market. But I think all of us would agree, it’s happened a lot faster and a lot more extreme than anyone could have anticipated.”
If history’s any guide, these lenders may not stay public for long. And then the cycle will turn again.
• Mortgage Rates Won’t be Falling Anytime Soon: Allison Schrager
• Housing Market Cooldown Will Lead to More D ysfunction: Conor Sen
• Are the Days of UK Property Booms and Busts Over?: Chris Hughes | 2022-06-21T08:16:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mortgage Lenders Timed the Market Perfectly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/mortgage-lenders-timed-the-market-perfectly/2022/06/21/d3fe397c-f11f-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/mortgage-lenders-timed-the-market-perfectly/2022/06/21/d3fe397c-f11f-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
How Kaliningrad, Russian territory surrounded by NATO, is tangled in Ukrain...
Model and reality TV personality Kira Dikhtyar seeks a reinvention in Vladimir Putin’s Russia
Kira Dikhtyar attends a fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2015 in New York in 2015. (Monica Schipper)
As Western businesses fled Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Kira Dikhtyar, a 33-year-old model in New York City, traveled in the opposite direction.
Leaving behind a decade-long modeling career in the United States, the dual U.S.-Russian national returned to her hometown of Moscow this spring to launch a new clothing line in sanctions-hit Russia while declaring her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The concept of the company, which she says is still under development, is inexpensive replicas of Western brand apparel to fill the shelves of Zara, H&M and other retailers that shuttered their Russian locations in the aftermath of the Feb. 24 invasion.
“We change the design a little bit in order not to get sued by the companies,” Dikhtyar said in a phone interview from her home in Moscow.
The project provides a glimpse into the ragtag reorientation of the Russian economy under Western sanctions. One of the best-known examples is the recreation of McDonald’s without the Golden Arches and Big Macs, but otherwise offering what its new backer — a Siberian oil tycoon who bought all 840 stores — says will be largely indistinguishable fare under a new name — “Tasty and that’s it.”
On Friday, at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said the adaptation of the Russian economy was succeeding. “Russian enterprises and government authorities worked in a composed and professional manner,” he said. “We’re normalizing the economic situation. We stabilized the financial markets, the banking system, the trade system.”
The effects of sanctions have for now also been blunted by soaring oil and gas revenue, allowing the Kremlin to continue to fund the war effort and stimulate the economy.
Dikhtyar sees herself at the vanguard of this economic reinvention and expresses no regret about pursuing business in wartime Russia. “What’s wrong with it?" she said. “It’s an amazing opportunity here in Moscow.”
In the United States, Dikhtyar is best-known for her stint on the reality TV show “The Face” and a subsequent tabloid feud with former supermodel Naomi Campbell. Over the last decade, she worked as a fashion model with her image featured in the pages of FHM and the foreign editions of L’Officiel and Playboy.
“People are so brainwashed by media — It’s insane,” she said, blaming the United States for prolonging a war in Ukraine that has brought the Kremlin international condemnation.
“There is no more peace and this is the fault of the United States of America,” she said. “If they would not support the military in Ukraine, they would achieve peace ... but since they brought military equipment to Ukraine, to give lots of money to Ukraine, it means Russia has to now bring more soldiers and more equipment, which can lead to more death and longer conflict.”
In returning to Moscow, Dikhtyar joined a small cohort of Russians with ties to the West who refused to condemn the invasion despite the reputational risk. Valery Gergiev, the chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic and a close ally of Putin, was fired from his position in Germany. Actor Vladimir Mashkov — known in the West for his roles in “Mission Impossible” and “Behind Enemy Lines” — strongly endorsed the war only to have his daughter refute him on U.S. television. Pianist Boris Berezovsky was dropped by his agent in March after urging Russian forces to cut off the electricity in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
In the fashion world, Burberry, Chanel, H&M and Hermès all closed stores and online sales in Russia, joining the nearly 1,000 companies that have curtailed operations in the country, according to a Yale University project.
But in their race to the exits, Dikhtyar sees opportunity.
“The market is huge,” she said. “Think about it: 150 million people have nothing to wear because all the brands pull out.”
Those who have worked with Dikhtyar say her attempt to do business in Moscow while championing the war in Ukraine is provocative but not surprising.
“She likes to be controversial and start scandals,” said Ivan Bitton, the owner of a fashion house in Los Angeles who produced several photo shoots with Dikhtyar between 2015 and 2018.
Bitton pointed to her televised fight with a Black model on “The Face” over Dikhtyar’s statement that darker-skinned models would not succeed on the show. Dikhtyar said her remarks were misunderstood.”
Her comments about the war touch on sensitivities in a fashion industry that is home to both Ukrainians and Russians working side-by-side as models, photographers and designers.
Evgeny Milkovich, a Ukrainian photographer working in New York City, has photographed Dikhtyar on multiple occasions. His family home in Kyiv is a 10-minute drive from the city of Bucha, where Ukrainians were massacred in March. Milkovich said he was dismayed by how Kremlin “propaganda” has taken the “humanity” from some of the Russians in the fashion industry.
“People like Kira wage their own wars with their controversies,” he said. “We made several successful photo projects, but the essence of the people I work with is also important to me. So unfortunately, cooperation can easily end here.”
Born in Moscow, Dikhtyar showed early promise as a rhythmic gymnast, competing on Russia’s national junior team before being recruited as a model in her early teens. Tall and thin with blue-green eyes, Dikhtyar was represented by MC2, a modeling agency founded by Jean-Luc Brunel with backing from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Dikhtyar said she first met Epstein at the age of 17 — but unlike scores of other women, she said he never touched her. Instead, the two forged a friendship that extended beyond 2008, when Epstein pleaded guilty in a Florida state court for soliciting underage girls for prostitution.
“Yes, It’s true. I was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. I’m not defending anything,” she said of the financier who committed suicide in 2019 while in custody facing charges of abuse and sex trafficking of girls.
In Russia, she captured headlines last year when she accused a once-powerful Russian oligarch of raping her when she was 15, a disclosure broadcast on state TV as part of her a campaign she launched against sexual violence. But Dikhtyar’s advocacy work on behalf of women is also a source of contention. Her professional website and accompanying media articles list her as a “UN Ambassador” for her international work on reforming sexual consent laws.
However, a spokeswoman for U.N. Women, the world body’s arm for gender equality, denied working with Dikhtyar and said the United Nations “has not appointed” her an ambassador, a title that requires the approval of U.N. Secretary General António Guterres.
Dikhtyar said she could not be faulted for how previous news articles characterized her work on behalf of women.
The prospects for Dikhtyar’s new retail pursuits are unclear.
The Russian economy is expected to contract by 8.5 percent in 2022 as international sanctions take a toll, according to the International Monetary Fund. But analysts say there is a potential market for moderately-priced clothing with Western panache.
“No matter how poor the Russian population has become, they still want to buy clothes and there are still people who have the money,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.
Olga Rebrova, a Russian stylist and the owner of the fashion brand Stanchy, cautioned that a new Russian clothing line would not be able to match the low production costs of established fast-fashion brands that manufacture in Vietnam, Bangladesh or China. But she said the mass exodus of Western retailers has made it “a little easier” for Russian businesses to succeed.
“When your competitors are big conglomerates, it’s quite difficult to compete as you don’t have such marketing budgets,” Rebrova said in an interview from Moscow. She said her own company has benefited “since I do not have big competitors now.”
In describing her business plan, Dikhtyar said designers would take a dress from her wardrobe, alter the design slightly, and mass produce it. “They basically take it, copy it, give it to factory, and in the morning you have thousands,” she said.
Jeff Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, said if Dikhtyar’s business infringed on the intellectual property of other fashion brands, it could have a negative long-term impact on the Russian economy.
“If they’re going to be in defiance of the most minimal of global standards of respect for intellectual property, then Russia will become even more of an island,” said Sonnenfeld.
After taking part in a more-than two-hour interview, Dikhtyar later requested that an article not be published about her because she said she was not authorized to speak on behalf of the clothing line.
While pressing to stop publication, she said that she knows people in the Russian mafia. “The Russian mafia still exists,” she said “We will have to do some background check on you and your family for this kind of article.”
Moments later, she insisted it was a joke. “Are you scared of Russian mafia?” she asked.
Mary Ilyushina and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, and Paul Sonne in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-06-21T09:16:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As businesses flee Russia, a New York model returns to Moscow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/russia-model-dikhtyar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/russia-model-dikhtyar/ |
World’s heaviest freshwater fish, a 661-pound stingray, caught in Cambodia
At 660 pounds and 13 feet in length, a giant stingray caught in the Mekong River in Cambodia on June 13 is the world’s largest recorded freshwater fish. (Video: Reuters)
A giant 661-pound stingray was caught in a remote fishing village on the shores of the Mekong River in Cambodia, making it the heaviest freshwater fish ever documented, researchers said Monday.
The 13-foot fish dethrones the former record-holder, a 646-pound catfish found in northern Thailand in 2005. It also renews hope that large freshwater fish — which as a group of animals are critically threatened — can thrive once again.
A fisherman caught the giant stingray on the evening of June 13, said Chea Selia, a member of a joint American-Cambodian research team known as the Wonders of the Mekong that is documenting freshwater fish. The fisherman then contacted her team the following morning, Chea said. The stingray was weighed, then released.
Before the catch, locals had told the researchers that they were seeing large “black shadows underneath the water at night,” Chea said in a phone interview. “They thought they were spirits. I think they were the stingrays,” she said.
Nearly a third of all freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction, according to the World Wildlife Fund; since 1970, populations of freshwater fish weighing 66 pounds or more have declined by 94 percent. In 2020 alone, 16 species were declared extinct, including the Chinese paddlefish.
Feared extinct for nearly half a century, Batman River fish rediscovered in Turkey
“I was concerned we would see [more extinctions] before we would see records broken,” said Zeb Hogan, a 48-year-old biologist who has spent his two-decade career researching large freshwater fish. “The fact that this record-breaking fish was found is mainly significant because it shows that there is still hope for these fish,” he said.
Hogan had just finished writing a manuscript for his book entitled “In Search of the World’s Largest Fish.” In his draft, Hogan describes how in 2005, locals in Thailand had found the then-largest ever freshwater fish. But last week, Hogan had to update it, after hearing from the Wonders of Mekong team in Cambodia, which he directs with help from the U.S. government. (The Wonders of Mekong is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development).
The 661-pound stingray is also the fourth large freshwater fish to be found in that area of the Mekong River since April 22, when Hogan’s team started asking local fishers to report any big fish they see. That suggests the area — near the fishing village of Koh Preah, 140 miles northeast of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh — could be a breeding ground for freshwater stingrays that needs to be conserved. “I think we can call it a stingray hot spot,” Hogan said.
Cambodian fisheries officials are now planning an international workshop that will seek to involve experts from Vietnam, Laos and Thailand to discuss how to better protect the surviving freshwater fish in the area, Hogan said.
The Mekong, which at an estimated 2,700 miles is longer than the Mississippi, snakes down mainland Southeast Asia across the four countries, meaning conservation efforts must be coordinated. Cambodian officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hogan spoke by phone from a vacation in Hawaii with his family. When asked if his family was okay with him working during his holiday, Hogan shrugged it off.
“I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life focused on this topic,” said Hogan, who has hosted a show called “Monster Fish with Zeb Hogan” on Nat Geo Wild. “So I wouldn’t miss this for the world. And yeah, my family’s on board, too,” he said. | 2022-06-21T09:16:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Giant freshwater stingray caught in Cambodia is world’s largest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/06/21/giant-stingray-cambodia-freshwater-mekong/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/06/21/giant-stingray-cambodia-freshwater-mekong/ |
Luxury touches with D.C.’s bustling Kennedy Street around the corner
Motif condominium building has 30 units, at prices ranging from $309,900 to $629,900
By Wendy A. Jordan
The living room in model unit 304 at Motif. (Benjamin C. Tankersley for The Washington Post)
Bello Realty Partners had several goals when planning Motif, a condominium building around the corner from the revitalized Kennedy Street corridor in Northwest Washington. The company wanted to tap into Kennedy Street’s lively commercial vibe, offer luxury amenities and make condos available at an attractive price.
Taller than the adjacent buildings on Seventh Street, the 30-unit Motif has six levels, including a semi-basement lower level and a penthouse level on top. Floor plans for studio units and units with one bedroom or one bedroom and a den have one bathroom. Two-bedroom units have two bathrooms.
Motif is expected to be ready to occupy in July.
The lowest-price condo is a 555 square-foot junior one-bedroom unit, at $309,900. The most expensive is the 834-square-foot penthouse, at $629,900. Sales manager Jay Zelaska of Smith Schnider said the units are designed to appeal to a range of buyers, such as first-time homeowners and people who want an urban lifestyle with a sense of community.
Each of the two penthouses has a private rooftop terrace, and all the condos come with access to common rooftop space. “A big selling point” of Motif, Zelaska said, “is the rooftop amenities,” which include an outdoor lounge and a furnished terrace. In addition to the terraces, the building has a green roof, with plantings to reduce storm water runoff and heat while improving air quality.
On the main floor, there is a furnished lobby with porcelain tile flooring, custom millwork and contemporary lighting. The building has a locked area for bicycles and a package room secured by a Package Concierge smart locker system. Motif has ramp and stairway access in front, and it has an elevator that serves all levels. It has 10 parking spaces for sale in the rear, listed at $30,000 each.
Zelaska said the architects, Torti Gallas + Partners, and the designers, ADG (Akseizer Design Group), incorporated upscale styling and finishes in all the units. They have nine-foot ceilings, six-inch European oak abalone flooring in living spaces, recessed LED lighting and a GE full-size stacked washer and dryer.
All units receive “an enormous amount of light” through floor-to-ceiling windows, Zelaska said. The energy-efficient Intus windows “have been very appealing to visitors,” he said.
Kitchens have Calacatta quartz countertops, two-tone, flat-panel cabinetry, a subway tile backsplash, a Moen high-arc chrome faucet, under-cabinet lighting, and a suite of GE Energy Saver stainless-steel appliances. The microwave range hood vents to the exterior.
Bathrooms have contemporary styling, with quartz countertops, Waterworks chrome fittings, and full-height porcelain tile tub and shower surrounds that incorporate tile niches.
Depending on size, configuration and location, units may have a kitchen island with storage, walk-in closets and a patio or balcony.
“The needs of city buyers have evolved over the past few years,” Zelaska said. “Outdoor spaces accessible at home have become a necessity to many, along with the ability to work from home. Thoughtful use of space, indoor and out, allows Motif to accommodate these needs.”
Because it is located just steps from Kennedy Street, Motif taps into the buzz of the vibrant commercial corridor, with its many shops and places to eat, Zelaska said. Yet the Seventh Street block has a more residential feel. Motif offers “urban luxury and lifestyle at a more relaxed, uptown pace,” he said.
Schools: Truesdell Elementary, MacFarland Middle, Roosevelt High
Transit: The neighborhood is served by numerous bus routes, including the 70/79 and E4 lines on Seventh Street. The Fort Totten Metro station, on the Red, Yellow and Green lines, is about a mile away. A Capital Bikeshare stand is a block away. The building is a few blocks east of Georgia Avenue (Route 29) and south of Missouri Avenue. Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park is about two miles away.
Nearby: The Kennedy Street corridor has many shops and eateries. Walmart Supercenter is about a half-mile away on Georgia Avenue. Nearby recreation venues include Fort Slocum Park, Rock Creek Park and Brightwood Recreation Area.
5508 Seventh St. NW, Washington, D.C.
The building has 30 units, with prices ranging from $309,900 to $629,900. Estimated delivery is July.
Builder: Bello Realty Partners
Features: Hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, stainless-steel GE appliances, quartz countertops.
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 1 or 2/1 or 2
Square-footage: 550 to 880
Condominium fee: $380 to $470
Sales: Jay Zelaska at Smith Schnider, 202-900-9430, jay.zelaska@smithschnider.com | 2022-06-21T12:50:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Motif has luxury touches and D.C.’s bustling Kennedy Street nearby - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/21/luxury-amenities-outdoor-space-offered-near-kennedy-street-corridor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/21/luxury-amenities-outdoor-space-offered-near-kennedy-street-corridor/ |
President Joe Biden finally plans to ease some of the tariffs on Chinese goods put in place by his predecessor — which is the right policy. But the president will have to do more if he wants to keep inflation low in the post-Covid economy.
The administration needs a complete reversal of its trade policy: Stop promoting demand for US-made products, and start seeking out the lowest-priced goods from around the world.
That will require investments in long-term partnerships in Latin America, Southeast Asia and West Africa. It will require stripping out “Buy America” provisions from federal contracts. It will require, in short, a complete reordering of US trade priorities — from protecting US producers to advocating for US consumers.
Under such an approach, unilateral free trade with US allies would be the norm. For example, the administration could slash all tariffs and trade barriers with Japan — and then, using soft power, seek to get Japan to reciprocate. That might leave the US with less leverage to defend its own exporting industries, but it would also lead to greater and more widespread savings for US consumers. In an era when inflation is far and away the biggest economic threat, holding down consumer prices has to be Job No. 1.
The problem with unilaterally lifting tariffs is that, over the last six years, Washington has experienced a radical bipartisan shift against free trade. On the right, that move was led by Donald Trump, who used the issue to help him trounce the Republican Party establishment in 2016. On the Democratic side, the Biden campaign’s economic policy agenda, released in 2020, was a collection of policies designed to shore up the Midwestern vote.
In fairness, these shifts were not just political, they were part of a long-overdue reckoning. For decades, economists from both sides of the aisle were united in their support for free trade and dismissed arguments it threatened US job growth. Even Paul Krugman, who received a Nobel Prize for work showing that tariffs can sometimes be beneficial, denounced trade restrictions.
Ironically, economists succeeded in forging a bipartisan consensus in favor of free trade just as the conditions necessary to support their argument were coming apart. The rapid growth in the Chinese export economy in the first decade of the 21st century delivered lower prices for consumers and freed up cash that could be spent on other things.
The theory was that this extra spending would create new jobs for the workers that were being laid off in the manufacturing industry. But the pace of change — since dubbed the China Shock — was so rapid that the job market could not keep up. Job losses piled up in the heartland while demand for new workers surged on the coasts, where much of the newly available cash was being spent on personal services.
Many workers were too old to move, and those that did encountered a shortage of housing and rapidly rising rents. These two effects — a rapidly collapsing demand for workers in the industrial Midwest and a shortage of housing on the coasts — trapped less educated but formerly middle-class workers in a nearly 20-year period of stagnant real wages and persistent underemployment.
Then, just as the aftereffects of the China Shock were wearing off, Covid hit. The demand for services collapsed, demand for manufactured goods exploded, and demand for warehouse and distribution workers climbed faster than at any point in US history.
The very same workers that had been hit hardest by the China Shock were now in great demand. Moreover, fiscal and monetary stimulus from Congress and the Federal Reserve transformed the US economy from one that was constrained by low demand into one that was constrained by insufficient supply. As a result, the major problem facing the US economy switched from underemployment to inflation.
As with the China Shock, politics has been slow to react to this unexpected change. So it’s good to see the White House back off some of Trump’s tariffs. But it would be even better if the moves were just the start of a much larger change.
• Protectionism Is a Mounting Threat to Global Growth: The Editors
• Inflation Isn’t the Only Reason Biden Should Lift China Tariffs: Yeling Tan
• The US Can’t Beat China If It Is Scared of Trade: Mihir Sharma | 2022-06-21T12:50:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden Needs to Do More Than Just Lift Tariffs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-needs-to-do-more-than-just-lift-tariffs/2022/06/21/7cbfcd0c-f15a-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-needs-to-do-more-than-just-lift-tariffs/2022/06/21/7cbfcd0c-f15a-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Big, Boxy Apartment Buildings Are Multiplying Faster Than Ever
Amid the materials shortages, price hikes and other craziness of the housing market last year, something remarkable happened. US builders completed more apartments in large multi-unit buildings than ever before.
Yes, these numbers only go back to 1972, but with other statistics indicating that 1972-1974 marked the all-time peak in overall US apartment construction, it seems safe to say that the 214,000 housing units completed in buildings of 50 units or more in 2021 has never been surpassed.
This news, contained in annual Characteristics of New Housing data that the Census Bureau released with little fanfare earlier this month, may come as something of a surprise amid a pandemic that emptied downtown office buildings and brought real estate bidding wars to outer suburbs and mountain resorts. Big apartment buildings don’t really seem to match the moment.
One explanation for their continued boom is that, to be completed in 2021, large apartment buildings generally had to have been in the works before the pandemic hit. According to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction, the average time from permitting to completion for multifamily buildings of 20 units or more that were finished in 2021 was about 19 months.
But that doesn’t explain what’s coming next: After dipping in 2020, the number of new units authorized in multifamily buildings took off, running 37% higher over the past 12 months than in the same period in 2018/2019.
Apartment completions are now down a little, a reflection of that 2020 permitting slowdown, but that should turn around soon. We don’t know for certain how many of these new apartments will be in big buildings, because the permit statistics don’t differentiate between 5-unit buildings and 50-unit ones. But over the past five years, housing units in buildings of 50 units or more accounted for 57% of all multifamily units completed, while those in buildings with 20 units or more accounted for 85%.
During the apartment construction booms of the 1970s and 1980s, smaller buildings predominated. Now, multifamily buildings of four units or fewer are barely being built at all — the Census Bureau estimates that just 4,000 duplex units and 3,000 units in three-or-four-unit buildings were completed in 2021 — and those in the five-to-19-unit range have gone from mainstay of the US new-apartment supply to afterthought.
The disappearance of this “missing middle” between single-family houses and larger multifamily structures has been much lamented, and, as is clear from the above chart, the boom in big apartment buildings hasn’t been enough to fully make up for it. Still, apartment construction is now at levels not seen since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 wiped out key tax incentives for investment in rental housing. By contrast, overall housing construction — which consists mostly of single-family houses — is still at only about two-thirds its 2006 peak.
A longer, population-adjusted view shows the period from 2008 to 2015 to have been the weakest for US housing starts since World War II, and one of the weakest on record.
That housing-construction bust happened just as the members of the largest US generation, the millennials, were entering adulthood. Not great timing! The current large-apartment-building boom, then, is occurring in the context of a housing supply that’s growing, but not fast enough to meet demand that built up during that bust. And now it has taken new forms with the pandemic-era embrace of remote work.
The ability to cut loose from downtown offices and even large metropolitan areas has to some extent shifted demand away from expensive urban neighborhoods and coastal metropolises in general. But picturesque mountain towns can only accommodate so many newcomers, and physical and political barriers to building a lot more single-family homes are cropping up in large inland metro areas as well as coastal ones. It’s no shock that multifamily units make up the majority of new housing going up in and around New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Miami and Boston, but a bit surprising to see that the same is now true of the Austin, Denver and Twin Cities metro areas, with Nashville not far off.
Other, smaller, metro areas where the majority of new housing units authorized in 2021 were in buildings of five units or more included Napa, California (86.3%), Missoula, Montana (73.2%), Santa Fe, New Mexico (72.9%); Madison, Wisconsin (72.8%); Boulder, Colorado (62.4%); and Rapid City, South Dakota (53.6%). It’s clearly not just a big-city thing. And while 50-plus-unit apartment buildings are probably a smaller part of the mix in these places than in larger metropolitan areas, the trend toward bigness has been pretty universal. Another way of measuring it is by how tall the buildings are.
Most of those buildings probably aren’t much taller than four stories. According to Characteristics of New Housing data, 77% of the multifamily units completed in 2021 were in wood-framed buildings. While “mass timber” buildings of up to 18 stories are now allowed, “stick” framing similar to that used in single-family houses is the standard in US wood-framed apartment construction, and is subject to stricter height limits. The resulting proliferation of boxy, “five-over-one” apartment buildings with five wood-framed stories over a concrete first floor (or, if you prefer, Type V construction over Type I) is something I have written about at great length in the past and won’t go into here, other than to urge you to refer to them as “stumpies” because I think that’s a good name.
But why the shift from small apartment buildings to big? I don’t think consumer demand really explains it. Yes, a big building or complex can offer amenities such as pools, gyms and concierges — not to mention views, if it’s tall enough — that a smaller one can’t, and there does appear to have been an increase in the number of affluent renters, many of them empty nesters, who demand such amenities. Supply-side factors seem more important, though.
Getting housing built is harder than it used to be, partly because there’s not a lot of developable land left within large metropolitan areas (or even adjacent to them in some coastal metropolises) and partly because the political and regulatory barriers to development have grown. That favors developers with lots of resources and expertise. As industries go, multifamily housing development isn’t all that concentrated — the 25 biggest US developers, as ranked by the National Multifamily Housing Council, accounted for a quarter of the multifamily housing starts in 2021. But even developers well below the top 25 go about their work in an increasingly professionalized and institutionalized manner, with syndicators, real estate investment trusts and even sovereign wealth funds all playing a role. Building some duplexes on a vacant lot in a residential area isn’t really worth these people’s time. Building a 150-unit apartment building in a city or a suburban shopping district often is.
Will it continue to be? The annualized return on US apartment investments has been 9.2% over the past decade, according to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries, with a return for the four quarters ending in March of 24.1%. Rising interest rates and a slowing economy mean 2022 and 2023 won’t be nearly so lucrative — the Standard & Poor’s 500 Residential REITs Sub Industry Index is down 36% since April — and a construction slowdown is almost sure to follow. But the longer-term forces driving investment into big apartment buildings don’t seem to be going away.
Housing Market Cooldown Will Lead to More Dysfunction: Conor Sen
Housing Bubble Fears and Your Down Payment: Alexis Leondis | 2022-06-21T12:50:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Big, Boxy Apartment Buildings Are Multiplying Faster Than Ever - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/big-boxy-apartment-buildings-are-multiplying-faster-than-ever/2022/06/21/51dbbf8c-f156-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/big-boxy-apartment-buildings-are-multiplying-faster-than-ever/2022/06/21/51dbbf8c-f156-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 17: Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the Advancing Freedom Lecture Series at Stanford University on February 17, 2022 in Stanford, California. Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence addressed a Stanford College Republican (SCR) Forum with a speech titled “How to Save America From the Woke Left.” (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) (Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
Remember “lanes”? Pundits used to — maybe some still do — discuss presidential candidates in terms of which lane they were supposedly running in, with the implication being that they’re only competing with others within that lane. It never made much sense, as political scientist Dave Hopkins explained. But let’s say that former Vice President Mike Pence, who gave a policy speech yesterday in Chicago, is running in the “pretend that Republicans are a normal party” lane.After all, if Republicans were a normal political party — if they were, for example, like the Republican Party of the 1980s — Pence would be a solid frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination. Sitting vice presidents who run for an open nomination generally get it, both in the old pre-reform system (Richard Nixon in 1960 and Hubert Humphrey in 1968) and the modern one (George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Al Gore in 2000). Former vice presidents who later run are generally successful as well — Nixon again in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Joe Biden in 2020 all captured nominations, with Humphrey coming extremely close in 1972. Only Dan Quayle in 2000 tried and utterly failed.Not only that, but they almost all try. Every vice president from 1953 on has run for president except for Spiro Agnew, who resigned from office in a plea-bargain deal; Nelson Rockefeller, who served briefly, was dumped by Gerald Ford when Ford tried for a new term, and died anyway before the next presidential election; and Dick Cheney, who had health issues, among other things.Within Pence’s “pretend” lane, he’s a formidable candidate. He’s as orthodox a conservative Republican as can be; there’s really no policy question on which Pence disagrees with the party. Even before he served as vice president, he already had conventional qualifications for a major-party nomination. And while all vice presidents are subjects of mockery and none of them looks impressive while they’re in office, Pence managed to survive four years of Donald Trump’s administration without causing personal scandal or destroying his reputation, which is not something very many folks within that administration can claim.And yet the Republicans, however hard Pence may want to pretend, are nothing like a normal party. And so while Pence may want to believe that his complete loyalty to Trump for three years and eleven months is what counts, what we know is that all that loyalty plus his refusal to go along with a scheme to undermine the Constitution that almost certainly wouldn’t have worked anyway put Pence on the receiving end of a mob screaming for his neck. And that a year and a half later, hardly anyone in the party wants to criticize the president who instigated that mob. All of which has Pence barely distinguishable from the also-rans of the party when it comes to the 2024 nomination, at least according to pundits and the wagering public.Even so, I’d be very hesitant to dismiss Pence’s chances just yet. There are good reasons that vice presidents do so well in nomination contests. They enter the race with name recognition among voters, yes. But they also spend a good deal of their four or eight years in office schmoozing with party actors and building relationships than can later pay off. It’s not just the personal connections; the vice presidency, including the national campaign needed to win the office, provides a deep education in the skills needed to accommodate all of the party’s groups and factions. Indeed, one reason vice presidents look so unimpressive during their time in office is their learned ability to put loyalty to the president and to party coalitions above all else — which turns out to be a significant asset when contesting nominations. At least in normal parties. So I’d caution against entirely writing off a former vice president. No matter what Trump says about him.But I’d also remind everyone that looking at nominations in terms of which candidate wins isn’t the only or the best way to think about it. Nominations define parties. Especially presidential nominations. They determine which groups, factions, policies and styles are the dominant ones within the party. And while candidates are part of that, the reverse is also true: The winning candidate winds up absorbing and reflecting that new dominant party coalition.So it’s worth paying attention to Pence’s fate as he runs for the 2024 nomination. And, for Republican party actors, it’s very much worth fighting for the fate of the party as it once again goes through a cycle of defining itself. | 2022-06-21T12:50:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Does Mike Pence Still Have a Chance in 2024? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/does-mike-pence-still-have-a-chance-in-2024/2022/06/21/b0628aa6-f15e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/does-mike-pence-still-have-a-chance-in-2024/2022/06/21/b0628aa6-f15e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
FILE - This is a display of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes cereal at a Costco Warehouse in Homestead, Pa, on Thursday, May 14, 2020. Kellogg’s announced Tuesday, June 21, 2022 that it is splitting into three companies: a cereal maker, a snack maker and a plant-based food company. Kellogg’s, whose brands include Eggo waffles, Rice Krispies cereal and MorningStar Farms vegetarian products, said the proposed spinoffs of the yet to be named cereal and plant-based companies are expected to be completed by the end of 2023. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File) | 2022-06-21T12:50:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kellogg to split into 3; snacks, cereals, plant-based food - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kellogg-to-split-into-3-snacks-cereals-plant-based-food/2022/06/21/063ac540-f157-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kellogg-to-split-into-3-snacks-cereals-plant-based-food/2022/06/21/063ac540-f157-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
The doomsday prophets materialized just days after indoor dining was shut down in major cities in March 2020. Chef, proprietor and activist Tom Colicchio predicted 75 percent of restaurants would close due to the pandemic (he would later downgrade his nightmare scenario to 40 to 50 percent). A month later, the newly minted Independent Restaurant Coalition went further, predicting that “as many as 85 percent” of independent restaurants might close.
Such a collapse could have meant the loss of hundreds of thousands of restaurants. But no such extinction event, as one advocate described the pandemic’s potential impact, occurred. The number of closed establishments to date is a fraction of those early dire predictions, which were based largely on fears or a small-business survey with acknowledged flaws or just educated guesses.
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Just how many restaurants have succumbed to the pandemic, with its mix of public health restrictions, government shutdowns and shared diner anxiety? That number is difficult to nail down.
The National Restaurant Association (NRA), the trade group that advocates for the industry, has an in-house economist as well as a senior vice president of research to provide reports, data and insights to members and the public at large. As the NRA lobbied Congress for relief to the battered industry, the group tried to calculate the damage already done, whether the restaurateurs were members of the association or not.
By the spring of 2021, the association had settled on a number: 90,000 closed restaurants, both temporary and permanent, which includes diners, cafes, chain outlets, taverns, bars and neighborhood restaurants. That number has been repeated many times, by media outlets and politicians, in the months since the NRA released it. That number has not been updated in more than a year, in large part because the NRA believes that, more than two years into the public health crisis, current restaurant closures may not be a result solely of the pandemic.
Is there a better way to determine — or even estimate — the number of bars and restaurants that have closed during the pandemic? Finding out means first examining the NRA’s own estimate — and how it arrived at it.
A self-selected survey
The NRA tackled the enormous task of tallying the damage by sending out email surveys to hundreds of thousands of recipients. The group then extrapolated the results — the percentage of closed restaurants — against the total number of “food services and drinking places” in the United States, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That number, right before the pandemic, was about 660,000 establishments.
For example, in December 2020, the association estimated that nearly 17 percent of food and drink establishments had shut their doors, based on survey responses from 6,000 restaurant operators and 250 supply chain companies. The NRA then used that percentage rate to calculate that about 110,000 establishments had closed, at least temporarily.
Several months later, in April 2021, the NRA lowered its estimate to 90,000 because “many of those temporarily closed restaurants reopened,” the association mentioned in a data analysis sent to The Post. It was based on survey responses from 2,500 restaurant operators.
One thing to keep in mind about the “food services and drinking places” number, as calculated by the BLS, is that it includes many businesses that are not, strictly speaking, restaurants. The number also includes airline food-service contractors, concessionaires at sports facilities, caterers, street vendors, ice cream and food trucks, coffee shops, doughnut shops, cocktail lounges and nightclubs.
The flaws with the NRA’s methodology, as least the parts shared with The Post, are not unique to this trade association and its email surveys, say economists and analysts. The response rate was small. The respondents were self-selected, not randomly sampled. The email lists may not have reflected the makeup of the industry at large.
For its part, the NRA determined early in the crisis that it would survey more than members. For its first pandemic-related survey, in March 2020, the NRA “went with a mailing list that we had, but in very, very, very short order our mailing list grew to be restaurant operators that were not members because we weren’t limiting our pandemic information to just members,” says Vanessa Sink, director of media relations for the association.
“We were sending it to anybody that wanted to be on the mailing list,” she adds. “We have tried to get representation from all parts of the industry in those surveys, so that we know how they’re being impacted.”
The NRA’s closure numbers, of course, were also in service to a much larger goal: to secure the federal assistance to an industry that was in free fall. The estimates were not necessarily meant to be airtight.
Another way to determine the number of shuttered restaurants over any given time is to review Business Employment Dynamics (BED) statistics, which are compiled from the BLS’s quarterly employment and wage census. These statistics include a quarterly tracking of business closures under the broad “food services and drinking places” category.
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Katharine Abraham, an economist with the University of Maryland, calls the BED numbers “very reliable” even though the NRA cautions they include temporary or seasonal closures, as well as permanent ones.
In 2020, according to the BED data, the total number of closures was 159,000. In the second quarter of 2020 alone, as government restrictions kicked into high gear, BED statistics indicate that more than 72,500 food and drink establishments closed, more than three times the quarterly average of about 20,300.
But those numbers don’t account for the normal, annual churn of closures. From 2011 to 2019, according to BED data, an average of more than 81,000 food and drink establishments closed every year. If you subtract that average from 159,000, you get nearly 78,000 additional closures in 2020.
The 78,000 figure, though, is still based on the larger category that includes establishments other than restaurants and bars. The BED stats are not broken down into smaller subcategories, but based on numbers crunched by The Post, restaurants and bars make up about 94 percent of the larger BLS group. That means in 2020, about 72,700 more restaurants and bars than normal closed, apparently due to the pandemic, a 95 percent jump over the average annual rate.
This is a clear sign of the pandemic’s devastating effect, representing hundreds of thousands of lost jobs that, in turn, impacted countless lives and communities.
Following a tumultuous 2020, the closure rates have stabilized over the first three quarters of 2021, according to the latest BED statistics available: about 19,500 per quarter, lower than the pre-pandemic average of 20,300.
The numbers would seem to indicate the industry has weathered the worst of the pandemic. They might even reflect a hopeful trend: that more bars and restaurants have reopened, given that the BED data include temporary closures. If you add up the BED closures so far during the pandemic, subtract the average shutdown rate and adjust the figures for just bars and restaurants, you get a total of about 70,300 establishments closed to date.
The NRA has not conducted a more recent survey to adjust its 90,000 number, in large part because the pandemic is just one factor — along with food costs, fuel costs, staff shortages and more — that may figure into a restaurant’s shuttering at this point, says Sink.
This Florida restaurant is doing what it must to save the family business
“There was a period of time where closures were because of the pandemic,” says Sink. “I don’t know that all closures could now be said that they’re because of the pandemic, unless we’re calling all of what’s happening right now the long tail of the pandemic.”
Restaurant advocates say the lower closure rates for 2021 don’t reflect what they hear from operators and probably mask a larger, looming problem: that thousands of operators, mostly independents, remain deep in debt; that they added to their debt load after assurances from the federal government they would receive relief through the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. After one round of RRF grants, Congress couldn’t muster the votes in May to replenish the fund.
“Just like we hear that the stock market is doing great and then we go to Main Street and it’s not so great, I feel the same way about the BLS numbers,” said Erika Polmar, executive director of the Independent Restaurant Coalition. “Maybe things look great on paper and maybe it looks like we’re thriving, but when you get out there and you talk to the community, it’s not good.”
With the replenishment of the RRF all but dead, the coalition is predicting that more than half of those 177,000 restaurants left out in the cold from the initial round will shut their doors permanently. If true, that would more than double the existing number of closures during the pandemic, though a certain percentage of them might have shut down even without the health crisis.
Colicchio, who predicted a 75 percent death rate at the start of the pandemic, says government assistance is the main reason there hasn’t been more widespread damage. Without money from the RRF, the Paycheck Protection Program and other programs, he says, the closure rate may not have been 75 percent, “but I think a lot more than we saw.”
Colicchio has lost one of his eight restaurants during the pandemic, and he chalks that up to a bad landlord. But like other independent restaurateurs, Colicchio has debt. He says he owes “close to a million dollars” to one landlord alone.
“They’re not pushing me, but sooner or later, they’re going to start,” Colicchio says. “We’re not out of the woods yet.” | 2022-06-21T12:50:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s how many restaurants closed during the pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/21/covid-restaurant-closures/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/21/covid-restaurant-closures/ |
Mark Esper on Trump: ‘There were a lot of bad ideas being proposed’
Mark T. Esper, 58, served in the Trump administration as secretary of defense from 2019 to 2020. (KK Ottesen for The Washington Post)
Mark T. Esper, 58, served in the Trump administration as secretary of defense from 2019 to 2020 and was secretary of the Army from 2017 to 2019. His book, “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times,” was released in May.
You write in your memoir about several dramatic instances when you had misgivings based on differences with President Donald Trump. Was there a moment those came into stark relief for you?
My separation with Trump begins almost immediately, and I begin pushing back, and it grows and grows over time. But I think it all comes together on June 1st, [2020] in the Oval Office when he calls us all in to discuss the [George Floyd] protests in Washington, D.C., and wants 10,000 troops in the capital. The president is up and down out of his chair, red-faced, moving his arms around expressing things. He’s swearing at us. He’s calling us losers. He says, “We look weak. The country looks weak.” “We” means him. And we get to this point where he settles in his chair and the room gets a little quiet, and he leans in and looks at [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Mark] Milley and says, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” And the question just hangs there. I think we were all taken aback. It’s just so far out of bounds. Nobody talks about shooting Americans.
Milley, [Attorney General Bill] Barr and I immediately go back to pushing back on this whole idea of bringing troops into the city in the first place. I’m pushing for law enforcement to be the lead. And Bill Barr’s supporting that. And we just kind of passed through that moment. And at the end of the day, because I think the president’s finally about ready to give a direct order to send troops into the city, Bill Barr commits to put 5,000 law enforcement in the streets. I commit to get up to 5,000 National Guardsmen into the city to do the job. And to really prevent the president from giving an order, I say, “Look, I’ll bring troops into Fort Belvoir,” somewhere close to the city. It wasn’t getting what he wanted, but it was enough to get him to yield. That was kind of my sleight of hand to get us out of the room, off the topic, and moving forward before we got this disastrous order.
So that was a turning point for you, that day?
Yeah. And then of course, the walk across Lafayette Park. I was heading down to the FBI command post for the evening. And I get the call around 6:20 that the president wants an update on the plans for the evening with regard to troops and law enforcement. But as I enter the outer Oval, there’s a couple dozen people there, and I say, “Hey, where’s the meeting?” They say, “The meeting’s off.” I say, “Well, I’m going back out.” And they said, “No, no, no, the president wants to walk across the park, and go check out the damage to the church.”
Did your radar go off then?
No, shame on us. I talked to Milley — “What’s going on?” And he doesn’t know. And as I approached the president up on the portico, I think I say, “Mr. President, where are we going? What are we doing?” He just kind of turns says, “Come on.” And he starts walking. We walk down this kind of gravel path, and as you leave the White House grounds you make a right turn, and right there as we make the right turn, White House press staff, or somebody, says, “Give the president distance between you and him.” And we rounded the corner, and you can see the reporters, just throngs of reporters. And right then and there, Milley and I realized that we’ve been duped, and we’re caught in this moment and can’t escape now. And the rest is history.
Later that night, Milley and I take this long, private walk along down the reflecting pool toward the Lincoln Memorial and finally have a chance to talk and share what’s going through our heads. We come to this point where we realize that our political antenna aren’t nearly calibrated the way we need to be; we made mistakes, and the game had changed, or at least our realization of it. And we need to come up with — at least I did — a different game plan going forward.
One thing I was struck by is just how much time and energy you spent forestalling a direct order from President Trump to use military force, whether to shoot missiles at Mexico or Iran or to shoot protesters. And while some called you the derogatory nickname, “Yesper,” you explain working behind the scenes to avoid those direct orders and to talk him down.
Look, in some ways I didn’t treat President Trump any differently than I’ve treated any other boss. My view was I owe them my honest advice. And I owe them more options than what they’re presented. And so in some cases I pushed back: “Mr. President, you can’t shoot missiles into Mexico — it would be an act of war, be illegal and ruin our relationship.” So in that scenario, I’m pushing back, but then saying, “But I understand what you want to do.” Because he was serious about taking care of drugs in America; we all know it tears up communities and families. And so I felt that I owed him another idea or sets of ideas. And I said, “Look, if you want, I’ll go back, and we’ll see if we can come up with something.” So that’s what I would do. But his inclination was to use the military too often. And it was enabled by others around him in the White House, around the [National Security Council], who kind of kept pushing this use-of-force type of approach to solving problems.
Did your experience shape the way you think about whether the checks on executive power are adequate? And what happens in the case of a president who [may be] unfit?
Yeah, we saw what happened there in the end, right? I’m fired on November 9th. And not just me, but they come in and decapitate the Pentagon in terms of knocking out undersecretaries. And according to reporters I spoke to, within 48 hours the president calls a meeting to discuss a possible attack on Iran. And then there’s ordered the immediate redeployment of troops out of Somalia. I mean, all these things start happening, right? And part of this was not just who would come in behind me, but how much time would they have? And so my goal became to get to the election because I think the American people should decide these things. And what I didn’t want is somebody having eight months to do Trump’s bidding and, maybe, create an October surprise. Or Lord knows do what else.
Anyways, on the checks and balances thing, the American people decide who they want. But the question would be: Is there another role for the Senate in terms of approving nominees? People have asked me, “Well, if Trump is reelected, what does that mean?” I think that one of the lessons that he and those around him will not make again is that they will make sure that they really get their loyalists into position. They’re not going to pick another [Jim] Mattis or another Esper. They’re going to get somebody in that’s going to do what he wants. And that’s where the Senate has to be really scrutinizing who comes into the administration. And, by the way, this could be a future Democrat one as well. You need good people to serve. You need good people who understand that their oath is to the Constitution, not to the president, not to the party, and not to a philosophy, and not to some notion of the election being stolen. Their oath is to the Constitution.
A lot people who read a book like this by people who come out of an administration and then criticize it ask, “Why did you wait?”
A big part of this book is the ethical dilemma I wrestled with: Should I stay or should I go? What’s your oath and who’s your loyalty to and what’s the better course of action? My view was that given the singular important position I sat in — there are only two jobs in the United States that can deploy U.S. military, and that’s the president and secretary of defense — that my higher calling, my duty, my oath was to stay in that position and prevent bad things from happening. Because there were a lot of bad ideas being proposed. And by the way, while I was there, I could do good things in terms of building cyber capabilities, modernizing the military, taking care of [military] family members, et cetera, et cetera.
Look, I could’ve resigned. I would’ve been the hero for 48 hours. But I think I couldn’t have lived with myself. If we’d attacked Venezuela or gotten in a war with Iran, I probably would have thought, “Could I have been there to make a difference? Why did I leave? I could have stopped that.”
I got to tell you, KK, even though folks on the left are criticizing me right now — “Why didn’t you resign on the spot? Why didn’t you walk away?” — I feel more confident today about [staying] than I did at the time, because I just look at all the good things I was able to advance in the Pentagon. And all the bad things I was able to push off. And what happened after I was removed and my chain of command replaced demonstrates that. I just can’t imagine what would’ve happened if I’d walked away on June 1st or June 2nd or was fired on June 3rd — the team he would’ve put in, what would they have done for six, seven, eight months. That was the thinking I was going through in my mind. And I called up my predecessors, I called up Colin Powell, all these folks, and sought their advice because I was unsure. And to a person, they said, “No, you got to stay. Make him fire you.”
And in some ways, I have those misgivings about being fired. If I’d been there on January 3rd, or 4th, or 5th might I have foreseen what was going to happen? Could I have mobilized the Guard, so they could have been in a better position to deploy more quickly to help the Capitol? I mean, you have those thoughts.
What would you like your legacy to be as a secretary of defense in this tumultuous period?
I’d like to think with regard to the military that I made a lot of good advances in terms of implementing the national defense strategy, and retooling and reorganizing our military to deal with the Chinese in the 21st century. I hope that’ll be the major achievement of my tenure on the positive side of things, the traditional side of things, if you will. Number 2, I think the work we did alongside [the Department of Health and Human Services] with Operation Warp Speed changed the arc of the nation and how it dealt with the pandemic. I think we saved a lot of lives. I think we rescued the economy. That’s a “we”; it’s a team effort. I think people might hopefully remember that piece of it.
In terms of managing the White House and stuff like that, look, people are going to say, and I say in the book, I made mistakes. I own up to them. But I think I did some things right. And at the end of the day, when the rubber really hits the road, when the moment counted, I hope people will say that he stood up and did the right thing. He went before the public on June 3rd and mourned the tragic murder of George Floyd, spoke about the apolitical role the military holds in our society, and announced that he would not support invocation of the Insurrection Act. And I hope they would say, as I believe, that this is what kind of calmed things down; this is what made the republic less wobbly and avoided what could have been a really bad situation. I hope that’s what they say.
This interview has been edited and condensed. KK Ottesen is a regular contributor to the Magazine. | 2022-06-21T12:51:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mark Esper on Trump: ‘There were a lot of bad ideas being proposed’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/21/trump-blm-defense-mark-esper/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/21/trump-blm-defense-mark-esper/ |
Agreement with Native American tribes could set precedent
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! We hope you're staying cool this week amid the heat wave baking the Lower 48. (We recommend climbing into a kiddie pool like this golden retriever.) But first:
Federal agreement with Native American tribes could set precedent
The Biden administration has reached an agreement to give five Native American tribes more say over the day-to-day management of a national monument in Utah, marking a new chapter in the federal government’s often-fraught relationship with tribes, your Climate 202 host Maxine Joselow scooped yesterday.
The first-of-its-kind agreement could set a precedent for similar arrangements with Native American tribes on public lands across the country, tribal leaders and advocates told The Climate 202.
“Some of the things that we’re doing are portable to many other entities in Indian country,” said Pat Gonzales-Rogers, executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which represents all five tribes.
“Ninety-nine percent of public lands are west of the Mississippi, which invariably means that if you're working on public lands, you're intersecting with Indian country,” he added. “And you're going to accomplish a lot of your goals by partnering with tribal communities.”
The cooperative agreement, which is legally binding, instructs the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service to “meaningfully engage with” tribes when developing a land management plan for Bears Ears.
The document also recognizes that tribal elders are repositories of knowledge within their communities. It directs the agencies to “identify how to obtain the input from Tribal members, in particular Tribal Elders, who cannot travel to remote sites.”
Angelo Baca, cultural resources coordinator for Utah Diné Bikéyah, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Indigenous communities and protecting their ancestral lands, said that such language could serve as a model.
“Everything that we do here sets the tone for other tribal nations around the world,” Baca told The Climate 202.
Still, Baca cautioned that it could be “hard to replicate the success” of the Bears Ears agreement. He noted that it's rare for five tribes to come together, despite their past and current cultural differences, to protect a place they all deem sacred.
Clark W. Tenakhongva, the former vice chairman of the Hopi Tribe, agreed. “Nowhere in the history of the United States have five tribes ever collaborated tirelessly on issues like this,” he said.
In southern Nevada, however, 10 tribes have united in a push for a new national monument on culturally significant lands in the Mojave Desert. The effort to establish the proposed Avi Kwa Ame National Monument is backed by tribes including the Mojave, Hualapai, Yavapai, Havasupai, Quechan, Maricopa, Pai Pai, Halchidhoma, Cocopah and Kumeyaay.
Efforts to contact the coalition of tribes were unsuccessful.
Political battles
Indigenous people have inhabited the southeastern corner of Utah for the past 13,000 years, carving arrowheads from stone, farming corn, painting images on rocks and creating communities on the mesas.
But in recent years, the region has been at the center of a political tug of war over America's public lands:
In October, President Biden used executive orders to protect 1.36 million acres in Bears Ears — slightly more than the Obama designation. The orders also reversed Trump's cuts to the 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument.
“What's nice about this agreement is that there's an intention and a plan,” Baca said. “It's not just dependent on political wills that change with the shifting directions of leadership.”
Despite an energy crunch driving up profits at U.S. oil refineries, many of the facilities are being retired and converted to other uses, as owners balk at making costly upgrades amid the nation's transition away from fossil fuels, The Washington Post’s Evan Halper reports.
In just the past two years, the nation’s refining capacity shrank by about 5 percent, removing more than 1 million barrels of fuel per day from the market and leaving plants struggling to meet demand.
President Biden last week wrote letters to oil and gas companies threatening to invoke emergency powers if they don't increase refinery production, saying they need to help alleviate pain at the pump for American consumers.
But the companies argue that their record profits come after heavy losses during the pandemic. They also fear their profits are short lived, because mounting public concern about climate change could make refineries obsolete.
“I don’t think you are ever going to see a refinery built again in this country,” Chevron CEO Michael Wirth said in an interview with The Post this month.
White House climate task force to huddle on extreme heat
Gina McCarthy, the White House national climate adviser, will convene a National Climate Task Force meeting on Tuesday to examine how the Biden administration is responding to extreme heat that disproportionately affects low-income and underserved communities across America, a White House official told The Climate 202.
The meeting of the task force, which includes Cabinet-level leaders from 21 federal agencies and senior White House officials, comes as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts above-normal temperatures this summer for most of the nation.
The task force will also discuss "advancing President Biden's agenda to lower energy costs and strengthen the nation's resilience to climate change and extreme weather, including persistent drought and wildfires in the West and flood risk throughout much of the eastern half of the U.S.," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Biden team sees climate ‘emergency,’ but powers are limited
With his climate legislation stalled in Congress and a Supreme Court case threatening his ability to cut emissions from power plants, President Biden has been leaning heavily on executive action to tackle the climate crisis. But acting alone has significant limitations, The Post's Dino Grandoni and Anna Phillips report.
For instance, Biden recently invoked the Defense Production Act to boost the domestic solar industry and clean energy manufacturing. But he will need Congress to fund the clean energy spending. And already, some Republicans are voicing concern about the use of a national defense law against climate change.
“The Biden administration’s expansive use of emergency authorities under the DPA is less about strengthening national security and more about subsidizing an anti-American energy resource agenda,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Gina McCarthy, Biden's national climate adviser, said using the defense law is appropriate because the need for clean energy is so urgent. “In the end, this is an emergency,” she said in a recent interview with The Post.
Decision on federal gas tax holiday could come by end of week, Biden says
President Biden on Monday said that he is seriously considering a temporary pause on the federal gasoline tax and that a decision could come as soon as the end of the week, as the administration weighs various options to help lower gas prices ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh report for Reuters.
“Yes, I am considering it. I hope I have a decision based on data I am looking for by the end of the week,” Biden told reporters Monday during a visit to Delaware.
The president also reiterated that Energy Department officials will sit down with fossil fuel executives this week. “I want an explanation from them on why they are not refining more oil,” he said.
Canada will ban the production and importation of single-use plastics by the end of the year in a sweeping effort to tackle pollution and climate change, the government announced Monday, The Post's Adela Suliman reports.
The ban will take effect in December for most plastic grocery bags, cutlery and straws, with "a few targeted exceptions" for medical needs, Canada's Environment Ministry said in a statement.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the ban could eliminate 1.3 million tons of plastic waste over the next decade. However, Canada's neighbor, the United States, ranks as the world's top contributor of plastic waste, according to a congressionally mandated report last year.
On Tuesday: The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies will mark up an appropriations bill for fiscal 2023 for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency
On Wednesday: The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on implementation of amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act. Michal Freedhoff, a former committee aide who heads the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, will testify.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will meet to consider multiple bills, including a measure to establish a program within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help reduce the health risks of extreme heat and to improve heat preparedness and response.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster preparedness and strategic priorities.
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy will hold a legislative hearing on several bills focused on strengthening energy infrastructure, efficiency and financing.
On Thursday: The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the National Flood Insurance Program, which is set to expire on Sept. 30.
On Friday: The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis will hold a hearing on the benefits of curbing methane emissions.
Why gas is so expensive in some U.S. states but not others — Aaron Gregg, Laris Karklis and Adrian Blanco for The Post
Massive wildfire in New Jersey has tripled in size since Sunday — Kim Bellware for The Post
Last month, China imported more Russian crude oil than ever before — Christian Shepherd for The Post
June heat wave smashes records in Europe — Ian Livingston for The Post
Republican drive to tilt courts against climate action reaches a crucial moment — Coral Davenport for the New York Times
Bloomberg's Zahra Hirji gave us the “Mean Girls” meme we didn't know we needed: 😂
PG&E Corp. used the term "Scope 4 emissions" in its latest climate report. This is not an official term.
To best describe the climate world's reaction, I turn to Mean Girl.https://t.co/GdvoZXUCLU pic.twitter.com/1V2QB3ys16
— Zahra Hirji (@Zhirji28) June 20, 2022 | 2022-06-21T12:51:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Agreement with Native American tribes could set precedent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/agreement-with-native-american-tribes-could-set-precedent/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/agreement-with-native-american-tribes-could-set-precedent/ |
Defense bill is a major cyber legislation opportunity for Rep. Langevin
Analysis by Aaron Schaffer
Good morning and happy Tuesday! I'm filling in for Joe today. If you have a few minutes, check out these delightful photos from this year's Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Below: Georgia's secretary of state is set to testify before the Jan. 6 committee, and U.S. officials warn that Russia will “probably” try to interfere in this year's elections. First up:
Langevin is reaching for cyber measures even as he heads out the door
Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), one of the most important cyber lawmakers in history, isn't running for reelection – but he still has work to do.
He’s looking at the annual must-pass defense authorization bill as an opportunity to fold in cybersecurity provisions that weren't even on the radar when he first joined Congress two decades ago.
The final version of the bill could include a flurry of cybersecurity measures, including recommendations from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which Langevin served on.
Langevin is eyeing at least five recommendations from the commission to be considered for the bill. Those include programs to boost cybersecurity collaboration and information gathering, and other proposals designed to reshape how the U.S. government thinks about cybersecurity and risk.
Codification of defining the most important types of critical infrastructure to U.S. society. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been working on identifying those entities.
Creation of centers to study important issues like open-source software, industrial technology and network security.
Making a Bureau of Cyber Statistics to collect, analyze and share cybersecurity-related data.
Inclusion of the Cyber Diplomacy Act to codify a Bureau of International Cyberspace Policy at the State Department. The department this year opened the long-awaited bureau, a step Langevin said “hits the right mark … but I want to see it enacted into law so it can't be changed by some future administration, or dropped or demoted in terms of its importance.”
Forming a system for the U.S. government to share sensitive cybersecurity information with the country’s most important infrastructure entities. That proposal is in a version of the bill that the full committee will discuss tomorrow.
“For the remainder of my time in Congress, I'm committed to advancing the key Cyberspace Solarium Commission recommendations, and this year's NDAA is an excellent opportunity to do so,” Langevin told The Cybersecurity 202 in an interview.
Defense bill
The annual defense bill is being considered at a critical time. For months, CISA has told organizations to put their “shields up” and prepare for potential cyberattacks in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. While U.S. organizations haven’t been hit in any devastating, public hacks recently, CISA and other federal agencies have for more than a year been responding to a surge of ransomware that has hit hospitals, schools, small businesses and other organizations around the country.
The Pentagon has also been busy. When it comes to Ukraine, U.S. Cyber Command has “conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum; offensive, defensive, [and] information operations,” U.S. Cyber Command and NSA leader Gen. Paul Nakasone told Sky News this month.
Langevin announced in January that he's not running for reelection this year, writing that “it is time for me to chart a new course, which will allow me to stay closer to home and spend more time with my family and friends.”
Cybersecurity has come a long way in the two decades since he joined Congress. Over the years, the U.S. government has formed and funded agencies to defend from cyberattacks and conduct hacking operations.
“When I first came to Congress in 2001, the [defense authorization bill] didn't even mention cyber or the internet,” Langevin said. “Now we have a whole section that is devoted to cyber-related issues, and so cyber is only growing in importance,” he said, noting that funding has followed, but oversight is also critical.
In the more than 10 years since U.S. Cyber Command began operations, it has been involved in major operations like hijacking a ransomware gang’s website, disrupting a massive botnet and combating election interference.
Cyber Command and the National Security Agency are both led by Nakasone, a four-star general. The debate over whether a “dual-hatted” leader should run both has simmered for years. But Langevin is firm that now’s not the time to be talking about changing how they’re structured.
“In terms of splitting the dual hat, we are nowhere near ready to even start talking about splitting the hat. Maybe someday down the road that happens, but right now there’s such important synergy between NSA and U.S. Cyber Command: one informs the actions of the other and it makes it more effective,” Langevin said. “By splitting the hat, I think we’ll be fighting battles with one hand tied behind our back.”
Georgia’s top elections official will testify at today’s Jan. 6 committee hearing
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and his deputy, Gabriel Sterling, will testify at an afternoon hearing held by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the committee said. It appears to be part of an effort by the committee to tie former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen to threats and pressure on election officials — and, ultimately, the attack on the Capitol.
Raffensperger played a significant role in parrying Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen in Georgia. In a January call, Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes in the state to overturn President Biden’s victory, but Raffensperger resisted.
Raffensperger won a primary election against a Trump-endorsed candidate last month. He “repudiated Trump’s false claims of election fraud to anyone who would listen,” but he also “won in part by courting Trump’s base with promises of stricter election security,” my colleague Amy Gardner wrote.
U.S. officials expect Russia to try to interfere with midterm elections
Interference in this year's midterm elections is still hypothetical, but officials worry that interference — or even the perception of interference — could play into fears about stolen elections and undermine trust in voting systems, CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports.
Department of Homeland Security this month warned that Russia will “probably” try to undermine this year’s elections in retaliation for the U.S. government’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a report obtained by CNN. “We expect Russian interference in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections, as Russia views this activity as an equitable response to perceived actions by Washington and an opportunity to both undermine U.S. global standing and influence U.S. decision-making,” the report says.
Jury convicts former Amazon Web Services engineer over Capital One hack
The jury found Paige Thompson guilty of six computer-hacking charges and one wire-fraud charge, the Seattle Times’s Maya Miller reports. The 2019 hack of Capital One compromised 100 million credit card applications. The bank later agreed to pay a $190 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by customers. It also agreed to pay an $80 million fine to regulators.
“We’re thrilled with the verdict,” prosecutor Nick Brown told Miller. “Hopefully it’s good deterrence for other people, like Ms. Thompson, who purport to be good-faith hackers, but who are in fact engaged in something far more dangerous.”
The case partly hinged on what it means for someone to access a computer system “without authorization,” Miller reports.
After Thompson left Amazon Web Services, she looked for misconfigured accounts and posed as a user who was authorized to access them, prosecutors argued. Because she didn’t have explicit permission to access those accounts, she didn’t have the proper authorization, prosecutors said.
Thompson’s attorney, on the other hand, argued “that Thompson’s actions were legal because the breached companies’ systems performed as they were programmed, and anyone with access to a web browser could’ve taken the same actions as Thompson,” Miller writes.
Using Thompson’s words: Prosecutors also “used a sampling of Thompson’s tweets, Slack messages and chat board posts to argue that she was a calculated hacker motivated by greed, rather than a noble ‘white-hat hacker’ trying to identify and patch vulnerabilities in companies’ online defenses,” Miller writes.
Cyber attack: Gloucester council services still not back to normal (BBC News)
CISA Director Jen Easterly and energy executives discuss cybersecurity at the EEI 2022 conference today.
The House Judiciary Committee holds an oversight hearing for the Justice Department’s National Security Division on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
CISA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Council meets at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
The Committee on House Administration holds a hearing on disinformation’s threats to democracy on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.
A House Homeland Security Committee panel holds a hearing on securing emerging technologies on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.
The R Street Institute hosts an event on the cybersecurity of the water industry on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. | 2022-06-21T12:51:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Defense bill is a major cyber legislation opportunity for Rep. Langevin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/defense-bill-is-major-cyber-legislation-opportunity-rep-langevin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/defense-bill-is-major-cyber-legislation-opportunity-rep-langevin/ |
Brooks Koepka will reportedly be latest to leave PGA Tour for LIV Golf
Brooks Koepka is reportedly off to LIV Golf. (Rob Carr/Getty Images)
Four-time major champion Brooks Koepka will leave the PGA Tour to join the breakaway LIV Golf Invitational Series, and will play in its next tournament later this month in Oregon, multiple outlets reported Tuesday. He represents one of the biggest names to leave the PGA Tour for the Saudi-backed circuit, lured away by guaranteed riches and a lighter schedule.
Koepka, 32, was the world’s No. 1 golfer in terms of the Official World Golf Ranking as recently as 2019, and his stretch between 2017 and 2019 was one of the most dominant in recent memory. He won four majors in eight starts at one point, and has 11 other top-10 major finishes in his career. But he has been slowed by hip, knee and wrist injuries over the past few years, and he’s finished no better than 55th at the three majors played this season, with a missed cut at the Masters. Now ranked 19th in the world — making him LIV’s highest-ranked golfer behind No. 16 Dustin Johnson — Koepka has not played in a non-major tournament since late March. He will join his lower-ranked brother, Chase, on the new circuit.
Before last week’s U.S. Open, Koepka called talk of the LIV series a distraction and castigated reporters for continuing to ask about the subject.
“I’m here at the U.S. Open,” Koepka told reporters when asked about the new league. “I’m ready to play the U.S. Open, and I think it kind of sucks, too, you are all throwing this black cloud over the U.S. Open. It’s one of my favorite events. I don’t know why you guys keep doing that. The more legs you give [LIV Golf], the more you keep talking about it.
“I’m trying to focus on the U.S. Open, man,” Koepka continued. “I legitimately don’t get it. I’m tired of the conversations. I’m tired of all this stuff. Like I said, y’all are throwing a black cloud on the U.S. Open. I think that sucks. I actually do feel bad for the [USGA] for once because it’s a s---ty situation. We’re here to play, and you are talking about an event that happened last week.”
Koepka made the cut at the U.S. Open but was not a threat to win after a dismal weekend, finishing 55th. He still is listed as in the field for this week’s PGA Tour event, the Travelers Championship in Connecticut. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was on-site Tuesday morning, and held a players-only meeting, reportedly to discuss the LIV threat.
Matt Fitzpatrick digs out of the sand to win U.S. Open for first major title
Saudi-funded LIV Golf reportedly has paid players such as Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed hundreds of millions of dollars simply to join the new league, which offers a lighter schedule; shorter, cut-free tournaments; and guaranteed prize money. In response, the PGA Tour announced earlier this month that any players who join the league will have their tour privileges revoked.
For now, however, LIV golfers are allowed to play in golf’s four majors, which are not operated by the PGA Tour. That could change if the Official World Golf Ranking does not recognize the new tour, as most players earn entry into the majors via their ranking. LIV Golf Investments CEO Greg Norman said Saturday that the new circuit is petitioning the OWGR for accreditation. Without it, the LIV golfers will see their rankings plummet, making it unlikely they will qualify for majors unless they are past champions.
LIV Golf has been accused of “sportswashing” human-rights violations committed by the Saudi regime, among them the CIA’s conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Norman and other LIV supporters have countered that the new series will be good for the sport by giving the golfers themselves more control over their careers and finances. | 2022-06-21T12:51:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brooks Koepka will reportedly leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/21/brooks-koepka-liv-golf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/21/brooks-koepka-liv-golf/ |
He played a junkie on ‘The Wire.’ Now he’s taking a shot at ‘Talk Radio.’
By Jason Vest
Actor Andre Royo, who played one of the most memorable characters on "The Wire," is workshopping the landmark play "Talk Radio" for off-Broadway. (Ron Eshel)
Like many in-demand actors, Andre Royo is in perpetual motion between Los Angeles (where he has made his home for 20 years) and New York (his hometown, where he also works). Yet Royo — whose portrayal of noble Baltimore junkie Bubbles on the iconic HBO series “The Wire” helped define the show — is heading somewhere he can honestly say he never imagined going: the middle of Indiana, to workshop the lead role in the landmark play “Talk Radio.”
“I think it’s gonna be something special because I’ve never experienced it,” the 53-year-old told me. “It’s gonna bring some newness to my sense of creativity. And might help me find newness in this character.”
That character is the acerbic Rust Belt shock jock Barry Champlain from next-door Cleveland, Ohio. Eric Bogosian’s play, which became a 1988 Oliver Stone-directed film, tells the story of Champlain, a radio talker whose talent for vituperative nocturnal jousts with racists and loonies is matched only by a psyche so neurotic it’s pirouetting on the edge of meltdown even while on the precipice of grand success. (Champlain is partially informed by real-life Denver talker Alan Berg, who was murdered by the Order, a neo-Nazi group, in 1984.)
In the last week of June, after more than two decades on stages and screens, Royo will go on his first creative retreat. It came by invitation from a small arts organization: a week in a cottage in the woods with his friend and collaborator Mark Armstrong, a New York director, to do nothing but think, write and workshop some scenes for “Talk Radio.”
The play will be staged off-Broadway in New York later this fall. And Royo has a big fan in the playwright. “I love Andre and I love his work,” a covid-stricken Bogosian told me in a recent email, adding that he first became aware of the actor from his character on “The Wire.” “Andre is an energy actor, an actor who commits himself totally. And he seems to love the role. I would pay to see this performance.”
Both Bogosian and Royo say that, to their knowledge, Barry Champlain has never been played by a Black actor. Thus the role was waiting as a challenge for Royo, who has wanted to play it for many years. “We as Black artists feel so regulated as to what parts we do portray, or see ourselves involved in, that it’s only natural to feel like, ‘What if ..., ’ ” Royo says. “Watching the movie late at night, back in the day, I remember being drawn into the character of Barry Champlain and his desire to be heard, to feel like his point of view mattered and was relevant to some form of contribution in society.”
Royo’s residency in Indiana is the latest chapter in an arts experiment born out of covid. Krista Detor, a noted folk singer-songwriter, lives with her husband and sound engineer, David Weber, on Hundredth Hill, a bucolic 51-acre property north of Bloomington (home of Indiana University). Since the pandemic, Detor and Weber have been gradually making Hundredth Hill a creative retreat, with a pilot program providing quarantine space to nine New York University playwrights in 2020.
With its three cottages, a vintage Airstream trailer, a barn and generous outdoor areas for camping and performing, Hundredth Hill is now a nonprofit that accepts donations to support residencies. In part it reflects Detor’s notions of mixing local talent and national and international artists. Allies in her mission include actor Jesse Eisenberg and his wife, Anna Strout, who is a native of Bloomington and a veteran of New York film and theater. They are part-time locals. (A casual conversation between Strout and Armstrong in New York earlier this year ultimately led to Royo and Armstrong’s Hundredth Hill invitation.)
“Indiana is not a place that has ever been on mine or anybody in my neighborhood’s list of destinations," Royo told me. “But it proves that art is one of those things like sports that just brings races together.”
Given the Hoosier State’s history with radio and race, it’s not a bad vantage from which to consider Bogosian’s classic play. Indiana native Jean Shepherd, of “A Christmas Story” fame, set the postwar standard for on-air monologues. A range of personalities — from Klan leader D.C. Stephenson in the 1920s, to the nationally syndicated, edgy drive-time duo Bob & Tom, to early ’90s conservative talker Mike Pence — all rode Indiana’s airwaves to impact.
“I would be remiss if I said anything less than place does matter. Especially in Baltimore’s case — it was the best character in ‘The Wire,’ ” Royo says. “Whatever project I’m doing, if I find out where characters are from, I gotta look into it — that’s part of process. That character of Eric’s moved around a lot, trying to find footing, ground, trying to look for his happy place.”
Royo says his happy place has always been the stage. He and his “Talk Radio” director met 20 years ago, the night after Royo took part in 24 Hour Plays, Armstrong’s New York drama outfit that, from writing to staging, produces quick-turnaround theater. Their meeting happened to be the night before Royo’s “Wire” audition, which Royo, feeling a bit haughty as a stage actor, nearly blew off. (“Why don’t you do the audition first and then turn it down if you get it,” he remembers his agent saying.)
Since “The Wire,” he’s become a ubiquitous guest star and supporting actor on dozens of TV shows, most recently “Truth Be Told” on Apple TV Plus, “With Love” on Amazon’s Prime Video service and Fox’s “Empire.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) He says coming across an old “Talk Radio” Playbill around 2018 reminded him it was time to return to the stage.
The Barry Champlain character leaves latitude for experimentation. Liev Schreiber, in the last 2007 Broadway staging of “Talk Radio,” opted to play Champlain a bit more laconically than has been typical. But for Royo, he won’t just be reinterpreting Champlain. The part will also be his contribution to an ongoing Black reclamation of stage after centuries of historic, and hostile, marginalization.
“I came from a borough that created hip-hop because it needed to be created. We needed to find another vehicle or avenues so that we could express and that can get us money,” he explains. Part of the appeal of “Talk Radio,” he told me, is that “behind the mic, you can be anyone you want — and I think a lot of minorities in America are trying to be someone who they want to be or need to be. It plays into another dynamic, another layer that makes the play revealing and provocative.”
Jason Vest lives in California. | 2022-06-21T13:38:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Andre Royo, known for ‘The Wire’ and other roles, takes on ‘Talk Radio’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/21/adre-royo-the-wire-talk-radio/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/21/adre-royo-the-wire-talk-radio/ |
Sunrise rituals and music parties: The world marks the summer solstice
People gather for sunrise at Stonehenge on June 21 in Wiltshire, England. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)
Across the Northern Hemisphere on Tuesday, musicians shined their instruments and children strung up flower garlands in preparation for celebrations of the summer solstice — the longest day and shortest night of the year in this part of the world.
On June 21, Londoners will experience about 17 hours of daylight. The sun will rise at 05:14 a.m. in Ottawa and set nearly 16 hours later. In Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, it will be dark for 5½ hours.
For some cultures, the day has a mystical quality to it. Different groups celebrate nature blooming for the start of summer, while others worship the sun. Vikings and ancient Egyptians celebrated the summer solstice centuries ago. Today, it’s marked in a variety of ways in countries of the Northern Hemisphere.
Crowds gathered at Stonehenge June 21 to watch the summer solstice sunrise after covid restrictions impacted festivities in 2020 and 2021. (Video: @carmenvazquez88 via Storyful)
For pagans, it marks the start of the Festival of Litha, a celebration of the sun’s powers. Followers of paganism don special attire and flower garlands, which are believed to repel evil spirits, hold special rituals and start bonfires.
In Wiltshire, England, pagans and other revelers welcomed the early sunrise Tuesday at Stonehenge with flutes and flower crowns.
The 5,000-year-old World Heritage Site is aligned with the sun’s movement, so that “if you were to stand in the middle of the stone circle on midsummer’s day, the sun rises just to the left of the Heel Stone, an outlying stone to the north-east of the monument,” according to English Heritage, which looks after hundreds of ancient monuments and sites.
This year, the celebrations of sunrise at Stonehenge — which were also streamed live for those who couldn’t make the trip — were extra special, because it was the first time in two years that the ancient monument lifted pandemic restrictions on public gatherings.
The crowd was diverse, according to Steven Morris, a reporter for the Guardian who was there. “A druid in flowing robes played a waltz on the bagpipes in the dappled shade of a tree as a band of pilgrims rested on the grass making crowns of summer flowers,” Morris wrote of the scene. “Three Buddhist monks strolled past while a group of men took off their T-shirts in the warm sunshine and drank lager, promising to carry on partying until the sun sets and rises again.”
In France, the summer solstice coincides with a national celebration of music held yearly since 1982. On June 21, partygoers, musicians and DJs take to the streets, and national monuments transform into concert venues. The holiday is celebrated in 120 countries, according to the organizers.
This year is the 40th anniversary of Music Day, which was started by Jack Lang, France’s culture minister, to democratize access to musical performances and encourage people to discover new musical genres. The Paris Philharmonic Orchestra will play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under the Louvre pyramid, while the Eiffel Tower will host a festival of the Latin American dance Bachata. Organizers say more than 18,000 concerts will be held worldwide.
Le 21 juin 1982, jour du solstice d’été ☀️, un événement d'un nouveau genre s'apprêtait à voir le jour... Retour dans les coulisses d'une édition mythique, celle de la première @fetemusique 👉 https://t.co/Ex2xRCht4o#FeteDeLaMusique #musique pic.twitter.com/xylRElBVuK
June 21 is also the International Day of Yoga, celebrated in South Asia and around the world with mass yoga sessions and educational events about the benefits of the practice.
Sweden and its Nordic neighbors celebrate Midsommar, or Midsummer, on the weekend between June 19 and 26. In Sweden, it is an official holiday and the start of five weeks of summer holidays for children. They mark the occasion with bonfires, picnics, flower-picking and maypole dancing.
Midsummer was traditionally a holiday of love and fertility. According to ancient folklore, those who put at least seven different flowers under their pillows on midsummer would dream of their future partner. And Swedish journalist Po Tidholm told Elle magazine in 2019 that Swedes tend to drink more during the holiday than they normally would — which can lead to unexpected romantic pairings.
“That, and the romantic feel of a beautiful and long night when the sun almost doesn’t set, used to make March 22, nine months after Midsummer, the day when the most babies were born in Sweden,” Tidholm told Elle. “That’s not true anymore, though, since most Swedes are pragmatic enough to plan their pregnancies in order to give birth when it suits their work schedule.” | 2022-06-21T13:51:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Summer solstice sparks celebrations at Stonehenge, in Europe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/summer-solstice-june-21-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/summer-solstice-june-21-photos/ |
Jackie Robinson played shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945. (Sporting News/Getty Images)
When Jackie Robinson came to Washington in the summer of 1945 for a Negro League game, people were already talking him up him as a potential major leaguer, two years before he broke baseball’s color barrier.
“Jackie Robinson, sensational shortstop, [UCLA] athlete, All-American football star and tabbed as the one Negro player of major league caliber,” wrote the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, on the eve of the June 24 showdown between Robinson’s Kansas City Monarchs and D.C.’s Homestead Grays.
Later that summer, Robinson met Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey, leading to a minor league contract that paved the way for him to break baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947 — an event that has been celebrated during this 75-year anniversary season.
Less remembered: Earlier in 1945, Robinson had a tryout with the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, along with two other Black players — Sam Jethroe, a future major leaguer, and Marvin Williams. The team only hosted those players under duress; Boston City Councilman Isadore Muchnick, a civil rights champion, had threatened to rescind the waiver from Blue Laws that let the Red Sox and Boston Braves play on Sundays unless they gave Black players an opportunity.
After the April tryout, Boston Manager Joe Cronin, the former Washington Senators star player-manager, raved about Robinson, telling Muchnick, “If I had that guy on the club we’d be a world-beater.” The city councilman had the same take: “You never saw anyone hit the wall the way Robinson did that day. Bang, bang, bang — he rattled it.”
Jackie Robinson’s last plea to MLB: ‘Wake up’ and hire Black managers
In 1979, Cronin acknowledged to the Boston Globe, “It was a great mistake by us” to pass on Robinson, who recognized the tryout was a sham from the start.
“We knew we were wasting our time,” he said years later, according to a 1972 Boston Globe column. “It was April 1945. Nobody was serious then about Black players in the majors, except maybe a few politicians. … They said we’d hear from them. We knew we were getting the brushoff. We didn’t wait around to work out with the Braves. It would have been the same story.”
(The Red Sox wound up being the last team to integrate, in 1959.)
Two months after the tryout, Robinson was on his way to D.C.’s major league ballpark, Griffith Stadium, which the Senators rented out to the Grays.
“Outstanding newcomer to the Monarchs is shortstop Jackie Robinson,” The Washington Post reported in a preview, “six foot, 200 pound former football, basketball and baseball star at the University of California of Los Angeles, who presently is being acclaimed as the 1945 Negro baseball rookie of the year.” The article predicted that Robinson “may steal the show” from teammate Satchel Paige and Grays star Josh Gibson.
“Robinson not only is shaping up as a consistent hitter with tremendous power,” The Post reported, “but also is fitting neatly [at shortstop] despite his big frame. The big fellow is amazingly agile, is a smooth and graceful defensive man and has one of the best throwing arms in baseball.” (Robinson would play just one game at shortstop in his major league career, according to baseball-reference.com.)
The doubleheader, staged in the waning days of World War II, pitted the defending Negro national champion Grays against the star-studded Monarchs. With the Senators out of town on a 19-game road trip, 18,000 came out to see the twin bill, The Post reported. That was more than double the Senators’ average crowd of around 8,400 that year, even though the team was in a hotly contested American League pennant race, which saw Washington finish just 1½ games out of first.
The Jackie Robinsons of every sport
The Grays were stacked with four future Hall of Famers: Gibson, Buck Leonard, Cool Papa Bell and 49-year-old Jud Wilson. The Monarchs had three Cooperstown-bound players: Robinson, Paige and Hilton Smith.
Robinson exceeded even the most bullish predictions. Batting third, he went 7 for 7 in the two games with a pair of doubles, although he did commit a costly error as the Grays swept the doubleheader.
“Although Jackie Robinson solved [pitcher Roy] Welmaker for a pair of doubles, two singles and a walk in four appearances, it was his poor throw to the plate with the bases filled, in the sixth inning of the first game, that brought ruin to the visitors,” the Baltimore Afro-American reported.
Robinson’s Monarchs returned for another game in Washington on Aug. 16, this time as part of a four-team doubleheader that drew 19,000. Robinson would finish the season with a team-best .375 batting average, a .449 on-base percentage and a .600 slugging percentage in what turned out to be his only Negro League season.
When Robinson helped fill the seats at Griffith Stadium, he also helped the bottom line of Senators owner Clark Griffith, who relied on rent from the Grays as a revenue stream. Robinson’s deal with the Dodgers signaled the beginning of the end of the Negro Leagues. Perhaps worried about a loss of income, Griffith assailed Rickey for signing Robinson without compensating the Monarchs.
“While it is true that we have no agreement with Negro leagues — National and American — we still can’t act like outlaws in taking their stars,” said Griffith, according to the Associated Press, on Oct. 24. “If Brooklyn wanted to buy Robinson from Kansas City, that would be all right, but contracts of Negro teams should be recognized by organized baseball.”
Rickey was unmoved. “The Negro organizations in baseball are not leagues, nor, in my opinion, do they even have an organization. As at present administered they are in the nature of a racket,” he said, according to the New York Times.
In his autobiography, Robinson recalled the objections by Griffith and other owners.
“Overnight, some of the prejudiced white owners and officials became extremely concerned about the future of the Negro leagues,” he wrote. “They mourned because Mr. Rickey was destroying the defenseless black clubs.” When the Monarchs threatened to sue Rickey, some major league owners encouraged the Negro League team, Robinson added.
“These owners wanted to stop blacks from getting into the mainstream of baseball, and some were making money leasing their ball parks to the Jim Crow teams,” he wrote. “Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, said that the Dodgers should pay the Monarchs for my services.” Griffith was the only owner Robinson mentioned by name.
Kevin Blackistone: Narrative of Jackie Robinson, like that of MLK, is at odds with the reality
Ironically, Griffith had in years past spoken about the possibility of integrating baseball. As far back as 1937, he told legendary Black sportswriter Sam Lacy of the Washington Tribune, who grew up just five blocks from Griffith Stadium: “The time is not far off when colored players will take their places beside those of other races in the major leagues. However, I am not so sure that time has arrived yet.”
Indeed, it would be another 17 years before the Senators finally put a Black player on the roster; they promoted the Cuban-born Carlos Paula in September 1954.
Lacy, who had long championed the cause of integrating baseball, said in a 1990 interview with Sports Illustrated that he was unimpressed with Griffith, who fretted that if he signed Black players he would hasten the death of the Negro leagues. “The Negro leagues were a symbol of segregation,” Lacy told the magazine. “If they had become successful, the world outside might never have known of Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron or Willie Mays. The black leagues were separate and unequal.”
Robinson spent 1946 with the Dodgers’ top minor league in Montreal, then played his entire major league career with the Dodgers in the National League, at a time when Washington played in the American League and interleague games didn’t exist. Although Robinson appeared in several exhibition games with the Dodgers at Griffith Stadium over the years, fans never got another chance to watch him play a regular season game in Washington. | 2022-06-21T14:04:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jackie Robinson's star turn in Washington's Griffith Stadium - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/21/jackie-robinson-washington-griffith-stadium/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/21/jackie-robinson-washington-griffith-stadium/ |
Keegan Theatre mounts regional premiere of ‘Shakespeare in Love’
The play based on the Oscar-winning 1998 film follows the literary and romantic travails of the Bard
Terrance Fleming, right, and Ashley D. Nguyen in “Shakespeare in Love” at Keegan Theatre. (Cameron Whitman)
Anyone who says the Bard can’t put bottoms in seats doesn’t remember the movie “Shakespeare in Love,” one of the top 10 box office hits of 1998, which went on to win seven Oscars, including best picture and best original screenplay. Of course, it didn’t hurt that it was co-written by Tom Stoppard, who added a lot of good jokes, both obvious and subtle, to the story of a 29-year-old William Shakespeare fighting through writer’s block to finish “Romeo and Juliet.”
Much of the film’s pleasure came from the way Shakespeare’s evolving script echoed the playwright’s offstage life: a new but forbidden romance and endless quarrels with the local authorities. How much stronger these echoes might have been, many thought, if we had heard them spoken on an actual stage rather than a movie screen. Disney Theatrical Productions recognized the possibilities and commissioned English playwright Lee Hall to adapt the Stoppard-Marc Norman screenplay for the stage in 2014. That show is now having its regional premiere at the Keegan Theatre through July 16.
“The script is clearly not the same as the screenplay,” says Terrance Fleming, the 30-year-old actor who plays the title role. “We don’t have hundreds of extras. We can’t zoom in for close-ups. And we’re keeping the love scenes PG. But to be there with these people onstage, breathing the same air in the same room, it brings the theatrical aspect of the story to life. We’re at a play about a guy who writes a play, and who performs in that play, in this play. That kind of doubling is a lot of the fun.”
Fleming is not intimidated by the challenge of playing one of the English language’s greatest writers. As a young person trying to get ahead in the theater world of 2022, he has enough in common with someone trying to do the same in 1593 that he can connect the character to his own background. Just as the 20-something Shakespeare will write a script, act in one or do almost anything to pay the bills, so will Fleming. Just as his predecessor had to move from Stratford-upon-Avon to London for better professional opportunities, Fleming had to move from Hattiesburg, Miss., to the Baltimore-Washington area.
“You have to take your own experience and use that,” Fleming explains. “As a Black man playing someone everyone knows is a White man, I’m already telling the audience that we’re showing them a Shakespeare rather than the Shakespeare. Every time [the character of] Lord Wessex mentions his plantation in Virginia, it makes my skin crawl a bit. I’m not going to run away from that; I’m going to use that to highlight the class differences in the play.”
Wessex is the aristocrat engaged to marry Viola, Shakespeare’s secret lover and the cross-dressing actor playing Romeo in the play within the play. But Wessex isn’t the only challenge facing the struggling scribbler.
“He’s having problems with his current wife, Anne Hathaway,” Fleming says. “People are doing his plays at a theater without paying him. He’s taken money for a play he can’t finish. And he can’t be with Viola the way he wants to. He used to get away from such problems with his writing, but right now he’s stuck. He writes, ‘Shall I compare thee … ’ and he can’t get past that first phrase. Because he’s halted in his writing. He’s all screwed up at the moment. He’s not at the breaking point, but you can see he’s getting there.”
As Shakespeare’s affair with Viola blossoms, the words get unstuck inside him, and he writes the balcony scene for “Romeo and Juliet.” He’s obviously a genius, but he’s also a streetwise hustler trying to evade his romantic and theatrical rivals until he can scrape up enough money and enough pages of text to keep them at bay for a few more days.
“The purists who want to keep Shakespeare on a pedestal,” Fleming says, “are not the people who should go see ‘Shakespeare in Love.’ He wasn’t in a tower writing poetry. The man had to make money, and he had to live life.”
Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW. 202-265-3767. www.keegantheatre.com. | 2022-06-21T14:17:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Keegan Theatre's 'Shakespeare in Love' is based on the Oscar-winning 1998 film. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/21/keegan-theatre-shakespeare-in-love/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/21/keegan-theatre-shakespeare-in-love/ |
‘Red Velvet’ spotlights a pioneering Black actor who played Othello
Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production tells the story of Ira Aldridge, an American actor in 1833 London
By Celia Wren
Amari Cheatom in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of “Red Velvet.” (Shakespeare Theatre Company)
In 1833 London, in the kind of show-must-go-on substitution that is the stuff of theater legend, actor Ira Aldridge stepped into the role of Othello, replacing Edmund Kean, the ailing English celebrity who had previously played the role in blackface. Aldridge was a Black American and accomplished Shakespeare interpreter, who had sought opportunity abroad after racism at minimum hindered his career in the U.S. The New York-born thespian had found some success in Britain, where his previous roles had included Othello — a part it was almost unheard of for a Black actor to fill in his day — and he would go on to perform for rapturous audiences in continental Europe. But his high-profile save-the-day turn as Othello at London’s Covent Garden encountered bald prejudice, as British playwright Lolita Chakrabarti recounts in her play “Red Velvet,” at Shakespeare Theatre Company through July 17.
According to Amari Cheatom, who embodies the character in the STC production, directed by Jade King Carroll, Aldridge was a “pioneer” for Black actors. “It’s kind of crazy that he isn’t a more major figure in Western theater history,” says Cheatom. Aldridge, he notes, “loosened the grip of the White gaze in Western theater.”
A 36-year-old Juilliard-trained performer whose stage and screen credits include the movie “Judas and the Black Messiah,” Cheatom brings a keen awareness of historical context to “Red Velvet,” as well as a sense of its current resonance. He weighed in on both topics in a recent interview, conducted by email while he recuperated from covid-19.
Among the aspects of Aldridge’s achievements that impressed Cheatom is the acting style that made the 19th-century actor arguably ahead of his time. Aldridge favored a relatively realistic approach — a striking contrast to the more declamatory, posturing star turns then in vogue. “He does not bother about the majestic stride, but moves about completely naturally, not like a tragedian, but like a human being,” a 19th-century critic marveled.
This kind of natural portrayal was “revolutionary” for the time, says Cheatom, who compares the shock value to staging “Othello” on Mars today, with the title character “warring over plots on the Red Planet, with [the play’s villain] Iago wiping the blood-red dust from his deeds on the front of a white spacesuit.”
He adds that the naturalness of Aldridge’s 1833 Othello was probably all the more disquieting to audiences because of the way the character — described by Shakespeare as a Moor — murders his Venetian wife, Desdemona.
“To see a Black body in power, expressing strength over a White body, was too much for the public of his time to digest,” Cheatom says. “Ira’s portrayal forced his audiences to witness what colonial powers of the time were trying their best to repress: Black power, strength, love, sexuality and emotion.”
Perhaps testifying to that would-be repression, Aldridge’s run in “Othello” at Covent Garden was cut short after some negative and racist reviews and, reportedly, disgruntled reactions by friends of actress Ellen Tree, who played Desdemona (and who is played in the STC production by Emily DeForest). While chronicling these events in “Red Velvet,” which premiered in London in 2012, Chakrabarti weaves in a seismic historical development of 1833: the lead-up to the passage of Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act.
“This play is really about identity,” Cheatom says. “How does the gaze of a political or social majority determine how an individual identifies themselves? Is there value in the discord the majority experiences from loss of control over identity? What is the cost to reclaim control of your own identity?”
With plot twists that touch on fight direction, backstage tensions and reviews, “Red Velvet” is also a play about the acting life. Cheatom appreciates that aspect as well.
“This business is fickle,” he says. “So much of your success as an actor is built on people ‘liking’ you. Being blacklisted or ‘canceled’ is as easy as the right person (or people) in power deciding they don’t like you. And their reasons can be as ridiculous now as they were in Ira’s time: playing a role as you artistically see fit, challenging the status quo, being a certain color or having a certain religious background. Talent is one thing, but if you’re not liked by the people in power, there’s not much you can do but keep on pushing.”
No wonder he sees his character in “Red Velvet” as “beyond layered.” In addition to his film credits, Cheatom has appeared onstage in New York and at high-profile regional theaters around the country. But, he says, “every role I’ve ever played feels like it’s been preparing me for this one.”
Shakespeare Theatre Company, Michael R. Klein Theatre at the Lansburgh, 450 7th Street NW. 202-547-1122. www.shakespearetheatre.org. | 2022-06-21T14:17:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Red Velvet’ spotlights a pioneering Black actor who played Othello - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/21/shakespeare-theater-red-velvet/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/21/shakespeare-theater-red-velvet/ |
A Russian customs officer at a port on the Baltic Sea in the Kaliningrad region last year. (Vitaly Nevar/Reuters)
Moscow warned Tuesday that Lithuania would face “serious” consequences for barring the transit of E.U.-sanctioned goods through its territory to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
The Kremlin has described the decision as “unprecedented" and “hostile,” summoning the E.U.’s top diplomat in Moscow to object.
The region of Kaliningrad, hundreds of miles west of the rest of Russia, has become the latest flash point between Moscow and Europe as the fallout from the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine widens.
Kaliningrad’s city and port sit on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Poland, which are both part of the European Union and NATO. The region, home to the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Sea Fleet, receives much of its supplies via Lithuania and Belarus and has maritime connections to Russia.
How Kaliningrad, Russian territory surrounded by NATO, is tangled in Ukraine war
Lithuania’s state rail operator, LTG, announced Friday that it would no longer allow Russian goods that are under E.U. sanctions, including coal, metals and construction materials, to transit through the country to Kaliningrad — which the region’s governor said would affect nearly half its imports.
Officials in Moscow promised retaliation.
“Russia will definitely react to such hostile actions,” Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, said Tuesday as he visited Kaliningrad, according to Russian news agencies.
He pledged “appropriate measures” in the near future, without providing details. “Their consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania,” Patrushev said.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, described Lithuania’s decision as “inadmissible,” according to Russian news agency Tass. “The consequences will follow,” she said.
Lithuania, one of the Baltic states that have been among Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, has said it is implementing European Union sanctions — part of a campaign by Western governments to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.
Russian military move into Belarus poses risks to more than Ukraine
The Lithuanian rail operator told The Washington Post that the movement of passengers and cargo not subject to E.U. sanctions would continue.
The E.U. foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, rejected Russian depictions of the Lithuanian move as a blockade.
Land transit between Kaliningrad and other parts of Russia “has not been stopped or banned,” he told a news conference Monday. “Lithuania has not taken any unilateral national restrictions and only applies the European Union sanctions.”
Goods such as fuel and cement could still be shipped in from Russia by sea, said the governor of Kaliningrad, Anton Alikhanov. The exclave operates as a special economic zone with low taxes, although Western sanctions have hurt its economy.
On Monday, Alikhanov said that while stores and gas stations were stocked, people rushed to building-supply stores because construction materials could no longer arrive by rail.
Amar Nadhir, Amy Cheng and Annabelle Chapman contributed to this report. | 2022-06-21T14:17:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lithuania enforces Kaliningrad sanctions, drawing Russian ire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/kaliningrad-lithuania-russia-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/kaliningrad-lithuania-russia-reaction/ |
Biden administration to reverse Trump-era rules on landmines
President Biden delivers remarks before signing the Ocean Shipping Act into law at the White House on June 16. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The Biden administration will ban the use of land mines by the United States across most of the globe, in a decision that reverses Trump-era rules allowing greater employment of the weapons that are blamed for killing thousands of civilians a year — the majority of them children.
The move, which the White House is expected to announce Tuesday, caps an extended internal review of a policy enacted in early 2020 that empowered military commanders to use the mines globally in certain situations. It allows the United States to use the weapons along ally South Korea’s border with North Korea, though mines are not currently placed there.
A State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe actions that had not yet been made public, said the new policy was a reflection of the Biden administration’s belief that human rights must be a significant factor when considering when to use weapons or provide them to other countries.
U.S. officials say anti-personnel mines used by various nations kill about 7,000 people a year, the vast majority of whom are civilians. At least half of the victims are believed to be children. In places such as Afghanistan and Yemen, land mines have remained a hidden peril following conflicts, sowing farmlands or mountain paths with invisible and long-lasting danger.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group, welcomed the new policy but said the United States must take the steps needed to join the Ottawa Convention, a 1997 treaty that prohibits participating nations from using, transferring or stockpiling weapons categorized as anti-personnel mines.
“We are still out of step with most of the world,” Kimball said. “The administration needs to move more quickly to bring us in line.”
While the United States remains ineligible to join the Ottawa treaty because of its refusal to forswear land mine use entirely, U.S. officials say they hope to do so if alternate weapons can be developed to safeguard South Korea’s border with North Korea.
The new policy will bring the United States into compliance with most aspects of the treaty, prohibiting the production and purchase of the mines, and banning their export and transfer except when necessary for their destruction. The regulations also commit the United States to destroying existing U.S. mines that are not deemed necessary in South Korea.
The U.S. stockpile includes some 3 million anti-personnel mines, all of which have self-destruction or self-deactivation features. The United States has employed anti-personnel mines once since the Ottawa treaty came into effect, in Afghanistan.
As a presidential candidate, Biden promised to roll back what he characterized as President Donald Trump’s “reckless” stance on mines. Officials have framed the policy, which is identical to the Obama administration’s rules, as further proof of the Biden administration’s commitment to civilians’ welfare and to human rights. The United States is also the largest supporter of efforts to destroy conventional weapons including land mines and other unexplored munitions.
Critics say the Biden administration’s actions have failed to match its rhetoric in other areas related to human rights, including its support for leaders who have overseen widespread abuses. The new policy comes ahead of Biden’s expected meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) urged the Defense Department, where senior officials have voiced support for land mine use, to quickly implement the new policy.
“This is long overdue recognition that the grave humanitarian and political costs of using these weapons far exceed their limited military utility,” said Leahy, who has long advocated for an end to land mine use, in a statement.
Annie Shiel, an official at the Centers for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), said the task ahead was now a full ban of the weapons “without exception.” “Land mines are indiscriminate weapons that cause devastating harm to civilians for decades after they are used,” she said.
The new rules strip the Pentagon of authority over the issue, giving control to the White House.
When the 2020 regulations were unveiled, the Pentagon characterized land mines as valuable in protecting troops from being overrun or channeling enemy forces into areas where they can be attacked. That policy permitted military commanders to order the use of some land mines in combat as long as they had a self-destruct or self-deactivation feature.
“The United States will not sacrifice American servicemembers’ safety,” a senior Pentagon official said at the time.
Military leaders have also supported the use of mines since Biden took office. In April, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, characterized the mines as an important wartime tool.
“Antitank or antipersonnel mines are a very effective use in combat,” he said, noting the necessity of ensuring the weapons do not remain active after conflicts.
The State Department official said Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the review process “had the opportunity to raise the need that they feel that they had for land mines with the White House and talk about their operational effectiveness, but this was the decision.”
The Biden administration has highlighted the toll that land mines are taking in the war in Ukraine, where officials say Russia has planted mines indiscriminately. While Russia is not party to the Ottawa convention, Ukraine is a signatory.
Karen Chandler, an acting deputy assistant secretary of state, said there was “no credible evidence of Ukraine using [anti-personnel mines], currently or during Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.” | 2022-06-21T14:23:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden administration to reverse Trump-era rules on landmines - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/united-states-biden-landmines-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/united-states-biden-landmines-trump/ |
WILMINGTON, Del. — An 8-year-old boy and two teenagers were shot on Monday evening in Wilmington, police said.
The shooting happened around 7 p.m. in the 300 block of South Jackson Street, Wilmington Police said in a news release. Officers found three boys, ages 8, 16 and 17, shot and all were taken to a hospital, police said. Police did not release details about the extent of the boys’ injuries, but said they were stable. | 2022-06-21T14:23:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police: 8-year-old, 2 teens shot in Wilmington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-8-year-old-2-teens-shot-in-wilmington/2022/06/21/5e136726-f16c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-8-year-old-2-teens-shot-in-wilmington/2022/06/21/5e136726-f16c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Clela Rorex, ‘unsung hero’ of marriage equality movement, dies at 78
As Boulder County clerk, she granted six same-sex marriage licenses in 1975 — four decades before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage
Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex in 1975. (Denver Post/Getty Images)
Clela Rorex, a Colorado county clerk who became a heroine of the gay rights movement when she began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 1975, four decades before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, died June 19 at a hospice center in Longmont, Colo. She was 78.
The cause was complications from a fall, said her son Scott Poston.
Ms. Rorex was 31 years old, a self-described “feminist who wore short skirts, had long hair and was a single parent,” when she won election as clerk of Boulder County in 1974. Three years earlier, ratification of the 26th Amendment had lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, and Ms. Rorex campaigned on a platform of making it easier for citizens, especially newly enfranchised students at the University of Colorado, to cast their votes. But it was another issue that would dominate her short time in office and propel her to national attention.
In early 1975, just a few months into her tenure, two men, David McCord and David Zamora, reported to Ms. Rorex’s office seeking a marriage license. They had failed in an earlier effort to obtain one in Colorado Springs and hoped for greater success in the university town that was the seat of Boulder County. “We don’t do those kinds of things here,” they had been told in Colorado Springs. “Go to Boulder.”
Ms. Rorex consulted Assistant District Attorney William Wise, who informed her that marriage laws in Colorado were gender-neutral, apparently because legislators had not anticipated petitions for unions other than those between a man and a woman. “If you want to go ahead and issue a license, you’d be within your legal right to do so,” she recalled him saying. “It’s your decision.”
Ms. Rorex granted the license on March 26, 1975.
“Forty years before the Supreme Court announced a right to same-sex marriage in 2015, Clela Rorex essentially announced a right to same-sex marriage and used that right to grant same-sex marriage licenses,” Jason Pierceson, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield and the author of the book “Same-Sex Marriage in the United States,” said in an interview. “It really was a very innovative and courageous decision, far ahead of its time.”
Ms. Rorex was not the first county clerk to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple; other licenses had been issued but not recorded, in some cases by clerks who did not realize that both applicants were of the same sex. But the license issued by Ms. Rorex represented “the first time in American history that a clerk had knowingly issued an official marriage license to an openly lesbian or gay couple that was used in a marriage which was later officially recorded,” according to the book “Marriage Equality: From Outlaws to In-Laws” by William N. Eskridge Jr. and Christopher R. Riano.
“What you have here is … courage and conviction in what she saw was the right thing to do,” Riano, a lecturer in constitutional law and government at Columbia University, said in an interview, describing Ms. Rorex as an “unsung hero” in the marriage equality movement.
Ms. Rorex’s decision made national news and brought about what she described as a “furor.”
“It was horrendous,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004. “I got volumes of hate mail. I got mail from entire church congregations … saying I was creating a Sodom and Gomorrah.”
At one point, a cowboy who by his own admission had consumed half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch whisky pulled up at the Boulder County clerk’s office and announced, in a dramatic protest of Ms. Rorex’s position, that he wished to marry his horse, Dolly.
“We need tolerance,” he was quoted as saying, “but good tarnation, there’s such a thing as taking it too far.”
Ms. Rorex outwitted the man when she began taking down the vital information of the applicants in question, as she did for any couple. “And how old is Dolly?” she inquired. The cowboy replied that the horse was 8. Ms. Rorex recalled years later in an interview for NPR’s StoryCorps series, “I put my pen down, calm as could be, and said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s too young without parental approval.’ ”
According to Eskridge and Riano’s account, Colorado Attorney General J.D. MacFarlane ultimately issued an opinion that state law did not permit the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses. The opinion did not strictly bar Ms. Rorex from granting more of them, but she concluded she had little choice but to stop. She left the county clerk’s office roughly halfway through her four-year term and moved to California to marry her second husband.
“I always stood by my actions,” she told Esquire magazine in 2016. “I never backed away from them. But I did not see out my term in office, because I knew I was going to get recalled.”
In total, Ms. Rorex granted marriage licenses to six gay and lesbian couples. One of them was Anthony Sullivan and Richard Adams. Sullivan was an Australian citizen facing deportation, and he and Adams hoped to use a marriage license to help him obtain a spousal visa to remain in the United States.
They were denied, and received from the U.S. immigration service a letter that reveals the degree of vitriol gay couples faced at the time. “You have failed,” the letter read, “to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.”
Although they lost their ensuing lawsuit, The Washington Post reported, their case represented the first time a federal court was petitioned to recognize a same-sex marriage. And years later, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would apologize for the language used in the letter.
40 years later, story of a same-sex marriage in Colo. remains remarkable
The campaign for marriage equality continued until the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 that due process protections of the Constitution guaranteed a right to same-sex marriage. Adams by then had died, but Sullivan, the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia reported, was finally granted a green card as his widower. Sullivan died in 2020.
Clela Ann Rorex was born in Denver on July 23, 1943. Her mother was a schoolteacher and a dance instructor. Her father, who lost his leg saving his father’s life in a mining accident, served for 30 years as clerk of Routt County, Colo., where Ms. Rorex grew up in the county seat of Steamboat Springs. The couple had adopted Ms. Rorex when she was a baby. Her son attributed her sensitivity to those who struggle in life in part to her experience as an adoptee, as well as to the difficulties she saw her father face because of his disability.
Ms. Rorex received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1973. After her interlude in California, she returned to her home state and received a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Colorado at Denver in 1981. She later worked for organizations including the Multistate Tax Commission and the Native American Rights Fund.
Her marriages to Bob Poston, Leo Warmolts and Joe Russell ended in divorce.
Survivors include a son from her first marriage, Scott Poston of Rico, Colo.; a son from her third marriage, Aron Rorex of Bethel Island, Calif.; a daughter she placed for adoption and with whom she was later reunited, Linda Young-Vap of Atwood, Kan.; and a brother.
Ms. Rorex said that when she first granted a same-sex marriage license, she did not know anyone who was openly gay, nor had she given much thought to the gay rights movement that had been galvanized by the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969. She said she simply saw the petition as a matter of legal rights, not unlike the ones she fought for on behalf of women as a feminist.
“[It was] a question of, am I going to be the one to take away such a right if this right exists?” Ms. Rorex said in a 2015 interview with the radio station WNYC. “And I could never have lived with that.” | 2022-06-21T14:23:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Clela Rorex dies at 78; clerk granted early same-sex marriage licenses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/21/clela-rorex-gay-marriage-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/21/clela-rorex-gay-marriage-dead/ |
Supreme Court rejects appeal from Roundup maker over cancer claims
Containers of Roundup are displayed on a store shelf in San Francisco. (Haven Daley/AP)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a multimillion-dollar verdict against the manufacturer of the popular weed killer, Roundup, for failing to warn of cancer risks.
The decision by the justices not to intervene has implications for thousands of similar lawsuits against the company Bayer. The Biden administration had urged the court to deny the company’s request, a departure from the Trump administration’s position.
In a statement Tuesday, the company said, it disagrees with the court’s decision not to take its appeal and “is confident that the extensive body of science and consistently favorable views of leading regulatory bodies worldwide provide a strong foundation on which it can successfully defend Roundup in court when necessary.”
The case was brought by Edwin Hardeman, who was diagnosed in 2015 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He sued the company, alleging that his use of Roundup for more than two decades had caused his cancer. He said the company had failed to warn of the cancer risks associated with the active ingredient glyphosate.
Since 1985, the ingredient has been classified as a “possible human carcinogen,” but the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly concluded that it is unlikely to cause cancer in humans. California’s labeling laws are more stringent, and after a 2015 finding from an international research group, required a warning label for glyphosate-based pesticides.
An appeals court upheld a jury’s $25 million verdict and finding that Hardeman’s exposure to Roundup was a “substantial factor” in causing his cancer and that the company had failed to warn of the risks.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said federal law does not preempt the company’s duty to include a cancer warning on its label. The court said that a pesticide can be “misbranded” even if the EPA has approved its label and that a company can comply with both federal and state labeling requirements.
The company’s lawyers urged the Supreme Court to reverse and pointed to previous rulings intended to ensure “nationwide uniformity of pesticide labeling.” California and potentially 49 other states should not be able to “marginalize” EPA’s statements that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer, they said.
The company noted that Hardeman stopped using Roundup in 2012, before the California label requirement. | 2022-06-21T14:23:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court rejects appeal from Roundup maker over cancer claims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/supreme-court-roundup-bayer-cancer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/supreme-court-roundup-bayer-cancer/ |
Bits of an extinct bird’s eggshells may be clue to why megafauna vanished
A new study suggests the 500-pound Genyornis newtoni laid the eggs in Australia, which could shed light on an even bigger scientific mystery.
By Daniel Grossman
The giant flightless bird Genyornis newtoni went extinct on the Australian continent tens of thousands of years ago, and some scientists now think they know why. (P. Trusler)
Scientists have long argued about the mysterious extinct creature that laid cantaloupe-size eggs in Australia’s arid expanses until about 45,000 years ago. Some contended it was an enormous, stubby-winged bird known as Genyornis newtoni. Others pointed to a turkey-like bird weighing a mere 10 pounds.
A new scientific paper, published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could settle the decades-old debate.
Using a novel technique called paleoproteomics, an international team of researchers studied proteins extracted from shards of fossilized eggshell. They compared those to proteins coded for in the DNA of living birds and found that they were unlike any in the genomes of modern-day species closely related to the smaller extinct fowl.
The shells, they decided, were most likely from the 500-pound Genyornis. Their conclusion is “pivotal for understanding how Australia’s first people interacted with their new environment,” the paper notes. Yet it also may shed light on an even greater scientific mystery about the disappearance of the planet’s megafauna — the gigantic animals that once roamed the continents.
“It's one of the few science questions that pretty much everybody knows something about,” said Gifford Miller, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado and the senior member of the research team.
The Earth once was traversed by scores of megafauna, including mastodons in North America and armadillo-like Glyptodonts in South America. Then they vanished. Some scientists say climate events wiped them out. Others blame early humans and the hunting that sustained their growing numbers.
Miller is in the second camp, and the ancient, cream-colored eggshell fragments he began gathering in 1992 are key to his conviction. An Australian paleontologist had previously deemed such shell notable for the huge eggs that were its source and hypothesized that only one bird, known by its fossilized bones, was big enough to have laid them.
Miller wanted to determine when the continent’s megafauna menagerie — the flightless Genyornis as well as a 7-foot-tall kangaroo, 23-foot-long reptile and marsupial the size of a pickup truck — had disappeared. He hoped to answer whether humans had overlapped with them and possibly caused their demise.
But dating the death of these and other exotic species had been impossible. Not only are megafauna bones relatively rare there, but carbon-14 dating could only show that the animals had been gone at least 40,000 years.
Eggshells of the kind identified as Genyornis eggs are common, though, and Miller, a geological-dating specialist, realized that durable proteins in the shell could serve as clocks. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, have structures that may be configured with a twist to the left or the right. After living things die, the ratio between the two configurations changes at a predictable rate as part of a process called racemization. Measuring that ratio can reveal how much time has elapsed since death.
To date Miller has gathered about 150,000 shell pieces presumed to be from Genyornis birds and has shown that no egg was laid more recently than 45,000 years ago. Using different methods, other researchers have dated the arrival of people in Australia at no later than around 60,000 years ago. The two time frames signal an overlap of thousands of years between humans and megafauna down under.
In 2016, however, a study directly challenged Miller’s work. A team led by paleontologist Trevor Worthy of Australia’s Flinders University said the shells came not from a Genyornis but from a megapode, a family of stout birds with descendants still found on the continent and on western-Pacific islands. Worthy’s primary argument was that the eggs in question would have been too small for a massive bird like Genyornis. He and two co-authors also asserted that Genyornis eggs would have a thicker shell with more surface texture.
If right, it meant that Miller had spent three decades focused not on one of the largest birds in history — in a futile effort to help investigate an extinction theory — but on one that would barely fill a family bucket of KFC chicken. It was a bona fide scientific debate, though it was also a matter of pride for the American: “I took it as a personal affront if my story all of a sudden isn’t about megafauna anymore [but] some stupid little megapode bird.”
Once again, he turned to molecular techniques to determine where the bird that laid the eggs would be on the tree of life. Establishing that through DNA was not possible; the DNA in the eggshell bits had degraded too much because of their age. Proteins are more durable, and Miller, an Australian molecular biologist and a British biochemist realized they could use them to identify Genyornis.
The trio brought in Beatrice Demarchi, a biomolecular archaeologist, at the University of Turin. She pulverized pieces of shell and analyzed the proteins she extracted in a mass spectrometer, an instrument that sorts molecules by firing them past a powerful magnet. With the machine’s output, she could identify the order in which amino acids had been linked together.
While no Genyornis descendants’ DNA exists — its entire lineage has died out — the genomes of more than 350 modern birds, including one megapode, have recently been catalogued through a collaboration involving the University of Copenhagen, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Rockefeller University and other leading research institutions.
Demarchi and several colleagues compared the amino-acid sequence of the eggshells with sequences inferred from genomes in the database. By then, the team had grown to 14 members from Australia, the United States, several European countries and China. The results, their new paper states, eliminate a megapode as the source.
The protein sequence “is very different from a megapode,” Demarchi said in an interview. “It’s more consistent with Genyornis.”
Worthy is not convinced. He says researchers can’t reliably predict the molecular fingerprint of extinct megapodes based on those alive today, as Miller’s team did. “Thus I do not think they have closed the case,” he noted in an email.
Chris Johnson, an ecologist at the University of Tasmania who wrote a book on Australia’s megafauna, takes a different view. The protein analysis was impressive, he said via email, and such studies “could really change the science of paleontology.”
Still, Johnson is not sure if determining whether a bigger or a smaller bird laid the eggs is so important. “Either way, the implications for the role of people in causing extinction by hunting are the same,” he said.
Miller insists that size matters. He believes the molecular evidence that people killed off a bird as large as the Genyornis has implications for the story of why megafauna went extinct globally.
Though some scientists continue to think that a cold snap about 12,000 years ago exterminated the giants of the northern Hemisphere, the hypothesis that they were hunted to death has much support. Paleontologists in North America have identified sites where early inhabitants butchered mastodons and mammoths, lending credence to that theory.
Miller himself discovered evidence of early Australians pursuing Genyornis: Hundreds of his shell fragments are blackened, with distinct heat spots as if they had been tossed into a campfire after being cooked. An egg burned in a forest fire, an obvious alternative explanation, would look different.
If more primitive peoples on that continent killed the huge animals around them some 45,000 years ago, he reasons, “then it’s even more likely that humans 11,000 years ago could have done the same thing in the Americas.” | 2022-06-21T14:23:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Eggshell fragments linked to huge, extinct bird in Australia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/05/25/bits-an-extinct-birds-eggshells-may-be-clue-why-megafauna-vanished/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/05/25/bits-an-extinct-birds-eggshells-may-be-clue-why-megafauna-vanished/ |
Supreme Court says Maine cannot deny public funds to schools that promote religious instruction
The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington. (Emily Elconin/Reuters)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended a recent streak of victories for religious interests, striking down a Maine tuition program that does not allow public funds to go to schools that promote religious instruction.
The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the majority and the court’s three liberals in dissent.
The case involves an unusual program in a small state that affects only a few thousand students. But it could have greater implications as the more conservative court relaxes the constitutional line between church and state.
Under the program, jurisdictions in rural areas too sparsely populated to support public schools of their own can arrange to have nearby schools teach their school-age children, or the state will pay tuition to parents to send their kids to private schools. But those schools must be nonsectarian, meaning they cannot promote a faith or belief system or teach “through the lens of this faith,” in the words of the state’s department of education.
Roberts said that program could not survive the court’s scrutiny.
“There is nothing neutral about Maine’s program,” he wrote. “The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the dissenters, answered: “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.”
The case, Carson v. Makin, is broadly similar to one from Montana decided by the court last year. In that case, the court ruled that states must allow religious schools to participate in programs that provide scholarships to students attending private schools.
Roberts, writing for the majority in the case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, said a provision of Montana’s Constitution banning aid to schools run by churches ran afoul of the federal Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion by discriminating against religious people and schools.
“A state need not subsidize private education,” he wrote. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
Maine requires rural communities without public secondary schools to arrange for their young residents’ educations in one of two ways. They can sign contracts with schools elsewhere, or they can pay tuition at public or private schools chosen by parents so long as they are, in the words of state law, “a nonsectarian school in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
In opposing Supreme Court review, officials in Maine argued that the schools students attend under the program should mirror the teaching offered at public schools.
The Supreme Court has long held that states may choose to provide aid to religious schools along with other private schools. The question in the cases from Montana and Maine was the opposite one: May states refuse to provide such aid if it is made available to other private schools? | 2022-06-21T14:56:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court says Maine cannot deny public funds to schools that promote religious instruction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/supreme-court-maine-religious-schools/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/supreme-court-maine-religious-schools/ |
What’s Mike Pence’s path back to the White House?
Former vice president Mike Pence speaks about the state of the U.S. economy at an event at the University Club of Chicago, on Monday. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
Mike Pence wants to be president.
Of course, Pence has always wanted to be president, as so many politicians do. It’s viewed as the championship belt of American democracy, the ultimate accomplishment in this competition. That’s not particularly healthy, of course; ideally, the ultimate benefit of public service would be the opportunity to serve the public. But we are none of us naive, so let’s recognize this for what it is.
That motivation is why Pence agreed to be Donald Trump’s running mate. The vice presidency — or even a vice-presidential bid — is a good way to elevate one’s national profile. Pence was cautiously critical of Trump’s positions as the 2016 primaries neared, in keeping with the Republican establishment’s preferred pattern of addressing the insurgent candidate who was expected to collapse at any moment. But then Trump got the nomination and reached out to Pence and there you go.
Even as he signed up for the No. 2 slot, though, Pence was thinking about how to elide the “vice” from his eventual title. When the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped shortly before the 2016 election, Pence reportedly began to selflessly offer his own services as the party nominee. That little hiccup soon resolved, however, and — to broad surprise — Pence ended up one heartbeat away from the brass ring.
Over four years, Pence was quietly loyal to Trump, doing his best to keep all parties happy with him — or, at least, not mad. He campaigned with Trump for reelection but, when that failed, mostly kept his distance from the machinations to seize a second term despite the loss. After the Capitol riot, Pence refused to use the 25th Amendment to oust Trump from office — but also refused to accede to Trump’s half-baked plan to simply reject electoral votes submitted by states his ticket had lost.
And that was it. Five-plus years of sticking by the president collapsed in the face of a demand that Pence put loyalty to Trump over loyalty to the rule of law. For days before Jan. 6, 2021, Trump had put all of the weight of staying in office on Pence’s shoulders; when Pence rejected the idea, Trump cast him out of MAGAland. As recently as last week, Trump disparaged Pence for doing the only thing he could legally do — which was not the thing Trump wanted.
Yet Pence still obviously wants to be president. He’s doing the things that, in the Before Times, signaled that a nationally known candidate was going to throw his hat in the ring: the policy speeches, the trips to primary states, the outreach. In effect, he’s doing what he always did: treating the Trump presidency as perfectly normal and his own position as a normal position for a politician to hold.
Unfortunately for the former vice president, the normalcy ship sailed long ago. The Republican electorate is not one that responds to the old cues in the same way. And a potential Pence candidacy will be colored by Trump regardless of whether the former president runs.
It’s far too early to make many specific calls about the 2024 presidential primary, but we can make some observations about what we see now. There are two broad pools of Republican voters: those who do and those who don’t pine for a Trumpian Republican in the White House. Soon after Trump left office, his pollster Tony Fabrizio broke this out further into five groups, including far-right conspiracy theorists, but for our purposes this yin-yang will work.
Pence’s play has been to retain appeal to both groups. To be the Trump loyalist and representative of the administration that will get nods from Trump boosters and to be the sane Republican anchor in a turbulent world that can appeal to the Trump-skeptical. He wants to be a bridge between the two, the colossus with one foot on each embankment.
The problem is that he probably will get the downsides of both positions, not the upsides.
Republicans skeptical of Trump — about a third of the party, per Fabrizio — probably will have other, less-Trump-adjacent choices. If one of them seems more viable than Pence, that’s where they’ll go.
Trump supporters, meanwhile, aren’t likely to be enthusiastic about Pence for a number of reasons. The first is that Trump himself might run, and why would a Coca-Cola fan choose RC Cola when Coke’s on the menu? The second is that Pence was never an important part of Trumpism any more than the Republican Party was. He was a remora on Trump’s shark. And the third, of course, is that Trump has spent months blaming Pence for his loss.
As the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman put it, Pence wants to frame his dispute with Trump as being all about a one-sided fight in which Trump alone is engaged. This is basically what Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) did as he cruised to his party’s nomination earlier this year. But it’s a lot easier to shrug off Trump when you are an incumbent elected on your own merits than as a potential candidate whose political identity is subsumed by that of the former president.
If Pence’s goal is to be the less erratic, sharper iteration of Trumpism, he’s already getting outplayed. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has the Trumpism-without-Trump lane secured should he choose to run, which he almost certainly will. Things can change; scandals can emerge; voter tastes can shift. But polling from YouGov conducted for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst last month found that DeSantis had a clear second-place advantage among likely primary voters. Most respondents said they’d vote for Trump but a quarter had DeSantis as their first choice. A third of respondents had DeSantis as their second choice — more than had Pence as a choice in their first, second or third slots.
Things change! The primary is a long ways off and a lot can happen, including that Trump might decide not to run. But Pence is not in an enviable position.
He presses forward anyway. After all, things can change. Maybe, come 2024, there will be a sudden demand for a guy who can credibly point to “Trump administration” on his resume but who is also seen as reasonable by big donors and long-serving Republicans. Maybe things will fall into place and he can be the Republican Party nominee — though whether he can win the presidency itself is, of course, another question entirely.
As it turns out, then, Pence’s best hope for becoming president is the same one he had from 2017 to 2021: Wait for something to dramatically change and be in the right place to take advantage of it. | 2022-06-21T14:56:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What’s Mike Pence’s path back to the White House? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/whats-mike-pences-path-back-white-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/whats-mike-pences-path-back-white-house/ |
Uvalde police had rifles, shield 19 minutes after gunman entered, reports say
People visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on June 2, 2022, to pay their respects to the victims killed in a school shooting. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
New reports have emerged indicating police officers arrived at a hallway at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., with rifles and at least one ballistic shield about 19 minutes after a gunman started firing, raising new questions and criticism about how authorities responded to the worst shooting at a U.S. school in almost a decade.
The Austin American-Statesman and the Texas Tribune reported Monday that authorities had reconstructed a timeline from the May 24 mass shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 children, using both body-cam footage from the officers and surveillance video from the school.
The timeline suggests that officers had resources to intervene earlier to stop the shooter. Authorities in Uvalde have been widely criticized for waiting more than an hour before entering the room where gunman Salvador Ramos was holed up.
The timeline will be presented at Tuesday’s special Texas Senate committee meeting on gun violence and school safety. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, will testify in his first public comments since he cast blame on District Police Chief Pete Arredondo for not giving orders sooner to breach the classrooms where the gunman was located.
A reconstructed timeline shows 11 officers who responded to the mass shooting were inside Robb Elementary three minutes after Ramos entered, according to the American-Statesman. Minutes after the gunman entered the school, Arredondo reportedly called a landline at the Uvalde Police Department for help.
“It’s an emergency right now,” he said, the American-Statesman reported. “We have him in the room. He’s got an AR-15. He’s shot a lot. … They need to be outside the building prepared because we don’t have firepower right now.”
Arredondo added that he did not have a radio at the time. The chief told a dispatcher that responding officers “need to be outside of this building prepared.”
“Because we don’t have enough firepower right now,” he said, according to the American-Statesman. “It’s all pistols and he has an AR-15.”
But video obtained by the Texas outlets shows that at least two officers were seen carrying rifles. By 11:52 a.m. on May 24, officers were seen with rifles and at least one ballistic shield, the outlets reported. During this time, Arredondo was coordinating with a SWAT dispatcher to set up a team at a funeral home across the street.
“I need to get one rifle. Hold on,” he said, according to the Tribune. “I’m trying to set him. I’m trying to set him up.”
When one of the officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety arrived 20 minutes after Ramos entered the school, the agent asked whether children were still inside, according to the Tribune.
“If there is, then they just need to go in,” the agent told their colleagues, reported the Tribune.
After another officer said it was “unknown at this time,” the DPS fired back, “Y’all don’t know if there’s kids in there?”
“If there’s kids in there we need to go in there,” the agent said.
The only answer the DPS official received was from another officer on scene, according to the Tribune: “Whoever is in charge will determine that.”
“Well, there’s kids over here,” the agent replied. “So I’m getting kids out.”
As the state looks into the response to the Uvalde shooting, the Justice Department is also reviewing what authorities could have done.
At the Tuesday hearing, lawmakers called for action during an emotional series of opening statements. Among those who urged action was state Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D), whose district represents Uvalde.
Gutierrez fought back tears as he talked about seeing little girls in coffins and hearing “the most gruesome stories from little kids and fourth graders that I dare not say at this time.” The state senator recounted how he “felt like such a coward” by not being able to do anything to help comfort the families waiting to hear about the status of their children.
“Their silence turned into the most awful screams you could imagine,” he said. “These women and their husbands walked to their cars screaming and crying, sounds that are not normal tears, not normal crying.”
Gutierrez joined his Democratic colleagues in calling for “common-sense gun laws” that he told the committee the people of Uvalde are begging for nearly a month after the massacre.
“An 18-year-old shouldn’t be able to go into store like 7-Eleven like he’s buying a Slurpee,” Gutierrez said. “Because that’s what happened.” | 2022-06-21T15:05:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde police in school with rifles, shield 19 minutes after gunman entered, report says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/21/uvalde-shooting-police-response-rifles-hearing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/21/uvalde-shooting-police-response-rifles-hearing/ |
Azad Majumder
Sadiq Naqvi
A flood-affected family waits for help at the marooned Tarabari village, west of Gauhati, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, on June 20. (Anupam Nath/AP)
When the floodwaters came, they swept away everything — furniture, clothes, even drums full of rice. Mainul Haque had never seen anything like it.
“We were not ready for this kind of flooding,” the 28-year-old said. “We could not save anything.”
Haque is a resident of Cholita Bari village in Bangladesh’s Sylhet district, one of the areas hit hardest by devastating monsoon floods that have swallowed villages, washed away bridges, snapped electricity lines and displaced millions.
Home to one-fifth of the world’s population, South Asia is increasingly vulnerable to climate change. While annual monsoon rains are crucial for the agrarian economies of the region, they have become ever more unpredictable. As temperatures rise, the monsoon is now marked by short spells of very heavy rainfall, which can trigger deadly, fast-moving floods.
Authorities delivered relief supplies June 20 to flooded towns and villages after more than 4 million people were marooned in the country, officials said. (Video: Reuters)
Relief workers in Bangladesh estimate that at least 40 people have died in monsoon-related events, including lightning strikes and landslides, and the toll is expected to rise. Across the border in northeastern India, authorities in Assam and Meghalaya said at least 115 people have been killed.
The two countries have pressed their militaries into action for rescue and relief work and set up shelters for the displaced. Images from local media in Bangladesh show people walking in waist-deep water, clutching a few belongings in plastic bags held above their heads. Some moved to safety in narrow wooden boats. In Assam, people marooned in flooded homes said they were without food and drinking water.
Data from the Indian Meteorological Department shows how drastically the weather is changing. In the first three weeks of June, the state of Assam received 109 percent more rain than normal; neighboring Meghalaya saw nearly three times its average amount of precipitation. The town of Mawsynram recorded about 40 inches of rainfall in 24 hours on June 17, surpassing the previous high, observed in 1966.
“The densely populated South Asia is the most vulnerable to climate change due to its proximity to the rapidly warming Indian Ocean on its south and the rapidly melting glaciers on its north,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. Koll noted that there has been an intensification of heat waves, cyclones, extreme rains and sea level rise in recent years.
At stake are the lives of hundreds of millions of some of the poorest people in the world.
Dewan Uddus Choudhury, a 44-year-old farmer in Assam’s Barpeta district, is stranded in his partially submerged home with his wife and daughter. Food is running low, and no government help has reached them.
“We have not been able to get out of our house,” Choudhury said. “There is six to eight feet of water outside.”
In another part of the state, two policemen engaged in rescue efforts were washed away in the floodwaters, local media reported. Damage to a major highway in the region has interrupted road travel to and from the state of Tripura and halted the delivery of essentials.
In northeastern Bangladesh, the districts of Sylhet and Sunamganj have borne the brunt of the flooding.
Farid Uddin Ahmed, a government worker, traveled 13 hours — via bus, auto rickshaw, truck, on foot and finally by boat — to reach his parents’ flooded home in Sunamganj district. The journey usually takes half that time.
“I had to risk my life to reach my village,” Ahmed said. “There was no electricity. I found at least one and a half feet of water in the house.”
Residents of Companiganj in Sylhet district said they have been without power for five days.
Poor connectivity and communication snags are preventing aid from reaching those who need it most, and relief workers say the widespread flooding has made it difficult for them to store rations for distribution.
“In many affected areas, the only means of mobility is still happening by boats, and those, too, are found to be scarce in the current situation,” said Farah Kabir, the country head of ActionAid in Bangladesh.
Beyond the immediate need for food and safe drinking water, people also need urgent access to health care, said Kabir, citing the risk of “waterborne diseases.”
Although the monsoon floods are a recurring problem, experts say governments are often slow to act, responding only after areas are underwater. Authorities need to develop better forecasting mechanisms, build embankments and ensure that people are informed in time, said Partha Jyoti Das, who heads the water and climate division at Aaranyak, a local NGO in Assam.
Ultimately, he said, short-term measures will not be enough. The government needs to “prepare a long-term action plan” for mitigating floods and disasters, allowing people to “gain resilience and coexist with riverine hazards in a sustainable way.”
Majumder reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Naqvi from Guwahati, India. | 2022-06-21T15:22:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Heavy rainfall and floods wreak havoc in Bangladesh and India - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/bangladesh-india-assam-meghalaya-floods/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/bangladesh-india-assam-meghalaya-floods/ |
Britain’s trains grind to a halt in biggest rail strike in 30 years
Union Jack flags and signs are seen outside the Oxford Circus station on the first day of a national rail strike, in London, June 21, 2022. (John Sibley/Reuters)
LONDON — As tens of thousands of train workers went on strike Tuesday in the biggest such action in three decades, the British commute turned into slog for millions of people.
With trains idled across England, Scotland and Wales, travelers packed the highways, sought out scarce taxis and looked for buses. A lot of Britons took to rental bicycles.
With 80 percent of trains canceled and 40,000 workers out on strike, some lines were completely shut down, and usually bustling central stations were nearly empty.
The London Underground — also known as “the Tube” — was also mostly closed because of another strike.
Tuesday’s action was the first of three rail strikes planned this week. More misery is scheduled for Thursday and Saturday.
The maintenance crews, ticket takers and conductors — represented by the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union — reached an impasse with their bosses at Network Rail in a fight over pay, pensions, job security and working conditions.
Network Rail said it was “profoundly sorry” for the disruption. Negotiations continue, the union says.
British union leaders are threatening a “summer of discontent,” as more workers could go on strike to demand pay increases to cope with surging inflation and rising costs of living.
Unions representing bus drivers, teachers, nursing home workers, trash collectors, doctors, nurses, mail carriers and airport baggage handlers may join future strikes.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in public remarks to his cabinet Tuesday, condemned the strikers for causing “disruption and inconvenience up and down the country, making it more difficult for people to get to work, risking people’s health appointments and making it challenging for kids to sit exams.”
Johnson called the strikes “wrong and unnecessary.” He said the government spent $20 billion during the pandemic to keep the railways operating and urged “union bosses” find a compromise with the railway companies and end the strike. | 2022-06-21T15:22:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain’s trains grind to a halt in biggest rail strike in 30 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/britain-rail-strike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/britain-rail-strike/ |
Netanyahu prepares for a comeback in Israel’s next elections
Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a rally held by right-wing Israelis in Jerusalem on April 6, 2022. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
TEL AVIV — The announcement of the Israeli governing coalition’s collapse and the preparations for a fifth election in less than four years was met with exasperation by many Israelis. But the news came as a resounding victory for Benjamin Netanyahu, who, over the past year as the head of the opposition, has been preparing for his own comeback.
It is not immediately clear how that would happen, however, since polls show most Israelis will continue to vote the way they have in the past few elections, producing a polarized, deadlocked Knesset and fragile coalition governments.
Netanyahu, who led Israel for much of the past 20 years, seems to be betting on breaking the political stalemate by galvanizing his right-wing base and painting his opponents as a threat to society.
Israel’s leader to dissolve Knesset, triggering new elections
“A government that depended on terror supporters, which abandoned the personal security of the citizens of Israel, that raised the cost of living to unheard-of heights, that imposed unnecessary taxes, that endangered our Jewish entity. This government is going home,” Netanyahu said Monday in a video posted on Twitter. “My friends and I will form a government … that, above all, will return the national pride to the citizens of Israel.”
The coalition’s collapse is in large part due to Netanyahu’s efforts to encourage coalition members uncomfortable with its ideological diversity to jump ship.
“From Day One, Netanyahu sought to take down the government, and focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the issues related to the Arabs in Israel,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst. “It was low-hanging fruit.”
A Knesset committee voted unanimously Tuesday to hold the first reading of the vote to dissolve itself Wednesday, instead of next week, as was originally planned, to foil efforts by Netanyahu to form a last-ditch alternative government.
At 72, after a year and one week spent in the Knesset’s opposition hall and in the Jerusalem District Court, where he is the subject of an ongoing corruption trial, Netanyahu’s determination to reclaim his political throne appears to be fiercer than ever.
“This is the big show, and no one does the big show like Netanyahu,” said Aviv Bushinsky, a former adviser to Netanyahu.
Michael Maimon, a longtime Netanyahu voter and a former army colleague of Netanyahu’s from the 1960s, said he expects the vote to be different from the past four times. The “nightmare” of the outgoing government has mobilized Netanyahu’s base, some 300,000 of whom did not go out to vote in the last elections as a result of exhaustion over the extended cycle of political gridlock.
Netanyahu has reliably won the most votes in each election but struggled to cobble together the 61 seats needed to control the 120-seat Knesset.
“Bibi knows that he is the most popular candidate and that the support for him is better now than it was in the past few years,” said Maimon. “He’s eager to get back in.”
A survey by the Israeli radio station 103FM found that a Netanyahu-led bloc — including his right-wing Likud, and the Zionist and ultra-Orthodox parties — would win the highest number of seats in fresh elections, although still two short of a majority — a consistent problem of the past several coalition attempts.
In 2021, Netanyahu failed to build a coalition and was compelled to pass the mandate to the centrist Yair Lapid, who was head of the second-largest party, which then allied with right-wing Naftali Bennett in a power-sharing agreement.
The Bennett-Lapid coalition replaced Netanyahu last June with the backing of a razor-thin coalition of eight ideologically divergent parties, united solely by a desire to oust Netanyahu.
Part of the reason Netanyahu failed to form a coalition in 2021 was that he had alienated so many of his erstwhile allies on the right — the same people now vowing to prevent his comeback.
“I won’t be bringing Bibi back. All of the party members are with me. No one will succumb to inducements [to defect to Likud],” Gideon Saar, Justice Minister and a former Likud party veteran, told Army Radio on Tuesday.
Netanyahu will try to shave off those from Bennett’s religious-Zionist base who have expressed discomfort with the coalition’s inclusion of an Arab-Islamist party. Netanyahu has long claimed its inclusion compromised Israel’s Jewish character and its security — though he once wooed the party himself.
“Peace and security must be restored to the citizens of Israel and to the streets of our cities. Unfortunately, we all see that a government dependent on the Islamic Movement is unable to do so,” said Netanyahu after visiting the relatives of one of the Israelis killed in a shooting in March.
With the rush toward elections, the Arab community in Israel is bracing for a Netanyahu campaign that will vilify Arabs, said Yousef Jabareen, a former Knesset member with the Arab-Israeli left-wing Hadash party.
Netanyahu has already cast the Palestinian citizens of Israel as a danger in past elections, warning that they were “heading to the polling stations in droves.”
“We are seriously concerned that Arab politicians and Arab citizens will be the subject of delegitimization,” said Jabareen. “We know that incitement against the Arab community is integral to Netanyahu’s process, in that it tries to attract more right-wing voters while also to try to keep Arab voters out of the game.” | 2022-06-21T15:23:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Netanyahu prepares for a comeback as Israel heads into new elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/israel-netanyahu-elections-comeback/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/israel-netanyahu-elections-comeback/ |
‘Official Competition’ skewers the pretensions of cinema, hilariously
Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez star in a sly satire of moviemaking
From left, Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Oscar Martínez in “Official Competition.” (AccuSoft Inc./IFC Films)
The ridiculous yet often revered art of make-believe peculiar to the business of moviemaking is somehow simultaneously skewered and held up in admiring regard in “Official Competition,” a sly satire of cinema that also manages to be a showcase for the comedic chops of its stars: Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez. Directed by the Argentine duo Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, from a screenplay co-written with Duprat’s brother Andrés Duprat, the film centers on the fraught dynamic between two fictional actors, Banderas’s Félix Rivero, a preening global movie star with a contract rider demanding a gluten-free macrobiotic diet, and Martínez’s Iván Torres, an elitist of another sort. A gray eminence of the avant-garde theater world, Iván disdains the bourgeois sensibilities of Félix’s fans and the kind of work he does to entertain them.
This odd couple has been brought together by Cruz’s Lola Cuevas, an acclaimed art-house filmmaker who, we’re told early on — and in an understatement — is a bit “strange.”
Lola greets her two leading men with a three-inch-thick binder of shooting notes, composed of unintelligible scribbling, Polaroids of naked body parts and other documents that look like they were rescued from the trash. The project — Lola’s adaptation of a Nobel Prize-winning novel called “Rivalry,” about two warring brothers, one of whom, in an eruption of melodrama, has caused the car accident that killed their parents — is being paid for by a pharma-billionaire named Humberto Suárez (José Luis Gómez). Humberto, on the eve of his 80th birthday, has decided that he wants his legacy to take the form of something more memorable than, say, a bridge.
That joke, which implies a blissful ignorance of filmdom’s ephemerality — quick: What took the Palme d’Or at Cannes last month? — is only the first of many in a film that is at once cerebral and sublimely silly. Humberto has also engineered it so that his daughter (Irene Escolar) will star in the film.
Not a single frame of the finished film is ever shown, as “Official Competition” takes place almost entirely during the rehearsal process (but honestly, it’s a movie I wouldn’t mind seeing).
These creative practice sessions are in large part a form of ego therapy, as Lola subjects Félix and Iván to increasingly inappropriate “exercises” meant to connect them more deeply with their characters and help them to detach from their public personae. One such ritual consists of forcing the actors to read their lines while seated beneath a massive boulder, precariously suspended from a crane. (The scene’s payoff is dumb but delicious.) Another involves saran-wrapping her actors together to immobilize them while she feeds their acting statuettes and honors — along with her own — into a whirring mechanical grinder, as a way to break down their need for approval.
The parody of self-serious thespianism (and, arguably, emotional abuse in the service of art) is spot on. At the same time, “Official Competition” shows us three actors performing precisely the kind of magical illusion the film purports to be all about puncturing. There are several layers involved in achieving this trick: Banderas and Martínez aren’t just playing actors who are themselves playing characters. At one point, both Félix and Iván attempt to “play” each other, beguiling their castmate (and Lola) in an effort to demonstrate who’s the “better” artist.
That is to say, who’s the better liar.
It’s a question that gets pushed to an absurd — and borderline alarming — extreme in a climax that is both hilarious and fiendishly dark.
The pretentiousness of acting is a fun thing to lampoon, and “Official Competition” does it with surgical precision. But it’s the pretense that holds the art form’s mesmerizing power. Acting isn’t really about lying at all, one character notes, but telling the truth. You have to believe what you’re saying if you want the audience to.
In the end, the rivalry of “Official Competition” ends in a kind of draw in which no one wins. No one, that is, except the audience, for whom its nimble sleight of hand is a fiendishly entertaining tour de force.
R. At area theaters. Contains strong language, some nudity, brief violence and smoking. In Spanish with subtitles. 114 minutes. | 2022-06-21T15:44:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Official Competition' pokes fun at moviemaking but is also a little bit in love with it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/06/21/official-competition-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/06/21/official-competition-movie-review/ |
Beyoncé’s ‘Break My Soul’ wants you to move your body
The first single from her forthcoming album, ‘Renaissance,’ is here
Beyoncé, seen here at the 2021 Grammy Awards, will release her new album, “Renaissance” on July 29. On June 20, she released a new single, “Break My Soul.” (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
In the precious infancy of “Break My Soul,” the new single that Beyoncé released Monday night, consider checking your impulses. Try not to think of this song as a hype morsel, or a discourse starter, or an aesthetic foreshadowing. It’s true, Beyoncé has a blockbuster album, “Renaissance,” due out later this summer, but a song is not a movie trailer, and while this one already feels made for the ages, it’ll never be this new again.
Maybe try not to think about anything at all. Instead, let your body notice every righteous detail: That impeccable house music pulse. That luscious sample from the old Robin S song, “Show Me Love.” Beyoncé’s curlicue la-las that rise over the intro like steam. That incredible refrain — “You won’t break my soul” — sung as if she’s reading her lyrics off slabs of chiseled marble. That gospel choir that appears during the song’s roof-burning finale, so expertly mixed, like they’re singing to us from a parallel dimension, or a memory, or a dream. If you’re not dancing yet, go back to the beginning of this paragraph and try again.
Obviously, dancing and thinking are not mutually exclusive activities. And as citizens of the internet, we’ve learned how to tweet and chew gum at the same time, too. But there will be plenty of time for hyping and discoursing this summer. If you care about music, Beyoncé has already signed a lease somewhere inside your brain that lasts for the rest of your life. Feeling this song with your body for the first time only happens once. | 2022-06-21T15:44:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Beyoncé's "Break My Soul" will move your body - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/21/beyonce-break-my-soul-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/06/21/beyonce-break-my-soul-review/ |
Photographers captured aurora-like scenes streaking across the Milky Way
Christopher Hoffman captured a red glow in the sky on Saturday night in St. Mary's County in Maryland, around the time of a SpaceX launch. (Christopher Hoffman)
The Milky Way was cast in an eerie shade of red on Saturday night, bewildering sky watchers across the Mid-Atlantic.
Only a lucky few captured the spectacle on camera, and it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. Long-exposure photographs revealed the scarlet streak, which lasted for only minutes around 12:30 a.m. Sunday.
Many think the red glow was tied to the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which occurred around the same time. The glow was photographed in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio.
How a rather mundane space storm knocked out 40 SpaceX satellites
“At first I thought maybe a thin cloud but not the case,” Christopher Hoffman, who photographed the scene in St. Mary’s County, Md., said in an email. “After research I came across a article that said spaceX launch Falcon 9 was launched at 12:27 a.m.”
David Johnston, who photographed the scene from Dolly Sods Wilderness in eastern West Virginia, posted a detailed analysis in the Dolly Sods Facebook group also linking the glow to the SpaceX rocket.
“I was shooting the Milky Way behind some silhouetted rocks when suddenly one of my images had this prominent red blob right in front of the core, that had not been there in the previous image 3 minutes before,” Johnston wrote in his Facebook post. “I was really annoyed because it ruined my picture, but I figured it would go away.”
Instead, Johnston said, it grew and extended to cover a large part of the southeastern sky. “I had no idea what this was and it was kind of freaking me out,” he wrote. He also later concluded that the glow was linked to the SpaceX rocket, because of the launch timing.
Around the same time that Johnston and Hoffman photographed the glow, David Cortner of Rutherford College captured what he described as “rocket-powered aurora” in western North Carolina, according to SpaceWeather.com.
Space physicist Carlos Martinis said the photographers’ hunches are probably correct.
He said the red blob was related to the engine burn of the Falcon 9′s second stage, which typically starts around three minutes after liftoff and lasts around six minutes. The second-stage burning usually occurs from 68 to 310 miles high, where positive oxygen ions are present in the atmosphere. These oxygen ions can combine with other ambient molecules and form molecular O2+, N2+, and NO+ ions, which react with electrons and produce a red glow. During rocket engine burns, the exhaust gases form the molecular ions at rates 100 to 1,000 times as fast as normal reactions — producing a more pronounced red glow.
“These days cameras became very sensitive and can capture things that before were possible only with scientific instruments,” Martinis, a professor at Boston University, said in an email. Because of diffusion, he said, the blob can expand to more than 60 degrees of the sky, as seen in the photos from Saturday.
Red glows have been observed with past rocket launches, including the launch of a Titan rocket in 2005. In general, such disturbances in the ionosphere do not harm humans but can affect GPS signals and disrupt aircraft navigation. Typically, however, these events and effects can be predicted in advance as launch dates, times and trajectories are known ahead of time.
Some, however, think SpaceX may not be the source. Tamitha Skov, a space weather expert, believes it was probably an actual aurora borealis.
“It is highly likely this is what we often call ‘sub-visual’ aurora,” she wrote in an email. “During this time we were at active conditions (Kp 4) due to some fast solar wind hitting Earth. Considering this is Maryland, which is at mid-latitudes, it doesnt surprise me that this was captured on camera, but not visible to the naked eye.”
She continued, “A student of mine saw the SpaceX rocket launch at a similar time and even in the camera, the scattered light from the rocket exhaust remained a localized white plume [see tweet below], so I really do not think the above phenomenon is a result of the SpaceX launch, but simply another dazzling reminder of how far south aurora really does occur, if we are willing to do what it takes to look for it!”
SpaceWeather.com, however, wrote that it was unlikely that there was enough geomagnetic activity from the sun for auroras. | 2022-06-21T15:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SpaceX launch may have cast invisible red glow over night sky - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/21/spacex-red-glow-mystery-aurora/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/21/spacex-red-glow-mystery-aurora/ |
The FDA is expected to say it will work on a proposal to lower nicotine to minimally or nonaddictive levels
A push to make cigarettes less addictive aims to drastically reduce deaths linked to smoking. (Michaela Rehle/Reuters)
The Biden administration is expected as soon as Tuesday to announce it intends to issue a rule requiring tobacco companies to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes sold in the United States to minimally or nonaddictive levels, according to an individual familiar with the situation.
The effort, if successful, could have an unprecedented effect in slashing smoking-related deaths and threaten a politically powerful industry.
The initiative is expected to be unveiled as part of the administration’s “unified agenda,” a compilation of planned federal regulatory actions released twice a year, according to the individual with knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not have authorization to discuss the issue.
The FDA has supported reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes for years but has never secured the necessary upper-level support, including from the Obama White House. The Trump administration’s first FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, said he wanted to lower nicotine levels as part of a broader tobacco policy, and the agency took an early step in 2018 by publishing an information-gathering notice. But the idea never had full-throated White House backing and was shelved after Gottlieb left the administration in spring 2019.
Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an antismoking group, said slashing nicotine levels “would produce the greatest drop in cancer rates and make the biggest difference” of any public health measure under discussion by the administration.
An agency-funded study published in 2018 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that lowering nicotine levels could save more than 8 million lives by the end of the century. The number probably is a little lower now because the percentage of adult smokers has declined in recent years from the 15 percent rate used in the study to about 12 to 13 percent. | 2022-06-21T15:53:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden administration is expected to move to cut nicotine in cigarettes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/21/nicotine-cigarettes-biden-administration-cut/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/21/nicotine-cigarettes-biden-administration-cut/ |
Fani Willis, district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., talks with a member of her team during proceedings on May 2 to seat a special purpose grand jury to look into the efforts of Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn the results of the 2020 election. (Ben Gray/AP)
Many Republicans and mainstream media commentators have intoned that the House Jan. 6 committee’s hearings wouldn’t draw ratings or change voters’ minds. That was wrong. In fact, the evidence presented thus far has been far more impactful than the punditocracy predicted.
The first hearing, shown in prime time, generated close to 20 million viewers. The next, during midmorning, attracted 11 million. But even that misses the true impact.
The hearings have dominated front pages and figured prominently in network and cable TV news coverage. People are discussing them widely on social media. The question is no longer about Donald Trump’s role in the attempted coup (there is no doubt his fingerprints are all over it); instead, the country is avidly debating whether there is sufficient evidence of Trump’s corrupt intent to prosecute him for it.
One poll from Democratic firm Navigator Research found that “the House investigation is garnering attention from the public, with 63 percent of respondents saying they have heard ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ about the hearings." Even more telling: “An increasing number of Americans believe that it is important to uncover the truth behind the attempted coup; respondents said that the hearings were important by a 15-point margin, up five points from April.” That increase is largely driven by independents, 45 percent of whom now say the investigation is important, compared with 26 percent who say the opposite.
There is also some anecdotal evidence that the hearings are getting through even among some Republicans. Retiring Michigan Rep. Fred Upton had this exchange with Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union”:
BASH: Do you think the case the Jan. 6 Committee is presenting is resonating with moderate Republican voters and independents?
UPTON: Yes, I think so.
I think the overriding issue certainly is the economy and gas prices. But I think there's been real interest in what's going on. You have got, obviously, your different factions that are not going to turn it on and watch. They made their decision some time ago.
But, yes, I think that it’s had an impact on voters across the country. And we will see how this thing plays out. The committee has been very careful not to divulge any details in advance of their hearings.
As the hearings continue this week and beyond, the country will learn even more about Trump’s involvement. Committee member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday suggested that more evidence and “tips” are coming in. That’s a critical benefit of public hearings: Those sitting on the fence might feel more comfortable coming forward. Other witnesses might not have realized the importance of information they’ve had all along.
In other words, the amount and value of evidence that Trump was at the center of the coup plot will only continue to build. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), another committee member, recently suggested there is evidence that Trump was directly involved in the scheme to come up with alternative slates of electors.
The serious tenor of the coverage and widespread interest in the evidence have several consequences. The first is that it might influence critical prosecutors, such as Fani Willis in Fulton County, Ga. She will no doubt be avidly watching Tuesday’s testimony from two Georgia state officials regarding the efforts of Trump and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to pressure election officials to “find” just enough votes to flip the state. And depending on the testimony of other witnesses such as Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives, other state investigations might be possible.
Second, the committee has already heightened interest in another promising line of inquiry: Trump’s alleged scheme to raise money for his campaign’s election lawsuits through what the committee says is a nonexistent fund. Committee member Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) explained that “the average donation was under $20” and that “these were donors who were not rich, but they responded to his appeals, which were fraudulent. And I don’t think that’s right.” Whether the alleged scam raises criminal or civil liability will no doubt be the subject of vigorous investigation among state prosecutors, state attorneys general and class-action lawyers. Without the hearings, it’s doubtful that ever would have occurred.
Third, in the event the Justice Department decides not to prosecute Trump and his closest cronies, Attorney General Merrick Garland will be under tremendous pressure to justify why the mound of evidence is not enough. Garland has vowed to ignore all politics, and his decision will inevitably involve whether he thinks a jury can find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If anything, public expectations might be shifting such that a refusal to prosecute would seem shocking to most Americans.
In sum, the hearings are already having a palpable impact on the public’s perception of Trump and on state officials as they contemplate their next steps. In the end, the public might not be surprised if they lead to multiple actions against the former president and his closest aides. | 2022-06-21T15:54:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Expectations about prosecuting Trump may be shifting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/21/jan-6-hearings-expectations-about-prosecuting-trump-may-be-shifting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/21/jan-6-hearings-expectations-about-prosecuting-trump-may-be-shifting/ |
“I don’t get the food I used to get,” Ghen said. “I'm more careful than ever.”
But now Lester says she is back to scrambling to keep her bank balance above the $100 minimum. A day-care provider, Lester has cut back on buying healthy food at the grocery store and stopped purchasing organic food. She is also trying to eat less overall. She is unsure if she can continue the afford the treatment for her back. “I’m feeling the anxiety a lot now,” she said. “What if something breaks? I really don’t have anything in my bank account.”
With her kids’ toys scattered on the carpet, Johnson looked out the window of her apartment — where the rent just increased by from $325 to $500 per month — and remembered her feeling when the stimulus payments arrived last year. She is pregnant, and is not sure where she will live when she gives birth again next year. | 2022-06-21T15:55:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inflation, end of covid aid spark nostalgia for pandemic economy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/06/21/inflation-covid-aid-economy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/06/21/inflation-covid-aid-economy/ |
Student arrested with gun at Prince George’s middle school, police say
A 13-year-old boy was arrested Tuesday after he took a loaded handgun to a middle school in Prince George’s County, Md., according to police and a school district spokeswoman.
The incident occurred at Isaac J. Gourdine Middle School in Fort Washington, where officers responded to a report of a student with a gun about 8:15 a.m., police said. They said officers found the student in a classroom and took him into custody without incident after finding the weapon in his waistband. No one was injured.
The school was on lockdown for about 90 minutes starting at 8:15 a.m., schools spokeswoman Meghan Gebreselassie said. Authorities did not identify the boy because he is a juvenile. They said charges against him were pending.
Some students saw the student with the gun and alerted school staff members, Gebreselassie said.
The firearm was a “ghost gun” without a serial number, police said. Such weapons are often assembled from kits or are 3D-printed from instructions purchased on the internet or at gun shows. The origins of such guns are typically difficult or impossible to trace.
Nicole Asbury contributed to this report. | 2022-06-21T16:40:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Student at Isaac J. Gourdine Middle School arrested with gun - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/21/maryland-student-gun-middle-school/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/21/maryland-student-gun-middle-school/ |
Two Jesuit priests killed in Mexican area torn by drug violence
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gestures during a news conference at the National Palace in Mexico City on June 20. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
MEXICO CITY — Gunmen burst into a Catholic church in northern Mexico on Monday in pursuit of a man trying to flee to safety, murdering him and two Jesuit priests who happened to be there, officials said. The killings shocked even Mexicans accustomed to high levels of violence.
The incident occurred in the Tarahumara mountains of Chihuahua state. The largely Indigenous region has been penetrated in recent years by drug traffickers who cultivate poppies for heroin production and carry out illegal logging.
The Jesuits said in a statement that the Rev. Javier Campos Morales and Rev. Joaquín César Mora Salazar were killed in the church in the town of Cerocahui. The religious order demanded justice and the return of the bodies of the Mexican priests, which were removed by the armed men. The third victim has not been identified.
The slayings were not an isolated event, the Jesuits said. “The Sierra Tarahumara, like many other regions of the country, suffers violence and neglect,” their statement read. “Every day men and women are arbitrarily slain, just like our brothers.”
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his morning news conference that armed men rushed into the church chasing another person. “They killed him, then the priests emerged, and it seems they were killed too,” he said. He added that authorities had information on the identity of the gunmen, but didn’t provide detail.
The government of Chihuahua state said the priests appeared to be “victims of circumstance.”
Hundreds of Indigenous families have been forced to flee their homes in the Tarahumara mountains in recent years, part of a growing crisis of displacement in Mexico as organized-crime groups expand their territorial control. About 30 Indigenous leaders have been killed in the region in the past two decades, according to Mexican news reports.
The Jesuits are known in Mexico for their universities and their programs to help poor and violence-plagued communities. “The Jesuits of Mexico will not be silent about the reality that lacerates our society,” their statement said. “We will remain present, working on our mission of justice, reconciliation and peace.” | 2022-06-21T16:53:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two Jesuit priests killed in Mexican area torn by drug violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/mexico-priests-killed-chihuahua-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/21/mexico-priests-killed-chihuahua-violence/ |
(Washington Post illustration; Photo by Jabin Botsford for The Washington Post)
In a recent speaking engagement, former president Donald Trump told some small falsehoods about how CNN these days is handling “the big lie.”
“Did you see what happened? They came out with a strong statement that they are prohibited, totally prohibited, from using the term ‘the big lie.’ They are not allowed to use it anymore,” Trump said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference Friday in Nashville. “And you know why? Because they know that ‘the big lie’ is actually ‘the big lie in reverse,’ that they have great liability,” said Trump.
That’s right, in talking about “the big lie,” Trump spread even more distortions.
Recently installed CNN Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Licht expressed a “preference” that CNN anchors stop using the term “big lie” when referring to Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won in a clean electoral college victory. There is, however, no prohibition on the usage, as Trump claimed.
By saying that “the big lie” is the “big lie in reverse,” Trump appeared to suggest that his claims of a stolen election have been validated. In fact, no evidence has emerged to support his position after a year and a half.
Contrary to Trump’s assertion about “great liability,” there is no legal exposure for CNN or other news organizations when they characterize Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results as “the big lie.” Those efforts, after all, were a bundle of falsehoods assembled to overturn U.S. democracy. Truthful information disseminated by the news media about matters of public importance carry the highest legal of protection under the First Amendment.
The only thing remotely accurate about Trump’s remarks was that CNN is making some changes to how it presents the news. Licht, who previously was executive producer of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show on CBS, took over the network reins in May following completion of the merger between Discovery and Warner Media. He has taken steps to curb CNN’s fast-twitch impulses under former president Jeff Zucker, who tried to squeeze every possible second of airtime out of every national controversy to come along.
As Axios puts it, the new leadership team (Licht and Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav) wants to curb “partisan programming” in favor of “traditional journalism.” Part of the formula involves more sparing use of “breaking news” banners on the TV screen, the better to avoid tricking viewers into thinking that something dramatic has happened every 15 minutes.
Curtailing recitations of “the big lie” on CNN air makes some sense. For one thing, the term has been traced to Hitler, who wrote that people were more apt to “fall victims to the big lie than the small lie.” One of Hitler’s own big lies argued that the Jews “exposed the loyal and true German population to catastrophic collapse,” as Zachary Jonathan Jacobson wrote in The Post in 2018.
In light of that provenance, perhaps a less loaded term would be more appropriate for a CNN that’s trying to steer right down the middle of the American political divide? As Mediaite reported last week, Licht fielded a question on that matter at a recent meeting. The new CNN boss said he preferred an approach that didn’t sound like Democratic Party “branding,” according to a source. He also said a more precise formulation would be helpful, though he made clear that this wasn’t a fiat. “Trump’s election lie” or “election lies,” he said, would be good alternatives, according to the source.
But neither of those formulations is a suitable replacement. If you’ll recall, Trump lied about the popular vote outcome in the 2016 presidential election, which he won via the electoral college. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump proclaimed on Twitter in November 2016, alleging voter fraud for which there also is zero evidence.
The point being, “Trump election lies” could well apply to 2016 or 2020 — or both. That’s why “the big lie” does so much work: It’s short, elegant and descriptive, encompassing the disinformation campaign surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Maybe that’s why CNN has used the term “big lie” so frequently since the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. It has been mentioned in nearly 3,500 pieces of content, according to Nexis — that is, in televised segments and written pieces on CNN.com. It is sometimes mentioned several times in the same segment. As FoxNews.com’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Nikolas Lanum pointed out, CNN anchors continued using “big lie” even after Licht’s preference spilled into the public realm earlier this month.
Good thing! Honesty and clarity demand that they keep it up.
Last November, John Malone — a Discovery board member and mentor to Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive Zaslav — said of the network, “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.” That assessment is doubtless linked to CNN’s coverage of the Trump years, which was a flood-the-zone extravaganza that highlighted every baffling suggestion and eructation of the 45th president. The Zuckerian approach did occasionally misfire, with live coverage of Trump rallies, credulous reporting on the Steele dossier, other embarrassments, and a general surfeit of commentary and analysis.
Give it this much, however: The CNN all-hands presentation was premised on the idea that Trump posed a “truth emergency,” a novel threat to American democracy. And know what? He did. | 2022-06-21T17:07:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump lies about CNN's posture on the 'big lie' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/21/trump-cnn-big-lie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/21/trump-cnn-big-lie/ |
Biden’s Risky Trip to the Mideast Is Also Pointless
President Joe Biden has a politically risky itinerary for his scheduled trip to Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia in mid-July. The question is, why he is doing this?
The tour is scheduled to begin in Jerusalem, where the president plans “to meet with Israelis leaders to discuss security, prosperity and increasing integration into the great region.” All worthy topics, but not quite in sync with the moment.
On Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced his resignation. According to the US embassy, Biden’s visit is still on. When he arrives in Jerusalem, he will find a caretaker prime minister, Yair Lapid, and a government incapable of making major moves or decisions. Elections are scheduled for late October or early November. Biden will also meet with the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who polls say is most likely to lead the next government.
His visit to the West Bank, where he plans to meet the head of the Palestinian Authority, is a controversy waiting to happen. No American president has ever visited the contested area before. The break from diplomatic precedent will be welcomed by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
But the battle here is for the future, and there is no reason to suppose that a summer chat between 87-year-old Mahmoud Abbas and the 79-year-old Biden will make much of a difference in the contours of the Holy Land.
Irrelevance abroad won’t prevent the president’s visit to the West Bank from becoming a talking point in America, with midterm congressional elections coming in November. Supporters and critics of Israel will argue over the departure from protocol. Biden may have concluded that this could be advantageous to his party.
I wouldn’t presume to argue politics with the president, but most public opinion polls show the Democrats are facing a landslide defeat in the House for reasons that have nothing to do with the West Bank or the moribund “peace process,” now going on for more than 55 years.
The last stop on the president’s tour, in Saudi Arabia, is the one most likely to matter. Or maybe matter too much.
According to the White House, Biden will be meeting the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council and additional Arab leaders from Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. The Saudi king, Salman Bin Abdulaziz, will chair the gathering. The name of his son, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, was intentionally omitted from the announcement.
The White House notes that Saudi Arabia “has been a strategic partner of the United States for nearly eight decades.” That is mostly true, but it requires an asterisk when it comes to the Biden administration.
In 2018, Saudi agents in Istanbul carried out the lurid assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a longtime Saudi journalist turned Washington Post columnist. Khashoggi had many friends in the US capital, and his murder became a cause celebre.
In his presidential campaign, Biden accused the crown prince of ordering the murder. MBS, as he is known, is the kingdom’s defense minister, heir to the throne of his 86-year-old father and the current power behind it. Not incidentally, he was regarded as a close ally of Donald Trump’s White House.
Biden vowed that, if elected, Saudi Arabia would pay a terrible price for murdering Khashoggi. He said he would end America’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia and turn it into an “international pariah.”
But it was a pledge he couldn’t keep. The kingdom, whatever its sins and flaws, is too big, too energy-rich and too widely allied to be isolated and turned into a pariah by presidential fiat. (Biden is now discovering that the same is true of Russia.)
The White House announcement of the meeting in Riyadh was a smorgasbord of bland offerings: Support the truce in Yemen, regional economic and security cooperation, infrastructure and climate initiatives; deter Iran, and advance human rights. Biden’s actual motive is to persuade the Saudis to pump enough oil to lower gas prices in the US before November. This will not happen without the acquiescence of Mohammed Bin Salman.
The Saudi royal family is famous for its hospitality. MBS will not want a public scene, especially with his father present. Biden’s climb-down is already being choreographed.
Three days after the official American agenda was announced, he amended it. “I’m not going to meet with MBS,” he told reporters. “I’m going to an international meeting, and he’s going to be part of it.”
Sure. Maybe the two men will bump into one another at the royal palace, shake hands and say “no hard feelings.” More likely, the sulha will be accomplished in private. No matter, everyone will be aware that Biden, the notional leader of the free world, came to the meeting as the supplicant of a prince young enough to be his grandson.
Biden’s trip to the Middle East is still three weeks off. There is no one to talk to in the Holy Land. There is no one he wants to talk to at the summit. He should find a way to make amends with MBS that doesn’t require an almost 7,000-mile pilgrimage — and offer the kingdom a generous oil deal it can’t refuse.
• Saudi Arabia’s Chief Oil Whisperer Spills Some of His Secrets: Javier Blas
• Israel’s Support of Ukraine Alliance Is Risky But Unavoidable: Zev Chafets | 2022-06-21T17:24:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s Risky Trip to the Mideast Is Also Pointless - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/bidens-risky-trip-to-the-mideast-is-also-pointless/2022/06/21/edb7d2ec-f179-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/bidens-risky-trip-to-the-mideast-is-also-pointless/2022/06/21/edb7d2ec-f179-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Unfortunately, no one has mastered the art of how to measure these expectations efficiently, reliably and dependably for policy purposes, which makes them a particularly problematic tool for making time-sensitive decisions that could make or break the US economic expansion. Another jarring reading like the one that apparently stunned Powell on June 10 could easily lead policy makers astray.
Consider the way that consumer inflation surveys actually work. In the University of Michigan’s case, it dials a series of mobile phone numbers and asks at least 500 people questions, including: “By about what percent per year do you expect prices to go (up/down) on the average, during the next 5 to 10 years?”
It’s part of the broader survey on consumer sentiment, but it’s one of the tougher ones. For most people, this is a subject they have never been quizzed about. Respondents gravitate to numbers with multiples of five, and a non-negligible group of participants give answers of 20% and higher. If you give an estimate above 5%, the survey team is instructed to subtly nudge respondents with another prompt: “Let me make sure I have that correct,” they must say. “You said that you expect prices to go (up/down) during the next 12 months by (x) percent. Is that correct?” The respondents sometimes change their answers.
The concept of inflation isn’t well understood by the general public. Studies have found that respondents tend to base their assessments of prices on a limited set of goods with which they interact regularly, including food and gasoline, according to a roundup of academic literature on the matter by researcher Michael Weber from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and several others. For men, beer prices tend to factor into the calculation.(2) Michigan’s survey was designed by academics who thought hard about many of these riddles. (For instance, it asks respondents about “prices” instead of “inflation” to avoid unnecessary confusion.) But it’s hard to overcome the inherent challenge of asking regular people with varying degrees of numerical literacy to predict something that even economists consistently fail to forecast well.
So what is the survey actually reporting? Is it actionable information for today’s policy debate?
As Morgan Stanley pointed out in a recent note, the Michigan survey on long-term inflation expectations basically tends to follow a five-year moving average of the consumer price index. That average has been climbing recently, so the amount of inflation alarm is rising in the Michigan survey as well. Even if you ignore the potential for the survey to mislead policy makers, a more benign interpretation suggests it is simply redundant as an input into decisions about the fed funds rate.
Of course, the last Michigan survey numbers — the preliminary release for May — came out just five days before the last Fed decision and showed that respondents expected prices to increase 3.3% over the next five to 10 years, the most since 2008. Central bankers can live with higher near-term inflation expectations, but rising long-term estimates theoretically suggest a public that’s losing faith. At his post-decision press conference, Powell said it was critical that inflation expectations remain anchored. As he put it:
If we even see a couple of indicators [of inflation expectations] that bring that into question, we take that very seriously. We do not take this for granted. We take it very seriously. So the preliminary Michigan reading, it’s a preliminary reading, it might be revised. Nevertheless, it was quite eye catching and we noticed that.
The Fed is walking the finest of lines as it attempts to tackle the worst inflation in 40 years and salvage the economic expansion. If it starts relying on inherently imprecise metrics, it may go overboard in one direction or the other, or — worse — end up waffling between the two and fail at both of its objectives.
On this occasion, the committee was right to send a bold message about its commitment to fighting inflation. But to the extent that it was the Michigan survey that cemented the decision, the Fed made the right decision for the wrong reasons. As it takes its inflation battle into the next phase, it must clean up deficiencies in its policy making process, and this is one of them.
(1) In “Gender roles produce divergent economic expectations,” D’Acunto et al show that men and women form inflation expectations differently. | 2022-06-21T17:24:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fed Pays Too Much Heed to 500 Random Opinions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/fed-pays-too-much-heed-to500-random-opinions/2022/06/21/b76f101a-f183-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/fed-pays-too-much-heed-to500-random-opinions/2022/06/21/b76f101a-f183-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Renting a house or an apartment can make living more sustainably challenging. These small, inexpensive changes are better for the environment — and your wallet.
Improving a rented home’s energy efficiency can start with switching out your existing appliances, washing clothes in cold cycles and helping your air conditioner with the use of a ceiling fan. (Photo illustration by Grassetto/iStock)
If you’re one of the millions of Americans who rents your home, living more sustainably can feel daunting. Many of the suggested improvements, such as solar panels, energy efficient appliances and improved insulation are permanent changes that cost a significant amount of money — which means they can’t be done by renters.
However, there are still actions you can take to make your rented house or apartment greener.
“There are quite a few things that we recommend to people that are not permanent,” said Ben Kolo, an electrician with almost three decades of experience and the owner of Mr. Electric of Central Iowa.
Focus on major appliances
The first step should be improving your home’s energy efficiency, as reducing electricity usage is good for both your wallet and the environment. Although buying new appliances or installing improved insulation is out of the question, there are a number of techniques that can help reduce your overall electric consumption, saving you money while being better for the environment.
Energy efficiency helped the Empire State Building save money and cut carbon. It can help you, too.
While switching out your existing appliances isn’t an option, there are actions you can take to maximize their efficiency. If you don’t have a high efficiency washer, Kolo suggests running a second spin cycle to cut down on drying time. Heating water accounts for about 90 percent of the energy used by a washing machine, so opt for cold cycles whenever possible. For your dryer, make sure that your lint trap is clean, as that prolongs drying time.
In the kitchen, make sure that your refrigerator isn’t overfull, as blocked airflow reduces its energy efficiency. “A refrigerator is roughly 13 percent of your appliance usage,” Kolo said. For your dishwasher, one way to cut down on energy use is to stop after the wash cycle, open the door and let the dishes air-dry.
Watch out for ‘vampire power’
“Vampire power,” also known as standby power, refers to the energy used by gadgets and appliances when they are plugged in, but not in active use. Vampire power alone costs consumers about $3 billion per year and is responsible for approximately 10 percent of residential power usage, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The best way to cut down on vampire power is by unplugging devices when they are not in use. This can be made easier if you buy a power strip, which will let you turn off multiple devices at once.
How to start tackling your home’s water — and climate — footprint
Conserve water
When it comes to conserving water, there are plenty of small actions that can really add up. Some of the actions that the Environmental Protection Agency recommends include turning off running water when you are brushing your teeth; taking showers instead of baths; using a dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand; and scraping your plate before putting it in the dishwasher, rather than rinsing it.
Give your air conditioner some help
To maximize efficiency, it’s a good idea to run the ceiling fan in addition to your air conditioner. “A ceiling fan can help adjust your temperature setting by as much as four degrees,” Kolo said. “A ceiling fan costs about 1 cent an hour to run, while an air conditioner can be as much as 36 cents per hour.”
If you like to set the temperature to 72ᵒF, running a ceiling fan can let you run the air conditioner at 76ᵒF without a noticeable difference. It’s also a good idea to change the filters regularly, as that helps the air conditioner run at an optimal efficiency.
Incandescent lightbulbs are on the way out. Here’s how to shop for more efficient replacements.
Ask your landlord to use LED lights
As Kolo points out, not only do LED lights use 70 to 80 percent less electricity than conventional lightbulbs, they also last longer. Although LED lights are more expensive, your landlord may be amenable to making the switch, since on their side, this means fewer trips to replace dead lightbulbs. “There’s also a maintenance factor to replacing conventional lightbulbs with LEDs,” Kolo said.
If your landlord refuses, and you are planning to live there long enough, it may be worth making the swap yourself, as the reduced energy consumption will save you money. (If you choose to do that, you can save the conventional lightbulbs, replacing them just before you leave and taking the LED lights with you.)
How to start composting at home, even if you don’t have a yard
Incorporate sustainable personal habits
When it comes to your personal habits, there are a lot of environmentally friendly actions that don’t require expensive modifications to your living space. This includes avoiding single-use plastics, whether it’s carrying a water bottle, using reusable tote bags or drinking your coffee from a reusable mug.
Opting for solid-bar soaps and shampoos can also cut down on plastic use while conserving energy, with one study showing that liquid hand soaps require five times as much energy to make and 20 times as much energy to package, compared to bar soaps.
Other habits include recycling whenever possible, and composting food scraps. If you are short on space, there are composting options that can be done in a confined space. Some cities also have municipal compost programs.
How to cool your home without relying on air conditioning
Consider installing window tints
Although you can’t replace your windows as a renter, there are some low-cost ways to make sure they are as energy efficient as possible. One way is to install window tints, which are a low-cost alternative to energy-efficient windows. Tints will keep your home warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, which will help save on energy costs.
Installing window tints can be a DIY project, although “I do recommend that if you’ve never done it before to call a professional,” said Ken Fisk, the director of technical services at Window Genie. “The tricky part is getting the window clean and getting the film on without getting any creases in it.” In his 21 years working on windows, Fisk has installed window tints for a number of renters.
The added benefit of window tints is they will protect your furniture from sunlight. “It doesn’t stop the fading, but it definitely slows it down,” Fisk said. “I’ve seen it a lot in the past, where one cherry table looks like a pine table and the other one is dark cherry.”
Trying to shop sustainably? Here’s what you need to consider.
Try secondhand stores to furnish your home
One way to help the environment is to shop secondhand, whether it’s for clothing, kitchenware or furniture. Fast fashion is one of the major causes of pollution, with the EPA reporting that 11.3 million tons of textiles ended up in the landfill in 2018, which is almost twice the amount of textile waste from 2000. When it comes to furniture, buying secondhand helps limit deforestation and plastic production.
Going to your local thrift store will keep these items out of the landfill while avoiding the environmental impact associated with production. | 2022-06-21T17:24:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How renters can make their homes more sustainable - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/06/21/rent-apartment-house-sustainable-tips/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/06/21/rent-apartment-house-sustainable-tips/ |
This combination of photos shows, top row from left, Laura Benanti, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, bottom row from left, Joshua Henry, Jeremy Jordan and Taylor Louderman, who will take part in The Broadway Cruise. Producers promise “intimate and grand scale shows and cabarets from Broadway’s coolest talent” as well as “tips and techniques from some of the best and brightest creative talent working today.” (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP)
NEW YORK — The maiden voyage of a cruise ship starring a boatload of musical theater stars — like Tony Award-winners Laura Benanti, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and Lena Hall — will set sail next spring. | 2022-06-21T17:25:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cruise ship with Broadway stars to steam off in spring 2023 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/cruise-ship-with-broadway-stars-to-steam-off-in-spring-2023/2022/06/21/abe40aec-f17f-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/cruise-ship-with-broadway-stars-to-steam-off-in-spring-2023/2022/06/21/abe40aec-f17f-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
The attempted revolution was televised — and recorded
At least three documentarians were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021
Police body-camera footage from Jan. 6, 2021, showing the attack on the U.S. Capitol is displayed during a June 13 hearing of the House select committee investigating the assault. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The House select committee investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, began its recent calendar of public hearings with two witnesses. One might have been predicted: a police officer at the Capitol that day who was assaulted by supporters of Donald Trump. The other probably wouldn’t have been: a documentary filmmaker named Nick Quested.
Quested was there because he was a witness to the actions of the extremist Proud Boys group in the days leading up to the riot and on Jan. 6 itself. The group gave him that access, agreeing to participate in the production of a film about its efforts despite its predilection for violence and lawbreaking. So the committee asked Quested to come and describe what he saw; in private, the committee reviewed the footage Quested and his team had captured.
As it turns out, though, having a filmmaker follow you around and make a movie about you was not something that appealed to the vanity of the Proud Boys alone. On Tuesday, we learned that Trump himself was working with a documentary filmmaker named Alex Holder. In a subpoena obtained by Politico, the committee asked Holder to turn over any footage from Jan. 6 in which plans to overturn the election were discussed and any interviews with Trump, his family and former vice president Mike Pence.
In a statement, Holder said that he had turned over the compliant footage to the committee. The project began in September 2020, he wrote, with his team “simply [wanting] to better understand who the Trumps were and what motivated them to hold onto power so desperately.” Safe to say that the team was well positioned to explore that question.
CBS News’s Robert Costa spoke with people who had worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign and saw the filmmakers at the campaign headquarters. One told Costa that the project was “a family thing,” which would help explain why its existence was apparently not broadly known. The result is reportedly a three-part series on the former president that includes footage from Capitol Hill on the day of the riot.
There was another documentary crew at the Capitol that day, too, capturing footage of another actor enthusiastic about the spotlight. Not Roger Stone, the longtime Trump adviser who was working with a documentary team of his own; he wasn’t at the Capitol. This third crew was working with notorious disinformation peddler Alex Jones.
Next month, filmmaker Alex Lee Moyer is expected to release a film called “Alex’s War,” focusing on the radio host and conspiracy theorist. Jones was at Trump’s rally outside the White House on the day of the riot and walked with Trump supporters to the Capitol, footage of which appears in an early cut of the film. At the Capitol, Jones briefly addressed the crowd with a bullhorn.
Speaking on a podcast last year, Moyer described being there with Jones.
“The scope of the movie is about Alex’s career. It’s not about his personal life. It’s not like tabloid-y,” she said. “It’s set against the backdrop of the fallout around the election.” She lamented that she had been identified at the Capitol by the site Jezebel as a potential protester since she “couldn’t spill the beans to everybody that I was there shooting this movie.” On Instagram that day, she posted a photo remarking that it was “the day we almost died but instead had a great time.”
Jones himself was subpoenaed by the House committee and offered testimony. (He claimed on his show that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights numerous times when doing so.) There’s no known footage of Jones inciting violence on Jan. 6 itself, but investigators were probably more curious about his activity in the weeks prior. He had been involved in the “Stop the Steal” effort after the 2020 election and had pushed people to Washington both for the Jan. 6 protest and prior rallies, including one in November 2020. Jones has been identified as a major conduit of funding for events associated with Jan. 6, though he was denied an opportunity to speak during Trump’s rally that morning. Instead, Jones spoke at a secondary rally on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021.
It does not appear that Moyer has been subpoenaed. (A question posed to the House committee did not receive a response by the time of publication.) It may be the case that Jones is sufficiently distant from the central events of the day that any footage might not be pertinent to the case the committee is building.
What makes the work of the known documentary filmmakers useful isn’t necessarily what they saw on Jan. 6 but what they saw on the days prior and following. The House committee doesn’t just want Holder’s footage from Capitol Hill; it wants to know what Trump et al. said at other points, too. Among Quested’s contributions to the probe was footage from a meeting between the Proud Boys and the right-wing extremist group Oath Keepers on Jan. 5. Who knows what Moyer might have been privy to.
Some of the most useful footage from the day, of course, was captured not by professional documentarians but amateur ones: the rioters themselves. Never before has a criminal event been so thoroughly recorded. For prominent participants, though, this impulse was simply outsourced. Trump’s team, the Proud Boys and Jones all wanted a record of what they were up to. They were just prominent enough that they didn’t have to live-stream to Facebook. They could have someone else capture it.
Analysis: Why the term ‘oath of office’ keeps coming up in the hearings | 2022-06-21T17:25:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At least three documentary filmmakers were at the Capitol riot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/attempted-revolution-was-televised-and-filmed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/21/attempted-revolution-was-televised-and-filmed/ |
The ‘wet dress rehearsal’ test was largely successful, NASA said. But a hydrogen leak cut the test slightly short.
NASA’s moon rocket on the launchpad on June 15, 2022. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/AFP/Getty Images)
NASA finally fully fueled its massive moon rocket on Wednesday, but a hydrogen leak forced the agency to cut short a simulated countdown, and it is not clear when the agency might attempt to launch the rocket for the first time.
Despite the leak, NASA officials on Thursday hailed the test — its fourth attempt — as a success that will put it on a path to launch the Orion spacecraft to the moon later this year as part of its Artemis lunar campaign.
“It was a great day,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the Artemis launch director, told reporters during a briefing. “It was a very successful day and we accomplished a majority of the objectives that we had not completed in the prior” tests.
The earlier attempts were cut short because of various problems, including a faulty valve in the rocket’s second stage in a line supplying liquid hydrogen; problems with temperature readings of propellant; and the malfunctioning of fans used to pressurize the mobile launch tower. NASA had to roll the rocket back to its assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center to make repairs before rolling it back out for the latest attempt.
NASA officials said they needed to look at the data before making a decision about whether to attempt a fifth test, known as a “wet dress rehearsal,” or to proceed to a launch attempt.
The launch would be the first step in NASA’s Artemis program, a plan to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2025. NASA is working toward the first launch, known as Artemis I, which would send the Orion spacecraft, without any astronauts onboard, in orbit around the moon. NASA was hoping that flight could come as soon as late August, but now the schedule is uncertain.
On the second flight, Artemis II, four astronauts would fly in Orion to orbit, but not land on, the moon. A landing by two astronauts would come in 2025. But the entire schedule is subject to change, as NASA works out kinks in the rocket, which is more than $1 billion over budget and years behind schedule. The rocket has been derided as the “Senate Launch System” by critics who say it is more suited to creating jobs in key congressional districts than to exploration.
Just this month, the NASA inspector general issued a scathing report saying that the rocket’s mobile launch tower cost $668.7 million alone and that a new one, needed for an upgraded version of the SLS, will cost at least $1 billion.
During Wednesday’s test, NASA was able, for the first time, to fully load the rocket’s two stages with more than 700,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen — a significant milestone, NASA officials said.
After loading the rocket, NASA proceeded with a simulated countdown that was “extremely smooth,” Blackwell-Thompson said. But the count was terminated with 29 seconds to go after the countdown was handed off to the rocket’s onboard computers, which sensed the leak.
“We’re going to take a little bit of time and look and see what all that means moving forward,” Mike Sarafin, the Artemis I program manager, said. “But we had a very, very successful test.” | 2022-06-21T17:28:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SLS fueling test success but first launch not set - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/21/nasa-sls-moon-rocket-space-launch-system/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/21/nasa-sls-moon-rocket-space-launch-system/ |
Lennie Rosenbluth, who led UNC to first basketball title, dies at 89
North Carolina basketball star Lennie Rosenbluth in 1957. (AP)
Lennie Rosenbluth, who led North Carolina to its first basketball NCAA title in 1957 with a victory over Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas in the championship game, died June 18. He was 89.
The university announced the death but did not provide further details. He had been living in recent years near Chapel Hill, where the school is located, and often attended basketball games.
North Carolina coach Frank McGuire recruited Mr. Rosenbluth, who was from the Bronx, without having seen him play. He was renowned for his play in the summer leagues of the Catskill Mountains and was among the first in a pipeline of New Yorkers who traveled south to play college basketball for North Carolina and other schools.
In the Tar Heels’ undefeated championship season in 1956-57, all five starting players — Mr. Rosenbluth, Tom Kearns, Bob Cunningham, Pete Brennan and Joe Quigg — were from New York. Mr. Rosenbluth, a 6-foot-5 forward, was an all-Atlantic Coast Conference player in each of his three seasons at UNC and a consensus all-American in his senior season. (Freshmen were ineligible for varsity play in those days.)
He averaged 28.0 points per game as a senior and 26.9 points for his career. Both are still all-time records at North Carolina.
The 1957 squad went 32-0 and had back-to-back triple overtime wins over Michigan State and Kansas to win the national championship. Mr. Rosenbluth scored two key baskets in the Tar Heels’ 74-70 win over Michigan State and scored 20 points against Kansas before fouling out late in regulation.
Without Mr. Rosenbluth, North Carolina hung on to defeat Kansas, 54-53, despite the towering presence of the Jayhawks’ 7-foot-1 center, Wilt Chamberlain.
“It was really remarkable that we won, with Lennie Rosenbluth on the bench," McGuire said after the game, "since he was our key man all season.”
The national championship, which was the first for a team from the Atlantic Coast Conference, helped make North Carolina a college basketball powerhouse.
Mr. Rosenbluth won Helms Foundation’s Player of the Year award over Chamberlain and was arguably the best-known Jewish athlete in the country. His No. 10 was the first jersey retired for a Tar Heel basketball player.
Leonard Robert Rosenbluth was born Jan. 22, 1933, in the Bronx. His father worked for a company that made electronic equipment, his mother was a homemaker.
After graduating from North Carolina in 1957, Mr. Rosenbluth spent two years with the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA but saw little playing time. He then coached and taught in high schools in North Carolina and Florida for more than 35 years.
His first wife, Helen “Pat” Oliver, died in 2010. Survivors include his wife since 2011, Dianne Stabler; two children from his first marriage; and several grandchildren. | 2022-06-21T18:07:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lennie Rosenbluth, led UNC to 1957 basketball title, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/21/unc-basketball-lennie-rosenbluth-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/21/unc-basketball-lennie-rosenbluth-dies/ |
Deshaun Watson agrees to settle 20 of the 24 civil lawsuits against him
Quarterback Deshaun Watson throws a pass during a Browns' practice last week. (Nick Cammett/Getty Images)
Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson has reached settlement agreements in 20 of the 24 active civil lawsuits filed against him by women who accused him of sexual misconduct, the attorney for the women announced Tuesday.
Lawyer Anthony Buzbee called the settlement terms confidential and said he expects the remaining four lawsuits to be resolved in court.
“Today I announce that all cases against Deshaun Watson, with the exception of four, have settled,” Buzbee said in a written statement. “We are working through the paperwork related to those settlements. Once we have done so, those particular cases will be dismissed. The terms and amounts of the settlements are confidential. We won’t comment further on the settlements or those cases.”
Watson has not been charged with a crime. He still faces a potential suspension by the NFL under its personal conduct policy.
“Today’s development has no impact on the collectively bargained disciplinary process,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said.
Watson and his attorney, Rusty Hardin, have denied the allegations.
Of the remaining civil lawsuits, Buzbee said: “I look forward to trying these cases in due course, consistent with other docket obligations and the court’s schedule.”
The allegations made against Watson by the women include making inappropriate comments, exposing himself and forcing his penis on women’s hands during massage therapy sessions.
Hardin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I’ve been honest and I’ve been truthful about my stance,” Watson told reporters last week at a Browns offseason practice. “And that’s: I never forced anyone. I never assaulted anyone …. I’ve been saying it from the beginning. And I’m going to continue to do that. Until all the facts come out on the legal side, I have to continue to just go with the process of my legal team and the court of law.”
Watson had given no public indication last week that he was interested in settling the lawsuits.
“Like I said, I just want to clear my name and be able to let the facts and the legal procedures continue to play out,” he said then. “So right now, that’s all I’m doing is wanting to clear my name and be able to let all the facts come out in a court of law and be able to focus on that.”
The NFL plans to argue to the sport’s new disciplinary officer that Watson should receive a “significant” suspension for violating the personal conduct policy, multiple people familiar with the case said Friday. The suspension that the league seeks of Watson could be for approximately one full season, one of those people said.
The NFL must present the findings of its investigation to Sue L. Robinson, the former U.S. district judge who is the disciplinary officer jointly appointed by the league and the NFL Players Association under the current version of the conduct policy.
It was not clear Tuesday whether the case officially has been presented to Robinson.
The league hopes that the entire disciplinary process, including the resolution of any potential appeal to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell or a person designated by him, is completed by the start of training camp, a person with knowledge of the matter said Friday. The Browns are scheduled to hold their opening practice of training camp on July 27.
“When it comes down to the league and their decision, we have to respect that and let them do their process and finish their investigation and report,” Watson said last week. “And like I said before, I’ve talked to the league. I’ve been honest and told them truthfully of every question that they asked. So I can’t really have [any] control on that.”
Buzbee said in an email Monday that he and his clients had no ongoing involvement in the NFL disciplinary process beyond the interviews that some of the women conducted last year with league representatives.
“Whatever the NFL does or fails to do has no bearing whatsoever on the civil cases,” Buzbee said in Monday’s email. | 2022-06-21T18:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Deshaun Watson agrees to settle 20 of 24 civil lawsuits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/21/deshaun-watson-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/21/deshaun-watson-settlement/ |
Michelle Boorstein
Abortion rights and antiabortion activists, including Terrisa Bukovinac, holding up a fake fetus, demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Several dozen protesters from both sides of the abortion debate shouted, rallied and waved competing scripture interpretations outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday, one of the last days the court could release its decision in a case that directly challenges the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade nearly 50 years ago.
A decision didn’t come, but advocates said they will return Thursday, the next time a decision could be announced.
“We are calling on everybody to come back into these streets, to stop what you are doing — I don’t care what kind of inconvenience it is. You know what’s inconvenient? Having your life shattered by forced motherhood. And we are the ones who can stop this. There is nobody else,” Sunsara Taylor of New York City, co-founder of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, told a crowd of about 100 in which journalists and passersby outnumbered advocates.
Taylor said advocates would be there Thursday “and every single day until the Supreme Court rules, and if they take this right away, every day until they reverse that decision. This is our responsibility. This is our duty.”
Advocates for abortion access outnumbered opponents about 2-1 Tuesday morning.
Many abortion rights advocates have been protesting for more than a month, after a leaked draft opinion overturning Roe was published in May. Each week, they have been bracing for the high court’s final majority opinion in the most highly anticipated decision of the term.
They have chanted on the National Mall, rallied outside the Supreme Court and marched past the homes of conservative justices. Authorities arrested a man this month they say traveled from California in an attempt to kill Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Antiabortion activists found encouragement in the leaked draft after spending nearly half a century working toward the goal of overturning Roe and banning abortion across the country.
Americans support the landmark abortion decision in Roe v. Wade by a ratio of 2-1, according to a November 2021 Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Americans broadly support Supreme Court upholding Roe v. Wade and oppose Texas abortion law, Post-ABC poll finds
Araceli Herrera, 72, came from San Antonio to protest outside the court. She said that in her youth, she was raped by classmates in Mexico, where getting an abortion was illegal. She raised her son without telling him until he was an adult about his father.
“Not having the right to abortion puts women in chains,” she said in an interview in Spanish. “When my son grew up, it was the hardest thing for me. Imagine if your son asks, ‘Who is my father? Where is he?’ What do you tell him? ‘You are the product of a rape.’ ” | 2022-06-21T18:16:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Supreme Court, protesters from both sides of abortion debate rally - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/21/supreme-court-abortion-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/21/supreme-court-abortion-protest/ |
Youngkin signs Virginia budget with tax cuts, spending increases
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs the budget at a ceremony at a grocery store June 21, 2022, in Richmond. (Steve Helber/AP)
RICHMOND — Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) ceremonially signed Virginia’s two-year, $165 billion spending plan Tuesday, hailing some $4 billion in tax relief as well as increased spending for priorities such as education and law enforcement.
His action comes just 10 days before the June 30 deadline to get a budget in place for the next fiscal year — a relatively close call caused by protracted negotiations for a compromise between the Republican-controlled House of Delegates and the Democratic-controlled state Senate.
Youngkin scored a few wins in the budget deal, suffered some losses and ultimately decided to take what he could get.
“This is big,” Youngkin said Tuesday at a campaign-style rally in a suburban Richmond supermarket. “It’s not everything that I wanted, so we’re going to go back in and get the rest” next year, he said. “But it is a big step in the right direction.”
With state coffers full from surging tax collections as well as federal coronavirus relief money, Youngkin and the General Assembly had plenty of resources to spread around. The centerpiece for Youngkin is a big increase in the standard deduction for personal income tax. He had sought to double the current level of $4,500 for individuals and $9,000 for couples filing jointly, and the General Assembly came just short of that, at $8,000 and $16,000, respectively.
Taxpayers will also get one-time rebates of $250 for individuals and $500 for couples — again, just shy of the $300 and $600 sought by Youngkin.
The new budget eliminates a 1.5 percent statewide tax on groceries but leaves intact a 1 percent local levy that Youngkin had wanted to cut. Lawmakers also refused Youngkin’s repeated request for a three-month holiday for the state’s 26-cent per gallon gasoline tax, arguing that there’s no guarantee wholesalers will pass the savings along to consumers and that the loss of revenue would harm transportation spending accounts.
The two-year plan includes a total of more than $19 billion for public education, an all-time high. Teachers and state employees are slated to get 5 percent raises for each of the next two years, as well as a one-time $1,000 bonus.
Youngkin won approval for $100 million for his plan to start “lab schools” around the state, partnering institutions of higher learning with K-12 schools. Current law allows only public colleges and universities with teacher training programs to participate in such programs; legislation to let private institutions participate failed to make it out of committee in this year’s regular General Assembly session.
In a budget session last week, though, the General Assembly passed a Youngkin budget amendment that would allow private colleges and universities to participate, as well as community colleges. But Democrats in the Senate killed a companion amendment that would have transferred more money to the program from public school spending.
Youngkin resurrects gas tax cut but not Commanders stadium in budget proposals
Democrats in the Senate blocked several other attempts by Youngkin to legislate through the budget, including a proposal that would have prevented the state from using public money to fund abortions for low-income women in cases where the fetus has “incapacitating” physical deformities or mental deficiencies.
Youngkin’s own party blocked another proposed amendment, with Republicans in the House of Delegates opting not to vote on a measure to make it a felony to demonstrate outside the home of a judge for the purpose of intimidation. GOP leaders said they support the idea but want to spend more time crafting a law.
The new budget goes into effect July 1. | 2022-06-21T18:16:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs Virginia budget with tax cuts, spending hikes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/21/virginia-youngkin-signs-budget-tax-cuts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/21/virginia-youngkin-signs-budget-tax-cuts/ |
Activision Blizzard shareholders vote for public harassment report
(Washington Post illustration; iStock)
Activision Blizzard shareholders approved a proposal from the New York State Comptroller requesting that the company publicly report on its efforts to stop workplace discrimination and harassment during an annual meeting held Tuesday. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s proposal, first raised in February, requested that Activision Blizzard share information including compensation data, the company’s total number of sexual harassment settlements, its progress around more quickly resolving harassment and abuse complaints, and total pending complaints.
The vast majority of shareholders also approved the election of ten directors to the board, despite a minority of shareholders advocating against the reelection of directors including CEO Bobby Kotick and long-standing members Brian Kelly and Robert Morgado. They also voted to approve the company’s executive compensation packages, with 88 percent voting yes.
Last Thursday, the company released an update saying that after an internal investigation, it found “no evidence to suggest that Activision Blizzard senior executives ever intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay the instances of gender harassment that occurred and were reported.” It also said investigators had not found any evidence that a senior executive or employee concealed information from the board of directors. The report affirmed that there were “some substantiated instances of gender harassment,” but cleared senior leadership and the board of directors from association with those incidents.
A proposal to nominate an employee representative to the board of directors — a request that was backed by organizing employees — was denied, with only five percent voting in favor. Shareholders approved of hiring PricewaterhouseCoopers as Activision’s accounting firm, with 96 percent voting yes.
Shareholders didn’t ask questions and the meeting concluded after twenty-some minutes. | 2022-06-21T18:16:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Activision Blizzard shareholders vote for public harassment report - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/21/activision-blizzard-shareholder-meeting-vote/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/21/activision-blizzard-shareholder-meeting-vote/ |
A boy died in hot car as his mom prepared his sister’s birthday party
It was supposed to be a joyous occasion. A mother rushed home Monday with her two children to get started on preparations for her 8-year-old daughter’s birthday party.
Instead, her 5-year-old son died inside a car several hours later, authorities said.
Around 3:19 p.m. on Monday, deputies from the Harris County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office were dispatched to the 13700 block of Blair Hill Lane, about 25 miles northeast of downtown Houston, where they found the child. He had died after being left inside a car, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.
The child was pronounced dead at the scene, Gonzalez said, and an investigation has begun.
On a sweltering day, opaque objects in cars, like dark dashboards and seats, can heat up to temperatures over 200 degrees, and then warm up the air around them. (Video: Courtesy GM and Jan Null, San Jose State University)
Rushing to get started on the arrangements for the party, the mother and daughter went inside their family home after retuning from the store, Gonzalez told reporters. But the 5-year-old boy “unbeknown to the mom remained in the back still seated in the car seat.”
He added that according to the mother, the boy knew how to unbuckle himself and exit the car.
“She assumed, I suppose, he was doing the same thing today,” he said Monday. So she went inside and started preparing for the party.
It was not until at least two or three hours later, Gonzalez said, that the mother started calling out for her son, receiving no answer. She then went outside and found him in the car, Gonzalez said.
According to ABC News, investigators think the vehicle is a rental and that the unfamiliarity with the door safety lock might have been a factor.
Temperatures climbed to 100 degrees on Monday in Houston, Gonzalez said.
Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a child in a car is a horrifying mistake. Is it a crime?
Children’s bodies heat up much faster than do adults. According to a 2018 National Security Council report, a child’s internal organs begin to shut down once his or her core body temperature reaches 104 degrees.
Fifty-six percent of all pediatric vehicular heat stroke deaths since 1998 have happened while the vehicle was at home, and 25 percent have happened while the parents or caregivers’ vehicle was parked at their workplace, the report found.
Opinion: Forgetting a child in a car can happen to anyone. Parents and companies must act accordingly.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for more information. It is unclear whether the mother will face charges.
Under Texas law, it is illegal to leave a child alone in a car for more than five minutes, if the child is younger than 7 and is not accompanied by someone 14 or older. | 2022-06-21T18:51:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A 5-year-old boy died in a hot car in Houston as mother prepared party - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/21/boy-left-car-seat-texas-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/21/boy-left-car-seat-texas-dies/ |
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