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After restaurant attack, authorities continue to gaslight China’s women
The attack in a restaurant in Tangshan has prompted China’s women to criticize lax attitudes about gender-based violence.
Lily Kuo
Two women lie on the ground after being assaulted by a group of men outside a restaurant in the northeastern city of Tangshan, China, June 10 in this image from surveillance footage. (Video Obtained By Reuters/Via Reuters)
When a mother was found chained in a shed outside in the winter in Fengxian, Jiangsu province, authorities blamed mental illness. A few months later, when three women in Tianjin accused professors of pressuring them into sex, they were criticized for not owning their decisions as adults.
This month, a group of men beat four women eating at a late-night barbecue restaurant in Tangshan in Hebei province after one did not respond to advances by one of their group. Authorities blamed the incident, which put two of the women to the hospital, on the prevalence of gangs in the area.
For years, activists have struggled to highlight the casual attitudes about violence against women only to be told that gender has little to do with it. Grassroots advocacy for women’s rights, including the #MeToo movement, have struggled in China, where it has clashed with Beijing’s intolerance for activism and been accused of being a Western import. But as the incidents and the outrage mount, it is becoming increasingly difficult to suppress the debate.
Saga of the chained mother of eight continues to roil China, inspiring rare social activism
More women are refusing to be gaslighted about the prevalence of sexism in Chinese society. “From the woman in Fengxian to the violent beating in Tangshan, the ‘she’ in those situations are all vulnerable. Maybe next time it will be you, or me, or all of us,” wrote a blogger under the penname Zhao Qiaoqiao in one popular commentary about the incident.
“When one case turns into an incident and when one incident turns into a phenomenon, only then will society pay attention and try to solve this problem,” Zhao wrote.
In an article that was later censored, another blogger asked, “Why is it that with the Tangshan incident they became not just gender blind but are doing everything possible to erase the gender dimension of this incident?”
Video footage of the attack in the early hours of June 10 in Tangshan showed a man approach a table of women and place his hand on their backs. The woman can be seen pushing him away. After a second time, he slaps her. When her friends try to intervene, other men rush to the table beating them and dragging one outside where she is kicked repeatedly on the ground as the other diners look on.
Authorities in Tangshan launched a public security campaign and pledged to crack down on crime, with police stationed throughout the city and at restaurants. A prominent sociologist wrote in an essay that this was an “ordinary incident” of threats to public order, arguing that it “stemmed from sexual harassment but does not reflect gender discrimination in society.”
Articles about the incident and gender-based violence were deleted, including one article calling on the government and state media to stop avoiding talking about feminism. Weibo, the microblogging website, banned 265 accounts for “instigating gender conflict” in discussing the Tangshan violence.
The response is in line with other campaigns to limit the fallout of such episodes. Support online for a landmark #MeToo lawsuit in which a former intern accused a prominent TV host for sexual assault last year has been heavily censored. An activist who tried to visit the woman found chained outside in Jiangsu in eastern China was detained by the police in March.
Last year, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who alleged on social media that a senior official had pressured her into sex, disappeared from public view for months before retracting her comments in carefully managed interviews.
In April, the official Weibo of Communist Youth League of China published a post saying that “extreme feminism has become a malignant tumor on the internet.”
Alibaba accuser facing lawsuits as China #MeToo backlash builds
Wang Yu, a Beijing-based rights lawyer said such framing is consistent with official messaging about women’s rights in China.
“The government is concerned about people talking about gender because any discussion about human rights is considered sensitive by the officials, and that includes women’s rights,” she said.
Still, observers say the movement has made some gains. Outrage over the case of the chained mother ignited Internet users, spurring forms of online and offline activism rarely seen as the space for Chinese civil society has shrunk.
A recent case of online #MeToo activism, taking inspiration from a Taiwanese writer, also undercut criticisms that Chinese feminists have been brainwashed by Western ideology.
In May, a woman alleged in a post on Weibo that an associate professor at the Nankai University in Tianjin had used his position to trick her into a sexual relationship with him when she was a student. She cited Taiwanese author Lin Yi-han’s 2017 novel about a young girl being seduced by her cram school tutor, based on Lin’s own life story. Lin committed suicide shortly after the book’s release.
“This matter has been torturing me for six years with several attempts to commit suicide,” she wrote. “If I die, I hope the world will know my story,” read the post, which could not be independently verified by The Washington Post. The post attracted 1.4 million likes as Internet users called for preventing another tragedy like that of Lin Yi-han.
In the wake of the post, two other professors in Tianjin were accused of having affairs with students and within a week, the school fired the accused professor for “having inappropriate relationships with women” and issued disciplinary measures against the other two, according to a statement from the university.
Lu Pin, the founding editor of Feminist Voices, a Chinese feminist platform banned in 2018, said Lin’s book had become a symbol of women’s rights in China. The novel is currently the eighth on the list of top 250 book list as ranked by Douban, a popular book review site. On a fan page for Lin with more than 22 million views, rape victims leave messages about their experiences.
“[Lin] speaks for many Chinese women in a culture that attaches great importance to shame,” Lu said.
The attack in the late night barbecue restaurant has similarly struck a chord about women’s vulnerability. Despite Tangshan authorities’ efforts to play down the attack, the public continues to call for answers. On Monday, a trending topic on Weibo calling for an update on the victims, received more than 1 billion views.
“The more you cover up the facts from the people, the more dissatisfied the public will be. Then more speculation will follow, bringing more negative effects,” read a widely circulated editorial from National Business Daily.
Following the public outrage, Hebei’s Public Security Department issued a statement Tuesday saying the two hospitalized victims’ conditions had improved and that all nine suspects were arrested. Authorities also said that the deputy chief of the Tangshan police had been removed and five other police officials were being investigated over their handling of the attack.
Censorship has been swift, however, against any perceived activism over the incident. One woman from Shanghai had her account banned on Weibo after posting a photo of herself holding a sign that called for information of the attacked women’s situation. A hashtag, “I’m speaking out for the Tangshan girls,” also appeared to have been censored.
Still, women’s rights advocates believe the feminist movements in China will persevere.
“The existence of the feminist movement is based on the needs in people’s hearts,” said Lu. “People are always waiting for the next opportunity to speak out for themselves. There is no way to eliminate this movement.”
Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report. | 2022-06-23T08:57:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As China minimizes Tangshan assault, women say their rights are under attack - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/23/china-tangshan-assault-violence-womens-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/23/china-tangshan-assault-violence-womens-rights/ |
Efforts to pressure Justice Department officials into pursuing false claims of election fraud will be the focus
Video featuring former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen is played during a June 13 hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress is set to hear testimony Thursday from former senior officials who resisted President Donald Trump’s efforts to bend the Justice Department to his will to try to overturn the election won by Joe Biden.
The 3 p.m. televised hearing will be a public airing of a high-stakes drama that played out inside the White House and Justice Department shortly before the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
Unbeknown to the public at the time, a handful of Justice officials scrambled to prevent Trump from ousting the acting head of the department, Jeffrey Rosen, if Rosen didn’t agree to have the agency publicly suggest the 2020 election results were invalid.
Justice Dept. expands false-elector probe with new round of subpoenas
Ultimately, Trump’s effort to replace Rosen led to a White House meeting between Trump and several senior Justice Department leaders, in which the officials told the president that if he went ahead with his plan, swaths of the department’s senior leadership would resign in protest, delegitimizing any attempt by Trump to undo the election results.
Trump eventually backed down, leaving Rosen in place. The standoff did not become known until weeks later, and lawmakers on the House panel have said the events are a critical part of understanding the lengths Trump was willing to go to in order to remain in power.
The Trump confrontation was described in exhaustive detail earlier this year in a nearly 400-page report by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democratic staff.
But lingering questions remain which the hearing could address, such as how a congressman from Pennsylvania, Rep. Scott Perry (R), ended up joining forces with a little-known environmental lawyer in the Justice Department, Jeffrey Clark, to push baseless claims of mass voter fraud.
Here's what happened inside the Oval Office three days before Jan. 6, 2021
In late December and early January, Trump threatened to replace Rosen with Clark at the top of the department if Rosen didn’t follow Trump’s wishes about declarations of voter fraud.
Rosen will, in some ways, be the star of Thursday’s hearing as the chief focus of Trump’s anger. But there will be other key witnesses from that standoff: Richard Donoghue, another senior Justice Department official, who also pushed back against Trump’s demands, and Steven A. Engel, a long-serving Trump Justice Department official who warned the president that any move to replace Rosen would prompt mass resignations.
During the standoff, when Trump suggested Clark might be the next acting attorney general, Donoghue flatly replied, “Sir, I would resign immediately. There is no way I’m serving one minute under this guy.”
That confrontation occurred on Jan. 3, 2020. Three days later, rioters stormed Congress, and the Justice Department, still led by Rosen, launched the largest investigation in its history, in terms of the number of people charged with crimes.
The Jan. 6 committee has taken a novel approach to the standard format of congressional hearings, generally forsaking the ritual of opening statements by all committee members to create a more orderly presentation of information. Lawmakers are using carefully curated, pretaped deposition excerpts to focus on specific allegations or instances of misconduct.
The Jan. 6 committee’s work is also somewhat unique among modern-day congressional hearings in that it doesn’t feature members of the minority party offering countering interpretations of facts. | 2022-06-23T09:57:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rosen, Donoghue, Engel testimony expected Thursday at Jan. 6 hearing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/23/justice-jan6-hearing-thursday/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/23/justice-jan6-hearing-thursday/ |
What I love about my home in Portland, Ore.
Perspective by Michele Lerner
Brenda W. Clough stores her treasured books in 10 steel bookcases along a 50-foot wall that runs the full length of her condo in Portland, Ore. (Courtesy of Brenda W. Clough)
Brenda W. Clough and her husband moved from Reston, Va., to Portland, Ore., early in 2020. Brenda, a novelist, shared their experience and what they love about their new home in an email. The following was edited for length and clarity.
“My husband and I sold our big house in Reston, Va., when we retired in early 2020. What good timing we had, because both of our offices closed down later that year. We moved to his hometown, Portland, Ore., where we bought a condo downtown.
A major move is a great excuse to renovate your lifestyle, and I was about done with the suburban experience. Now that my kids are out of the nest, we do not need four bedrooms, a big yard and access to high schools. We have shifted gears and became city folks. Now, from my window I can see the Portland Art Museum. Streetcars can be seen rolling by. We no longer have to mow the lawn, clean the gutters or weed the garden. The people at the front desk accept my Amazon packages for me.
What I love about my home in D.C.’s Cathedral Heights
What I like about our new home is that it is within walking distance of just about everything anyone could ever need. The Safeway is across the street. There are two weekly farmers markets several blocks away. The main branch of the public library is a five-minute walk, the doctor and dentist are 10. There must be at least a couple dozen restaurants within an easy stroll. It will take us years to explore everything, and then we can get on the streetcar and ride to the other side of town and explore that. Suddenly life no longer revolves around driving.
I also wanted modern architecture. The D.C. suburbs are almost purely Colonial in style, a Mid-Atlantic thing. Now I have become a fan of poured concrete and Brutalism. My current home has plate-glass windows that go from floor to ceiling. There are no steps at all. I can’t hear my neighbors, and I don’t have screens on the windows. There aren’t many bugs downtown.
Because I am a novelist, I also needed a place that could accommodate our 10 tall bookcases full of books. I dragged the ones in the picture all the way from the East Coast to the West, the tools of my trade: a science fiction and fantasy collection that spans 70 years and historical volumes focusing on Antarctica or Victorian England. And these are only the survivors of a major cull. I weeded out half of the books and gave them to Reston’s Used Book Shop in Lake Anne, which has been enabling my book shopping for decades. It costs roughly a dollar a pound to move stuff coast to coast, a price that powerfully focuses the mind. Moving like this is the opportunity to prune all the possessions back. It has been liberating to get rid of stuff from the basement, garage and attic.
What I love about my home in Mount Rainier, Md.
As you can see from the photograph, I have a single 50-foot wall that runs the full length of the condo from the front door all the way to the living room windows. It was this feature that sold me on the place. Books do furnish a room. To have them all lined up in one place makes organizing and surveying them much simpler. Now I do not have to wander from room to room looking for that one volume about Wilkie Collins. Because this is an earthquake-active zone (like the entire West Coast), the bookcases are affixed to the studs in the wall with earthquake straps.
But the most dangerous feature of this dwelling? I live within walking distance of Powell’s Books, one of the biggest new and used bookstores in the country. The 10 steel bookcases are almost full, and I have vowed I will try to keep new book acquisition down to a dull roar. I don’t want to have to move to a bigger place to accommodate the books.”
In this ongoing feature, we ask homeowners what they love most about their home. If you’d like to share your story, please send a photo of the room/feature you love (preferably with you in the photo, too) and 400 to 450 words describing the space and why you love it to: mlerner@gmail.com. | 2022-06-23T10:32:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What I love about my home in Portland, Ore. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/23/what-i-love-about-my-home-portland-ore/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/23/what-i-love-about-my-home-portland-ore/ |
Mark Collins is 53 and works at a federal agency. He is looking for someone who is “highly intelligent, spontaneous, flexible, fit” and “caring.” Maggie Buenting is 45 and an audiovisual technician. She is seeking someone who “appreciates music and is not super [buttoned-up].” (Daniele Seiss)
Mark Collins, 53, who has been single for seven years, is wrestling with a dating question: When he’s looking through the apps, “is it just easier to find something you can use to disqualify someone? I think I’m guilty of not pushing out of my comfort zone enough — of looking for the ideal — [and] I was hamstringing myself by doing that.”
Earlier this year, Mark moved to Alexandria from Oahu, Hawaii. “I really thought I had landed in the land of my kindred spirits in the DMV,” he said. But when he started browsing, “I was quite disheartened by my experiences.” Mark isn’t a parent (he self-identifies as the “fun uncle”) and struggled to find potential matches who wanted to talk about something other than their children. So he decided to launch himself outside of that comfort zone and apply to Date Lab.
He’s hoping to find someone “age-appropriate,” which he defines as someone “five-to-seven years younger” than he is (“I really don’t think older would be a good fit for me”). He’s drawn to “women who are independent and an easy laugh.” On the physical front, “I’m probably out-of-my-league picky,” he confessed, describing his preferences: “slim and fit, that’s super important. … I’ve been on dates with women taller than me, and I’m embarrassed to say it but I’m just not comfortable.” (Mark is 5-10.)
We matched Mark with Maggie Buenting, 45, an audiovisual technician who has been in the D.C. area on and off for the past 20 years. She, too, has gone on “numerous crummy dates from online.” A friend who is “a big fan of Date Lab” encouraged her to apply. She’s looking for someone “genuine,” “extroverted” and “down-to-earth.” Being shorter is a dealbreaker for her. (Maggie says she’s not even 5-4 but reports men on apps are really rounding up when they say they’re 5-8.)
When she learned she’d been selected for Date Lab, Maggie looked up the restaurant — Gypsy Kitchen on 14th Street NW — so she could see the vibe and dress accordingly. She went with “pseudo-casual: jeans and a cute spaghetti-strap white eyelet tank … and espadrilles and red lipstick.” She kept her hopes reasonable: All she wanted was “a fun, relaxed night with someone that I [find] attractive.”
Her 30-minute Uber from Bethesda did not have air conditioning, and this was one of D.C.’s very swampy days, so she was “hot and sweating and nervous” on the ride over. She arrived first and treated herself to a glass of wine before Mark showed up, right on time. “First impression: He’s hot,” she said. “He’s very handsome! Very good-looking. And a great smile.” Though this is what she’d been hoping for, it did not set her at ease. “I was more nervous.”
Mark had also felt some nerves when he got that Date Lab email, but he came around, figuring, “What could the real downside be?” He spent the day of the date at work but found time to shave, hit the gym and meditate. He called a buddy with style instincts to vet his outfit and decided on “one of my favorite shirts from Oahu … a comfortable pair of jeans and Vans.”
He drove to the date and found Maggie waiting inside. Though he wasn’t sure if they were “physically a good match” at first glance, “she had a very pretty smile and a really nice energy,” he said. “I was excited to get to know her.” He grabbed a gin cocktail and they settled into a booth for dinner.
Over the next two hours and many plates of tapas, they discussed pop culture — Maggie has worked in music; to her relief, Mark shared her dislike of Coldplay — and some of the celebrities and musicians Maggie has met through her job, which Mark found “really interesting.” Maggie said Mark seemed like someone with “a lot of patience” and “a really good heart.” According to her, the energy “felt somewhere between friendly and flirty.” (“He told me I was very pretty,” she said. “And asked me if I hear that a lot. That made me blush.”)
“I found her wonderful company,” Mark said. “She really pushed me to have a two-way conversation — I tend to be very inquisitive and that can come off as one-sided, and I’m working on it, and she called me on that and pushed me to make it 50-50, and I really respected and appreciated that.”
But Mark said they didn’t have the same views on many subjects. And, he noted, “I didn’t feel a physical connection.”
He offered to drive her home, but Maggie had a feeling that Mark was too new in town to realize just what he’d be signing up for (driving to Bethesda only to turn around and drive to Alexandria), so she declined. They hugged before she got in her Uber but didn’t exchange contact information.
“He did not ask me for my number,” Maggie said, and she didn’t ask him because “I blanked. And I wish I had!”
Mark: 4 [out of 5].
Maggie: 4.5.
Jessica M. Goldstein is a regular contributor to the Post’s Style section. | 2022-06-23T10:33:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Date Lab: The vibe was ‘between friendly and flirty’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/23/date-lab-vibe-was-between-friendly-flirty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/23/date-lab-vibe-was-between-friendly-flirty/ |
Russia is counting on the media to spread propaganda about show trials
How the media can avoid getting lured into a trap
Perspective by Francine Hirsch
Francine Hirsch is Vilas Distinguished Achievement professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of "Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II" (Oxford UP, 2020).
An image, taken from footage of the Supreme Court of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, shows Britons Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun in a courtroom cage at a location given as Donetsk, Ukraine. (Reuters)
Since the start of the war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders have been calling for a “Nuremberg 2.0” of Ukrainian leaders, whom they falsely smear as “neo-Nazis.” Russian officials in Donetsk and Luhansk in recent weeks have launched sham trials of foreigners while planning a “Mariupol Tribunal” of Ukrainian prisoners-of-war, including the Azovstal soldiers. They have described such proceedings as “intermediate trials” that will prepare the way for a larger “international tribunal” in Moscow.
In laying out their plans in the Russian press, local officials have announced that the Mariupol Tribunal will be modeled on Soviet war crimes trials of the early 1940s, which, the officials emphasize, “set an international precedent” that laid a foundation for Nuremberg. Looking at these trials, and at early Soviet political trials of all sorts, can give us a sense of how Russia will present the trial of Ukrainian prisoners-of-war to the world. We can expect this to be a highly staged event at which individual soldiers publicly confess to war crimes and the prosecution uses their cases to tell a larger story. The trial will be targeted at Russians as well as an international audience — and the organizers will be counting on extensive coverage in the world press. In fact, they’ve already invited the international media to attend the “Mariupol Tribunal.”
The Krasnodar Trial, the first public Soviet war crimes trial, was held in July 1943 in the North Caucasus. Eleven men, Russians and Ukrainians, all local Nazi collaborators, were charged with committing treason during the German occupation. Eyewitnesses provided general testimony about Nazi atrocities in the region. The defendants, who had served in SS Special Detachment 10a (which had murdered thousands of Soviet citizens in poison gas vans), confessed the details of their crimes before hundreds of spectators, including foreign journalists. All were found guilty, and eight were hanged before a crowd of 30,000. Cameramen filmed the spectacle; the footage was shown throughout the Soviet Union.
The Kharkov Trial convened five months later, in December 1943, in Ukraine. Three Gestapo officials and a Ukrainian collaborator were tried for the slaughter of civilians. This was the first public trial of German nationals held by any Allied power. The trial unfolded over four days before a large rotating audience that once again included foreign correspondents. All four defendants were found guilty and hanged in public. Life magazine ran a two-page photo essay with grisly images of the convicted men swinging from the scaffolds. Soviet filmmakers produced a documentary of the trial, “Sud idet!” (The Trial Begins!), released in English as “The Kharkov Trials” and shown in New York and London.
The Soviets used these war crimes trials to bring international attention to German atrocities, including the slaughter of thousands of civilians, in the occupied Soviet Union. They also used them to hone a particular narrative about the war. While most of the victims in Krasnodar and Kharkov were Jews, they were referred to during the trials as “peaceful Soviet citizens” to emphasize the shared suffering of the entire Soviet people.
Legally, the Soviets saw these trials as important building blocks for further war crimes trials, and used the Kharkov Trial to establish the invalidity of the plea of “following superior orders”— which was still a standard defense in international law. From early in the war, Soviet lawyers had been denouncing this defense as a “saving bunker” for war criminals “during the stern hour of vengeance” and arguing that rank-and-file soldiers who “plunder and kill on the orders of their superiors” were no less guilty than those who do so “of their own accord.” When the accused attempted to enter this plea at Kharkov, the tribunal rejected it as inadmissible.
Such strategies worked. With Krasnodar and Kharkov, the Soviets revealed the horrors of the Nazi occupation and showed the world that they were serious about prosecuting Nazi war crimes. They pressed the other Allied powers to join with them to convene a “special international tribunal” to try to punish the leaders of Nazi Germany with “all of the severity of criminal law.” After the victory, when the United States and Britain came around to this idea, the U.S. chief prosecutor for the Nuremberg Trials, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, had his staff watch the Soviet film on the Kharkov Trial to learn about the Soviet approach to postwar justice.
The Krasnodar and Kharkov Trials did not hew to Western legal standards: The accused were given neither a robust defense nor the right to appeal. But it was generally understood (and still is) that the defendants had committed actual war crimes. In other words, these were war crimes trials with clear political goals — but they were not kangaroo courts. The difference is significant.
A Mariupol Tribunal, by contrast, would be a kangaroo court, plain and simple — and a travesty of justice. Russia’s effort to present it as the “successor” to Krasnodar and Kharkov is straight-up propaganda. Ukraine is not Nazi Germany. Ukrainian leaders are not Nazis. Ukraine is not attempting to carry out a genocide of Russians — nor has it aggressed against Russia in any way.
It is Russia that’s the aggressor in this war, guilty of violating international law by invading another country. The Ukrainian prisoners-of-war were defending their country from Russian aggression and trying to stop Russian atrocities. Russian officials are preparing for a Mariupol Tribunal in an effort to control the narrative of the war: to turn reality on its head and propagate Putin’s falsehoods.
A Mariupol Tribunal will be more akin to Soviet show trials like the Moscow Trials of 1936-1938, which were instrumental to Joseph Stalin’s consolidation of power. These are its real antecedents and the true inspiration for any kind of Moscow-sponsored “Nuremberg 2.0.” Innocent men were arrested and tortured and compelled to publicly confess to heinous crimes. These show trials were grand charades, spectacles designed to support Stalin’s domestic and foreign policy goals.
The three Moscow Trials, staged in August 1936, January 1937 and March 1938, were not the first Soviet show trials, but they were the most sensationalist ones. The defendants — Nikolai Bukharin, Karl Radek and other members of the Bolshevik elite — were tried on trumped-up charges as “spies” and as “foreign collaborators” plotting with Adolf Hitler “to establish a fascist dictatorship in Russia.” All were convicted and most were executed. Stalin invited international observers to watch the trials, including diplomats and members of the press corps.
Most Western newspapers, including the New York Times, treated the Moscow Trials as legitimate. Times reporter Walter Duranty drew out the details of the prosecution’s case with awe and admiration. He took the “evidence” and the confessions at face value. In an article on the 1937 trial, Duranty deemed the prosecutor, Andrei Vyshinsky, to have “marshaled his facts effectively” to prove that the defendants were “a gang of spies, bandits, murderers, crooks and traitors who had behaved with the most disgusting indecency.” Duranty is a model of what not to do when reporting on a show trial. Through his uncritical reporting, the New York Times served as a mouthpiece for Stalin’s falsehoods.
Unfortunately, Duranty was not alone in disseminating the official Soviet line. U.S. Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who attended the 1937 trial, reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the confessions of the accused “bore the hallmark of credibility” and that Stalin had uprooted “a clear conspiracy against the government.” The International Association of Lawyers came to a similar conclusion after the first Moscow Trial, in 1936, stating that the prosecution had “fully proven” the links between the accused and the Gestapo. Stalin had every reason to be pleased. By the end of the 1930s, show trials had become a reliable tool of propaganda and political repression for the Stalinist state.
If Russia goes forward with a Mariupol Tribunal, this history teaches us that how the press covers it will be crucial. If journalists get sucked in by Russia’s falsehoods and treat this as an actual war crimes trial (like Krasnodar or Kharkov), they will play into Putin’s hands and legitimize his illegal invasion. If, however, they see Russia’s present-day show trials for what they are — a deep injustice violating all legal norms and punishing Ukrainians for bravely defending their country — they can help puncture Putin’s attempts at selling the world on his fictional version of reality. | 2022-06-23T10:34:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia is counting on the media to spread propaganda about show trials - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/23/russia-is-counting-media-spread-propaganda-about-show-trials/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/23/russia-is-counting-media-spread-propaganda-about-show-trials/ |
Title IX has been spectacularly successful and disturbingly unfulfilled
A lack of enforcement has blunted the law’s transformative potential
Perspective by Anne M. Blaschke
Anne M. Blaschke is an associate lecturer in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is writing a book on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
U.S. Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney testifies during a Senate Judiciary hearing about the FBI's handling of the Larry Nassar investigation in 2021. (Saul Loeb/AP)
Title IX celebrated its 50th birthday on Wednesday. Signed into law in 1972, the policy requires educational institutions that receive government funding to treat all sexes and gender identities equally.
This mandate has at once been phenomenally successful and disturbingly unfulfilled. In banning sex discrimination, Title IX fundamentally changed American education by creating the legal expectation of equality. Millions of people have seized the expansive gender opportunities Title IX has forced open, and now their children and grandchildren expect and even take for granted those options.
Yet the policy has historically fallen short of its mandate because of a lack of enforcement, particularly on issues of sexual abuse and bigotry. As a result, its radical potential to normalize equal treatment across sex and gender in education has not been realized.
Title IX passed in 1972 amid other policies affirming women’s rights. Feminists celebrated the law, although they initially thought it would only affect academics. Controversy exploded when girls and women rushed to claim space in academic programs and on athletic playing fields.
Title IX’s impact on sports drew the most attention because it was the area in which the sex gap was the most egregious. Girls and women in sports also visually challenged long-held sexist tropes about their capabilities and ambitions. Since the late-19th century, doctors and sports executives had feared athletic activity could cause hysteria, infertility and cancer in women. Nearly as worrisome, athletic competition might compromise the heteronormativity and femininity essential to women’s social roles, turning them into deviant “muscle molls.”
Sexist gatekeepers fought to exclude women from athletics. In 1967, for example, Boston Marathon Director Jock Semple tried — and failed — to drag runner Katherine Switzer off the course. As a result of decades of sex discrimination, girls comprised just 7 percent of high school athletes in 1971, while collegiate women received just 2 percent of overall athletic budgets and almost no scholarships before President Richard M. Nixon signed Title IX into law in 1972.
Title IX radically changed this reality. The sheer volume of women who flooded athletic fields within a year belied the long-held belief that girls lacked interest or competitive drive. The law also emboldened athletes to take drastic measures to force their schools’ compliance.
In 1976, the Yale women’s crew team protested their inadequate facilities to physical education director Joni Barnett at her office, naked save for the phrase “Title IX” scrawled across their torsos. In the wake of scathing press coverage, Yale granted the women locker rooms and showers. Title IX’s impact also reverberated beyond campus into the free market, as female athletes bought and popularized apparel, such as sports bras, that women entrepreneurs designed.
But after less than a decade, the Reagan administration weakened Title IX. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan crippled the National Advisory Council on Women’s Educational Programs, a women’s federal advisory board on sex equality, by replacing its executive director with a state leader of Phyllis Schlafly’s anti-feminist Eagle Forum group.
A year later, he dissolved the board altogether. Reagan’s 1981 Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O’Connor also concurred with the majority in Grove City College v. Bell (1984), which held that schools must only apply Title IX to discrete areas of their operations that received federal funds, rather than to entire institutions; the decision threatened to gut Title IX’s broad impact on campuses. In 1988, when Congress voted for the Civil Rights Restoration Act — which restored Title IX to all aspects of campus affairs — Reagan vetoed the bill and, like other conservatives, lambasted its passage as intrusive government bloat when Congress overrode his veto.
Amid this backlash, women conquering new Olympic sports and breaking athletic records were accused of gender deviance when their talents soared beyond mainstream social expectations of womanhood. Record-setting Olympic sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner (“Flo-Jo”) famously faced doping accusations, often tinged with racism, due to her muscularity and speed in the late-1980s.
And yet, millions of Americans broadly accepted the idea of gender equality Title IX promoted. Consider, for example, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s about-face on women’s sports. During the 1970s, the organization had lobbied against Title IX and attempted to exempt men’s revenue-producing sports. Yet college sports for women grew exponentially as athletic powerhouses like UCLA and the University of Michigan created women’s athletic programs.
In 1982, the NCAA reversed course and took control of women’s athletic governance, offering prominent universities lucrative opportunities to compete in NCAA tournaments and secure television contracts — thereby strangling the smaller, single-sex organization that had originally supported Title IX, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.
Most large universities bowed to Title IX’s pressure to create women’s sports programs, though they often segregated these into “women’s centers” rather than integrate the sexes on equal footing. In these expansive new roles — as in other arenas of women’s increased access due to Title IX, including in business, medicine and entertainment — stereotyping and harassment often accompanied women’s efforts on the playing field. By the 1990s, women experienced both harassment and opportunity, even as the political environment became more supportive of the legislation with the Bill Clinton administration working to expand Title IX reporting and redouble efforts to combat sex discrimination.
It may sound incongruous that President Clinton waved the banner for sex equality policy in 1997, at the height of his own sexual harassment and perjury scandals. But, a closer look shows that this behavior mirrored the application of Title IX on issues of campus safety from the 1990s forward.
During the Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, when women students accused male athletes of sexual assault, coaches, university boosters and community leaders frequently circled wagons to protect the alleged perpetrators. This was especially true since the accused often graduated, and sometimes ascended to lucrative sport careers — even as the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights issued guidance compelling schools to prevent, eliminate and remedy sexual harassment, and lower the standard of proof needed to demonstrate sexual misconduct.
Students who reported their coaches’ sexual assaults also faced the trauma of being silenced and subjected to further violence. At Penn State, for instance, assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky abused boys for years — and was further enabled by legendary head coach Joe Paterno and other university power brokers who violated Title IX by failing to report the abuse for more than a decade. At Michigan State University, orthopedist and athletic trainer Larry Nassar began sexually abusing children and undergraduates on campus in the 1990s, but university officials ignored multiple students’ reports of abuse, allowing him to break down the lives of over 500 athletes over the course of 20 years.
These individual examples speak to a catastrophic failure to enforce Title IX by both academic institutions and the federal government. The onus not to be harmed, it seems, is now on victims, rather than on schools to fulfill their mandate and perpetrators not to rape, molest or assault. Until her recent death, Title IX pioneer Bernice Sandler referred to these stakes as a “chilly climate” for the vulnerable. Meanwhile, queer and trans students continue to face institutional whiplash over access to campus spaces and organizations in alignment with their gender identity and sexuality, although Title IX affords them these protections.
Despite these major shortfalls, many of the sweeping changes Title IX mandated have now become mainstream — often imperceptible. And each generation has been less aware of the law’s existence than the one preceding it. In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in February 2022, for example, women under the age of 50 were less likely than women over age 50 to have heard of the law, and 50 percent of Americans have never heard of it.
But even if a marker of Title IX’s success is the decades-long assumption of sex equality on campus and beyond, the law has not created a cultural shift from a patriarchal to a more feminist, egalitarian society. Reflecting on the impact of women in sports, U.S. 1999 World Cup soccer champion Brandi Chastain recently asked, “How do we disrupt a culture that has been systematically not for us?” Until institutions fully utilize the potential of Title IX, that question will remain unanswered. | 2022-06-23T10:34:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Title IX has been spectacularly successful and disturbingly unfulfilled - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/23/title-ix-has-been-spectacularly-successful-disturbingly-unfulfilled/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/23/title-ix-has-been-spectacularly-successful-disturbingly-unfulfilled/ |
Officials urged the public to use caution after incidents at Difficult Run and Four Mile Run streams.
Two people drowned this week in waters in Maryland and Virginia. ((iStock))
Authorities warned the public to use caution after two people drowned over the last few days in waters in Maryland and Virginia.
One incident happened around 6 p.m. Sunday at the Difficult Run Stream in McLean. When rescuers arrived they found a man on a trail about a quarter-mile off the 8800 block of Georgetown Road. Officials said the man had been swimming in the stream and went underwater but did not resurface so his friends pulled him out.
He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and he died Tuesday. Police later identified him as German Salinas, 29, of Sterling.
In another incident, Alexandria police said a man died after he drowned Monday afternoon while in Four Mile Run stream.
He was later identified as Tewodros Teferi, 52. It was not known where he lived and he was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. No details were given about how he drowned but police said in a statement that they do not suspect foul play. | 2022-06-23T10:37:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two people drowned in waters in MD and VA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/two-drowned-in-maryland-and-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/two-drowned-in-maryland-and-virginia/ |
She had her ‘soulmate’ kill her husband. A judge gave her life in prison.
Jennifer Faith speaks with a Dallas police investigator on the morning her husband was killed. (Dallas Police Department via Department of Justice)
Less than two months after her husband was shot seven times in October 2020, Jennifer Faith went on television and said she hoped the killer would feel guilty and come forward.
“I’m not supposed to be widowed at 48, you know?” Faith told WFAA through tears.
In fact, it was Faith who orchestrated the murder, persuading her former high school boyfriend to ambush and shoot her husband, Jamie, outside of their home in Oak Cliff, Tex. After pleading guilty in February to the commission of murder-for-hire, Faith was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison. She was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine and $6,500 in restitution to the family of her late husband, an IT director at American Airlines.
“Ms. Faith put on quite a performance in the wake of her husband’s murder,” U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham said in a statement Tuesday. “ … But crocodile tears didn’t stop the feds. We were committed to getting justice for Jamie, and with the Judge’s imposition of a life sentence this afternoon, we’re one step closer.”
She cried on TV after her husband’s killing. Now she’s charged with covering for the shooter.
In March 2020, Faith reconnected with her former high school sweetheart, Darrin Ruben Lopez, who had told Faith that he was disabled from a traumatic brain injury after serving in Iraq, according to court documents. Over the next several months, prosecutors said she texted with Lopez and sent him effusive letters in which she called him her “soulmate” and “one and only love.” In addition to carrying on what she characterized as a “full-blown emotional affair” with Lopez, Faith also told Lopez that her husband was physically and sexually abusing her — accusations Faith later admitted were lies, according to court documents.
But Lopez believed Faith, prosecutors say. In May, Faith created a fake email account under the name of one of her best friends, according to court documents. Faith allegedly used the fake identity to falsely claim that Jamie Faith was physically and sexually abusing his wife.
Lopez responded with sympathy.
“I know I won’t feel better about her situation until she is out of the house away from him or she lets me put a bullet in Jamie’s head,” Lopez replied to one of the emails, according to court documents. “I keep offering and she keeps telling me no.”
On Oct. 9, 2020, around 7:33 a.m., Faith and her husband stepped out of their house to walk their dog. About a minute later, Lopez came up behind Jamie and shot him seven times, killing him, prosecutors say. Lopez allegedly took off in a black Nissan Titan pickup truck with a “T” decal on the back window.
About a month after her husband’s murder, Faith sought out $629,000 in a life insurance claim, according to court documents. Around that time, she set up a GoFundMe fundraiser called “Support for Jennifer Faith” and participated in television interviews in which she pleaded with viewers to help catch her husband’s killer.
“Somebody has got to know whose truck this is,” Faith told WFAA. “It’s a black Nissan Titan extended cab. It had a Texas Rangers sticker in the back window. So it was very distinctive from that point.”
But following the interviews, Faith told Lopez to remove the “T” from his truck, and Lopez eventually did, according to court documents. She also spoke to him about the progress of the life insurance claim, which she said had been complicated by the ongoing homicide investigation. Moreover, Faith used the GoFundMe proceeds to pay off credit cards Lopez was using and sent Lopez and his family money and gifts, court documents state.
Lopez was arrested on Jan. 11, 2021. He is awaiting trial on both state and federal charges in connection with the killing; he has pleaded not guilty in both cases, according to the Department of Justice. Faith was arrested the following month on an obstruction of justice charge; she was later charged with the commission of murder-for-hire.
Weeks before her arrest, Faith asked a personal associate to relay a message to Lopez that she “will always be with him, regardless of whatever has happened,” according to court documents.
“I do know how you feel, together we can get through this I believe in my heart,” Lopez said in response to Faith’s message, according to court documents. “Please stay strong for US. Your Knight always.... As You Wish.” | 2022-06-23T11:16:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jennifer Faith sentenced to life in prison in husband’s murder - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/jennifer-faith-murder-sentence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/jennifer-faith-murder-sentence/ |
There’s a carbon-capture gold rush. Some warn better solutions exist.
To stem climate change, billionaires, politicians and philanthropists say sucking carbon out of the air and storing it underground could work. Critics fiercely disagree.
The W.A. Parish Generating Station in Thompsons, Tex. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)
In White House halls, Davos conference rooms and billionaires’ Twitter feeds, one climate change solution is gaining traction: carbon-capture technology.
In recent months, the Biden administration, Elon Musk and companies like Alphabet and Meta have poured millions — in some cases, billions — into investment funds, research proposals, grant opportunities and competitions to develop it. Scientists argue carbon capture, which takes carbon dioxide from the air and stores it deep underground, has the potential to quickly slow Earth’s rapidly warming climate.
The method takes multiple forms. One attaches industrial plants to factories, reusing or transporting carbon emitted directly from smokestacks. A more experimental version envisions large facilities that could capture air, remove the carbon dioxide and store it underground. Others propose using mine waste, algae farms or bio waste to decrease emissions.
The focus comes at a crisis moment. In February, the United Nations warned climate change has reached a tipping point, where island nations could soon be flooded, millions may have to flee their homes in the face of drought and famine, underwater habitats would whither, and deaths related to heat, pollution and malnutrition will rise.
There are 27 carbon-capture projects operational worldwide and 14 in the United States, according to an October report from the Global CCS Institute, a think tank. Another 108 are in development worldwide in various stages of production.
Despite the growth in projects, fierce debate remains. Critics contend carbon capture technology is expensive, ineffective and difficult to scale. Moreover, they argue, money spent developing the tool distracts from funding proven solutions, like renewable energy, while encouraging oil and gas companies and other heavy carbon emitters to continue their operations unabated.
“The idea that this is going to be the fix to the global problem of massive emissions and accelerating climate change is just not borne out by reality,” said Nikki Reisch, the director of climate programs at the Center for International Environmental Law. “It’s unfortunately an attractive myth [created] by the oil industry to perpetuate the idea that we can … have our cake and eat it, too.”
The growing chorus for carbon capture
Carbon capture builds on natural processes such as photosynthesis, which allows trees and plants to take carbon dioxide and turn it into a usable energy source. But as the world industrialized, natural ways to process and remove carbon from the air were not enough to keep balance in order.
In the early 1970s, oil and gas companies began using a chemical process to separate carbon dioxide from gas pumped on-site and steer it back into oil fields to get more oil from the ground. Years later, the process getting the most out of a waste product became a way to mitigate climate change. Companies built plants to take carbon out of concrete, cement and steel factories to be repurposed or stored in geological formations permanently.
Carl Greenfield, an analyst at the International Energy Agency, said carbon-capture technology has proven successful at reducing carbon emissions in tricky places, such as cement factories, triggering excitement in the industry.
He added that carbon-capture technology has evolved from the 1970s, when it was meant to enhance gas production, into a stronger focus on carbon dioxide reduction. Government initiatives, such as a U.S. program that provides tax credits for each metric ton of carbon a company captures, have created economic incentives.
“The drivers we’re seeing this time around is really different,” he said. We’re “hoping that’s enough to translate this momentum into implementation.”
United Airlines aims to suck carbon dioxide from the friendly skies
But simply diverting carbon emissions from factory smokestacks won’t do the job, many experts said, especially since the system must be attached to an emission-emitting factory, making it difficult to scale quickly. Direct air capture, which uses chemical reactions to capture carbon dioxide directly from the air and reroute it underground permanently, is gaining backers because of its easy setup.
Though critics say the technology is years away from implementation, it hasn’t stopped funding efforts. The Biden administration in late May earmarked $3.5 billion toward this effort, intending to build four “direct air capture hubs” across the country.
“The UN’s latest climate report made clear that removing legacy carbon pollution from the air through direct air capture and safely storing it is an essential weapon in our fight against the climate crisis,” Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said in a statement.
In April, Musk’s foundation, along with the nonprofit XPRIZE, provided 15 groups $1 million in funding to scale up promising carbon-capture solutions. Six projects are focused on capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the air.
In four years, they will choose a grand prize winner to get $50 million, while three runners-up will split $30 million in funding.
Cam Hosie, the chief executive of 8 Rivers and one of the prize winners of Musk’s competition, said his project is on the path to being an inexpensive solution that can scale quicker than other attempts.
His creation allows air to pass through a warehouse filled with calcium hydroxide. A natural process turns the carbon dioxide into calcium carbonate crystals. Those would then be recycled and allow the carbon dioxide to be trapped underground in many places across the world, making it easy to build facilities. “It’s immediately deliverable and immensely scalable,” he added.
But many climate advocates strongly disagree with efforts to create new plants that capture carbon from factories or directly from the air.
Dominic Eagleton, a senior campaigner for Global Witness, pointed to research showing that 78 percent of large-scale projects to capture air from a factory’s point of pollution have been canceled or put on hold because of challenges with funding and economic feasibility.
Eagleton said this underlines a notable problem: These types of plants require significant upfront expenses, sometimes up to $1 billion, and are unprofitable and costly to run long term.
“The investment case for carbon capture and storage is weak,” he said. “There’s not really that much you can do with [it].”
Reisch, of the Center for International Environmental Law, added that carbon-capture plants that attach to factories, such as coal plants, extend the life of fuel sources that should be retired. She added that it takes significant energy and complex chemical processes to run carbon-capture plants, so scaling this technology could actually increase other harmful pollutants into the environment.
As for the solutions promising to capture carbon from the air, she said, those are scientifically unproven. Since air does not have high levels of carbon dioxide concentration, it will take immense energy to make factories that pull it out of the air. It would be wiser for governments and philanthropists to scale proven technologies, such as wind and solar energy, and focus more on creating more policies that curb levels of carbon dioxide emissions, she argued.
“People want to believe there’s a quick fix — but there really isn’t,” she said. “We need systemic, structural change.” | 2022-06-23T11:37:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carbon capture technology gold rush from Biden, Elon Musk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/23/carbon-capture-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/23/carbon-capture-climate-change/ |
Shea Ralph has seen the evolution of Title IX as a player at U-Conn. and now the head coach at Vanderbilt. (Sean Rayford/AP)
By the time Marsha Lake’s daughter was 6 years old, her mother could describe her as “one big muscle.” Shea Ralph was born rambunctious, endlessly energetic and with a devilish competitive streak that meant mom put her in as many sports as she could handle, plus dance and piano, which didn’t stick.
When sometime in the mid-80s their local North Carolina YMCA started offering girls basketball, Lake was elated. She loved the sport, and besides, it was too convenient to pass up — the gym sat right behind Fayetteville Tech, where Lake taught math.
“I dropped her off and when I come back the guy running it goes, ‘She’s really, really good,’” Lake said, her vowels bowing with a southern twang. “And I just look at him and I go, ‘Well. She ought to be.’”
Ralph, who decades after her rec-league introduction to basketball is entering her second year as the head coach of the Vanderbilt women’s team, came by her talent naturally.
Her mother was among a generation of pioneers in women’s basketball. A small-town girl who stretched to 6 feet tall in the seventh grade, Lake played at North Carolina from 1971-1975. Her career straddled the passage of Title IX, the law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex at schools that receive federal funding. She was the Tar Heels’ first female all-American and played on the national team that was a precursor to today’s dominant Team USA.
She also passed down a legacy.
One way to trace progress in the 50 years since Title IX was enacted on June 23, 1972, is through Lake and Ralph’s family tree.
Title IX is mutable. The law itself has expanded and contracted in its political application. As a cause, it has evolved as each generation passes its stewardship to the next.
Lake, 68, rode to games with her teammates packed into the back of station wagons and was denied the basic resources — including having enough basketballs for every woman on the team — that were standard for the men’s team.
Ralph, 44, attended Connecticut on scholarship and was given free basketball shoes and meals as a member of the country’s top-rated women’s program. At Vanderbilt, where the Commodores have Candice Storey Lee, the first Black female athletic director in the SEC’s history, as an advocate, her team lives even better. Ralph’s players fly charter to games, have mental performance coaches and nutritionists, same as the men.
“My relationship with Title IX, I have gratitude and appreciation for it because I know without it, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Ralph said. “But I also know that we’re not even close to where we need to be. For me, there’s also this fire that it’s created inside of me that wants to make me continue to push, and for what? For equality.”
Ruffling feathers
Ralph’s definition of equality differs from what her mother was working toward in the 1970s.
When Title IX passed early in Lake’s college career, its effects were not immediate. She arrived on campus at the end of each summer to a different coach — whichever physical education teacher drew the shortest straw at the back-to-school meeting — and often knew more about the game than her instructor. The women’s team had no access to a locker room and no sweatsuits for warm-ups.
Lake never complained about the conditions. She simply told the truth, including when a broadcaster from a TV station in Durham came for a report on the differences between the men’s and women’s teams.
It earned her a stern lecture from North Carolina’s athletic director. Yet soon after, there were enough basketballs for Lake and all her teammates.
“I’ve never been a feminist, I was just happy to play basketball. I didn’t ruffle feathers. But I didn’t say anything that wasn’t right, and then things started getting better,” Lake said. “It was slow. A lot wasn’t fixed in those years before I graduated. But it makes me feel good that maybe I played just a little teeny role in dusting up enough feathers that somebody listened.”
Lake’s influence wasn’t confined to Chapel Hill. As a member of the 1973 team that traveled to Moscow for the World University Games, she was a part of Team USA’s first foray into women’s basketball.
There, she played alongside an edgy, 5-foot-10 forward who would become a lifelong friend: Pat Summit, “always intense, always serious,” Lake said. Years after Lake graduated from North Carolina, sewed up her playing career and had a teenage daughter with basketball skill that was garnering serious buzz around the state, she called Summit to ask for her professional opinion on Ralph.
The legendary Tennessee coach was, by then, practiced in smoothing out the expectations of overly eager parents. Summit told Lake every mom and dad who spent their weekends driving carpool to AAU games felt the same way: Their daughter was the reincarnation of Dr. Naismith himself. Why should Lake’s kid be any different?
“Yeah, Pat,” Lake sighed, “but you know me. And you know I know what I’m talking about.”
Summit relented and invited Ralph to attend one of her summer basketball camps, where she proved her mother right and “won every award imaginable,” Lake said. Summit only asked one thing in exchange — her old teammate had to come and work the session.
Creating opportunity
Ralph was a hotly recruited all-American in high school whose heart was set on Tennessee until it wasn’t. She won a national title in 2000 as team captain with the Lady Vols’ greatest rival, Connecticut, then added six more to her resume as a Huskies assistant coach.
Before she began coaching, Ralph’s entire life was playing basketball. But she didn’t know who she was as a person until five ACL injuries derailed her plans for a professional playing career and she spent time alone, away from the game. Then she found coaching.
Stepping into a mentorship role felt like oiled gears sliding into place.
“The reason that I coach is because of so much more than basketball,” Ralph said. “I had people — and there were definitely women — but there weren’t enough to show me the way. And if we want to keep creating avenues for young women to grow into confident people that can be a positive impact on our society in every way and embrace that and push the envelope, then we have to have more women in leadership roles.”
If Ralph felt a dearth of female mentorship after growing up with the rare gift of a college basketball-playing mother, Summit in her ear and two dozen coaches in-between on her side, how must other woman feel?
Ralph’s interpretation of equality as it relates to Title IX is creating more opportunities for women, then — and this is the critical part — nurturing them in their roles. Basketball opened unimaginable opportunities for her mother and in turn, for Ralph. That’s why the coach purposefully has a staff composed of mostly women. She said she works hard not to micromanage and to let people grow on their own while providing support.
It’s an opportunity she doesn’t take lightly. Women coaches helm only 42.3 percent of all Division I women’s teams during the 2019-2020 season, according to Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport. Like her mother, Ralph wants to leave a mark.
“As a wife and a mother, there were plenty of times along the way — plenty — that I came this close to quitting. This close, because I didn’t feel like I had the support,” Ralph said. “If I don’t do a good job in my role, then that’s one less woman that I can impact. I want to be the one to make a stamp on it. I want to be the one to create that legacy that will provide my 4-year-old daughter the opportunity she may not have had if I hadn’t been brave enough to take this on.” | 2022-06-23T11:55:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thread of Title IX can be traced through coach, her mother - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/23/title-ix-shea-ralph-marsha-lake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/23/title-ix-shea-ralph-marsha-lake/ |
Amid criticism, Western tourists returning to a battered Syria
The gatehouse of the historic citadel in Aleppo, Syria, which dates back to the 13th century. ( Ugurhan/Getty Images/iStock)
BEIRUT — Standing high on the castle-like walls of Aleppo’s historic citadel, Nick White was shocked by the destruction to the city. The 63-year-old British tourist could see how large parts had been flattened by Syria’s terrible civil war.
The ancient Citadel of Aleppo has never been breached, his guide said, pointing to the thin slits and openings along the walls where 800 years ago arrows were shot and boiling oil was poured on the Crusader invaders. In 2013, they became sniper positions.
The medieval fortification is surrounded by a deep moat and steep walls, with the sole entrance through an aged stone bridge resting atop high columns. The protection it offered inhabitants centuries ago was revived in 2013, when government forces holed up there for three years, fending off the rebels in the city below, fueled by the belief that he who controls the citadel controls the front lines.
After years of conflict, tourists are returning to a changed Syria. This summer, locals and tour operators are reporting an uptick in visitors from Western countries. Authorities restarted issuing visas in October for curious foreigners to see for themselves the country whose conflict once dominated television screens and flooded Europe with refugees.
Syrians fleeing desperation home flock to the United Arab Emirates
Now, as the echoes of war die down in Syria — despite several still active front lines — and travelers are returning, detractors demand visitors consider how much they are supporting a government known for its oppressiveness and brutality.
Criticism of such trips has mounted abroad, particularly in 2019 following a brief revival of Western tourism and the ensuing flood of videos and blogs by travel influencers. Anger flared among Syrians residing abroad, many of whom had been displaced by the war and cannot return home themselves.
Syria had resumed granting tourist visas in 2018 in hopes of pulling in some much needed revenue, before the pandemic put an end to that.
The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, a Washington-based nonprofit, said last summer that while tourism can help locals in Syria, “mass promotion without nuance or understanding is irresponsible at best and potentially fatal” for those still living under “a government involved in systemic human rights abuses.”
White, like many of his fellow travelers, knows the criticism tours such as his face, and everyone in his group wondered if this is “effectively supporting the Assad regime.”
“But no, we were supporting the Syrian economy,” he said. “We’re supporting the people on the street, trying to bring some money into the economy.”
The tours typically cost around $1,700 per person for a week-long trip which includes stops in Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra with its unparalleled Roman-era ruins, and the Crusader fort of Krak Des Chevaliers — considered one of the finest examples of medieval military architecture in the region.
Where they don’t go is to the northwest, where former al-Qaeda affiliates, Turkish-backed rebels, Syrian soldiers and Russian mercenaries nervously eye each other amid talk of a new Turkish invasion. Out of sight are also the areas to the east where Iranian militants roam free and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces are still hunting the remnants of the Islamic State.
ISIS leader dead after U.S. raid in Syria, Biden says
All outside tourism agencies are required to work with local companies registered with Syria’s Ministry of Tourism, that are responsible for handling visa applications and coordinating security clearances, accommodation and transportation.
While U.S. passport-holders are almost always rejected, those from Europe are increasingly allowed in and residents in Damascus and other cities report seeing much larger numbers of tourists distinct from the usual Iranian pilgrims, Russian mercenaries and Chinese visitors.
Tour leaders interviewed for this article all said they are not accompanied by government minders, who are typically assigned to supervise and restrict the movement of foreign visitors.
There is one exception: an unarmed member of the Syrian army escorts every group through Palmyra, desert city of the fabled Queen Zenobia who took on the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. The man is typically a lieutenant who had been directly involved in the battles to liberate the city from the Islamic State, which conquered the area twice, in 2015 and in 2017, and destroyed some of the historic ruins.
“Really hearing the modern history,” White said, “with ISIS and the things that they got up to, seeing the ruins in Palmyra that they had blown up and knocked down, and hearing that they executed people on the stage, in the auditorium we were sitting in, it was really,” he paused, “poignant.”
The officer describes the battles, points to the damage, answers questions. “But then he gives a little bit of an ideological speech,” said one tour leader, painting “the Syrian army as national heroes.”
To give as balanced a trip as possible, this particular tour leader makes sure his tours include another stop, where they meet a member of the Free Syrian Army, a loose band of factions and fighters created in the wake of the revolts that spread throughout the country in 2011.
Made up at first largely of defected soldiers and officers, they fought government troops across the country, labeling areas “liberated Syria,” before collapsing from infighting and other factors, amid the rise of more radical Islamist groups.
The tour leader, who asked to stay anonymous for security reasons because he still works in Syria, makes sure his groups hear here a different version of history where the Syrian army “started slaughtering and burning down houses, along with Hezbollah.”
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James Willcox, the founder of Britain-based travel agency Untamed Borders, said tourists resuming their visits to the country give Syrians a sense that some things, at least, are slowly going back to normal. “After a decade of conflict, normalization is good,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a really positive sign, it’s one of those symbols of better times ahead.”
The resumption of Western tourism in Syria does present a lifeline for hotels, restaurants and small business owners, especially those in and around old cities in Damascus and Aleppo who for generations have been catering to adventurous foreigners.
But they are not the only ones to gain financially: individuals and groups close to the government naturally stand to benefit as well. According to local reports, the U.S.-sanctioned Katerji Group, run by two brothers who accrued their wealth on the back of the war, already has plans underway to turn Aleppo’s old military hospital into a five-star hotel complex — profiting from one of the most vicious sieges of the war that saw whole neighborhoods leveled by Russian-backed artillery.
Attempts to clear the rubble and rebuild in the city are underway, but a war-torn economy, sanctions, and the steep depreciation of the Syrian pound have sunk the country into a financial crisis that will prolong any reconstruction.
White said he visited Syria in April with the Spanish-based agency, Against the Compass, “because it is just a place that not a lot of people have been to, and I just wanted to see for myself.”
Visible from the citadel, whose walls were partially collapsed by a bomb in 2015, is the destruction of Aleppo’s famous covered markets, once a must-see on the tourist trail but now destroyed by fighting in between the rebels and government in 2012. “Heart-wrenching,” said White. | 2022-06-23T11:55:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Europeans return to Syria, fueling tourism and attracting criticism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/23/syria-european-tourism-returns-criticism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/23/syria-european-tourism-returns-criticism/ |
Fatal shooting victim found in Rockville
Police said suspects were taken into custody
A man was fatally shot late Wednesday in Rockville and police said they have taken suspects into custody.
About 11:30 p.m., officers from the Rockville and Montgomery County police departments were called for a reported shooting in the 16000 block of Shady Grove Road, authorities said.
They arrived to find “an adult male suffering from a gunshot wound, who succumbed to his injuries,” Montgomery officials said in a statement.
“At this time, investigators believe that this is an isolated incident and there is no further danger to the community,” the statement also said.
More details were expected to be released Thursday. | 2022-06-23T11:59:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fatal shooting victim found in Rockville - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/fatal-shooting-rockville/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/fatal-shooting-rockville/ |
Man found fatally shot in vehicle after crash in Northeast Washington
A man from Maryland who was found shot inside a vehicle that crashed on New York Avenue in Northeast Washington on Monday has died, according to D.C. police.
The victim was identified as Darrius Watts, 29, of Laurel, Md.
Police said they were called to a traffic crash about 2:20 a.m. in the 2800 block of New York Avenue NE, east of Bladensburg Road, and found Watts suffering from gunshot wounds.
Police said they also found a woman inside the vehicle who had been injured in the crash. Authorities said Watts died later at a hospital; the woman’s injuries were not believed to be life threatening.
No other details were made available about the incident, including who was driving the vehicle, where the shooting might have occurred and whether any other vehicles were involved in the crash. | 2022-06-23T11:59:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fatal shooting on New York Avenue in Northeast Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/shooting-homicide-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/shooting-homicide-dc/ |
Hunger Is Worse Now Than During the Pandemic
One in six Americans relied on food banks to survive last year — 53 million people compared with 40 million before the pandemic. Now, even as the pandemic ebbs, the number of hungry Americans is rising again. Grocery prices have jumped 12% in the past year — the sharpest increase since 1979. Some of the nation’s largest food-relief organizations, such as the Atlanta Community Food Bank, have recently reported spikes in demand as significant as those in the early months of 2020.
The threat is greatest for families dependent on food-relief programs such as the Department of Agriculture’s SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), as the emergency allotments granted during the pandemic begin to expire. Children are particularly vulnerable as schools close for the summer and millions of low-income students face months without free lunches. | 2022-06-23T12:04:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hunger Is Worse Now Than During the Pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hunger-is-worse-now-than-during-the-pandemic/2022/06/23/a050e00a-f2e8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hunger-is-worse-now-than-during-the-pandemic/2022/06/23/a050e00a-f2e8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
U.K. declares ‘national incident’ after polio virus traces found in sewage
Girl receives anti-polio vaccination drops. (Ramesh Lalwani/Getty Images)
LONDON — The United Kingdom has declared a rare ‘national incident’ after traces of the highly contagious polio virus were found in sewage in London, the government said.
Britain, like many developed nations, has been polio-free since the 1980s due to the high uptake of the vaccine. So far, no cases have been reported.
However, its health security agency and medical regulator said in a statement Wednesday that authorities had found traces of poliovirus in sewage samples collected from the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, as part of “routine surveillance.” The sewage treatment plant covers a population close to 4 million in the north and east of the capital.
“Investigations are underway after several closely-related viruses were found in sewage samples taken between February and May,” the statement said. The type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus “on rare occasions can cause serious illness, such as paralysis, in people who are not fully vaccinated,” it added.
The detection suggests it is likely “there has been some spread between closely-linked individuals in North and East London and that they are now shedding the type 2 poliovirus strain in their faeces,” the statement said. So far, the polio virus has only been detected in sewage samples but investigations are underway to establish if any community transmission is occurring.
“Vaccine-derived poliovirus is rare and the risk to the public overall is extremely low,” said Vanessa Saliba, consultant epidemiologist at UK Health Security Agency in a statement.
“We are urgently investigating to better understand the extent of this transmission and the NHS has been asked to swiftly report any suspected cases,” she said, adding that “no cases have been reported or confirmed so far.”
Polio or poliomyelitis is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease, which invades the nervous system and spreads mainly through contamination by fecal matter.
There is no cure, but vaccinations since the 1960s, mostly in childhood, have been a game changer allowing many countries to eradicate wild polio. The U.K. maintains vaccine coverage of more than 95 percent, the government said, largely through a routine childhood immunization program.
Surveillance, vaccination and investment to #EndPolio 🌍 is critical, as the #UK's announcement of environmental #polio samples identified in London sewage reminds us. No child has been infected so far. @WHO is supporting 🇬🇧 and partners.https://t.co/97zNVNUiBg
The U.K. health security agency says it normally detects between one and three “poliovirus isolates per year” in sewage but they are normally one-offs and unrelated to each other. “In this instance, the isolates identified between February and June 2022 are genetically related. This has prompted the need to investigate the extent of transmission,” it added.
The most likely scenario is that a recently vaccinated individual entered the U.K. from a country where an oral polio vaccine was used. The U.K. stopped such oral vaccines in 2004 but it remains common in places such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, authorities said.
Head of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that “surveillance, vaccination and investment to #EndPolio is critical,” following news of the UK announcement.
The scandal over Boris Johnson job-hunting for his wife won’t go away
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which works to eradicate all wild and vaccine-related cases of the virus, said although largely eradicated the disease remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“It is important that all countries, in particular those with a high volume of travel and contact with polio-affected countries and areas, strengthen surveillance in order to rapidly detect any new virus importation and to facilitate a rapid response,” the group said in a statement.
Meanwhile, health officials in London are urging parents to ensure young children are fully vaccinated to prevent any spread or outbreak. The National Health Service will begin reaching out to parents of children aged under 5 in the capital who are not up to date with their vaccinations, the government said. | 2022-06-23T12:05:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Polio virus detected in London sewage; no cases reported - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/23/uk-polio-virus-london-sewage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/23/uk-polio-virus-london-sewage/ |
A half century after one movement, ‘Fierce Madres’ in Uvalde call for another
Teo Armus
Angie Villescaz, Adela Garza-Bond and Angeli Gomez make protest signs at El Progreso Memorial Library on Monday in Uvalde, TX. (Sergio Flores)
UVALDE, Tex. — The mothers and grandmothers filed into the school board meeting, a sea of maroon T-shirts with “Fierce Madres” emblazoned on their chests, ready to confront local officials after the shooting at Robb Elementary.
Angeli Gomez was called to speak first. On the day of the attack, she’d been briefly handcuffed by police as she tried to get into the school. The farmworker eventually jumped a fence and snatched her two sons from their classrooms.
“If nothing is done with this council to ensure the safety of our children, perhaps it is time for individuals who are willing to risk their lives for our children to fill your seats,” said Gomez, 30, her braids brushing the words “Hispanic Moms United” on the shirt’s back.
It has been nearly one month since the May 24 mass shooting, when a gunman stormed into an Uvalde, Tex., elementary school and killed 19 children and two teachers while police stood outside the classroom where he was shooting for over an hour.
Now, after a long procession of funerals, the collective grief here is turning into collective rage. Moms and dads, some who lost children in the attack, are showing up at town meetings teary-eyed and angry to demand school police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo’s firing. A local group calling for gun laws has grown to more than 1,000 members in just a few days — a feat in a Southwest Texas town where hunting tourism remains a large driver of the economy and private gun ownership is commonplace. Protesters are expected to gather at the town square this weekend to demand accountability.
“I am one pissed grandma,” said Estella Martinez, 70, a member of the Fierce Madres, a Latina mom-driven group that formed a week ago.
Armed Uvalde officers waited for key to unlocked door, official says
Unlike many of the parents who became activists after shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the predominantly Mexican American families here work low-wage, full-time jobs. They don’t have connections with high-profile lawmakers or philanthropists. Many don’t have a Twitter account.
Nonetheless, the residents of this 15,000-person city are not strangers to protest. A half-century ago, families participated in a walkout considered a defining moment in civil rights history after a Latino teacher at Robb Elementary was fired. They say they are drawing from that history in shaping their response to the worst U.S. school shooting in nearly a decade.
“It’s about time we flipped the script,” said Tina Quintanilla, 41, another member of the Fierce Madres. “Collectively, with our older generations, we can do this.”
‘A tough town to live in’
Back in 1970, it wasn’t school violence that spurred Uvalde students and parents into action. It was inequality.
Even though the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling deemed school segregation unlawful across the country, plenty of institutions nonetheless continued separating communities by race — including the Uvalde school district.
Residents who lived here in the 1950s and 60s recall the churches, cemeteries and movie theaters designated for Mexicans. And then there were the schools. In official records, Robb Elementary was described as the “Mexican School” — a legacy of what many in Texas call the “Juan Crow” era.
Robb, named after a White teacher, was built on the overwhelmingly Hispanic southwest side, with bare facilities that longtime residents said were worse maintained than Dalton Elementary, a majority-White school farther east. Most of the teachers were White. Josue “George” Garza was one of the few exceptions, a Latino teacher well liked by Hispanic families. He spoke with parents in Spanish and encouraged children to continue their education. He also had an activist streak and set up voter registration drives in the community.
It didn’t sit well with the principal of Robb Elementary.
“You’re a double crosser,” Garza remembers the school’s leader telling him.
When his contract wasn’t renewed, hundreds of students boycotted Uvalde schools for six weeks in the spring of 1970, putting the small town in the history books for staging one of the longest walkouts of the Chicano civil rights movement. That set into motion more civic action.
Later that year, one parent, Genoveva Morales, filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all Latino children and their parents, looking to end what she said was illegal segregation in the district. Five years later, an appellate court ruled against the school district and ordered it to desegregate.
But many families here feel that history is often pushed aside — discussed little in school and left for grandparents to retell. Painted on the walls of the public library and the high school is an image published in a 1957 New York Times article on Uvalde titled “Race Unity Easy for Texas Town.” It shows four boys of different races — one White, one Latino, one Asian and one Black — raising an American flag.
“Uvalde has sort of held on to this moment of when it was a symbol of racial unity and of hope for racial integration,” said Monica Muñoz Martinez, a native of Uvalde and history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
For many in the community, that image is a far cry from reality. In the years after the walkout, more Mexican Americans began to fill school board seats, and redistricting allowed them to gain greater representation on the county court. Garza, the teacher at the center of the controversy, was elected to the school board and then rose to become Uvalde mayor.
Yet while public institutions are more Latino today, White men still lead important organizations, such as the local bank. Parents with higher incomes — typically those who are White — send their kids to private schools or the higher-ranking school district in nearby Knippa.
The city is 81 percent Hispanic, according to the Census, but local experts estimate that only 10 to 15 percent of the area’s wealth is owned by Hispanics. Only 17 percent of local residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
“Uvalde is a tough town to live in,” said Alfredo Santos, 70, who lived in Uvalde as a child and now runs the Austin-based bilingual newspaper La Voz. “A lot of people have over the years left because they refuse to walk with their heads down. Others have stayed, trapped by poverty. Others have stayed because they have a safe job and make sure they don’t stir the pot.”
As the Fierce Madres gathered in Uvalde’s public library on a recent morning, they pulled out books recounting their town’s history for inspiration — tomes by Olga Rodriguez, a renowned activist in the community in the 1970s, and Juan Sanchez, a former Uvaldean and historian who laid out the history of the Ku Klux Klan in the community.
Some, like Gomez, who was handcuffed outside the school, have children at Robb and are now dealing with the traumatic aftermath of the shooting. They stood along the perimeter of the school that day, hoping and praying that their children, nieces and nephews, or grandchildren would come out alive. Others are Uvalde natives who felt pressed to do something.
Angie Villescaz, 55, is one of the group’s leaders and its founder. She used to work at a shelter for survivors of child abuse in Austin and ran and lost in a Democratic primary for state representative in March. After the shooting, she began talking with friends and family in her hometown about what could be done. Little by little, mothers and grandmothers began connecting.
Soon, they had a name, paying homage to the hard-charging determination with which they were raised — and are now raising their children.
“You may not know much about our culture, but you don’t mess with our kids,” Villescaz said. “We have to stay laser-focused on what Hispanic moms are trying to do because they never have really been given this kind of space.”
She and others in the group see themselves as the Latina version of Moms Demand Action, the gun control group led by mothers that arose after the Sandy Hook school massacre. Just as the women’s rights movement often failed to address the rights of women of color, Villescaz said the gun control and school safety conversation needs diverse voices to ensure their needs are met, too.
The Fierce Madres don’t yet know how to raise money, or from where. But they are steadily putting together a list of demands. First, they want school police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo fired. After that, they intend to host voter registration drives this fall in the hopes of overturning leadership — at pretty much all levels, from the local mayor to state governor, all of whom they feel didn’t do enough to protect their children.
“So far as I can see, they’ve done nothing,” said Estella Martinez, the Fierce Madres member, who grew up in a migrant farm-working family and worked as a waitress while she raised her children, often relying on food stamps to get by. Her close friend’s daughter died in the shooting as well as one of her cousin’s granddaughters.
“They’re just trying to say, ‘Okay, let’s give them time and they’ll forget.’ But I swore the day that these children got killed I was never going to let them forget.”
Grief and mistrust
In the weeks since the shooting, many have tried to focus on healing and coming together in this town where, as many like to say, everyone knows everyone. But it has also stirred long-simmering feelings of mistrust — particularly toward law enforcement officials, who are accused of dawdling and waiting for a key to enter the classroom door and kill the gunman.
At one point during their meeting, Quintanilla posed the fellow women a question: “So what if that class was full of White kids?”
Villescaz immediately responded: “Oh, they wouldn’t have been shooting the breeze, sitting around in their cars.”
“They would’ve gone in there instantly. I guarantee it. I know it,” Gomez said.
The rest of the room nodded.
Michael Luis Ortiz, a resident of Uvalde and professor at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Tex., accused leaders of protecting themselves at the expense of the public by not holding public meetings to talk to residents about what happened that day. He also said the lack of mental health resources and other social services in Uvalde ultimately set up an environment where an 18-year-old with violent thoughts and access to weaponry could slip through the cracks.
But he also believes a lack of civic action is to blame.
“We don’t have opportunities here because people are not able or willing to fight for them,” he said. “I think a lot of it just comes from not knowing how to do that, not knowing how to advocate for your rights.”
The Fierce Madres’ first foray into demanding change at the school board meeting gave them a hint that the road ahead could be long and bumpy. Angry parents and siblings were asked to speak in groups and given three minutes each. No immediate action was taken against the school district’s embattled police chief. And there was no response from school board members to the tearful testimonies of victim families.
By the end of the night, Villescaz’s feet were swollen from holding up her sign for over an hour: “Enough is enough.” The women were tired and upset. Many rushed straight to their cars when it was over, too flustered to speak.
On Wednesday, the school district announced Arredondo had been put on administrative leave. The Fierce Madres said they want more. They helped circulate an online petition that quickly gathered thousands of signatures calling for his firing. Thinking of their neighbors and family members who protested decades before, they vowed to press on.
“They moved the needle, but it’s up to us to finish it,” Martinez said, her voice shaking. “We’re like a big, giant tiger, and they have awoken us.” | 2022-06-23T12:47:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde parents protest in Robb Elementary school shooting’s aftermath - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/uvalde-walkout-activism-school-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/uvalde-walkout-activism-school-shooting/ |
Mortgage rates continue to escalate, move closer to 6 percent
Rates for fixed-rate mortgages have surged since the start of the year, rising more than two full percentage points. (Matt Rourke/AP)
Mortgage rates continued their upward momentum this week and show no signs of slowing down as they ticked up closer to the 6 percent mark, according to data released Thursday by Freddie Mac.
Rates for fixed-rate mortgages have surged since the start of the year, rising more than two full percentage points. The higher borrowing costs are part of a campaign by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates as a way to cool inflation, and the fallout in the housing market has been immediate.
Just in the past month, there have been fewer home sales, a decline of first-time buyers and sudden industry layoffs, signs that the air may be leaking out of the overheated housing market as higher rates drive down housing demand.
“Real estate is very sensitive to mortgage rate increases, so the higher rates will pull back sales and slow the housing market further,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. “Housing is a major contributor to the U.S. economy, and we’ve already seen builders cut back production and sales slow. Let’s hope higher rates don’t tip the U.S. into a recession.”
The housing cool-down has had a chilling effect on the home-lending industry. JPMorgan Chase is laying off hundreds of employees this week and reassigning hundreds more. Industry heavyweight Wells Fargo let go of more than 100 employees in its home-lending business following a drop in revenue in its first quarter. Other lenders such as Pennymac, LoanDepot and Guaranteed Rate have also reduced their workforces.
The rise in rates is also shaking up real estate companies. Compass real estate brokerage recently announced a layoff of 10 percent of its employees along with a pause on hiring and expansion. Redfin real estate brokerage also let go of 8 percent of its staff.
“The real estate industry is one of the most fiercely competitive out there, so any downturn quickly leads to a shakeout in companies,” Yun said.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage edged to 5.81 percent, up from 5.78 percent a week ago, according to Freddie Mac. It was 3.02 percent a year ago. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.92 percent, up from 4.81 percent last week. A year ago, it was 2.34 percent. The five-year adjustable rate averaged 4.41 percent, increasing from last week when it averaged 4.33 percent. A year ago, it was 2.53 percent.
Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point in an effort to tame inflation — its sharpest increase since 1994. It was the third of seven hikes expected this year. Although the central bank does not set mortgage rates, its own rate-setting activity does indirectly affect them.
Despite higher mortgage rates, mortgage applications increased for the second consecutive week during the week that ended June 12, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).
“However, purchase activity was still 10 percent lower than a year ago, as inventory shortages and higher mortgage rates are dampening demand,” Joel Kan, associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting for the MBA, said in a statement.
Kan said the average loan size is just over $420,000, well below its $460,000 peak earlier this year, and is potentially a sign that home price growth is moderating.
Pressure on home buyers
Harrison Beacher said his potential home-buying clients with a budget below $450,000 had a “visceral reaction” to the additional costs of a home loan with a 6 percent mortgage rate.
“The few hundred dollars’ difference in payment with a higher rate has a much bigger impact on buyers at an entry-level price point,” said Beacher, managing partner of the Coalition Properties Group with Keller Williams Capital Properties in D.C. “Those buyers pulled out of the market and decided to keep renting.”
Since mortgage rates began rising in early 2022 and then spiked last week by more than a half percentage point to their highest level since 2008, home buyers have increasingly felt the pinch in their expected housing payments. And yet the bottom hasn’t completely fallen out of the housing market. Instead, there’s a slowdown in sales and demand.
“The combination of rising interest rates, inflation and home prices mean that home buyers have lost close to 50 percent of the buying power they had six months ago,” said David Howell, executive vice president and chief information officer for McEnearney Associates in McLean, Va. “With any other commodity that experienced that kind of dramatic shift, demand would plummet, but that hasn’t happened.”
Over the past six weeks, signed contracts in the D.C. region are down about 15 to 20 percent compared with the same time last year, “but that’s not that steep a drop,” he said.
Howell said that 2021 and 2020 are two of the most abnormal real estate markets ever experienced. Today’s housing market is comparable to 2019, except with even lower inventory of homes for sale and higher mortgage rates, he said.
Still, there’s no expectation that mortgage rates will go down in the near future, and there’s also no evidence that prices will drop either, Beacher said. Instead of an across-the-board price reduction, the pace of appreciation is anticipated to slow, although some individual sellers are dropping their prices today if their home hasn’t sold.
‘Wait and see’
Home buyers who were looking at the top of their budget when rates were 3.5 to 4 percent may be facing a housing payment above their comfort level, said Carolyn Sappenfield, a real estate agent with Re/Max Realty Services in Bethesda, Md.
“If you don’t have to move and the payment is too high, you may want to take a step back and wait and see what happens with the market,” Sappenfield said.
First-time buyers and those looking for entry-level housing need to be flexible about location and the type of housing they buy, Beacher said.
“Your first house isn’t your forever house,” Beacher said. “It’s not impossible to buy, but you just may not be able to buy exactly what you want. The dynamic is that renting isn’t cheaper than buying now and your rent is likely going up, too.”
The condo market in D.C., especially for older buildings without outdoor space, is softer than the rest of the housing market, Howell said. That may offer an opportunity for some first-time buyers.
For sellers, Beacher recommends pricing their home appropriately and considering offering closing-cost credits to help buyers buy down their interest rate to make their payment more affordable.
“I coach all of my clients to stay in the game if they have the means to buy,” Beacher said. | 2022-06-23T15:06:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mortgage rates continue to escalate, move closer to 6 percent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/23/freddie-mac-mortgage-rates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/23/freddie-mac-mortgage-rates/ |
Analysis by Hussein Ibish | Bloomberg
When President Joe Biden visits Saudi Arabia next month, he’ll be moving past the antipathy he expressed during the presidential campaign toward the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He’s right when he says that whatever his personal feelings about the Saudis’ human-rights record, the US partnership with Riyadh is indispensable, for reasons ranging from oil prices to the containment of Iran to great-power competition with China.
But Biden shouldn’t avoid raising human rights with King Salman and the crown prince, known as MBS. A serious conversation about ongoing abuses should be a win-win for the US and the Saudis.
During a campaign debate, Biden spoke for the anger of many Democrats, and even some Republicans in Congress, when he vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state. Democrats were enraged by the Saudi government’s excessive enthusiasm for then President Donald Trump. That was compounded by concerns over the civilian deaths and devastation of the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Antagonism coalesced over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The killing was heinous, and Khashoggi had a lot of outraged friends in Washington (including myself).
The grim fact, though, is that justice for the dead is almost never possible, and certainly not for Khashoggi. Even Turkey has given up on the issue and transferred the trial of the accused parties over to Saudi Arabia. Europe has long moved on. Washington, alone, had been struggling to turn the page. Biden recognizes now is the time.
But human rights remain a significant issue, and Biden can raise them in a forward-looking manner that can produce results, rather than a quixotic, backward-looking request for unavailable justice.
Biden ought to bring up specific current cases with MBS and the king when they meet on July 15. He ought to start with asking for the release of the jailed adult children and son-in-law of former top Saudi intelligence official Saad Aljabri, who is in exile.
They are imprisoned on money-laundering and conspiracy charges that seem obviously trumped up, and are in effect being held hostage because their father was an associate of MBS’s most potent rival in the Saudi royal family, former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Nayef and Aljabri were key figures in cooperating with Washington on counterterrorism at the height of the al-Qaeda threat.
Biden should also appeal on behalf of the group of recently freed women’s-rights advocates, including restoring the right to travel of Loujain Alhathloul, a key campaigner for women’s right to drive. He should push for allowing the recently released blogger Raif Badawi to use social media as well as travel. And he should press for the release of jailed government critics including the aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan and activist Mohammed al-Rabiah.
Biden is right that statecraft involves unpalatable choices. He’s not the first president to have campaigned on a human-rights platform only to meet the realities of the Middle East. So did Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country on the itinerary that recently saw the death of a prominent journalist critic. His first stop, on July 13, will be in Jerusalem. Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank have been strongly implicated in what looks like a deliberate killing this May of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Biden should raise that issue and see what he can do about curtailing other Israeli abuses in the Palestinian territories.
But the more politically sensitive journey is to Saudi Arabia. If Biden can come away with some progress on outstanding human-rights cases, it will help justify his decision to go forward with the relationship. And MBS and company will gain a more sympathetic hearing for not only their strategic partnership with Washington but also the social and cultural liberalization underway in the country, which has been overshadowed by the Khashoggi murder.
There will still be critics on the left and right who want to terminate the US-Saudi partnership. But they’re basically neo-isolationists opposed to US global leadership. Washington and Riyadh have been partners for decades because they share a common interest in maintaining the global and regional status quo. That hasn’t changed. By pressing on human rights, Biden can make the partnership stronger.
Biden’s Risky Trip to the Mideast Is Also Pointless: Zev Chafets
Middle East Is Frenemy Territory for U.S. and Russia: Hussein Ibish
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. | 2022-06-23T15:06:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden Can Repair a Rift and Push Human Rights in Saudi Arabia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/biden-can-repair-a-rift-and-push-humanrights-in-saudi-arabia/2022/06/23/98429d3a-f2fd-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/biden-can-repair-a-rift-and-push-humanrights-in-saudi-arabia/2022/06/23/98429d3a-f2fd-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Covid-19 made hunger a critical concern as millions of Americans lost their jobs, families were homebound and supply chains were disrupted. Now inflation and war are making it worse.
One in 6 Americans relied on food banks to survive last year — 53 million people, compared with 40 million before the pandemic. Now, even as the pandemic ebbs, the number of hungry Americans is rising again. Grocery prices have jumped 12% in the past year — the sharpest increase since 1979. Some of the nation’s largest food-relief organizations, such as the Atlanta Community Food Bank, have recently reported spikes in demand as significant as those in the early months of 2020.
The threat is greatest for families dependent on food-relief programs such as the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as the emergency allotments granted during the pandemic begin to expire. Children are particularly vulnerable as schools close for the summer and millions of low-income students face months without free lunches. | 2022-06-23T15:06:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hunger Is Getting Worse Since the Pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hunger-isgetting-worse-since-the-pandemic/2022/06/23/a050e00a-f2e8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hunger-isgetting-worse-since-the-pandemic/2022/06/23/a050e00a-f2e8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
By Isabel Debre | AP
The Madame Gu superyacht, owned by Russian parliamentarian Andrei Skoch, is docked at Port Rashid terminal, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, June 23, 2022. The sleek $156 million yacht belonging to Skoch, a sanctioned Russian oligarch and parliamentarian, is the latest reminder of how the sheikhdom has become a haven for Russian money amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A sleek $156 million superyacht belonging to a sanctioned Russian oligarch and parliamentarian is now docked in Dubai, the latest reminder of how the skyscraper-studded sheikhdom has become a haven for Russian money amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
The 98-meter (324-foot) Madame Gu, which has a helicopter pad, gym, beach club and elevator, remained moored off Dubai’s Port Rashid on Thursday in what has become a test for the close partnership between the United States and United Arab Emirates.
The vessel, with an eye-catching blue hull and $1 million annual paint job price tag, is owned by Andrei Skoch, one of the wealthiest men in Russia’s Duma. A steel magnate, Skoch’s fortune is valued at about $6.6 billion, according to Forbes. Attempts to reach Skoch for comment were not successful.
The Madame Gu, registered in the Cayman Islands, flew an Emirati flag on Thursday when Associated Press journalists observed the ship — a show of wealth dramatic enough to rival the Dubai’s famed Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship-turned-hotel floating just beside it. It also was moored just next to the $200 million megayacht Dubai, owned by the city-state’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
The UAE, home to glitzy Dubai and oil-rich Abu Dhabi, has declined to take sides in Moscow’s war and welcomed the influx of Russian money to its beach-front villas and luxury hotels. The UAE’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An apparent influx of superyachts and private planes tied to Russian’s wealthy so far have avoided scrutiny in a country that has long been a magnet for foreign money — legal and otherwise.
“Despite this commitment (to prevent money laundering), the UAE — and other global financial hubs — continue to face the threat of illicit financial flows,” he said, according to readout from the Treasury Department. | 2022-06-23T15:07:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sanctioned Russian oligarch yacht in Dubai as pressure grows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sanctioned-russian-oligarch-yacht-in-dubai-as-pressure-grows/2022/06/23/ef701f22-f2ff-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sanctioned-russian-oligarch-yacht-in-dubai-as-pressure-grows/2022/06/23/ef701f22-f2ff-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Federal regulators ordered Juul to stop selling its e-cigarette products, which come in menthol and tobacco flavors. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
The decisions are part of a campaign by regulators to ensure e-cigarettes are “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That means a product must be more likely to help adults to quit smoking than to entice young people to start vaping — and potentially get addicted to nicotine.
“Today’s action is further progress on the FDA’s commitment to ensuring that all e-cigarette and electronic nicotine delivery system products currently being marketed to consumers meet our public health standards,” FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf said in a statement.
The FDA’s rejection of Juul’s applications is a stunning blow for a company whose popularity skyrocketed after its 2015 introduction of a sleek vaping device — which looked like a flash drive — and pre-filled nicotine pods in flavors such as creme brulee, mango and cucumber.
Juul’s innovative approach, touted in early marketing videos featuring young models partying and puffing on e-cigarettes, revolutionized the sleepy vaping industry. But it also prompted a fierce backlash from parents and regulators, who blamed the company for igniting a surge in teenage vaping. In response, the company ultimately took all of its flavored pre-filled pods — except for tobacco and menthol — off the market.
During the past several months, the agency has ruled on applications involving millions of e-cigarette products. But the FDA has yet to complete reviews involving some of the market leaders, angering anti-tobacco groups and some members of Congress. Nearly 50 companies have sued FDA because of its decisions on their products.
In 2020, concerned about youth vaping, the FDA prohibited sales of sweet and fruity e-cigarette pods, which Juul had already stopped selling. Juul and other companies were permitted to continue selling tobacco- and menthol-flavored cartridges — but only while the FDA reviewed their marketing applications.
Juul’s problems with the agency began in 2018, when data showed a huge increase in teenage vaping, fueling a backlash from regulators. Scott Gottlieb, who was then FDA commissioner, publicly blamed Juul for setting off a youth vaping epidemic. He was infuriated when the tobacco giant Altria bought a 35 percent stake in Juul at the end of that year.
“Juul, more than any other product and any other company, has been responsible for creating and fueling the youth e-cigarette epidemic,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. He said ordering the products off the market “would be the most significant action the FDA has taken to date to end the youth e-cigarette epidemic and stop tobacco companies from using these nicotine-loaded products to addict another generation of kids.”
“Juul is believed to be quite an effective and much less harmful substitute for cigarettes for addicted adult smokers,” said Clifford E. Douglas, director of the University of Michigan’s Tobacco Research Network and former vice president for tobacco control at the American Cancer Society.
In March, 15 senators, including Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) wrote to Califf urging the agency to quickly wrap up its reviews of vaping products, saying further delays meant “e-cigarettes that hold the greatest potential harm to public health remain unreviewed and on the market.” Durbin recently called on Califf to “step aside” if the agency did not move immediately to ban flavored products that appeal to young people.
Recently, Vuse Alto e-cigarettes, owned by Reynolds American tobacco company, has edged past Juul in terms of market share of cartridge-based brands in the United States. In 2021, Juul’s annual revenues were $1.3 billion, down from just under $1.5 billion in 2020 and $2 billion in 2019, according to a person familiar with the figures who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide them.
The most recent survey of youth tobacco use by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that youth vaping has declined since its peak in 2019. About 7.6 percent of middle school and high school students in the 2021 survey said they had used an e-cigarette at least once in the past 30 days, compared with 20 percent in 2019. Still, the FDA said, e-cigarette use remains a concern because more than 2 million middle and high school students reported vaping within the past 30 days. | 2022-06-23T15:07:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FDA orders Juul e-cigarettes off the market, citing insufficient and conflicting data - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/23/juul-banned-fda/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/23/juul-banned-fda/ |
Tribal leaders and federal officials to oversee Bear Ears together
The two groups formally reestablished a commission to oversee the national monument in Utah.
The “House on Fire” ruins in Mule Canyon, which is part of Bears Ears National Monument, near Blanding, Utah, is seen June 22, 2016. Federal officials and tribal nations have formally reestablished a commission to jointly govern the monument. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
In 2021, President Joe Biden restored two sprawling national monuments in southern Utah — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — reversing a decision by President Donald Trump that opened for mining and other development hundreds of thousands of acres of rugged lands sacred to Native Americans and home to ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs, or rock carvings.
Together, the monuments encompass an area nearly the size of Connecticut. They were created by Democratic administrations under a century-old law that allows presidents to protect sites considered historic, geographically or culturally important.
“This 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. This type of true co-management will serve as a model for our work to honor the nation-to-nation relationship in the future,” said Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning, one of the officials who signed the agreement.
The Bears Ears Commission and a joint governance plan was changed when Trump downsized the monument in 2017. That decision upset officials from the five nations driven off land included in the monument: the Hopi, the Navajo Nation, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
“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. We are being asked to apply our traditional knowledge to both the natural and human-caused ecological challenges, drought, erosion, visitation, etc.,” said Carleton Bowekaty, Bears Ears Commission co-chairman and lieutenant governor of Zuni Pueblo. | 2022-06-23T15:07:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bears Ears monument returns to joint control by tribal, federal officials - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/23/tribal-leaders-federal-officials-oversee-bear-ears-together/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/23/tribal-leaders-federal-officials-oversee-bear-ears-together/ |
They protested with Pride flags at graduation. Their fight isn’t over.
After a bittersweet senior year at Seattle Pacific University, Chloe Guillot, 22, was determined to make a statement at graduation.
She knew she was supposed to be savoring the pomp and circumstance of celebrating the end of her undergraduate career. But her mind ran elsewhere. Instead, she was focused on what she wanted to say to SPU’s interim president, Pete Menjares, when she approached him on stage. Guillot, who double majored in Christian theology and social justice, was ready to put her degrees to immediate use.
“I feel like it’s my duty as a Christian to repent and advocate against hateful ideologies,” she said.
It wasn’t just her: Many in the community were contending with the latest issue in a years-long fight to change discriminatory policies against members of the LGBTQ community at Seattle Pacific, Guillot said. So before the day was over, about 50 graduating seniors, one after another, walked across the stage and handed Menjares something to remember them by: a Pride flag.
A video of the students’ protest was posted to the TikTok account @engaygetheculture and has since garnered more than 3 million views. Other videos posted by the account — which is run by 2022 graduate Pamela Styborski — chronicle students’ protest efforts.
she's an icon 🎓 she's a legend 🎓 and she IS the moment 🎓 🏳️🌈
Students at Seattle Pacific University protest their school's anti-LGBTQ+ president by handing him Pride flags at graduation. pic.twitter.com/l3W4NZz5JT
— Peer Health Exchange (@PeerHealthExch) June 19, 2022
Many students, alumni and faculty at the Free Methodist-affiliated university are at odds with the Board of Trustees over the school’s Employee Lifestyle Expectations policy, which states that “employees are expected to refrain from sexual behavior that is inconsistent with the university’s understanding of biblical standards, including cohabitation, extramarital sexual activity, and same-sex sexual activity.” The trustees relooked at the policy late last month and voted to keep the verbiage the same.
This Florida teen went viral for his lesson on the Stonewall riots
Pride flags at commencement weren’t the only way the student activists have openly criticized the policy. Since the board’s decision, students have staked out in front of board member Menjares’s office in Demaray Hall to demand a policy change.
Styborski, who is also a sit-in organizer, said the group has made the hall into a “gender-neutral dorm.”
The students — many of them recently graduated, like Styborski and Guillot — plan to continue sitting in until July 1, Guillot said. If nothing happens, they plan to sue the trustees for negatively impacting the campus community. (Menjares, along with the rest of the board, declined a request for comment.)
The university has been welcoming to LGBTQ students and staff in recent years, Guillot added. Its faculty senate passed a resolution asking the board to rethink its decision, and donors have delivered food and water to the sit-in activists, she said.
Alumni have also participated in the sit-in, contributed to the $34,000 that has been raised for legal costs and shared social media posts in support.
However, the 12-member board hasn’t budged.
“It’s important that the charges be brought against the board and not the university,” Guillot said. “We need to bring accountability to them.”
After the trustees upheld the employee policy, they released a statement explaining their decision.
“While this decision brings complex and heart-felt reactions, the Board made a decision that it believed was most in line with the university’s mission and Statement of Faith and chose to have SPU remain in communion with its founding denomination, the Free Methodist Church USA, as a core part of its historical identity as a Christian university,” former board chairman Cedric Davis said in the statement.
Davis is one of the trustees who left the board amid the decision announcement. Kevin Johnson, another of the former trustees, expressed his discontent with the ruling on LinkedIn.
“I wholeheartedly stand for equality in all forms, and will always push for a community of love and inclusion,” Johnson wrote.
An FAQ on SPU’s website noted that many institutions in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities have similar policies.
Shirley Hoogstra, president of the CCCU, believes the school’s faith statement has been a “compass” guiding the board’s decision on the employee policy.
“The United States Constitution allows you to practice your faith. We’re really upfront that we’re religious, and so nobody wants this to come as a surprise,” she said. Hoogstra cited other identity-specific institutions, including Catholic schools and historically Black colleges and universities, as examples of options people have when choosing higher education: “You don’t have to work there, and you don’t have to go there.”
Many at the university were unaware of the employee policy until last year, when gay adjunct nursing professor Jéaux Rinedahl sued the university for discrimination after he was denied a full-time position. Rinedahl no longer works at SPU, and the parties settled out of court earlier this year. After news spread about Rinedahl’s case, Pride flags popped up on professors’ windows and email signatures, and many wore Pride pins in solidarity, Styborski said.
“No matter the walk of faith you come from, or lack thereof, no matter your race, your identity, your sexuality, whether you’re a member of the LGBTQ community, professors, as far as I experienced, went above and beyond to support students in every aspect of their life,” she said.
A decade ago, students worked to make Haven, a group for LGBTQ students, an official club on campus. Now, students like Guillot and Styborski want people outside the school community to know that SPU’s social activist spirit has never stopped.
“I’ve had a passion for social justice since high school, even if I didn’t know exactly what it meant,” Guillot said. “This school empowers you to stand up for things you believe in.”
And at graduation, Guillot was empowered to do just that.
When Guillot walked across the stage, she carried the Pride flag in hand. And as she exchanged it for her SPU diploma cover, she finally stood face to face with Menjares and said the words that ran through her head during the ceremony:
“We’re not going to stop until the policy changes.” | 2022-06-23T15:07:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Seattle Pacific University grads continue protest of anti-LGBTQ policy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/seattle-pacific-university-pride-flag-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/seattle-pacific-university-pride-flag-protest/ |
Ethan Crumbley attends a hearing at Oakland County circuit court in Pontiac, Mich., on Feb. 22, 2022. A judge on Thursday, June 23, 2022 postponed a murder trial until January in the case of the teenager accused of killing four fellow students and injuring others at a Michigan high school. Lawyers for Crumbley said a September trial date wouldn’t leave enough time to go through evidence and prepare. (David Guralnick/Detroit News via AP, Pool) | 2022-06-23T15:08:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michigan teen's trial in school shooting moved to January - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/michigan-teens-trial-in-school-shooting-moved-to-january/2022/06/23/67077c56-f2fb-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/michigan-teens-trial-in-school-shooting-moved-to-january/2022/06/23/67077c56-f2fb-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
By Gitanas Nauseda
Finnish soldiers perform war simulation exercises during NATO military drills on June 11 in Varmdo, Sweden. (Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images)
Gitanas Nauseda is the president of Lithuania.
“Never again” was the oath most widely pledged after the end of World War II. Yet for more than 100 days now, Russia’s brutal war of aggression has been raging in Ukraine. The war has fundamentally challenged the security architecture of the West. NATO’s initial response was admirable. But now we must go further — by making urgently needed adjustments to the alliance and its structure. NATO must adapt to a radically changed security environment.
Russia has been publicly challenging the West for at least the past 15 years. It has tried to gain the upper hand through aggressive action, first in Georgia in 2008, then in Ukrainian Crimea and Donbas in 2014. Despite all this, some Western countries have continued business as usual with Moscow, some even expanding their cooperation. For decades, the West has failed to understand what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime is about — namely expansionism, revisionism, violence, rule by fear and coercion. Russia is not interested in creation or cooperation, but rather in destruction and rule by force.
Feb. 24, 2022, was the day when the rose-tinted glasses fell off. Now the countries of the West have imposed stringent sanctions on Russia and are delivering heavy weapons to Ukraine. Europe has started moving toward energy independence from Russia. It might seem as though a lot has been done, but this is not enough to stop the war in Ukraine. And are we really doing enough to stop Putin from continuing his aggression elsewhere?
The time has come to understand that Russia cannot be stopped by persuasion, cooperation, appeasement or concessions. Russia takes such gestures as a sign of weakness, as permission to expand and intensify its onslaught. When Putin hears Western leaders talk about the need to negotiate, the need for a cease-fire, the need to avoid “humiliating” Russia, he is only encouraged to increase his gamble for world conquest. Recently Putin even compared himself to Peter the Great and openly declared his determination to take back lands previously occupied by the Russian Empire. Such rhetoric clearly demonstrates his contempt for one of the most fundamental pillars of the rules-based international order: the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Putin is clear in his desire to subvert Western values, cut the links between North America and Europe, and subdue Europe to Russia’s will. He knows that he can achieve these aims by confronting NATO. We can prevent this from happening by ensuring that the transatlantic community has a clear plan for defense. We are at a crucial moment in history, one where we must show decisiveness and determination. The NATO summit scheduled to start on June 29 in Madrid will be our chance to do so.
First, we must clearly define Russia as an explicit long-term threat to the entire Euro-Atlantic area. NATO policies must be adjusted accordingly. There is no place for passive hesitation and appeasement.
Second, we must scale up our defenses. We can no longer place our faith in the policy of tentative reinforcement. We need to make sure that NATO has no weaknesses. It is crucial that no potential adversary should be tempted to attack the alliance. The three Baltic states are already on the front line if Putin decides to test NATO’s boundaries, strength and commitment. In this situation, there is no credible alternative for NATO but to invest more in the defense of the Baltic countries. We must quickly move to modern forward defense by upgrading NATO’s battalion-scale enhanced forward presence to brigade level and by building regional air-defense capabilities. This would send the strongest signal yet to Russia that it will not be allowed to set the parameters for the security of NATO’s eastern flank. Failure to do so would invite further trouble.
Third, we must make sure Ukraine wins. We must provide every form of support to Ukraine, including (and most especially) heavy weapons, quickly and in significant quantities. Time and numbers matter in this war. We must understand that every centimeter of Ukrainian land occupied by Putin’s forces brings Russian terror closer to our door. We must understand that this war is about the world we and our children are going to live in. Values cannot defend themselves. If left undefended, they will perish, and democracy will be replaced by authoritarianism. We need to choose between succumbing or standing up for our values. We need to choose Ukraine.
And finally, NATO’s “open door policy” must be officially maintained as the most effective tool in expanding security and providing peace for millions of Europeans. We should wholeheartedly welcome Sweden and Finland into the alliance. This decision will have a wide-ranging positive impact on the Baltic region and NATO as a whole.
To be truly safe and stable, Europe must be whole and free, united in peace, democracy and prosperity. For this future to become a reality, the success of NATO as the backbone of collective defense spanning the whole transatlantic area is crucial.
This also means that the alliance will have to reinvent itself. Only by being more proactive, investing more in our indivisible security and making it more difficult for adversaries to wreak havoc can we hope to achieve the return of a lasting peace in Europe. | 2022-06-23T15:08:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda: Now is the time to make NATO even stronger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/lithuanian-president-gitanas-nauseda-strengthen-nato-russia-war-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/lithuanian-president-gitanas-nauseda-strengthen-nato-russia-war-ukraine/ |
People look at departure screens at Waterloo train station, in London, during a railway workers strike, Thursday, June 23, 2022. Tens of thousands of railway workers walked off the job in Britain on Tuesday, bringing the train network to a crawl in the country’s biggest transit strike for three decades. Britain faces the second of three national railway strikes Thursday after new negotiations between union and employers ended in deadlock. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) | 2022-06-23T15:09:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trains canceled in UK as unions stage 2nd 24-hour walkout - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trains-canceled-in-uk-as-unions-stage-2nd-24-hour-walkout/2022/06/23/26085c0e-f303-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trains-canceled-in-uk-as-unions-stage-2nd-24-hour-walkout/2022/06/23/26085c0e-f303-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Arch Manning will look to carry on his family's quarterbacking legacy at Texas. (Tim Warner/Getty Images)
Arch Manning, the latest in the long line of Manning family quarterbacks, announced Thursday that he will play for the University of Texas after one of the most closely followed recruitments in recent history. The son of Cooper, nephew of Peyton and Eli, and grandson of Archie announced his decision on Twitter.
Ranked No. 1 overall in the class of 2023 by 247 Sports, Manning still has one year to play at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, where his father and uncles all played and where he’s been the varsity starter since he was a freshman. He reportedly had his pick of college programs and chose the Longhorns over powerhouses like Alabama, Georgia, LSU, and Clemson.
Manning threw 26 touchdown passes and rushed for eight more as an Isidore Newman junior in 2021, leading the Greenies to a 7-3 record.
“He’s got the quickest release that I’ve ever seen, just how fast the ball gets out,” Isidore Newman Coach Nelson Stewart told ESPN last year. “His load to release is almost eerie. He snaps his wrist and the ball is out. He has tremendous footwork and takes pride in that. His drops are very fast. He has a really good pocket presence. Young quarterbacks sometimes get flushed out and feel the pressure and want to spin and run outside the pocket. He’s not that way. He hangs in there and is willing to take shots.”
Arch Manning is a STUD@MaxPreps/@CBSSportsHQpic.twitter.com/3IC0Asyrfw
For good measure, Manning also helped Isidore Newman to its first Louisiana state basketball title since 1993.
Manning should provide a jolt to a Texas program that has been mired in relative mediocrity in recent years. Since their last trip to the national title game during the 2009-10 season, the Longhorns have exceeded seven wins only five times, have had five losing records and have gone through four head coaches. The latest, Steve Sarkisian, could only muster a 5-7 record last season, his first in Austin.
Manning will be a junior in 2025, when the Longhorns will play their first season as a member of the Southeastern Conference. He may have been drawn to Texas because of Sarkisian’s history developing quarterbacks such as Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones and Matt Leinart in a career that has included stints in both college football and the NFL.
If no one transfers — a big “if” these days — the Longhorns will have the No. 2 quarterback from the class of 2020 (Hudson Card), the top quarterback from the class of 2021 (Ohio State transfer Quinn Ewers), the No. 12 quarterback from the class of 2022 (Maalik Murphy) and Manning on their roster when Manning joins the team in 2023.
Manning likely can handle the pressure, seeing as how he attends the high school where the No. 18 worn by his father — whose promising football career was cut short by a spinal stenosis diagnosis — and his Super Bowl-winning uncles has been retired.
“I think there’s a natural pressure, but I think he’s just one of those kids who is a high achiever and has high standards,” Stewart told ESPN. “It’s just how he’s wired. I know he adores his grandfather and it’s an incredibly close family. He doesn’t get caught up in it. I really do just focus on the Arch, and not the Manning, and just be his coach. I think he’s his own entity, and he knows that. There’s no sense of entitlement with him, and that’s important to me. He’s very unassuming. I don’t think he feels pressure because of [his name], but he puts pressure on himself.” | 2022-06-23T17:47:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arch Manning, nephew of Peyton and Eli Manning, headed to Texas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/23/arch-manning-texas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/23/arch-manning-texas/ |
Bomb scare at Wheaton high-rise prompts temporary evacuation
Many residents had been taken to a nearby recreation center
Montgomery County firefighters partially cleared a high-rise apartment building in downtown Wheaton on Thursday morning after one of its residents reported having a bomb in his unit, officials said Thursday morning.
But investigators who got into the unit found no explosives, and by noon officials were planning to move residents back in, according to Battalion Chief Jason Blake.
Shortly before 8 a.m., firefighters responded to a fire alarm at “The Exchange,” which has approximately 17 floors that rise above a Safeway grocery store, Blake said. The building has 486 apartment units, Blake said.
After arriving, the firefighters encountered a man who said he pulled the alarm and that there was a bomb in his apartment. Investigators were able to see inside his apartment, and indeed noted a “suspicious looking” package.
“What they saw gave them concern,” Blake said from the scene.
Residents were asked to leave the building, with many being taken to a nearby recreation center, as investigators entered the apartment with a neutralization plan, according to Blake.
“The suspicious package was rendered safe,” he said, and it was determined to not be an explosive. | 2022-06-23T18:05:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bomb scare at Wheaton high-rise prompts temporary evacuation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/bomb-scare-at-wheaton-high-rise/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/bomb-scare-at-wheaton-high-rise/ |
In the US, where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, states have differing policies on who can carry concealed weapons in public. Pro-gun activists have made headway in recent years by getting more states to stop requiring permits to do so. (Openly carrying weapons, a distinct but related issue, is also subject to state-by-state laws.) Now the Supreme Court has struck down New York’s law that required people to show a special need to carry a handgun in public, ruling for the first time that the Second Amendment protects gun rights outside the home.
State laws on concealed-carry fall into three categories. In states with “permitless carry” laws, individuals need no prior approval or permit to carry a concealed firearm in public. States with “shall issue” laws grant a permit to any applicant who meets minimum legal requirements, such as being at least 21 years old and having no felony convictions. States with “may issue” laws, the most stringent type, give officials some discretion to reject people seeking a permit. The Supreme Court’s ruling against New York most likely spells the end for this category, leaving states to choose only between permitless carry and “shall issue” laws.
New York was one of at least six states -- along with California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Hawaii -- with laws that prevented most people from legally carrying a handgun. About a third of states have some kind of “shall issue” law, offering state officials a degree of discretion in approving or denying applications; these “shall issue” regimes aren’t affected by the ruling striking down New York’s law, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion. About 25 states -- half of the US, in other words -- allow concealed carry with no permit. Those states include Texas, where 21 people died in an elementary school shooting in May.
3. Are there no limits to carrying a gun in public?
There are. Many states -- even some with the most permissive concealed-carry laws -- do require permits to carry guns in certain places, such as schools.
Gun-rights activists and the conservative political leaders who generally side with them argue that requiring permits violates their constitutional rights. They say applying for a permit can be a tedious obstacle in the way of taking steps to defend oneself. The National Rifle Association, whose affiliate challenged New York’s concealed carry permit laws in the Supreme Court, has been pushing to weaken permit laws since the mid-1980s. | 2022-06-23T18:09:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s How US States Differ on Carrying Guns in Public - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-how-us-states-differ-on-carrying-guns-in-public/2022/06/23/c8811718-f318-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-how-us-states-differ-on-carrying-guns-in-public/2022/06/23/c8811718-f318-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
The Latest Currency War May Just Be a Skirmish
Analysis by Robert Burgess and Daniel Niemi | Bloomberg
There’s a lot of hand-wringing in the foreign-exchange market about a fresh “currency war” breaking out, with countries and central banks taking action to support their weakening currencies to offset a strengthening US dollar. The last currency war took place a decade ago, but that one was about the opposite — finding ways to reverse the massive appreciation in local currencies because of a rapidly depreciating dollar. Regardless, the latest battle may end before it truly gets started.
To understand why, you have to go back even further — before the worldwide pandemic, before Europe’s debt crisis, before the global financial crisis — to the early 2000s, when global monetary policies were calibrated toward actual economic fundamentals rather than keeping economies from collapsing. Back then, a primary driver of exchange rates was the US current-account deficit, and the dollar would routinely rise and fall based on whether the shortfall would contract or expand.To be sure, this metric isn’t on par with unemployment or inflation when it comes to economic importance, but it’s critical for the currency market because by including investment flows on top of exports and imports, it’s the broadest measure of trade. And 20 years ago, the deficit was expanding rapidly, growing from around $50 billion near the end of the last century to more than $200 billion in 2005. As a result, the US needed to attract billions of dollars a day to finance the shortfall. Naturally, this had a negative effect on the greenback, with the US Dollar Index plunging some 33% between July 2001 and late 2004.
The current-account deficit steadily improved from that point on, but then the pandemic hit and global trade was upended. The shortfall has ballooned from around $100 billion at the end of 2019 to $291.4 billion as of the end of the first quarter, the US Commerce Department said Thursday. At 4.8% of current dollar gross domestic product, the deficit is back on par with the period when the dollar was depreciating swiftly.
All this wouldn’t matter much if the US was attracting an increasing amount of foreign investment to finance the deficit, but that may no longer be happening. The Treasury Department said last week that foreign holdings of US Treasuries dropped by almost $300 billion in the first four months of the year. Although the amount is a small fraction of the $23.3 trillion in marketable US government debt outstanding, and foreigners still hold some $7.4 trillion of that, it’s the direction that counts. Then there’s the Federal Reserve’s holdings of Treasuries on behalf of foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds. That account has shrunk from $3.13 trillion in early 2021 to a recent $2.99 trillion. Again, not a huge amount, but the direction is concerning. Most worrisome of all, however, may be the dollar’s eroding status as the world’s primary reserve currency. Although the International Monetary Fund estimates the greenback makes up 58.8% of global foreign-exchange reserves, that’s down from a peak of 72.7% in 2001 and the lowest percentage since 1996.
Demand for haven-like assets amid the pandemic and higher relative interest rates have certainly underpinned the US currency, with the Dollar Index rising about 17% since the beginning of 2021. This has put tremendous pressure on other currencies. For example, the Bloomberg Euro Index has dropped 10%; the Bloomberg British Pound Index is down more than 7% since May 2021; Japan’s yen has plunged 20%; the MSCI EM Currency Index is off 4.61% since late February alone.
True, a weaker currency brings some benefits. For one, it makes a country’s exports more affordable. But that hardly matters when world trade volumes are still incredibly depressed because of supply chain disruptions. Plus, officials are generally more concerned with the speed of currency moves, which can disrupt an economy because companies have little time to adjust. As my Bloomberg News colleagues Amelia Pollard and Saleha Mohsin noted, the European Central Bank’s Isabel Schnabel highlighted a chart in February showing how much the euro had weakened against the dollar. Bank of Canada official Tiff MacKlem then bemoaned the decline of that country’s dollar. Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan then suggested he’d like to see a stronger franc.
In the case of the US, a weakening currency could give foreign investors even less incentive to buy dollar-denominated assets, making it harder to finance the record budget and trade deficits. That could mean higher borrowing costs for the government, companies and consumers. It’s been two decades since the US current-account deficit drove global currency markets, but that may be about to change and in a big way.More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
• The Weaker Dollar Trend Is Only Just Beginning: Stephen Roach
• Why the Dollar Is More Robust Than It Looks: Richard Cookson
• US Debt Is Massive, Expanding and Under Control: Gary Shilling
Daniel Niemi is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously an assistant business editor and a DealBook editor at the New York Times. He was also an editor at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky and the Cincinnati Enquirer. | 2022-06-23T18:09:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Latest Currency War May Just Be a Skirmish - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-latest-currency-war-may-just-be-a-skirmish/2022/06/23/6eb0cf16-f31e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-latest-currency-war-may-just-be-a-skirmish/2022/06/23/6eb0cf16-f31e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
U.S. to give some ‘Havana syndrome’ victims six-figure compensation
President Biden meets with members of the Wounded Warrior Project's Soldier Ride, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. The event helps raise awareness to the public about severely injured veterans and provides rehabilitation opportunities. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The Biden administration plans to pay some diplomats and intelligence officers roughly $100,000 to $200,000 each to compensate for the mysterious health problems known as “Havana syndrome,” according to congressional aides and a former official familiar with the matter.
The payment scheme is the culmination of a multiyear push by Congress, which passed a law last fall mandating that the State Department and CIA compensate current and former officials suffering from what the government calls Anomalous Health Incidents, or AHIs.
Despite six years of investigations, the United States still lacks certainty about what is causing the symptoms, which include headaches, vision problems, dizziness and brain fog, among other ailments. The health problems were first reported among U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers serving in Cuba’s capital but have since been reported on every continent except Antarctica.
The six-figure payments will go to those determined to have suffered the most significant setbacks, such as job loss or career derailment, said people briefed on the plan who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the scheme has not been approved for release.
U.S. officials cautioned that the range of compensation is not yet final and could change as the State Department’s regulation goes through the final stages of a review process, which is coordinated by the Office of Management and Budget.
The CIA determined this winter that a foreign country is probably not behind a “worldwide campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or mechanism” — an assessment that raised doubts about years of speculation that the health issues were the result of a mysterious directed energy weapon wielded by Russian or Chinese agents.
Government investigators have reviewed more than 1,000 cases, with the majority being attributed to a preexisting medical condition or environmental or other factors. Dozens of other reported cases remain unexplained.
As word of the compensation packages has trickled out to the federal workforce, some officials have remarked that the packages were generous while others have said the compensation range seems insufficient given the loss of future and past income for those who suffered severe neurological damage and can no longer work.
The Biden administration has not yet released the criteria for how it will determine eligibility for compensation but it is expected to be made public shortly. Current and former officials as well as their family members will be eligible to make claims, said those briefed on the plan.
Under the Havana Act, Congress gave the secretary of state and CIA director the authority to determine eligibility, which has already caused concerns about whether diplomats and intelligence officers will be treated the same.
“It is crucial that CIA and State implement the Havana Act in an identical fashion. To include using the exact same criteria who qualifies for compensation. There cannot be any daylight between agencies, which previously was an unfortunate hallmark in how the USG responded to the AHIs,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA officer who retired while suffering symptoms, including painful headaches, after a trip to Moscow in 2017, when he was helping run clandestine operations in Russia.
Devising a compensation plan has been particularly difficult for U.S. government officials given the lack of hard evidence for what’s causing the ailments and the inability to establish a clear diagnosis for the broad range of symptoms that while sometimes debilitating can also be common.
Officials with the State Department and CIA said Thursday that the Havana Act authorized the agencies to provide payments to personnel for “qualifying injuries to the brain.”
The two agencies have been working in partnership with the National Security Council on how the payment system will work and will have more information on it “soon,” said the CIA official.
The official added that the legislation provides the CIA and other agencies “the authority to make payments to employees, eligible family members, and other individuals affiliated with the CIA.”
“As Director Burns has emphasized, nothing is more important to him and CIA leaders than taking care of our people,” the official said.
Officials from the National Institutes of Health, the Pentagon and other agencies have jointly developed a new, two-hour medical exam to screen potential new cases that can be administered by doctors or other practitioners to U.S. personnel assigned to overseas missions.
The triage process includes visual, vestibular and blood testing but not brain imaging, a fact that reflects constantly changing and sometimes disputed science on the injuries. Even though some doctors previously identified “perceptible changes” in the brain as a result of apparent attacks, State Department physicians say they now believe the scans have no scientific validity.
Officials are also seeking to better educate medical staffers at missions worldwide, instructing them to be receptive to potential victims’ experiences — and they stress that skepticism is no longer the norm.
In January, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the State Department, like the CIA, was focused on providing medical care to those needing it, and would continue to seek a cause behind the health issues.
“We are going to continue to bring all of our resources to bear in learning more about these incidents, and there will be additional reports to follow. We will leave no stone unturned,” he wrote. | 2022-06-23T18:10:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. to compensate some ‘Havana syndrome’ victims with six-figure payments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/23/united-states-havana-syndrome-payments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/23/united-states-havana-syndrome-payments/ |
Democrats are having a mini-2024 primary right now
Vice President Harris in Columbia, S.C., earlier this month. (Sean Rayford/Pool/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Instead of just handing their 2024 nomination to President Biden, Democrats are having a public-if-not-quite-open discussion about who should be their standard-bearer. That’s good, and I hope it continues.
No Democrats have declared that they will run against Biden. But in recent weeks, we’ve seen signs that a miniprimary is underway. Prominent party figures told the New York Times that they have doubts about another Biden candidacy. Vice President Harris gave a speech to Democrats in South Carolina, a key early stop in the nomination process. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker did the same in New Hampshire. California Gov. Gavin Newsom told the Atlantic that the party needs someone to forcefully attack the extremist policies being adopted by state-level Republicans — and essentially volunteered himself for the role. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who boosted both Barack Obama in the 2008 primary and Biden 12 years later, suggested he would back Harris if Biden doesn’t run.
Incumbent presidents typically do not face many questions about whether they will seek a second term. And usually, they shouldn’t — since incumbents generally fare better than challengers. But this isn’t a typical set of circumstances. Biden won the presidency at 77, in a race that didn’t require much in-person campaigning because of covid-19. In 2024, a then-81-year-old Biden would have to be on the road a lot more. And currently, only about 40 percent of voters approve of Biden’s performance as president, while about 55 percent disapprove, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of recent polls.
It would be nuts to defer to a candidate facing those challenges — and I’m glad that Democrats appear to understand that. I suspect Biden himself is aware of the issues. In early 2020, he described himself as a “bridge” figure who would help carry the party to its next generation of leaders.
Biden would be the favorite in a rematch against Donald Trump, but he could lose, too, and I think a contest against a fresh face from the GOP would be really tough for him. Harris, meanwhile, has been unfairly tagged as a bad politician because of her lackluster 2020 campaign. (Biden’s campaigns of 1988 and 2008 were worse.) But it’s fair to say she doesn’t appear to have Obama-level political skills, and she has poll numbers similar to Biden’s and would be tagged with all the foibles of this administration.
Nonetheless, if Biden doesn’t run, it will be difficult for the party to dislodge the heir apparent, Harris. Remove Biden from the question, and she leads most polls of the 2024 Democratic primary field, in part because she has fairly strong support among Black voters. I suspect many party leaders would embrace her, as Clyburn has, and particularly Black ones. Black people constitute only about 20 percent of Democrats, but in many ways they are the moral center of the party.
Many other Democrats would make formidable candidates, too. In my view, the party would be best off if a broad coalition of leading Democrats and liberals — such as Biden, Harris, Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — came together, say, in January 2023 to jointly urge the voters to get behind a ticket of Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.). Such a ticket would satisfy Democrats’ desire for representation of women and people of color and likely appeal to swing voters while being acceptable to the party’s left wing.
But that isn’t going to happen. Instead, if Biden opts out, Democrats are likely to have a 2023 that looks like 2019. Many people will run, including some — like Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang three years ago — who are clearly unqualified. There will be an endless stream of debates that goose cable news ratings but do little to inform the electorate. And candidates will spend a lot of time bickering over the fine points of policy plans that have no chance of being enacted.
In other words, Democrats have three real choices ahead of them: An octogenarian, unpopular Biden. An unproven, unpopular Harris. Or a free-for-all that might produce a great candidate but also might not.
I tend to think that the inflation that is jolting the price of gas and other goods will ease between now and the 2024 election, that Biden and Harris will get more popular as a result and also that Democrats could have an open primary and emerge with a great candidate.
But none of that is guaranteed. So I can understand all the anxiety within the party. And I’m glad that it’s trying to address these questions instead of sweeping them under the rug.
Perhaps Biden-Harris 2024 is still the best option. But that should be discussed, openly and immediately. After all, the 2024 presidential campaign will start in earnest in less than five months.
Follow Alerts: Sign up to receive email notifications from John Paul Brammer, Jonathan Capehart, Kate Cohen and more of your favorite columnists on our newsletters page. | 2022-06-23T18:11:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Will Biden run in 2024? Democrats need to decide soon. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/president-biden-2024-mini-democrat-primary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/president-biden-2024-mini-democrat-primary/ |
It will be the California Air Resources Board’s first public discussion of this year’s draft scoping plan, which is updated every five years and lays out a roadmap for the state to reach its climate goals. The 2045 goal is among the most ambitious in the nation, but the proposal has many critics beyond the oil industry. A wide range of environmental advocates say the plan does far too little to quickly lower planet-warming emissions.
California is often touted as a leader on U.S. climate policy and it has set some of the most aggressive rules for regulating vehicle emissions. The size of the California’s economy — it’s bigger than most nation’s — means the state’s climate policies can often drive major business changes. It’s 2045 carbon neutrality goal is matched only by Hawaii among states, and tracks with goals set by other major economies like Germany.
Such a sweeping transition would lower the state’s emissions about 78% come 2045. Some observers note that Washington and New York, both Democratic-led states, have more ambitious targets for direct emissions reductions, 95% and 85% respectively.
Though the timelines don’t offer perfect comparisons, the two states are “pushing harder and farther,” said Danny Cullenward, a lawyer and climate economist who serves on an oversight board for California’s carbon pricing program.
Critics from environmental groups say California’s plan doesn’t call for deep enough emissions cuts, relies too heavily on unproven and energy intensive carbon removal technology and lacks a focus on whether the state is poised to hit its more urgent 2030 emissions targets. The concerns about carbon removal technology track with global concerns about the best way to tackle emissions goals.
Catherine Garoupa White, executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, said air regulators can’t answer key questions about the safety and feasibility of carbon sequestration and removal proposals. The plan allows oil refining to continue but requires installation of carbon capture technology.
“We’re constantly put in the position of having to react and respond to plans that they’ve already baked up with industry,” said Garoupa White, who is a member of the air board’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee.
Liane Randolph, chair of the Air Resources Board, noted the plan calls for a major reduction in gas-fueled home appliances and a shift to electric-powered vehicles. Still, the demand for fossil fuels won’t drop to zero, she said. | 2022-06-23T18:11:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California emissions, carbon neutrality plan draws criticism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/california-emissions-carbon-neutrality-plan-draws-criticism/2022/06/23/fe3a89d0-f31c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/california-emissions-carbon-neutrality-plan-draws-criticism/2022/06/23/fe3a89d0-f31c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Yelp CEO shutters some offices, says hybrid work is “hell”
CEO Jeremy Stoppelman calls hybrid offices “the worst of both worlds" as he doubles down on remote work
In this photo taken Friday, Aug. 1, 2014, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman poses at his company's headquarters in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
In an interview with The Washington Post, Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman called hybrid offices “the worst of both worlds” and noted that two things have become increasingly clear following the pandemic: Workers want to do their jobs remotely and the company benefits from meeting the demand. Stoppelman acknowledged the growing popularity of hybrid policies — in which employees work from the office part time — but called them “the hell of half measures.”
“It’s the worst of three options,” he said.
Stoppelman’s decision to double down on remote work comes after Yelp told its 4,400 employees last year that they can work from anywhere indefinitely. It also downsized its San Francisco headquarters to opt for a “hoteling” model, in which employees reserve their desk spaces for the day. Yelp is among a growing number of companies — including Twitter, Airbnb and Slack — that have indicated that the future of work is remote. Meanwhile, others are opting for a hybrid work environment or a five-day in-office workweek.
‘The office as we know it is over,’ Airbnb CEO says
Yelp plans to use the cost-savings from the office space to reinvest in hiring, in employee benefits and perks, and the business itself. Stoppelman said the company is figuring out the cadence and best ways to host in-person events so workers can meet, collaborate and bond in real life.
But Stoppelman says he isn’t taking Yelp’s work policies lightly. Instead, he says he’s following data from employee surveys as well as business results.
A recent company survey shows that more than 85 percent of respondents prefer to work remotely most or all of the time and that remote work has made them more effective, Stoppelman says. Only 1 percent of employees are currently going to an office every day. The company announced its remote policy in 2021 and opened its offices in March 2022. Meanwhile, Yelp reported a net profit of $39.7 million on record revenue of $1.03 billion in 2021. Revenue continued to increase into 2022, popping 19 percent in the first quarter.
“Frankly, it was somewhat surprising,” Stoppelman said about the success of remote work. “We feel strongly that this is the way forward.”
When it comes to the buzzy world of hybrid work, Stoppelman pointed to a few problems. Employees are still required to commute only to arrive at an office where they only see a small portion of their co-workers. They’re also forced to reside or relocate to potentially more expensive cities where they can go to an office. Meanwhile, companies miss out on savings that come with reducing their footprints, and they limit their talent pool to certain geographical areas.
Stoppelman also pushed back on the idea that companies can’t create culture in a remote environment — as Yelp has had a somewhat distributed workforce years before the pandemic. Instead he says culture comes from who a company hires, who it fires and who it promotes.
“When people talk about this … they don’t have robust data to back it up,” he said about concerns of losing culture and creativity in remote environments.
As a result of its remote policies, Stoppelman said Yelp has been able to hire employees in all U.S. states as well as Canada, Germany, and the U.K. He said he expects this to increase the diversity of the company’s employee base.
Looking ahead, Stoppelman said he plans to continue reviewing worker surveys to determine how its other offices — located in San Francisco, London, Toronto and Hamburg — are being used and whether they’re still needed. So far, they’re still getting enough usage to keep open, he said.
What your future office could look like — if you even need to be there
He’s also paying attention to what benefits employees want and need. Following the pandemic, the company beefed up its offerings to include a home office equipment reimbursement, a monthly work-from-home stipend to cover costs like internet, additional wellness days and child care benefits. | 2022-06-23T18:12:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Yelp CEO shutters some offices, says hybrid work is “hell” - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/22/yelp-shutters-offices/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/22/yelp-shutters-offices/ |
In Canada, five museums that celebrate the country’s Black history
The Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society & Black Mecca Museum showcases artifacts and art from southern Ontario. (Dudek Photography/Chatham-Kent Tourism and Ontario’s Southwest)
Canada is rarely regarded as a destination with rich Black heritage. That’s a mistake: The country’s Black history is full of impactful civil rights movements and unsung Black heroes.
It’s a history closely tied to slavery. From 1628 onward, hundreds of enslaved Africans were brought to Canada by French, English and American settlers. During the Revolutionary War, the British promised enslaved Africans freedom in Canada if they pledged their loyalty to the British. In defeat, the British kept their promise, and settled the emancipated families in what are now known as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
While slavery continued in the United States, Britain — and therefore Canada — made the practice illegal with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The lure of freedom drew Black Americans north of the border via the Underground Railroad, where they settled in southern Ontario and Quebec.
Throughout the 1900s, a number of policies that discriminated against African and Caribbean immigrants were eliminated, and Canada’s present-day Black communities began to take shape. The country’s Black population doubled between 1996 and 2016, and now makes up about 3.5 percent of the population.
As a biracial Canadian, fully understanding the significance of my country’s Black history is essential to me, as is ensuring that this understanding is passed on to the next generation. Luckily, Black history museums from coast to coast celebrate the unique role that Black people have played in shaping the country and offer African Canadians an opportunity to connect with their ancestors. Here are some of my favorites.
[For Black tour guides in Savannah, the historical is personal]
The Black Loyalist Heritage Center in Nova Scotia examines Black Loyalist history. (Black Loyalist Heritage Center)
Black Loyalist Heritage Center
119 Old Birchtown Rd., Shelburne, Nova Scotia
blackloyalist.novascotia.ca
Opened in 2015 as part of the Nova Scotia Museum, the Black Loyalist Heritage Center tells the story of Birchtown (now part of Shelburne), which was home to the world’s largest free African population outside of Africa during the late 18th century. After the Revolutionary War, more than 3,000 Black people arrived in Nova Scotia, promised freedom and land by the British in exchange for their military service. Unfortunately, the end of the war only brought more years of oppression and suffering as Black Loyalists struggled to make a life in a new, inhospitable land. In the 19th century, much of the Birchtown population traveled back to the United States, on to Quebec or the Caribbean, or even back to Africa.
The center, which is built on a bay overlooking the water, examines Black Loyalist history with exhibits of documents and artifacts, some excavated from an archaeological dig where the museum now stands. Guests can virtually explore the Book of Negroes, a document that recorded the names of Black Loyalists who emigrated from the United States, and watch taped interviews with Loyalist descendants. A virtual quilt covers the wall at the center’s exit, each square containing the name of a previous guest and how they felt after visiting the museum.
Guided tours take visitors to the Old School House and St. Paul’s Church, both central landmarks of Birchtown’s Black community.
Finally, the center’s Heritage Trail leads visitors to a statue on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, commemorating the 1783 Black Loyalist landings in Nova Scotia.
Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum
Regina, Saskatchewan
sachm.org
This small yet substantial museum, created in 2002, relates the story of a small Black population that felt forgotten in a prairie province in the middle of Canada. A primarily virtual entity, it curates mobile exhibitions that preserve the stories of African descendants such as Mattie Mayes, a respected midwife who served the province’s first Black settlement, and Saskatchewan’s most important Black cowboy, John Ware.
The museum celebrates the legacies of Black Saskatchewan residents through pictures, stories and documents, and highlights notable Black natives from the past 150 years, including pioneers of the 1860s, politicians, farmers and athletes.
It takes its programming — which includes art exhibits, performances and children’s classes — to venues around the province, creating gathering spaces for people of color. It also provides speakers for schools and other educational institutions to further human rights causes in both the region and the country as a whole.
[7 Black voices on what needs to change in the travel industry]
The Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society & Black Mecca Museum houses community archives and features an interactive exhibit. (Dudek Photography/Chatham-Kent Tourism and Ontario’s Southwest)
Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society & Black Mecca Museum
177 King St. East, Chatham, Ontario
ckbhs.org
Southern Ontario was famously a haven for runaway enslaved people who escaped through the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. In Chatham, Ontario, a town near the U.S.-Canada border on Lake Erie, rose a prosperous Canadian Black community.
That community thrived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, boasting many successful businesses, medical practices and schools. The residents celebrated Black culture and entertainment, and they were the home of the Chatham Colored All-Stars, the first Black baseball team to win a title in the Ontario Baseball Amateur Association. Chatham inspired the founding of other nearby Black communities, building an inviting and compassionate home for those who had recently found freedom.
In addition to exhibiting documents, pictures and artifacts, this all-encompassing museum holds walking tours of the town’s original Black neighborhood. This historically rich space also includes community archives from the 1780s to the present, as well as an interactive exhibit full of first-person accounts from those who lived and worked in this Canadian community.
This Ontario Heritage site is built on the former location of the Dawn Settlement, a Black community founded by Rev. Josiah Henson. (Ontario Heritage Trust)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site
29251 Uncle Tom’s Rd., Dresden, Ontario
bit.ly/uncle-toms
This Ontario Heritage site is built on the former location of the Dawn Settlement, a Black community founded by the Rev. Josiah Henson in 1841. Henson’s memoir, “The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself,” was published in 1849 and was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
After escaping slavery in Maryland and Kentucky, Henson became an active organizer on the Underground Railroad. Through networks and safe houses, he guided 118 enslaved people to freedom, including his wife and four children. Around 1836, with 12 friends and some financial assistance from the British American Institute of Science and Technology, Henson bought 200 acres of land in Dresden, Ontario, and built the Dawn Settlement, a place for formerly enslaved people to live. In 1842, the vocational school opened, followed by a mill, brickyard, farm and church, to encourage self-reliance and education. The community began to fade in 1868.
On this sprawling site, which is closed through June 28 for maintenance, guests can visit the restored sawmill, the Underground Railroad Freedom Gallery and a reconstruction of the house where Henson and his wife once lived. The site also hosts the Josiah Henson Interpretive Center, a collection of 19th-century artifacts, and rare books, all highlighting Henson’s life.
The Africville Museum in Nova Scotia tells the story of a community that lived, worked and thrived in the area, despite oppression. (Africville Museum)
Africville Museum
5795 Africville Rd., Halifax, Nova Scotia
africvillemuseum.org
Africville was a Black community on the northern edge of Halifax Harbor, where the Africville National Historic Site stands today. Africville has a 150-year-old history and is built on land purchased by free Black residents in 1848.
At its height in the early 20th century, Africville housed many homes, a robust school and the Seaview United Baptist Church, a spiritual and social center. The city of Halifax, however, refused to provide the Africville residents with infrastructure such as sewers and roads, or access to clean water and garbage removal. As the area became uninhabitable, the city of Halifax compounded the issue by building undesirable developments in and around Africville. These included an infectious-disease hospital, a prison and a dump. By the 1970s, Africville was destroyed, and families were forced from their homes through bribery, intimidation and, in some cases, expropriation.
In 2004, the United Nations officially stated that the destruction of Africville, and the treatment of its residents, was a crime against humanity. In 2010, former Africville occupants and their descendants received an apology from Nova Scotia and funds to rebuild the original church. It now houses the Africville Museum.
The museum tells the story of a resilient community that lived, worked and thrived here, despite constant oppression, and highlights the long-lasting effects of racism and how it shaped the Canada we know today. Visitors can view artifacts from the town’s past, interact with former residents and their descendants, and explore history through images, documents and videos.
Preddie is a writer based in Toronto. Find her on Twitter and Instagram: @_nattyp.
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Perspective What it’s like to rent from Turo, a car-sharing app | 2022-06-23T18:12:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where to learn about Black history in Canada - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/23/canada-black-history-museums/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/23/canada-black-history-museums/ |
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump are seen on the screen as the House Jan. 6 committee holds its third public hearing on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Former president Donald Trump called those who participated in the demonstrations and Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, “smart” during a defiant interview last spring, according to a documentary filmmaker who was granted extensive access to Trump and his family and is now cooperating with the House committee investigating the insurrection.
“A very small portion as you know went down to the Capitol, and then a very small portion of them went in. But I will tell you, they were angry from the standpoint of what happened in the election because they’re smart and they see. And they saw what happened. I believe that that was a big part of what happened on Jan. 6,” he said to British filmmaker Alex Holder in a March interview, according to a film clip reviewed by The Washington Post.
Trump said it was a “sad day” but did not offer a repudiation of the events, according to the footage reviewed by The Washington Post and the filmmaker.
Holder met with Jan. 6 committee investigators in a closed-door meeting Thursday and provided more than 10 hours of footage to the panel from interviews with Trump, his adult children, former vice president Mike Pence and footage of the Capitol attack itself. Holder said he was surprised he had not been called sooner but received a subpoena last week from the committee.
Holder was interviewed for about two hours but declined to specify what the committee staff asked him “out of respect for an ongoing investigation,” his spokeswoman said.
Holder said he interviewed Trump three times in December 2020, March 2021 and May 2021 for the documentary, called “Unprecedented” and slated to be released this summer. The film has been bought by Discovery Plus, a representative for the company said.
The film was meant to chronicle Trump’s reelection campaign and his relationship with his adult children, he said. Holder said he was not present for any of the planning of the Jan. 6 events and did not have private details about its provenance.
In his December interview, which lasted 45 minutes at the Diplomatic Reception Room in the White House, the filmmaker said Trump was in a foul mood and was obsessed with the 2020 election, looking for ways to stay in office and talking about how he needed to pressure Georgia officials and the Supreme Court. “He had barricaded himself in the White House,” he said. “He wasn’t talking to the press or doing anything. … He said, we have to get some good judges who can help us.”
The documentary filmmaker said Trump never conceded he lost the election — and repeated his same claims of fraud and protestations that he won the election in private as he did in public. Trump also did not raise the date of Jan. 6 with him in his first meeting, and the president’s children and Pence similarly never mentioned the date before the attack happened, he said.
In March at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in South Florida, Holder said Trump was defiant and did not accept any responsibility for Jan. 6 and remained obsessed with the election, even moving the discussion away from softer questions about his family. He talked extensively about his crowd size that day, bragging it was the biggest crowd he’d ever attracted.
“I would bring up other topics like his children, and he would talk about that, but he always wanted to come back to the election,” Holder said.
A spokesman for Trump did not comment.
Holder said Trump’s children praised their father for waging a battle over the election in December interviews, he said. “They really echoed their father,” he said. “You could tell they really admired their father.”
After Jan. 6, he said the Trump family declined to talk about the topic at all, and neither did Pence, who sat for an interview with the documentarian a few days after Jan. 6. “And we will make that clear in the film,” he said. A person familiar with the project said it was not pitched as a project about Jan. 6 but instead about the Trump family and Trump as a father.
Holder said he was present as Pence received an email about the 25th Amendment to the Constitution — which lays out procedures for removing a president from office — but he declined to describe Pence’s reaction.
“He didn’t seem mad,” Holder said. “The people around him were nervous. He told us he wasn’t as good of a golfer as Trump. He seemed optimistic about the future of America.”
Holder said that he believed the committee would be interested in six hours of footage he shot on Jan. 6, where he was not at the White House but with the rioters on Capitol Hill. He was not with Donald Trump or Pence that day, he said.
Holder said the family wanted to participate in the documentary as a “legacy project” and that he chatted with family members before the election, but Trump only after the election. He had gotten to know associates of the family, he said, through a project he was shooting in the Middle East. A person familiar with the matter said he was introduced to the Trump family by Jason Greenblatt, a Middle East envoy in the Trump administration.
“They all thought they were going to win,” he said.
He was given access to Air Force One, the White House and campaign events, he said, and some in his crew were closer in proximity to Trump at times “than his own Secret Service agents.”
Multiple campaign officials said they had no idea Holder was filming a documentary. “I think there was no question the family did sort of keep us away from the campaign. We had some interaction with them but not a lot,” he said.
The documentarian said Trump never conceded in private that he’d lost. “I had the opinion prior to meeting him that he actually didn’t really believe that the election was rigged,” he said. “Absolutely not. He is absolutely convinced.”
He also said that in the final interview, the documentary filmmaker was finally able to get Trump to talk about his children and topics other than the election. He railed about getting kicked off social media.
“I showed him on my iPad a clip of his kids campaigning for him — it was a really interesting moment. He said, ‘They all have their own base, but it’s really part of my base,’” Holder said. “There were elements of him being proud of his kids.”
He said Trump also expressed a surprising amount of honesty over his coronavirus diagnosis. “He expressed being scared over covid, and how he was sick, and how he had friends who died,” Holder said.
Trump documentarian had ‘thorough’ conversation with Jan. 6 panel Thursday | 2022-06-23T18:40:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump praised Jan. 6 participants as ‘smart,’ filmmaker says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/trump-documentary-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/trump-documentary-jan-6/ |
The most dangerous gun ruling in history, at the worst possible time
By Michael Waldman
Illegal guns are displayed during a gun buyback event last year in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Bebeto Matthews/AP)
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday striking down a New York gun law isn’t just the most significant ruling on the Second Amendment in a dozen years — it may be the most significant, and most dangerous, such ruling in the nation’s history. At a time when the United States continues to reel from mass shootings and everyday gun violence, this decision will make it far harder to ensure public safety.
Back in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court for the first time recognized an individual’s right to own a gun for self-defense. The central right, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote then, was to protect “hearth and home.” The court never said how that newly discovered right applied to carrying a weapon outside the home — or what test should be applied.
In 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified, New York City had 33,000 residents. Today it has more than 8 million. To me, as a resident of New York City, the notion that thousands or hundreds of thousands of people might be walking around armed, thinking themselves a “good guy with a gun,” is, frankly, terrifying. Yet Thomas made clear that Manhattan, despite its density, is not a sensitive place. Exempting "cities from the Second Amendment ... would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense,” he wrote.
That means the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights lawyers get a do-over. They will go to court to challenge dozens of laws that have been upheld in recent years, to say, no, you must apply “history and tradition.” The NRA is a husk of its former self, but its views live on in the lifetime-appointed justices who have now ruled.
Not only courts but also state and local governments will have to parse this fuzzy standard, at a moment when gun violence is rising, and fears of gun crime have shaken families everywhere. It will make it harder for government at all levels to restrict gun violence, and surely harder for officials to know what they can lawfully do. | 2022-06-23T18:53:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court's dangerous expansion of the Second Amendment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/bruen-supreme-court-gun-rights-dangerous/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/bruen-supreme-court-gun-rights-dangerous/ |
The Supreme Court is ready to gut every blue state’s gun laws
(Jessica Tezak for the Washington Post)
Gun advocates like to say that an armed society is a polite society — in other words, if everyone is carrying guns all the time and we’re all terrified that even the slightest disagreement or misunderstanding could turn to deadly violence, we’ll be nicer to each other. This view is utterly at odds with reality and evidence of an almost psychotic morality. But on Thursday, the Supreme Court took us one giant step toward making it our future.
In a 6-to-3 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court struck down a New York state regulation that required people to show a special need before carrying their guns in public. The opinion also invalidated similar laws in a half-dozen other states.
While not taking us quite to the unfettered firearm free-for-all some conservatives would like, the decision is extremely significant, both in its immediate effects and in what it portends for the future. This court isn’t done expanding gun rights, not by a mile.
The best place to start may be a brief concurrence written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who insisted that the decision was narrow in scope. “Properly interpreted, the Second Amendment allows a ‘variety’ of gun regulations,” he wrote, stressing that the decision didn’t affect the 43 states that have some form of “shall issue” concealed-carry regimes, in which people are presumed to have a right to carry a gun.
But reading through Thomas’s decision, that’s hardly the impression one gets. Thomas explicitly nullifies the approach many appeals courts have taken, in which the practical impact of gun regulations is considered.
In effect, he rules that the Constitution doesn’t care how many Americans are slaughtered with guns every day. The only consideration courts should employ, he suggests, is whether a contemporary gun regulation has a very similar historical analogue from the time of the nation’s founding.
Thomas presents a parody of “originalism,” an interpretive dance through history in which events, regulations, judicial rulings and the comments of historical figures are embraced as gospel or rejected as irrelevant depending on whether they support the conclusion that people must be allowed to carry guns wherever they please. Here’s how he sums it up:
[W]hen a challenged regulation addresses a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Likewise, if earlier generations addressed the societal problem, but did so through materially different means, that also could be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional.
In other words: If I decide a gun regulation in place today isn’t precisely the same as a regulation from the 18th century, that means today’s regulation is unconstitutional. Ta-da!
Thomas then calls this “straightforward historical inquiry.” You can almost hear him giggling.
Despite Kavanaugh’s caveats, it isn’t hard to see the implication of this line of reasoning. While Republican states have been frantically passing “permitless carry” laws — allowing almost anyone to carry a gun almost anywhere, with no license or training or background check required — many Democratic states still have licensing requirements. Some would like to make them even stricter. So what will happen to those requirements in light of this ruling?
Nothing directly, since the decision only strikes down state laws that require someone to show a reason they need to carry a gun. In the short term, while your state won’t be able to ask you why you want to carry, it can still impose other requirements on you before you do.
But it’s all but certain that gun advocates will very quickly prepare lawsuits challenging all those requirements, based on Thomas’s ruling and its demand that today’s gun regulations mirror those in place in the 18th century. Your state says you have to complete a gun safety course before getting your license? But there weren’t gun safety courses in 1787! Strike it down! There were no background checks in 1787 either, or limits on large-capacity magazines, or age minimums for who could have a gun.
All those rules are now in jeopardy. As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern said, this decision “has effectively rendered gun restrictions presumptively unconstitutional. This is a revolution in Second Amendment law.”
We can’t say for sure how many of those challenges will succeed. But the conditions have been set for more and more regulations to be struck down. Kavanaugh once insisted in a dissent as an appeals court judge that “There is no meaningful or persuasive constitutional distinction between semi-automatic handguns and semiautomatic rifles" as he said a ban on assault weapons should be struck down. This suggests Kavanaugh’s claim that the current ruling will leave many regulations intact might not survive what appears to be his real hostility to such regulations.
To understand what this will mean for the lives we live, focus on two words that appear many times in the decision: “fear” and “terror.” A 1795 Massachusetts law discussed in the decision provided for the arrest of those “as shall ride or go armed offensively, to the fear or terror of the good citizens of this Commonwealth,” and there were similar laws elsewhere. But the court’s conservatives hold that because today America is drowning in guns, their appearance in public is now so common that no one should feel terrorized by them.
Today’s gun advocates, on the other hand, know that’s not true. In fact, many of them enjoy carrying their guns in public precisely because they get a thrill from seeing their fellow citizens terrorized. Recently a man walked into an AT&T store in Tulsa wearing a tactical vest and carrying a military-style rifle, causing a panic — but he was within his rights as established by the state. (He ended up being arrested for carrying brass knuckles, which are illegal there.)
The people who were terrorized, and who don’t want to go to their grocery store to find some young man with an AR-15 strapped to his back, have few rights the Supreme Court finds worthy of protecting, unless they want to arm up themselves.
To most of us, that scenario sounds terrifying. But it’s the future this court appears poised to impose on the country. | 2022-06-23T18:53:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court is ready to gut every blue state's gun laws - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/supreme-court-ready-to-gut-gun-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/supreme-court-ready-to-gut-gun-laws/ |
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in D.C. on Feb. 28. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post)
Six years ago, the D.C. Council enacted the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results (Near) Act establishing a comprehensive blueprint for a public health approach to preventing violent crime in D.C. With the District, like many other parts of the country, experiencing a spike in crime and violence, it is fair to ask whether the city is on the right track. A recently released audit cautiously suggests the answer is yes but says the programs, while promising, need strengthening and further study to assess their effectiveness.
A report by D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson mixed praise with criticism for how the administration of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has implemented the myriad programs mandated under the Near Act. The report, for example, cited some success in attracting young people at high risk of committing violence or becoming victims of violence into a program that provides job and life skills and six months of supported employment. Likewise, the report lauded the establishment of a hospital-based violence intervention program and provision of incentives for private security cameras. But it faulted the administration for not implementing some requirements of the law, including creation of police-clinician teams to respond to behavioral health crises. Such failures, Ms. Patterson said, mar “otherwise notable accomplishments.”
In some areas, auditors weren’t able to reach conclusions because they said more study is needed. That was the case with the city’s high-profile and much-touted strategy of deploying violence interrupters in high-crime neighborhoods to defuse tensions and head off conflicts before they escalate into violence. “We can’t prove what hasn’t happened,” Ms. Patterson said, explaining why auditors couldn’t gauge the impact of violence interrupters on violent crime. The audit recommends that a more sophisticated social-science study be undertaken to determine whether violence interrupters are an effective strategy. Officials also would do well to determine whether it makes any sense — we think not — for the violence interruption programs to be run out of two offices, that of the mayor and that of the attorney general. A merger of the two programs that incorporates the best aspects of each might improve outcomes, auditors wrote.
There are many complex factors responsible for violence, and so a variety of strategies — some involving police, some government, some community organizations and nonprofits, some the schools — need to be developed and effectively executed. The mayor in January created the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, shifting responsibility to the city administrator and hopefully providing the central coordination that will help strengthen the city’s efforts.
“The good news,” said Ms. Patterson, “is that structures and services are in place that did not exist when the council enacted this law. The challenge is to build on new program models, make them stronger, keep measuring and keep improving.” We look forward to future progress reports and hope they will show that this promising approach is yielding significant dividends.
Our picks for Tuesday’s D.C. Democratic primary | 2022-06-23T18:53:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | D.C.'s promising approach to violence prevention has room for improvement - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/where-dcs-violence-prevention-efforts-stand/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/where-dcs-violence-prevention-efforts-stand/ |
What Kavanaugh’s gun-case concurrence does — and doesn’t — mean
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) called the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on concealed handguns "reckless" and "reprehensible" on June 23. (Video: Reuters)
There is no question the expanded conservative majority on the Supreme Court has just delivered a significant setback to the gun-control effort.
The court in a 6-to-3 ruling Thursday struck down a New York law that requires those seeking a permit for carrying a handgun outside their homes to demonstrate a special need to do so. The ruling makes vulnerable similar laws in five other states.
But as the opinion was handed down, two conservative justices sought to emphasize one of the few limits the majority endorsed. The significance of that will be the subject of plenty of debate in the future — and in courts of law themselves.
In a concurrence, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in underscoring that this ruling doesn’t mean states can’t impose more objective licensing requirements for carrying a concealed weapon. They explicitly stated that the ruling would have no impact on 43 other states, and that the six states at issue, including New York, could still restrict the practice if they align with the other 43:
First, the Court’s decision does not prohibit States from imposing licensing requirements for carrying a handgun for self-defense. In particular, the Court’s decision does not affect the existing licensing regimes — known as “shall-issue” regimes — that are employed in 43 States.
The Court’s decision addresses only the unusual discretionary licensing regimes, known as “may-issue” regimes, that are employed by 6 States including New York.
By contrast, 43 States employ objective shall-issue licensing regimes. Those shall-issue regimes may require a license applicant to undergo fingerprinting, a background check, a mental health records check, and training in firearms handling and in laws regarding the use of force, among other possible requirements.
Going forward, therefore, the 43 States that employ objective shall-issue licensing regimes for carrying handguns for self-defense may continue to do so.
(Essentially “may-issue” laws allow more discretion about whether someone should be allowed to carry a gun, while “shall-issue” laws provide little or no discretion once someone meets basic requirements.)
While these words are in a concurrence and not in the opinion of the court, they could be construed as “controlling” — that is, restricting interpretations of the opinion.
That’s because Kavanaugh and Roberts form a necessary bloc when it comes to the six-justice majority. They could join with the three liberal justices in preventing the court from going further in striking down the laws in those 43 other states, which they emphasize remain valid. Kavanaugh’s concurrence also very notably re-ups the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s language from District of Columbia vs. Heller, in which Scalia assured the Second Amendment was “neither a regulatory straitjacket nor a regulatory blank check.”
The middle of the court (such as it exists) aligning with Scalia will be pretty thin gruel for many gun-control activists. But there was some question about just how far the court might go on eliminating gun restrictions with its new 6-to-3 conservative majority. And Kavanaugh and Roberts appear to want to make sure everyone knows that, for now, the answer is “not that far.”
There is some disagreement about the practical significance of this concurrence.
For one, the two justices merely said that this particular decision doesn’t strike down the laws in those 43 states. But those laws could still be subject to review.
Another notable point is that, while Kavanaugh and Roberts wrote what seems like a controlling or “pivotal concurrence,” they didn’t just concur in the overall judgment, but also in the opinion itself. Some argued this undercuts how controlling their concurrence is.
Indeed, in some ways, the concurrence could be seen as an effort to make it look like the court hasn’t gone to an extreme — which Roberts in particular has demonstrated acute concern about — when in fact the justices didn’t fight hard enough for that language to appear in the opinion itself.
But regardless, some experts argued the concurrence could be legally significant. University of Missouri law professor Tommy Bennett noted that lower courts often regard such controlling or “pivotal concurrences” as important in evaluating laws.
The reason, we found, is that lower courts are much more likely to pay attention to pivotal concurrences than they are to non-pivotal concurrences. That tendency is at its apex in salient, constitutional cases—ones just like Bruen. pic.twitter.com/v9EW8kJmrp
— Tommy Bennett (@tommy_bennett) June 23, 2022
The key factor is just what Kavanaugh and Roberts say in their concurrence that doesn’t appear in the majority opinion.
Some on the right argued that the two justices were merely restating and adding emphasis to something Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion itself.
In a footnote, Thomas’s opinion states: “To be clear, nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States’ ‘shall-issue’ licensing regimes.”
But Thomas’s opinion adds, “That said, because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”
At the least, it’s a difference in emphasis — a footnote versus a concerted effort, in Kavanaugh’s words, “to underscore two important points about the limits of the Court’s decision.” Thomas’s opinion emphasizes that laws in those 43 states could still be reviewed and even suggests grounds on which they could be overturned, while Kavanaugh and Roberts suggest the six states might have some peace-of-mind that future, tailored gun restrictions could stand as long as they’re more in line with the 43.
The question is whether it’s a difference in emphasis for PR purposes or because Kavanaugh and Roberts are less comfortable with where the other four want to go in rolling back gun restrictions.
What seems pretty clear is that the future of gun rights in America will likely be determined by the two of them — and probably, more specifically, Kavanaugh. | 2022-06-23T19:01:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Kavanaugh’s gun-case concurrence does — and doesn’t — mean - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/kavanaugh-gun-concurrence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/kavanaugh-gun-concurrence/ |
How the House committee probing the attack on the Capitol is trying to turn a year-long investigative grind into must-see television.
James Goldston, former president of ABC News, outside the hearing room where he has been assisting the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack during its televised hearings. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Bill Stepien’s wife went into labor, and suddenly democracy hung in the balance.
Or at least that’s how it may have seemed on Monday morning of last week for the members and staff of the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, who had been awaiting the former Trump campaign manager’s arrival for his televised testimony that day.
Timing is everything for the select committee, which is attempting to turn a year-long investigative grind into something like must-see television, spread out over at least a half-dozen live-broadcast hearings — though some conservative critics see it as more of a televised prosecution. To tell the complicated story of how Donald Trump and his allies tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election means finding a coherent narrative and breaking it down into chapters, with witnesses rolled out in a careful and deliberate chronology. Committee members had counted on using the testimony of Stepien, who had never spoken publicly about the days after the election, to build their Chapter Two — how Trump ignored the warnings of close advisers that there was no credible evidence of widespread fraud to support his flagrant claims of a stolen election.
But just hours before Stepien was expected to testify, word reached the committee that he wouldn’t make it to Capitol Hill — his wife was about to have a baby.
Committee investigators rushed to the small room in the Cannon House Office Building where they have huddled during the hearings with a small production team. They were joined by a man in horn-rimmed glasses and a dark-blue plaid suit. He was James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, whom the committee tapped this spring, relatively late in their process, to help hone a clean, compelling, easy-to-follow structure to present the evidence they’ve collected from more than 1,000 interviews and depositions.
The committee announced that the day’s hearing would start late — and its staff got to work filling the programming void. An idea to have Stepien’s attorney deliver a statement on his behalf was considered and rejected; instead investigators decided to simply present excerpts of Stepien’s videotaped deposition — a compelling-enough story, as it turned out, with the campaign pro describing his dismay as Trump shunned his advice in favor of the wild election-fraud theories whispered to him by Rudy Giuliani and others.
“I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time,” Stepien said in one clip widely cited in news coverage across the country.
The four hearings that have been broadcast so far — a fifth is scheduled for Thursday afternoon — have been stately affairs, lacking the bombast and grandstanding that dominate most American political performance these days. The witnesses selected to appear live are polite and noncontentious. Some observers, including Trump defenders, have criticized the lack of vigorous cross-examination — GOP leaders opposed the committee’s creation and declined to join it, leaving a mostly Democratic panel — leading to a format that subverts the bipartisan standards of traditional hearings but also eliminates some of the usual TV-friendly fireworks.
Yet a subtle stagecraft has lent the hearings an unexpected momentum and pull that has drawn in many viewers — including the former president, who is said to have been monitoring them. The committee has shown shocking, never-before-seen video of Jan. 6 violence. There have been emotional climaxes, such as the tearful testimony of a Georgia poll worker who said she was forced to go into hiding after Trump’s allies baselessly accused her of rigging the vote; and jolts of unbleeped vulgarity, including former Attorney General William P. Barr in a video deposition testifying that he told Trump his claims of election fraud were “bulls---.”
Committee members have even deployed some of the tropes of episodic drama to help viewers follow the intricate storyline — flashbacks, flash-forwards, repetition of key scenes, even previews of coming attractions.
“Let me leave you today with one clip to preview what you will see in one of our hearings to come,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said at the close of Day Two.
The tantalizing 15-second snippet of deposition that followed — White House lawyer Eric Herschmann relaying a testy conversation with Trump legal adviser John Eastman (“I said to him, are you out of your effing mind?”) — hit the news cycle like a cherry bomb, sparking a cascade of anticipatory punditry and analysis.
“That’s all her,” a person involved in the hearings said, crediting Cheney with the tactic. “And she’s pretty formidable at it.”
Though the hearings are not as popular as presidential debates, which can draw 60 to 75 million viewers when simulcast by all the major networks, they are getting far higher ratings than most other congressional hearings, according to Nielsen. Nearly 19 million watched the first prime-time hearing through major broadcast channels on June 9 — a viewership roughly on par with Sunday Night Football — while about 11 million watched the first daytime hearing last week.
When preparing to launch the televised hearings, the committee hoped to find a more coherent way to present its findings than what the public saw in the Trump impeachment proceedings or former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s testimony before Congress about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Even before the committee brought in Goldston — a move that drew vociferous blowback from Republican leaders — its members had begun to sort their copious interview and video evidence into specific themes and along specific timelines that would allow them to emphasize certain points.
Critic's notebook: The Jan. 6 hearings and the spectacle of competence
Among the issues they wanted to highlight: What happened on Jan. 6 at the Capitol. What happened in the meetings on Jan. 3 when Trump nearly installed a new attorney general in a bid to overturn the election results. What happened when Trump heard that the mob at the Capitol was threatening to hang Mike Pence. What happened when Trump launched a pressure campaign in Georgia and other key states to overturn the results. And how Trump’s allies have continued to promote baseless election-fraud claims in an attempt to exert control over future races — a slow-rolling insurrection, as committee members see it.
The sheer amount of evidence collected over the past year — emails, texts, thousands of hours of videotaped deposition interviews and film footage from the Jan. 6 attack — with more coming in every day, has been both a boon and a challenge.
Goldston suggested using snippets of deposition videos to recreate particular moments, almost like an oral history. “We almost stumbled into it,” said another person familiar with the committee’s internal deliberations. “We realized we had interviewed everyone in a particular meeting, and could just tell it through their voices.”
To lend clarity to other complicated events, the committee has turned to its own staff investigators to act as narrators — such as lawyer Marcus Childress, who appeared during the first hearing to describe how Trump’s tweets encouraging people to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally were amplified and echoed by far-right extremists on the internet.
With the committee still receiving fresh evidence — just this week, they subpoenaed a British documentary filmmaker who has never-seen footage of Trump from the final weeks of the 2020 campaign — the content and timing of the hearings have remained in constant flux, requiring committee members to pivot on real-time deadlines.
Goldston told colleagues that the shake-up prompted by Stepien’s absence last week was no different than producing a breaking-news special that has to be edited on the fly. It helped that the committee had hours of Stepien’s deposition interview on hand anyway, in case he delivered live testimony that conflicted with what he had told them previously.
But the committee has intentionally resisted jazzing up its video segments with the trappings of a slick, overly dramatized broadcast-news package.
While lawmakers fretted privately ahead of the hearings that Goldston’s presentation was lackluster, “it ended up hanging together so cohesively and so right,” said a person involved in the process, “and we haven’t overplayed anything.”
Some of Trump’s allies, who testified reluctantly under subpoena, have expressed a grudging admiration of the production values. “Game respects game,” one figure interviewed by the committee told The Post. The drama of the televised candor spilling out under oath from inner-circle figures like Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Jason Miller, Stepien and Barr has frustrated the former president, according to two of his advisers. He has complained that so many people cooperated on camera, they said. Some of his allies who have testified on camera have tried to convince Trump that they are victims of unflattering editing by the committee, according to a person who spoke with Trump.
For its final hearing, which will be on an as-yet-undetermined date in July, the committee is expected to turn again to testimony from family members on camera along with that of other close aides to focus on the then-president’s actions during the 187 minutes that the Capitol was under siege. | 2022-06-23T19:06:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James Goldston and the stagecraft of the January 6 committee hearings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/23/jan6-hearings-story-narrative-stagecraft-james-goldston/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/23/jan6-hearings-story-narrative-stagecraft-james-goldston/ |
Lawmakers and mayors decry ‘reckless’ Supreme Court ruling on guns
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) speaks about the Supreme Court ruling against New York's current concealed carry law, on June 23, 2022, in New York. (Kevin P. Coughlin/Office Of Governor Kathy Hochul/)
Democratic lawmakers pledged to seek new ways to tighten gun regulations after the Supreme Court invalidated century-old restrictions on who can carry concealed weapons in New York, a ruling that is likely to weaken firearm laws in several different states at a time of rising gun violence.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that New York’s requirement that people must show a specific need to carry a concealed weapon was unconstitutional. The law had been in place since 1913. Five other states — California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Hawaii — place similar restrictions on the gun permitting process. Those state laws could face imminent legal challenges.
Within minutes of the decision, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) responded with anger: “This decision isn’t just reckless, it’s reprehensible,” she said. “We do not need people entering our subways, our restaurants, our movie theaters with concealed weapons.”
Hochul said the ruling “could place millions of New Yorkers in harm’s way” at a time when “we’re still mourning the loss of lives” in mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex.
She said she planned to call the Democratic-controlled state legislature into special session as soon as next month to enact fresh firearm restrictions. Hochul also said New York would seek to prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons in sensitive locations and at private businesses, as well as raise the training requirements for the holders of such permits.
President Biden also denounced the court’s ruling, saying in a statement that it “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Thursday’s 6-to-3 decision by the court’s conservative supermajority was a “dangerous decision from a court hell bent on pursuing a radical ideological agenda.”
The Supreme Court has ruled that “states can no longer decide for ourselves how best to limit the proliferation of firearms in the public sphere,” said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D). “Let there be no mistake — this dangerous decision will make America a less safe country.”
Perhaps no elected official expressed greater alarm about the consequences of the decision than New York Mayor Eric Adams.
For months, Adams (D) has warned about the potential impact of the case on the nation’s most populous city, saying that the looming ruling was keeping him up at night, even as its contours remained unclear.
On Thursday, after the decision was released, Adams asked his chief legal counsel to rate the decision on a scale of 1-to-10 in terms of its level of concern for the city. The answer: “very close to a 10,” Adams told reporters.
“We can say with certainty this decision has made every single one of us less safe from gun violence,” said Adams.
That sentiment was echoed by Keechant Sewell, New York’s police commissioner. “When we open the universe of carry permits, it potentially brings more guns to the city of New York,” Sewell said.
Adams said that in the wake of the ruling, the city would have to review plans to use scanning technology to detect guns in subways. He promised to work with lawmakers at all levels of government in New York to “limit the risk this decision will create.”
Byron Brown (I), the mayor of Buffalo, the site of last month’s racist attack that left 10 dead, said he was “disappointed and alarmed” by the ruling.
Earlier this month, New York became the first state to enact new restrictions on guns in the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. The changes included raising the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic rifle to 21. (Both the shooter in Texas and the accused gunman in New York were 18.)
Republican officials, meantime, expressed satisfaction with the court’s decision. John O’Connor, the attorney general of Oklahoma, commended the court for ensuring that the right to bear arms is “not a ‘second-class’ right that can be trampled upon by governments on a whim.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik, one of seven Republicans in New York’s 29-member congressional delegation, said in an interview with Fox News that the ruling was “historic” and “a win for law-abiding gun owners.” | 2022-06-23T19:06:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats seek new ways to restrict gun use after Supreme Court decision - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/new-york-guns-politics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/new-york-guns-politics/ |
Biden administration response raises concerns that country is ill-prepared for next pandemic
Dan Diamond
President Biden makes his way to the Oval Office from the South Lawn of the White House on June 14. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Public health experts, including within the Biden administration, are increasingly concerned that the federal government’s handling of the largest-ever U.S. monkeypox outbreak is mirroring its cumbersome response to the coronavirus pandemic 2½ years ago, with potentially dire consequences.
The rapidly rising global case counts have prompted the World Health Organization to convene an emergency committee on Thursday to assess whether the monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern — the agency’s highest-level warning, which currently applies only to the coronavirus and polio.
But as other nations have ramped up their efforts to track and prevent the spread of infection, experts say the United States has moved too slowly to expand access to monkeypox testing and vaccinate people at highest risk. The government’s failure to clearly and urgently communicate the symptoms and risks associated with monkeypox, a disease spread by close contact that can lead to fever, pain and a visible rash, has left gay and bisexual men who are disproportionately contracting the virus especially vulnerable, public health experts say.
The plodding U.S. response so far raises doubts about the country’s preparedness for the next pandemic, some administration officials say.
Communication about whom to test, when to test them and what monkeypox symptoms look like has been dismal, said Sauer, a public health expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Frustrations are running particularly high because, unlike the coronavirus, monkeypox has been studied for decades by global and U.S. experts who know the tools, strategies and vaccine protocols that can limit spread.
Biden administration officials on Wednesday said that they have amply prepared for a monkeypox outbreak, touting the government’s efforts to acquire more vaccine doses, warn the public about the emerging outbreak, and begin distributing tests to commercial labs across the country this week. They also insisted their response reflected lessons learned from fighting coronavirus, such as waiting to distribute the “right test that works” to laboratories after federal officials distributed flawed coronavirus tests in early 2020.
“All this work takes weeks to get it done right,” said Raj Panjabi, who leads the White House’s global health security efforts, reflecting on the “humility” that he said officials have tried to apply to monkeypox after struggles in containing the coronavirus and other outbreaks.
Clinicians, patients and some administration officials have faulted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing criteria that they say are too narrow and have resulted in long waits — sometimes multiple days — in identifying positive cases. Under the current framework, physicians who want a test for an individual suspected to have monkeypox must first consult with a state epidemiologist. State public health officials say that protocol helps identify people at highest risk so doctors can recommend isolation and take other steps to prevent community spread.
And just as in early 2020, when the coronavirus first menaced the United States, federal officials at first limited monkeypox testing to a network of several dozen public health laboratories — and did not authorize thousands of commercial laboratories and hospitals to perform their own testing, too.
Monkeypox testing is handled by 86 mostly state and local public health labs, with capacity for more than 8,000 tests a week, according to the CDC. But an official of a large city health department who is working directly on monkeypox response said that number is misleading, because the labs are not concentrated around the major metropolitan areas where the bulk of infections are detected.
Without better access to tests, which involves swabbing a lesion, it is impossible for public health officials to know the true prevalence of the disease.
Monkeypox has repeatedly emerged in Central and West Africa for decades, but the current outbreak has been occurring in countries that have not previously reported infections, raising concern about how and why the disease appears to be gaining a foothold in countries including Britain, Germany, Portugal and Spain.
The response has also been hindered by U.S. physicians’ lack of familiarity with the rare disease. The CDC initially publicized decades-old photos from more severe outbreaks in Africa, instead of the more subtle rashes detected in the recent global outbreak. The United States was far slower than Britain and Canada to distribute updated education materials, only recently sharing photos showing what the rashes look like on fair skin, said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
“One of the things that worries me right now is that we are seeing cases pop up in many countries, and we are also seeing numbers being reported in places that are much more aggressive in their surveillance than what we’ve seen here,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University’s School of Public Health.
While monkeypox has been spreading mostly among men who have sex with men, the disease is not specific to any one group. “If a woman doesn’t have a particular known risk factor, and some woman shows up in urgent care, what’s the likelihood that she is going to get found?” Nuzzo said.
In most cases, monkeypox symptoms disappear on their own within a few weeks. But for pregnant women, children and people with weak immune systems, the disease can lead to medical complications, including death, according to the WHO.
Chasing a killer: At a time when a deadly disease can cross the globe, scientists need to understand the mysterious monkeypox.
Two federal officials involved in the monkeypox response said there are “significantly” more cases across the United States that are being missed because testing for monkeypox had not been expanded beyond the network of public health laboratories.
“If we don’t move aggressively now, monkeypox is going to be that much harder to eradicate later — or it could even become endemic” in the United States, said one of the administration officials, who is among more than two dozen across the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House tasked with combating the outbreak and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press. Many of the same teams have been working on the coronavirus response.
On Wednesday, administration officials said they were authorizing five major commercial laboratories to test for monkeypox starting in early July, a dramatic expansion of capacity. That could allow labs to conduct tens of thousands of more tests a week. Health-care providers will be able to send specimens directly to the commercial labs for testing without having to first consult with state health officials to determine whether testing criteria are met. Activists say the move was overdue.
About 10 monkeypox tests per day were being performed nationwide in early June, even as other countries such as Britain were performing far more, a senior administration official said Wednesday. While laboratory testing ramped up last week, only about 700 total tests had been conducted as of June 17, the official said.
Before the CDC made its test widely available to commercial labs, the agency needed to update testing protocols, establish agreements with the five labs and ensure personnel had personal protective equipment and vaccinations to protect against infection, according to a senior public health official who spoke under Biden administration ground rules that they not be named.
One man who sought testing on June 13 in New York City for potential monkeypox symptoms — flu-like illness and swollen lymph nodes — was initially advised by a physician that he did not have the disease and did not need a test, said Joseph Osmundson, a virologist at New York University, who spent several days trying to help the individual obtain a test. The man had recently returned to New York from Portugal, where he said he had casual sex with other men. Health officials have advised clinicians to look out for travel-associated cases from Europe, and in situations in which men have had sex with men.
But the man told The Post his efforts to obtain a test were repeatedly rebuffed — even after he was found to have “abnormal HPV-like lesions” that weren’t readily visible.
“The pain has been like someone stabbing me from inside — I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t sleep,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. He said he went to four different providers, including a major New York City hospital, before an urgent care clinic collected a specimen on Monday. While clinicians classified him as “presumed positive,” he said he was still waiting on results as of Wednesday evening.
Osmundson said he was aware of a dozen similar cases in which people with possible monkeypox symptoms were being rebuffed.
“The CDC is very narrowly defining criteria for testing, and the [New York] Department of Health is not going outside those criteria. So if you don’t check off on every single one of the boxes, based on CDC, you don’t get access to testing,” Osmundson said.
Michael Lanza, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, confirmed that providers must contact the agency to evaluate the case and determine whether testing is necessary. He said officials have not denied testing requests except in cases with no rash or no known risk factors.
James Krellenstein, co-founder of PrEP4ALL, an HIV-care nonprofit that has pressed state and federal officials to expand testing, said that “no one can confidently say if the outbreak is under control or not.”
“I’m extremely, extremely frustrated,” Krellenstein said. “It’s as if what happened in covid in February of 2020 never happened. This is not the first time, and to see CDC, HHS [and other officials] make the same errors over again is inexplicable, considering how large the cost was in 2020.”
Public health experts also have criticized U.S. officials for not proactively vaccinating high-risk individuals against the virus, even as other nations have moved more aggressively to do so. Health officials in Britain announced a strategy Tuesday to offer vaccine to some gay and bisexual men at higher risk of exposure, and New York City officials on Thursday opened a vaccine clinic to those who may have been recently exposed. While U.S. officials have stockpiled two vaccines that are effective against monkeypox, there is a limited supply of the vaccine that is specifically authorized to prevent monkeypox, Jynneos.
U.S. officials “need to have very serious planning conversations” about proactively vaccinating people at high risk for disease, said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. She said individuals who should be prioritized include men who have sex with men, sex workers, lab personnel conducting monkeypox testing, and health-care workers expected to provide direct care for monkeypox patients.
Of the two vaccines that are effective against monkeypox, Jynneos is in high global demand. The other vaccine, ACAM2000, is older and was approved to prevent smallpox. While it is effective against monkeypox, it can cause serious side effects and cannot be used for people with severely weakened immune systems or eczema, according to the CDC.
Senior public health officials said Wednesday they are considering potential strategies for proactive vaccination. Current CDC recommendations call for vaccinating those at high risk after an exposure.
Inger Damon, the CDC’s top orthopoxvirus expert, said at a briefing with reporters that federal officials have yet to receive information from state and local health departments on the number of Americans vaccinated against monkeypox.
Krellenstein, who joined a call with senior administration officials on Tuesday to discuss the U.S. monkeypox strategy, said the administration could not answer questions about vaccine uptake.
“That’s very concerning, because we do need to be making sure that this vaccine is going into arms,” Krellenstein said, adding that the lack of clarity echoed the CDC’s data problems from the coronavirus response.
Officials say they also are worried about possible supply chain bottlenecks with the vaccine, a problem that emerged during the coronavirus pandemic as countries competed for resources to fight the virus, and hard-hit nations such as India moved to ban exports of coronavirus vaccines.
Jynneos is produced by Bavarian Nordic in Denmark — and is the only vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent monkeypox. Some pandemic experts have warned that if the outbreak worsens, European officials could institute an export ban on Jynneos and limit shipments abroad.
The United States currently has more than 65,000 doses of Jynneos, a two-shot vaccine, immediately available in its Strategic National Stockpile, officials said. The federal government has also requested that 300,000 additional government-owned doses be soon shipped to the United States, and has ordered another 500,000 doses to be delivered later this year.
Public health experts and activists are clamoring for more-proactive vaccinations in high-risk communities, warning that the outbreak could be amplified as the gay community celebrates Pride Month and if clinicians miss opportunities to diagnose probable cases of monkeypox.
“I had four close contacts that likely could have been avoided if I’d gotten my early diagnosis,” said the New York City man who was forced to visit four providers to get tested. He said he decided on his own to isolate when his symptoms worsened, because he worried about the virus spreading, undetected, through the gay community. “Hopefully we can prevent that with the vaccine,” he said.
Frances Stead Sellers contributed to this report. | 2022-06-23T19:19:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden monkeypox response mirrors early coronavirus missteps - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/23/monkeypox-response-biden-administration/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/23/monkeypox-response-biden-administration/ |
The conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election spanned the country
An image of former president Donald Trump is displayed at the Capitol in Washington on June 21 as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to reveal the findings of its year-long investigation. (Al Drago/Pool via AP)
No one from Vermont has been arrested for participating in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. No one from Nebraska has, either, nor either of the Dakotas.
And that’s the end of the list. At least one person from each of the other 46 states and from D.C. has been arrested in connection with the riot, according to data compiled by George Washington University Program on Extremism. That ranges from 87 Floridians who’ve been targeted for prosecution by federal authorities to one person each from Hawaii and Alaska. The effort to block the counting of electoral votes at the Capitol on that day was truly a national effort.
But blocking the electoral vote count on Jan. 6 was simply the culmination of a multipronged effort by Donald Trump and his allies to forestall Joe Biden’s inauguration as president. In recent weeks, we’ve learned not only more about the breadth of that effort (thanks largely to the work of the House select committee focused on probing the riot) but also about how law enforcement has been working to uproot it.
What occurred from Nov. 3, 2020, to Jan. 6, 2021, was an attempt to force the nation to accept a second term in office for Donald Trump, despite the election results. A slow-rolling coup. And as with the Capitol riot itself, it should be recognized as a national effort, one intertwined with Trump’s campaign and his party.
On Wednesday, the Virginia home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark was searched by federal investigators. Eighteen months ago, few Americans had heard of Clark, an acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department before his departure. But then we learned that Clark had been at the forefront of an effort to get Trump to supplant the acting attorney general to redirect the department’s energy at unfounded claims of voter fraud. Clark was introduced to Trump by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and quickly earned the president’s favor by proposing a strategy for leveraging the Justice Department in service of Trump’s effort to retain power.
The raid at Clark’s house occurred on the same day that federal investigators seized electronic devices from the chairman of the Republican Party in Nevada. Michael McDonald was reportedly involved in an effort to put forward an alternate slate of electors from his state after it voted for Biden, part of a similar effort that unfolded in a number of other states that Trump had lost. McDonald was actually one of the alternate electors, as the party touted on its Twitter account the day that electoral votes were finalized.
Our brave electors standing up for what is right and casting their electoral votes for @realDonaldTrump.
We believe in fair elections and will continue the fight against voter fraud in the Silver State! pic.twitter.com/tJYbli6vhn
— Nevada GOP (@NVGOP) December 14, 2020
That’s just one state. In late January, the House committee subpoenaed 14 party officials and activists in seven states for information about the ploy to create facially viable sets of alternate electors that could replace the certified versions on Jan. 6, following that up with further subpoenas a few weeks later.
The Justice Department’s targeting of McDonald this week also wasn’t an isolated effort. The Washington Post reported that individuals associated with the fake-electors effort were also subject to subpoenas or searches in Georgia, Virginia and possibly Michigan.
During the committee’s hearing Tuesday, Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was shown in recorded testimony. The Republican National Committee (RNC) had hosted a call in the weeks after the election featuring Trump and his attorney John Eastman — another once unknown name that’s gained some notoriety.
Trump “turned the call over to Mr. Eastman,” McDaniel said, “who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states.”
That framing is careful, implying that the RNC’s involvement was one of “helping” the campaign should its legal efforts pan out. Of course, the RNC had already planted a flag in support of the effort to upend the election results when the party hosted Trump’s attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for a breathlessly nonsensical news conference alleging rampant fraud. Despite McDaniel’s careful phrasing, the involvement of party officials extended well past the point at which there was a credible legal path to overturning any results. (It’s not clear when the RNC call with Eastman occurred.) The campaign’s lawsuits became increasingly flighty, culminating in a lawsuit from the attorney general of Texas asking the Supreme Court to throw out vote totals in Biden-voting states on explicitly specious grounds. Hundreds of Republican officials, including members of Congress, signed on in support of that suit.
Ultimately, invalid electoral slates were filed in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (There were actually three filed from Arizona, including two from a sovereign citizens’ group.) In total, 84 people were identified as electors for Trump in states that Trump lost. The documents often make explicitly false claims (such as that the Michigan electors were gathered in the state Capitol, which they weren’t) that might invite fraud or forgery charges. Many of the signatories were involved with the party or elected officials. It’s not that this wasn’t understood to be risky; state officials in four states rejected the plan in advance. But scores went along with it.
For those slates to be considered valid (as McDaniel argues was the hope being held out), the Trump campaign sought to pressure state legislators to seize the authority to appoint electors as they saw fit. The argument derives from the “independent state legislature doctrine,” a theory that holds state legislators have ultimate authority to decide how electors should be appointed. So, the theory goes, if legislators said that the Trump slate was the state’s slate, that was the state’s slate.
A few days before Jan. 6, Trump and Eastman participated in a conference call with legislators aimed at getting them to take such an action. “You are the real power,” Trump told them at the time. Nearly two dozen legislators in Pennsylvania had already signed on to a resolution aiming to exercise that purported power.
According to contemporaneous reporting, several hundred legislators sought to participate in the call with Trump and Eastman. More than a dozen legislators from Wisconsin subsequently wrote to Vice President Mike Pence asking him not to count the state’s submitted electors, as did scores of legislators in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.
On Jan. 6 itself, Trump and his allies tried to use the riot to convince more members of Congress to oppose the counting of cast electoral votes. Once the Capitol was cleared, the count went forward anyway, and Trump’s loss was confirmed. But not before 147 Republicans in the House and Senate — including a majority of the House Republican caucus — voted to block the submitted votes from Arizona, Pennsylvania or both. Again, this was after the riot.
All of this, every part of it, was downstream from Donald Trump’s false claims about the election being stolen and his being the real winner of the election. But the House committee’s elevation of officials who thwarted Trump’s efforts during its hearing Tuesday should be considered in the context of how many other officials went along with it. Thousands of people from nearly every state in the union were involved in the fake-elector plan or worked as legislators to try to replace Biden’s electors or pushed as members of Congress to prevent the electors cast by Arizona or Pennsylvania from being counted — or simply showed up in Washington, where they overran Capitol Police to block the process entirely.
Trump was the spark to the effort to steal a second term in office. The resulting wildfire ran throughout the Republican Party and the country. | 2022-06-23T19:19:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election spanned the country - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/conspiracy-subvert-2020-election-spanned-country/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/conspiracy-subvert-2020-election-spanned-country/ |
The Jan. 6 committee is reaching its audience. Is that enough?
The first hearing of the House committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is seen on a television at Roxy Delicatessen on June 9, 2022, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
On Tuesday night, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) appeared on Fox News. Host Bret Baier asked the senator if he’d been watching the hearings held by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol and, if so, if he’d learned anything new from them.
“I have not watched the January 6 hearings,” Scott said. “I was actually in the Senate when it happened. So I don’t need an education on what actually happened.” He derided the hearings as a “made for TV” event aimed more at “diverting the public’s attention and less to do with finding the truth.”
One of two things is happening here. Either Scott has not watched the hearings and is making assumptions about what they show without having seen them, or he has watched the hearings and is hoping to characterize them negatively for the Fox News audience. Either way, his response was representative: a Republican who wasn’t paying attention but nonetheless didn’t claim to see the committee’s work as informative.
On Wednesday, Quinnipiac University released polling assessing Americans’ views of the Capitol riot and the House probe. It found that about half of Republicans said they weren’t paying particularly close attention to news about the committee’s work — but neither were a quarter of Democrats.
The pollsters then overlaid those responses on a number of related poll questions. So, for example, respondents were asked if they’d learned anything new from the hearings. Most said they hadn’t. Among those who were paying very close attention to the hearings, though, two-thirds said they had. Those paying no attention? Nearly all, like Scott, said they hadn’t.
This, of course, is what you’d expect! If you’re paying no attention, you’re not going to learn anything new.
But, then, that’s also the challenge the committee faces. Its goal is to broaden the public’s understanding of what occurred both during the riot and in the weeks prior. In order for that understanding to be broadened, though, it needs an audience to tune in. Those who are watching are learning more. But lots of people aren’t watching.
Again, this is confounded with partisanship. Republicans aren’t as likely to be watching — often clearly a conscious choice. Republicans, like Scott, will often have a preconceived notion of what the hearings aim to accomplish and will therefore pay them little heed. Democrats are influenced in the other direction: They want to watch programming that validates their assumptions about Trump’s nefariousness. So they do — and they declare that the hearings have been a success.
Consider another Quinnipiac question: Does Trump bear blame for the riot? Most Americans say he does, thanks to an overwhelming majority of Democrats holding that view. Three-quarters of those who are paying very close attention to the hearings think he bears blame — but is that because of what they’ve seen or is it an opinion they brought to the first hearing anyway? Two-thirds of those paying no attention think he bears little blame, a view that they definitionally hold independent of the hearings.
In a flurry of questions, the views of those watching or not watching the hearings align with the views of Democrats (who are more likely to be watching) and Republicans (who are more likely not to be).
And for example:
In other words, it’s clear that the Jan. 6 committee is reaching a broad audience, but it’s not clear that it is influencing understanding of the post-election efforts. And if it’s not doing that, its success is necessarily limited.
Consider a key question from the Quinnipiac poll, one that gets at the committee’s central focus. Americans are generally split on whether the attack on the Capitol risks occurring again in some form.
The committee has been very pointed in arguing that the conditions that undergirded the riot are largely still existent. It sees its mandate as helping to uproot the possibility that a similar act of violence could occur, something that it warns is quite possible. But here again, the same split: even a quarter of those who say they’re paying close attention haven’t taken that message away — if they’ve picked up on it at all. If they’re actually even paying close attention.
In that interview on Tuesday, Baier also asked if Scott could support Donald Trump in 2024, given the investigation into the riot.
Scott — who, again, said he hadn’t been paying attention to the hearings — replied in the affirmative.
“If President Trump is the nominee,” Scott said, “of course, we support him.”
Again placing Scott in line with the bulk of his party. | 2022-06-23T19:19:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Jan. 6 committee is reaching its audience. Is that enough? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/jan-6-committee-is-reaching-its-audience-is-that-enough/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/23/jan-6-committee-is-reaching-its-audience-is-that-enough/ |
Allstate, Progressive drop firm after racist Juneteenth sign sparks outrage
Officer faces probe for telling Black driver, ‘This is how you guys get kil...
Robin Thede on comedically reflecting on Black America through ‘A Black Lad...
A Maine insurance company has been dropped by Allstate and Progressive after an employee posted a racist sign telling people to “enjoy your fried chicken and collard greens” on Juneteenth. (Screenshot via YouTube/WCSH)
People in the town of Millinocket, Maine, found their own ways to observe Juneteenth, a federal holiday honoring the end of slavery on U.S. soil in 1865. Yet a sign posted in the window of an insurance company has received the most attention after it not only dismissed the new holiday but also repeated a racist trope regarding Black people and fried chicken.
“Juneteenth, it’s whatever … we’re closed,” the sign read outside of the Harry E. Reed Insurance Agency, according to a photo posted to social media. “Enjoy your fried chicken and collard greens.”
As the firm has faced backlash for the sign, insurance giants Allstate and Progressive announced this week they are dropping the Maine company after days of national headlines. An Allstate spokesperson said in a statement to The Washington Post that the company had terminated its contract with Harry E. Reed, which Allstate described as an “independent agent.”
“Our commitment to Inclusive Diversity and Equity is nonnegotiable and we take action when individuals violate our code of conduct,” an Allstate spokesperson said.
Progressive spokesperson Jeff Sibel told The Post the company was “appalled by the sign recently posted at the Harry E. Reed Agency,” and that Progressive was also terminating its relationship with the firm.
“We’re committed to creating an environment where our people feel welcomed, valued and respected and expect that anyone representing Progressive to take part in this commitment,” Sibel said in a statement. “The sign is in direct violation of that commitment and doesn’t align with our company’s Core Values and Code of Conduct.”
Melanie Higgins, who helps run the insurance firm with her mother, wrote in a Wednesday letter posted to Facebook that she had posted the sign. Higgins apologized “for any misunderstanding or hurt that has arisen out of my usual, snarky office closure signs and content,” and said she had been reprimanded for her actions.
“My only explanation I can offer is I had a death in my family and I just wanted to go home and I quickly wrote the note,” Higgins wrote, identifying herself as multiracial. “I can assure you all, truly, I would never in any facet of the word be characterized a racist. Nor would I purposely incite such acts.”
Messages left for the insurance firm were not immediately returned on Thursday.
Juneteenth recognizes the events of June 19, 1865, when people enslaved in Galveston, Tex., learned they were free more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. The next year marked the first Juneteenth celebration statewide, and it has been a cultural mainstay since then, with parades, cookouts, art shows, and games. Texas was the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday, in 1979.
After Juneteenth was made a federal holiday last year, some Black leaders were concerned that its historical significance would be co-opted by blowout sales on mattresses or patio furniture — much like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Some companies have faced social media blowback for early missteps. Among them was the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which advertised a “Juneteenth watermelon salad” in its food court — using another food that’s been weaponized as a racist trope to belittle Black people, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum then dropped it and issued an apology after intense blowback.
Some experts have argued that the link between the Black community and fried chicken stems from a history in which enslaved Africans turned their skill at frying chickens into successful entrepreneurship. Marcia Chatelain, a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University, wrote in The Post in 2019 that although there’s been a long association between fried chicken and African American food culture, the connection has been twisted into a racist trope.
Why Popeyes markets its chicken sandwich to African Americans
“Despite these positive connotations, fried chicken has also often been used as a prop in popular culture to degrade Black people,” wrote Chatelain, who later won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for history. “D.W. Griffith’s 1915 celebration of the Ku Klux Klan, ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ included a scene featuring Reconstruction-era Black legislators feasting on chicken during a formal proceeding. This pejorative stereotype has remained part of our popular culture — on multiple occasions during his career, peers have made tasteless fried chicken jokes about Tiger Woods, for example.”
Which came first: The fried chicken or the racist trope?
Located about 71 miles north of Bangor, Millinocket is a town of about 4,200 with a population that’s about 98 percent White, according to census data. Less than 1 percent of the population is Black, data shows.
The sign in front of the insurance firm first got attention on Monday, when Millinocket resident Alura Stillwagon posted a photo of the sign to Facebook.
“The racism in Millinocket is real,” she wrote.
Higgins wrote in her letter that she has posted closure signs with “humor to lighten” situations since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. She mentioned one example to WCSH in Portland, Maine, in which she thanked all service members for their service on Memorial Day.
“A country now that is going to hell in a hand basket faster than my dog stealing a piece of pizza off the counter … now that I mention pizza, I’m craving it … remember, the more you weigh, the harder you are to kidnap,” she wrote.
But the sign on Juneteenth echoing the racist trope was a different story, town officials said. Steve Golieb, chair of the Millinocket Town Council, said in a statement this week that it was “deeply saddening, disgraceful and unacceptable for any person, business, or organization to attempt to make light of Juneteenth and what it represents for millions of slaves and their living descendants.”
“There is no place in the Town of Millinocket for such a blatant disregard of human decency,” he said.
Since the sign was posted, online critics have left one-star reviews for the business on Google and Yelp, many of whom mentioning the Juneteenth note.
“The photo says it all,” one reviewer wrote on Google.
Other insurance companies in Millinocket and around Maine have faced blowback from people thinking they had posted the sign. Even though they are located about 150 miles away from Millinocket, the owner of Family Insurance Advisors in Damariscotta, Maine, told WGME his company has been flooded with angry voice mails and reviews.
“We are not affiliated nor associated with it,” Nate Reed said. “It just happens to be the same last name.”
A similar issue has gone on with Millinocket Insurance Agency. Owner Lori Speed told WABI that the phone numbers of the two businesses are almost identical, and that they have been inundated with criticism.
“We appreciate what Juneteenth stands for and we are not racist,” Speed wrote on Facebook accompanying a sign of their Juneteenth sign telling customers to “have a safe and happy holiday weekend!”
Golieb told WCSH that the town is now trying to find a way forward, stressing that “an unfortunate incident like this does not characterize who we are as a community.” After noting to the outlet that the business has received death threats, Higgins reiterated her remorse for what’s happened.
“I truly apologize,” she said. “I’m mortified that this is even happening.”
Samantha Cherry, Lateshia Beachum, Jacob Bogage and Jonathan Edwards contributed to this report. | 2022-06-23T19:41:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Allstate, Progressive drop Maine insurance firm after racist Juneteenth sign about fried chicken - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/23/maine-insurance-juneteenth-racist-sign-allstate-progressive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/23/maine-insurance-juneteenth-racist-sign-allstate-progressive/ |
Ken Griffin Makes Wall Street South in Miami a Reality
MIAMI, FLORIDA - OCTOBER 27: Aerial view of palm trees framing the city skyline on October 27, 2021 in Miami, Florida. Some cities in Florida are encouraging the planting of canopy trees, including species such as gumbo limbo, oak, ash, elm, and sycamore, in place of palms. Palm trees do not sequester carbon at the same rate as native canopy trees to help with climate change. A tree absorbs carbon during photosynthesis and stores it for the tree’s life, but Florida’s palm trees are the least effective at carbon sequestration. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America)
Ken Griffin is turning Wall Street South into a reality. After years of speculation, the billionaire supporter of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is moving his hedge fund and market-making businesses to Miami from Chicago, cementing the area’s status as an attractive destination for finance and investment jobs.
The arrival of Griffin’s firms, Citadel and Citadel Securities, marks an exciting development for a region that has struggled to establish an economic identity outside of trade and the low-paying tourism industry. For years, it has been a place where the wealthy spent leisure time and acquired real estate but not where most of them earned their living. That drove many of the brightest young Miami minds elsewhere.
Now, it’s both, but the shift comes at a delicate moment for one of the least affordable and most-unequal cities in America, and local officials must ensure that the boom in hedge funds doesn’t come at the expense of the city’s affordability for ordinary residents.
Inflation is already uniquely painful in the Sunshine State. Single-family rents in the Miami metro area surged 41% in the past year, the most among large metro areas tracked by CoreLogic, thanks in part to limited supply and the added demand from people moving into the area. On Zillow, typical rents in the Miami metro are now comparable to those in Los Angeles despite household income levels that are about 25% lower. Meanwhile, Miami’s Gini coefficient — a measure of inequality — is on par with Colombia’s.
Officials including Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, and City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, a Republican in a nonpartisan office, must ensure that the city builds more affordable housing so working-class residents can stay close to the urban core and aren’t forced into vulnerable neighborhoods and dwellings that can’t handle the area’s brewing climate-change challenges. They should also redouble efforts to improve the county’s woeful public transportation system, which has been plagued by decades of delays and broken promises. If officials fail at these tasks, Miami could cease to be viable for the working-class people who made it what it is, including the many immigrants from Latin America who give South Florida a character unlike any other in the US.
Of course, you can’t blame people for wanting to move to a place with year-round warm weather, rich culture and no state income taxes. In addition to Citadel, splashy recent arrivals have included Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management in St. Petersburg; Elliott Management Corp. in West Palm Beach; and Jeffrey Gundlach’s DoubleLine Capital LP in Tampa.
The work-from-anywhere revolution allowed individuals and companies to make lifestyle choices they couldn’t before, and asset-light hedge funds (which often consist of a half dozen people working on computers) were naturally among the first movers. Griffin is also Governor DeSantis’s top donor, and he has made no secret of his disdain for the crime and political leadership in Illinois, the state Citadel leaves behind.
To be sure, South Florida has plenty of troubled cities itself, and it still has a long way to go before it can be viewed as a full-fledged alternative to great finance cities including New York. Although it’s easy for white-collar workers and hedge fund bosses to work from anywhere, other factors are still tying people to traditional hubs in the Northeast. One common refrain among the 1% is that there aren’t enough slots at top Ivy League “feeder” private schools. The market will adapt to meet that demand, but that will take time. As of the most recent Securities and Exchange Commission data, Florida had just 1.8% of the US’s regulatory assets under management, up from 1.3% before the pandemic.
Still, it’s evident that the official numbers undercount the industry’s growing size, in part because they don’t include the countless satellite offices. It’s also undeniable that large and influential firms like Citadel will help build further momentum. That means Miami — a lifestyle city par excellence — finally has a shot at retaining its home-grown talent and reversing the brain-drain of the past. But in the process, it must protect the working-class people who made South Florida what it is.
• Make Sun Belt Cities More Like New York and L.A.: Conor Sen
• Remote Working Offers Growth Engine for College Towns: Conor Sen | 2022-06-23T19:41:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ken Griffin Makes Wall Street South in Miami a Reality - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ken-griffin-makes-wall-street-south-in-miami-a-reality/2022/06/23/e590efc6-f328-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ken-griffin-makes-wall-street-south-in-miami-a-reality/2022/06/23/e590efc6-f328-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
In this photo provided by NASA, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule are seen on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Monday, June 20, 2022. NASA fueled the rocket for the first time on Monday and completed a countdown test despite a fuel line leak. (NASA via AP) (Uncredited/NASA) | 2022-06-23T19:41:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA wraps up moon rocket test; to set launch date after fix - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/nasa-wraps-up-moon-rocket-test-to-set-launch-date-after-fix/2022/06/23/dc3ccafa-f326-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/nasa-wraps-up-moon-rocket-test-to-set-launch-date-after-fix/2022/06/23/dc3ccafa-f326-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Biden is under pressure to go soft on China’s genocide
A worker gathers cotton yarn at a textile manufacturing plant, as seen during a government-organized trip for foreign journalists, in Aksu in China's Xinjiang region on April 20, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
The Biden administration faces a crucial test of its willingness to confront the genocide in China. This week, a new U.S. law meant to cripple China’s ability to profit from the forced labor of Uyghurs and other persecuted minorities went into effect. The question is whether President Biden will fully implement it — or squander America’s best and perhaps last chance to end our complicity in these atrocities.
Congress passed and Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act last December. It bans imports of any products connected to forced-labor practices in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, part of what the Biden administration has determined to be an ongoing genocide. Several officials, congressional staffers and experts have told me that some administration figures and business interests are fighting against strict implementation of the law. Those opposed are the same interests that fought long and hard to thwart its passage, as detailed in a new seven-part investigation released by the Dispatch. They are not about to stop now.
“The implementation will be contested, just as everything Xinjiang-related was contested last year,” said Michael Sobolik, a fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. “The mechanics are different, but the battle remains the same: climate interests pitted against human rights concerns.”
Some Biden officials, including State Department climate envoy John F. Kerry, have argued internally since last year that human rights concerns should not stand in the way of working with China on climate change. (Asked about this trade-off last year, Kerry said that “life is always full of tough choices.”) Beijing itself promotes this linkage, demanding the United States back off human rights criticism before it will cooperate on climate change.
What’s different this year is that Biden faces an economic crisis that threatens Democratic control of Congress and his own reelection. This seems to be causing the White House to ease off its promise to combat Uyghur forced labor to the full extent of its ability. This month, the White House issued an emergency declaration that granted a 24-month tariffs waiver for solar panels containing components from Xinjiang, even though that action undermined an ongoing Commerce Department investigation.
The new law requires that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detain any shipment that comes from Xinjiang or has components connected to Xinjiang, which are now presumed to be tainted with forced labor unless the importers can prove otherwise. Some U.S. corporations are already complaining that the requirement is too onerous, because proving that the products are unconnected to abuses is near impossible.
China doesn’t allow independent auditing of Xinjiang factories and denies all accusations of abusing Uyghurs. This is contradicted by mountains of evidence showing that the Chinese government has systematically imprisoned millions of Uyghurs and other minorities, compelled tens of thousands of them into forced labor, separated families, quashed their religious and cultural freedom, and used forced sterilization, all in service of their genocidal aims.
To be sure, if the law were enforced as written, there would be short-term disruptions to several industries, involving everything from cotton to electric vehicles. But that’s the whole point. Unless businesses are compelled to scrub their supply chains of products made with forced labor, they won’t act. That’s why Congress stepped in.
These corporations can’t say they didn’t have fair warning. Since the law was passed, CBP and the Department of Homeland Security’s task force on forced labor have engaged with industry extensively on the new rules. Homeland Security released a list of Chinese companies that use forced labor in Xinjiang or transport forced workers to other parts of China. Many of these Chinese entities were already banned in previous government actions.
“Without full and effective implementation, businesses will continue to profit from slave labor, and American consumers will continue to be complicit in the genocide,” said Uyghur American Nury Turkel, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “We cannot carry on with business as usual, empowering the Chinese Communist Party to commit human rights abuses with impunity.”
Human rights considerations aside, China’s rampant use of cheap forced labor hinders the competitiveness of U.S. solar firms, who must pay workers market rates. Moreover, U.S. dependence on these Chinese supply chains is an increasingly obvious national security vulnerability.
Importing solar panels from China is of minimal value to solving climate change anyway, given that China’s solar industry factories run largely on dirty coal. It’s also naive to think that if the United States tones down its criticism on human rights that Beijing will cooperate on climate change in any meaningful way.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised this week to implement the new law and rally “allies and partners” to the cause. Congress will be watching closely to hold the administration to that commitment. If the White House provides enough wiggle room for China’s forced-labor industry to continue with business as usual, the entire effort will be rendered useless — and the prospects for the Uyghurs and other victims will further darken.
Restricting U.S. oil exports would betray European allies and benefit Russia | 2022-06-23T19:42:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden is under pressure to go soft on China’s genocide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/biden-uyghur-forced-labor-law-implementation-china-genocide/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/biden-uyghur-forced-labor-law-implementation-china-genocide/ |
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a video call in Moscow on June 23. (Mikhail Metzel/AFP/Getty Images)
The leaders of the Group of 7 nations, or G-7, will assemble Sunday in the Bavarian Alps. Dominating the discussions will be the biggest war in Europe since 1945 and its ramifications. With Russia still waging an offensive on eastern Ukraine, increasing the effectiveness of economic sanctions on the Kremlin should be an urgent priority for the group, which includes President Biden and his counterparts from Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain, Canada and France, as well as representatives of the European Union. Specifically, they should acknowledge that Europe’s efforts to block oil imports from Russia are proving ineffective in the short run and must be modified.
Here’s the background: The United States and Canada have banned their already tiny imports of Russian crude, a relatively painless step for these two oil-rich nations. Such a ban is much more difficult for the 27 members of the European Union, which receive 29 percent of their collective crude oil imports from Russia; some E.U. countries are far more dependent than that. The E.U. members paid President Vladimir Putin’s state-owned oil company a combined $108 billion in 2021, according to the World Economic Forum. On June 3, the E.U. adopted a ban on Russian crude, but it won’t take effect for seaborne imports until Dec. 5, and for other petroleum products until Feb. 5, 2023.
Once that kicks in, Russia might find itself faced with a permanent reduction in demand for its oil, which, in combination with other sanctions, will erode its productive capacity, and earnings. In the meantime, Europe has no easy alternatives. It must import Russian oil, albeit in reduced volumes. E.U. nations have paid about $33 billion for Moscow’s oil since Mr. Putin started the war on Feb. 24, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a Finland-based nongovernmental organization. And the International Energy Agency said in May that Russia’s oil revenue had actually grown 50 percent since Jan. 1 — to $20 billion a month. Russia has shipped crude to China and India at distress-sale prices but in larger volumes. Some of it is being refined and reexported to Europe.
For now, therefore, oil money is helping the Russian economy weather the West’s sanctions — the ruble has actually appreciated relative to the dollar since the invasion. It’s urgent to dampen this flow of cash.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen is working on a plan whereby the United States and other backers of Ukraine would pay Russia no more than the cost of production for its oil, using Western control over insurance and finance for Russian oil shipments to force Moscow to go along. Russian oil would still flow into world markets, helping the global economy, but Russia would get less money for it.
The wisdom of this proposal is that it targets what matters most — which is not the flow of crude oil out of Russia but the flow of hard currency in the opposite direction. Persuading the G-7 to support it is one of the best ways Mr. Biden can help Ukraine now. | 2022-06-23T19:42:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Russia’s oil earnings are booming. U.S., Europe need a new plan. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/russia-oil-money-new-plan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/russia-oil-money-new-plan/ |
The Supreme Court building on on June 21. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a century-old New York gun law. Its decision is just the latest sign that the court’s conservative majority is committed to dangerous pro-gun dogma at odds with the Constitution’s words and common sense.
The New York statute required handgun owners to obtain a permit to carry concealed handguns in public, which in turn required them to show “proper cause” justifying the permit. The majority reasoned that the Constitution guarantees individuals the right to keep and bear arms to defend themselves. Because people face the general risk of violence outside the home, they concluded, the Constitution demands that people be allowed to carry handguns in public without any special justification.
The court repudiated sensible distinctions between gun owners’ homes, where it is reasonable to impose less regulation on their use of firearms, and public spaces, where states have an overwhelming interest in maintaining public order. The majority said that only a few public places — schools or government buildings — are “sensitive” enough to justify such strict gun restrictions.
Underlying the court’s reasoning is the conservative majority’s apparent concern that the Second Amendment is considered “a second-class right.” This is puzzling, given how the justices themselves have elevated the Second Amendment above others. Their interpretation — construing the amendment to convey a personal right to individual Americans and all but ignoring its stipulation that its purpose is to preserve a “well-regulated militia” — is atextual. Rather than disfavoring the Second Amendment, the court has taken an unduly expansive view of its words.
The implications are broader than this specific case. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas declared that “to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The majority then discarded the historical antecedents to the New York law.
In its decision, the court rejected balancing Second Amendment rights against the government’s compelling interest in preserving peace — the sort of balancing the court performs in the context of other constitutional protections, including the First Amendment. The court’s special treatment of the Second Amendment is a break not only with good sense, but also with its recent decisions. In 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, the court found that individuals’ right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is “not unlimited” and gave several indications that legitimate state concerns could be considered in assessing gun laws’ constitutionality.
If there was anything reassuring in the decision, it was that Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. emphasized in a concurrence that the court’s opinion does not prohibit states from requiring licenses to carry handguns for self-defense, so long as they use “objective licensing requirements,” such as background checks, mental health records reviews, firearms training and other possible stipulations.
Despite this nod by the justices to the need for some regulation of firearms, the nation will pay in more lives lost to gun violence for the court’s continuing ideological crusade to supercharge the Second Amendment. | 2022-06-23T19:42:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Supreme Court's gun decision supercharges the Second Amendment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/supreme-court-new-york-gun-decision-2nd-amendment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/23/supreme-court-new-york-gun-decision-2nd-amendment/ |
Kyle Rittenhouse announces video game to fund media defamation suits
(Washington Post illustration; Sean Krajacic/Reuters)
Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people and wounded a third during a protest in Kenosha, Wis., in 2020, announced Thursday plans to release a video game, with proceeds going toward funding defamation lawsuits against the media. In the game, players control Rittenhouse, who, equipped with a cartoonish orange gun, shoots turkeys labeled “fake news” and “MSDNC.”
“The media is nothing but a bunch of turkeys with nothing better to do than to push their lying agenda and destroy innocent people’s lives,” Rittenhouse says in a trailer for the game.
The game, “Kyle Rittenhouse’s Turkey Shoot,” is not currently available. On its website, users can preorder the title for $9.99. The site does not say when the game will be released, though it notes that the game will “aid Kyle’s legal defense against the fake news.”
“Kyle Rittenhouse is raising funds to sue the left-wing media organizations for defamation and now you can help,” reads a module on the preorder website. At the bottom of the page, developer Mint Studios promises never to “deplatform” legal content.
Kyle Rittenhouse gets standing ovation from conservatives, says he may sue media outlets
Late last year, after facing five felony charges including homicide and being acquitted on all counts, Rittenhouse suggested he would pursue legal action against media outlets over their coverage of his trial. “There’s going to be some media accountability coming soon,” he told Fox News in December 2021. Since then, Rittenhouse has not named any media outlets he intends to sue, though he suggested in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he might pursue legal action against TV personality Whoopi Goldberg and political commentator Cenk Uygur.
Rittenhouse was acquitted on all counts Nov. 19, 2021, after a polarizing trial that sparked a national debate over gun rights, self-defense and race. Rittenhouse said he arrived in Kenosha to protect local businesses in the wake of unrest and protests following the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a White police officer.
The video game industry increasingly has become a culture war battleground over the past decade. With the industry showing greater interest in unionization, it has become a focal point in tech industry organizing. Debates over pervasive sexism and racism have riven the industry, particularly in light of landmark workplace harassment and discrimination suits filed against some of the biggest companies in gaming. Geopolitical conflicts have played out in esports, too, as the war in Ukraine prompted teams and stakeholders in the space to cut ties with Russian companies and organizations. Some commentators have also traced the rise of Donald Trump to the GamerGate movement. | 2022-06-23T19:49:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyle Rittenhouse announces video game to fund media defamation suits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/23/kyle-rittenhouse-video-game-defamation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/06/23/kyle-rittenhouse-video-game-defamation/ |
Maryland officers cleared after killing man who pointed pistol at them
Four officers in Montgomery County, Md., had fired more than 30 rounds during traffic stop
Chief Investigator Anthony Schartner, right, with the Maryland Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division analyzes the scene of a fatal police shooting on Dec. 29 in Silver Spring. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Four Maryland police officers were legally justified in firing more than 30 rounds at a man who had pointed his gun at them during a fatal traffic stop late last year in Silver Spring, prosecutors announced Thursday.
An 18-page report into the killing of Osman Sesay, 27, also revealed details about what Sesay said just before he burst from the back seat at 4:32 a.m. to confront the officers.
“I can’t go back to jail,” he told two others in the car, according to the report. “I love you guys.”
Sesay then opened his door, turned toward the officers and lifted a Glock .45-caliber pistol equipped with a device designed to turn it into a fully automatic weapon, the report asserts. It is unclear if he fired the gun, which after the encounter was found near his body with a live round jammed between the frame and slide of gun, and eight more rounds in the magazine.
At least two Montgomery County police video recordings of the Dec. 29 encounter — one from a police car dashboard, the other from a body camera — captured Osman raising his weapon.
“There’s no question Mr. Sesay pointed a gun at them because it’s caught on camera,” said Howard State’s Attorney Rich Gibson. “When someone points a gun at police officers, those officers certainly have the right to believe their lives are in danger, and have the right to use what they see as a corresponding level of force.”
Michael Ashley, an attorney for Sesay’s family, said they remain devastated by the passing of a young man who had just launched a clothing line called “Children of the Trenches,” designed to bring awareness to worldwide poverty among youths.
The family remains concerned about the police handling of the entire incident, Ashley said, including any delays in them coming to check on Sesay after he fell to the pavement.
“Our concerns are not necessary confined to the use of force,” Ashley said. “The officers had a duty to render aid.”
He declined to speak in detail, saying he has yet to receive the full investigative file — including all of the video recordings captured by officers at the scene.
Several agencies were involved in the incident and the ensuing investigation.
The shooting officers were from the Montgomery County Police Department, the main law enforcement force in a jurisdiction of 1.1. million residents just north of Washington D.C. They had pulled over the Mercedes because they believed it had just been involved in a different shooting a half-mile away.
The investigation into the officer’s actions was conducted by a relatively new unit at the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that has begun probing officer-involved fatalities in the state. Their 18-page report was submitted to Gibson’s office, just north of Montgomery County, based on an agreement between the counties’ prosecutors to review each other’s officer-involved fatal shootings.
Evidence at the scene showed at least 34 shell casings from the officers’ guns. An autopsy of Sesay’s body showed he was hit three times — with bullets entering his arm, his lower back and his buttocks. Gibson stressed that the wounds to Sesay’s backside should be seen in the context of his actions — specifically, that he was pointing his gun as he was turning away from the police and as they started shooting.
How many people have been shot and killed by police in the past year?
“This is all separated by milliseconds, fractions of seconds,” Gibson said.
The Attorney General’s report described a shooting that preceded the traffic stop. About 4:25 a.m., a gunshot erupted in the midst of a large crowd outside a restaurant on Bonifant Street in downtown Silver Spring. As it happened, an off-duty Montgomery County detective was in the immediate area because he had stopped to pick up some food.
The detective sat the victim on the ground and scanned the crowd, learning that shooter was said to be in a white Mercedes that the detective saw driving away. He radioed a description of the car.
A minute later, Officer Nathan Lenhart — who was involved in a different traffic stop — saw a white Mercedes pass him. He followed the Mercedes, and pulled it over near the corner of Wayne and Dartmouth avenues.
As other officers arrived, Lenhart commanded the driver and front seat passenger to lift their hands out through their opened windows, according to police videos. Sesay then began to open his rear passenger door.
“Stay in the car!” an officer yelled as he continued getting out, according to recordings.
After the four officers fired, they remained concerned about the two other car occupants. When they commanded the driver to exit, he said the door was stuck, so they ordered him to climb out the window and then walk backward to them, which he did. The other three officers who fired their weapons were earlier identified as Karli Dorsey, Dennis Tejada, and Eric Kessler.
About this time, an officer who could see Sesay’s body saw movement. “His hand his moving,” the officer said, according to the report.
The passenger was also removed from the car. At 4:39 a.m. — some seven minutes after shooting him — officers approached Sesay, who was lying face down near a pool of blood in front of the Mercedes. One of officer tried to take his pulse. “I got nothing,” he said.
Investigators with the Attorney General’s office looked into whether the officers waited too long to approach Sesay and may have been subject to misconduct in office charges, according to the report.
But they noted that the officers, immediately after the shooting, called for paramedics. Then, “any delay in officers physically getting to Mr. Sesay was reasonable,” the report concluded, “as officers had to remove the other occupants from the car and otherwise secure the scene in order to ensure the safety of officers and the surrounding community.”
Lee Holland, president of Montgomery County’s police union, FOP Lodge 35, said the officers responded how they were trained, and noted that Sesay’s pistol had been modified to fire like a machine gun.
“The investigation concluded that the events that night, if the gun had operated as intended, could have resulted in severe injuries or death to these officers and/or innocent bystanders,” Holland said. “Although these officers are cleared of potential criminal charges, this is an event they must live with for the rest of their lives.” | 2022-06-24T00:54:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland officers cleared after killing man who pointed pistol at them - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/officers-cleared-fatal-shooting-sesay/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/23/officers-cleared-fatal-shooting-sesay/ |
Hugh McElhenny, Hall of Fame NFL running back, dies at 93
With the San Francisco 49ers in the 1950s, he was one of the NFL’s most elusive and explosive runners
Hugh McElhenny with the New York Giants in 1963. (Harry Harris/AP)
Hugh McElhenny, a Hall of Fame running back and one of the NFL’s most elusive and exciting runners of the 1950s, died June 17 at his home near Las Vegas. He was 93.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced his death in a statement but did provide further details.
As a college all-American at the University of Washington and for more than a decade in the National Football League, Mr. McElhenny was known as one of the most dynamic and charismatic players of his generation. He was skilled as a running back, receiver and kick returner and was the NFL’s Rookie of the Year in 1952 and a two-time first-team all-pro.
Drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 1952, Mr. McElhenny led the NFL in yards per carry (7.0) in his rookie season and had the league’s longest run from scrimmage (89 yards) and longest punt return (94 yards). He scored 10 touchdowns: six by rushing, three on pass receptions and one on a punt return. After scoring five touchdowns in one game against the Chicago Bears in his first year, Mr. McElhenny was given a nickname that stuck with him throughout his career: the King.
“When Hugh joined the 49ers in 1952,” Lou Spadia, the team’s general manager at the time, once said, “it was questionable whether our franchise could survive. McElhenny removed all doubts. That’s why we call him our franchise saver.”
In San Francisco, Mr. McElhenny was considered the brightest star in the 49ers’ “Million-Dollar Backfield,” which included quarterback Y.A. Tittle, fullback Joe Perry and bruising running back John Henry Johnson, all of whom later entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Y.A. Tittle, gritty quarterback forever in search of a championship, dies at 90
Mr. McElhenny, who had movie-star good looks, was 6-foot-1, weighed about 200 pounds and played much of his career without a face mask. In one game in 1952, he caught a pass from Tittle near midfield as a defender ripped off his helmet, but Mr. McElhenny kept running bareheaded downfield for a 40-yard gain.
His teammate Perry called him the best broken field runner he had ever seen. Mr. McElhenny had a long stride, high knee action and could change directions with rabbit-like agility. His running style likened to those of later NFL greats Gale Sayers and Barry Sanders.
“My attitude carrying the ball was fear,” Mr. McElhenny once said. “Not a fear of getting hurt, but a fear of getting caught from behind and taken down and embarrassing myself and my teammates.”
He was remarkably fast for a player of his era and could blow past defenders with a burst of speed or leave them sprawling with a deceptive move.
“I was never an individual that appreciated body contact, so I always tried to avoid it as much as I could,” he said in an NFL Films production. “And maybe that was the reason I ran the way I did.”
Mr. McElhenny was off to perhaps his best start in a season in 1954, leading the league in rushing with 515 yards in the 49ers’ first six games, for an average of 8 yards per carry. But he separated his shoulder and missed the remainder of the season. He gained a career-best 916 yards on the ground in 1956. (NFL seasons consisted of 12 games at that time.)
In 1961, the Minnesota Vikings selected Mr. McElhenny in the expansion draft, and he showed flashes of his old self. He gained 570 yards on the ground, caught 37 passes, returned a punt 81 yards for a touchdown and was chosen for the Pro Bowl.
Traded to the New York Giants in 1963, he was reunited with Tittle, his old quarterback, and played in the Giants’ 14-10 loss to the Chicago Bears in the NFL championship game. His final season came with the Detroit Lions in 1964.
When he retired, Mr. McElhenny’s 11,375 all-purpose yards — from running, pass receiving and returning kicks — were the third most in NFL history. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1970 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1981. The 49ers retired his No. 39 jersey in 1971.
Hugh Edward McElhenny Jr. was born Dec. 31, 1928, in Los Angeles. His father was a vending-machine distributor, and his mother was a homemaker.
As a high school athlete in Los Angeles in the 1940s, setting a national record in the high hurdles and state records in the low hurdles and long jump. He could run the 100-yard dash in 9.6 seconds. He briefly attended the University of Southern California before becoming a football standout at Compton Junior College in Los Angeles.
Mr. McElhenny then played for three years at the University of Washington, where he set a team record by rushing for 1,107 yards in 1950 — a total not surpassed until 1978. He gained 296 yards on the ground against Washington State as a junior, still the Huskies’ single-game record.
In his senior season, he returned a punt for 100 yards against Southern California, faking out another future Hall of Famer, Frank Gifford, on the play. Even though Mr. McElhenny’s Washington team won only three games in 1951, he was a consensus All-American.
In 2004, Mr. McElhenny admitted that he had accepted under-the-table payments from football supporters at Washington.
“I know it was illegal for me to receive cash, and every month I received cash,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2004. “I know it was illegal to receive clothing, and I got clothing all the time from stores.
“I got a check every month, and it was never signed by the same person, so we never really knew who it was coming from. They invested in me every year.”
After his playing career, Mr. McElhenny was a broadcaster for the 49ers and was part of an unsuccessful effort to bring an NFL franchise to Seattle. (He was not part of the Seattle Seahawks organization, which entered the NFL in 1976.) He later became an executive with the Washington Transit Authority in Seattle.
His wife of 70 years, the former Peggy Ogston, died in 2019. Survivors include two daughters; a sister; four grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
Mr. McElhenny, who said his highest salary as a player was $25,000, said modern-day football had become too complex for his taste.
“It’s just so complicated,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2020. “What you can and can’t do when you tackle a guy — sometimes I get the feeling you’re supposed to not even touch somebody. And there are too many delays [for replays]. “The game was a lot simpler in my time — but I think it was just as much fun to watch.” | 2022-06-24T01:24:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hugh McElhenny, Hall of Fame NFL running back, dies at 93 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/23/nfl-star-hugh-mcelhenny-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/23/nfl-star-hugh-mcelhenny-dies/ |
CAS to hear appeal of FIS president Eliasch's re-election
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The Court of Arbitration for Sport said Friday the ski federations of Austria, Germany, Croatia and Switzerland have appealed the re-election of Johan Eliasch as president of the International Ski Federation because they say the election was faulty. | 2022-06-24T01:47:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | CAS to hear appeal of FIS president Eliasch's re-election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/cas-to-hear-appeal-of-fis-president-eliaschs-re-election/2022/06/23/9da39828-f35d-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/cas-to-hear-appeal-of-fis-president-eliaschs-re-election/2022/06/23/9da39828-f35d-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
“I’m just going to bring competitive edge,” Smith said. “My shooting ability, my ability to score, ability to guard multiple positions, and just my will to win... I’m a team player, so that’s what they’re getting.”
“Thing I’m looking forward to is just growing with them over these next few years... we’re all young, all new to the NBA lifestyle, so just learning from them,” Smith said. “They’re older than me, so just getting in there and ultimately building that relationship with them so it can transfer to the court.” | 2022-06-24T01:47:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Houston takes Auburn's Jabari Smith with third overall pick - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/houston-takes-auburns-jabari-smith-with-third-overall-pick/2022/06/23/5d15fdda-f355-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/houston-takes-auburns-jabari-smith-with-third-overall-pick/2022/06/23/5d15fdda-f355-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
METAIRIE, La. — The New Orleans Pelicans selected Dyson Daniels in Thursday night’s NBA draft, using the No. 8 pick to add size to their backcourt.
Daniels, 6-foot-8, 199 pounds, is a 19-year-old Australian who played in the G League last season. He averaged 12.0 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.1 assists in 26 games.
He’s joining a backcourt that was bolstered in the middle of last season when New Orleans acquired veteran guard CJ McCollum in a trade with Portland.
McCollum, 6-foot-3, teamed with forward Brandon Ingram to lead a Pelicans’ late-season surge. McCollum’s partner in the backcourt was rookie Herbert Jones, 6-7, a second-round pick who was named to named as second team all-defensive player.
The Pelicans drafted Daniels with a pick acquired from the Los Angeles Lakers in the Anthony Davis trade three years ago.
The addition of Daniels adds more youth to what appears to be a rising team. New Orleans overcame a 3-16 start last season to qualify for the Western Conference play-in tournament with a 36-46 record.
The Pelicans won elimination games against the Spurs and Clippers before losing to top-seeded Phoenix 4-2 in a first-round playoff series.
New Orleans expects to have forward Zion Williamson, the No. 1 overall pick in 2019, in the lineup after he missed all of last season due to foot surgery. He has played in just 85 games in three seasons because of various injuries, but when he has been healthy he has shown the productivity that was expected, averaging 25.7 points, 7.0 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game.
McCollum and staring center Jonas Valanciunas are both 30 years old, but otherwise New Orleans has a very young nucleus.
New Orleans has 14 players under contract for next season and no significant free agents.
The Pelicans also have two second-round picks – Nos. 41 and 52 overall. | 2022-06-24T01:48:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pelicans take G League's Dyson Daniels at No. 8 in NBA draft - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/pelicans-take-g-leagues-dyson-daniels-at-no-8-in-nba-draft/2022/06/23/7b5b78b2-f35d-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/pelicans-take-g-leagues-dyson-daniels-at-no-8-in-nba-draft/2022/06/23/7b5b78b2-f35d-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Detroit’s rebuilding plan should get a boost with the addition of a dynamic player with scoring ability. The 6-foot-4, 195-pound Ivey can play point or shooting guard. He averaged 17.3 points last season and made 46% of his shots overall and 36% beyond the 3-point arc for the Boilermakers.
To get the sputtering rebuild going, though, Detroit needs Ivey to pan out after winning just 23 games last year and finishing ahead of only Houston and Orlando in the league.
His father, Javin Hunter, was born in Detroit and was a star receiver at Notre Dame. His mother, Niele, Notre Dame women’s basketball coach, played for the Detroit Shock in the WNBA in 2005. His late grandfather, James Hunter, started 77 games at defensive back for the Detroit Lions from 1976 to 1982. | 2022-06-24T01:48:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pistons take Purdue's Jaden Ivey with 5th pick in NBA draft - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/pistons-take-purdues-jaden-ivey-with-5th-pick-in-nba-draft/2022/06/23/e2aca2ac-f35d-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/pistons-take-purdues-jaden-ivey-with-5th-pick-in-nba-draft/2022/06/23/e2aca2ac-f35d-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Members of the Shawinigan Cataractes celebrate a third-period goal against Hamilton Bulldogs goaltender Marco Costantini in a Memorial Cup hockey game Thursday, June 23, 2022, in Saint John, New Brunswick. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press via AP)
SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick — Olivier Nadeau broke a third-period tie with Shawinigan’s third power-play goal, Antoine Coulombe made 38 saves and the Cataractes beat the Hamilton Bulldogs 3-2 on Wednesday night in the Memorial Cup. | 2022-06-24T01:48:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shawinigan beat Hamilton to improve to 2-0 in Memorial Cup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/shawinigan-beat-hamilton-to-improve-to-2-0-in-memorial-cup/2022/06/23/39768e10-f35c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/shawinigan-beat-hamilton-to-improve-to-2-0-in-memorial-cup/2022/06/23/39768e10-f35c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Analysis by Tim Culpan and Gearoid Reidy | Bloomberg
There’s a $60 billion reason why SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son might feel a little down. His company has shed more market value in the past year than during any 12-month period over the past two decades, while his portfolio of private and public companies faces continued turmoil. And yet, Son remains unfailingly optimistic.
“I have no doubt at all. No matter what changes take place, I have never been doubtful,” Son told shareholders Friday of his belief in the information revolution that forms the underlying thesis for his investment strategy.
From declining share prices to failed merger deals, the 64-year-old found an upside to almost every trouble his conglomerate has faced over the past year. And he needs to. His handful of investment vehicles, lead by the SoftBank Vision Fund, has a stake in more than 470 companies. Few of them have delivered a home run, but they will. Maybe.
Son’s acolytes believe the Japanese billionaire’s eternal faith in the information revolution — a global economic shift that puts data at the heart of commerce — will eventually pay off. By putting money into a variety of businesses, he’s betting that a rising tide will lift all boats. But the challenge will be for the company to stay afloat long enough that the current shifts in his favor.
With debt of almost $300 billion and a weakening yen, Son needs to steady himself for a few years until he can realize the gains he’s so confident will eventually come.
A major setback in paying down that debt was SoftBank’s failed $40 billion sale of chip company Arm Ltd. to Nvidia Corp. Regulators around the world worried it would be too powerful a business and rejected the merger. Yet Son even put a positive spin on that failure, claiming it was a good thing that he could hold onto the British company longer.
While demand for the IPO in the current market environment remains to be seen, Son said he has been receiving “love calls” from multiple exchanges seeking to host the public offering, with the firm reportedly planning to list a partial stake in London. Already bullish on Arm, Son outlined his prediction that the chip designer could be worth something similar to the “GAFA” quartet of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple — or an order of magnitude more than the value of the sale to Nvidia.
While that might be a typical Son overstatement, there are reasons to suspect he will muddle through. For one thing, to its lenders, SoftBank itself is too big to fail — a classic example of the adage that if you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem, but if you owe the bank $300 billion, that’s the bank’s problem. Money is still essentially free in Japan, where there is no sign of the central bank joining the rest of the world in raising rates — a scenario in which SoftBank would be the least of the country’s problems. And for now, banks will still be lining up to enable SoftBank to roll over its obligations, long before it has to sell off its prize assets. Even then, Son predicted that no more than three firms in his vast portfolio would ever be a hit on the scale of his winning punt on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
During parts of the shareholders meeting, it was easy to see where Son gets his (over)confidence. Some of the investors asking questions seemed more like cheerleaders, with one urging Son to be the “light of hope for all humanity” by staying on at the head of the company until he passes 100 years of age. Let’s hope Son is hearing more critical voices in the boardroom. At least Ken Miyauchi, a longtime lieutenant and chairman of SoftBank’s mobile unit, admitted Friday he had periods where he was “full of doubts” about the firm’s stock price.
For wary investors, Son has a message: If you can’t stand the thrills, you’re free to disembark the ride.
“Looking at the share price from a 10- or 20-year perspective, it’s consistently rising, but over the short term it goes up and down,” Son said. “If you can’t put up with that, then it’s better for you if you don’t — for the good for your health.”
It would be tough to recommend that the faint of heart invest in SoftBank. But as a typically bombastic SoftBank video promised, “despair can turn to hope.” The message was not intended for fretful investors, but maybe they can take solace nonetheless. Even if no one else does, Son still believes. More From These Writers and Others at Bloomberg Opinion:
• SoftBank Needs to Stop Buying and Start Selling: Tim Culpan
• SoftBank’s Arm Is Best Off Listing in London: Chris Hughes | 2022-06-24T07:52:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Eternal Optimism of Masayoshi Son - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-eternal-optimism-of-masayoshi-son/2022/06/24/2ca0898e-f38e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-eternal-optimism-of-masayoshi-son/2022/06/24/2ca0898e-f38e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
FILE - Boston Red Sox groundskeeper Dave Mellor bends over and kisses his service dog Drago while preparing the field for baseball practice at Fenway Park in Boston, Oct. 8, 2016. In 1995 Mellor, while working for the Milwaukee Brewers, was hit by a car that drove through a security gate and onto the stadium’s field while sod was being replaced. A week ago, shortly after walking on the outfield grass before the Red Sox hosted Oakland, Drago had a stroke. Two days later, he died at age 10. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File) | 2022-06-24T07:52:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Popular Fenway fixture Drago the German shepherd dies at 10 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/popular-fenway-fixture-drago-the-german-shepherd-dies-at-10/2022/06/24/a5a57152-f387-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/popular-fenway-fixture-drago-the-german-shepherd-dies-at-10/2022/06/24/a5a57152-f387-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
BUDAPEST, Hungary — American swimmers Lilly King, Ryan Murphy and the men’s 4x200 freestyle team claimed three more gold medals for the United States at the world swimming championships on Thursday.
In the 4x200 freestyle relay, Americans Drew Kibler, Carson Foster, Trenton Julian and Kieran Smith clocked in at 7:00.24, finishing more than three seconds ahead of the Australian and British teams. | 2022-06-24T07:53:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thursday Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursday-sports-in-brief/2022/06/24/efb03820-f389-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursday-sports-in-brief/2022/06/24/efb03820-f389-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
An Indian Air Force aircraft with earthquake relief consignment lands in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. India said it sent a technical team to Kabul to coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance after a powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan that state media reported killed 1,000 people. (India’s Ministry of External Affairs via AP) (Uncredited/India’s Ministry of External Affairs) | 2022-06-24T07:53:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | India flies tons of essentials to quake-rocked Afghanistan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-flies-tons-of-essentials-to-quake-rocked-afghanistan/2022/06/24/dffe4fda-f388-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-flies-tons-of-essentials-to-quake-rocked-afghanistan/2022/06/24/dffe4fda-f388-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Protesters hold images of Chinese rights advocate Xu Zhiyong, during a demonstration calling for his release, outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong, China January 27, 2014. (Siu Chiu/Reuters)
Two prominent Chinese advocates for citizen rights and the rule of law in China were tried for subversion this week in what family members said was an opaque legal process designed to conceal from people the plight of the country’s human rights defenders.
Xu Zhiyong, a founding figure of the “new citizen’s movement” that called for constitutionalism in China, and Ding Jiaxi, another leading figure in the movement, stood trial on Wednesday and Friday respectively in Linshu county in eastern China, according to relatives and supporters.
The two were accused of running an illegal organization with the intent to overthrow China’s current political system. Actions cited as evidence in an indictment from August 2021 included filming an illegal documentary, organizing training sessions on nonviolence, and holding “secret meetings” in the cities of Yantai and Xiamen.
Luo Shengchun, Ding’s wife who now lives in the United States, described the process as having taken place in “pitch darkness.” Her husband’s lawyers said they could not provide her additional information about the case. Supporters who tried to attend the trial were thrown out of their hotel rooms in the middle of the night. All Luo received was a text message informing her that the hearing was taking place.
“It’s getting ever worse,” she said in an interview. “The power of defense lawyers has been stripped to zero, and every step of the way they must sign a nondisclosure agreement. Even calling this case a state secret has no legal basis, because all they did was organize two private gatherings. Yes, they talked about human rights, but that should be allowed under freedom of speech.”
Neither China’s Justice Ministry nor the courthouse where the trials took place responded to requests for comment.
“There is no public attention, their families can’t protest, [and] their lawyers can’t mount a good defense,” she said. “How are you going to deliver a fair verdict on this case? It’s just impossible.”
Before Xi, the movement led by Xu appeared to be gaining limited but significant traction. In 2003, Xu was a rare independent candidate elected to Beijing’s Haidian District People’s Congress. Over the next decade, his advocacy on equal education rights and civil participation drew Chinese media attention — and increasing official scrutiny.
In 2014, after a campaign calling for officials to disclose their wealth, Xu and Ding were both jailed on charges of gathering a crowd to disrupt public order. At the time, Xu’s trial drew widespread attention, including in Chinese media.
In contrast, the hearing on Wednesday proceeded in almost complete silence. His lawyers, under threat of disbarment, were unable to speak to the press. Calls from fellow Chinese human rights lawyers for Xu and Ding’s trails to be open to the public were ignored. The courthouse did not release any statements about the hearings.
After his release in 2017, Xu kept a low profile. For a year, he wrote a history of the “citizen’s movement” and his ideas, which was published on his blog in 24 chapters. Slowly and quietly, he began to meet with other activists. Together with Ding, he organized two casual gatherings including one in the southern seaside city of Xiamen in December 2019.
That meeting sparked a nationwide hunt for Xu and his colleagues. After weeks on run, Xu was eventually captured in February 2020, in the southern city of Guangzhou where he had been in hiding at a friend’s home.
Likely adding to the case against Xu is a letter he addressed to Chinese President Xi Jinping that he published while on the lam, in which he said that Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, was “not smart enough” to govern and called for him to step down.
“Of course, it’s easy for anyone who surrounds themselves with sycophants to develop an exaggerated sense of themselves. That’s made all the worse by a system that censors discordant views and leaves room only for fawning approval. There are no voices that dare to disagree,” Xu wrote.
Pressure over China’s human rights abuses mounts ahead of Beijing Olympics
As Xi’s tenure lengthens, the crackdown on Chinese rights lawyers and activists has shown no sign of slowing. More severe charges for similar advocacy has meant harsher punishments, leaving family members increasingly concerned for the health of their imprisoned loved ones. These fears are often worsened by the continued secrecy even after sentences are handed down.
One such case is that of anti-discrimination activist Cheng Yuan, who was jailed in 2020 for subversion. Shi Minglei, Cheng’s wife, said she fears that her slender husband will be unable to withstand the physical labor common in Chinese prisons.
“Since he was transferred to a new prison, his letters stopped and he isn’t allowed to make phone calls,” she said in an phone interview from her home in the United States. Like in the cases of Xu and Ding, Shi has been barred from seeing any of the court documents relating to her husband’s trial, which are classified as a state secret. “We ask for an explanation but are always told ‘there is no reason — you just can’t see it.’ The whole trial process took place inside a black box.”
Vic Chiang in Taipei contributed reporting. | 2022-06-24T08:27:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chinese advocates for rule of law Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi are tried in secret - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/china-rule-of-law-activists-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/china-rule-of-law-activists-trial/ |
Britain to pull $18B in bank notes as it switches from paper to polymer
The five-pound polymer note features Queen Elizabeth II on one side and former prime minister Winston Churchill on the other. (Hollie Adams/Bloomberg News)
Britain’s Central Bank will remove bank notes worth 14.5 billion pounds, or nearly $18 billion, from circulation by Sept. 30, as it seeks to retire its remaining paper currency in favor of polymer bills. The transition will make Britain the world’s largest economy that uses only plastic-like bank notes.
The Bank of England urged people holding paper 20- and 50-pound bills to spend or deposit them with a financial institution before they are no longer legal tender. Retail outlets will no longer accept them starting in October, but banks and the U.K. Post Office may continue to do so. Britain is one of Europe’s most cashless societies, with many consumers switching to digital and card payments during the coronavirus pandemic.
Polymers, known for their flexibility, are an important ingredient in many plastics. The Bank of England said that notes made from polymer tend to be cleaner. They are also water resistant and harder to fake because the laborious manufacturing process is likely to put off counterfeiters.
“Changing our bank notes from paper to polymer over recent years has been an important development, because it makes them more difficult to counterfeit, and means they are more durable,” said Chief Cashier Sarah John, the official responsible for bank notes, in a statement.
Australia, which began issuing polymer bills in 1992, was the first economy to switch away from paper currency. The U.S. dollar is printed on a linen and cotton blend with red and blue fibers randomly distributed to deter counterfeiting.
Why vegetarians are peeved about Britain’s new £5 bill
All British polymer bills feature a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on one side. The 5-pound denomination was the first to be rolled out and began circulating in September 2016. The other side depicts former prime minister Winston Churchill, who steered the country through the Second World War.
Jane Austen, the celebrated writer of romantic novels, is depicted on the polymer 10-pound bills. The 20-pound polymer note bears a portrait of J.M.W. Turner, a 19th-century artist renowned for his landscape and seascape paintings. The new 50-pound bill showcases Alan Turing, a founding father of computer science and artificial intelligence who was a code breaker during World War II. The story of his life was adapted into the Oscar-winning film “Imitation Game.”
The notes going out of circulation feature Adam Smith, a Scottish economist who wrote a seminal text on capitalism, and the industrialist-inventors Matthew Boulton and James Watt.
The Bank of England was initially criticized by some animal lovers and religious groups for using a minimal amount of tallow — an animal fat product commonly used as an industrial lubricant — to produce polymer bills. Tallow helps currency feed smoothly through machines, ensuring that it doesn’t jam or get stuck, a chemist told The Washington Post in 2016. It can also be derived from non-animal sources.
British authorities declined to make changes to the polymer notes, citing the high cost of switching to alternative sources of oil. | 2022-06-24T08:27:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. to pull paper bank notes, transition to polymer within 100 days - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/uk-banknotes-paper-polymer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/uk-banknotes-paper-polymer/ |
Hatchet Speed, a Navy reservist from McLean, spoke of how to ‘wipe out’ Jews and bought a dozen firearms after the Capitol attack, U.S. alleges
Prosecutors say this screenshot of surveillance video from the U.S. Capitol shows Hatchet Speed, circled in red, on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C.)
A Navy reservist described by prosecutors as a heavily armed Nazi sympathizer with top-level U.S. government security clearance was arrested Wednesday in McLean, Va., and charged with breaching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys, according to court filings.
Hatchet M. Speed, who worked until recently with a U.S. defense and intelligence cyberoperations contractor based in nearby Vienna, posed an “alarming” threat to public safety, prosecutors said in court filings unsealed Thursday.
U.S. prosecutors did not ask to jail Speed, but they requested a judge detain him until court authorities could find and remove weapons that were not seized in a search of his home and storage unit when he was arrested. An FBI search found 13 firearms, seven silencers, evidence of three more unrecovered suppressors and 25 firearms belonging to housemates, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexis J. Loeb wrote.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui ordered that Speed be held on home detention at a motel for the time being, in keeping with a standard release condition that defendants not possess firearms.
In charging papers, however, the FBI said Speed in private praised the writings of Eric Rudolph, the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bomber in Atlanta, and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, a mathematician turned domestic terrorist active from 1978 to 1995, while criticizing their attacks and the efforts of domestic armed groups as ineffective.
Speed, a petty officer first class, is assigned to the Naval Warfare Space Field Activity at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, part of the U.S. intelligence community, according to court filings. He previously worked as a software developer for Novetta Solutions, a cyber analytics firm cleared for classified work for the Pentagon and other federal agencies, the FBI said.
The agent said Speed remarked in an April conversation: “[B]ecause we do live in the DC area, so there’s actually … a lot of these … enemies that appear because this is where the seat of government is … So we have an advantage … Everybody is here.” | 2022-06-24T10:11:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy reservist Hatchet Speed charged in Jan. 6 riot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/hatchet-speed-jan6-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/hatchet-speed-jan6-arrest/ |
They went hiking to get closer to God. Instead, they had to be rescued.
The women’s group was filming a reality TV show, ‘Bad Girls Gone God,’ while on a religious retreat
Rescuers cart one of the eight women who suffered from heat sickness Thursday afternoon while hiking at Camelback Mountain near Scottsdale, Ariz. They were part of a group of about 15 women at a religious retreat filming a reality TV series titled “Bad Girls Gone God.” (KSAZ)
Tatiana Robinson and about 15 other hikers thought they’d brought enough water to venture into the Arizona wilderness Thursday morning and complete their mission: get closer to the Almighty for their reality TV series.
The temperature was 91 degrees at 7 a.m. when they struck out on the 2½-mile Echo Canyon Trail along Camelback Mountain near Scottsdale. It rose to nearly 97 degrees at 9 a.m., and by noon, it had shot up to 106.
It got even hotter, with temperatures topping 108 that day. With no shade to hide from the unrelenting sun, Robinson realized they were in trouble.
“I started getting really, really dizzy,” she told KSAZ, “and then after that, it was like, ‘No, we can’t do this.’”
Robinson was part of a group of women from around the country who rallied in Phoenix for an annual religious retreat, according to the Phoenix Fire Department. One of the women, Keisha Carter, told KNXV they were filming a reality show titled “Bad Girls Gone God.” During the gathering, the women planned to worship together and test their physical and spiritual limits — all while capturing the experience for the show.
“We started doing a women’s retreat every year, where we get together,” Jasmin Hunter told KSAZ. “We praise, we worship, we do different activities that not only test our physical [side], but they test our spiritual as well.”
On Thursday morning, that meant tackling Echo Canyon Trail. The outdoors website AllTrails describes the trek as beautiful but adds that it’s generally “considered a challenging route.” It’s rocky, and some sections require hikers to scramble — a more intense type of climb involving the use of one’s hands and feet — all while offering no shade. Cholla Trail, the only other path to the summit of Camelback, is much the same.
“Both trails are strenuous and subject to extreme heat, so hikers suggest bringing plenty of water as numerous people have endured heat strokes,” according to AllTrails, which notes that Cholla is indefinitely closed.
Hiking Camelback Mountain is tough, so much so that there’s a community service Facebook group dedicated to educating people about preparing for the trek. The group’s name: “Please Don’t Die Or Have to Be Rescued On Camelback Mountain, Arizona.”
By midafternoon, the group had posted about Robinson and her compatriots: “Unfortunately they didn’t see this page before they decided to do this hike.”
The hikers admitted to authorities that they didn’t do their research before starting the trek. The result: Eight suffered what the Phoenix Fire Department described as “heat related issues,” and three had to be taken to the hospital.
One of the eight was Kristen Livingston: “I barely made it down. I had an episode in the car — almost passed out. It was a lot,” she told KSAZ.
Robinson told KSAZ she feared they wouldn’t survive. She credits not dying to luck — and another form of invisible intervention.
“God,” she said, “was definitely with us.” | 2022-06-24T10:20:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women saved from Arizona heat while filming ‘Girls Gone God’ reality show - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/hikers-women-god-rescue/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/hikers-women-god-rescue/ |
Pedestrian struck, killed by SUV in Chillum area
(Prince George's County Police)
A pedestrian was struck and killed by an SUV on Wednesday, Prince George’s County police said.
The incident happened around 9 p.m. at the intersection of East-West Highway and Riggs Road in the Chillum area.
Police said an initial investigation found the pedestrian, whom they later identified as Maria Quinteros, 57, of Hyattsville, was hit by an SUV that was headed east on East-West Highway. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The SUV driver was not hurt and stayed on the scene. | 2022-06-24T10:50:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pedestrian struck and killed by SUV in Prince George's County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/pedestrian-killed-chillum-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/pedestrian-killed-chillum-prince-georges/ |
What is a recession? Your economy questions, answered.
Is an economic downturn inevitable? How should you prepare for one?
Prices are posted at a New York City grocery store June 10. Inflation has risen to its highest level in four decades, raising the cost of airfare, hotels, vehicles, gas and food. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The U.S. economy is back in the headlines, with more economists and financial experts warning of an impending downturn at some point in the next year. But what is a recession — and what happens during one?
The answers can be complicated and vague.
“Recessions are notoriously hard to predict in advance,” said Tara Sinclair, an economics professor at George Washington University. “It’s pretty easy to say a recession is coming at some point in the future. … It’s much harder to quantify exactly when, how long and how deep.”
For nearly two years, the U.S. economy has notched blockbuster gains, with millions of new jobs and wage hikes adding to the streak of good news. Families and businesses were flush with cash, which they used to buy houses, cars, electronics and other big-ticket items. That extra spending — combined with lingering supply chain shortages and delays from the pandemic — helped drive up prices and contributed to the highest inflation in 40 years.
Now policymakers are trying to tackle some of those skyrocketing prices with higher interest rates. They’re hoping that by making it more expensive for families and businesses to borrow — for investments, homes and cars, for example — that demand for those things will go down. The question is whether they will be able to slow things down just enough, without sending the country into a recession.
Here, we answer some common questions on economic downturns and how they affect Americans.
How do we know if we’re in a recession?
Is a recession coming? How soon?
How long does a typical recession last?
How does a recession affect the average person?
What should I do to protect my finances before a recession?
Inflation explained: How prices took off | 2022-06-24T10:55:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is a recession? Your economy questions, answered. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/24/what-is-a-recession/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/24/what-is-a-recession/ |
Why Billionaires Are Flinging Satellites Into ‘LEO’: QuickTake
Analysis by Thomas Seal and Greg Ritchie | Bloomberg
Close to 3 billion people have never used the internet, and billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are on a mission that could narrow the digital divide. The two entrepreneurs are competing to launch thousands of small satellites that will zip around the globe in what’s known as low-Earth orbit (LEO). They can be used to connect places that are too remote for ground-based broadband or have been cut off by natural disasters or conflict. The technology was put through its paces in Ukraine, where Musk’s Starlink system helped to keep civilians and the military online after Russian forces invaded. But colonizing this special slice of Earth’s atmosphere comes with heavy startup costs as well as complex and potentially dangerous challenges.
1. How low is LEO?
Most LEO satellites circle from 500 kilometers (311 miles) to 2,000 kilometers above Earth’s surface, so they can send data to the ground more rapidly than traditional communication satellites that are stationed at roughly 36,000 kilometers out. Those high-orbit systems have a median signal delay, or latency, of nearly 600 milliseconds for a round trip -- too slow for technologies such as live video streaming, self-driving cars and high-frequency securities trading. Starlink aims for latency as low as 20 milliseconds, which Musk hopes eventually to cut in half. At those speeds, LEO satellites may compete with the fastest ground networks.
2. Why so many satellites?
Satellites that are closer to Earth see a smaller part of its surface, so you need more of them. Also, the speed needed for an object to keep a stable orbit -- achieved by balancing its velocity with Earth’s gravity -- increases in LEO, so a satellite must travel at about 27,000 kph to stay aloft, circling the planet in 90 to 120 minutes. As each satellite is only briefly in contact with a ground transmitter, another needs to appear on the horizon before the first goes out of view. To ensure there’s always a satellite overhead, you need lots of them strung out along crisscrossing paths that envelop the globe.
3. How will the companies make money?
By selling their services to governments, businesses working in remote regions and providers of terrestrial 5G wireless and fixed-line broadband services that need to fill gaps in their own networks. They also aim to sell direct to consumers in poorer nations where broadband is patchy. For that, they’ll have to cut the cost of the ground terminals: A Starlink package costs $599 in the US, excluding the connection fee. Past LEO projects such as Iridium, Globalstar and Orbcomm went bankrupt. Today’s are more viable as satellite launch costs have plunged with the introduction of lighter, reusable rockets. Musk’s Falcon 9 can send up a satellite at a cost of $2,600 per kilogram, down from roughly $10,000 two decades ago. His company Space Exploration Technologies Corp. estimated that Starlink may cost up to $30 billion to install, and Musk has said that annual revenue could eventually reach $50 billion, helping to bankroll his ultimate ambition -- colonizing Mars.
4. What about the competition?
Musk’s rivals aren’t far behind. In April, Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. struck the biggest launch deal ever, to send up more than 3,000 satellites for his Project Kuiper constellation. OneWeb Ltd., an LEO constellation controlled by Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal and the British government, plans to offer global coverage from 2023. LEO networks from Canadian-backed Telesat, China, the European Union and others are in various stages of development. By the end of the decade, there could be more than 100,000 satellites zipping around the Earth, more than 20 times the number in operation in early 2022. Astronomers have already noticed the growing traffic, complaining that Starlink satellites are interfering with their view of space.
5. What’s the downside of LEO?
Because the satellites are moving so fast, collisions are harder to predict and can be devastating. A 10-centimeter chunk of debris traveling in LEO can contain about as much energy as 7 kilograms of TNT, enough to shatter a satellite into thousands of pieces. Radar detection systems can estimate a satellite’s trajectory only to within a few miles as solar radiation and atmospheric drag make orbital paths slightly irregular. LEO is already used by satellites for climate observation, Earth imaging and military purposes, as well as the International Space Station. It’s also littered with dead satellites and stray bits of old spacecraft. There’s a worry that a few collisions could cascade into further smashes, creating clouds of debris that put LEO’s most useful orbits off-limits for centuries. There are various proposals for removing space junk. But they would cost billions of dollars, and governments can’t decide who would pay the bill. | 2022-06-24T10:55:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Billionaires Are Flinging Satellites Into ‘LEO’: QuickTake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-billionaires-are-flinging-satellites-into-leo-quicktake/2022/06/24/e6121cd8-f39e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-billionaires-are-flinging-satellites-into-leo-quicktake/2022/06/24/e6121cd8-f39e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
She found handwritten letters from her enslaved ancestor: ‘I’m just blown away’
Kelley Dixon-Tealer, left, Linda Epps Parker, Nicka Sewell-Smith, Valarie Gray Holmes and Marie Jenkins at their first meeting in April in Warren County, N.C. The cousins recently found each other after a genealogy search. (Courtesy of Velocity Paramount )
Kelley Dixon-Tealer knew her search for her roots was typical of many Black families in the United States.
She hit roadblocks researching her genealogy because so many families were torn apart during the horrors of slavery. But she felt a new urgency to know where she came from after her last grandparent died in 2018.
“My grandparents were near and dear to my heart, and I really wanted to keep that connection to them,” she said. “I thought that finding out more about my family tree would help to keep them alive in some way.”
She never imagined she’d be able to find out about her enslaved great-great-great grandfather, and actually read his own words, in his own tidy handwriting that had been preserved for 155 years.
“I’m just blown away,” Dixon-Tealer said, explaining that she learned that he had been born into slavery and was separated from his family when he was 6.
Dixon-Tealer’s break came in 2018 when she and her mother, Marie Jenkins, who both live in Houston, decided to renew a genealogical quest they’d put on hold in 2005 at Ancestry.
“We both felt like it was time to get started again,” said Dixon-Tealer, 48.
Dixon-Tealer found a list of names to look into that she hadn’t seen during her previous searches, she said. She slowly continued her research, and then, in April 2021, she received a surprising offer from Ancestry:
Would she like some help looking into her family’s backstory?
Because she’d opted to make her page public, genealogists could see what she was working on and had picked up on the challenges she faced, said Dixon-Tealer.
She began working with Ancestry genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith, who took up the search using newspaper and government records.
“We wanted to help Kelley and her mom to connect the dots,” Sewell-Smith said.
Sewell-Smith found some answers in records from the Freedmen’s Bureau — an agency established by Congress after the Civil War to help formerly enslaved people reunite with their families, purchase land and legalize marriages.
“The Freedmen’s Bureau is such an alluring collection of records — it’s often the very first time we hear from the individuals themselves who were sold as property,” said Sewell-Smith.
Although the bureau was dismantled in 1872, the records were stored at the National Archives and put on microfilm in the 1970s. More than 3.5 million records are now available free online, she said.
Incredibly, two letters written by her great-great-great-grandfather Hawkins Wilson in 1867 were among those records. They were penned two years after slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment.
“I was ecstatic when I got the news,” said Dixon-Tealer, explaining both the thrill and heartbreak of peeking into his life.
He was torn from his first love in the Korean War. Strangers just helped them reunite.
Wilson had been born into slavery in 1837 in Mecklenburg County, Va., and was taken from his family and sold at age 6 to pay a debt, she said. He died in April 1906.
The letters that Sewell-Smith found in the Freedmen’s Bureau archives helped fill in some of her family mystery, Dixon-Tealer said, adding that they helped her feel close to Wilson. He was a seemingly compassionate and determined man who wanted nothing more than to be reunited with his family, she said.
Both letters were written in refined cursive and were dated May 11, 1867. Wilson had mailed them to the Freedmen’s Bureau from his home in Galveston, Tex.
“Dear Sir, I am anxious to learn about my sisters, from whom I have been separated many years,” read the first letter. “I have not heard from them since I left Virginia twenty-four years ago. I am in hopes that they are still living and I am anxious to hear how they are getting on.”
“My name is Hawkins Wilson and I am their brother, who was sold at Sheriff’s sale and used to belong to Jackson Talley and was bought by M. Wright, Boydtown, C.H.,” Wilson added. “You will please send the enclosed letter to my sister Jane, or some of her family, if she is dead.”
Wilson’s second letter was filled with hope and longing for the sister he was torn from as a boy.
“Dear Sister Jane, your little brother Hawkins is trying to find out where you are and where his poor old mother is,” he wrote.
“Let me know and I will come to you,” he continued. “I should never forget the bag of biscuits you made for me the last night I spent with you. Your advice to me to meet you in heaven has never passed from my mind.”
Wilson wrote about his wife, Martha White, whom he married in March 1867, and he described his job as a church officer and caretaker, earning $18 a month.
But Dixon-Tealer said she and her mother were especially touched by the memories he included about the family he’d been forced to leave behind.
“Please send me some of Julia’s hair whom I left as a baby in the cradle when I was torn away from you,” Wilson wrote. “I know that she is a young lady now, but I hope she will not deny her affectionate uncle this request, seeing she was an infant in the cradle when he saw her last.”
“It was so sad to think of what he’d gone through,” said Dixon-Tealer. “But when you read his letters, you can also see his compassion. I saw a Christian man who chose not to be a victim. He had earned respect.”
“You can sense that he was family-oriented, just like my father was,” added Jenkins, 73. “You can tell he was a good person who never forgot about the importance of family.”
She and her daughter said they hope to see the original copies of Wilson’s letters someday at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
The women and Sewell-Smith participated in an Ancestry documentary about Dixon-Tealer’s search for her family, “A Dream Delivered.”
Dixon-Tealer said they are grateful to have found some new family connections.
The search led them to some distant cousins, Valarie Gray Holmes and Linda Epps Parker, who had been asking some of the same genealogy questions as Dixon-Tealer.
“Until now, I didn’t have a lot of family stories and history,” said Dixon-Tealer. “I always wondered, ‘Where were those relationships?' ”
The four women met for the first time in North Carolina in mid-April. Holmes and Parker are descendants of Hawkins Wilson’s uncle, Jim Langley.
“All of us had been asking, ‘Who are our ancestors?’ ” said Parker, 68, who lives in Alexandria, Va. “It was really rewarding to meet Kelley and Marie and realize that we’re all family.”
Dixon-Tealer said the discovery of the letters and new relatives has enticed her to do more research in the hope of adding new names to her family history.
“I spent my Juneteenth looking at my new family tree,” she said. “To touch those names made me feel like I’d won the lottery.” | 2022-06-24T10:55:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kelley Dixon-Tealer found handwritten letters from enslaved ancestor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/24/kelley-dixon-tealer-letters-enslaved/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/24/kelley-dixon-tealer-letters-enslaved/ |
An evangelical youth event could offer clues about the movement’s future
TOGETHER ’22 aims to mimic EXPLO ’72 — which provided hints about the rising conservative evangelical tide.
Perspective by Benjamin J. Young
Benjamin J. Young is a PhD student in the department of history at the University of Notre Dame.
In 1972, Ray Womack, wearing an “Explo 72" shirt, begins a 900-mile run to Dallas, for an evangelical rally. (Denver Post/Getty Images)
On Friday and Saturday, young evangelicals will gather at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas for TOGETHER ’22. Evangelist Nick Hall, backed by a wide spectrum of parachurch ministries, has organized the two-day conference. The architects of the event hope their jamboree of worship concerts, “breakout sessions” and “evangelism opportunities” will “activate a generation to share Jesus” and return home “with the courage, community and tools to share the Good News.”
Hall’s team is patterning TOGETHER ’22 on a week-long evangelical youth summit from 50 years ago this summer — one that drew an estimated 180,000 people. EXPLO ’72, organized by Bill Bright, founder of the evangelical collegiate ministry Campus Crusade for Christ, filled the only place in Dallas that could contain that many people: a mile-long stretch cleared for an unconstructed freeway north of downtown. Among the attractions: America’s most famous evangelical preacher Billy Graham, country music star Johnny Cash performing hymns and the sanctified rock and soul music of “Jesus People” bands.
EXPLO ’72 wasn’t a mere revival. Instead, it was a generational hinge in the history of modern American evangelicalism. “Godstock,” as Christianity Today called it, signaled the arrival of evangelical baby boomers whose faith didn’t look like their parents’ old-time religion. It served as a harbinger of the future of the evangelical movement, tracing the faint features of a rising era of conservative evangelicalism that would dominate the decades to come. TOGETHER ’22 may well offer similar signals about how Gen Z evangelicals will practice their faith in a nation polarized along political, social and racial lines.
EXPLO ’72 took place as American evangelicals confronted a transitional moment and an uncertain future. The decade and a half after World War II had filled evangelical churches with the fruits of a baby boom, and the early Cold War had fostered a “Judeo-Christian” cultural consensus into which evangelicals easily and enthusiastically assimilated.
But by the early 1970s, baby boomers were aging out of their parents’ churches and entering a culture fractured by the events of the 1960s and the ongoing Vietnam War. A terminal slide in membership in America’s mainline Protestant denominations had begun in the late 1960s, reinforcing the anxieties of evangelicals eager to pass on the faith to the next generation. These evangelicals, like Bright, relied upon innovation to prevent their faith from suffering a similar slide.
EXPLO ’72 embodied that creativity. The conference evoked the aesthetic of the “Jesus People” — an evangelical subculture birthed among California hippies in the late 1960s — and popularized it to teeming masses of young attendees from middle America. Gone were the organs, hymnals, button-down shirts and cropped haircuts that had typified Billy Graham’s youth revivals of the 1940s and 1950s. Instead, images of EXPLO ’72 attendees with shaggy hair in bell-bottom jeans and graphic tees, lifting their arms in praise to Christian contemporary music, graced the pages of national newspapers.
Fashion whims changed in the years after EXPLO ’72, but its casual, pop-cultural vibe would only spread within American evangelicalism as baby boomers aged. Music that had been innovative at EXPLO ’72 would become boilerplate over the coming decades as congregations exchanged hymnals and choirs for slide projectors and drum kits. The megachurch phenomenon, which blossomed in the 1970s, mimicked the come-as-you-are posture and event-oriented spectacle that EXPLO ’72 popularized. This style sought to attract younger non-evangelicals who found evangelicalism’s traditional stylization off-putting — and who in many cases were searching for meaning and community after leaving the mainline congregations of their youth.
Crucially, however, while EXPLO ’72 embraced the edgy aesthetic style of the Jesus People, it discarded the movement’s earnest attempts to synthesize evangelical theology with left-leaning social concerns. When a group of Jesus People from Illinois unfurled an anti-Vietnam War banner and chanted during an evening worship service, the surrounding crowd quickly pressured them into silence.
An informal poll conducted by the Dallas Morning News confirmed the attendees’ conservative politics. The newspaper found that 58 percent of them backed President Richard M. Nixon’s reelection that fall, while only 11 percent supported his probable challenger, Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.). The rest split between undecided voters and supporters of McGovern’s waning Democratic rival (and former segregationist) George Wallace. These numbers were particularly significant because the 26th Amendment (ratified in 1971) had lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
But one didn’t need a survey to tell that the crowds at EXPLO ’72 leaned to the right. Reporters highlighted their effusive treatment of law enforcement during the festival — including several spontaneous standing ovations for Dallas police officers — which suggested their sympathies for the Nixonian touchstones of law and order. Indeed, Billy Graham had predicted before EXPLO ’72 that reporters would encounter “the ‘silenced’ majority” of “great, wonderful young people.”
And the event made clear that if the civil rights movement and the Vietnam era had galvanized many young Americans to liberal activism, this spirit was taking more traditionalist, conservative forms among young evangelicals. “We, too, believe that young people want change,” a college-age EXPLO ’72 attendee told the Dallas Morning News, “but it does not necessarily have to be brought about by liberals or Democrats.”
In fact, Nixon himself almost attended EXPLO ’72. Bright used Graham’s White House connections to lobby Nixon to appear, and Nixon’s staff proved receptive. Yet Bright eventually walked back the invitation under pressure from other organizers who feared Nixon’s presence would distract from the event’s proceedings. An appreciative presidential telegram, read from the EXPLO ’72 stage, would have to suffice.
What observers witnessed in embryonic form at EXPLO ’72 — a confident conservatism laced in a casual aesthetic — would become a key characteristic of American evangelicalism in the coming decades. EXPLO ’72 revealed a nascent relationship between evangelical baby boomers and the GOP that ultimately strengthened during the Reagan years, solidified under George W. Bush and, if anything, grew in the Trump era.
A cascade of voices inside and outside American evangelicalism have claimed in recent years that the movement now finds itself in a state of “crisis” against a broader backdrop of political and social polarization in American life reminiscent of 1972. As they pay homage to EXPLO ’72, organizers of TOGETHER ’22 are praying their event launches another generational revival that charts a path forward. Whether TOGETHER ’22 fulfills their hopes, EXPLO ’72 suggests it could offer telling hints about the future of American evangelicalism as a new generation assumes its place in the movement. | 2022-06-24T10:56:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An evangelical youth event could offer clues about the movement’s future - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/an-evangelical-youth-event-could-offer-clues-about-movements-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/an-evangelical-youth-event-could-offer-clues-about-movements-future/ |
Photos of derelict U.S. landscapes rooted in sense of isolation, poverty
Worcester County, Md. (Ben Marcin)
Photographer Ben Marcin’s latest solo show, “American Derelicts,” at C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore brings together work from three of his ongoing series — “A House Apart,” “Out West” and “Last House Standing.”
The work encompasses Baltimore, where Marcin has made his home since the 1970s, to Colorado and even Washington. As disparate as these areas are, he ties it all together through a sense of isolation, poverty and the silent but sure encroachment of time and human destruction.
There’s a cliched saying about photographs: “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” But there’s also a saying that cliches often contain more than a modicum of truth. Both are true here. Marcin’s photos are seemingly simple, but when you stand back and take them all in, you’ll notice that meaning begins to form like the layers of an onion.
This is largely by design. On a recent visit I made to Grimaldis to see the work, Marcin told me that he doesn’t like to hit the viewer over the head with a specific message. He’d prefer that we look at the images and fill in the blanks. But there are ample clues in the images for narratives to be formed.
As I noted before, there is a unifying theme of isolation throughout the images. The very title of the exhibition, “American Derelicts,” pulls few punches in situating the work among a tale of decay and even criminality. Looking at the images, both of those things rise to the surface in the many questions they provoke.
Although it is accomplished with a soft hand, Marcin’s images of forlorn houses in equally forlorn landscapes can be seen as a commentary on the nature of life and how it fades with disuse and neglect. The old becomes decrepit, discarded to make way for something new, whatever that may be. We don’t know. It’s the age-old drama of time’s marching on.
We may know what was once there in these bereft and diminishing landscapes, and that lends an elegiac quality to the work. The making of history is at once a remembrance and an erasure. The land takes back from what our industriousness put there, encroaching on its natural state. The cycle of life, death and rebirth marches on whether we like it or not. Marcin’s camera, whether it be a DSLR or, his preferred method, a large format 4x5, is there to freeze and memorialize it.
Marcin, a German native, relocated to the United States with his family as a young boy. He worked as a software engineer for the government and became a self-taught photographer. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. “American Derelicts” is his third solo show at C. Grimaldis Gallery and is on view until July 7.
You can see more of Marcin’s work on his website. | 2022-06-24T10:56:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of derelict U.S. landscapes rooted in sense of isolation, poverty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/06/24/american-derelict/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/06/24/american-derelict/ |
On abortion, Muslim Americans say Islamic history is ‘on the side of mercy’
A demonstrator places a sign on the anti-scaling fence outside of the U.S. Supreme Court, Thursday, May 5, 2022 in Washington. As the United States Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Muslim Americans are gearing up for what the landmark reversal could mean for their communities. (Alex Brandon/AP)
“I had no qualms about it. I grew up in an environment and a religious tradition that sees my life as the most important thing,” said Abdelhadi, a professor at the University of Chicago who was raised in a Muslim household. “It felt very clear to me. There was never anything like, ‘You did something unethical.’”
“There’s been a sort of confused silence as [Muslim] folks try to figure out what they believe about this, or what Islam tells them about this,” said Abdelhadi, now a sociologist who studies Muslims in America. “I think what happens in a Christian-dominated space is that sometimes, even among Muslims, we don’t know what we believe.”
Recent passage of antiabortion legislation in Texas and other red states has led many to make comparisons to the Taliban’s iron-fisted control of women in Muslim-majority Afghanistan. Such comparisons are inaccurate and perpetuate Islamophobia, experts say, adding that this rationale minimizes the role of Christianity and other U.S. systems that led to Texas’ six-week abortion ban.
While Muslims have performed abortions since premodern times, Ayubi said contemporary concepts of when life begins are derived from Islamic legal tradition, pertaining to the inheritance rights of an unborn child or criminal laws addressing the fine a perpetrator would face for harming a pregnant person.
The Texas law, currently one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, constitutes a religious violation of the First Amendment, said Awad, in that it subjects this “moral position of the Christian right and the antiabortion movement” to other communities who don’t subscribe to these beliefs.
“Abortion was a matter between pregnant people and their providers and the state did not get involved, religious authority did not get involved,” Mohajir said. “It’s important for us to reclaim that history.”
“Muslims are not a monolith. They not only are the most racially and ethnically diverse religious minority in North America, they’re also diverse even with respect to religious practice and lived experience,” she said. — Religion News Service | 2022-06-24T10:56:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | On abortion, Muslim Americans say Islamic history is ‘on the side of mercy’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/24/abortion-muslim-americans-say-islamic-history-is-side-mercy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/24/abortion-muslim-americans-say-islamic-history-is-side-mercy/ |
‘Just rumors’: Cardinal Parolin dismisses chatter about pope’s plan to resign
By Claire Giangravé
Pope Francis arrives in a wheelchair to meet children with disabilities and Ukrainian children who fled their country due to Russia's invasion, at the Vatican, on June 4. (Remo Casilli/Reuters)
VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the second-highest-ranking official at the Vatican, told reporters on June 23 that reports predicting Pope Francis will retire due to his ailing health “are just rumors.”
“There is nothing to comment on,” Parolin said when asked about the possibility that Francis might follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, and abdicate the papal chair.
Parolin’s statements echoed others who had spoken to the pope in recent weeks and uniformly dismissed the idea of Francis stepping down.
Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, who advises the pope within the Council of Cardinals, said in an interview June 9 that reports of Francis’s abdication are “fake news” and constitute nothing more than “a cheap soap opera.” Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life and a papal ally, told America magazine that reports of Francis’s resignation represent “wishful thinking” by his opponents.
Francis’s health struggles include severe pain in his right knee that has forced him to use a wheelchair since May. Recently, Francis has been seen relying on a cane to address the faithful in St. Peter’s Square for his Wednesday reflections, which in recent weeks have centered on the illnesses and challenges of old age.
Parolin’s comments on Thursday took place on the sidelines of the COOPERA conference organized by the Italian government to foster cooperation with international and nonprofit organizations. The conference focused on promoting aid and support for struggling populations in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and in the war in Ukraine.
Asked about Francis’s interest in fostering dialogue between the Russian Federation and Ukraine and its allies, Parolin said that “there are no new developments.” While stating that the Catholic institution “always remains open and hopeful” that there might still be space for dialogue, “there have been no signals so far.”
Parolin emphasized that “weapons don’t build peace,” supporting the Vatican stance that sending weapons to Ukraine does not constitute a viable option for reconciliation, but added that this must take into account a nation’s “legitimate defense.”
The cardinal said that “there needs to be a great political will by everyone” to ensure that poor populations continue to have access to wheat and grain, which have become scarcer in countries that relied on Ukraine’s large farming exports. Most important, he added, “grain must not be used as a political and military tool.”
Regarding the possibility that Ukraine might join the European Union, Parolin said it could be seen as a gesture “of encouragement and support” for the embattled country. | 2022-06-24T10:56:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Just rumors’: Cardinal Parolin dismisses chatter about pope’s plan to resign - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/24/just-rumors-cardinal-parolin-dismisses-chatter-about-popes-plan-resign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/24/just-rumors-cardinal-parolin-dismisses-chatter-about-popes-plan-resign/ |
Mourners attend a memorial ceremony for Shireen Abu Aqleh, to mark the 40th day of the killing of the Al Jazeera journalist, in the West Bank city of Ramallah on June 19. (Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV — A veteran Palestinian American journalist was killed by Israeli forces while covering a military raid in the occupied West Bank, according to an independent investigation published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Friday. She was not shot “from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities,” the office added.
A correspondent with decades of experience for Al Jazeera news network covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Shireen Abu Akleh was fatally shot in the head early in the morning on May 11, while reporting on an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.
IDF spokesperson Ran Kochav first acknowledged the incident in a 7:45 a.m., saying: “The possibility that journalists were injured, possibly by Palestinian gunfire, is being investigated.”
Later that morning, he told Army Radio that it was “likely” that a Palestinian gunman was responsible. By the end of the day, though, Israeli defense forces walked back those statements and said an Israeli soldier could have also been responsible for firing the fatal shot.
A week after the killing, however, the army said that it had not found evidence of criminal conduct in the killing which would be required for a military police probe.
“More than six weeks after the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and injury of her colleague Ali Samoudi in Jenin on 11 May 2022, it is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation,” said the statement from the U.N. Human Rights Office.
The conclusion correlates with the findings of an investigation published earlier this month by The Washington Post, which examined visual, audio and witness testimonies. It found no evidence of activity of armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the place where Abu Akleh, and a group of other journalists, were standing before the killing.
According to The Post’s analysis of available footage, though, an IDF convoy was present roughly 182 meters to 243 meters (597 feet to 797 feet) away from the group of journalists that included Abu Akleh. | 2022-06-24T10:57:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shireen Abu Akleh killed by Israeli shots, says U.N. rights body - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/israel-un-shireen-american-journalist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/israel-un-shireen-american-journalist/ |
Looking to bike in Europe? Lake Constance straddles three countries.
By Diane Daniel
The author explored the lakeside town of Lindau, Germany, which bills itself as the “Bavarian Riviera.” (Photos by Selina Kok)
An 18th-century baroque basilica awash in pink and surrounded by vineyards. Reconstructed prehistoric stilt-house dwellings above the water. A medieval castle perched atop a hill. A museum devoted to zeppelins, plus an actual zeppelin high in the sky.
Those were the sights during our first 12 hours at Lake Constance. In between, we encountered towns with tolling church bells, lakeside parks, lively cafes and shimmering blue water.
It’s easy to see why the 39-mile-long lake, which straddles Germany, Austria and Switzerland, has long been a popular European resort area. (If you want to check off a fourth country, Liechtenstein is only about 30 minutes away by car.)
With more than a dozen marked bicycle routes and boosted by the surge of electric bikes, the region has also become one of Europe’s most popular cycling destinations. That’s how my wife, Selina, and I explored the area, following the signposted 168-mile Lake Constance Bike Route, which roughly circumnavigates the lake.
The lake, located about an hour northeast of Zurich, is fed by the Rhine River and is made of two linked parts: the larger Obersee (upper lake) and the Untersee (lower lake). Its outline, frequently seen on tourist signs, improbably resembles a scuba diver. (There are dive spots in the lake, too.) Germany claims most of the shoreline — 107 miles — and Lake Constance is commonly referred to by its German name, Bodensee (pronounced Boden-zay).
Historic resort towns, most with public beaches, ring the shoreline, while farmland, orchards and vineyards lie just beyond. The closer views are hilly, with the towering Alps visible in the distance in certain spots. On the water, ferries crisscross from one town to another, interspersed with sailboats and other recreational vessels.
Some visitors park themselves in one town and use public transportation, including ferries, buses and trains, to reach the rest of the lake and beyond. Depending on how much you plan to see and do, one option that can save time and money is to buy a Bodensee Card Plus, which includes entrance to more than 160 attractions around the lake, plus some transportation.
A Dutch adventurer chronicles two years traveling by bicycle
As for the cycling, although the sections near the shoreline are flat, the route otherwise has more ups and downs than I had expected. Overall, the cycling felt safe, though routes were not always separated from traffic. Surfaces included pavement in urban areas, crushed gravel in parks and dirt roads through forests. We brought our own bikes from our home in the Netherlands, but there are plenty of rental shops in the region, as well as a long list of organized and self-guided bike tour outfitters.
We are usually in the minority when arriving at a hotel by bicycle. Here we blended right in. On one day of our ride, a sunny Saturday during a holiday weekend in late May, there were so many bikes on the paths that it felt like a cycling event.
We were among the few English speakers visiting the area. So if you’re looking for a European destination with few Americans, this is one. With that in mind, most signs were in German, and many Germans we encountered spoke very little English, even at hotels.
We followed the bike route clockwise, starting from the town of Radolfzell, on the western end of the lower lake.
After pedaling along the shoreline and passing miles of fruit orchards and strawberry fields (many with tempting farm stands), we reached the Birnau Basilica. The pale-pink jewel built atop a hill around 1750 is so large that we later spotted it from different vantage points as we circled the lake. The church’s interior is a breathtaking rococo riot, with a ceiling that looks like a collection of upside-down wedding cakes.
Think you can’t handle a bicycle tour? Consider using an e-bike.
Thirty minutes later, we went even further back in time at the Pfahlbauten, or pile dwellings, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of 111 locations of prehistoric stilt houses found around the Alps. Based on excavations, the village was reconstructed and can be toured. Child-friendly exhibits make this a great family stop, and it also abuts a large waterfront park.
We had to skip the famous Meersburg Castle (and “newer” 18th-century palace) to reach the town of Friedrichshafen before the Zeppelin Museum closed for the day. Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who grew up on the lake, invented the zeppelin and started building airships in Friedrichshafen in the late 1890s. Most of us know of the zeppelin through the Hindenburg, which burst into flames in New Jersey in 1937, killing 36 people. But before that, hundreds of passenger trips were completed on the dirigibles. The museum documents this fascinating form of air travel. The centerpiece is a reproduction of the 108-foot-long passenger section of the Hindenburg, down to its toilets and decorative wall panels.
The next day, we sped past several lovely lakeside towns to reach Lindau, which bills itself as the “Bavarian Riviera.” Its “Altstadt,” or old town, is on an island with a pedestrian-only center and lively harborside. We climbed the lighthouse at the end of the harbor for a fantastic view of the lake and the colorful buildings lining cobblestone streets.
Heading farther east, we saw our first clear outlines of snow-covered mountains and finally crossed the border into Austria. In Bregenz, we hopped aboard the city’s famed Pfänderbahn cable car, which takes six minutes from the heart of the city to reach Pfänder, a 3,490-foot peak. At the top, we could look out over a panorama of three countries and a sparkling blue lake. Clouds obscured the 240 Alpine peaks one can supposedly see on a clear day. Still, the views were majestic.
We checked Switzerland off the list the next day on our way to the biggest city on the lake: Konstanz, Germany, with about 85,000 residents. The vibrant university town on the lake’s northwest shore boasts a large historic center with timber-framed buildings, some with strikingly painted facades.
Konstanz is also known for its two neighboring islands, Mainau and Reichenau. Mainau, a small island with an admission fee, is a popular attraction, especially for families. Its gardens and arboretum were thankfully less manicured than I’d expected and were quite beautiful. A baroque castle punctuates the eastern end near the ferry harbor.
On the west side of Konstanz sits Reichenau, another UNESCO World Heritage site. During the Middle Ages, its Benedictine monastery, founded in 724, became one of the continent’s most important spiritual centers and produced splendid illuminated manuscripts and frescoes. Three remaining churches can be visited, each with its own small museum. The most popular is St. Georg, known for its elaborate fresco-covered walls.
Today, Reichenau is also famous for its vegetable farms. Thanks to a mild climate and a sprawling irrigation network across the 1.7-square-mile island, farmers here harvest four times yearly. Family greenhouses virtually cover the island. Some island families also fish for a living, catching mostly whitefish, perch, pike and trout. We had lunch at the picturesque Georg’s Fischerhütte, one of a few small family-run fish restaurants on the island, where we feasted on unadorned grilled whitefish straight from the lake.
Although the number of Konstanz’s painted facades could fill an art gallery, the ones we saw the next day in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland, counted toward a full museum’s worth. The town, home to about 3,500 people along the Rhine, has passed down its folklore in vivid, richly detailed artwork on centuries-old buildings, many of them half-timbered structures. Bustling shops and cafes flank the cobblestone main street, but the architecture steals the show.
From Stein am Rhein, you can take a boat down the Rhine to Schaffhausen, Switzerland, which is near Rheinfall, or the Rhine Falls. At about 500 feet wide and 75 feet high, the falls are among the largest and most powerful in Europe. As we approached by bike, we could feel the wind gusts before we could hear or see the water. Although “it’s no Niagara,” as several friends mentioned, it does have an attraction I can’t imagine seeing in the United States: Tourist boats take visitors through churning waters to a set of stairs that lead to a viewing platform atop a tall rock in the middle of the falls.
Another water attraction we loved in Schaffhausen is the Rhybadi, or Rhine River Bath, an enclosed pool constructed in the river that has been there for more than a century.
On our last day of riding, we finally stopped at a farm stand for strawberries. I’d been eyeing the plump, ripe berries all week, but we didn’t have a good way to transport them. We got them safely to the car and ate them like candy on the way home, sweet reminders of our ride around Lake Constance.
Daniel is a writer based in the Netherlands and Florida. Her website is bydianedaniel.com.
Hotel Germania
Am Steinenbach 9, Bregenz, Austria
011-43-5574-427-660
hotel-germania.at
Contemporary city hotel located between the city center and the Lake Constance shoreline. Standard double room about $198 per night, including breakfast buffet.
Hotel Halm
Bahnhofplatz 6, Konstanz, Germany
011-49-7531-1210
hotel-halm.de/en
Elegant 19th-century Gothic Revival hotel situated in Old Town, near the train station and harbor, with some lakefront rooms. Standard double room about $150, not including breakfast.
Hotel Kronenhof
Kirchhofpl. 7, Schaffhausen, Switzerland
011-41-52-635-7575
kronenhof.ch
Located in Schaffhausen’s Old Town, this 15th-century hotel is elegant and cozy, with a lively restaurant and bar. Standard double room about $170, including breakfast buffet.
Wirtshaus am See
Seepromenade 2, Bregenz, Austria
011-43-5574-42210
wirtshausamsee.at/en/home
This waterfront restaurant serves fresh fish from the lake. Afterward, stroll the lovely lakeside promenade. Dinner entrees from about $15. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., from March to December.
Brauhaus Joh. Albrecht
Konradigasse 2, Konstanz, Germany
bit.ly/brauhaus-konstanz
German brewpub operates a small chain of restaurants specializing in beer and traditional German dishes, including schnitzel. Dinner entrees from about $13.50. Open daily, noon to midnight.
Georg’s Fischerhütte
Fischergasse 5, Konstanz-Reichenau, Germany
bit.ly/georgs-reichenau
Wooden furniture and railings give this family restaurant a rustic charm. Freshly caught whitefish, pike and more are grilled and unadorned. Dinner entrees from about $17.50. Open daily 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., year-round.
Beckenburg das Restaurant
Neustadt 1, Schaffhausen, Switzerland
011-41-52620-1212
beckenburg.ch
Cozy and stylish, this city favorite focuses on locally sourced vegetables and protein. Dinner entrees from about $30. Open for lunch Tuesday to Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and for dinner Tuesday to Friday, 6 to 11:30 p.m., and Saturday, 6 to midnight. Closed Sunday and Monday. Reservations recommended.
Birnau Basilica
Birnau-Maurach 5, Uhldingen-Mühlhofen, Germany
birnau.de
Pilgrimage church with rococo interior and stunning lake views. Open daily 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. in summer; closes 5 p.m. in winter. Free.
Pfahlbauten
Strandpromenade 6, Uhldingen-Mühlhofen, Germany
pfahlbauten.de
Archaeological open-air museum and UNESCO World Heritage site features reconstructed prehistoric stilt dwellings. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission about $12 for adults, $8 children 5 to 15, $11 students 16 and older and guests with disabilities, and free for children 4 and under.
Zeppelin Museum
Seestrasse 22, Friedrichshafen, Germany
zeppelin-museum.de
Waterfront museum charts the history of the zeppelin aircraft and includes a reproduction of the passenger section of the Hindenburg. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., May to October, and Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., November to April. Entry until 4:30 p.m. Admission from May to October about $13 for adults, about $7 children 6 to 16, $12 for retirees, and free for children 5 and under. Admission for November to April about $12 adults, $6 children 6 to 16, $10 retirees.
Pfänderbahn
Steinbruchgasse 4, Bregenz, Austria
pfaenderbahn.at/en/
Scenic cable-car ride to Pfänder, a mountain overlooking Lake Constance. Open daily, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Round-trip rates April to October: about $15 adults, about $14 seniors 65 and older, about $13 ages 16 to 19, about $8 ages 6 to 15, free ages 5 and under. Round-trip rates November to March: about $13.50 for adults, about $13 for seniors 65 and older, about $12 ages 16 to 19, about $7 ages 6 to 15.
Mainau Island
mainau.de
This attraction east of Konstanz features flower gardens, a butterfly house and baroque castle. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission when ordering online about $24 adults, $15 children 13 and older with student ID, and free for children 12 and under.
Reichenau Island
reichenau-tourismus.de
During the Middle Ages, the Benedictine monastery on Reichenau Island became one of the continent’s most important spiritual centers and produced splendid illuminated manuscripts and frescoes. It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and its three remaining churches (Minister of St. Maria and Markus, the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, and the Church of St. George) are open to visitors. Open year-round, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., unless church services interfere. The most famous, the Church of St. George, can only be visited through a tour (in German) at 12:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. daily, about $3 per person.
Neuhausen am Rheinfall/Schaffhausen, Switzerland
011-41-52-632-63-30
rheinfall.ch
At about 500 feet wide and 75 feet high, the Rheinfall, or Rhine Falls, is among the largest and most powerful waterfalls in Europe. Visitors can follow a walkway along the falls for viewing from different vantage points. The falls’ viewing points at the northern bank are always open and free.
bodensee.eu | 2022-06-24T12:18:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Lake Constance is a premiere European biking destination - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/24/biking-austria-germany-switzerland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/24/biking-austria-germany-switzerland/ |
A generous exploration of creativity that embraces its mysteries
Review by Eric Weiner
Dancer Damian Woetzel, center stage, leads students and cellist Yo-Yo Ma in motion exercises during a workshop in 2012 at Savoy Elementary in Washington. Ma is among the creatives featured in Matt Richtel’s new book. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Halfway into Matt Richtel’s engaging and lively romp through the wide world of creativity, he collides headfirst with the conundrum every writer tackling subjects like creativity or humor eventually confronts: how to shed light on the topic without spoiling the fun. When he asks the wildly talented musician Rhiannon Giddens to describe her creative process, she says, “Sometimes I get an idea and it just goes and it goes … It’s magic.”
Magic and mystery are what make jokes funny and creativity so tantalizing. Revealing how a magic trick is done or giving away a punchline will not win you any friends. So, as much as we profess interest in divining the “secret” to creative thinking, we’re also wary. We don’t want to kill the magic.
This ambivalence has allowed a host of stubborn myths about creativity to proliferate: that it is the dominion of a few lone geniuses, that it stems from raw intelligence, that all “true artists” must suffer for their art. And perhaps the biggest myth of all: that creativity can’t be taught. You’re either born creative or you’re not.
In “Inspired: Understanding Creativity: A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul,” Richtel ruthlessly punctures each of these myths, and more, with prose that is crisp, conversational and at times darned funny. (Recalling his premature midlife crisis in his 20s, he writes, “I was an enigma to myself, wrapped in the fetal position.”) He doesn’t have all the answers, though, and thank goodness. It is his open embrace of doubt — and yes, mystery — that explains a lot of this book’s charm.
“Inspired” begins in an unexpected setting: Jerusalem. Having lived there, I know the city to be many things, though creative is not among them. But Richtel has a plan. He is reaching back, way back, into history. “This book is the story of human creation,” he proclaims, biblically.
This is your first clue that this is no ordinary book on creativity. Richtel doesn’t fixate on the neuroscience — this is your brain on creativity! — or proffer a few tricks so that you too can become the next Picasso! This is creativity at its broadest and most inclusive, encompassing everything from the coronavirus (the novel coronavirus) to Bono to the guy who invented Velcro.
One thread holding it all together is the idea that creativity can be cultivated. It can be cultivated in humanity’s greatest creativity generator, the city, and in music jam sessions and in corporate boardrooms. Most of all, Richtel argues, it can be cultivated in you.
How? That isn’t entirely clear, and as Richtel admits, “This is not that kind of self-help book.” He offers no novel approach to creativity or unifying theory of innovation. No new techniques that will turn you into the next Picasso or Einstein.
What distinguishes “Inspired” is its expansive range and conversational tone, as well as Richtel’s ability to synthesize a lot of complex research, simplifying without oversimplifying. He’s clearly done his homework, weeding through many dry scientific papers and distilling their essence. He also excels at probing assumptions or, as he puts it, asking the “smart-dumb question.”
Thus one of the keys to creativity: reframing problems rather than fixating on solutions. Creative people are not know-it-alls. They are see-it-alls. They connect more dots because they see more dots (literally, as we learn) and possess one of the key personality traits shared by nearly all creative people: openness to experience.
It is something Richtel clearly possesses too. Where others see history as a relentless parade of wars and upheavals, Richtel sees lessons. (“History teaches the good news.”) Where others see religion as destructive, Richtel sees a powerful creative force, one that even nonbelievers benefit from. Where others see Silicon Valley as a playpen for narcissists who can code, Richtel sees a fount for good in the world.
“Hell is other people,” Sartre famously said. Perhaps, but not when it comes to creativity. It is a social phenomenon. We need other people to collaborate with, to test our ideas on and to gently tell us when we’re heading down a dead end. “It’s all about having people who have a good heart,” says Judd Apatow, in one of the many generous sentiments found in these pages.
“Inspired” is populated with a rich cast of creative characters, from Claude Monet to Taylor Swift, Carlos Santana to Yo-Yo Ma. The pensive basketball coach Steve Kerr makes an appearance, as does the cartoonist Gary Trudeau and the biologist Richard Dawkins, as well as a smattering of Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur “genius grant” recipients and other bright lights bound to make you feel like a dim bulb.
Richtel paints compelling, bite-size portraits of these creatives, teasing lessons from each, but I wish he had better exercised one of the key tenets of creativity: discernment. Some of these creatives are more insightful than others. And they come and go too quickly. We’re just getting to know them, to peer into their creative process, when Richtel ushers them offstage.
And I would have liked to have learned more about the one creator’s story he knows best: his own. A reporter for the New York Times, Richtel has also written several thrillers, nonfiction books, a children’s book called “Runaway Booger” and a popular comic strip. Yet he reveals his creative process only in dribs and drabs, almost apologetically. “I do not intend to dwell on my own experience.” Dwell, please.
And while Richtel punctures some myths about creativity, he perpetuates others. He repeats the common — and, I think, misguided — belief that creative products are neither good nor bad. “It really depends on how they are used,” he writes. A few paragraphs later, though, he concedes that “some are noxious,” listing slavery and poison gas as examples. Surely other inventions belong on this list of shame, including the modern assault weapon. No creation is entirely neutral. It is designed with a purpose, even if that purpose is later altered by others.
“Inspired” is not perfect — no creation is. The otherwise fresh writing is marred by a few syrupy clunkers: Richtel describes a musician as “builder of his own creative lifestyle” and implores you to embark on your “creative journey.” Some of his observations sound profound but on closer inspection actually say very little. “Such is the power of creativity that it forms and re-forms our very understanding of the world,” he writes. Huh?
This is a bouillabaisse of a book: a meaty, messy mélange of stories, hunches, studies, digressions, contradictions and, occasionally, blazing insight. It is, in other words, a lot like the creative process itself. Magic included.
Eric Weiner is the author, most recently, of “The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons From Dead Philosophers.”
Understanding Creativity: A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul
By Matt Richtel
Mariner. 320 pp. $29.99 | 2022-06-24T12:22:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Inspired: Understanding Creativity: A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul by Matt Richtel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/generous-exploration-creativity-that-embraces-its-mysteries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/generous-exploration-creativity-that-embraces-its-mysteries/ |
NBC’s Katy Tur took abuse from Trump; it reminded her of her childhood
Review by Janet Hook
A mist-producing machine blows a steady fog onto journalists, including NBC News's Katy Tur, during a campaign rally for Donald Trump in Manchester, N.H., on Nov. 7, 2016, just before Election Day. As she covered his campaign, Trump often publicly berated Tur. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Katy Tur, an MSNBC anchor, gained prominence as a reporter during the 2016 presidential campaign, when Donald Trump plucked her from obscurity to taunt her at rallies as “little Katy,” a “third-rate reporter,” an exemplar of the media he despised. Tur withstood repeated abuse with remarkable aplomb, won a major journalism award and detailed her experience in a best-selling campaign memoir, “Unbelievable.”
Now, in a second memoir, “Rough Draft,” Tur makes clear why she was especially well equipped for that bruising experience.
She was raised in Los Angeles by parents who were pathbreaking journalists and prepared her for a thrilling life of chasing news. But Bob Tur — who came out as transgender in 2013 and became a woman, Zoey — was also a volatile, sometimes violent father who subjected their family to fits of rage and abuse.
This is a case study in the blessings and curse of family legacy, a vivid account of how one woman’s inheritance propelled her from a tumultuous childhood to a high-profile perch in television journalism.
“I can thank my father for training me, pushing me, shaping me as a reporter and broadcaster,” writes Tur. “I can hate her for hitting me, slapping me, chasing me, hurting my mother and brother, kicking my dog, and burning down our lives.”
It is odd for a person under 40 to have already written two memoirs, but Tur has the humility to call this a “Rough Draft” of an autobiography. It is more provocative than Tur’s first book, about covering Trump, a conventional campaign memoir. “Rough Draft” is a painful read in many parts, laced with humor in others, embellished with reflections on journalism.
There is overlap with Tur’s campaign book, and Trump is still a central figure. But here he is a doppelganger for her bullying father.
“I’d dealt with this kind of behavior before,” she writes of Trump. “This insistence on attention. This love of coverage and publicity, no matter how good or bad. This obsession with respect and tolerance for fighting and feuding. … I’d seen it all before in my own family.”
Tur’s father and mother, Marika Gerrard, became famous in the 1980s and 1990s for pioneering live helicopter coverage of major news events. Founders of the Los Angeles News Service, they scored such scoops as live aerial coverage of the O.J. Simpson car chase, the mob attack on truck driver Reginald Denny in the 1992 riots and Madonna’s secret marriage to Sean Penn.
Their business eventually fell apart, and Tur says it was because of one thing: her father’s anger. The marriage also ended, and Tur learned of their divorce the day she graduated from college.
She left Los Angeles in her early 20s and took her rookie journalism skills to New York. She lived with Keith Olbermann, an MSNBC star almost 25 years her senior. “I became, in tabloid-speak, the bimbo,” she writes, bluntly acknowledging that she paid a professional price for the relationship. Long after they broke up, now married to CBS correspondent Tony Dokoupil and the mother of two children, Tur says that even today detractors bring up her erstwhile celebrity boyfriend to diminish her achievements.
She chronicles her career ascent through some unglamorous jobs, at the Weather Channel and in New York local news, before making it to NBC and then landing in London as a foreign correspondent.
That dream job was interrupted when in 2015 she was temporarily assigned to cover the Trump campaign, which then was considered a doomed enterprise. But it turned into a full-time job, a year-and-a-half endurance test.
“My ability to stick with the Trump beat, to stay on the job — fending off competition and fatigue and buckets of abuse, to hang around long enough to watch the country change, and with it my little life — all of it goes back to my father,” she writes.
After Trump’s surprising victory, Tur was not assigned to the White House — a common destination for reporters who covered a winning candidate. She remained in New York, and 2017 was a banner year. She was assigned to anchor an afternoon show on MSNBC. Her book about Trump was a huge success. She got married to Dokoupil, and had their first child in 2019, their second in 2021.
As she rose in journalism, so too did tensions with her father, who told her in announcing his plan to become a woman, “It’s why I’ve been so angry.” Tur says she supported her father’s transition but was unwilling to accept it as a way to erase responsibility for the past. In the following years, her father told interviewers that they were estranged because she could not accept his transition. Tur denies that, detailing in this book how she was estranged because Zoey Tur refused to discuss and address the violence and abuse Bob Tur had inflicted on their family.
“My father wanted to throw the past into the abyss and let it sink while I needed to dig it up and lay it out for discussion,” she writes. “There was simply no getting past this difference, though we both tried.”
Tur’s memoir includes reflections on the flaws of contemporary journalism — such as cable’s contribution to the polarization of politics — but with no grand ideas for fixing it. In a takedown of Walter Cronkite’s hero status, she argues that the reverence for great newscasters of the past is overdone, and she makes a decent case that today’s craft is “more accountable” because it is open to instantaneous feedback.
Exploring the challenges of women in journalism, she dives deep into the special anxiety of new mothers. She worried about losing her “edge” and her job while on maternity leave. She admits her impatience during her newborn’s first pediatrician visit, antsy to get out because the office was a cell-service dead zone. The panic of her first day back at work will ring true to any working mom.
The book’s appeal may not reach far beyond her fans, but Tur has many and they will enjoy this fast-paced tale. Two important people in her audience are her parents: Tur includes special praise for her mother’s underappreciated role in the family business; she expresses hope that the book will “open a door, start a new chapter” between herself and her father.
“No one can choose the gifts of their childhood. But everyone can work to reject its worst lessons,” she writes.
Janet Hook has covered national politics for the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Atria/One Signal. 272 pp. $28. | 2022-06-24T12:22:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "Rough Draft," by Katy Tur - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/nbcs-katy-tur-took-abuse-trump-it-reminded-her-her-childhood/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/nbcs-katy-tur-took-abuse-trump-it-reminded-her-her-childhood/ |
A plan to fix the internet: Put the government in charge
Review by Gabriel Nicholas
Ben Tarnoff proposes that the best way to fix the problems with internet service providers and tech companies, such as Twitter, is for them to be publicly or cooperatively owned. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
The day Elon Musk declared his intent to buy Twitter, many Americans learned for the first time that there is no law that prohibits one person — say, the world’s richest man — from single-handedly owning and controlling one of the largest public information-sharing systems in human history. But should there be?
Ben Tarnoff would surely say yes, and then some. In his book “Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future,” Tarnoff, a tech worker and a co-founder of Logic magazine, advocates for a publicly owned internet. He argues that the internet’s myriad problems — rampant hate speech, virulent misinformation and, in the United States, some of the slowest and most expensive internet service in the developed world — exist because “the internet is a business.” Tarnoff says that “to build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye toward making markets work better, but toward making them less dominant … an internet where people, and not profit, rule.”
“Internet for the People” has ideas and language that will trip some readers’ anti-leftist reflexes, but those able to quell their Cold War proclivities will find perhaps not a panacea for the internet’s problems but a helpful reframing — from thinking about how to avoid a horrible internet to how to create a good one.
It’s hard to imagine, but the internet was not always a business; for the first 25 years of its history, it was entirely funded and operated by the federal government. The earliest progenitor of the internet was ARPANET, built in 1969 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The network was originally meant to let computers communicate with poorly connected battle stations across the globe, but it was quickly commandeered by DARPA scientists eager to share research with one another. In 1986, the National Science Foundation (NSF) took over the endeavor and replaced ARPANET with NSFNET, which enabled more than 200 universities and government agencies to “internetwork” with one another. Since its inception, the internet has been a nonproprietary, universal language that any computer can use to speak to any other. “Under private ownership,” Tarnoff writes, “such a language could never have been created.”
But by 1994, NSFNET was collapsing under its own weight. Traffic was up more than 1,000-fold, and the invention of the first web browser was about to make things worse. In the Clintonian fervor for privatization, the government decided to address the problem by transferring control of the internet to a handful of telecom companies. State and federal governments had spent close to $2 billion to build the infrastructure of the internet, yet “strikingly, this transfer came with no conditions.” Tarnoff sees 1994 as the internet’s Waterloo, a case where the government, because of its overzealous faith in the market, blew its chance to extract concessions for privacy, guaranteed access or democratic control over the internet.
Tarnoff believes that for internet service providers (ISPs) and the platforms built on top of them, the profit motive and the public good are inherently at odds. Private ISPs are incentivized to sell access at minimum speeds for maximum price, mine their customers’ traffic for sensitive data to sell to advertisers, and not extend service to hard-to-reach rural areas. Tech companies, too, are interested in externalizing as many costs as possible onto contract workers (think underpaid Uber drivers, overworked Amazon warehouse employees, traumatized Facebook content moderators) and the public at large (think social media companies maximizing ad revenue by collecting private data and recommending sensationalist content).
The usual ways lawmakers deal with these kinds of problems are regulation and increased competition, but Tarnoff argues that neither would work for the tech sector. Regulation can often be circumvented and may further decrease competition by creating compliance costs that only the largest companies can bear. Breaking up companies could, as Ezra Klein put it, “lead to yet fiercer wars for our attention and data, which would incentivize yet more unethical modes of capturing it.” Ultimately, Tarnoff says, both approaches fail because they assume and encourage “an internet run for profit.”
Tarnoff believes that the best way to fix ISPs and tech companies is for them to be publicly or cooperatively owned. This model already works for ISPs — municipally owned broadband networks tend to offer faster, cheaper and more equitable internet access than their corporate alternatives because they don’t need to earn a profit. Chattanooga’s city-owned fiber-to-the-home network, for example, offers on- gigabit-per-second speeds (about 25 times faster than the national average) for the same average national cost, and half-price for low-income families. The main barrier to more municipal broadband is not a lack of success stories but telecom lobbyists, who have succeeded in banning or restricting it in 18 states.
Platforms have no similar straightforward path to public or collective control, but “Internet for the People” offers a sketch of what a more democratic internet could look like. Tarnoff wants platforms to be much smaller, small enough to govern themselves and resist radicalizing content. He pulls from Ethan Zuckerman’s idea of a web that is “plural in purpose” — that just as pool halls, libraries and churches each have different norms, purposes and designs, so too should different places on the internet. To achieve this, Tarnoff wants governments to pass laws that would make the big platforms unprofitable and, in their place, fund small-scale, local experiments in social media design. Instead of having platforms ruled by engagement-maximizing algorithms, Tarnoff imagines public platforms run by local librarians that include content from public media.
Tarnoff is hazy on the details of his deprivatized internet, and he is the first to admit that it is incomplete and politically impracticable. He talks little about how a public internet would deal with thorny problems such as government surveillance or content moderation. He discusses America’s bigoted history of “local control” — blocking school desegregation, redlining housing — but has few ideas for how to prevent a locally governed internet from meeting the same fate. The image of a trusty, bespectacled librarian managing a small internet community instead of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg fully controlling a global, near-ubiquitous billion-dollar social network feels like a cool breeze over a hot garbage pit. If that librarian had real political power, though, the outcome might not be so idyllic.
“Internet for the People” doesn’t offer solutions for all the internet’s problems in its 180 pages, or even in its 60 pages of citations, nor does it need to. Instead, it presents a paradigm shift for reform, changing the question from “How can we have a healthy, privately owned internet?” to “What is the internet we want, and where does pro-market mentality get in the way?” The internet was born from the government largesse of the 1960s but raised in the “privatize everything” attitude of the 1990s. Unlike with public health, public education and public transportation, most Americans never got to experience a public internet. Tarnoff wants to bring the internet back to its publicly owned, civically oriented roots, and whether or not that’s the right thing to do, it’s the right question to ask.
Gabriel Nicholas is a researcher at the Center for Democracy & Technology and a joint fellow at the NYU Information Law Institute and the NYU Center for Cybersecurity.
Internet for the People
The Fight for Our Digital Future
Verso. 272 pp. $24.95 | 2022-06-24T12:22:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future," by Ben Tarnoff - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/plan-fix-internet-put-government-charge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/plan-fix-internet-put-government-charge/ |
What drove some to resist Hitler — and others to stay quiet
Review by Katja Hoyer
After joining the Polish army, citizens march through the streets of Praga on their way to fight the Germans on Jan. 9, 1945. The Nazis regarded the Polish people as Untermenschen — subhumans. (AP)
Summer, 1940. A deep sense of despair descended over Europe as country after country fell to Nazi Germany’s rapacious conquest. Wherever they went, the occupiers imposed painful markers of their presence. Public buildings were draped in blood-red banners bearing the swastika. Orders were barked at civilians. German street signs appeared. “Foreign occupation changes every detail of one’s whole life,” a Czech soldier wrote. “You are no longer master of your own country, no longer at home in your own home.”
But what could be done to defy such overwhelming force? The German onslaught had overrun the professional armies of Poland and France in a matter of months. Resistance from ordinary people seemed futile, even suicidal. Most Europeans did not dare fight their occupiers; they tried to learn to live with them: “If we cannot sing with the angels we shall howl with the wolves,” as a Czech journalist put it.
But even at this moment in history, when Nazi victory seemed certain and permanent, some men and women found it in themselves to fight back. The intriguing question of why they did so — “Why resist?” — runs like a red thread through Halik Kochanski’s comprehensive new book, “Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945.”
In her unflinching and sober account of the response of ordinary people under occupation, Kochanski shows that there is no straightforward answer to the question of why some Europeans chose to resist the Nazis while most did not. Broadly, she argues, the responses depended on the type of occupation imposed: “What Hitler wanted from France was for the French to remain silent while he prepared for war against Britain, and to permit the economic plundering of the country.” In Poland meanwhile, the population was regarded as Untermenschen — subhumans to be exploited and then exterminated. To Western Europeans, “Why resist?” was a question of principle, while to Eastern Europeans it became one of survival.
At least in the early phases of the war, resistance in Western Europe was less risky. As a result, small-scale forms, such as the use of symbols, were widespread. Many Dutch people wore orange blossoms to support the House of Orange; some Norwegians wore paper clips on their lapels in allegiance with King Haakon; French resisters carried the Cross of Lorraine as key fobs. Such visual defiance may seem ineffective, but it helped maintain tension between the occupiers and the occupied and rarely ended in prison sentences, never mind executions.
Meanwhile in Eastern Europe, partisan action began well before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and it drew a devastating backlash not just for those involved but for passive civilians too. In Poland, Maj. Henryk Dobrzanski, known as Hubal, refused to surrender after the Polish defeat in 1939 and gathered a volunteer force that destroyed an entire German battalion in March 1940. But Nazi retaliation was swift and brutal. Anti-partisan units killed more than 1,200 people, including civilians whose villages were targeted whether they had supported Hubal or not.
While the efforts of resisters everywhere in Europe were admirable in bravery and spirit, decades of postwar mythmaking have also obscured many uncomfortable historical realities. Kochanski takes an uncompromising new look at many of these dearly held ideas without taking away from their importance “to the concept of the nation state in the post-war years.”
In order to rebuild, postwar France, for instance, needed to believe that it had practically liberated itself under Charles de Gaulle, the leader of Free France. Indeed, his agents provided vital intelligence — for example, where air power might be deployed most effectively — but “these activities were only valuable when the Allies were nearby,” Kochanski writes. Industrial sabotage and the dismantling of railway lines were making the Germans aware of their vulnerability, but Kochanski shows that they were “more of a nuisance than a war-changing activity.”
“Resistance” also challenges our images of friend and foe in World War II. “Who is the enemy?” is a pertinent question, given that the compliance of internal collaborators was often as much of a problem to the resistance as the Germans themselves.
For Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Czechoslovakia, countries that had gained independence after World War I, there was another dimension to the struggle: Their fight was for autonomy — against whoever compromised it. After 1943, when the war began to turn, this conundrum raised the question: “Was the greater enemy the retreating Germans or the advancing Soviets?”
This dilemma had serious repercussions for postwar views of what resistance had achieved. In the West, where the defeat of Nazism restored independence, democracy and a chance to rebuild national dignity, the resistance was associated with liberation. But in the East, where Soviet occupation replaced the German one, things were very different. As one devastated resistance fighter put it, “As the smoke cleared from the battlefield it began to emerge that we had suffered a huge national defeat.”
A nuanced and dispassionate study, “Resistance” nonetheless pays tribute to those who “were determined to thwart the designs of the Germans, to harass them, to deny them the opportunity to ever assert total control over the peoples of Europe.” Ideas of independence and dignity were at the heart of the struggle — worth fighting and even dying for. Dutch resister Erik Hazelhoff spoke for many when he said: “In the life of every person there are moments when he says to himself: ‘Tja, this won’t do.’ And then he does something.”
Katja Hoyer, an Anglo-German historian and journalist, is the author of “Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918.”
The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945
By Halik Kochanski
Liveright. 936 pp. $45 | 2022-06-24T12:22:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945" by Halik Kochanski - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/what-drove-some-resist-hitler-others-stay-quiet/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/what-drove-some-resist-hitler-others-stay-quiet/ |
Sometimes, the best thing is to do nothing
How to do your best to find peace of mind by turning off your brain
Perspective by Steven Petrow
My grandmother always had an aphorism on the tip of her tongue. I remember when she first uttered what seemed very Zen to me back in the 1970s: “If I can’t change the situation, I must change my attitude for my own peace of mind.”
Clearly, Grandma was an early advocate of “radical acceptance.” I loved how this woman, born in 1907 to Polish immigrants, absorbed the zeitgeist of the Age of Aquarius without all the woo-woo language. But the mantra she most often repeated was this: “Busy people are happy people.” Of course, Grandma never would have used the word “mantra.”
Perhaps staying busy simply distracts us from feeling bad? That has certainly been my own experience. “Sorry, I’m too busy to feel now!” Still, I’m not sure it’s really about being happy or not, rather what happens when you live a life in the fast lane, which can be a dearth of equanimity (heightened anxiety or a readiness to anger, for instance) or a malaise.
I also came to realize that during the depths of the pandemic — when many experienced increased isolation, deepened polarization and worsened mental health — my malaise surged. The pandemic itself was central to all that but I wondered if the loss of distractions was also to blame. To paraphrase Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.
I’m reminded of one of my daily covid walks when the pandemic was hitting one of its peaks. A neighbor ran up to me (but stayed six feet away) and joyously recounted that she’d just finished 365 consecutive days of meditating on the Ten Percent app. She told me it was life changing; she slept better, felt more resilient and could better handle stress.
I’d meditated in the past, and decided to try it again, “sitting” with a variety of different teachers offered on various meditation apps. Some were formal in their practice, some quasi-religious, and then there was this one irreverent guy who seemed not to take it so seriously. I mean, his meditations were almost fun, if that’s possible. And he didn’t call it mediation — preferring to say it’s all about “doing nothing.”
Feeling stressed? Meditation apps see surge in group relaxation.
The group meets weekly online via YouTube for about a half-hour, when Warren, also co-author of the best-selling “Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics,” says “we can use the time to doodle, stare vacantly into space or meditate.” He promises it’s a training in equanimity. Really? Do nothing will help me find inner calm?
Warren leads the live stream, which is attended by a few hundred people from all over the world, who check in with one another each week. People share their ongoing challenges — from birth of a baby to death of a parent — and that was just in one week. (Often, 1,000 or more replay the live stream during the week, according to YouTube statistics.
But what happens when you’re doing nothing? A lot, as it turns out, but you have to do a little work to get there. In the past, I found myself bouncing back and forth between being fidgety, distracted, bored, even irritated. Warren’s YouTube meetup was a different experience. He advises people to keep their expectations low and to exit anytime by clicking the “leave” button. Yes. You can leave
Warren doesn’t tout greater focus, lower blood pressure or reduced stress, some of the known benefits of meditation. If anything, he hopes people will be able “just to sit there and … be a human being without compulsively needing to upgrade your situation.” Or, put another way, “to find genuine rest in the middle of the busyness.”
Oliver Burkeman, the author of “Four Thousand Weeks,” which is about making the most of our finite lives in a world of impossible demands, relentless distraction and political insanity, has written that “too much busyness is counterproductive” and that we confuse effort with effectiveness. In one article, he quotes the Dutch work expert Manfred Kets de Vries, who wrote, "[busyness] can be a very protective defence (sic) mechanism for warding off disturbing thoughts and feelings.”
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Enter David Vago, an associate professor at the Vanderbilt Brain Institute, who researches neuropsychology and is familiar with Warren’s work and the larger practice of mindful meditation.
As with any good teacher, Vago asked me to think about how I define my terms, in this case “doing nothing.” Then told me, “When I ask my 6-year-old son what he’s doing or thinking and he says ‘nothing,’ I often praise him and say, ‘Wow, tell me more about nothing! What is it like?' ” Then Vago gets into a playful debate with his son “on whether doing nothing is actually doing something — and whether you can really ever do nothing.”
Putting on his neuroscientist hat, Vago tells me: “Doing nothing” is the passive day-dreamy state many of us know, the default resting state for the mind, which, in terms of brain health is a good thing. When we passively allow our minds to wander, he says, it can move toward content that is helpful and adaptive — or self-reflective and maladaptive. Mind-wandering, at its best, can be constructive for creativity or focused planning. Neuroscientists, he says, refer to this passive day-dreamy state of “doing nothing” as the default resting state for the mind. Our brains require this downtime not only to recharge, he says, but to process all the data we’re deluged with, to consolidate memory, and reinforce learning. Anything that gets in the way of all that can be detrimental to health.
I’d like more of that, I think to myself.
By the end of the second of Warren’s session’s I attended, my mind had begun to quiet down. Less fidgety, for sure. Breathing deeply — in through my nose, out through my mouth — calmed me. I could tell that my heart rate had fallen. I stopped thinking about my to-do list (even what to make for dinner afterward), my sister’s cancer diagnosis and the topsy-turvy state of the world. And I enjoyed the online community, being with a group of people — doing nothing together.
Over time, I’ve found a new calmness or the beginnings of equanimity. I came to realize that “doing nothing” is not actually doing nothing; it’s really about doing nothing useful, which helps to keep me rooted in the present, and prevents me from skipping ahead to the future (where worry stalks us).
I’ve learned that you can “do nothing” almost anywhere. It helps to have a designated time (like Warren’s weekly meeting), or you can put a hold on your calendar (say 15 or 30 minutes a day). I’m finding that I can “do nothing” on walks, swimming, even washing the dishes or folding the laundry. Leave your device behind. Do your best to turn off your brain. Close your eyes (unless you’re out in the world). Or as the tattoo on Warren’s right arm says, “Let go.”
Susan Piver, also a meditation instructor and the author of many books, would not have agreed with my grandmother’s advice that busy people are happy people, having written, “busyness is seen as a form of laziness,” meaning that we instinctively answer the phone when it rings or reflexively reply to emails as they come in and don’t prioritize where to put our time and effort.
But I hope Grandma would be happy to see me following some of her advice, notably her admonition: If I can’t change the situation, I must change my attitude for my own peace of mind.” | 2022-06-24T12:27:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sometimes, the best thing is to do nothing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/24/doing-nothing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/24/doing-nothing/ |
J.K. Rowling thought she was talking to Zelensky. It was Russian pranksters.
Author J.K. Rowling, seen in 2018, was pranked by Russian comedians. (Christophe Ena/AP)
In a video posted to a Russian website this week, renowned author J.K. Rowling is seen sitting in a sun-drenched room on what was supposed to be a video call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss her foundation’s efforts to support children in the country invaded in February by Russia.
“Out of solidarity with Ukraine, I am not proceeding with certain business interests in Russia,” the author of the Harry Potter series said at the start of the 12-minute video.
But as the conversation continued, the faceless voice that claimed to be Zelensky made increasingly bizarre suggestions on how the British author could punish Russia. Among the requests was a suggestion to change Harry Potter’s lightning-bolt-shaped scar to a Ukrainian coat of arms, because the current iteration looks like a “Z,” a symbol of support for the Russian invasion.
“It might be good for me to do something with that myself on social media, because I think that would get into the newspapers,” Rowling responded.
Toward the end of the video, it becomes clear to the viewer that Rowling was never talking to the Ukrainian president — it was a Russian prankster duo known as Vovan and Lexus, who support Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for Rowling lambasted the prank, calling it “distasteful.”
“J.K. Rowling was approached to talk about her extensive charitable work in Ukraine, supporting children and families who have been affected by the current conflict in the region,” the spokesperson added. “The video, which has been edited, is a distorted representation of the conversation.”
The two men, Vladimir “Vovan” Kuznetsov and Aleksei “Lexus” Stolyarov, are known for pulling off high-profile hoaxes. Since at least 2014, they have fooled singer Elton John, former president George W. Bush, Vice President Harris, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Prince Harry. They duped lawmakers in Canada and the United States by pretending to be Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist. They persuaded lawmakers throughout Europe that they were a top aide to Alexei Navalny, the jailed Kremlin critic who was poisoned in 2020.
Kuznetsov and Stolyarov denied working for or being involved with the Kremlin in a 2016 interview with the Guardian.
The duo took credit for the Rowling prank by uploading the video on Rutube — Russian’s answer to YouTube, which banned the pair earlier this month. The video was first reported by the Rowling Library, a website dedicated to news about the author and her work.
The conversation with the Zelensky impersonator began with the prankster praising Rowling. He then asked the author if she could “demand that Russians don’t read your books at all.” He also suggested imposing sanctions on a Russian actor who appeared in the new movie from the Potter prequel series “Fantastic Beasts,” which was released in April, because it was too late to cut him out of the film.
“I will certainly talk to people and see what we can do,” Rowling said in what appeared to be a direct response.
The fake Zelensky also discussed Rowling’s donations and fundraising through her foundation, Lumos, which is working west of Kyiv in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine to help orphaned and displaced children. He said that the money was going toward buying “a lot of weapons and missiles … to destroy Russian troops.”
“I hope you are all for that,” he added.
Rowling replied, “We’ll look after the kids, but I really want Ukraine to have all the arms it needs.”
The faux Zelensky also said the Ukrainian military was writing “Avada Kedavra” — the killing curse in the Potter series — on its missiles.
About halfway through, the pranksters asked about one of her characters, the wizard Albus Dumbledore, being gay and inquired whom the Hogwarts headmaster had slept with, adding “hopefully not a transgender.” The comment was an apparent reference to Rowling’s controversial comments that have been criticized as transphobic.
The call ended with the appearance of three people who claimed to be members of a group called “The Order of the Ukrainian Phoenix” that reads Potter books to soldiers. They wore matching purple T-shirts.
“Only Putin,” it says in Russian, in support of the country’s leader. | 2022-06-24T12:27:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | J.K. Rowling fooled by pranksters Vovan and Lexus posing as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/jk-rowling-russian-prank-zelensky/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/jk-rowling-russian-prank-zelensky/ |
'Still a nightmare’: Surfside families mark one year since collapse
Luis Velarde
Record-breaking settlements for victims and their relatives have failed to provide closure a year after the Surfside, Fla. condo building collapsed. (Video: Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)
Early Friday, the parents, children and siblings of those killed got the opportunity to set foot on the vacant lot on the beach. They gathered at the same place, and at the same time a year earlier when — just after 1 a.m. — the building began to buckle and heave and within 10 minutes cave in on itself. First lady Jill Biden will speak at a public memorial event later in the morning.
After cataloguing the rubble, investigators with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are preparing to conduct more invasive tests on the debris in hopes of shedding light on the state of the building’s concrete and reinforcing steel at the time of the collapse.
“We have ruled out nothing at this time,” a NIST update from this month stated.
A Miami-Dade County grand jury recommended dozens of changes to building inspection requirements, including reducing the 40-year time frame for recertification — though their suggestions were not binding. At the federal level, South Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) on Thursday announced she would introduce a bill next week to provide low-interest financing for condo associations to pay for structural maintenance. | 2022-06-24T12:27:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Surfside families mark one year since Champlain Towers South collapse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/surfside-condo-collapse-anniversary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/surfside-condo-collapse-anniversary/ |
Post Politics Now House poised to send gun legislation to Biden in response to mass shootings
On our radar: Court ruling likely to make it easier to carry guns in nation’s biggest cities
Analysis: Thursday’s Jan. 6 hearing had echoes of Watergate
The latest: Jan. 6 panel names 5 Republicans who allegedly sought Trump pardons
The latest: Rep. Perry played key role in promoting false fraud claims
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is expected to take up the Senate bill on gun violence today. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Today, the House is poised to pass and send to President Biden legislation that aims to stanch mass gun violence through modest new firearms restrictions and mental health and school security funding. While the bill includes the most significant new gun restrictions since the mid-1990s, its expected passage comes amid the controversy over Thursday’s Supreme Court decision that will probably make it easier to carry guns in many of the nation’s largest cities.
Meanwhile, fallout continues from Thursday’s hearing from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The testimony focused on President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to overturn the election and revealed the names of several Republican lawmakers who allegedly sought presidential pardons in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol.
10 a.m. Eastern time: The Supreme Court releases more decisions.
10:45 a.m. Eastern: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) holds a weekly news conference. Watch live here.
Got a question about politics? Submit it here. At 3 p.m. Eastern time on weekdays, return to this space and we’ll address what’s on the mind of readers.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is scheduled to provide testimony and documents next month to Atlanta-area prosecutors conducting a criminal investigation into whether President Donald Trump tried to improperly pressure Georgia officials to reverse election results in the state.
Kemp, who drew Trump’s ire for refusing to intervene to overturn the election, easily turned back a GOP primary challenge last month from former senator David Perdue (R-Ga.), who was recruited by Trump to run against Kemp.
Kemp will provide a “sworn recorded statement,” according to a letter from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office that was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“The attached subpoena has as its primary purpose the examination of the conduct of former President Donald Trump, and those working on his behalf,” Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor hired by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) to help with the investigation, said in the letter.
“Also, the District Attorney’s primary interest is to discover what witnesses and documents are available that will explain what was being said and done regarding the 2020 presidential election and the efforts to replace the constitutionally elected electors,” Wade said.
Wade said the district attorney’s office agreed to a recorded statement “in a spirit of cooperation with the Governor and his schedule.” It is scheduled for July 25.
Nearly one month after the massacre in Uvalde, Tex., the Senate passed the most significant changes to gun laws in nearly three decades in a vote called just after 10 p.m. as families of victims of gun violence sat in the gallery watching.
Writing in The Early 202, The Post’s Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell assess the fallout, writing:
The Senate voted 65 to 33 on June 23 to pass the bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It is the most significant firearms legislation in more than 25 years. (Video: The Washington Post)
The House on Friday is scrambling to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, legislation that cleared the Senate on Thursday night. The bill aims to staunch mass gun violence through modest new firearms restrictions and $15 billion in mental health and school security funding.
“While more is needed, this package must quickly become law to help protect our children,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier this week.
President Biden, who called for far more sweeping gun-control measures, signaled Thursday night that he intends to sign the bill, saying in a statement that “kids in schools and communities will be safer because of it.”
The Post’s Mike DeBonis has details of Thursday’s passage of the bill in the Senate:
The 65-to-33 vote represented an unlikely breakthrough on the emotional and polarizing question of U.S. gun laws, which have gone largely unchanged for more than 25 years, even as the nation has been repeatedly scarred by mass shootings whose names have become etched in history — from Columbine and Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook and Parkland.
But the May 24 killing of 19 students and two teachers inside a Uvalde, Tex., elementary school prompted renewed action, compelling a small group of senators to negotiate a narrow, bipartisan package focused on keeping guns away from dangerous potential killers while also bulking up the nation’s mental-health-care capacity with billions of dollars in new funding.
The vote in the House is expected to be less bipartisan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) have told colleagues they plan to vote against it.
You can read more from Mike here.
The Supreme Court on June 23 said New York's gun law was too restrictive and violated the right to carry firearms outside the home for self-defense. (Video: Joy Yi/The Washington Post, Photo: Erik S Lesser/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock/The Washington Post)
Friday’s expected House passage of gun legislation comes amid the fallout of a Supreme Court ruling Thursday that law-abiding Americans have a right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense — a decision that is likely to make it easier to carry firearms in some of the nation’s biggest cities.
The Post’s Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow have more on the watershed constitutional ruling:
The court’s conservatives prevailed in a 6-to-3 decision that struck a New York law requiring a special need for carrying a weapon and puts at risk similar laws in Maryland, California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Massachusetts.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s longest-serving justice and perhaps its most outspoken Second Amendment advocate, wrote a sweeping, 66-page opinion for the court’s conservatives that was specific to New York’s law, but also raises substantial obstacles at the high court for future gun-control measures.
“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’ ” Thomas wrote, referring to a previous Supreme Court ruling. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”
RELATEDLawmakers and mayors decry ‘reckless’ Supreme Court ruling on guns
New details released at Thursday’s hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by a pro-Donald Trump mob, revealed just how close the Justice Department came to collapsing after the 2020 presidential election and throwing the country into an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
The Post’s Michael Kranish and Rosalind S. Helderman write that much of the dramatic testimony had already been detailed in dry depositions and previously released court documents. But delivered with raw emotion on Thursday, those details landed with new gravity as some of Trump’s former top aides called out his falsehoods about the election, still sounding shocked and disdainful at what they had witnessed. Our colleagues write:
In a series of striking moments, nationally televised to millions, the damning testimony from the nation’s top law enforcement officials was the closest that the investigation has come to events that unfolded a half-century ago in the Watergate scandal.
Instead of White House tapes, there were the handwritten notes and fly-on-the-wall testimony about Oval Office conversations by former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and others. Instead of President Richard M. Nixon’s White House counsel warning that there was a “cancer on the presidency,” there was an account of Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone saying that an effort to overturn the election was like a “murder-suicide pact” that would affect everyone involved.
And, in an echo of how Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” led to the resignations of his attorney general and deputy attorney general, Donoghue, Trump’s acting deputy attorney general, warned Trump that hundreds of Justice Department officials could resign if the president replaced his attorney general with a mid-level official who had vowed to pursue Trump’s claims.
You can read more from our colleagues here.
In a video presented on June 23, Trump White House officials said that at least five House Republicans asked President Donald Trump for pardons. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
After gripping testimony from former Justice Department officials describing President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 election results, House lawmakers on Thursday identified five Republican lawmakers who allegedly sought pardons — suggesting not just their own fear of criminal exposure, but a belief that the outgoing president would preemptively protect them from the investigations that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.
The Post’s Devlin Barrett reports that videotaped testimony presented at the end of Thursday’s hearing named Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.) and Scott Perry (Pa.) as the lawmakers who sought preemptive pardons after or, in at least one case, before the Capitol breach.
More from Devlin:
They were among the most active and outspoken supporters in Congress of Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
The allegations of pardon-hunting came from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and from John McEntee, a close aide to Trump. Such testimony strikes at one of the most fraught issues to emerge out of the Jan. 6 attack — the suspicion rife in many quarters of Congress that some of its members may have participated in criminal conspiracies to thwart the valid results of a presidential election.
You can read Devlin’s full story here.
Of all the fantastical false claims of fraud and vote manipulation in the 2020 presidential election, “Italygate” was one of the most extreme. And Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was at the heart of bringing it to President Donald Trump’s attention.
The Post’s Jacqueline Alemany, Emma Brown and Amy Gardner write that his particular allegation of fraud centered around what one former Justice Department official described Thursday as an “absurd” claim: that an Italian defense contractor had conspired with senior CIA officials to use military satellites to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
As The Washington Post has reported, the theory was pushed by a Virginia horse-country socialite who once gave an extended television interview from a 22-bedroom mansion that she repeatedly described as her own, even though it was not.
But as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol demonstrated Thursday, Italygate also made its way to the highest levels of the U.S. government. The committee showed Dec. 31, 2020, text messages between Perry and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that included a YouTube video about it, with Perry asking: “Why can’t we just work with the Italian government?”
RELATEDHome of Jeffrey Clark, Trump DOJ official, searched by federal agents | 2022-06-24T12:27:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House poised to send gun legislation to Biden in response to mass shootings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/house-guns-bill-biden-jan6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/house-guns-bill-biden-jan6/ |
Severodonetsk was one of the last cities standing in the way of Russia controlling the entire Luhansk region
Annabelle Chapman
Ukrainian Territorial Defense forces take cover in the woods after they fear they spotted a Russian drone flying above them on a road that leads to Lysychansk, Ukraine, on June 21. (Heidi Levine/FTWP)
As the war in Ukraine grinds on for more than 120 days, Russia has been concentrating its fire power on the east of the country for weeks, specifically on the strategic city of Severodonetsk.
Now, Ukrainian troops will be withdrawing from there, says Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai — an effective surrender of the embattled city.
“Unfortunately, we will have to withdraw our troops from Severodonetsk, because it makes no sense to be in broken positions — the number of dead is growing,” he said in a video posted on Telegram on Friday.
“No one is abandoning our boys, nobody will allow them to be surrounded,” he said. “There is no point in simply being there, because with every day the proportional number of dead on unfortified territories could increase.”
Ukrainian troops have “already received an order to withdraw to new positions, to new fortified areas,” he added.
The eastern city, located on the Donets river and normally home to around 100,000 people, has emerged as a focal point of Russia’s war in Ukraine. It is one of the last cities standing in the way of Russia controlling the Luhansk region, and, analysts say, is one of the three cities Russia needs to claim victory in the wider Donbas region after pivoting its focus to eastern Ukraine in April.
The city, which has experienced intense fighting, has been largely under Russian control for weeks.
Russian forces have pounded Severodonetsk with artillery and engaged in street fighting, wreaking damage as part of a scorched-earth assault in the east, inflicting significant casualties on Ukrainian forces.
“The Russians have been shelling Severodonetsk almost every day for four months, the city’s infrastructure is completely destroyed,” Haidai said, adding that almost 90 percent of homes had been damaged or destroyed.
Across the river from Severodonetsk, its sister city Lysychansk is also seeing Russian troops advancing, Haidai said Friday, as the Kremlin’s forces move to encircle the city just west of Severodonetsk. So far, it remains under Ukrainian control, but the landscape there makes it “difficult” to defend, Haidai said.
He added that some humanitarian supplies had been delivered and a handful of evacuations carried out, but chided people for waiting too long to leave.
However, Ukraine’s loss of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk “will not represent a major turning point in the war,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, said in its latest analysis on Thursday.
Why Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine is key to Russia’s war
President Vladimir Putin recognized the separatist areas of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent before he invaded Ukraine in February, while the United States said last month that Moscow was preparing to annex the regions, along with the southern city of Kherson.
Donetsk governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told Agence France-Presse on Thursday there are few “safe” places left in the region, as he urged people to evacuate. He added that Ukraine’s forces were primarily focused on holding the major Donetsk cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
Andrew Jeong and Claire Parker contributed to this report. | 2022-06-24T12:44:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine withdraws from Severodonetsk as Russia advances in Luhansk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/severodonetsk-troop-withdrawal-ukraine-lysychansk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/severodonetsk-troop-withdrawal-ukraine-lysychansk/ |
Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, left, and Eric Adams, mayor of New York, center, march with demonstrators over the Brooklyn Bridge during a March For Our Lives rally in New York, US, on Saturday, June 11, 2022. In the wake of the May massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and other recent mass shootings, students and activists have continued to stage walkouts and rallies to demand change. (Bloomberg)
The Supreme Court’s decision overturning New York State’s restrictions on carrying guns in public is a serious mistake. It will jeopardize public safety, make Americans more vulnerable to the scourge of gun violence, and cause needless death and suffering. Elected officials should take immediate action to protect citizens from the consequences of the court’s recklessness.
By a 6-3 majority, the court struck down a century-old New York state law requiring that people show “proper cause” of a need for personal protection in order to carry a concealed handgun. Siding with the plaintiffs in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas said the law violates the Constitution by preventing law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense. Thomas wrote that while the Constitution allows guns to be banned from certain sensitive places, such as courthouses, schools and government buildings, “expanding the category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation … defines the category of ‘sensitive places’ far too broadly.” In essence, Thomas declared that New York’s current system is tantamount to a ban on concealed carry, and thus unconstitutional.
As a result of the ruling, New York, California and several other states with similar laws will be seriously hampered from preventing citizens from carrying guns in public. Taken to its extreme, this decision has the potential to flood major cities with guns and increase both the frequency and lethality of mass shootings. Riders of the New York City subway, for example, might not only have to face the possibility of one crazy shooter, but find themselves caught in a crossfire of multiple armed individuals. At a minimum, the court’s decision will create added confusion for law-enforcement officials and the public.
Even so, the court didn’t toss out gun-safety regulations altogether. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts cited previous decisions in which the court said the Second Amendment is not “unlimited” and pointed out that states are still able to set rules on who can legally receive gun licenses.
The burden is now on Congress, as well as state and local officials, to put those standards to the test. The concealed-carry ruling comes just as a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has produced historic legislation — the first in nearly three decades — designed to address escalating mass shootings. The bill falls short of the reforms necessary to comprehensively make Americans safe, but nevertheless represents a badly-needed step in the direction of gun sanity — principally by strengthening authorities’ ability to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous individuals. In the wake of the court’s decision, it’s all the more urgent that Congress pass the bill without delay.
With a single ill-considered decision, the Supreme Court has heartened the gun industry and made public spaces less safe. The work of undoing the damage should begin now.
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How to Start Solving America’s Gun-Culture Problem: Sarah Green Carmichael and Francis Wilkinson | 2022-06-24T13:58:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Reckless Ruling, a New Gun-Safety Challenge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-recklessruling-a-new-gun-safety-challenge/2022/06/24/5f88fa72-f3be-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-recklessruling-a-new-gun-safety-challenge/2022/06/24/5f88fa72-f3be-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Nice boat. Be a shame if something happened to it. (Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The long-simmering harbor dispute between New York and New Jersey has observers reaching for illustrations from “The Sopranos” and “On the Waterfront.” But now that the US Supreme Court has agreed to adjudicate the spat, I wonder whether a more useful resource might be “The Paper Chase.”
The disagreement stems from New Jersey’s determination to exit the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, an entity established by the two states back in 1953 in response to news reports of widespread corruption and violence among those who loaded and unloaded ships. New Jersey argues that as a sovereign state, it can’t be forced to remain in the pact forever. New York replies that the deal has the force of law and neither state can quit without the permission of the other. (And Congress!)
The Supreme Court is now involved because that’s the venue the Constitution prescribes when one state sues another. Four days before New Jersey’s announced departure date of March 28, the justices issued an injunction preventing the move. This week they agreed to adjudicate the dispute and set an accelerated schedule for briefs and oral argument.
The case is rich with competing constitutional arguments, but I wonder whether the more straightforward solution is to stop thinking about New Jersey and New York as sovereign states and view them instead as parties to a contract. After all, contract law has long been applied to interpret compacts between states, and both states reference contract law in their Supreme Court filings.
If we consider only contract law, New Jersey would seem to have a strong argument. For one thing, courts dislike deals of indefinite duration. More important, cases over the past century have converged around the notion that even a deal that’s supposed to go on forever can be broken if circumstances have sufficiently changed.
For example, a parcel of land is sold with a covenant that it can only be used to build a residence. Fifty years later, the neighborhood is all businesses. Although the covenant by its terms cannot expire, the court will likely “reform” the deed to allow the owner to construct commercial space.
How does that principle apply here? Let’s go back to the years after World War II. It’s difficult to describe in a short column how grim life had become along the New York and New Jersey waterfront. The port of New York handled one-third of US foreign trade, and organized crime held sufficient sway that ships couldn’t depart until their owners paid off the mobsters who ran the docks. “Men have been murdered,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor in 1948. “Gangsters control the lives and destines of thousands of water-front workers.”
Every day, longshoremen would crowd the docks, hoping for a few hours’ pay. The hiring bosses would pick and choose, often in exchange for a kickback. Part of the kickback went to the Mob. Those who refused to pay couldn’t get work.
Although the hiring bosses at times were themselves victims of Mob violence, those who went along with the scheme wielded enormous and arbitrary power. A 1945 article in The Nation alleged that the bosses pressured longshoremen to make their wives and daughters sexually available in exchange for work.
By most accounts, the International Longshoremen’s Association also profited from the setup, and did all it could to halt investigations. In 1948, the New York Times reported that the union was threatening to pull the entire crew off the job “whenever one of their members was taken from a pier for questioning.” And the shipping companies were hardly untainted. “Organized crime in the unions could not flourish,” wrote the New York Herald Tribune, “without the connivance — or supineness — of employers.”
Meanwhile, public outrage grew. The Waterfront Commission was established amidst high hopes that it would be able to break the power of both organized crime and the corrupt union along the docks. Here’s New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, speaking in August 1953: “We must substitute law and order for the jungle rule of fear and violence that grips the waterfront.”
Seven decades later, the Mob casts a far smaller shadow than it once did. For years, technology (especially the invention of container shipping) has been killing longshoring jobs across the country. At the Port of New York, the union workforce has declined by nearly 90%. Productivity is up. Pilferage is down. So is the power of the hiring bosses, whose role was crucial to the worst of the dockside corruption that led to creation of the Waterfront Commission. At the same time, the New Jersey waterfront has become a prime development territory, dotted with hotels and apartments and shopping malls.
Are these changes sufficient to release New Jersey from the agreement? New York insists that organized crime still plays a role along the docks. New Jersey responds that the commission is no longer the right solution; that it’s made hiring dockworkers expensive by creating unnecessary bureaucratic layers; and that, per a harsh 2009 report, it’s not exactly a paragon of probity itself.
I won’t venture to guess how the case will come out. But I hope the justices will clarify whether changed circumstances ever allow a state to escape a compact with another state. There are hundreds of interstate deals out there, and not a few of them are ripe for challenge.
• The Supreme Court Just Made New York’s Streets Meaner: Noah Feldman
• Five Notes on the Republican Party’s Future: Jonathan Bernstein
• Hunger Is Getting Worse Since the Pandemic: Amanda Little | 2022-06-24T13:58:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court’s New York Harbor Case Isn’t a ‘Sopranos’ Episode - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/supreme-courts-new-york-harbor-case-isnt-a-sopranos-episode/2022/06/24/5f34468a-f3be-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/supreme-courts-new-york-harbor-case-isnt-a-sopranos-episode/2022/06/24/5f34468a-f3be-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Jeff Clark won’t talk to the Jan. 6 committee. But he’ll talk to Tucker.
Jeffrey Clark appears on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” (Fox News) (Fox News)
When the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot held its first prime-time hearing two weeks ago, Fox News pointedly chose not to air it. But not only did it not air the committee hearing, it hosted Tucker Carlson’s opinion show at the same time, during which Carlson promoted misinformation about what had occurred on Jan. 6, 2021. Among his guests that evening, for example, was Darren Beattie, a former Trump administration official who promoted long-debunked or otherwise unsupported allegations about the involvement of federal agents in the riot.
It wasn’t just that Fox News was not presenting the committee’s work to its audience. It was actively misleading its audience.
On Thursday, the committee hosted its fifth hearing since it began presenting its evidence. Fox News carried the beginning of it. (That’s because the hearing began at 3 p.m. and not in prime time. At 5 p.m., Fox News cut away to its regular programming.) But rest assured: Carlson again stepped up to undercut what the network’s audience might have learned.
He began by contrasting protests outside the White House in the late spring of 2020 with the Capitol riot, suggesting that the protests outside the White House represented an “actual insurrection” — despite their posing little threat to the White House and having no intent or path for ousting President Donald Trump from office. That this argument doesn’t hold much water isn’t the point; the point is that Carlson wants to use this sort of false equivalence to downplay what happened at the Capitol.
He then turned to his guest, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. Clark was the focal point of much of the House committee’s hearing a few hours before, thanks to his efforts to help Trump retain power despite his election loss. The committee showed evidence of a behind-the-scenes effort to have Clark appointed as acting attorney general, allowing him to press forward with allegations of wrongdoing in the presidential election in Georgia. That there was no evidence of such wrongdoing was beside the point; Clark wanted to send a letter alleging wrongdoing and get the state legislature to consider sending a slate of pro-Trump electors to Washington. Three days before the Capitol riot, the plot almost came to fruition. Only a dramatic Oval Office fight involving Trump, Clark and Clark’s superiors averted the plan.
Clark appeared during the committee hearing, on video. The committee showed footage of an interview in which Clark participated with investigators, during which he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. The committee had also shown clips from an interview with Trump’s former attorney Eric Herschmann, in which Herschmann recalled telling Clark that, by saying he would challenge the results in Georgia, he’d “just admitted your first step or act you’d take as attorney general would be committing a felony.”
On Wednesday morning, federal law enforcement officials searched Clark’s home, confiscating a number of electronic devices. On Thursday evening, Tucker Carlson asked him to opine on the raid.
“What’s happening in Congress right now is not about ‘insurrection,’ ” Carlson said as he introduced Clark. “It’s about using the mechanics of the federal government, which you pay for, especially the intel and law enforcement agencies, to crush and silence anyone who opposes the Democratic Party and Joe Biden.” After all, he said, Clark had not committed a crime. “What he did wrong was calling for an investigation into voter fraud,” Carlson said.
Even if all Clark had done was “call for an investigation,” that’s hardly innocuous. The election had been probed and prodded myriad ways, by Clark’s own department. To call for an investigation in late December 2020 was to take a political position in support of Trump. But that’s not what Clark is understood to have done, as the committee made quite clear. He was allegedly a conduit for using the force of the Justice Department to try to effect Trump’s broader plan to replace Joe Biden electors with Donald Trump ones. He was a vehicle for subverting the election.
Clark proceeded to describe the search of his home in dire terms, saying he was not even allowed to change out of his pajamas. But, he said, he didn’t blame the agents. “What you’re talking about in terms of weaponization,” he said to Carlson, “is really about who’s pointing the agents and telling them what to do.”
He added that the search of his home was part of a “nationwide effort” that involved the presentation of subpoenas or seizure of electronic devices from several others. “That obviously requires a high level of coordination,” said a man who used to work as a senior official for the Justice Department of the United States, a well-established organization with a presence in every state.
“I just think we’re living in an era that I don’t recognize,” Clark added later. “And increasingly, Tucker, I don’t recognize the country anymore with these kinds of Stasi-like things happening.” The Stasi were the secret police in East Germany. Unlike federal law enforcement in the United States, which seeks subpoenas from judges and acts through a system with at least some accountability processes, the Stasi worked in the shadows to exercise its power — something that seems a lot more like conspiring with the president to undercut election results in Georgia than obtaining a search warrant.
Carlson didn’t ask about the allegations raised by the House committee, perhaps realizing that Clark would be unlikely to answer. But that’s by far the most charitable assumption. It’s more likely that Carlson and his audience simply didn’t care, and didn’t see Clark’s actions as anything that demanded explanation. It’s like when Fox’s Sean Hannity interviewed former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort earlier this year: Clark was there to get an attaboy from his team.
For Fox News’s most popular host, Clark was also useful as a way to push forward his narrative that the government is out to get the political right. It’s a narrative Carlson has been promoting for the entirety of Biden’s administration and is why he likes to amplify nonsense like Darren Beattie’s: he wants his viewers to fear and loathe the government.
So Carlson didn’t agree the tactics were Stasi-like, since that impugned the police. They were, instead, “Stalinist,” as he put it. In other words, blame the leaders, not law enforcement.
“At some point, somebody’s going to fight back, and it’s going to get super ugly,” Carlson said. “I pray that doesn’t happen, but I think it probably will.”
His interview with Clark ended. He teased his next segment: coronavirus vaccines might be more dangerous for men than had been suggested.
Supreme Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, ending right to abortion
2:18 PMSupreme Court reaches decision in highly anticipated abortion case | 2022-06-24T14:46:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jeff Clark won’t talk to the Jan. 6 committee. But he’ll talk to Tucker. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/jeff-clark-wont-talk-jan-6-committee-hell-talk-tucker/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/jeff-clark-wont-talk-jan-6-committee-hell-talk-tucker/ |
U.S. personnel boss faces lingering post-pandemic challenges
After just one year in office, Kiran Ahuja is already the longest serving Senate-confirmed director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management since 2015. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Uncle Sam likes to think of himself as the best boss.
The Office of Personnel Management seeks to confirm that status by “positioning the federal government to lead by example at a time when the future of work is being redefined. As the largest employer in the United States, the federal government has the opportunity to serve as a model employer for other sectors to follow.”
It’s a big task outlined in an OPM fact sheet marking Kiran Ahuja’s first year as the government’s top personnel officer. It’s not an easy job. Ahuja is the longest serving Senate-confirmed OPM director since 2015 — with only one year in office — a fact that complicates her work.
“That’s not really something to celebrate,” she told a news briefing Thursday. “But I think it speaks to kind of the challenges the agency has had over the past number of years and the importance of having good, solid leadership in these positions in these institutions.”
For OPM’s initial challenge, Ahuja looks within. Rejuvenating her agency after President Donald Trump tried to dismantle it is a major task. His unsuccessful proposal would have transferred major OPM duties to the General Services Administration and the White House, an effort critics said would have politicized the federal workforce.
Even with good leadership, significant workforce issues continue to confront the federal government and its more than 2 million employees.
But first, some good news, from the fact sheet’s “major accomplishments” of Ahuja’s brief tenure, including:
Pushing President Biden’s “Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce.” It helps, OPM said, to “strengthen agencies’ ability to recruit, hire, develop, promote, and retain our Nation’s talent and remove barriers to equal opportunity.”
Implementing a federal-government-wide $15 minimum wage, which “increased pay for over 67,000 federal employees in every state in the country.” The action “has provided a myriad of benefits to the federal government, ranging from improved recruitment to greater retention and increased productivity.”
Issuing multiple hiring strategies “aimed at rebuilding the federal workforce,” such as increased paid internships and efforts to recruit postsecondary students and college graduates into jobs paying up to $72,000.
Updating telework by developing “toolkits and resources that provided agencies the support needed to safely transition the federal workforce to a hybrid work environment.”
Resetting labor relations and encouraging union organizing. “OPM is proud to work on behalf of the Biden-Harris Administration on this government-wide effort to remove barriers and obstacles in federal workplaces which impede unions’ ability to strengthen union density and inform civil servants about their collective bargaining rights.”
Yet, despite wide-ranging Biden administration efforts in support of the federal workforce, in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s posture, employee engagement scores are going in the wrong direction.
OPM’s 2021 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey shows the overall engagement score, an approximate measure of morale, rose under Trump, including in his last year, then dropped one point under Biden. Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal government, attributed the increase under Trump to the government’s speedy move to telework during the coronavirus pandemic. The decline in the engagement score under Biden, Stier said, reflects a return to federal facilities that “has been bumpy” and has “taken a toll on the morale of the workforce.”
Also bumpy has been Biden’s effort to reset labor relations — a general accomplishment that has doubters in some agencies. While praising Biden and Ahuja, federal labor leaders are critical of some agency implementation of the administration’s workplace policies.
An email from the American Federation of Government Employees said, for example, that “Social Security’s complete intransigence on implementing the Biden [policy] on collective bargaining continues and the agency faces no consequences for retaining much of what it took away from its workforce during the Trump administration.”
Responding, a statement from the Social Security Administration said the agency “has complied with all of the administration’s labor policies and is fully committed to positive relations with our labor partners. … We are currently engaged in settlement discussions with AFGE to renegotiate contract provisions and resolve other matters of interest.”
Ahuja praised soon-to-be-implemented pay raises that were approved for wildland firefighters in November, after a long wait that drew the ire of the National Federation of Federal Employees. She called the raises an “incredible milestone … long overdue, admittedly, but we have a new occupational series in place that will set a very clear path for these individuals to have a … sustainable and prosperous career in the federal government.”
Matt Biggs, the president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, wants the administration to make labor-management partnerships mandatory, instead of simply encouraged. Unlike under the Obama administration, the partnerships, which facilitate workplace communications, “have not been officially required,” Biggs said, and there is no government-wide forum where labor and management issues are discussed.
OPM did not directly respond to questions about the partnerships but said in a statement after the briefing that it is “committed to helping the Biden-Harris Administration write a new chapter of engagement with federal labor unions.”
“There are around 2,000 bargaining units representing over 1.2 million federal employees so work remains in resetting labor-management relations across the Executive Branch,” the statement said. “OPM will continue to work with unions and agencies in addressing challenges related to implementation of the Administration’s policies on labor-management relations.” | 2022-06-24T14:46:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kiran Ahuja's first year as OPM chief marked by post-pandemic challenges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/kiran-ahuja-opm-post-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/kiran-ahuja-opm-post-pandemic/ |
2022 Travel photo contest: official rules
Janell Harris's photo of a Cessna against the night sky Namibia's Namib Desert was the third-place winner in Travel's 2021 photo contest. (Janell Harris)
The contest is open only to legal residents of the United States, although anyone can submit photos for potential publication by The Washington Post. Entrants must be 18 years of age or older to enter. This Contest is sponsored by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post. Employees, officers, directors and representatives of Sponsor and its corporate affiliates, and those with whom such persons are domiciled, are not eligible. Void outside the United States and where prohibited by law. Contest subject to all federal, state and local laws.
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WINNERS LIST: For the names of the prize winners, available after Sept. 6, 2022, or a copy of these Official Rules, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Travel, 1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Please specify “Official Rules” or “Winners List.” Requests must be received by Dec. 31, 2022. | 2022-06-24T14:50:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 2022 Washington Post Travel Photo Contest rules - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/24/washington-post-photo-contest-rules/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/24/washington-post-photo-contest-rules/ |
Tex. school district bans dresses, skirts to promote ‘workforce skills’
The Forney Independent School District in North Texas announced that its dress code is banning dresses, skirts and hoodies in an effort to promote professionalism among its students. (Screenshot via YouTube/WFAA)
When a North Texas school district returns from summer break in August, many of its students might find themselves looking for new wardrobes knowing that they will be unable to wear dresses, skirts or hoodies as part of the district’s effort to promote professionalism.
The Forney Independent School District announced this week that it was implementing the new dress code to help improve the children’s “future workforce skills” for the 2022-23 academic year. All hoodies, as well as hooded jackets and coats, will be prohibited for all the roughly 15,000 students inside any of FISD’s 18 schools. Dresses, skirts and skorts are now allowed only for kids in prekindergarten through the fourth grade in an effort the district says will “help prepare students for a safe and successful future.”
“The use of a school dress code is established to improve student self-esteem, bridge socio-economic differences among students, and promote positive behavior, thereby enhancing school safety and improving the learning environment,” the district wrote in its announcement to parents.
Those who don’t follow the new dress code against dresses, skirts and hoodies face an in-school suspension for the rest of the day “until the problem is corrected, or until a parent or designee brings an acceptable change of clothing to the school,” according to the district.
But the dress code has brought backlash from students, parents and critics accusing the district of enforcing “unfair policies” targeting students, especially girls. Forney High School student Brooklynn Hollaman started a petition against the dress code that has garnered nearly 3,800 signatures as of Friday morning.
“Any sensible person can realize that this is completely wrong,” wrote Hollaman, a rising sophomore.
Forney ISD spokeswoman Kristin Zastoupil told The Washington Post that no one from the district was available for an interview on Friday. She said the videos released by the district, located about 25 miles east of Dallas, are part of Forney ISD’s initiative on “resetting our bar to go back for the future of our kids.”
“In our annual review of the existing dress code, the few changes approved by the board were made to simplify the dress code for all 15,000 students,” she said in an email.
Historians have noted how school dress codes have been a way to assert power and control over students. Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, an assistant professor of American history and women’s and gender history at Case Western Reserve University, wrote in The Post last year about the long history schools had of imposing codes of appearance and behavior, from uniforms to rules of conduct.
“As social institutions that are meant to prepare future citizens to function in society, schools are hardly democratic spaces. Instead, schools use their authority to enforce social values through curriculum choices, enrollment decisions and also dress codes,” Rabinovitch-Fox wrote. “Dress codes have usually targeted women and minorities, continuing a long tradition of policing these groups’ appearance and presence in public.”
In Texas, at least one school district made masks part of its dress code last year to exploit a loophole in Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide ban on mandates regarding face coverings during the coronavirus pandemic. The Paris Independent School District of about 4,000 students announced that masks were in the dress code after its board of trustees said it was “concerned about the health and safety of its students and employees.”
Forney ISD introduced its “Back for the Future” initiative earlier this month in a YouTube video. On Monday, the district released its updated dress code. The seven-page document outlines how “repeated offenses may result in more serious disciplinary action in accordance with the Student Code of Conduct.”
In a separate YouTube video accompanying the notice to parents on Wednesday, FISD Superintendent Justin Terry said the updated dress code was one way the district wanted to “work together to take our schools, our classrooms, back for the future of our kids to have a safe, enjoyable and exciting learning environment.”
“There are so many important future workforce skills that we want to impart on our kids as they head off to have a successful future,” Terry said.
The video this week features a voice-over from a young student offering her support of the dress code and the district’s push for professionalism.
When Hollaman heard about the new dress code, she started the petition with the support of her parents. She told WFAA that other friends and classmates are upset with the district’s decision outlawing dresses, skirts and hoodies.
“I think people should be able to wear them as long as they’re appropriate,” she said.
Her father, Derick Hollaman, told the TV station that he contacted the district this week to ask about the dress code — and was surprised to hear the reasoning behind the moves.
Others who have signed the Change.org petition argue that the ban of dresses and skirts signals that “all female students are being denied the freedom to dress as young ladies.” One poster who identified as a Forney ISD student wrote that their classmates felt “greatly violated” by the dress code.
“My fellow students and classmates are enraged due to this abrupt change,” Harley Anderson wrote. “They claim it’s for ‘raising students’ self-esteem,’ but they failed to consider that this is taking it away. By not allowing us to feel comfortable in our own learning environment, we automatically get drained of these kind of things.”
Anderson added, “This district has desperately failed to think about the student [body’s] well being while they claim they are trying their ‘absolute best.’ ”
Brooklynn Hollaman is planning to present the petition to the school board on Monday, in hope that the district will again allow dresses, skirts and hoodies for all students, according to WFAA. The teen told local media that she was saddened about how the ban on skirts affected not just her and the high-schoolers but also her little sister and anyone from the fifth grade on. | 2022-06-24T15:07:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas school district's dress code bans dresses, skirts, hoodies to promote professionalism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/24/texas-school-dress-code-dresses-skirts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/24/texas-school-dress-code-dresses-skirts/ |
A flag reading “Don't Tread on My Uterus” is displayed outside the U.S. Supreme Court on June 4. (Daniel Slim/AFP/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court’s decision Friday to reverse Roe v. Wade and scrap the constitutional right to an abortion has placed the United States among a select few countries that have severely curtailed access to the procedure in the 21st century.
In 1973, the landmark ruling found that the constitution protected the decision to terminate a pregnancy as a fundamental matter of privacy. It set nearly five decades of legal precedent in the United States — but was never codified into federal law.
Court strikes down Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion
Since then, “monumental gains” have been made to secure abortion rights worldwide, with more than 50 countries liberalizing their laws over the last several decades, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global advocacy group opposed to abortion restrictions.
The process through which abortion is legalized affects how it is regulated — and how it can be challenged. For years, abortion rights advocates in the United States pushed for a separate law to fortify Roe, fearing that, despite the precedent, another court ruling could override the original judgment.
Here are some of the countries where abortion has been legalized since Roe — and how those policies have fared against the challenges that followed.
Is U.S. a liberal outlier on abortion as leaked draft opinion says?
In Colombia in February, the Constitutional Court voted to legalize abortion before 24 weeks of pregnancy — the point at which doctors generally agree that the fetus begins to be viable.
The court’s justices asked Colombia’s legislature to draw up regulations to apply the decision. But rights advocates say more action is needed to formally remove the crime of abortion from the Colombian penal code.
The court found the law in Mexico’s Coahuila state unconstitutional, paving the way for abortion rights advocates to challenge more restrictive laws in other Mexican states.
Mexico decriminalizes abortion, a dramatic step in world’s second-biggest Catholic country
Last month, the Mexican state of Guerrero became the ninth of the country’s 32 federal entities to begin allowing abortions. While Mexico’s Supreme Court set a federal precedent, it remains unclear if the country’s congress will enact a law affirming the right to obtain an abortion without criminal punishment.
That’s because, in 1988, Canada’s Supreme Court issued its own landmark ruling striking down a long-standing federal law banning abortions. The court ruled that the law’s procedural requirements — including the approval of a committee of doctors — violated a woman’s right to “life, liberty and security of the person” under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But the 1988 ruling, unlike Roe v. Wade, did not consider whether the right to choose an abortion was protected by Canada’s constitution. As a result, access to the procedure is not actually enshrined in Canadian law.
According to legal experts, Canadian authorities would need to amend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to include the explicit right to an abortion, with one constitutional law professor last month calling it an “unlikely scenario.”
Abortion pills are booming worldwide. Will their use grow in Texas?
The laws permitting abortion — from South Africa to Russia to Ireland to Vietnam — vary widely in what they allow and at what stages of pregnancy.
Across Europe, abortion is generally legal on request or on broad social grounds, at least in the first trimester, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. It is also widely permitted throughout pregnancy when necessary to protect a pregnant person’s health or life.
The original amendment was passed in 1983 in part over concerns that the country’s restrictive abortion laws would be declared unconstitutional. In its place is a new clause granting parliament the authority to legislate pregnancy terminations.
In 1993, the Federal Court of Justice struck down a parliamentary measure to fully liberalize the country’s abortion law, citing paragraph 218. But the court held that women could not be punished for terminating a pregnancy within the first 12 weeks, provided that they receive state-mandated counseling.
But in March, the federal cabinet approved a draft law to repeal Section 219a of the penal code, a Nazi-era measure that prohibits doctors from “advertising” abortion services, or providing even basic information about the procedures, with a maximum sentence of two years in prison.
The bill, which would allow abortion providers “to inform the general public that they perform abortions and provide details of the method they use,” is now being considered in parliament. | 2022-06-24T15:20:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Court overturns Roe: In many countries, abortion is protected by law, not courts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/global-abortion-laws-roe-wade-courts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/global-abortion-laws-roe-wade-courts/ |
Peter Jamison
A woman reacts to the opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization near the Supreme Court on Friday. (Eric Lee/For The Washington Post)
An emotional crowd gathered outside the Supreme Court on Friday morning to alternately celebrate and revile the historic overturning of Roe v. Wade, with tensions mounting between demonstrators as they absorbed the news that the court had struck down the 50-year-old decision guaranteeing the constitutional right to an abortion.
About 100 protesters were present when the decision was announced shortly after 10 a.m. Many said they did not expect the decision until next week and were caught off guard by the ruling announced in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the most anticipated and consequential opinion of the court’s term. Few police were present as the crowd swelled to a few hundred and began to group itself into dueling factions.
Supporters of abortion rights voiced despair and outrage — one held a defiant sign: “I will aid and abet abortion” — while antiabortion activists were overwhelmed with emotion at a legal victory that had been decades in the making.
“I can’t believe it’s real,” said Lauren Marlowe, 22, an antiabortion demonstrator who shrieked and embraced her friends when the decision came down. “I just want to hug everyone. … We’re in a post-Roe America now.”
Clutching a plastic doll she said represented a 15-week fetus, Marlowe said she had supported abortion rights until she attended Liberty University and “saw videos of abortion procedures.”
Antiabortion activists were as furious and distraught as Marlowe and her fellow demonstrators were elated.
Paige Thomas and her friend Kaitlyn, both 17, are in the District for a summer program and were supposed to be touring the Capitol this morning, they said.
“Then the decision came out, so now we’re protesting,” Thomas said in a shaky voice, amid a group that had booed the decision. “I’m thankful to be surrounded by people who are still fighting for women’s rights, but it definitely feels like a step backwards.”
Dustin Sternbeck, a D.C. police spokesman, said the force has gone on what is called “full department activation” because of demonstrations at the Supreme Court.
As of 10:30 a.m., D.C. police said there were no immediate signs of disturbances. It was not immediately known whether D.C. police had been asked to assist Capitol police at or near the court. | 2022-06-24T15:25:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court protests erupt after Roe v. Wade ruling in Dobbs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/supreme-court-abortion-protests-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/supreme-court-abortion-protests-roe/ |
Analysis by Fiona Rutherford and Robert Langreth | Bloomberg
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The developers of the Juul e-cigarette say they created the device to help adult smokers quit. But their product achieved enormous success, becoming the top-selling e-cigarette in the US in two years, in part by attracting a huge following among teenagers, who aren’t legally allowed to purchase such products. Now, the nation’s Food and Drug Administration has banned Juul Labs Inc.’s products from the market, noting their “disproportionate role in the rise in youth vaping.”
1. What’s a Juul?
It’s a vaping device containing a battery that heats nicotine liquid. The user inhales nicotine, an addictive alkaloid present in tobacco, and exhales aerosol. There’s no burning tobacco and thus no smoke or tar. The Juul has a sleek design. It’s made of brushed aluminum and resembles a USB flash drive. Because it’s small, the underage vaper can palm it, discreetly take a hit when a teacher or parent isn’t looking, and breathe the aerosol into a sleeve or collar. Originally, Juul refills came in tasty flavors such as mango and creme.
More than 13% of middle- and high-school students said they vaped within the previous month, according to a national survey published in October. More than 80% of those students said they used flavored e-cigarettes. Fruit flavors were the most popular, followed by candy ones. In 2020, the FDA essentially barred flavors except tobacco and menthol in e-cigarettes such as the Juul that use a replaceable cartridge (or pod) filled with nicotine liquid. But disposable e-cigarettes and liquids for refillable open-tank systems weren’t covered. (Michael R. Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, has funded efforts to ban flavored vaping products.)
While some evidence suggests that vaping is a safer choice than lighting up, there isn’t enough long-term data to make a definitive conclusion. In late 2019 and early 2020, there were nearly 3,000 cases of lung injuries resulting in 68 deaths reported in the US that were associated with vaping. Vitamin E acetate, an additive in some vaping products containing THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, is strongly suspected to be the culprit. The effects on humans of nicotine aren’t well-studied, although adolescents appear to be particularly vulnerable to it, with some evidence suggesting it can harm brain development. A report by the US National Academies of Sciences said there was substantial evidence that young vapers are more likely than nonvapers to try regular cigarettes.
4. How are e-cigarettes regulated in the US?
The FDA began regulating e-cigarettes as tobacco products in 2016, requiring companies to submit applications to continue selling existing or new products. One of the biggest challenges for the agency has been keeping the products out of the hands of kids. The FDA has sent thousands of warning letters to retailers who have illegally sold e-cigarettes to minors. It also conducts regular inspections of manufacturing facilities. Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, has said that the burden is on companies applying for authorization to sell vaping products “to demonstrate that the benefit to adults is going to outweigh the harm to kids.” According to the FDA, Juul’s application lacked sufficient evidence to show that allowing its products to be sold in the US would be appropriate for the protection of public health. It said some of the company’s study findings “raised concerns due to insufficient and conflicting data.”
In 28 countries, the sale of all types of e-cigarettes is banned. They include Brazil, India, Mexico, Qatar, Thailand and Uganda. In addition, Jamaica, Japan and Switzerland prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes that contain nicotine. European and UK health authorities have embraced vaping products as a way to get people to quit smoking and have imposed tougher regulations on them than the US has, restricting marketing to children, for example, and imposing lower limits on nicotine content. The European Union and UK permit a maximum of 20 milligrams of nicotine per milliliter of e-cigarette fluid, whereas Juul pod solds in the US contain either 35 or 59 milligrams per milliliter. In both the EU and UK, teen vaping rates are lower than in the US.
6. What’s the future for Juul Labs?
Joe Murillo, chief regulatory officer for Juul Labs, said the company disagreed with the FDA’s decision and would seek a stay as it considers what to do next, including an appeal. Meanwhile, the company is facing a plethora of lawsuits. In April it reached a $22.5 million settlement with Washington state over claims it unlawfully targeted underage consumers with deceptive advertisements. Last year, the company struck a $40 million settlement with North Carolina over a suit claiming it aimed its products at the young. The company agreed to stop all marketing directed at young people as part of that deal. There are also more than 2,500 personal injury cases in which Juul Labs is accused of deliberately targeting minors in marketing its products. | 2022-06-24T15:29:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Understanding the Juul Ban and Concerns About Teen Vaping - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-the-juul-ban-and-concerns-about-teen-vaping/2022/06/24/cf3e11b8-f3c8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-the-juul-ban-and-concerns-about-teen-vaping/2022/06/24/cf3e11b8-f3c8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
When abortions were illegal—and how women got them anyway
By Elisabeth Stevens
Headlines for The Washington Post's January 1966 series on abortion. (The Washington Post)
In January 1966, The Washington Post ran a four-part series on how women in the Washington area obtained abortions. At the time, abortion was illegal with few exceptions in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Now, nearly a half-century after Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has struck down the constitutional right to abortion. In about half of states, abortion will soon become illegal or drastically restricted. It will remain legal in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, barring any future legislative action.
Below is an abridged version of The Post’s four-part series, edited to highlight personal experiences. The original headlines of the series are now subheads for each section.
Abortions: Agony, Risk of Death
In the early twilight of mid-December, a car stopped briefly at 14th and K streets NW. A young woman clambered in. At two other downtown intersections, two more women joined the group.
As the car sped out of the city, the driver ordered the three women to cover their eyes with scarves. Less than an hour later, they reached their destination — a house in the isolated Virginia countryside.
That night, three more of what is estimated to be one million abortions of that year were performed.
Police have no idea how many abortions are done annually in the Washington area, since most are unreported.
Humiliation, agony, and the risk of sterility or death do not deter American women from ending an average of one out of every five pregnancies by abortion.
Dr. John Skilling, chief obstetrical resident at Washington Hospital Center, says that a Washington woman with $600 [$4,700 in 2019] can often get a safe, competently performed abortion in a local hospital.
“You need $50 each for two psychiatrists,” he explains. “They write up consultation sheets saying you have threatened to commit suicide because you are pregnant, and then you find a gynecologist who will do a TA (therapeutic abortion) for depression.”
The total $600 cost that includes surgical fees and hospitalization is higher than the price of a criminal abortion ($250-$500), but the near-certainty of a safe operation is worth it, Dr. Skilling says.
“Therapeutic abortion may occasionally be necessary in cases of heart disease, diabetes and psychosis,” Dr. Skilling says, “but when I go into practice I’ll only do TAs for women who have been in psychiatric consultation for a long time—not for a woman who has only seen a psychiatrist once."
A means that some otherwise legitimate doctors use is to take blood from a woman‘s arm and squirt it into her vagina. When the blood seeps out, the physician admits the woman to a hospital for care, ostensibly on the basis that she is miscarrying. Then he does a D and C [dilation and curettage] for her “incomplete abortion.”
Assembly Line Abortion Rings Called Big Business in Area
“Everyone knows, but you never see a word written about it,” said the Bethesda woman.
Floating abortion rings are big-time business right now in well-heeled Washington suburbs, she adds.
A doctor, nurse and perhaps a dozen employees may rent a luxuriously furnished suburban home for several months, she says. They operate, assembly line fashion, on women referred by a sympathetic local physician — and then move to another state before police get wise.
“Those rings take every medical precaution,” the Bethesda matron claims, “because if the woman isn‘t all right afterwards they’re in trouble.”
Alito was ‘proud’ of fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade as early as 1985
One of the best known area physician-abortionists was Dr. G. Lottrell Timanus of Baltimore who says he performed 5,210 operations during more than 20 years of practice with only two deaths.
Closer to home was last year’s conviction of Marcella Brown as an abortionist.
“Some of those girls looked like they‘d go crazy if they didn’t get an abortion,” recalls Edna Q. Crump, 62, Marcella Brown’s mother, who was convicted as an abortionist’s accomplice.
Mrs. Crump and Marcella, 44, were arrested on the complaint of a 25-year-old Takoma Park woman who became ill after the operation.
Edna Crump served six weeks of probation in lieu of a three-month jail sentence, and her daughter is in District Jail serving an eight-month to two-year term.
Seated in her comfortably furnished living room on Shepherd St. NW, Mrs. Crump described the workings of her daughter’s abortion business — a sideline to the legitimate family enterprise — the Marcella Brown Hand Laundry at 3549 Georgia Ave. NW, which is still in business.
“The girls came to see Marcella,” Mrs. Crump recalled, “she didn’t go to them. Some people called long distance, and some connected with the law had abortions themselves.”
“Marcella had all the sanitary medical instruments and everything like that,” Mrs. Crump said, recalling that her daughter studied medicine at Howard University but never completed the course.
“Marcella operated in another place — not here in the house,” her mother continued, “and she didn’t put them to sleep — because we like to know what‘s happening to you.”
The girls were brought to the Shepherd Street home after the operations, and Mrs. Crump cared for them for 24 hours or until they were ready to leave.
One of the Washington area’s most notorious abortion mills was operated by Dr. George Thomas Strother in the early 1950s.
Dr. Strother, his third wife, and five accomplices were arrested in 1954 in the lonely farm house near Paris, Va., about 50 miles from Washington, where they had just operated on several women. Drugs and surgical instruments were confiscated from an air-conditioned operating room, and $2400 was found between the mattresses in a luxurious bedroom.
The Strother mill netted about $600,000 a year, police estimated. Girls who stood on pre-arranged Washington street corners were picked up by Strother’s three-man taxi service, it was discovered. Patients were obtained through “contact men” in government agencies.
Convicted in 1955, Strother was paroled after serving one year of a 15-year sentence. Police say he now is retired and lives in Southern Virginia.
Lack of Regret Over Abortions Is Widespread
“I’ve always wondered why more women don’t think of doing what I did,” says a happily married Washington mother of five who thinks she tricked a young doctor into performing her abortion at Georgetown Hospital.
“My husband had been sick for several months,” says this upper middle class woman, “and one of my little girls had rheumatic fever. When our family doctor told me I was pregnant, I decided I just couldn’t have the baby.”
“The doctor examined me very roughly internally,” she says. “He knew how I felt, and I think he was hoping something would happen. But once you’re implanted, you’re implanted, and it didn’t do any good.”
“I felt he would have given me the name of an abortionist if I had asked,” she recalls, “but of course he had to be very careful.”
“I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to risk my life,” she says, “and I began to think about making a quick trip to one of the Scandinavian countries.”
“Then,” she says, “just on a chance I talked to a young doctor at the clinic where I take the children. I told him I had been spotting (bleeding between menstrual periods) and right away he told me I ought to have a dilation and curettage.”
“Two days later I was in Georgetown Hospital,” she recalls, “and the last thing I remember as I was going under the anesthetic was wondering whether I’d wake up with a policeman beside my bed.”
“Instead the doctor came to me afterwards and apologized,” she says. “He told me that he had discovered after the operation that I was pregnant, but that the fetus was dead.”
“I don’t think it was dead,” she says. “He just told me that so as not to upset me — and I don’t think he ever knew I’d tricked him.”
“I’ve never had any regrets,” she concludes, “just a great feeling of relief. It’s all we can do to support the children we have — right now I’m wondering if we can afford braces for our youngest girl.”
Few of the estimated million American women each year who get abortions get theirs the way this woman did, but her lack of regret is widespread.
A recent study of 500 post-abortion cases in Sweden showed that only 11 percent felt “serious self-reproach” and only 14 percent felt “mild self-reproach.”
For a few women, however, abortion leaves lasting regrets. One girl, a 23-year-old magazine researcher, became pregnant by a business associate who refused to marry her.
She took two weeks vacation, borrowed the flight fare and visited a college classmate in Japan, where abortion is legal. Her physical recovery from the operation was quick, but the destruction of the child of the man she loved deeply still haunts her.
Many Women Pay Death Penalty After Abortions
The most common abortion tool in Washington is a rubber catheter attached to a straightened wire coat hanger, according to Dr. John Skilling, chief obstetrical resident at Washington Hospital Center, “I had a 26-year-old girl here recently who did it that way herself lying on a bed with a mirror,” he says. “She didn’t have $300 for an abortionist and couldn‘t afford to lose her job as a keypunch operator.”
“There was so much pain — I can‘t explain it really,” another woman told a grand jury after an illegal operation was performed on her without anesthetic. “It was just like my whole stomach was coming out,” she testified.
“When a girl comes to our emergency room she’s bleeding massively,” Skilling says, “She has a high fever — and often an infection in the blood stream or abdominal cavity or a bowel obstruction.”
One of Dr. Skilling’s recent patients had injected a soapy solution with a catheter and swallowed 30 tablets that she thought would make her womb contract. The price of aborting her four-month fetus was the loss of her womb — and later the loss of her hearing. The deafness was caused by the powerful drugs necessary to save her life during an 11-week illness that cost $14,000.
Dr. Benny Waxman, chief medical officer in D.C. General’s Department of Obstetrics, says about 10 percent of D.C. General’s obstetrical admissions are suffering from spontaneous or criminal abortions.
One recent patient was a 16-year-old girl who drank lye to abort herself and died. Another woman succumbed to gas gangrene — a toxin that can kill between 24 and 48 hours after a bungled abortion.
On D.C. General‘s grounds is a stark, square brick building which is the city’s morgue. Dr. Richard L. Whelton, the Coroner, says that he has seen only five abortion victims here in the last five years.
One, he said, was the victim of a hospital nurse who brought surgical instruments home to “help out” her neighbor.
The nurse tried to break the membrane surrounding the fetus and draw out the fluids with a catheter, creating an air pocket between the womb and its lining.
The air bubble entered the blood vessels and was carried to the heart, causing a sudden and fatal blockage of blood supply.
With laws as they are, the dreary story of the frightened girl and the incompetent abortionist is doomed to be repeated day after day in the back rooms of every American city.
In 1965, the death list of Washington women included:
Jeretha Tanner, a mother of three, who died during an abortion attempted by Theodora Cagle, a 45-year-old practical nurse, police said.
Teresa Lyles, 26, who died of an air embolism after an abortion attempted, police said, by James L. Davis and Shirley J. Rawot.
A 26-year-old suburban Maryland housewife who died June 1 at George Washington University Hospital from an infected abortion performed, police charged, by Lucille Caroline Jefferson.
Present laws are “puritanical punishment,” says Dr. Allan F. Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood. But punitive laws are hard to repeal, and it seems that women — not abortionists — will continue to pay the death penalty.
Elisabeth Stevens, who reported and wrote the original 1966 articles, died in 2018. Her papers are in the collection of the John Hay Library at Brown University.
Read more Retropolis:
Roe v. Wade’s forgotten loser: The remarkable story of Dallas prosecutor Henry Wade
A surgeon experimented on slave women without anesthesia. Now his statues are under attack.
Johns Hopkins names building to honor Henrietta Lacks and her ‘immortal’ cells | 2022-06-24T15:29:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How women got illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/24/illegal-abortions-before-roe-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/24/illegal-abortions-before-roe-dc/ |
Europe’s youngest democracy is a new front in the U.S.-Russia battle of ideas
European Council President Charles Michel, left, looks on before a meeting with Kosovo's prime minister, Albin Kurti, during a visit to Kosovo on June 15. (Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images)
Russia’s war on Ukraine is forcing all European countries to reconsider their strategic and military relationships. For Kosovo, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression confirms the belief that it needs a more robust partnership with the United States and its allies.
Last month, on the day that Sweden and Finland simultaneously submitted their requests to join NATO, Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti was in Washington to make his case for increased cooperation.
For a country of fewer than 2 million inhabitants that declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, the stakes couldn’t be higher. With 48 Serbian military installations staring across Kosovo’s borders, according to Kurti, it’s little wonder that he sees the fate of his country as a defining front in the ideological confrontation of our times. He considers his region an active but sometimes overlooked battleground in the developing tensions between the United States and Russia.
“There are these two poles in the world. It’s the U.S. and Russia,” Kurti told me. “Putin’s attack on Ukraine is an attempt to sit down with President Biden for a Yalta 2 kind of conference. This is my impression. Let’s divide the world, because if we do not divide the world, we will keep fighting. … This is how he wants to, I believe, frame it.”
The seven nations that comprise the Western Balkans are an integral part of that discussion, both because of their geographic location and the contemporary regional conflicts following the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992. With large populations of ethnic Serbs living within Kosovo’s borders and vice versa, the potential for civil strife is always present.
Kurti told me he continues to make good-faith attempts at de-escalation with Serbia, but those have led nowhere so far. At the heart of the tension is Serbia’s continued unwillingness to recognize Kosovo as an independent sovereign state.
“I cannot recognize a Serbia which does not recognize me. So there is needed mutual recognition, and we are ready to engage in this dialogue,” Kurti explained.
Kurti said that a peace and non-aggression declaration proposed by Kosovo in 2021 was rejected by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, as was a plan to reciprocally protect minority rights within each other’s borders. Instead, Serbian authorities reportedly began removing Albanians in southern Serbia from voter lists, citing residency claims.
“President Vucic said that, in contrast to Kosovo, Serbia is an example of how minorities should be treated,” Kurti told me. He added, somewhat sarcastically: “I said, ‘Then let’s see how Serbia treats minorities, and I can replicate the model in Kosovo.’ And then he got very angry because I said, ‘Let’s do this reciprocity thing.’ ”
The Kremlin’s support for Serbia is a powerful incentive to Vucic to maintain the status quo. Kosovo is fertile ground for online disinformation campaigns because of weak regulation and nearly nonexistent libel laws, and reports suggest Russian disinformation has attempted to undermine Kosovo’s engagement with the West and boost Serbian narratives about the government.
“Russia is absolutely a threat, doing everything in its power to harm Kosovo,” Reuf Bajrovic, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and former minister of energy for Bosnia and Herzegovina, told me. “It has been slowed because of the heroic Ukrainian efforts to defend itself. … As long as Ukraine is standing, we don’t need to worry about this in the near term, but the threat remains.”
In the new battle over models of civilizations, Kosovo sees itself as a lonely example of successful American intervention in recent times. It is trying to live up to expectations: Elections are held, and democracy watchdogs say they are generally fair. Kosovo has pledged to accept 5,000 Ukrainian refugees. Kosovo also has a fairly open media landscape and made a dramatic leap of 17 places in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders.
After some incidents of Kosovo citizens joining Muslim extremist movements in Syria and elsewhere, it has taken action. According to Kurti, some of those fighters were killed in the war, while others are imprisoned in Kosovo, with their wives and children being reintegrated into society through government-funded programs.
“President Putin wants to turn Kosovo into a failed state. … After [what Putin considers] the failure of Afghanistan and Iraq as expressions of U.S. and NATO interventions, only Kosovo has been left,” Kurti said. “He wants to consider Kosovo a temporary success. So defending Kosovo is very important.”
What would that look like for Kosovo? A permanent American military presence. Entry into the European Union and recognition from remaining countries of its legitimacy as a nation.
As both the E.U. and NATO see some of their members backslide on democratic commitments — think Hungary, Poland and Turkey — the United States and its European partners should make every possible investment in fostering liberal ideals. Supporting these values in Kosovo, Europe’s youngest democracy, would go a long way toward securing the continent’s democratic future.
Opinions about Europe | 2022-06-24T15:30:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Kosovo is a new front in the U.S.-Russia battle of ideas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/kosovo-albin-kurti-western-engagement-serbia-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/kosovo-albin-kurti-western-engagement-serbia-russia/ |
The Dobbs decision looks to history to rescind Roe
But the history it relies on is not correct.
Perspective by Patricia Cline Cohen
Patricia Cline Cohen is professor of history, emerita, at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Protesters hold signs with images of Supreme Court justices during a ShutDownDC demonstration in Washington, D.C., June 13, 2022. Photographer: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg (Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg)
Writing for the majority in Dobbs, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argues that Roe disrupted “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment” that had “persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.” But the real picture is far blurrier — and even once states began passing stricter abortion laws between the 1820s and 1880s, public sentiment did not follow. Few abortion providers were convicted under the new laws, indicating that most Americans didn’t see abortion as a crime.
Anglo-American common law initially guided the U.S. on abortion. Under common law, abortion was only punishable after “quickening,” defined as the moment the mother first felt fetal movement — typically between 16 to 22 weeks of gestation.
But then something changed. The number of abortion statutes that states passed shot up between 1845 and the 1860s — and this pattern closely tracked with a sudden groundswell of newspaper reports about young women dead from bungled abortions. A sharp turn in journalistic practices in the 1840s sent reporters chasing crime and sex stories. Abortion was in the news as never before. A collection of 225 newspaper reports about abortion in nationally-distributed news articles from 1820 to 1860 shows a trickle of stories up to 1845, followed by a dramatic acceleration thereafter.
Abortion law in Massachusetts followed these patterns. Boston had a burst of three court trials in 1844 that received heavy press coverage, and one was a first for that city’s newspapers: the arrest of a midwife who successfully terminated the very early pregnancies of three married women. The district attorney allowed that the women were respectable, but he disapproved of their stated motive: “these ladies … had children faster than they desired to.” The midwife was acquitted in the State Supreme Court because Massachusetts still followed the common law then, which permitted abortions before quickening. The state legislature quickly moved to change that, and heavily penalized all abortions going forward. Under the new law, 34 cases were tried over the next 12 years. But not a single one resulted in a conviction.
More punitive laws — some mandating sentences of 10 or 20 years — rolled out in the 1860s and 1870s. These resulted from the work of a group of White male doctors in Boston who were convinced that “among the married the crime [of abortion] seems even more common than among those who have the excuse of shame.” They began a concerted drive to stop the practice. Their opening report garnered skepticism, with one critic concluding, these doctors “will fail to convince the public that abortion in the early months is a crime, and a large proportion of the medical profession will tacitly support the popular view of the subject.”
Via savvy lobbying, the Boston doctors’ flawed calculations landed with every legislature in the country. Their arguments persuaded the newly-formed American Medical Association, a group also primarily composed of White male doctors with similar concerns, to endorse abortion bans. This advocacy drove most states that had not yet enacted new abortion statutes to do so in the 1860s and 1870s — laws that criminalized abortion before quickening.
Before states began criminalizing abortion in the 19th century, and even after, respectable doctors and midwives performed abortions, with the practice usually only visible to the public when a patient died. Juries were tolerant, penalties were low and successful patients — whether hiding shame or spacing pregnancies — availed themselves of these procedures. | 2022-06-24T15:30:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Dobbs decision looks to history to rescind Roe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/dobbs-decision-looks-history-rescind-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/dobbs-decision-looks-history-rescind-roe/ |
Banned book recommendations for your child’s summer reading list
(Washington Post Illustration / Balzer + Bray; Harper Perennial; Clarion Books; Lee & Low Books; Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Atheneum Books for Young Readers; HarperCollins)
Is there anything better than a fresh stack of books at the start of the summer? Okay, fine. Not every child would answer yes to that, but the fact is summer is the time to read, either for pleasure or for school.
But reading has been a fraught topic across this country in recent months. Books many of us grew up on — literature that widens our children’s world, novels that spur questions and discussions, poems that make people of all ages laugh out loud — have been challenged or pulled from shelves by school boards, parents and politicians.
We asked children’s authors, reading experts, a librarian and a poet (and her son!) to recommend challenged or banned books for kids and teens this summer. These books are meant to entertain, enlighten and expand children’s and teens’ understanding of the world.
Minh Le, picture book author of “Drawn Together”, “Green Lantern Legacy”, “Let Me Finish” and others.
Recommendation: “When Aidan Became a Brother” by Kyle Lukoff, illustrated by Kaylani Juanita.
This heartwarming book follows Aidan’s journey as a transgender boy and soon-to-be big brother. Through tender text and soulful illustrations, Aidan’s family learns together, makes mistakes together and moves forward together. And as the family expands and evolves, young Aidan finds strength in knowing that no matter how much things change, their love remains constant.
[This book was pulled from shelves in an elementary school in Pennsylvania, presumably because the main character is transgender.]
Maggie Smith, poet and author of “Good Bones”, “Keep Moving” and more, and her son, Rhett, age 9.
Recommendation: “A Light in the Attic” by Shel Silverstein
I grew up with Shel Silverstein’s “A Light in the Attic." My daughter, Violet, loved it when she was younger; and my 9-year-old son, Rhett, still turns to this book often. He loves to read the poems to me at bedtime, and we laugh together. When I told him this book was on the challenged list — along with one of his other favorites, “James and the Giant Peach,” his eyes grew wide. “Why?” he asked.
I asked him why he likes “A Light in the Attic,” and he offered this, first and foremost: “It’s silly.” Rhett said he likes both the poems and the artwork, because both are so imaginative. “If you read a poem, it doesn’t have to rhyme, but when he rhymes it sounds really funny. It’s kind of like a rap song — sometimes he makes up words to fit the rhyme. It makes you excited to read the poems to see how he’s going to play with words. And the illustrations look really warped, but that’s part of what makes them funny. I like the style.”
Flipping through our battered family copy, he said: “Honestly I can’t find one poem in the book that doesn’t have something funny in it. If you were in a bad mood it would make you giggle and cheer you up—whether you like it or not.”
["A Light in the Attic" was banned in some Florida schools due to concerns it “promoted violence and disrespect.”]
Kate DiCamillo, Newbery Medal winning author of “Flora & Ulysses” and “The Tale of Despereaux”, among others, and former Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
Recommendation: “The Giver” by Lois Lowry
I’ve read this book four times. Each time it gives me something new. And each time, it makes me think about how I want the world to be and what it means to see and feel. It is a deeply moving, thought-provoking, necessary book.
[The Giver is a dystopian novel that has been banned or challenged because of difficult topics, including infanticide, euthanasia and suicide.]
Meg Medina, Newbery Medal children’s book author of “Merci Suárez Changes Gears,” among others.
Recommendation: “The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo
Few main characters will stay with a reader for as long as Xiomara. This explosive novel-in-verse unpacks a young Dominican girl’s coming of age and her embrace of her own body, mind and voice. Each poem is a powerhouse of emotion and honesty as Xiomara questions the dynamics in her household, the teachings of her church, and the rules imposed on young Afro-Latinas in school and community. This is the perfect book for teens who are asking their own hard questions about their lives.
[The Poet X has been challenged or banned for perceived anti-Christian verses. It also has sexual references and profanity.]
Jordan Bookey & Felix Lloyd, co-founders of Beanstack, a tool for reading challenges in schools and libraries, aimed to promote reading
Recommendation: “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas
We read “The Hate U Give” a few times, most recently as an informal family book club with our middle grade son. The main character, a high school student named Starr, is lovable and real; we could feel her struggle in the book’s movement through the different worlds in which Starr lives, including her Black neighborhood and her mostly White private school. As a Black man, Felix connected with the quiet complexities of the characters Maverick and Uncle Carlos. We especially appreciated how this fictional story gave us a vehicle for discussing heavy, real-world topics like police brutality and speaking out. Also, Starr’s personal journey to question and redefine complicated (and in some cases unhealthy) friendships led us to conversations about what healthy friendships should look like. And as our son pointed out, “the book is still a page turner.” During the school year, we have to rush from one thing to the next. The summer gives us more time to spend in conversation with our kids. The Hate U Give is compelling in its plot and in sparking shared dialogue with middle- or high school-aged kids.
["The Hate U Give" has been banned and challenged for profanity, violence and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda, according to the American Library Association.]
Mary Ellen Icaza, chief executive and executive director of the Stark Library.
Recommendation: “All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
There are many challenged books that I would recommend that high school students read, but one that comes to mind is “All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. This book is written from the perspective of two teenage boys, Rashad, who is mistakenly accused of stealing and then beaten by a police officer; and Quinn, who witnesses the beating. Why do I recommend this book? This book features real-life issues such as police brutality and racial profiling, that are happening in our country, but it does so in a unique way through the voices of Rashad, who is Black, and Quinn, who is White. The writing is powerful — raw and honest. Some have challenged the book because of what they describe as violence, language, and promotion of an anti-police viewpoint. However, “All American Boys” encourages readers of the book to critically think about recent events, consider what they thought they knew, about topics like racism, social justice, and police brutality, and perhaps generate difficult conversations with peers and adults.
[According to the American Library Association, “All American Boys” has been banned and challenged for profanity, drug use and alcoholism, and because it was thought to promote anti-police views and contain divisive topics.]
LeVar Burton, actor, television host, reading advocate
Recommendation: “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
There is a reason that Atticus Finch is one of the most enduringly popular characters in American literature. He was one of my literary heroes growing up; a man determined to stand up for those who don’t have a voice because it’s the right thing to do. Set in the pre-civil rights era South, the story depicts an America that hardly exists anymore yet deals with issues of race and class that plague us still.
["To Kill a Mockingbird" has been often banned or challenged, mostly for racism and use of the N-word and other profanity.]
Helen Carefoot contributed to this report | 2022-06-24T15:30:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Experts recommend the best challenged books for kids to read this summer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/06/24/banned-books-summer-reading/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/06/24/banned-books-summer-reading/ |
Citi Open field adds past champions, top-20 players
Jessica Pegula won the Citi Open in 2019. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Two-time Grand Slam champion and former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka has joined the 32-player field for the Citi Open’s women’s tournament along with American Jessica Pegula, who won the event when it was last contested in Washington.
The ninth-ranked Pegula, 28, broke into the top 10 after reaching the quarterfinals of this year’s French Open, where she teamed with fellow American Coco Gauff to also reach the doubles final at Roland Garros.
Tournament officials on Friday announced three prominent additions to the 48-player men’s event — 2015 Citi Open champion Kei Nishikori, three-time Grand Slam semifinalist Grigor Dimitrov and 2018 Citi Open finalist Alex de Minaur.
The men’s and women’s tournaments will be held concurrently at Rock Creek Park Tennis Center July 30-Aug. 7.
Additional players are expected to be named in the coming weeks after Wimbledon concludes the sport’s grass-court season and players’ attention shifts to hard courts in preparation for the U.S. Open, which gets underway Aug. 29 and is the season’s final Grand Slam.
To date, the tournament’s field includes seven current top-20 players and four former Citi Open champions.
On the men’s side, they include the previously announced Nick Kyrgios, the 2019 Citi Open champion; Hyattsville native Frances Tiafoe, ranked No. 28; world No. 8 Andrey Rublev of Russia; 2022 Indian Wells champion Taylor Fritz; and 18th-ranked Reilly Opelka.
On the women’s side, Azarenka, Pegula and Canada’s Genie Bouchard will join a field that includes reigning U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu and runner-up Leylah Fernandez, who’ll be making their Citi Open debut.
Other top draws in the women’s field include 2017 U.S. Open champion Sloane Stephens and 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenan.
The women’s event returns to Washington after a three-year absence.
Azarenka, 32, won the 2012 and 2013 Australian Open and was a three-time U.S. Open finalist. Currently ranked 20th, she will be making her Citi Open debut.
Bouchard, a 2014 Wimbledon finalist who reached a career-high No. 5 later that year, has recently returned to competition after undergoing shoulder surgery in 2021.
The Citi Open’s men’s event, classified as a 500-level event on the top men’s prop tour, is one rung higher than the companion women’s event (a level 250) in terms of the size of its field and the ranking points and prize money at stake.
But over the decade in which Citi hosted a companion women’s event before it was relocated, it drew strong fan support and attracted a prominent field. | 2022-06-24T15:30:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Victoria Azarenka, Jessica Pegula join Citi Open field - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/citi-open-field-victoria-azarenka-jessica-pegula/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/citi-open-field-victoria-azarenka-jessica-pegula/ |
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