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End the tipped wage to help back-of-house staff
By Tim Linaberry
A worker serves drinks at Mr. Henry's in D.C. in 2020. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
Tim Linaberry works in D.C.'s restaurant industry.
The D.C. hospitality industry is gearing up for another battle over eliminating the tipped wage. The concept of a tipped wage, now $5.05 in D.C., comes from the archaic 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows employers to pay tipped employees less than the minimum wage. Initiative 82, essentially a replica of the passed but repealed Initiative 77, would require D.C. businesses to raise the hourly wage for tipped workers incrementally over the next five years until it reaches the standard D.C. minimum wage. The minimum wage is $15.20 but will be $16.10 in July.
As someone who has been entrenched in D.C.’s restaurant scene for the better part of the past decade, I understand the argument against the initiative. Servers and bartenders in D.C. have well-paid positions that provide a decent living, even though the city has one of the most expensive housing and rental markets in the country. The concern that employers will have to dramatically shift their business models to account for increased labor budgets is not unwarranted and will no doubt have a significant effect on the future of hospitality in D.C. However, only one side of this proposed change is being discussed. The dominant narrative surrounds mainly the potential impacts for the front-of-house employees, ignoring the other, often forgotten and consistently marginalized half of the restaurant: the back-of-house staff.
With the pay structure of most restaurants, a majority of the labor budget goes to pay the back-of-house staff an hourly rate usually at or just above the minimum wage. Employers pay the front-of-house staff the tipped wage knowing that gratuities will make up most of their employees’ income. When gratuities are added to the tipped wage, employees’ take-home pay is typically much higher than the minimum wage. As a result, front-of-house workers typically have much higher incomes than those of workers in equivalent back-of-house positions, though wages are wildly variable. The average hourly pay difference between the front and back is nearly 2 to 1 in some restaurants. This disparity hardly seems fair and is part of the reason Initiative 82 needs to be passed.
While there is no doubt working in the front of house requires good people skills and social acumen, equivalent positions in the back of house often require extensive training, experience and schooling. In many cases, proper kitchen training requires high out-of-pocket costs, which often drop young cooks into debt. This unfortunate reality leads to a higher probability of career abandonment. Many will study, sweat and sacrifice to pursue their dreams of one day opening their own restaurant. But line cooks and sous chefs often become demoralized as they come to understand the unbalanced pay structure between the front of house and back. In fact, a surprisingly high number of back-of-house workers switch to front-of-house positions because they net much higher pay. Imagine how many delicious and creative dishes will never be conceptualized, developed or enjoyed because practical and pragmatic individuals are forced to prioritize personal profits over passion.
Ending the tipped wage might very well lead to a cultural shift away from voluntary tipping. Other countries have moved away from tipping as a form of legitimate income, so a plurality of alternatives already exist. We can implement mandatory service charges that can be spread among all restaurant employees. We can pay employees a static hourly rate or a salary that includes benefits and paid time off, as is done in nearly every other industry. Or we can negotiate flexible property rents that accurately reflect the variability of our dynamic industry.
Eliminating the tipped wage will shake D.C. restaurants to their core. It will not be smooth, nor will it be easy. It will be an end to business as usual for restaurant owners and operators who have, for too long, relied on a faulty formula for labor budgeting that perpetuates income inequality among their workforce. If Initiative 88 is passed, the solutions need not come immediately as the tipped wage will be gradually phased out, but the time to start reimagining restaurants is nigh.
The New Union Station should embrace its history | 2022-06-24T15:47:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | End the tipped wage to help back-of-house staff - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/end-tipped-wage-help-back-of-house-staff/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/end-tipped-wage-help-back-of-house-staff/ |
Far too little has changed in Md. since our first gun violence protest
By Matt Post
Brenna Levitan
Nate Tinbite
Demonstrators at the March for Our Lives rally on June 11 in D.C. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Matt Post, Brenna Levitan, Michael Solomon and Nate Tinbite are gun-safety advocates who represented Maryland students at the first March for Our Lives in 2018.
Four years ago, we stood on the March for Our Lives stage in D.C. and cried out for change.
A lot has changed since. We all graduated from high school, and two of us finished college. The leadership of both houses of Maryland’s state legislature turned over. Democrats took control of the U.S. House, and a new president was sworn in.
Through it all, the devastation of gun violence has remained a certainty. A string of high-profile shootings this month has served as a crushing reminder of our country’s failure to reduce gun violence.
As saddened as we are by the absence of national action, we’re especially frustrated by how little has changed in our home state of Maryland.
Instead of addressing our state’s gun crisis with the urgency it deserves, the Maryland legislature has dawdled: resting on our reputation as a liberal state to justify an insufficient response to gun violence. Our state’s policymakers must rapidly pass innovative legislation to protect us from guns.
With a Democratic supermajority and lives at stake, we refuse to accept the lackadaisical pace of the Maryland legislature. Common-sense laws supported by the overwhelming majority of Marylanders should not take several years or be repeatedly diluted in order to pass.
In 2016, a bill mandating universal background checks was first introduced in the House of Delegates and failed to get a committee vote. A year later, it was reintroduced but died again in committee. It took two more attempts before finally passing in 2020. However, with each reintroduction, the bill was further whittled down — compromising a policy that 88 percent of Americans support.
That kind of legislative lethargy is infuriatingly common in Annapolis. Restrictions on firearms around voting sites have been reintroduced twice and still not made it to a committee vote. Requirements for the safe storage of firearms have been reintroduced five times since 2013 and have yet to pass out of a committee.
A ban on ghost guns took multiple reintroductions over the course of three years to become law. In the meantime, a student at Montgomery County’s Col. Zadok Magruder High School acquired a ghost gun and used it to shoot a 15-year-old classmate in a school bathroom.
While policymakers in Annapolis mull and sit on their hands, Marylanders are being shot and killed. When a lifesaving bill is delayed because of an unwritten rule about needing to be reintroduced several times before passing, that convention amounts to a death pact.
Maryland is one of the most progressive and resource-rich states in the country. Instead of taking years just to catch up with other states, Maryland should be leading the nation in innovative models of gun safety.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions has spent decades producing evidence-based policies in Annapolis’s backyard. The state legislature should turn that research into law: mandating microstamping to track firearms, massively increasing funding to violence-intervention programs through taxes on guns, and providing hospital-based support programs for gun violence survivors statewide.
Policymakers need to get creative. Gun companies should be taxed for each death their products enable in Maryland. The state could also hold social media companies accountable for algorithms that glorify gun violence to their profit and our expense.
The Maryland legislature must be more explicit and intentional in tying investments in education, housing, and reducing poverty to reducing violence.
And instead of throwing our hands up about the guns flowing in from our neighbors, Maryland should give its attorney general the go-ahead to hold them accountable for enabling preventable deaths in our communities.
It might be argued that the sheepishness of the Maryland legislature is just the way our state government has always worked. That’s exactly the problem.
If we’re to extinguish the horrors of gun violence in Maryland, we have to believe we can do things differently. We have to envision a more nimble and responsive legislature. And we have to work together to build that new kind of state government, dedicated not to stalling hard decisions, but to our survival. | 2022-06-24T15:47:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Far too little has changed in Md. since our first gun violence protest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/march-for-our-lives-four-years-later/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/march-for-our-lives-four-years-later/ |
Protect the Potomac
By Dean Naujoks
The Potomac River near Key Bridge. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Dean Naujoks is a Potomac riverkeeper and member of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network.
For decades, Alexandria has allowed unlawful discharge of toxic pollutants into the Potomac River, as reported in these pages. And, after years of asking the city to fix this problem, we at the Potomac Riverkeeper Network have decided to sue. Coal tar and creosote pollution of the river is an imminent and substantial danger to the environment and human health, and it must end. As clean-water advocates, we are confounded by the city’s failure to stop the pollution.
Our investigation revealed that the Oronoco Street outfall, at the north end of Founders Park in Old Town, has been illegally discharging coal tar and creosote wastes into the Potomac River since at least 1975. Many of these pollutants are classified as probable human carcinogens and are a potential danger to marine and aquatic organisms and the animals that feed on them.
Founders Park is a beautiful public resource enjoyed by Alexandrians and other residents of Northern Virginia throughout the year. The park is a welcome getaway where families can have a picnic, take a walk or simply enjoy the views of our nation’s river. It should be protected and preserved, not polluted.
As a Potomac riverkeeper, my responsibility is to speak for the river — and for the millions of people who value it as a place to recreate and as a source of drinking water. And as a resident of Alexandria, I have a personal stake in the river’s health as well. My family and I enjoy boating on the river and, like many river lovers, we expect it to be clean. I have a lot of respect for the city and its officials — they long ago adopted an “eco-city” charter, so they have their eye on the ball. But so far on this issue, it’s a swing and a miss.
The source of the pollution was the Alexandria Town Gas company, a manufactured gas plant that operated between about 1851 and 1946 and was owned by the city for most of that time. The gas plant generated large volumes of coal tar and creosote wastes from its process of turning low-grade coal into gas for street lamps and homes. Recent studies concluded that the soil and groundwater near the site are heavily contaminated with coal tar and creosote wastes.
These wastes migrated from the Alexandria Town Gas company site to the storm sewer pipe outfall and have been discharged into the Potomac River. Coal tar and creosote wastes have also migrated through the soil and continue to seep up from the sediments near the outfall. This has resulted in an observable sheen on the water, sediment contamination and a noticeable odor of creosote.
The river is frequently used by paddlers, high school crew teams and the public as a spot for recreational fishing. I have no doubt that constituents would be shocked to learn this pollution is happening and would rightly demand that the city do better. Our lawsuit should be a wake-up call to city officials to solve this problem once and for all. | 2022-06-24T15:47:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Protect the Potomac - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/protect-potomac/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/protect-potomac/ |
Now is the time for moral courage, not more guns
By Michelle Maldonado
Jeremy S. McPike
A memorial at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on May 28. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
Michelle Maldonado, a Democrat, represents Prince William in the Virginia House of Delegates. Jeremy S. McPike, a Democrat, represents Prince William in the Virginia state Senate.
On May 24, an 18-year-old opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex. Armed with an assault-style rifle, he killed 19 children and two teachers.
As parents of children who have lived through lockdowns at schools, we can attest that you never want to receive the text “we’re in lockdown — it’s real.” This is the reality that parents, teachers and students experience today after Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech and Robb. The frequency of shootings has reached crisis levels, with the incidents at churches, synagogues, mosques, grocery stores and nightclubs. They inflicted damage across many families and communities.
On the heels of the tragedies in Uvalde, Buffalo and Laguna Woods, Calif., Virginians also recognize the pain of a community that has lost loved ones to gun violence all too well. In April 2007, Virginia experienced the largest school shooting in the history of the commonwealth, at Virginia Tech. The massacre left 32 people dead, 23 physically injured, including 17 by gunfire, and countless others to suffer from the physical, mental and emotional trauma of the shooting.
As we reflect on this, it is important to recognize that Virginia and our nation are experiencing trauma from this gun-violence crisis. According to Everytown for Gun Safety’s analysis, since 2009 there have been “278 mass shootings in the United States resulting in 1569 people shot and killed and 1000 people shot and wounded.” During this same period, the five deadliest mass shootings involved the use of assault weapons and/or high-capacity magazines. This is an important indicator of how the gruesome nature of these attacks is changing. These events also are taking a toll on our first responders, our police, firefighters and EMS who work to save as many lives as possible. They will carry the incidents with them forever, just as those who were wounded do. Although the physical and mental health repercussions of mass shootings have yet to be fully researched, preliminary data tells us that they include post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, depression and other serious conditions that for many survivors can take longer to heal than their physical wounds.
Fred Guttenberg, the father of 14-year-old Jaime Guttenberg, who was killed in the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, said it best: These shootings are preventable, but they’re also predictable. By some estimates, the United States is home to more than 393 million guns, compared with its population of about 330 million people. Similar studies also indicate that the United States makes up about 4 percent of the world’s population but makes up more than 45 percent of the entire global stock of 857 million civilian firearms. Here is the kicker — 3 percent of the U.S. adult population owns half of the nation’s firearms and nearly one-quarter of the world’s civilian firearms stockpile. Read that again. Let it sink in.
Throwing more guns at more guns will not work. What Virginia legislators passed in the years following the Virginia Tech massacre helped put important gun-safety protections in place. And thankfully, since that time, we have not experienced another tragedy of that scale. Although we cannot prevent all gun violence, there are steps each state can take to enable better gun safety for everyone. In Virginia’s case, among the 12 gun-safety bills passed by the Democratic-led majority in the 2020 and 2021 sessions, 10 directly related to Virginia’s ability to better protect our schools and our children against gun violence. These actions might serve as a road map for other state legislators seeking to create safer communities and stem the tide of growing gun violence:
1. Required universal background checks.
2. Mandated reporting of lost or stolen firearms.
3. Provided local authority to ban or regulate firearms in public spaces.
4. Granted judges the ability to issue emergency risk protective orders (red-flag laws).
5. Reinstated a one-gun-per-month limit on gun purchases.
6. Made it a Class 6 felony for someone subject to a protective order to knowingly possess a firearm.
7. Classified it as a misdemeanor to recklessly leave firearms around minors.
8. Allowed school boards to ban guns from school board property.
9. Restricted convicted domestic abusers from purchasing firearms.
10. Extended the time period for FBI background checks on gun sales.
While the above legislation is a good start, there still is so much more we can do in Virginia and around the nation. Specifically, we can and should ban ghost guns, increase funding for gun violence prevention programs, restore magazine capacity limits that expired from federal law in 2004 after the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban and, importantly, reconsider how, if and under which circumstances assault weapons should be in the hands of citizens outside of the military context.
Yes, the next mass shooting might be predictable, but it also is preventable. We urge you to vote and demand your local, state and federal representatives exercise the moral courage to perform these and other actions to protect our families. Our children’s lives depend on it. | 2022-06-24T15:47:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Now is the time for moral courage, not more guns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/now-is-time-moral-courage-not-more-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/now-is-time-moral-courage-not-more-guns/ |
Tom Graham, Washington Post copy editor, dies at 71
By Washington Post Staff Reports
Tom Graham in 2000. (Marie Marzi/FTWP)
Tom Graham, a journalist who retired in 2019 after 21 years at The Washington Post, mostly as a copy editor for the health section, died June 22 at his home in Columbia, Md. He was 71.
The cause was complications from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a form of cancer, said his daughter Eileen Graham.
Before joining The Post, Mr. Graham spent nearly a quarter century working for what became Patuxent Publishing and overseeing the editorial operation of about a dozen community newspapers in Howard and Baltimore counties. In 1983, on a fellowship that took him to Paris, he worked on the copy desk of the International Herald Tribune.
Thomas Michael Graham was born in Manhattan on April 7, 1951, and grew up in the Bronx. His father was a conductor for the New York City transit authority, and his mother, an Irish immigrant, was a homemaker.
He graduated in 1973 from Boston College with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. He became a board vice president of the Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Association.
For the past two decades, Mr. Graham held leadership roles with the World Computer Exchange, a nonprofit organization that helps disadvantaged youth gain access to computers and tech education.
In addition to his wife of 48 years, Mary Kay Sigaty, a former member of the Howard County Council, survivors include two daughters, Eileen Graham of Washington and Bridget Graham of Federalsburg, Md.; two brothers; and a sister. | 2022-06-24T15:51:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tom Graham, Washington Post copy editor, dies at 71 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/24/tom-graham-editor-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/24/tom-graham-editor-dead/ |
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin delivers remarks as he talks about his budget accomplishments at a restaurant Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in Woodbridge, Va. (Steve Helber/AP)
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) said he will seek to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, moving quickly following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Friday overturning the constitutional right to an abortion.
Youngkin has asked four Virginia lawmakers — all antiabortion Republicans — to craft legislation, and he said that setting the cutoff at 20 weeks might be necessary to attract more consensus in a divided Capitol. He said hesupports exceptions for rape, incest and cases where the life of the mother is at risk.
“Virginians do want fewer abortions as opposed to more abortions,” Youngkin said Friday morning during a meeting with reporters, editors and editorial writers at The Washington Post, moments after the court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was announced. “I am not someone who is going to jump in and try to push us apart … There is a place we can come together.”
Youngkin said he would like to see abortion outlawed at the point at which a fetus feels pain. He acknowledged that there is a consensus in Congress and elsewhere that the pain threshold exists at 20 weeks of pregnancy, but said he would prefer to aim for a 15-week law.
Though he emphasized his personal opposition to abortion, Youngkin said he recognized that there is a spectrum of beliefs in Virginia and acknowledged that 20 weeks could wind up being a point of compromise. “I also represent all Virginians,” he said. But, he added, “I believe the place we should be able to get to is a 15-week pain threshold.”
That would be similar to recent laws passed in Florida and Mississippi.
Abortion is lawful in Virginia during the first and second trimesters of a pregnancy, a timetable that has been in place through years of Republican and Democratic control in the General Assembly.
The procedure is allowed in the third trimester only if life or health is at serious risk, as certified by three doctors. Parental consent is required for minors seeking to terminate a pregnancy. Public funding of abortions is allowed for low-income women only in cases of rape or incest, if life or health is at risk, or if the fetus has “incapacitating” physical or mental deficiencies.
Youngkin has asked two state senators and two delegates to work on the legislation. They are Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant (Henrico), an obstetrician; Sen. Steve Newman (Bedford); Del. Kathy Byron (Lynchburg) and Del. Margaret Ransone (R-Westmoreland).
In 2012, Byron sponsored a bill that, as originally proposed, would have required most women seeking an abortion to first get a vaginal ultrasound. After an uproar over the invasive nature of the test, the bill was amended to require an abdominal ultrasound, which in most cases would not yield an image because most abortions take place early in pregnancy, when the fetus is too small to be detected with that test. The bill became law but was repealed, along with a host of other abortion restrictions, after Democrats took full control in Richmond in 2020.
When it was suggested that Youngkin’s effort could disappoint some conservatives who might want further restrictions, he said he was being realistic about the political moment. Republicans control the House of Delegates and Democrats control the Senate, and any legislation coming before the General Assembly when it convenes in January would have to pass both chambers.
“We’ve got a process in Virginia to work through,” Youngkin said. “I am a pro-life governor, I also am very, very aware of Virginia. … A governor can’t do it on his own. And it’s going to require … work across the aisle. And so we’ve got to work over the next few months to find a place that we can land.”
He compared that political reality to his efforts to pass a gas tax holiday, which has been repeatedly rebuffed by the state Senate. “I believe we should have a three-month gas tax holiday. And I can’t get the Senate to do it. And bottom line is that one of the things that I firmly believe that government needs to do is deliver results and I gotta deliver results,” Youngkin said.
The governor’s security detail cut short his scheduled 45-minute session with The Post’s editorial board once news of the high court’s decision broke, whisking Youngkin out about halfway through. He said he had work to do to help maintain order and security in Virginia as protests began to take shape over the court ruling.
“We’re going to protect people’s rights to express dissatisfaction or support,” Youngkin said. “And so if people want to gather and protest or demonstrate, we’re going to protect that right today. And we are also going to protect property. We’re going to protect safety … We’re gonna have zero tolerance for infractions.” | 2022-06-24T16:00:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gov. Youngkin to seek 15-week abortion law in Virginia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/virginia-youngkin-abortion-15-week-ruling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/virginia-youngkin-abortion-15-week-ruling/ |
Bennedict Mathurin survived tragedy and thrived in Mexico to get to NBA
Bennedict Mathurin was able to share his NBA draft moment with his mother, Elvie Jeune, and sister, Jenn Mathurin, after getting selected by the Indiana Pacers with the No. 6 pick. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Dominique Jeune was riding his bicycle home from school, but he never made it.
That Tuesday in September nearly eight years ago is seared into Bennedict Mathurin’s memory and inked on his left forearm. Back then, a 12-year-old Mathurin and his 15-year-old half brother, Jeune, were inseparable. Jeune was serious and a head taller, and he didn’t go easy in their one-on-one basketball games. Mathurin was a little more physical, and already imbued with the stubborn confidence that carried him to the Barclays Center stage Thursday and made him the first graduate of the NBA’s Latin America Academy to be selected in the draft.
Mathurin never had a relationship with his father, Felix, who died in 2013, but it didn’t bother him. He had Jeune, who Mathurin viewed as his twin. They would play-fight constantly, spend long afternoons at a local park and savor their Haitian mother Elvie Jeune’s chicken, rice and beans. The boys and their older sister, Jenn Mathurin, lived in a modest apartment and looked out for each other while Elvie worked long hours as a nurse to support the family in Montreal-Nord, statistically one of Montreal’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
Now 20, Mathurin recalls Jeune’s tragic head injury with a steady gaze and clipped sentences, unrolling his shirt sleeve to reveal a tattoo bearing Jeune’s name and the dates of his birth and death.
“A car hit him,” Mathurin said during an interview at a midtown Manhattan hotel on Wednesday. “I was at home. He just didn’t come back from school. My mom was wondering what happened. She received a call. She went to the hospital. She found him. It was hard for my mom, my sister and my whole family. We didn’t move on easily. It took a couple years to get used to it.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called Mathurin’s name as the sixth selection in the draft by the Indiana Pacers, and the 6-foot-6 wing, who spent two seasons at the University of Arizona, opened his red and black suit jacket to reveal a photograph of himself, Jeune and his sister when they were children. Mathurin’s mother hugged him and donned a Haitian flag over her shoulders.
There was never any doubt that Jeune would join Mathurin onstage. After all, Mathurin wore Jeune’s name on his shoes at Arizona and appends the “#domixworld” hashtag to many of his tweets. While standing on 6th Avenue the day before the draft, Mathurin turned his head to the right and assured his company that Jeune was there next to him.
“Everything I do is for my brother,” Mathurin said. “He’s always with me. We did everything together. I had one chip on my shoulder already, but [his death] put another one. I’ve got chips on both shoulders now. Whichever way people bump into me, they’re going to hit one of them.”
A few years after Jeune’s death, Mathurin hit a growth spurt. Standing 6-foot-4 at age 15, he believed for the first time that professional basketball was a realistic possibility. He still wasn’t much of a shooter, but he was powerful and naturally athletic, having played football and hockey as a child. Mathurin felt an added pressure to provide for his mother and sister, to be the man of the house even as a teenager.
“It was a pretty rough neighborhood,” Mathurin said. “It wasn’t easy. There were people who chose the wrong path. A lot of people died. Drugs. Guns. Shootings and violent stuff. I’ve always been around it. That really shaped me as a person. I learned to be grateful. My family kept me focused on the things I wanted to do. Basketball is really what saved me.”
Academy life
The crucial link came in 2018 via a cryptic piece of advice from the head of Mathurin’s Quebec provincial team: “If a train comes, just take it.”
Within weeks, Mathurin was invited to attend the NBA’s Latin America Academy, which was then based in Mexico City. The new program, which provided focused basketball instruction, high school academics and life skills to a select group of teenage prospects, was one of four global academies established by the NBA to develop international talent.
Academy attendees receive a full scholarship, room and board and guidance on everything from financial literacy to diet, nutrition and strength and conditioning programs. Mathurin traveled the world to compete against the NBA’s other academies and in various international competitions, helping to prepare him for college and the NBA lifestyle.
Many top Canadian prospects, like Golden State Warriors forward Andrew Wiggins, attended high school in the United States. But Mathurin’s family liked that the academy was a controlled environment that could be a step away from the potential pitfalls of Montreal-Nord and a big step toward the NBA.
“We were told the campus was super safe and he was going to be able to focus,” said Jenn Mathurin, who played four years of college basketball at North Carolina State. “He was all the way in Mexico on a secure campus. He couldn’t really get in trouble. It was a no-brainer.”
Mathurin was the first Canadian invite at the Latin America Academy and, at age 16, he set about learning Spanish, his fourth language after English, French and Creole, and adjusting to life without his mother’s cooking.
Academy staffers remember Mathurin arriving as a shy and quiet teenager who was nevertheless eager to prove that he not only belonged, but was the top dog. At one practice, a coach asked the team who was the best shooter in the gym. Every player, except one, named Hyunjung Lee, a South Korean guard who attended an NBA academy in Australia and went on to play college ball at Davidson, where he shot nearly 40 percent on three-pointers over three seasons.
The lone exception was Mathurin, who nominated himself and stood tall when confronted by a gym’s worth of quizzical looks. In Mexico, he refined his outside shooting and transitioned from life as an energetic power forward to a prototypical wing and a more vocal leader. Two seasons at the academy prepared him for the University of Arizona, which he chose over his other finalist, Baylor, because he would have a larger role as a freshman.
“For Benn to take a nontraditional path and take that leap of faith with an unproven program, it means the world to us,” said Chris Ebersole, the NBA’s head of elite basketball. “We want the academies to open as many pathways as possible, whether players go on to college, the G League or professional leagues overseas.”
No doubts
A breakout sophomore season at Arizona sent Mathurin racing up draft boards: He averaged 17.7 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.5 assists, and he helped Arizona to a 33-4 season that ended with a Sweet 16 loss to Houston. Mathurin completed his collegiate career as a 38.5 percent three-point shooter, and he claimed Pac-12 player of the year honors.
Mathurin’s favorite NBA comparisons are Miami’s Jimmy Butler and Boston’s Jaylen Brown, as they combine powerful offense with fierce defense, though he hastened to add that he is, “a little bit better of a shooter than Jimmy.” During his pre-draft interviews with teams, Mathurin assured executives that questions about his defensive energy and focus are misguided, noting that he “can really guard.”
Perhaps because he survived an unthinkable personal tragedy and then thrived thousands of miles from home, Mathurin seems eager for new and bigger tests. His professional goals are as lofty as possible: Win the 2023 Rookie of the Year award, an MVP and a championship en route to induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Asked if that might sound a bit ambitious given that he hasn’t stepped foot in the NBA yet, Mathurin brushed off the notion that doubt should impact his vision. Despite Jeune’s accident, he has no fear of bicycles. Despite his initial culture shock in Mexico, he’s now learning his fifth language: Portuguese. And despite his skyrocketing draft stock in recent months, Mathurin promised that he would “bring my heart to the Pacers” and said that he will always remember the names of the five players selected ahead of him. | 2022-06-24T16:04:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bennedict Mathurin found NBA path in Mexico after brother's death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/bennedict-mathurin-nba-draft-brother-mexico/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/bennedict-mathurin-nba-draft-brother-mexico/ |
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reacts to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. (Will Oliver/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Democratic lawmakers and candidates unleashed a torrent of angry, defiant statements Friday, promising to make abortion rights a decisive issue for voters in November, as Republicans celebrated their victory in a decades-long fight for the Supreme Court to end the constitutional right to an abortion.
Since a draft opinion leaked in early May indicating that the court was prepared to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, advocates for reproductive rights have looked ahead to the midterm elections as their only chance to have those rights restored. Democrats believe that by overturning the landmark decision, the Supreme Court just handed them an issue to mobilize voters, particularly suburban women, in an otherwise difficult political climate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaking to reporters shortly after the decision was announced, offered a preview of the Democrats’ campaign message for the next several months. “The Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have majority in the Congress to do that. That’s their goal,” she said.
On Capitol Hill, two House Democratic women embraced as they saw each other, just minutes after the Supreme Court handed down its decision. A visibly shocked Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) didn’t have the words to react when reporters asked, simply saying she’s “devastated.” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), in a shaky voice said she was “horrified.”
“We’ll fight it. This will not apply. We will restore rights for my granddaughters,” Dean said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who played the greatest role in shaping the current conservative makeup of the Supreme Court, called the decision “courageous and correct.”
The massive victory for Republicans came in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that asked whether a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi was constitutional.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the court’s decision “one of the darkest days our country has ever seen.”
“Millions upon millions of American women are having their rights taken from them by five unelected Justices on the extremist MAGA court," he said.
In the opinion authored by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., he wrote that if women don’t like the decision to give states the power to decide whether to allow abortions, then they should vote.
“Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting and running for office," he wrote. “Women are not without electoral or political power.”
“If there were any doubts left about what’s at stake in this race, it became crystal clear today. The right to an abortion will be on the ballot this November in Pennsylvania," said John Fetterman, Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania.
“The decision to strike down Roe v. Wade is downright dangerous and tragic. I’m sick and tired of our basic, fundamental right to privacy being politicized," said Rep. Val Demings, a Florida Democrat running for the Senate.
After the Roe decision, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tweeted: “Every unborn child is precious, extraordinary, and worthy of protection. I applaud this historic ruling, which will save countless innocent lives. The Court is right to return the power to protect the unborn to the people’s elected representatives in Congress and the states.”
Outside the House floor, an enthusiastic Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said: “That’s’s great! It’s a blessing” when asked for her reaction to the decision.
A Washington Post poll in May found a 57 percent majority of women say the court should uphold the constitutional right to an abortion while a slightly smaller share of men, 50 percent, say the same.
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Attorney General Garland says Dept. of Justice will protect reproductive freedom | 2022-06-24T16:39:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nancy Pelosi blasted Supreme Court decision on Roe, Mitch McConnell called it 'correct' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/abortion-midterms-democrfats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/abortion-midterms-democrfats/ |
The machinations that ended Roe
Antiabortion demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court on June 24. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg News)
Roe v. Wade didn’t end because of activism. It ended because conservatives were the beneficiaries of a few lucky breaks — and because political power in the United States is not always linked directly to the will of voters.
From the moment Roe was decided, it faced political opposition. But that didn’t become intertwined with politics until the early 1990s, at which point views of abortion became more polarized on partisan lines. In the decades since, there has, of course, been a robust effort to target Roe, one that has created a large, politically active voting constituency to which Republican politicians have frequently appealed. Yet, because only the Supreme Court could unwind the Supreme Court’s decision and because the court’s membership was not inclined to do so, Roe remained in place.
Were the decision put to a plebiscite vote, it would almost certainly have survived at any given point since it was made. Over the past 30 years, Gallup polling has consistently found that most Americans think Roe should stand. There was an active group of opponents agitating against it, but they were a minority within a minority.
Then, on Feb. 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died while on vacation.
President Barack Obama soon nominated Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s seat. But the Senate was controlled by Republicans, thanks to a 2014 midterm election that saw a number of largely red-state seats (Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia among them) flip to the GOP. The Republican senators who were serving in early 2016 had received fewer votes than the Democrats, but they held a majority. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made clear that Garland would not be seated as a Supreme Court justice before the presidential election.
This was strictly a power play, a long-shot bid to block the appointment of a nominee from a Democratic president in hopes that a Republican would be elected that November. McConnell couched it as somehow being about reflecting the will of the population, that he simply wanted voters to decide who should fill the seat. But that was transparently contrived, as he would make explicitly clear four years later. The seat remained open.
Democrats were frustrated, but they could at least take solace in the high likelihood that Obama would be followed by another Democrat, Hillary Clinton. Polls showed she had a robust lead! McConnell was simply delaying the inevitable.
And then Clinton lost. Thanks to some 80,000 votes in three northern, Rust Belt states, Donald Trump earned more votes in the electoral college even as he lost the popular vote by nearly as large a percentage of the electorate as George W. Bush won by in 2004. The race was so close in those states that any number of things could be cited as contributing to Clinton’s loss — overconfidence, FBI Director James B. Comey’s last-minute elevation of questions about her email server, the focus on material released by WikiLeaks — but the result was the same. Trump became president.
He quickly nominated Neil M. Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s seat. Democrats opposed the move but Republicans still held the majority in the Senate (while again still having earned fewer votes than the Democrats), changing filibuster rules to allow Gorsuch’s confirmation.
Gorsuch was Trump’s pick officially, but it’s clear that Trump was mostly following the lead of conservatives who had a broader vision for what the court should look like. Trump pledged to appoint anti-Roe justices explicitly in an effort to secure enthusiastic support from the anti-Roe voting bloc; he then got recommendations on who might meet his standard.
In 2018, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced his retirement. He reportedly recommended that Brett M. Kavanaugh take his seat. Trump nominated Kavanaugh.
That confirmation process became a fight for other reasons, but it’s worth remembering that he, like Gorsuch, pointed to the importance of precedent in evaluating Roe. Both were understood to be opposed to abortion, but Kavanaugh’s answers on abortion in particular gave Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), otherwise an advocate of the availability of abortion, space to vote in favor of his nomination. Kavanaugh, too, was confirmed — by senators representing a minority of Americans.
The court now had a 5-to-4 conservative majority, thanks to Trump’s two appointments. But there had been similarly narrow conservative majorities in the past that Roe had survived.
Then, on Sept. 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
Immediately, the entire thing fell into place. McConnell reconfigured his contrived 2016 standard to facilitate a rapid Trump nomination and confirmation; after all, polls looked even worse for his reelection than they had for his election in 2016. Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination was fast-tracked and she was confirmed — after a flurry of Roe questions — less than two weeks before the election.
Trump did lose that election, prompting him to spend two months fighting to retain power despite earning fewer votes than Joe Biden. Why not, really; the political right had effectively managed to increase its power dramatically for four years despite what most voters sought. That effort finally collapsed early in the predawn hours of Jan. 7, 2021.
But the power was already built. It just needed to be deployed. The state of Mississippi passed a strict antiabortion law in 2018 that was a promising vehicle. In May 2021, the court agreed to consider a legal challenge to it. The result was Friday’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision setting aside Roe.
On Thursday, Gallup released a different set of polling related to the subject. It found that only a quarter of Americans had confidence in the Supreme Court, a record low in its polling. That was driven by deep skepticism from Democrats, only 1 in 8 of whom had confidence in the institution. That was a decline of nearly 30 points from 2016, a decline almost certainly driven largely by the ability of a Senate and president supported by less than half of voters to solidify conservative power on the bench.
Roe was law for decades. It took five years of good luck and a political system that rewards less populous, rural states for the political right to overturn it. Which, for the left, makes Friday’s decision even worse: They need time, luck — and to overcome those systemic disadvantages to see movement back in the other direction. | 2022-06-24T16:39:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The machinations that ended Roe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/machinations-that-ended-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/machinations-that-ended-roe/ |
Supreme Court ruling leaves states free to outlaw abortion
The vote was 6 to 3 to uphold a restrictive Mississippi law, but Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his conservative colleagues for taking the additional step of overturning Roe v. Wade.
Abortion rights protesters clash with antiabortion activists outside the Supreme Court in June. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Read the opinion and dissent: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was the most anticipated of the court’s term, with political tension surrounding the fight over abortion rights erupting in May with the leak of a draft opinion indicating a majority of justices intended to end the long-standing precedent.
The justices were considering a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law had not taken effect because lower courts said it was at odds with the national right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade in 1973 and affirmed by subsequent Supreme Court rulings.
The decision was an extraordinary victory for the conservative legal movement, which for decades has made overturning Roe its highest priority and had been frustrated in previous trips to the Supreme Court. The decision came from a court more conservative than the nation has seen in decades, bolstered by three justices nominated by President Donald Trump.
It was a worst-case scenario for abortion rights supporters, who had comforted themselves in the past with the notion that while abortion might be restricted, the fundamental right would never be erased. The right will now be decided by state legislatures, as it had until Roe was decided in 1973, and could lead to the procedure being banned in more than half the states.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who will be retiring from the court at the end of the term, dissented along with fellow liberals Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. They said the decision was devastating for women.
“It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of,” they wrote in a joint dissent. “A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs. An abortion restriction, the majority holds, is permissible whenever rational, the lowest level of scrutiny known to the law.”
They added: “Yesterday, the Constitution guaranteed that a woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy could (within reasonable limits) make her own decision about whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming consequences that act involve. But no longer. As of today, this Court holds, a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions. A State can thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced, may be a nightmare.”
Alito was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, and Trump’s three nominees, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court just 21 months ago, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court’s most outspoken proponent of abortion rights.
Roberts agreed with upholding the Mississippi law and allowing some abortion restrictions before viability, the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb, about 22 to 24 weeks. It was the line set in Casey.
But Roberts criticized his conservative colleagues’ haste, and worried for the court’s credibility.
Thomas, on the other hand, would have gone even farther. In a concurring opinion no other justice joined, he said he agrees with the majority that nothing in the opinion “should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Yet, he also says that in future cases, “we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” including those involving birth control, homosexual conduct and same-sex marriage.” Perhaps, he writes, they can be justified in other ways.
The dissenters picked up on that. “Not until Roe, the majority argues, did people think abortion fell within the Constitution’s guarantee of liberty,” they wrote. “The same could be said, though, of most of the rights the majority claims it is not tampering with … Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.”
Just the prospect of such a change transformed the nation’s political landscape. Liberal states wrote abortion protections into state law and proposed constitutional amendments safeguarding the right. States governed by Republicans have passed a blizzard of restrictions not currently allowed, and more than a dozen have passed laws that would outlaw abortion in most cases should Roe fall.
President Biden is scheduled to speak on the decision later Friday. Attorney General Merrick Garland called it a “devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States” but said it still leaves states free to protect abortion rights. And that those in states where it will be eliminated are free to travel to where it is.
“We recognize that traveling to obtain reproductive care may not be feasible in many circumstances,” Garland said in a statement. “But under bedrock constitutional principles, women who reside in states that have banned access to comprehensive reproductive care must remain free to seek that care in states where it is legal. Moreover, under fundamental First Amendment principles, individuals must remain free to inform and counsel each other about the reproductive care that is available in other states.”
The Mississippi law at issue would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions for medical emergencies or fetal abnormalities. It had not gone into effect because a federal district judge and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said it could not be squared with the right to abortion established in Roe in 1973 and affirmed in 1992′s Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Combined, Roe and Casey said that a state may not impose restrictions that would place an undue burden on a woman’s right to an abortion before viability. That refers to the time at which a fetus might survive outside the womb, usually estimated to be 22 to 24 weeks.
Supreme Court will investigate leaked draft of abortion opinion
When it accepted the case in May 2021, the court said it would examine whether “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Mississippi initially said the court could uphold its law without overturning Roe or Casey, but changed its stance in its briefing and at oral argument.
Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart told the court that the two cases “have no home in our history or traditions. They’ve damaged the democratic process. They’ve poisoned the law. For 50 years, they’ve kept this court at the center of a political battle that it can never resolve.”
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, said if the court did not protect its precedents, the restriction or even prohibition of abortion would be “severe and swift.”
“If this court renounces the liberty interests recognized in Roe and reaffirmed in Casey, it would be an unprecedented contraction of individual rights and a stark departure from principles of stare decisis,” said Prelogar, referring to the court’s tradition of respecting past decisions.
From December: Supreme Court seems inclined to uphold Mississippi abortion law that would undermine Roe v. Wade
Mississippi already bans abortions after 20 weeks, and it has passed legislation that would ban most abortions after six weeks. Lower courts have declined to let that law, or the 15-week ban passed in 2018, take effect.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves wrote in a 2018 ruling on the 15-week ban that the Mississippi legislature’s “professed interest in ‘women’s health’ is pure gaslighting.”
“The State chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Reeves wrote.
The state argued that because the clinic challenging the law offered abortions only up to 16 weeks, the law was not affecting many women. The harm to the state, it said, was “requiring it to permit inhumane abortion procedures which cause a fetus to experience pain — a factor the Supreme Court has never explicitly addressed.”
But the 5th Circuit said it was not the place of lower courts to challenge the Supreme Court.
“In an unbroken line dating to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s abortion cases have established (and affirmed, and reaffirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability,” Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote for the appeals court. “States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman’s right, but they may not ban abortions.”
The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. | 2022-06-24T16:39:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court ruling leaves states free to outlaw abortion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/supreme-court-ruling-abortion-dobbs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/supreme-court-ruling-abortion-dobbs/ |
Disney says it will cover employee travel costs for abortions
Corporations are scrambling to adjust policies after the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade.
The Walt Disney Co. said Friday it would cover the cost of travel for abortions in light of the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade. (Richard Drew/AP)
The benefit covers the cost of travel for “family planning” for all employees who cannot access care where they live, Disney said, including “pregnancy-related decisions.”
“We recognize the impact of the ruling and that we remain committed to providing comprehensive access to quality and affordable care for all of our employees, cast members and their families, including family planning and reproductive care, no matter where they live,” Disney said in a statement to The Post.
A torrent of similar announcements rolled in from titans like Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Comcast on Friday, underscoring corporate America’s unusual role in safeguarding reproductive rights following the high court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Effective in July, JPMorgan Chase is expanding travel benefits for any covered service that can only be obtained more than 50 miles from an employee’s home, the company told The Post. The policy will apply to U.S. employees who are enrolled in its medical plan, as well as covered partners and dependents.
“New SHRM research shows that nearly a quarter of organizations agree that offering a health savings account to cover travel for reproductive care in another state will enhance their ability to compete for talent,” Dickens said. “But how these policies interact with state laws is unclear, and employers should be aware of the legal risks involved.” | 2022-06-24T16:56:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Disney, Netflix, Comcast say they will cover employee travel for abortions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/24/abortion-supreme-court-corporate-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/24/abortion-supreme-court-corporate-reaction/ |
Voters may be a lot angrier about Roe’s repeal than the right assumes
Abortion rights demonstrators react outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg)
Donald Trump’s response to the repeal of Roe v. Wade on Friday was characteristically uncomplicated.
“I think, in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “This brings everything back to the states where it has always belonged.”
Trump, of course, is famous for having reversed his opinion on abortion before seeking the Republican nomination for president and for having moderated his position on it in real time on the campaign trail in 2016. He understood abortion fundamentally as a vehicle for bolstering his political support, and as was the case with his base more broadly, he spent much of his presidency working to strengthen that support. For many abortion opponents, politics was the cumbersome path to achieving their desired moral outcomes. For Trump, abortion was the cumbersome path to achieving his desired political ones.
But his flippancy in the wake of the court’s decision is not unique. After a draft of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was released, other conservative commentators assured their audiences that the effects of repealing Roe would be limited.
“If the court threw out Roe,” Andrew McCarthy said on Fox News in May, for example, “what we are going to find is when everybody woke up the next day, the sky will not have fallen.”
It’s clear why this is appealing to these men: They’d like to convince themselves that the change they’d advocated and achieved would not have broad negative repercussions. But that thesis is about to get a dramatic test — and there’s good reason to think that the “it’ll all be okay” theory will not carry the day.
Polling on this is a bit hard to parse, in part because the change is so dramatic. In the aftermath of the leak of the draft decision, there wasn’t a noticeable change in the generic ballot for Congress. Republicans were poised to do well this November thanks to a confluence of factors (historic patterns, President Biden’s low approval rating, concerns about the economy) and that position seemed to hold.
But that was when the prospect of Roe being overturned was still theoretical. It’s also a second-order measure; it’s not a consideration of how people feel about voting for Congress in light of the change to Roe.
Efforts to figure out how political events effect vote choice are notoriously fraught. People’s responses on questions about whether they’re more or less likely to back candidates that, say, will fight to protect access to abortions are often downstream from how the respondents felt about the candidates in the first place. Are you more or less likely to vote for the Republican senator in your state knowing they backed Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court? Well, most Republicans will say that they’re more likely to vote for that senator, even though they were going to vote for him anyway. Most Democrats will say they became less likely to do so, even though they never were. It’s hard to disentangle this.
But we can read the tea leaves to some extent, as The Washington Post’s Scott Clement did Friday morning.
In March, polling from KFF determined that about half of Americans would feel “sad” or “angry” about a repeal of Roe. That included 7 in 10 Democrats who anticipated feeling angry — suggesting that they might then seek some political response.
Perhaps more interestingly in that poll, as CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy pointed out, many residents of states with “trigger” laws — laws that ban abortion immediately upon Roe being overturned — didn’t know they lived in such states. And why would they? These were “what if” laws for something that seemed only like a fairly remote possibility for a long time. Forty-five percent of women ages 18 to 49 in states with “trigger” laws didn’t know those laws existed when KFF asked. Learning that the laws governing their ability to get an abortion had suddenly changed might be expected to be jarring.
Fifty-six percent of women in that age group nationally, incidentally, reported that they would be angry if Roe fell.
In CNN’s polling, conducted in January, most Americans reported knowing someone who’d had an abortion. Six in 10 Democrats said someone close to them had undergone the procedure; 7 in 10 Republicans did as well. This is a reflection of something that, in the years since Roe was decided, had become common — and now would in many places be unavailable.
Trump’s correct that abortion does not immediately become illegal everywhere, instead falling to state-level determinations in the absence of a federal ban. Places where it will remain legal, though, are largely Democratic strongholds where voters might be expected to be angrier about the court’s decision. Places where Republicans have political power are more likely to see triggered or eventual bans on abortion that could stoke direct anger at the change in the law.
Anger does not always translate into political activism, of course. There’s been enormous frustration on the left even before the Dobbs decision about the Democratic Party’s failure to better protect access to abortion or to respond to the shifting legal terrain. Some of that is a function of the way in which political systems disadvantage Democrats. Some of it, clearly, is inaction. Will voters angry at Dobbs prioritize going to the polls to support a party they blame for allowing Dobbs to happen?
One place that anger might manifest is in state-level races. Suddenly, races for state legislatures and governor are proxies for protecting or rescinding abortion access. While federal races often get attention and trickle down to state contests, we may see elections this fall in which voters are coming out to vote for governor but then vote up-ballot along party lines.
It’s hard to predict. This is uncharted territory, this reversal of a highly controversial ruling at a moment of deep anger and tension.
What is safe to predict is that this will not “work out for everybody.” | 2022-06-24T16:56:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Voters may be a lot angrier about Roe's repeal than the right assumes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/voters-may-be-lot-angrier-about-roes-repeal-than-right-assumes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/voters-may-be-lot-angrier-about-roes-repeal-than-right-assumes/ |
Students chronicle their troubled world
The cover of “The Amplifier,” a magazine produced by students from 15 Montgomery County high schools in Maryland and published in June 2022. (Cover art used with permission)
In the vitriolic national debate about what can and can’t be taught in public schools, parents’ rights and public funding of religious education, it’s easy to forget that many students at many schools across the country routinely do amazing work.
One way to see that is to look at high school student newspapers and magazines, some of which are exceptional in writing, art and design. You can see some of the best high school newspapers here, finalists for the National Scholastic Press Association’s annual Pacemaker awards.
In that vein, I am publishing parts of two exceptional publications produced by high school students in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public School District that have in common their faculty sponsor, David Lopilato of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School (BCC). One of the publications is an all-county magazine produced with students from 15 high schools in the district, and the other is BCC’s final edition of its student newspaper.
Lopilato has been a popular mentor to journalism students for more than a dozen years, known for encouraging students to explore their world and do their best work, as well as for his propensity to work overtime and spend some of his own money to help journalism endeavors at the school.
He oversaw an effort to revive the print edition of the Tattler, the student newspaper at BCC, which was first published nearly a century go. Below you can read the last edition of the Tattler for the 2021-22 school year, which is “retro” themed, comparing the current student generation to past ones, and features impressive art.
One story looks at the drug culture at BCC and how it’s changed over time. There is also a deep look by Tattler editors and writers Bennett Galper and Katherine Jones at a wave of teacher departures. They sent a survey to every teacher at BCC to find out why, and published some of the responses, including “scripted curriculum, endless data collection and nonstop testing.” The story reports that within the school district, the largest in Maryland, the resignation/retirement rate of teachers approximately doubled from last year to this year — a problem facing districts around the country.
Lopilato also brought together student journalists from BCC and 14 other Montgomery County high schools to produce magazines filled with writing and art and poetry that explore teens’ challenges and struggles.
In 2021, students from across the district produced a magazine titled “Coming of Age in a Pandemic,” which you can see here and which offered insights about the impact of the disruption to schooling caused by the coronavirus. This month, students from 15 high schools published the 100-page “The Amplifier” — parts of which you can read below — which is organized around a day in the life of a high school student and includes sections on hate, covid and “redefining our generation.” There is, among many other things, a first-person piece by a student from Afghanistan who writes about the collapse of his country, a piece on gun violence, and one titled “The Toxicity of Teen Political Discourse.”
“The Amplifier” was created by student journalists from BCC as well as these Montgomery County high schools: James Hubert Blake, Winston Churchill, Damascus, Albert Einstein, Walter Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Col. Zadok Magruder, Richard Montgomery, Northwest, Quince Orchard, Paint Branch, Watkins Mill, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Wootton.
Here is an editorial the Amplifier editors wrote explaining their work:
It was August 2021 when we were selected to lead The Amplifier, the countywide student journalism magazine of Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. For some of us, it was a “do it for college” kind of thing. You know, something that would look good on a college application supplemental. Then, the 2021-2022 school year happened.
We all expected turbulence returning to full-time, in-person school after the pandemic, but we did not expect violence to drag MCPS onto the evening news night after night. We knew mental health was on the decline among teens, but we could not imagine it would take classmates from us.
In April, we learned from the CDC that 44% of American teens feel persistently hopeless (up from 26% in 2009). Less than a month later, we watched in horror as an 18 year-old killed 10 in a Buffalo supermarket. A week later, another 18 year-old killed 19 children and 2 adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. What seemed like a “nice” thing to do back in August is now clearly a public safety imperative.
While our heads spin, trying to make sense of what happened on the same day (June 23rd) in Congress and the Supreme Court in terms of gun legislation, there is something each of us can do right now.
Listen to teens.
It is the right thing to do: morally, psychologically, and for the greater well-being.
We are not trying to be sensational or alarmist. However, if almost half of teens are feeling persistently hopeless, an unbearable number (i.e. any number greater than zero) of teens are at risk of doing harm to themselves or others.
We either listen to teenagers or we are in for a world of hurt.
America clearly understands the power of teen voices. In 2018, we crowded the streets of D.C. for March for Our Lives to hear David Hogg and Emma “X” González, Stoneman Douglas survivors, and gun control activists.
Yet, America fails to provide a consistent platform for teen voices.
Assembling The Amplifier, we realized that print journalism is a luxury restricted more and more to schools in higher-income zip codes, leaving too many without a voice. The Amplifier aims to change that narrative.
Over the past three months, we assembled a team of talented writers, editors, and artists representing 15 schools in Montgomery County.
We applaud MCPS for having our back, agreeing to finance the printing of thousands of copies of The Amplifier, with no censorship whatsoever.
They have made it possible for The Amplifier to be a magazine purely for student expression: free of cost, free of advertisement, and free of spin.
This edition of the magazine is organized around a day in the life of a high school student. Each chapter chronicles a different point of the day: the hallway, class, lunch, a party, etc.
If those in power refuse to give students a platform, we will do it ourselves. This edition of The Amplifier tells the story of students and pushes their voices to center stage. It is a platform where student voices and concerns can be communicated, where their opinions can be heard en masse, where they are represented, expressed, and most importantly… Amplified.
The editors are Aaron Tiao, Michael Shapiro, Josh Garber, Gabe Gebrekristose, Elyas Laubach and Nathaniel Schrader — all of BCC; Katherine Comer and Sofia Norberte of Blake; Madison Sherman of Quince Orchard; Samantha Wu of Richard Montgomery; and Sophie Hummel of Walt Whitman.
The Tattler edition below is the last under the sponsorship of Lopilato. He is leaving the journalism program to head a new endeavor at BCC, a Cultural Studies Certificate program that will be multidisciplinary and has already signed up some 80 students. The first project will be creating a museum-like tour of a fictional factory that has created teen identity over the past century.
Over the summer, Lopilato and colleagues are teaching journalism to girls and women in Afghanistan via Zoom. Twenty-five girls who can’t go to school at home have signed up and will take part in creating a publication in which they explain, among other things, what it is like not to have a school, he said.
Here’s a preview of “The Amplifier.”
Amplifier by Valerie Strauss on Scribd
Here’s the final edition of “The Tattler” for the school year:
Final by Valerie Strauss on Scribd | 2022-06-24T17:01:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Students chronicle their troubled world - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/24/students-chronicle-their-troubled-world/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/24/students-chronicle-their-troubled-world/ |
Antiabortion protesters react after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
While we knew from the leak of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s majority opinion that Roe v. Wade and nearly 50 years of constitutional precedent were hanging by a thread, and yet when the opinion came down Friday morning — a virtual copy of the leaked draft — many Americans no doubt felt a wave of disbelief, anger, dread and fear.
The court’s decision is so emphatic, and so contemptuous of the principle of stare decisis, that one wonders whether the unvarnished radicalism of the decision will finally rouse millions of Americans to the threat posed by a court untethered to law, precedent or reason.
Q&A: Jennifer Rubin answered questions about the Supreme Court's abortion decision and other news of the week
As the dissent (by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor) made clear, the majority opinion is as radical as any in its history: “It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs. An abortion restriction, the majority holds, is permissible whenever rational, the lowest level of scrutiny known to the law. And because, as the Court has often stated, protecting fetal life is rational, States will feel free to enact all manner of restrictions.”
The result could well be enactment of criminal penalties for every abortion, in any circumstance. “Enforcement of all these draconian restrictions will also be left largely to the States’ devices. A State can of course impose criminal penalties on abortion providers, including lengthy prison sentences,” the three dissenters wrote. “But some States will not stop there. Perhaps, in the wake of today’s decision, a state law will criminalize the woman’s conduct too, incarcerating or fining her for daring to seek or obtain an abortion.” The dissent added, “And as Texas has recently shown, a State can turn neighbor against neighbor, enlisting fellow citizens in the effort to root out anyone who tries to get an abortion, or to assist another in doing so.”
The dissent also underscores the enormous damage to women’s self-determination, autonomy and equal status as persons. And it rightly attacks the garbled history in the majority opinion, noting that the Constitution was ratified before women had the vote. In essence, the court elevates male dominance to a constitutional imperative in the 21st century.
Julia Bowes
counterpointOverturning Roe could threaten rights conservatives hold dear
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s feckless concurrence claiming the court is simply being neutral on the issue of abortion is preposterous, as the dissent makes clear: “His idea is that neutrality lies in giving the abortion issue to the States, where some can go one way and some another. But would he say that the Court is being ‘scrupulously neutral’ if it allowed New York and California to ban all the guns they want?”
The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of the court’s right-wing justices lead to the conclusion that they have simply appointed themselves super-legislators free to impose a view of the United States as a White, Christian and male-dominated society despite the values, beliefs and choices of a majority of 330 million modern Americans.
To understand how radical the court’s decision is, one need only consider Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence, where he says the quiet part out loud: He’d sweep away 14th Amendment substantive due process — birth control, gay marriage, all of it. And that is where we are heading, for in a sense Thomas is right. There is no bright line between destroying the expansive view of liberty in the 14th Amendment, when abortion is at issue, and destroying it for all other intimate decisions. The right-wing majority’s willingness to countenance an all-powerful state that interferes with every aspect of our lives is breathtaking.
The dissent says it plainly: The majority “makes radical change too easy and too fast, based on nothing more than the new views of new judges. The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them. The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law.”
And now what? States will race to criminalize abortion. Women’s lives and personhood will be put at risk. But that is not the end. Ultimately, the people — even in the court’s telling — still have control. They can vote out those who would drastically criminalize women unwilling to be forced to give birth. They can elect senators to do away with the filibuster in order to protect reproductive rights and reformulate the court, including the removal of lifetime tenure. The response frankly must be as bold and decisive as the court’s affront.
The court’s decision may result in women’s deaths. But it has certainly killed off what is left of the court’s credibility. And for that, there is no solution in sight.
Cartoon: The Supreme Court takes away a woman’s autonomy over her body | 2022-06-24T17:02:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Supreme Court loses legitimacy in overturning Roe v. Wade - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/supreme-court-abortion-legitimacy-radicalism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/supreme-court-abortion-legitimacy-radicalism/ |
Overturning Roe could threaten rights conservatives hold dear
Parental rights stem from the same liberty that the Supreme Court just began rolling back.
Perspective by Julia Bowes
A demonstrator outside the Supreme Court as the court rules in the Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization abortion case on June 24, 2022. (Michael Mccoy/Reuters)
Conservatives are celebrating the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as a legal victory that protects the rights of the unborn child. But the decision could have unforeseen implications for political causes that conservatives hold dear, especially parental rights. Dobbs reversed the seminal decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which was based on two early 20th-century Supreme Court decisions that found that the 14th Amendment protected fundamental civil liberties, namely the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit.
While many commentators have focused on the danger posed by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s reasoning in Dobbs to other fundamental liberties protected by Supreme Court decisions based on Roe, such as same-sex marriage, the implications of the decision for parental rights have received little attention. But they should.
The court’s decision in Dobbs begins the process of rolling back the 14th Amendment’s protections for civil liberties, which may eventually threaten the Supreme Court decisions in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). The circumstances that led to Meyer and Pierce, where sweeping laws passed by democratic majorities threatened the ability of minorities to make decisions about their family life, also foreshadow the risks of a post-Dobbs world.
Amid the rising popularity of eugenics and “race science,” the nativist impulses in the movement for children’s rights reached a fever pitch during and after World War I. The anti-German sentiment lingering from the war drove the Nebraska legislature to require that all children be schooled in English. In Oregon, during a brief surge of Ku Klux Klan power, citizens took advantage of an initiative referendum process to put a measure on the ballot that required all children to be educated in public school. An overwhelming majority of voters supported the measure, which promised, in effect, to ban private and religious schooling.
These laws produced the court challenges that the Supreme Court ruled on in Meyer and Pierce.
In Meyer, a German American who taught in a Lutheran school challenged his arrest under the Nebraska law for teaching in a language other than English. In Pierce, Oregon Catholics challenged the law compelling students to attend public schools. The National Catholic Welfare Council perceived the case to be so significant to Catholic parents across the United States that the council took over the case when Oregon appealed an initial decision, and recruited one of the most prominent conservative Catholic constitutional scholars to argue the case before the Supreme Court.
At the time, the political division over the Oregon and Nebraska laws did not map neatly into partisan or ideological camps. Some liberals and populists championed compulsory public education as a class-leveling exercise, but so, too, did the Klan, which stoked and capitalized on anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment. Overall, Americans who supported the laws found common ground in arguments that all children had a right to a public school education and that the interest of the state in its children as future citizens trumped the prerogatives of parents. Several states, especially in the Midwest and West, came close to introducing similar laws as those in Nebraska and Oregon.
Yet, even as the court continued to forge new ground in creating a private sphere where Americans could do as they pleased in their family life without undue government interference, an increasingly politically powerful conservative coalition began arguing that the state must limit or ban abortions because it had a duty to protect the fundamental rights of the unborn child.
Unwittingly, the antiabortion movement was echoing the claims of those who, in touting the fundamental rights of all children, sought to pass the Nebraska and Oregon schooling laws. They, too, saw abridging the liberty of parents as justified by the universal rights of children — precisely what the court ruled against in Meyer and Pierce. | 2022-06-24T17:02:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Overturning Roe could threaten rights conservatives hold dear - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/overturning-roe-could-threaten-rights-conservatives-hold-dear/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/overturning-roe-could-threaten-rights-conservatives-hold-dear/ |
A worker passes Centre Court as preparationas take place ahead of the 2022 Wimbledon Championship at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon, England, Friday, June 24, 2022. The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships start on Monday, June 27, and runs for two weeks. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
WIMBLEDON, England — A glance at Wimbledon, the third Grand Slam tennis tournament of 2022: | 2022-06-24T17:03:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WIMBLEDON 2022: Djokovic defends title; Swiatek seeded No. 1 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/wimbledon-2022-djokovic-defends-title-swiatek-seeded-no-1/2022/06/24/aea18c9c-f3db-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/wimbledon-2022-djokovic-defends-title-swiatek-seeded-no-1/2022/06/24/aea18c9c-f3db-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Submit your photo to the 2022 Washington Post Travel contest
Marc Squire's photo of Yosemite National Park's Half Dome at sunset won first place in Travel's 2021 photo contest. (Marc Squire)
Submissions are now open for the 23nd annual Travel photo contest! Please read the complete contest rules here before you submit your photograph. Here are some highlights:
● Photo must have been taken between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022.
● Please do not submit images that have been heavily manipulated.
● Only amateur photographers are eligible. Professional photographers (i.e., anyone who earns more than 50 percent of their annual income from photography, determined at Sponsor’s sole discretion) are not eligible.
See the 2021 Washington Post Travel photo contest winners and finalists here
● Entrants must be 18 or older and residents of the United States.
● By entering, you grant The Washington Post permission to use your photo in perpetuity in any medium.
● Only one entry is allowed per person. By submitting a photo, you are stating that you took the photo and own the rights to the photo. All submissions must be received by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on August 17, 2022.
Winners will be announced in print Sept. 7, 2022, as well as online at wapo.st./travel.
Submit your photo at wapo.st/travelcontest2022 | 2022-06-24T17:03:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to enter the 2022 Washington Post Travel photo contest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/24/washington-post-travel-photo-contest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/24/washington-post-travel-photo-contest/ |
Biden can’t go it alone on climate change
President Biden during the virtual Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in D.C. on June 17. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg)
Regarding the June 21 front-page article “Biden going it alone on climate but faces limits”:
Two years ago, the Pew Research Center reported that two-thirds of Americans thought the government wasn’t doing enough to combat climate change. Climate change is the defining issue of our time, and mitigating the effects of it must be seen as a top priority. So why today are Republicans and Democrats still fighting politically on this life-threatening issue? We can’t expect the president’s executive authority to accomplish enough.
As The Post reported earlier this year, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said, “Climate change threatens America’s security and is altering the geostrategic landscape as we know it.” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said, “Climate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time.”
I implore members of Congress to immediately figure out lasting solutions together. One such action, which has both Republican and Democratic support outside the Beltway, is a carbon fee and dividend program. Annually raise the price on carbon at the source (well, mine and port) and give all fees collected back to every U.S. citizen. Those monthly dividends would offset the higher costs for families, allowing a smooth transition to clean, renewable energy. Congress: The American people are waiting on you to act, and time is running short.
Jonathan Light, Laguna Niguel, Calif. | 2022-06-24T18:10:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden can’t go it alone on climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/biden-cant-go-it-alone-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/biden-cant-go-it-alone-climate-change/ |
The Post’s endorsements in the Democratic primary for Montgomery County Council
The Maryland State House and state flag. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Voters in Montgomery County decided in 2020 to add two new seats to the County Council, creating an 11-member body. That decision, paired with the departure of three incumbents who are term-limited, means there will be at least five new members. With the county facing myriad challenges — including how to broaden the tax base and attract jobs in the aftermath of the crippling pandemic — who will occupy those seats is of critical importance.
More than 50 candidates are on the July 19 Democratic ballot and the winners are likely to prevail in November’s general election. Some of the issues confronting Montgomery are long-standing: clogged roads, a lack of affordable housing, an inhospitable business climate. Others are more recent: a rise in crime, covid-related losses in student learning. Voters would do well to pick candidates committed to solving the real-world problems of Montgomery residents with practical solutions rather than those more interested in making headlines and appeasing advocates.
In the race for four at-large seats, we endorse incumbents Gabe Albornoz, Evan Glass and Will Jawando and local businessman and lawyer Scott Goldberg. We are enthusiastic in our support of Mr. Albornoz, Mr. Glass and Mr. Goldberg. The two council members have in their first four years in office proved to be thoughtful and hard-working lawmakers. Mr. Albornoz was at the forefront of Montgomery’s efforts to combat covid-19, establishing health protocols and helping to streamline efforts to get recovery funds to local workers and businesses. Mr. Glass has been a leader in efforts to improve public transportation and pedestrian safety, making public buses free for all children under the age of 18. Mr. Goldberg has built a successful residential property management company, giving him valuable insights into the needs of businesses that are lacking on the council. Our endorsement of Mr. Jawando comes with a reservation. We admire his advocacy for racial equity, his support of libraries and his dedication to public service. However, his tendency to listen to the loudest voices has resulted in ill-advised stands, such as his campaign against school resource officers and his support for rent control legislation that would stifle the production of sorely-needed housing.
District 1: Incumbent Andrew Friedson is the only incumbent running unopposed, a testament to the stellar work of his first four years.
District 2: We endorsed Marilyn Balcombe four years ago when she ran unsuccessfully for an at-large seat and we reiterate our belief that her years as a community activist and head of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce has grounded her in the needs of the county. The council would benefit from her pragmatic common sense.
District 3: We urge voters to return Sidney Katz for a third term. With so many new council members, it will be important to have someone with his knowledge and reputation as a consensus builder. Especially pertinent to the post-pandemic challenges facing the county is his work in mental health and public safety issues.
District 4: Amy Ginsburg has a rich history of working with nonprofits, most recently as head of the Manna Food Center. Not only did that work give her keen insights into the challenges facing Montgomery residents, but it honed her ability to bring together community, business and government.
District 5: Jeremiah Pope, long active in his Hillandale neighborhood’s civic associations, is keenly aware of the challenges facing east county residents, and his experience, as a political consultant and chief of staff to a Maryland delegate, equips him in getting those needs addressed.
District 6: Natali Fani González, former vice-chair of the Montgomery County Park and Planning Commission, is well-versed in land issues and how best to build more affordable housing, design safe streets and increase recreational opportunities.
District 7: Dawn Luedtke, an assistant state attorney general with broad experience in education, public safety and health-care law, is forward thinking in her approach to issues. Particularly noteworthy is her work in school safety and training law enforcement officers. | 2022-06-24T18:10:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Endorsements for Montgomery County Council Democratic primary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/montgomery-county-maryland-council-primary-endorsement-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/montgomery-county-maryland-council-primary-endorsement-2022/ |
Sprucing up the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge is a good call
The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge in October 2020. (D.C. Department of Transportation)
The June 10 letter “Not a sight to behold,” which complained about the appearance of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, hit the nail on the head. Cleaning off the rust and freshening up the paint are not going to make the bridge a valued landmark on the Potomac River. That will require a fresh start.
The Potomac River and the views up and downstream will be restored only if there are fewer piers in the water and the supporting structure is mostly above the roadway. The new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge is a good model. When it is finally complete, it will have dramatically and forever improved the Anacostia River waterfront.
Frederick Gottemoeller, Alexandria
The writer was architect of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge. | 2022-06-24T18:11:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Sprucing up the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge is a good call - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/sprucing-up-theodore-roosevelt-bridge-is-good-call/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/sprucing-up-theodore-roosevelt-bridge-is-good-call/ |
A third conservative approach to international relations
U.S. and Chinese flags on Sept. 16, 2018, on top of a trishaw in Beijing. (Andy Wong/Associated Press)
David Von Drehle’s June 19 op-ed on national conservatism, “A manifesto that sounds a lot like fascism,” left out a third possibility for how Republicans might approach international relations.
There are certainly some nationalists “who would build walls around the United States,” and their views are clear and straightforward. But regarding “internationalists who would spread freedom around the world,” there are two subgroups. Mr. Von Drehle focused on military interventionists who believe in “policing the world,” but there is also another kind of internationalist: those who promote freedom at home and engage in peaceful trade and cultural exchanges with the rest of the world in the hopes of spreading that message.
Whether many Republicans are willing to take this approach remains to be seen, but it certainly holds great promise and is worthy of consideration by some political party.
Simon Lester, Falls Church | 2022-06-24T18:11:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A third conservative approach to international relations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/third-conservative-approach-international-relations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/third-conservative-approach-international-relations/ |
Violence begets violence, but so does poverty
(iStock) (Irinas Creative Photo/iStock)
In her June 15 op-ed, “A wave of violence as abortion ruling looms,” Kathleen Parker referenced the biblical adage that violence begets violence. Poverty also begets violence.
Ms. Parker was referring to abortion and threats to people who oppose it. But why oppose abortion without also opposing “inhumane” (to quote Ms. Parker) policies that allow children to be brought into this world without health care, childhood education and bonding time for parents? In the United States, unlike in other industrialized countries, parents scramble to find affordable, quality child care. Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act in 1971, but then-President Richard M. Nixon vetoed it. Congress never passed it again.
Among other nonpolicies, the United States does not provide paid maternity leave, joining only the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.
The United States never joined any of the United Nations’ maternity protection conventions, not the one from 1919 or 1952 or 2000. All mandate paid maternity leave. The 2000 convention mandates mothers receive not less than two-thirds of their pre-pregnancy earnings. Those financial burdens are not foisted on employers but are spread across society. Imagine taxes or insurance funds to avoid childhood poverty and ill health.
People who oppose abortion also should be willing to share the burdens and oppose policies or nonpolicies that impoverish children. Healthy, cared-for children are less likely to be abused or violent and are more likely to benefit society.
Candace Kovacic-Fleischer, McLean | 2022-06-24T18:11:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Violence begets violence, but so does poverty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/violence-begets-violence-so-does-poverty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/violence-begets-violence-so-does-poverty/ |
Analysis by Patrick Donahue and Daryna Krasnolutska | Bloomberg
1. What does candidacy status mean?
A country given candidacy status has the prospect of joining if it meets the EU’s political and economic criteria. Formal negotiations can begin only once the candidate nation fulfills those conditions. In Ukraine’s case, the EU’s initial road map requires steps to fight corruption, break the control of oligarchs over the economy and make rules for selecting judges. The European Commission will monitor progress. Once talks start, the parties have to work through 35 so-called chapters covering everything from the environment to markets to ensure Ukraine’s legislation and standards are aligned with the EU’s.
2. How long does the process take?
It’s open-ended. Croatia, the EU’s newest member, waited 10 years before its bid was formally accepted. Turkey has been a candidate since 1999, though its government’s increasing authoritarianism under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has moved it further off the EU track. The bloc’s leaders have made clear that there is no fast track. But Ukraine at least won candidacy status just four months after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy formally applied. For comparison, Albania, another EU candidate, had to wait five years after applying to be granted candidacy.
3. How did Ukraine gain candidacy status so quickly?
Once a republic of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has long had EU ambitions, though any prospect of membership seemed a long way off. Russia’s military assault instantly changed the calculus. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen insisted that Kyiv belongs within the “European family.” Several member states were reticent to offer Ukraine full candidacy ahead of existing applicants. The breakthrough came with a high-level visit in June to Kyiv by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi -- all of whom promised their support for Ukraine’s bid.
4. Can Ukraine meet the EU’s demands?
Its most challenging task will be to tackle corruption that’s become endemic. Anti-graft bodies set up under agreements with global partners, including the International Monetary Fund, have yielded few results, with no prosecutions against top officials accused of corruption. That includes promised investigations into figures tied to toppled Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych -- a group renowned for their luxury mansions and cars. The nation’s media landscape is almost entirely in the hands of billionaire oligarchs. Before the war, foreign businesses consistently cited the compromised court system as a barrier to investment. Ukraine ranks 122nd out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
5. Do Ukrainians support joining the EU?
The Ukrainian public’s tilt toward Europe has been the driving force of tensions with Russia at least since the 2004 Orange Revolution, which overturned the initially fraudulent election of Yanukovych. When the Kremlin-backed leader, who eventually came to power in 2010, reneged on an EU cooperation treaty at Putin’s behest in 2013, public outrage grew into the Maidan Revolution, which ousted his government. Still, support for EU membership wasn’t always universal. As recently as January, before Russia’s invasion, a survey by the Rating Group pollster showed that 65% of respondents favored joining. A June 18-19 Rating poll showed that figure had jumped to 87%. The survey showed broad support among all regions and age groups.
6. Who else is trying to join the EU?
Moldova, another former Soviet republic partially occupied by Russian troops, also received candidacy (Georgia was offered a roadmap with conditions to obtain it). The two effectively jumped the line. Bosnia-Herzegovina, a former Yugoslav republic racked by war in the 1990s, and Kosovo, a former Serbian province not recognized by a handful of EU members, have sought EU accession since 2016 but have yet to receive an invitation. Other nations have made it in the door, but have been waiting for years for the talks to begin or to inch forward, including Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and North Macedonia. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has excoriated the lack of progress, particularly a blockade by Bulgaria on North Macedonia’s advancement, saying at a summit in Brussels that the deadlock is in effect offering “unsolicited help” to Putin by hindering a NATO member. Their frustrations with the application could foreshadow what Ukraine will contend with.
7. Who’s not sold on EU enlargement?
The Balkan frustration derives from a sense among European leaders that expanding the bloc will create additional problems, especially given the standoff over the rule of law with EU members Hungary and Poland -- and the struggle in member states such as Romania and Bulgaria to tackle corruption. A sixth round of sanctions against Russia was held up primarily by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. France’s Macron, though he gave the nod to Ukraine’s candidacy, has been blunt about “enlargement fatigue.” He’s proposed a “European political community” as a kind of antechamber to full membership for applicants, though the details have been fuzzy. Member states including the Netherlands and Denmark had also expressed reservations on Ukraine’s accession prospects. | 2022-06-24T18:32:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Ukraine’s EU Candidacy Means, and What’s Ahead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-ukraines-eu-candidacy-means-and-whats-ahead/2022/06/24/0af44a5e-f3e4-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-ukraines-eu-candidacy-means-and-whats-ahead/2022/06/24/0af44a5e-f3e4-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
This isn’t over. (Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
The Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that for nearly half a century had guaranteed a right to abortion nationwide, is the most significant setback for women’s rights in generations. It is also a call to action.
The court’s decision dwells at length on Roe’s constitutional deficiencies, a remarkable turnaround for justices who had little to say about those deficiencies during their Senate confirmation hearings. But whatever the ruling’s flaws, summarily overturning it after all these years amounts to a radicalism in its own right: In effect, the court is revoking a fundamental right that generations of American women have taken for granted. A more explosive decision is hard to imagine.
Where does the country go from here?
An effort in the Senate last month to codify Roe into federal law failed, largely because the bill’s legal protections went beyond Roe. Lawmakers should not give up on the matter. They should continue working to find common ground on a bill that would unite Congress’s pro-choice majority, including accepting some restrictions that pro-choice Republicans favor. Such a law will of course face a constitutional challenge, but that should not preclude Congress from acting to save elements of a right that American women have counted on for 49 years.
Absent federal action, the fight will now head to the states. Here, supporters of abortion rights can count on some advantages. With Roe in place, state lawmakers have long been free to advance severe restrictions — including banning abortion in cases of rape and incest — with little fear of real-world consequences for women or political consequences for their careers. Now that Roe has been rescinded, they’re likely to find that such bans are far harder to defend in the face of angry voters.
The fact is, the court has overturned a half-century of constitutional protections for individual rights, an unprecedented retreat that could endanger women’s health and lives. History is unlikely to look favorably on this decision. For now, it should serve as a rallying point for the majority of Americans who opposed overturning Roe — and the nearly 90 percent of American citizens who oppose total bans on abortions.
That will require pro-choice activists to create coalitions, build political support and convince their opponents that personal opposition to abortion does not preclude support for abortion rights. As they do so, they’ll need to accept that the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. Even securing limited access in conservative states is better than no access at all.
As the shock of this decision wears off, pro-choice Americans should see it as a challenge to elect people who will see reason, to hold current officeholders accountable, and to continue the fight to secure fundamental rights nationwide. Future generations are counting on them.
• A Conservative Plan to Help Families, Post-Roe: Ramesh Ponnuru
• Yellen Is Right About Costs of Roe Reversal: Julianna Goldman
• Reversing Roe Will Make US Democracy Harder to Fix: Clive Crook | 2022-06-24T18:32:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With Roe Struck Down, What Now? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/with-roe-struck-down-what-now/2022/06/24/66be22b6-f3e3-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/with-roe-struck-down-what-now/2022/06/24/66be22b6-f3e3-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Grassley, Warner call for inspector general probe of Bijan Ghaisar killing
The request comes after the Justice Department declined to reopen its investigation of the 2017 fatal shooting by Park Police
U.S. Park Police officer Lucas Vinyard, left, is shown firing his handgun, while U.S. Park Police officer Alejandro Amaya, right, aims his handgun at Bijan Ghaisar's vehicle. The image comes from a video taken by Fairfax County police during the pursuit and shooting death of Ghaisar. (US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia)
Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) have asked the Interior Department’s inspector general to investigate the 2017 fatal shooting of unarmed motorist Bijan Ghaisar by two U.S. Park Police officers, in a letter that is critical of the FBI and Justice Department handling of the case.
Ghaisar, 25, was killed after he repeatedly drove away from Officers Lucas Vinyard, 40, and Alejandro Amaya, 42, in a residential neighborhood of Fairfax County on Nov. 17, 2017. The case was investigated by the FBI, but after a two-year probe, the Justice Department under then-Attorney General William P. Barr announced it would not seek federal criminal civil rights charges against the officers. A criminal manslaughter indictment obtained by Fairfax prosecutors in 2020 was dismissed by a federal judge last year.
With new Justice Department leadership installed by President Biden, Grassley and the local Virginia congressional delegation, Ghaisar’s family and numerous civil rights groups called on officials to reconsider the case. But Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced on June 10 that the department would not revisit the case.
Justice Dept. won’t reopen probe of Bijan Ghaisar’s slaying by Park Police
Grassley and Warner have repeatedly pressed the federal government for answers, both before and after the various decisions on the case. Their letter sent Thursday to Interior Inspector Mark Greenblatt says that the FBI “spent nearly two years investigating what should have been a relatively straightforward case.” They wrote letters to the FBI beginning in 2018 seeking answers on the progress of the investigation, and Warner held up one Interior Department nomination because of the lack of responsiveness.
“Investigations involving the use of deadly force,” Grassley and Warner wrote, “should be handled in a manner that reinforces public confidence in law enforcement. The FBI and DOJ’s handling of this case has not met that bar.”
The Justice Department and the inspector general’s office did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The letter asks that Greenblatt investigate whether the officers acted in accordance with Park Police policy, guidelines and training, and to review the Park Police’s use of force policies, de-escalation training and policing methods.
Vinyard and Amaya were placed on administrative duties, and then administrative leave, after the shooting. Last November, the Interior Department began internal proceedings to fire the officers, which the officers’ union noted bypassed standard termination processes set out in their labor agreement. The result of that move is pending. | 2022-06-24T18:32:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Grassley, Warner call for inspector general probe of Park Police slaying of Bijan Ghaisar - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/ghaisar-inspector-general-probe-sought/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/ghaisar-inspector-general-probe-sought/ |
The abortion she never wanted, the baby she still mourns, the choice she’d make again
Outside the Supreme Court after Roe v. Wade was struck down, one woman knew from personal experience how complicated every abortion decision is
Shannon Mayes went to the Supreme Court after the ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade. (Courtesy Shannon Mayes)
Shannon Mayes stood off to the side of the crowds that gathered in front of the Supreme Court Friday after the justices struck down Roe v. Wade.
Amid the flags and hand-drawn posters and loud music, Mayes could not help but think that abortion was more gray than the factions celebrating and mourning acknowledged.
Mayes, a 52-year-old substitute teacher, is from Akin, S.C., a state known for its conservative leanings. Raised Catholic, she could understand why so many were excited by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. For many devout Catholics and evangelical Christians, a heartbeat is a heartbeat, and a life is a life. But as Moyes had taken in the news alert flashing on the television at her hotel in Washington earlier that morning, something else had called her to the Supreme Court.
Her first child.
It had been 25 years since she had last held William in her arms.
Many of her friends did not even know the story — how, in 1997, she and her husband, Danny Mayes, also 52, found out that only half of their son’s heart had developed, a rare genetic condition known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
A doctor informed them that if Mayes decided to carry the baby to term, they would have to move to Boston for advanced medical care. He was only expected to live a few years, if he wasn’t stillborn.
“Obviously for me,” said Mayes, “the gray is pretty personal.”
She and her husband chose to terminate the pregnancy at 20 weeks. Mayes had gotten an epidural. She’d gone through labor. And then she’d held her son — small and unmoving — in her arms before she let him go.
The decision changed her life, and it had brought her to the Supreme Court. She had never attended an abortion rally or protest before, she said.
“It crossed my mind this morning, getting ready,” said Mayes, who was in the nation’s capital with her husband and 20-year-old son, Ryan, on a visit to see her 23-year-old daughter. “As I told my son, that would’ve changed our whole lives’ path. It’ll take some time to …”
She paused, thinking about the Supreme Court decision.
“It’s a lot I’ll be thinking about,” she said. “If that had happened now, it would be terrible. It definitely changed things for me. What I went through, it’s a gray area. People have to understand that, and if they don’t, they aren’t very empathetic.” | 2022-06-24T18:32:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Outside Supreme Court, S.C. woman recounts abortion she didn't want but needed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/woman-abortion-roe-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/woman-abortion-roe-supreme-court/ |
The Supreme Court’s abortion decision is based on a myth. Here’s why.
How a history rooted in White Christian nationalism drove the court’s reasoning, despite being false.
Perspective by Samira K. Mehta
Lauren MacIvor Thompson
A family leaves church in the 1950s (iStock). (iStock)
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization argues that rights not mentioned in the Constitution are only guaranteed if they are “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” Abortion, he claims, is not such a right — despite historians arguing otherwise in amicus briefs submitted to the Court. Instead, Alito dismisses their analysis and points to his own historical evidence to argue that abortion has always been unpopular and criminalized.
Because a draft of Alito’s opinion leaked in May, historians already have pointed out the untruths, cherry-picked facts and deliberate omissions in his opinion. They have noted that abortion was a common and accepted part of life throughout much of American history. In fact, it was so common that no one saw the need for men to comment on what was a ubiquitous feature of women’s private reproductive lives in documents like the Constitution.
But these historical facts don’t matter to Alito and the antiabortion movement because they undermine the version of American history they subscribe to — what sociologist Philip Gorski calls “white, Christian nationalism.” The basic idea, Gorski writes, is that “America was founded as a Christian nation, by (white) Christians and its laws and institutions are based on ‘biblical’ (that is, Protestant) Christianity.” These circumstances, he argues, have made America “divinely favored,” and the nation’s accumulation of wealth and power comes with a mission to maintain, enforce and spread its laws and institutions.
This mythic status is tied to the maintenance of strict gender roles, with America’s strength embedded in the White, traditional family headed by a male patriarch.
Put simply, for a subset of the population, America’s core beliefs and morals are rooted in, as the common saying goes, “motherhood and apple pie.” This myth is as durable and powerful as it is flawed — and now it is responsible for taking a constitutional right away from American women in the name of maintaining the power of the family and the nation.
The White Christian nationalist myth dates back to the founding and maps onto the idea of “republican motherhood.” In the Revolutionary era, the ideal woman was a married White Christian mother who would raise her children to be worthy, educated citizens. This meant raising sons who would lead the new republic, and giving daughters the tools to serve as mothers for the next generation. Women had few legal rights themselves, but their domestic and maternal roles were supposedly responsible for securing the survival of the new American experiment. This construct did not apply to women of color and to other mothers whose sons were not seen as future American leaders.
Building on these ideas, 19th-century society viewed married White Christian women as the moral center of the family — and of American life more broadly. Their alleged greater morality and gentle nature acted as a bulwark at home against the external world of vice and corruption. But this construct also reinforced the notion that these women belonged at home, lest their morality be scrubbed off by wading into the corrupt (male) realms of politics and the economy.
These ideas about gender became especially powerful in times of economic and political upheaval. The late 19th century, for example, was dominated by the expanding regime of Jim Crow segregation, backlash against the rising tide of Southeast European immigrants and the emergence of eugenic theory, as well as the growing women’s suffrage movement. These changes combined to further entrench traditional gender roles and white supremacy.
As Horatio Storer, the physician responsible for writing much of the literature that convinced professional medical societies and state legislatures to rally behind restrictive abortion statutes in the 19th century, warned: “Do [white] women realize that in avoiding the duties and responsibilities of married life, they are, in effect living in a state of legalized prostitution? Shall we permit our broad and fertile prairies to be settled only by the children of aliens?” The United States had initially relied on Anglo-American common law, which permitted abortions before the mother felt fetal movement (a subjective standard known as “quickening”). But after Storer and his allies began their lobbying campaign, many state legislatures responded by passing laws between 1850 and 1900 that banned the procedure altogether. Storer’s purpose was clear: keeping women in their traditional role.
The myth of American women as domestic beings and the moral center of their families and the nation continued into the 20th century — surviving the achievement of women’s suffrage and the increasing number of women forced into the workforce by the Great Depression and World War II.
In the 1950s, these traditional gender roles were amplified as part of the United States’ Cold War competition with the Soviet Union — a nation where many women worked for the state alongside men, as their children went to state-run day cares. To demonstrate that the United States was different from (and superior to) its arch enemy, old ideas about gender and family were rebranded. Government and media alike idealized what became called the “nuclear” family in this new atomic age: the White family headed by a heterosexual married couple with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker living in a suburban home with their children.
But the government did more than idealize the White nuclear family — it helped create more of them. The GI Bill offered predominantly White male veterans of World War II entry into a comfortable middle-class consumer lifestyle with a free college education and cheap, government-subsidized mortgages. White families, in turn, used those mortgages to purchase single-family homes in suburbs that excluded families of color. As a result, millions of White women who had worked outside the home, were now out of jobs with limited opportunities beyond child-rearing and homemaking.
In 1963, Betty Friedan’s best-selling book, “The Feminine Mystique,” would ask: “Is this all?” echoing the dissatisfaction of millions of economically-secure (typically White) women with their stultified existence. As the feminist movement regained traction in the 1960s and 1970s, their push for equal rights grew to include liberalization of the strict abortion bans states enacted in the 19th century. Working with allies in the medical and legal communities, feminists succeeded in legalizing abortion (under certain circumstances) in 17 states plus the District of Columbia before the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional right to abortion at the federal level in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Initially, Catholics, long-standing opponents of abortion, led the fight against liberalizing abortion laws. But in the wake of Roe, White Protestant evangelicals also became increasingly uneasy with abortion as a potential threat to what they considered to be Divinely-inspired traditional gender roles.
As Catholics and Protestants slowly joined forces in the 1970s, they developed, as scholar Seth Dowland has argued, a political rhetoric that began to focus on the demise of the “traditional” family. The civil rights movement, the political work of feminists and the emergent gay rights movement fueled the rise of a new politics that described the traditional American family as under attack from radical, even communist, forces that imperiled the strength of the nation.
A brochure for evangelical pastor Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority group, formed in 1979, further strengthened the link between nation and family by declaring the new organization to be “pro-life, pro-family, pro-moral, and pro-America.” As the Democratic Party moved to embrace legal abortion in the 1970s, this politics of “family values,” as it was known by the 1980s, enabled conservatives to gain control of the Republican Party by marginalizing moderates in the party who had supported legal abortion and other feminist-backed reforms.
In the ensuing decades, abortion became a partisan political issue centered on questions about women’s proper roles in the family and nation. In other words, should women retain control over their own bodies and reproduction, as feminists and other proponents of legal abortion argue, or should the state compel them to become mothers by carrying all pregnancies to term? Reproductive health research tell us that many people seeking abortions today (as in the past) are married women who are already parents, but who see abortion as the best way to care for the children they already have. But this data disrupts a linchpin of the White Christian nationalist myth, suggesting that motherhood might not always be sacred, or that women might make decisions that value their own sexual and bodily autonomy.
As we now face a new era of making abortion illegal across America, that historical reality hasn’t shined through because it hasn’t been part of a cultural narrative as compellingly simple as the White, Christian nationalist one at the heart of the opinion in Dobbs. In this sense, the fight for reproductive justice — like political debates about other issues such as climate change and how to teach the history race — is a battle over the primacy of knowledge and expertise. | 2022-06-24T18:33:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Supreme Court’s abortion decision is based on a myth. Here’s why. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/supreme-courts-abortion-decision-is-based-myth-heres-why/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/24/supreme-courts-abortion-decision-is-based-myth-heres-why/ |
The measure is the biggest breakthrough in gun violence legislation in 30 years, despite its modest nature
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers talk about the gun bill, and victims of gun violence, at the U.S. Capitol on June 24. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The House of Representatives passed significant gun violence legislation on Friday aimed at curbing the frequency of mass shootings in the United States, ending the measure’s quick trip through Congress. It now heads to President Biden for his signature to make it law.
Following Senate action Thursday night, House passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act broke an almost-30-year logjam in Washington on the contentious and emotional issue of gun rights. The metastasizing divisions that have separated Republicans and Democrats on the issue since passage of the 1994 assault weapons ban have prevented meaningful changes to acquiring and retaining firearms for those who are not law-abiding citizens.
The House took the noteworthy step on the same day that the Supreme Court, across the street from the U.S. Capitol, where voting took place, released its historic decision to overturn abortion rights as established in Roe v. Wade, painting a dramatic tableau in Washington. Democrats clapped, smiled and linked arms after the gun measure passed the House, a striking departure from their earlier grim faces.
The gun legislation was the result of negotiations by a small handful of Republican and Democratic senators, led by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.), in the wake of recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Tex., and Buffalo.
The bill passed the House overwhelmingly along party lines, 234 to 193, with no Democratic defections. Fourteen Republicans voted in favor, including Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), who represents Uvalde, the small city that is now the infamous home of the second-largest mass school shooting after the one in Newtown, Conn., almost a decade before.
Democrats were seen hugging Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), who ran for Congress after her son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed after a dispute over loud music at a gas station. They were congratulating her after provisions she supported made it into the bipartisan package.
The Senate approved the measure, which was written by 20 bipartisan senators, late Thursday. Fifteen Republican senators joined all Senate Democrats, marking a historic and rarely seen agreement across party lines in an equally divided Senate. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) supported the bill, while the National Rifle Association opposed it.
Senate approves bipartisan gun deal
The twin incidents influenced Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.), a father of young daughters who was born and raised in Buffalo, to break with his party and come out in support of banning assault weapons and limiting high-capacity magazines, among other measures. The move appeared to have hurt him politically, prompting him to announce a week later that he would not seek reelection, after he lost some GOP support.
Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), who is retiring, also joined Democrats in supporting the gun package, along with GOP Reps. Fred Upton (Mich.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Maria Elvira Salazar (Fla.) and several Republicans in the Ohio delegation: Reps. Steve Chabot, Michael R. Turner, David Joyce and Anthony Gonzalez. Republican Reps. Peter Meijer (Mich.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) also voted in favor.
And in the most surprising defection from her party, Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican facing a heated primary challenge in August, also backed the measure, meaning she will probably face attacks in her conservative Western state over this issue as well as her prominent role on the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. She has been working to win over Democratic voters ahead of her primary.
Cheney aims to recruit crossover Democrats in her primary
The legislation does, however, direct millions to increase mental health services and school security measures, which Republicans have championed as the best ways to address school shootings instead of tougher measures pushed by Democrats. The bill also expands criminal background checks for some gun buyers, and bars a larger group of domestic-violence offenders from being able to purchase firearms as part of language aimed at what is known as the “boyfriend loophole.” The measure funds programs that would allow authorities to seize guns from troubled individuals.
“With this bipartisan package, we take the first steps to fight back on behalf of the American people who desperately want new measures to keep communities safe in the high numbers in the polling,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. “To those who lacked the courage to join in this work, I say your political survival is insignificant compared to the survival of our children.”
The package faced more resistance from both parties in the House than in the Senate, the issue electrifying debate between liberals and conservatives in the chamber. Republicans argued that the bill does not go far enough in expanding school safety and shamed Democrats for pushing the argument that more laws would eliminate future school shootings.
“I’ll tell you what saves lives — the decision we got from the Supreme Court today saves lives. This bill takes life away from law-abiding citizens,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) responded to Pelosi, referencing how the Supreme Court overturned access to abortions Friday.
While a majority of Democrats supported the legislation, a small number of progressives voted against it, citing concerns over funding police presence at schools that they said could indirectly increase the criminalization of minority students. Most Democrats thought the legislation was weak in comparison with more sweeping changes, including Rep. Norma J. Torres (D-Calif.), who argued Friday that the bill was the “bare minimum.”
On Thursday, McConnell acknowledged that the deal “is the sweet spot … making America safer, especially for kids in school,” and later telling reporters he hopes it will help the GOP earn good will from “voters in the suburbs that we need to regain to hopefully be a majority next year.”
The 15 Republicans who joined all Democratic senators in supporting the bill were Sens. Roy Blunt (Mo.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) and Todd C. Young (Ind.), as well as McConnell and Cornyn.
Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.
Illinois to hold special session to ‘further enshrine’ abortion rights | 2022-06-24T18:33:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House approves gun bill, which heads to Biden for his signature - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/house-approves-gun-bill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/house-approves-gun-bill/ |
A man continues to pray alone at St. John’s United Church of Christ in Michigan City, Ind., at the end of a prayer vigil on June 2, 2022, for the victims of mass shootings in Uvalde, Tex., and Buffalo. (Jeff Mayes/La Porte County Herald-Dispatch/AP)
Belief in God has been one of the strongest, most reliable markers of the persistence of American religiosity over the years. But a new Gallup Poll suggests that may be changing.
In the latest Gallup Poll, belief in God dipped to 81 percent, down six percentage points from 2017, the lowest since Gallup first asked the question in 1944.
Even at 81 percent, Americans’ belief in God remains robust, at least in comparison with Europe, where only 26 percent said they believed in the God of the Bible, and 36 percent said they believed in a higher power, according to a 2018 Pew poll.
Throughout the post-World War II era, an overwhelming 98 percent of U.S. adults said they believed in God. The proportion began to fall in 2011, when 92 percent of Americans said they believed in God and, in 2013, went down to 87 percent.
The latest decline may be part of the larger growth in the number of Americans who are unaffiliated or say they have no religion in particular. About 29 percent of Americans are religious “nones” — people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity.
“Belief is typically the last thing to go,” said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. “They stop attending, they stop affiliating and then they stop believing.”
Less surprising, the Gallup survey showed belief in God has fallen most among younger Americans. Only 68 percent of adults ages 18-29 said they believed in God (compared with 87 percent of Americans age 65 or older.)
The poll also found that belief in God is higher among married people (compared with those who are not married), women (as opposed to men) and those who did not go to college (vs. college graduates).
But perhaps the most striking differences were in political ideology. Belief in God is correlated more closely with conservatism in the United States, and as the society’s ideological gap widens, it may be a contributor to growing polarization. The poll found that 72 percent of self-identified Democrats said they believed in God, compared with 92 percent of Republicans (with independents between at 81 percent).
In recent years there has been a rise in the number of Americans who acknowledge being Christian nationalists — those who believe Christian and American identities should be fused.
“It could be that the increase in the number of atheists is a direct result of Christian nationalism,” said Ryan Cragun, a sociologist at the University of Tampa who studies the nonreligious. “They seem to be dominating the rhetoric. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is legitimately backlash against it and people saying, ‘You know what? I’m an atheist.’ ”
How to scrub yourself from the internet, the best that you can | 2022-06-24T18:33:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Poll: Americans’ belief in God is dropping - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/24/poll-americans-belief-god-is-dropping/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/06/24/poll-americans-belief-god-is-dropping/ |
Team of Australia, right, celebrates after winning the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay at the 19th FINA World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Friday, June 24, 2022. Team of the United States, left, placed third. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Australia has set a world record in the mixed 4x100 meters freestyle final at the world swimming championships.
Jack Cartwright, Kyle Chalmers, Madison Wilson and Mollie O’Callaghan clocked 3 minutes, 19.38 seconds in Budapest on Friday to shave two-hundredths of a second off the record set by the United States at the last worlds in Gwangju, South Korea, in July 2019. | 2022-06-24T18:34:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Australia sets world record in mixed 4x100 freestyle final - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/australia-sets-world-record-in-mixed-4x100-freestyle-final/2022/06/24/f3bcfd72-f3e8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/australia-sets-world-record-in-mixed-4x100-freestyle-final/2022/06/24/f3bcfd72-f3e8-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
By John Bohnenkamp | AP
FILE - Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell (31) runs on the field during the second half of an NCAA college football game against Purdue, Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021, in Iowa City, Iowa. Campbell plans to savor his 2023 senior football season after missing spring practice to allow nagging injuries to heal. Campbell was the national leader in tackles with 143 last season and a second-team pick to The Associated Press All-Big Ten team. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Wearing a T-shirt and shorts instead of a uniform and pads, Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell paced the field during the Hawkeyes’ open practice in April.
It’s the way he was dressed the whole spring, when he was held out of practices as he rested and rehabilitated nagging injuries from a season in which he led the nation with 143 tackles.
“It was tough, obviously — every competitor is going to want to be out there,” Campbell said this week. “I wish I could have worked every single day in the spring. But just due to the fact that I was trying to get things healed up and fixed up, that wasn’t an option. For me, personally, you can’t take a day for granted.”
Campbell, a senior, is back on the field for summer workouts, and he’s trying to convey that attitude to teammates.
“When I was a freshman, I didn’t know what to expect,” Campbell said. “I learned really quickly that the summer goes by pretty fast, and then you’re in fall camp.”
An Associated Press All-Big Ten second-team selection last season, Campbell is healthy and expected to once again play a major role for an Iowa defense that ranked as one of the best. The Hawkeyes led the nation with 25 interceptions and ranked third in turnovers forced with 30. They allowed 19.2 points per game.
Campbell was the anchor at middle linebacker.
“If you’re the linebacker at Iowa, you’ve got to know all of the calls,” defensive end John Waggoner said. “He’s on top of that, barking out calls, and seeing things before other people do. He’s a great leader and an example for how the younger guys should act.”
Campbell played as a true freshman and recorded 34 tackles his first two years. He broke out in 2021. His tackle total ranked fifth all-time in Iowa history and was the most by a linebacker since Pat Angerer had 145 in 2009. Campbell had five games with 10 or more stops, including 14 in the season-ending Citrus Bowl loss to Kentucky.
The season took a toll on his body and he needed the spring to recover. He said his off-field work was important for growing his game. Much of his time was spent watching video and rehabbing with athletic trainers.
“I just worked my butt off in the film room and talked to other linebackers about football stuff, just doing all the things off the field I could to make an impact,” he said. “But ultimately, I’m here now, and I’m ready to go.”
Campbell said the spring gave him a chance to work on the mental side of the game.
“Once you get older, you can see little things that you wouldn’t notice as a freshman,” he said. “Maybe the eyes of a guy, maybe a way he gets in a stance, maybe a way he leans. The splits of the receivers, the splits of the tight end. What’s the situation, down and distance. Stuff like that.”
Campbell has always been vocal, and he has been a mentor to younger players in a linebacker room with plenty of depth.
“He’s a beast, he’s relentless,” Waggoner said. “He just goes so hard. And the younger players see that.”
With preseason practices starting in a little over a month, Campbell is healed and excited to savor his senior season.
“As I reevaluated myself for this season, I’m never going to be satisfied with any single play,” Campbell said. “You can always get better at everything, and that’s the mindset I’ve taken this summer, just improving on every facet of the game. I know it’s kind of a generic answer, but that’s what I’m working on — just being the best Jack Campbell I can be.” | 2022-06-24T18:34:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After missing spring, Iowa's Campbell to savor senior season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/after-missing-spring-iowas-campbell-to-savor-senior-season/2022/06/24/4390f73a-f3ea-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/after-missing-spring-iowas-campbell-to-savor-senior-season/2022/06/24/4390f73a-f3ea-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Indigenous protesters are paralyzing Ecuador. Here’s why.
By Kimberley Brown
Protesters try to enter Ecuador's National Assembly in Quito on Thursday. (Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images)
QUITO, Ecuador — The Indigenous protesters of Ecuador have been credited in the past with bringing the country to its knees — and chasing three presidents from office.
Now, the South American country’s powerful Indigenous movement has taken to the streets again, spearheading 12 days of nationwide protests that have paralyzed the capital and tested the government of Guillermo Lasso, one of the last conservative leaders on the continent, just a year into his presidency.
Demonstrators have marched through Quito, clashed with police and blocked highways across the country, causing shortages of food and fuel. As government forces have sought to quell the rising protests this week, at least four people have died, four have disappeared and 93 have been injured. Dozens have been arrested, according to local human rights groups, and at least 114 police officers have been injured, authorities say.
As in 2019, when pre-pandemic protests led by the Indigenous brought Ecuador to a standstill, organizers are harnessing frustration over fuel prices. Gasoline costs less in Ecuador than in other countries in the region, but the government last year cut long-running subsidies, causing prices at the pump to nearly double.
But this time, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador is asking for more. The movement is calling for economic reforms to address widening inequality in a country still suffering from the economic havoc wrought by the pandemic, which was particularly lethal here.
Indigenous and rural communities, protesters say, have been disproportionately hurt by inflation, soaring gas prices and austerity measures. The organization has presented the government with a list of 10 demands, including a better job-creation plan, increased investment in public education and health care, and a halt to oil and mining expansion.
Mario Granja joined demonstrators this week on the Avenida 12 de Octubre in central Quito. Police had blocked traffic on the normally busy street; protesters lit eucalyptus fires in an effort to ward off the effects of the eye-burning tear gas that lingered in the air.
“I come here to fight for fuel prices … for our children’s education, and for work,” the 57-year-old construction worker said. “We want the president to leave. He is lying to the people, and the people are tired of being deceived.”
Voters across Latin America, one of the regions hit hardest by the pandemic and its economic toll, have voted out presidents and parties in favor of politicians promising change. Lasso’s victory in Ecuador last year, over the candidate handpicked by former president Rafael Correa, amounted to a rebuke of the leftist governments that had long held power in the country. Lasso, a conservative banker, promised to ramp up coronavirus vaccinations, revive the country’s economy and create more job opportunities — including for Indigenous people.
Lasso benefited in the election from discontent among Indigenous peoples, who represent only about 10 percent of the population but are a powerful and organized political force. After the Indigenous candidate Yaku Pérez failed to make it to the second round of voting, many Indigenous voters cast their ballots blank, helping Lasso.
A year later, Ecuador is suffering rising unemployment, a shortage of medicine, students still out of school, and surges in drug violence and prison massacres. Lasso has focused more on macroeconomic challenges, such as reducing the budget deficit and repaying foreign debt, than on the social programs demanded by a population struggling with poverty. Sociologist Decio Machado, an independent political consultant, said the approach reflected a total “lack of sensitivity.”
That’s earned the president sinking approval and rising opposition in the National Assembly and on the streets. Lawmakers associated with Correa initiated a process in the assembly Friday to vote on Lasso’s removal.
The war next door: Conflict in Mexico is displacing thousands
Lasso has addressed the protesters’ demands only partially. He announced plans last week to subsidize fertilizer costs for small and medium farmers by 50 percent. He said the public bank would forgive overdue loans worth up to $3,000. He also said there would be no additional increase in the cost of diesel, which would be limited to $1.90 per gallon, or gasoline, which would be limited to $2.55. Both are above the protesters’ demands of $1.50 and $2.10 per gallon.
“I called for dialogue and the answer was more violence,” Lasso said in televised remarks. “There is no intention to find solutions.”
Leonidas Iza, president of the Indigenous confederation, said Lasso’s proposals did not fully meet the protesters’ demands. He also doubted the president’s sincerity in implementing them.
Lasso’s challenges could serve as a warning to other recently elected presidents in the region who courted angry voters with promises of change.
“In such unequal countries, when people see someone new, they have huge expectations,” said political scientist Santiago Basabe. “When you’ve already offered more than you can give, people aren’t going to take a step back. … If you don’t follow through, people will get irritated.”
And in the case of Ecuador’s Indigenous community, people will mobilize.
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador is credited with helping to oust three governments in Ecuador between 1997 and 2005, by leading massive, days-long street protests that pushed the National Assembly to vote out the presidents for incapacity to govern. Today, many, including Lasso, say the group is trying to do the same.
But it won’t be as easy this time. The assembly now requires a two-thirds vote to remove a president, more than the majority requirement of the past.
Lasso has responded to the protests by calling a 30-day state of emergency in six provinces, including Pichincha, home to Quito. Police have occupied the Casa de la Cultura, a cultural center in central Quito that has historic significance as a base for Indigenous protesters who come in from the countryside. Police withdrew from the building Thursday.
Several groups, including Amnesty International, have called for a dialogue between the government and the movement to end the protests immediately. Both sides say they are open to dialogue, but the confederation’s Iza has demanded that the government lift the state of emergency before sitting down at the table.
“We’ve always had our door open to dialogue — we’ve only said that talks can’t make a mockery of the Ecuadoran people,” Iza said at a news conference. He said any dialogue with the government must lead to results. He has had several meetings with the president over the past year, he said. All, he said, have ended in empty promises.
Ecuador’s prison riot: Drug cartels, overcrowded cells and a bloodbath
Meanwhile, anger at the protesters and the disruption they’re causing to daily life is rising, particularly in Quito, where clashes between protesters and police have blocked off whole neighborhoods in the city center. Counterprotesters staged “peace demonstrations” in the capital Wednesday, shouting “We want to work!”
The government says the first eight days of protests cost the economy more than $110 million dollars, affecting some 1.4 million jobs. The Ecuadoran Federation of Exporters says highway blockades, affecting mostly the flower, broccoli, lumber and banana industries, have cost it $27 million in exports.
Granja traveled to Quito in a caravan Monday night from the province of Cotopaxi. Ordinarily, the drive would take less than an hour, but it took the caravan 10 hours as it met police blockades along the way.
He’s been sleeping on a floor at Salesian University, one of two universities in Quito that have opened their doors to some 18,000 protesters from rural Ecuador.
Back in his community of Tancuchi, Granja said, he’s being pushed to his limits. He has found it difficult to find work as a construction worker; when he does, the pay is $100 per week, not the $150 he got before the pandemic. The price of some basic goods, meanwhile, has doubled. Cooking oil has jumped from $2 per liter to nearly $4.50 per liter. One dollar used to buy eight buns. Today it buys only four.
“Now even the potatoes have to be counted. As they say, one potato can be made into 12 pieces,” he said. “I ask God that the president takes action. That he doesn’t continue deceiving us.” | 2022-06-24T18:49:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ecuador protests: Indigenous movement tests Guillermo Lasso presidency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/ecuador-indigenous-protests-lasso/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/ecuador-indigenous-protests-lasso/ |
Supreme Court goes against public opinion in rulings on abortion, guns
Until recently, the Court hewed closely to shifting public views on key social issues like same-sex marriage, private sexual conduct, workplace protections for transgender people and popular support for laws and executive orders on immigration and health care.
Abortion rights demonstrators gather near the Supreme Court in Washington on June 24, 2022. The court announced a ruling on a Mississippi abortion case overturning Roe v. Wade. (Eric Lee/For The Washington Post)
The U.S. Supreme Court’s new majority boldly signaled with twin rulings this week that public opinion would not interfere with conservative plans to shift the nation’s legal landscape.
The court rejected Roe v. Wade, a 49-year-old legal precedent that guaranteed the right to an abortion, after a string of national polls showed a clear majority of Americans wanted the opposite result. A similar court majority invalidated a 108-year-old New York state law restricting who can carry concealed guns that is supported by nearly 8 in 10 New Yorkers, according to a recent poll by Siena College.
Rather than ignore the dissonance, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority in the abortion decision, attacked the notion that the court should consider the public will. He quoted the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist from a previous ruling: “The Judicial Branch derives its legitimacy, not from following public opinion, but from deciding by its best lights.”
“We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey,” Alito continued the court’s opinion in the case that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. “And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”
Abortion will soon be banned in 13 states. Here's which could be next.
The assertion punctuates a shift that has been evident on the high court since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020. The high court during the George W. Bush, Barack Obama and early Donald Trump administrations generally hewed closely to shifting public views on key social issues like same-sex marriage, private sexual conduct, workplace protections for transgender people and popular support for laws and executive orders on immigration and health care.
Maya Sen, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, is one of several academics who have noted the recent shift by studying public polling on issues decided by the high court over the course of more than a decade.
“Up until a couple years ago, it used to be the case that where the court fell was well within the lines of the average Americans’ positions,” Sen said. “Now we are estimating that the court falls more squarely in line with the average Republican, not the average American.”
The shift has created what Democrats view as a political opportunity — to use the court’s recent rulings, particularly around abortion, to mobilize voters in the fall. The entire Democratic establishment, from the White House, House and Senate, has united around the strategy, making anger at the court’s ruling one of the few clear pitches that the party is deploying for the midterm elections.
“I’m not saying it’s changing the political landscape wholesale but we’re going to see a lot of close races in November, and this is going to keep and put Democrats in office in some of those close races,” said John Anzalone, a pollster for President Biden. “Republicans are going to be on their heels defending this, because they’ve outlawed abortion even in the most extreme cases of rape and incest.”
The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 26 states are likely or certain to ban or restrict abortion now that Roe has been overturned. They include key 2024 presidential battleground states like Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, which have pre-Roe bans on abortion in the law that have not been repealed, and Georgia, which has a six-week ban in place. All of those states have competitive U.S. Senate contests on the ballot this fall.
The high court’s decision to divert from popular opinion has also fueled calls to change the structure of the court, either by adding more justices or imposing a rotational schedule to regularly change the court’s makeup. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past nine presidential contests — a stretch of more than three decades during which all the present Supreme Court justices were appointed. But Republicans have appointed six of nine current justices.
Former attorney general Eric Holder, an Obama appointee, released a statement Friday calling on reforms to the Supreme Court’s structure “to ensure that the Court serves the interests of the people instead of the interests of an extreme, minority faction.”
“A significant majority of Americans agree that gun safety measures protect the constitutional rights and lives of our people, and that women should have the right to choose,” he wrote. “Yet the Court’s majority — most of whom were nominated by Presidents who lost the popular vote — is forcing through its own particular and peculiar vision of America.”
“The conservatives on the Court are much more conservative than the majority of the American people,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. “These decisions will have a long-lasting effect on the Court’s legitimacy. It is unclear at this point what that will mean.”
Concern over losing the public trust has repeatedly been voiced by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a Republican appointee who often shaped the court’s approach before Ginsburg’s death. In a 2007 interview with the Atlantic, he spoke of the “high priority to keep any kind of partisan divide out of the judiciary.” He said it was important to shore up the court’s “legitimacy as an institution.”
Barry Friedman, a New York University law professor who wrote “The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution,” has argued that tracking the public mood is a well-worn tradition of the court. Even if individual cases have repeatedly bucked public opinion, he said, “over time in salient cases, the court tends to come into line with public opinion.”
“What has allowed the court to untether itself from public opinion is deep dysfunction in our political system,” he wrote Friday in an email, about the recent shift away from that pattern. “One of the strongest tethers to public opinion is that Congress and the president will discipline the court in some way if it gets too far out of line. There are tools such as jurisdiction stripping, and court packing, and ever since 1937 even the threat of these has had a profound impact on the justices. But these are not credible threats given the electoral makeup of Congress.”
Another result of the shift has been declining public approval of the court, driven largely by a dive in support from Democrats. A January Pew Research Center poll found that 54 percent of Americans had a favorable approval of the court, down from 70 percent in August of 2020, just before the death of Ginsburg. Favorable approval among Democrats was at 46 percent, down from 67 percent in August of 2020.
Fifty-four percent of Americans said the Roe decision should be upheld in a May Washington Post/ABC News poll, while 28 percent believe it should be overturned — a roughly 2-to-1 margin. The same poll found 36 percent of Americans supported outlawing abortion after the first six or 15 weeks of pregnancy, which is closer to the position Roberts took in Friday’s ruling. He supported allowing states to shorten the window for legal abortion, but objected to fully overturning Roe.
National polling on concealed carry permits is more muddled. In 2004, Gallup found 27 percent of Americans believed “any private citizen” should be able to carry a concealed weapon, while 27 percent believed “only those with a clear need” and 44 percent of Americans believed only safety officials. A year later, Gallup found that 56 percent of Americans believed American would be safer by allowing more Americans to carry concealed weapons, if they passed a background check and training course. A May poll by Marquette Law School found only 19 percent of Americans support unlicensed concealed carry of handguns.
The high court’s ruling Thursday overturned a New York law that required its citizens to show a specific need to carry a concealed weapon outside of the home. Unlike the abortion ruling, which found that state’s legislatures should determine regulations, the court erected substantial obstacles for states in enforcing 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,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion.
What conservative justices told the Senate about Roe v. Wade at their confirmation hearings
Historically, justices have been wary of using public opinion directly as a rational for their rulings, but that has not stopped them from citing shifting mores. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s 2003 decision in Lawrence vs. Texas that overturned laws against sodomy noted an “emerging awareness” of protection for the private conduct of consenting adults and a clear trend away from legislatures outlawing the practice and states enforcing those laws.
Similarly, Kennedy noted “a shift in public attitudes toward greater tolerance” of same-sex couples in his 2015 opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges that recognized a constitutional right for those couples to marry.
Ironically, Rehnquist — the justice that Alito cited Friday to argue that public opinion should not impact judicial rulings — had a rather contradictory record on the topic. As a law clerk to Justice Robert Jackson in the 1950s, he wrote a memo to his boss suggesting that southern racial segregation should be allowed to continue because it was “not part of the judicial function to thwart public opinion except in extreme cases.”
Once he became a justice on the court, he was asked whether justices should isolate themselves from public opinion. He did not embrace a clean separation, according to a 2005 profile of Rehnquist by The Atlantic magazine.
“My answer is that we are not able to do so, and it would probably be unwise to try,” he said.
Ashley Parker contributed to this report. | 2022-06-24T22:58:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court goes against public opinion in rulings on abortion, guns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/supreme-court-goes-against-public-opinion-rulings-abortion-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/supreme-court-goes-against-public-opinion-rulings-abortion-guns/ |
Now that Roe is gone, what rights are endangered next?
Many fear the loss of abortion rights will be followed by attacks on contraception use and same-sex marriage
Liz Costanzo turned her Trader Joe's bag into a protest sign the morning that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Petula Dvorak/The Washington Post)
She took leave from work, grabbed a paper grocery bag from her recycling pile and headed to the Supreme Court. She went there because she knew she had been wrong.
“My daughters have lost their right to CHOOSE! To PRIVACY!” said the protest sign that Liz Costanzo, 59, spatchcocked out of a Trader Joe’s bag and held over her head.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade was coming, this wasn’t news to Costanzo or any of the other protesters who gathered at the court.
But the Friday morning announcement — foreshadowed on Capitol Hill by the clank of additional security fencing, police cars on every street corner and the thwack of helicopters overhead — was a gut punch.
She survived a K Street abortion speakeasy. Is this our future?
In our evolving, forward-moving democracy, we are used to a Supreme Court expanding the rights of individuals.
In 1898, Wong Kim Ark, a boy born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, won the right to be a U.S. citizen regardless of his parents’ status.
In 1954, students of color won the right to attend any public school in Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1969, Mary Beth Tinker won the right to wear a black armband to school to protest the Vietnam War.
These are the cases that establish freedoms woven into our society, norms that are an undisputed part of American culture. And until abortion rights became used as a political weapon — despite the steadily declining abortion rate — the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision carved out one of those rights. Decided. Done. Behind us. So much a part of life, it was barely noticed as a subplot in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
“I was wrong,” said Costanzo, a former schoolteacher who told her social studies students that one of the cases she would not argue with them was Roe v. Wade. Because she believed it wouldn’t change. “But here I am today. My daughters have fewer rights than I did. Unbelievable.”
The people who raced to the Supreme Court on Friday morning, in disbelief and horror because they didn’t know what else to do, fear this isn’t the only shock we are facing.
“January 6th was a gut punch. The guns ruling was a gut punch,” said a 62-year-old dad who came in from Arlington, Va., Friday morning, wearing a USA baseball cap and carrying a sign he scrawled on a piece of cardboard:
“GOP Most Extreme Ever Jan6 — Roe — Guns”.
Alice Marshall, 69, came because she knew many women who’d had abortions and was infuriated at the decision.
“I have bad knees and bad ankles,” Marshall said. “But when I saw a film on Twitter showing police in riot gear, I knew I had to be here.”
This ruling isn’t just a leftie trigger. It’s frightening because it doesn’t reflect who we are today — what most of our country believes.
America is a nation that largely supports a women’s right to choose — recent polling has shown support for abortion rights exceeding or matching previous highs.
And if that many Americans believe in a right and the Supreme Court takes it away, what’s next?
This is what supporting life looks like. The rest is just politics.
“Well, Miranda,” Costanzo said.
One of Hollywood’s favorite Supreme Court cases that established in 1966 that Ernesto Miranda should have been informed of his rights before he was questioned and confessed to a rape and murder, was gutted in Thursday’s ruling that police cannot be sued for Miranda violations.
What about a woman’s right to contraceptives, established in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut?
In a concurring opinion issued alongside the Friday morning ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas said he wants to have a say in whether women can use contraceptives, he wants to decide what kind of sex is legal in bedrooms across the nation and he’s looking to end more than half a million same-sex marriages.
Those are the Supreme Court cases — Griswold; Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which decriminalizes sodomy and other sex acts between consenting adults; and Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2015 — that Thomas said were “demonstrably erroneous.”
The conservative Black justice made no mention of the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage, making it possible for him to marry his White wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas.
“This is taking us back. Way, way back,” said Merline Williams, 59, a registered nurse in Georgia who was on a “girl’s trip” with other nurses to visit Washington. “They’re not going to end with Roe. They’re going to keep pushing us back.”
Her traveling companion, Maureen Chukwujindu, 67, also a nurse, was one of the few people in the crowd who remembers what that way-back world was like.
“They were arresting doctors, oh yes,” Chukwujindu said. “I didn’t think we’d go back to that. But that’s why we have to keep fighting. Fight, fight, fight. And don’t go back.” | 2022-06-24T23:02:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Now that Roe is gone, will contraception and same-sex marriage be next? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/roe-abortion-contraception-gay-marriage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/roe-abortion-contraception-gay-marriage/ |
NEW YORK — Stocks racked up more gains on Wall Street Friday, as the S&P 500 had its best day in two years and just its second winning week in the last 12 to provide a bit of relief from the market’s brutal sell-off this year. The benchmark index rose 3.1%, with technology and banks leading the broad rally. The S&P 500 notched a 6.4% gain for the week, erasing the brutal loss it took a week earlier, though it’s still close to 20% below its record set early this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.7% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended 3.3% higher.
WASHINGTON — With the Supreme Court ending the constitutional protections for abortion, four Democratic lawmakers are asking federal regulators to investigate Apple and Google for allegedly deceiving millions of mobile phone users by enabling the collection and sale of their personal data to third parties. The decision Friday by the court’s conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade is expected to lead to abortion bans in about half the states. Privacy experts say that could make women vulnerable because their personal data could be used to surveil pregnancies and shared with police or sold to vigilantes. Online searches, period apps, fitness trackers and advice helplines could become rich data sources for such surveillance efforts.
NEW YORK — A federal court has put a temporary hold on the government’s order for Juul to stop selling its electronic cigarettes. Juul had filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington so it can appeal the sales ban from the Food and Drug Administration. The court granted the motion Friday. The FDA on Thursday said Juul must stop selling its vaping device and its cartridges. The FDA said Juul didn’t give it enough information to evaluate the potential health risks of its e-cigarettes. In its court filing, the company disagreed.
DALLAS — With an eye on the upcoming July Fourth weekend, airlines are stepping up their criticism of federal officials over recent widespread flight delays and cancellations. The industry trade group Airlines for America said Friday that understaffing at the Federal Aviation Administration is crippling traffic along the East Coast. The airlines say they are doing everything they can to keep customers happy, including hiring more pilots and customer-service agents. The airlines are pushing back a week after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called them to a virtual meeting and threatened to punish carriers that fail to meet consumer-protection standards.
CONSTANTA, Romania — With Ukraine’s seaports blockaded or captured by Russian forces, neighboring Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as a main conduit for the war-torn country’s grain exports amid a growing world food crisis. It’s Romania’s biggest port, home to Europe’s fastest-loading grain terminal, and has processed nearly a million tons of grain from Ukraine — one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and corn — since the Feb. 24 invasion. But port operators say that maintaining, let alone increasing, the volume they handle could soon be impossible without concerted European Union support and investment. “If we want to keep helping Ukrainian farmers, we need help to increase our handling capacities,” said Dan Dolghin, director of cereal operations at the Black Sea port’s main Comvex operator. | 2022-06-24T23:06:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Wall Street rally, airlines' criticism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-wall-street-rally-airlines-criticism/2022/06/24/a03dc164-f405-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-wall-street-rally-airlines-criticism/2022/06/24/a03dc164-f405-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Antiabortion advocates gathered outside the Supreme Court building in Washington before the court issued a ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Tex.) emphatically praised God, while Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) described the day as a defining moment for the “greatest human rights issue of our generation.” Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) espoused the wonder of carrying a child: “Over those nine months is a sacred miracle — it is something you feel in every moment.”
Republican lawmakers were jubilant Friday, celebrating the 6-3 Supreme Court vote overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision establishing the constitutional right to abortion nearly 50 years ago. And as dozens of House Democrats marched across a fortified Capitol to the Supreme Court, chanting and holding signs advocating for abortion rights, some Republicans were already eyeing new abortion restrictions, making clear that the momentous decision was just the beginning for the antiabortion movement.
“We’re working on something along those lines,” Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) told reporters about plans to pass a nationwide ban on abortion. He added that he’s working to reintroduce his bill, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would ban most abortions after 20-weeks — and lower it to a 15-week ban.
Democrats now have few legislative options in a post-Roe landscape after a bill guaranteeing abortion access nationwide failed last month in the Senate, where Democrats hold a razor-thin majority. Even if all Democratic senators voted in support of the bill, Democrats would still have to eliminate the filibuster to guarantee passage of the right to an abortion with a simple majority — a rule change that Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) both oppose.
But there was no sign Friday of an appetite among Democrats to re-litigate various proposals that could change the filibuster rules to pass such a bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was the lone Democratic leader to mention the issue ― and only in the context of electing two more Democrats to the Senate this fall to overcome Manchin and Sinema’s opposition.
“There is a plan, and that plan is to win the [midterm] election, hopefully to get two more Senators so that we can change the — the obstacles to passing laws … for the good of our country,” Pelosi said Friday at a news conference.
Some Republican lawmakers have advocated deferring the issue of abortion restrictions to the states but Friday’s decision could open the floodgates for an embrace of a national abortion ban as voters become increasingly polarized on the issue. Nearly a dozen House GOP lawmakers demurred when asked whether they supported plans to move to pass a nationwide ban on abortion — a reflection of the politically tenuous terrain the party faces as it weighs what comes next while Democratic interest in protecting abortion rights has ticked up ahead of November’s midterms.
“[Federal legislation is] something we’re going to have to talk about,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Tex.), who represents a state where abortions have ceased following Friday’s ruling. “Of course, it’s been passed to the states — I’m a 10th Amendment guy, so let the states decide. But all these things we need to look at because life has been attacked by the liberal left for so long.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) refused to say if there should exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother, or if House Republicans should legislate on the issue.
“I’m not punting, I just think right now we should recognize the ruling for what it is — putting Roe in its rightful place,” Roy said.
And Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), a prominent antiabortion advocate who represents a state where nearly all abortion is now banned, said piecemeal legislation, like her bill that bans abortions on the basis of sex, should be a priority for House Republicans if they take back the majority in November.
But Smith, the chair of the Pro-Life Caucus, decisively stated the end game for antiabortion advocates that others avoided clearly spelling out: passing more restrictive federal abortion legislation before Democrats moved to invalidate restrictions at the state level.
“We’re at a crossroads,” Smith said. “We have to argue and persuade like we’ve never argued and persuaded before.”
All but conceding that any potential for change is now in the hands of their voters, Democrats immediately highlighted the possibility of a national ban, and pointed to Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion as a road map of what other restrictions may come.
Thomas wrote that “in future cases,” the court “should reconsider” three landmark cases that protect the right to contraception, same-sex relations, and same-sex marriage, arguing that the court has a “duty to correct the error.”
“They consider all of this free game,” said Rep. Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.), assistant Democratic leader of the House. Asked if House Democrats are considering codifying access to contraception into law, Clark vaguely replied that they are looking into “a lot of different things.”
Pelosi also issued a statement torching the decision that ended with a call for Democrats to turn out at the ballot box in November and previewed Democrats’ campaign message.
“The Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have majority in the Congress to do that,” said Pelosi.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) on Friday also called on Congress to codify abortions protections. The duo have been working with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) since the Democratic bill to ensure abortion protections failed last month. Those negotiators have expressed a new sense of urgency but it’s unlikely any legislation protecting abortion would gain the support of ten Republicans to overcome the filibuster.
At a legislative dead-end, President Biden delivered remarks that reflected the White House’s view of abortion rights as a galvanizing issue in November.
If there aren’t enough lawmakers willing to protect access to abortion, he said, then Americans must “elect more senators and representatives to codify a woman’s right to choose into federal law [and] elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level.” | 2022-06-24T23:07:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Congressional Democrats, Republican chart new path after Roe overturned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/congress-abortion-democrats-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/congress-abortion-democrats-republicans/ |
Marjorie Dannenfelser on Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president and co-founder of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a pro-life organization that works to elect antiabortion leaders. On Monday, June 27 at 12:00 p.m. ET, join Washington Post Live anchor Leigh Ann Caldwell for a conversation with Dannenfelser about the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
President, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America | 2022-06-24T23:08:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marjorie Dannenfelser on Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/27/marjorie-dannenfelser-supreme-court-decision-overturn-roe-v-wade/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/27/marjorie-dannenfelser-supreme-court-decision-overturn-roe-v-wade/ |
UNITED NATIONS — Donors pledged about $160 million for the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, but it still needs over $100 million to support education for more than half a million children and provide primary health care for close to 2 million people and emergency cash assistance to the poorest refugees, the agency’s chief said Friday. | 2022-06-24T23:08:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Donors pledge $160 million, Palestinian refugees need more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/donors-pledge-160-million-palestinian-refugees-need-more/2022/06/24/02815180-f40e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/donors-pledge-160-million-palestinian-refugees-need-more/2022/06/24/02815180-f40e-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Martínez Castillo wrote in his social media accounts that the climbers fell about 150 feet (50 meters) down a gully, and that the woman’s body and the surviving climbers had been successfully removed from the peak.
The Mountain Rescue and Assistance Brigade posted a notice on their social media Friday reading: “She shouldn’t have died. Don’t put your life or those of others at risk. The Popocatepetl volcano is closed.”
The country’s National Disaster Prevention Center said it “calls on people not to go near the volcano, especially the crater, due to the risk of falling ballistic fragments.” | 2022-06-24T23:08:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexico climber dies scaling active, off-limits volcano - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexico-climber-dies-after-scaling-active-off-limits-volcano/2022/06/24/43d3c9aa-f405-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexico-climber-dies-after-scaling-active-off-limits-volcano/2022/06/24/43d3c9aa-f405-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
D.C. man sentenced to 20 years in shooting of mother and young son
Anthony Bedney pleaded guilty to shooting a mother and her young son after a confrontation over Bedney’s riding a scooter near where children were playing
A scooter is seen on the sidewalk as investigators search for evidence at the site where a mother and her young son were shot in Shaw on May 18, 2021. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Patrick Reilly repeatedly cried out for help, begging the 911 operator to send emergency responders to the Shaw neighborhood where his wife had been shot.
“Oh my God. She’s dying. She can’t breathe … She’s turning blue,” Reilly sobbed, screaming out, “I got my wife killed.”
Authorities say Reilly’s wife, Katie Reilly, and their five-year-old son had just been shot by a man who she and her husband had confronted over his riding a scooter in an area where children were playing. On Friday, the shooter — Anthony Bedney, 27, of Northwest Washington — was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
At a hearing in D.C. Superior Court to determine Bedney’s penalty, prosecutors played the harrowing 911 tape, and recalled the horror of the day. Katie Reilly and her son were both critically wounded, though at the time, her husband believed his wife has been shot in the throat, and the situation was more dire.
“Sir, I need you to calm down sir, so that I can help you help her,” the operator told him, calmly guiding him on how to perform compressions.
“Katie, keep breathing with me. Katie, keep breathing with me,” Patrick Reilly pleaded with his wife, not yet realizing his son had also been shot.
According to federal prosecutors, the May 18, 2021, incident in the 1500 block of 10th Street NW began when Katie Reilly, her son and a neighbor’s children were playing on a sidewalk, and Bedney zipped by in a scooter. Prosecutors say Bedney was on the sidewalk; Bedney’s attorney, Billy L. Ponds, told the Judge Milton C. Lee his client was on a bike path in the street.
Katie Reilly scolded Bedney, prosecutors said, and Bedney stepped off the scooter and began cursing at her. Patrick Reilly then emerged from the house, approached Bedney and began yelling at him, prosecutors said. At one point, Reilly walked over, picked up the scooter and hurled it toward Bedney, prosecutors said.
Bedney then rushed away from the house, put a black mask over his face, pulled out a gun and began shooting toward the Reillys. Cellphone video, captured by a neighbor and played in court, showed Bedney standing feet from the house, someone off camera yelling “gun,” and the sound of shots echoing through the neighborhood.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole G.H. Conte called the shooting another “example of senseless violence in the District” and a “nightmare for the family and neighbors.”
Bedney pleaded guilty in the case in April.
The Reillys sat in the courtroom Friday, holding each other’s hands, surrounded by family and friends. They did not speak during the hearing, but submitted a written statement to the judge.
Keith Arnold, one of the neighbors whose children was playing with the Reilly’s children that evening, asked the judge to sentence Bedney to the maximum 20 years — the high end of the plea agreement that called for a 15 to 20 years sentence.
Standing before the judge, Arnold spoke of how Katie Reilly spent six weeks in the hospital recovering. He detailed how the Reillys’ son still had a bullet lodged in his back after doctors determined it was too close to his heart to safely remove it. And he described how he and other neighbors spent hours scrubbing blood off the sidewalk.
“We have witnessed the physical, emotional and mental tolls this has taken on them and on their loved one,” Arnold said.
Ponds asked the judge to sentence Bedney below the 15-year minimum called for in the plea. He argued that Bedney’s was protecting himself and reacting to Patrick Reilly’s “threatening” behavior. Ponds said Patrick Reilly’s words to the 911 operator — “I got my wife killed” — indicated Patrick Reilly blamed himself for what happened. The prosecutor disputed Ponds’s assertion that Patrick Reilly was to blame.
Still, Ponds described his client’s behavior “excessive and unnecessary.” He said that his client suffered from years of trauma brought on by various forms of childhood abuse and being raised in the foster system after his mother was unable to care for him due to her drug problem.
In a letter to the judge filed with the court, Bedney apologized to the Reillys and said he planned to seek mental health therapy while in prison. “I would like to send my deepest and sincerest apologies to the family for the crimes I’ve committed,” he wrote, adding that he was “disappointed in myself for the crimes I’ve committed against them which is why I am ready to accept any punishment that awaits me.” | 2022-06-24T23:28:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anthony Bedney sentenced in 2021 shooting that injured mother, 5-year-old - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/anthony-bedney-sentenced-shaw-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/anthony-bedney-sentenced-shaw-shooting/ |
Suspect in Red Roof Inn murder says as Buddhist he’d never hurt anyone
Police in Montgomery County charged him and another man with first-degree murder
Montgomery County detectives charged two men this week in the fatal shooting at Red Roof Inn. (Dan Morse/The Washington Post)
The knock outside Room 207 of the Red Roof Inn, just before midnight, portended trouble. Two men, one masked, demanded to speak with a female occupant, police say. Her boyfriend, also in the room, grabbed a machete and headed outside.
Exactly what happened next is unclear. But detectives in Montgomery County, Md., say they learned enough to charge the two hotel callers with first-degree murder this week in the fatal shooting of Javier Gonzalez-Mena. Those suspects made their first appearances in court Friday.
Accused shooter Sergey Danshin, 34, made a short but impassioned plea of innocence. “I am not a murderer,” Danshin said over closed-circuit video from the jail. “My religion, I’m a Buddhist, even if were attacked, I would rather suffer while being harmed that hurt another human being.”
Danshin, who is listed in court records as a lab technician for a Gaithersburg biochemical firm, asked to be released on house arrest so he could better prepare for a trial. “I am a man of honor,” he said, bowing his head, “and man of integrity.”
Micah Clemons, 32, who police say met Danshin outside the hotel late Wednesday and gave him a Glock 9mm handgun, did not address the allegations. But his attorney, Dyan Owens, noted that he had no criminal record and worked as an EMT driver.
District Judge John Moffett ordered them both held without bond. “Given the posture of the case today,” he told Danshin, “I have to weigh the allegations at this stage against the potential danger to the community.”
In affidavits filed in court, Montgomery County detectives asserted that before the shooting, there were three people inside the hotel room. An argument broke out between Gonzalez-Mena and his girlfriend, police said, leading her to place at least one phone call.
Then they heard a knock on the window to their room. Gonzalez-Mena and another man looked out to see the two men, who called out by name to Gonzalez-Mena’s girlfriend. “At this point, the victim grabbed a machete and exited the room,” detectives wrote, referring to Gonzalez-Mena.
They put their case together, according to the affidavit, in large part by interviewing the two hotel room survivors and the two suspects. One of those who had been in the hotel room, the victim’s girlfriend, said that she followed him out of the hotel room and they ran down a stairway.
Then the victim turned around and walked up the stairs, his girlfriend reportedly told investigators, at which pointed he encountered “a crouching individual in a dark-colored mask” who pointed a gun at him and fired twice.
The gunman, she told detectives, then pointed his gun at her and ordered her to drive off with him. She did, at which point he removed his mask to reveal to her that it was a man she knew only as “Alex.” They made their way to a home several miles away.
The gunshots at the hotel had brought out the police, who found Gonzalez-Mena suffering from at least once gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead on the scene a short time later.
As officers searched around the Red Roof Inn, they found Clemons hiding in a wooded area with a 9mm magazine with bullets in a pants pocket, according to court filings. He was taken in for questioning and said he came to the hotel at the request of a man he knew as “Serge,” and gave him a gun, investigators said. He acknowledged walking up to the hotel room with Serge, but said he walked away before hearing the gunshots
At 1:49 a.m. Thursday, about two and a half hours after the shooting, Montgomery County police received a 911 call from the victim’s girlfriend who said she fled the scene at gunpoint by the shooter. In the 911 call, she said that man was outside the home she was calling from along Twinbrook Parkway.
Police say they arrested the man called Alex, eventually identifying him as Danshin, and took him to police headquarters. He indicated he had been on some kind a rescue mission, saying he’d come to take the woman from the hotel room, police said.
Under questioning from detectives, court records state, Danshin spoke about holding a gun at the hotel. “He stated that the gun jammed,” detectives wrote. “He also stated he heard two gunshots but would not admit to having fired the pistol.”
Danshin’s mother declined to comment Friday, as did Clemons’s mother and father. Detectives said Danshin told them where the gun was and that they were able to find it at that location. David Hogan, an attorney for Danshin, said in court that the affidavit filed by detectives doesn’t appear to tell the full story. “I think there’s a lot more going on here than what the statement of probable cause is alleging,” he said. | 2022-06-24T23:28:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Suspect in Red Roof Inn murder says as Buddhist he would never hurt anyone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/red-roof-inn-rockville-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/red-roof-inn-rockville-arrest/ |
Diane Horvath, left, and Morgan Nuzzo are opening an all-trimester abortion clinic in College Park, Md. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
The vast majority of abortions, about 93 percent, take place early in gestation, before 14 weeks, and about 6 percent take place between 14 and 20 weeks of gestation, according to 2019 data from the CDC. A very small number, fewer than 1 percent of abortions, were performed at or past 21 week, data shows, but they attract the most attention from antiabortion activists.
They had spent a day the previous month moving equipment by U-Haul out of their homes in D.C. and Maryland and into the storage space down the road from the site of their clinic, a unit in an office complex that they will lease from an investor who supports their mission, the women said.
“It’s okay to have feelings about it, but it’s not okay to use those feelings to limit somebody else’s ability to make the decisions they need to make,” Nuzzo said. | 2022-06-24T23:29:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With access in peril, 2 women open a later-abortion clinic in Maryland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/with-access-peril-2-women-open-later-abortion-clinic-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/24/with-access-peril-2-women-open-later-abortion-clinic-maryland/ |
Lexi Thompson goes low, but In Gee Chun still in command at Women’s PGA
In Gee Chun looks over her yardage book before she tees off for her second round at the Women's PGA Championship at Congressional. Chun shot a 69 and enters the weekend with a six-shot lead. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The commotion around the green began to unfold when American Lexi Thompson, gap wedge in hand, landed her approach to the par-4 17th roughly five yards beyond the hole, eliciting modest applause for a player few, if any, on the LPGA Tour can match when it comes to ball-striking and distance control.
Then the murmurs grew louder, eventually turning into outright shouts of disbelief and exuberance as the ball drifted back toward the flagstick, gaining velocity until it disappeared into the cup for an eagle. Thompson wasn’t able to witness the ball dropping from her position on the fairway, but she heard the roar reverberate throughout the grounds at Congressional Country Club.
It was the highlight of the second round at the Women’s PGA Championship — and it still left the world’s sixth-ranked player with plenty of work to do in pursuit of leader In Gee Chun.
Women's PGA leader board
Thompson’s eagle was the springboard for a 67, tied for the low round on the day. Yet Thompson, at 3 under, will enter the weekend trailing Chun by eight strokes. Chun, who followed a stunning first-round 64 with a cool 69, is six shots clear of closest pursuers Lydia Ko of New Zealand and American Jennifer Kupcho.
“Honestly, before I started today, I felt a little pressure for sure after I had a great first round,” Chun said. “Now I am in a good position. Expectation is really high. It was a little tough to focus. I believe it’s another process in my life. I want to see the big picture and enjoy the next two days.”
Thompson at least enters the weekend with a glimmer in the third major of the year and the first women’s major championship contested at this storied property in Bethesda.
“I’m comfortable to be sure,” said Thompson, a fan favorite. “Today went really well. … I just came in today with a positive attitude. And same going into the weekend; if I go out and play like I did today, just solid and committing to my shots in the process of my routine, we’ll see where it takes me.”
Thompson, 27, shot seven strokes better than her opening round as she seeks a second major championship and first since winning the 2014 Kraft Nabisco Championship. Her best finish at the Women’s PGA Championship was third in 2015 at Westchester Country Club in Harrison, N.Y.
Thompson, an 11-time winner on the LPGA Tour, also is bidding to end the longest winless drought of her career. She last won at the 2019 ShopRite LPGA Classic.
“If I have a bad day, it’s not the end of the world,” Thompson said after a round that included a divot improbably landing down her shirt from the fairway at No. 16. “Still a blessing just to be even out here.”
Jenny Suh Thompson's homecoming cut short by missed cut at Women's PGA
Ko, meanwhile, matched Thompson’s round thanks in large part to amassing five birdies on her front side and saving par at the 18th, statistically the most difficult hole this week, with a pitch from the tall grass hugging the fairway that settled within a foot of the pin for a tap-in 4.
The best finish for Ko at the Women’s PGA was a second in 2016 at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Wash.
“I feel like the game is in a pretty solid place,” Ko said. “At the same time, it’s very difficult to win. The level of play on the tour is incredible. You can see by the scores week in and week out.”
Ko, 25, had been winning with regularity, often with ease belying her youth, not long after turning professional in 2013. From 2014 through 2016 she claimed a dozen triumphs, including both of her majors, but she has won only three times since, including in January at the LPGA at Boca Rio in Boca Raton, Fla.
Ko became the youngest player, male or female, to reach No. 1 when she did so in 2015 at 17 years 9 months 9 days. She has flirted with victories over her five most recent events, finishing in the top five four times, including fifth at the U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles in Southern Pines, N.C.
“When things are going well, everything looks good,” Ko said. “But I think the important thing is for me to realize that sometimes I’m not — most of the time — I’m not going to have a perfect round.”
Chun came as close to that as anyone on tour Thursday morning, taming the 6,894-yard layout that was playing even longer with two-plus inches of rain that fell overnight. The South Korea-born two-time major champion wasn’t as sharp in the second round after opening with three birdies in five holes.
She made consecutive bogeys at Nos. 7 and 8, where she hit into a greenside bunker, splashed out back into the fairway and chipped to just inside the fringe. She then missed a lengthy putt for par.
But she regrouped on the back nine, bookending it with birdies on Nos. 10 and 18 to enter the weekend in command. Among those chasing are Americans Caroline Inglis and Jennifer Chang as well as Canadian Brooke Henderson, ranked eighth in the world.
“You know, it’s a major championship, and anything can happen, and it’s only halfway,” said Henderson, who is tied for fourth at 4 under. “Like I said, I think I’ll have to play extremely well and make a lot of birdies and put myself in a good position on Sunday.” | 2022-06-25T00:20:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Women's PGA, Lexi Thompson goes low, In Gee Chun in control - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/womens-pga-congressional-lexi-thompson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/womens-pga-congressional-lexi-thompson/ |
‘We’re done’: Chaos and tears as an abortion clinic abruptly shuts down
An emotional scene unfolded as this Texas clinic turned away patients as soon as the Supreme Court overturned Roe
Patient advocate Marjorie Eisen spends a silent, sad moment with a fellow clinic staff member at the Houston Women’s Reproductive Services clinic on Friday. (Annie Mulligan/For The Washington Post)
HOUSTON — The phones started ringing, as they always did, moments after Houston Women’s Reproductive Services opened for business at 9 a.m. on Friday — with patients in need of abortions calling to secure a spot on the schedule.
“Can we still do abortions today?” asked patient advocate Marjorie Eisen, thinking about the 20 women they already had on the schedule.
Several were already in the waiting room, scrolling through their phones as they waited for their appointments.
“No,” said Kathy Kleinfeld, a co-owner of the clinic. “We’re done.”
For the first time since 1973, Americans would not have a constitutional right to abortion. The seismic ruling will transform life for millions of women years into the future. But on this steamy Friday morning in Texas, it came as an abrupt, life-altering change for the patients who would sit down in the waiting room that day, thinking they had found a solution to their unwanted pregnancies.
The state had already banned abortions at six weeks, but the end of Roe reinstituted an existing all-out ban enacted before the landmark precedent, making it instantly illegal for the doctors and staff at the clinic to perform the procedure. And while the clinic’s lawyers plan to challenge that law in court, the most they can do is buy the clinic a little more time: In 30 days, a trigger ban will take effect in Texas, banning abortions across the state.
Suddenly, the staff had to decide what to tell their patients. Some of the women on the schedule that day had kids, others didn’t. They were White, Black and Hispanic. At least one had driven hundreds of miles to get to Houston that day, because the lone clinic in her home state of Mississippi was scheduling appointments several weeks out — and she wanted to put her pregnancy behind her.
Kleinfeld began taking the women out of the waiting room, one by one, to deliver the news.
The second woman she spoke to ran out of the clinic in tears.
Since she opened Houston Women’s Reproductive Services in 2019, Kleinfeld had worked hard to create a space where her patients would feel comfortable. She keeps a vase of lilies in the waiting room and lines the walls with motivational posters in various pastel shades.
As Kleinfeld told patients about the ruling, a Spotify playlist called “Peaceful Guitar” played in the background.
Meanwhile, other patient advocates turned to the phones: They had 35 scheduled patients to call.
Eisen, who had worked in abortion care for 30 years, hadn’t really prepared for this moment. Even after a draft of the decision leaked in May, she hadn’t wanted to believe Roe could really fall.
“We don’t even know what states to send them to,” Eisen said, talking to the other patient advocates. “California?”
She looked over a map of America, the states with abortion bans shaded gray, then picked up the phone. She would start with the earliest appointments and work her way through the afternoon, she decided: Better to minimize the number of patients they had to turn away in person.
One of the first patients on the list was Victoria, a 25-year old single mother who was five weeks into her pregnancy.
Victoria, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition that only her first name be used to protect her privacy, was 30 minutes away from the clinic when she got the call, stopped at a red light. As soon as she heard the news, she said, she broke down crying, trying to figure out what she would do now.
“There are a lot of women who just can’t,” she later said in an interview. “And right now I just can’t.”
Even though she couldn’t get her abortion, Victoria decided to come into the clinic to talk through her options. The staff gave her a handout about ordering abortion pills online and mentioned a few states where the procedure was still legal.
New Mexico. Colorado. Florida. Illinois.
Victoria would have to line up child care, she said, and ask for extra time off work. She would be able to cover her travel expenses, but just barely: After her abortion, she said, she’d be back living “paycheck to paycheck.”
The news was particularly painful, Victoria said, because she’d found out about her pregnancy so early. As restrictive as Texas’s six-week ban had been, she said, she’d still managed to “beat it.”
“I’m five weeks, there’s no heartbeat.” And still, she said, “my rights were just taken.”
After Victoria left the clinic, Eisen continued to move through her calls. Some of the patients took the news in stride, calmly asking questions about various clinics in other states. Others asked if she was sure about the ruling. One begged.
“I can pay extra,” the woman said.
“It’s not an issue of expense,” said Eisen. “It’s just an issue of legality.”
The phones kept ringing through much of the morning with new patients calling to schedule appointments, completely unaware of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Eisen and others kept repeating the same message: We have a decision from the Supreme Court. Think about who you might be able to stay with in other states. It’s devastating. I’m so sorry.
Finally, Kleinfeld decided that she needed to record a new outgoing message.
“I’m sorry to report that as of today, Friday, June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade, the right to legalized abortion, has been overturned,” Kleinfeld recited. “As of today, we are no longer able to provide abortion services.”
She paused, then added one more thought.
“We hope you all remember this when it’s time to vote.”
Turning away patient after patient, Kleinfeld was frustrated by how little help she could offer. When the Texas abortion ban took effect in the fall, she had sent patients to a sister clinic in Oklahoma. When Oklahoma banned abortions in the spring, she diverted them to providers in New Mexico or Colorado.
Now, most of the Southeast and Midwest would be dark.
All morning, Kleinfeld had been handing out copies of a Ms. Magazine article titled “People Are Getting Creative Obtaining Abortion Pills Online,” which outlined various places to buy abortion pills — both legally and illegally. She marked “Aid Access” with a yellow highlighter, drawing attention to an Austrian-based organization run by Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts, which mails abortion pills to all 50 states, including many states that have banned abortion by mail.
She couldn’t advise people to order abortion pills illegally online, Kleinfeld said with a smile — but she could hand out recommended reading.
The doorbell rang, and Kleinfeld looked over at their external video camera.
Another patient was waiting to come in. | 2022-06-25T00:20:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chaos and tears as an abortion clinic abruptly shuts down as court overturns Roe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/abortion-clinic-dobbs-supreme-court-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/abortion-clinic-dobbs-supreme-court-roe/ |
Biden confronts a bombshell that could define his presidency
Roe’s demise could give Biden a way to find his voice and re-energize his presidency — or just escalate the divisions that have made it so hard to govern
President Biden vowed to protect what remains of abortion access in a speech at the White House on Friday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
President Biden seized on the demise of Roe v. Wade on Friday as a way to re-energize Democrats’ electoral prospects and revive his presidency, urging voters to choose candidates who support abortion rights as he sought to regain the voice of an administration that has been struggling amid a turbulent political landscape.
Speaking from the White House two hours after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision, Biden said his administration would do everything it could to protect abortion rights but stressed that the ultimate power for change lay with millions of shocked and angry Americans whom he urged to carry their outrage into voting booths this November.
“This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” Biden said. “Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality — they’re all on the ballot. Until then, I will do all in my power to protect women’s rights in states where they will face the consequences of today’s decision.”
Democrats hold narrow majorities in Congress, but party leaders have been unable to persuade all their members to eliminate the Senate filibuster, and their 50 Senate seats are far short of the 60 they would need to codify abortion rights. On Friday, as protesters streamed to the Supreme Court, Biden sought to entrench himself as a leader in the fight to protect abortion access, a battle that could define the trajectory of his presidency.
While Republicans hope the midterm elections are a referendum on high inflation and ballooning gas prices, the Supreme Court’s decision gives Biden and his party a new target — a high court with an approval rating lower than the president’s that is widely seen by Biden’s base as a dangerous vestige of the Trump presidency.
Many Democrats have worried that simply attacking GOP “extremism” would not be enough to overcome voters’ anxiety about bread-and-butter issues in November. The abortion ruling, they hope, could change that, especially since it could signal the court’s willingness to take aim at rights like contraception and same-sex marriage.
“Can you run a day-to-day campaign against the Republican MAGA agenda when [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas said he wants to come for contraception next? Oh, yeah, you can,” said Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for the Obama White House. “For things to break through, there has to be a real and present threat on things that impact people’s lives. And they now have that in spades.”
The decision, perhaps the most far-reaching Supreme Court ruling in a half-century, lands as Biden is already struggling to govern a country riven by bitter cultural divisions. The president has often been on the defensive in recent months, looking for ways to enact meaningful policy and deliver a resonant message.
It’s not clear whether Roe’s demise will give Biden a path to find his voice and re-energize his presidency, or will simply exacerbate the social divisions that have created such obstacles to governing.
Some Democrats were dismayed that the White House did not have a more robust plan to push abortion rights, especially given that news of the decision leaked nearly two months ago. Biden promised to take actions like ensuring abortion pills that can be received in the mail are widely available and fighting states that try to prevent women from traveling to obtain abortions elsewhere, but he stressed that the only real way to guarantee abortion rights is to enshrine them in federal law, which takes a Congress prepared to do that.
Read the full opinion
Biden, who was first sworn into the Senate just before the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, has been at times uncomfortable wading into one of the nation’s most incendiary debates, even as abortion access entered the mainstream of his party’s platform. A devout Catholic who still attends mass every Sunday, Biden’s views on the issue have evolved, though sometimes too slowly for Democratic Party supporters.
Although White House officials conceded the issue does not always come easy to him, they say that he has become more aware of how abortion bans disproportionately harm poor women and women of color, and that he is now unequivocal in his support for abortion.
“He is never going to be the president of NARAL when he leaves office — that is not his comfort area,” a former White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the president, referring to the abortion rights group. “I think a lot of it has been educating and informing himself on who is impacted by bans on abortion. There is a huge equity issue, and that piece is important to him.”
White House officials stressed that they have spent months preparing for Roe’s potential demise, holding calls with faith leaders, advocacy groups and others since the decision leaked last month. The efforts began shortly after the draft opinion leaked, when Jen Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council, convened an interagency working group to strategize about the administration’s response.
Much of the administration’s power to act rests with the Food and Drug Administration, which in December made it easier for people to get hold of mifepristone, part of a combination of pills that can be taken at home to induce an abortion during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The agency allowed it to be prescribed without an in-person doctor visit and sent through the mail.
The administration also could seek ways to provide money to poor women to travel out of state for an abortion, although the Hyde Amendment, which bans using federal funding for abortions, would pose legal challenges to such an approach.
Top White House officials have been eager for Vice President Harris to take a leading role on the abortion issue. They see the nation’s first female vice president, who is of Black and Asian descent, as a potentially strong messenger.
Harris had initial reservations about becoming the face of the administration’s response, worrying she could be pigeonholed on the issue because of her gender, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose a sensitive dynamic. Ultimately, she decided to take on the issue and is expected to play a prominent role as a defender of abortion rights in the coming weeks and months.
In Chicago on Friday, Harris said she reshaped a planned speech focused on maternal health to focus on what she saw as a monumental reduction in rights for women. “Millions of women in America will go to bed tonight without access to the health care and reproductive care that they had this morning,” she said. “Without access to the same health care [and] reproductive health care that their mothers and grandmothers had for 50 years.”
Harris has met with abortion providers and advocates multiple times during her vice presidency, and ramped that up in the weeks since the Roe v. Wade draft opinion was leaked. In the last two months, she’s had an abortion-focused event, conversation or convening at least once a week.
Just after the opinion was leaked last month, Harris expressed outrage in a speech to Emily’s List: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women, well we say ‘How dare they! How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body. How dare they!’ ”
While Biden has supported abortion rights for years, advocates have noted his discomfort with the issue during his five decades in politics. Early in his political career, Biden said he disagreed with Roe. “I think it went too far,” he said in 1974. “I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.”
He has said at times that he was trying to strike a “middle-of-the-road” position on abortion, conceding that doing so might have “made everybody angry.” He has been openly conflicted over the issue and has at times struggled to square the views of his Catholic faith with those of his political party.
For most of his career, Biden supported abortion rights but opposed federal funding for the procedure, including in some instances cases of rape and incest. For decades, he supported the “Mexico City policy,” which prohibits U.S. funding for foreign organizations that perform or actively promote abortion. Biden was among the few Democrats in 1982 to vote for a constitutional amendment that would have let states bypass Roe v. Wade and restrict abortion.
But even so, his position has at times collided with the Catholic church, as some American bishops have suggested Biden should not receive Communion because of his stance on abortion.
One of the key moments in his 2020 presidential primary race was his decision to reverse his long-held position supporting the Hyde Amendment. He had initially kept to the position he’d held for four decades but, amid an uproar from other Democrats, decided to change course, saying the growing assault on Roe persuaded him that circumstances had changed.
Regardless of his past positions, many abortion rights advocates praised Biden’s remarks Friday, including the passionate tone of his delivery. “With this decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country,” Biden said. He added, “This is an extreme and dangerous path the court is now taking us on.”
Abortion rights advocates said they hoped Biden would continue to emphasize the issue.
“Keeping this issue in the top of people’s minds is an important part of the work we need to do,” said Laphonza Butler, president of Emily’s List. “And the administration has to, of course, use its bully pulpit.”
Patagonia to pay bail for workers protesting abortion decision
11:21 PMChicago protesters mark ‘devastating day in history’
11:17 PMPeriod tracker app Flo to launch ‘anonymous mode’ after Supreme Court ruling
10:57 PMWisconsin governor taking steps to protect women from 1849 abortion ban | 2022-06-25T00:20:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden confronts an abortion bombshell that could define his presidency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/biden-abortion-presidenct/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/biden-abortion-presidenct/ |
No matter if one feels relief or devastation, the weight of overturning Roe is profound
Antiabortion demonstrators chant and celebrate in a storm of bubbles after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
The bubbles floated into the air and swirled around the antiabortion activists who had come to the street in front of the Supreme Court to celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The antiabortion activists cheered. They were giddy. Mostly they were young, college-age women and men from Minnesota and Texas and across the country who had come to the nation’s capital for a gathering of like minds and the added bonus of watching history unfold. They snuggled up next to each other in their blue and red T-shirts and they posted on social media, enthusing over their culture war victory, and they hugged each other in joy. They held up placards declaring themselves “the post-Roe generation,” which seemed a bit of a facile boast since they were too young to know what it was like to have lived through pre-Roe times.
The Black-Eyed Peas played over a speaker and Fergie belted out, “I gotta feeling. That tonight’s gonna be a good night.” And indeed, the “students for life” were feeling good. They weren’t so much dancing as jumping up and down with a slight acknowledgment of the beat, as if First Street NE, the dividing line between the Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol, was the site of a morning rave.
It was a heartbreaking spectacle. For some honest brokers, this decision may well heal a cultural wound that has pained them for decades. For others, it is a harbinger of sorrows yet to come. No matter if one feels relief or devastation, the weight of this decision is profound. It is sobering. It is not fizzy.
With its 6 to 3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court declared that Americans no longer have a constitutional right to an abortion. It’s now up to each state to legislate the parameters of abortion access, thus making bodily autonomy synonymous with geography. In New York, you are your own woman; in Mississippi, you are not. For some people — those of limited means, those without the ability to travel, those who are simply overwhelmed by hurdles and fine print and religious dogma — an unwanted pregnancy will no longer be a private medical decision. It will become government-enforced, biological motherhood. A village can go to the ballot box and vote on whether a child is brought into this world, but the village does not have to raise that child.
The Supreme Court: Unreachable, inaccessible and frightening
The arrival of Friday morning’s decision in Dobbs was heralded by the sound of police sirens signaling that once again the nation’s capital was on high alert. The court was already surrounded by high black fencing and low metal bike racks ever since a draft of the opinion leaked last month. Neighboring streets have been blocked for weeks and the sidewalk shut down. But those on opposite sides of this argument have been yelling at each other for nearly 50 years, ever since Roe was decided in 1973. Those who tirelessly battled Roe have done so, they said, to save lives. And if that is more than rhetoric, it would seem that their fresh victory also comes with a tremendous responsibility. It yields a sobering duty that extends beyond making sure that a pregnancy goes to term and that the mother gets a few donations of diapers, a box of formula and the occasional “God bless you.”
The abortion rights advocates were now forced onto the offensive and outside the Supreme Court they were yelling that they wouldn’t back down and they wouldn’t go back to a time of illicit abortions. A parade of lawmakers who support abortion rights marched over from the Capitol. They could barely be heard over the celebrations and the protesting and Fergie, but they offered up a few platitudes and cathartic rallying cries, but there really wasn’t much else to say. “Women are going to control their bodies no matter how they try to stop us,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D- Calif.) said. “The hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”
The antiabortion activists were jubilant. They didn’t even seem to notice the aggrieved lawmakers. “The best day ever,” someone in the antiabortion crowd yelled. And in their estimation, surely it was. But what about days and months and years from now? Do they anticipate the weight of what June 24, 2022 will mean for those distressed pregnant people who are not swayed by the exhortations of volunteers at crisis pregnancy centers and choose unsafe means to end their pregnancy? What might it feel like to live next door to someone who was bullied into becoming a mother, to be the neighbor of a woman who did not grow into the role of mom or find some inner maternal selflessness, but instead simply plodded along dutifully but not joyfully, perhaps even angrily, never shaking the grief over the life she could have had? What will happen when those who are dancing and screaming and thanking God are asked to fund more affordable and accessible child care and early education programs? What will happen when those who felt such moral certitude in their stance on abortion find that Dobbs has opened a door to ending constitutional guarantees of other rights such as access to contraception, interracial marriage and same-sex marriage? To what exactly have they hitched their righteousness?
“Today, the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized,” President Biden said. “They didn’t limit it; they simply took it away.”
The opponents of abortion rights aimed to define themselves as defenders of life. They forced the question of when life begins and they had the audacity to believe they had the answer. They fought to protect an embryo, a fetus, a baby. They proclaimed that they knew better, that they knew more about that cluster of cells inside the womb than anyone else. They spoke about those cells with certainty and cultivated a conversation in which abortion was a kind of existential crime rather than a medical procedure.
And so it seems that after all that communing with their God, their better angels and their personal moral compass, antiabortion activists might want to take a deep breath and consider what this decision means, not simply within the confines of their household or church or neighborhood, but what it will mean for those people that they don’t know and who are simply statistics, anecdotes and talking points. Now antiabortion folks must ask themselves how much they value the lives that they have altered, the lives they may have mid-wived into being with their single-minded political force?
They won. And the spoils of their victory are an enormous moral debt. This may be their best day, but it’s not one to celebrate. | 2022-06-25T00:33:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | No matter if one feels relief or devastation, the weight of overturning Roe is profound - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/no-matter-if-one-feels-relief-or-devastation-weight-overturning-roe-is-profound/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/no-matter-if-one-feels-relief-or-devastation-weight-overturning-roe-is-profound/ |
Tahira Henson, 19, and Vinod Akunuri, 22, embrace during an abortion rights rally near the Supreme Court on June 24. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Her entire life, Christina Mitchell has lived with Roe as the law of the land. On Friday morning, the 23-year-old was on her way out for a run in Houston. As she was about to walk out the door, her mother delivered the news: The Supreme Court had just overturned the fundamental right to an abortion.
“My initial reaction was shock,” said Mitchell, a law student at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge. This year, Mitchell, who is Black, had traveled to D.C. to celebrate Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Among a throng of supporters, she cheered and chanted and held up signs supporting the court’s first Black female justice.
Now, what Mitchell feels the most is uncertainty in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. She viewed abortion as the Supreme Court had laid it out in its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling: a fundamental right giving women the power to exercise control over their bodies.
While Mitchell lives in a state where abortion is banned, she doesn’t believe that will affect her: She is religious and doesn’t foresee getting an abortion herself, she said.
But Mitchell is clear about who will be most impacted by Dobbs. “It’s going to affect Black women more,” she said.
All sides of the abortion rights debate have acknowledged that women of color are most likely to be affected by abortion laws. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote a concurring opinion on the Dobbs ruling, has previously compared abortion to a “tool of modern-day eugenics.” (Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in the court’s majority opinion, wrote in a footnote that it is “beyond dispute” that Roe has had a “demographic effect” — “a highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.”)
Not all states report racial and ethnic data on abortion, but among those who do (29 states and D.C.), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that a disproportionately high share are women of color. In 2019, the abortion rate for Black women was 23.8 per 1,000 women. For Hispanic women, it was 11.7 per 1,000. And for White women, it was 6.6 per 1,000.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights, the reasons for these higher rates are systemic, driven by a lack of access to and effective use of contraceptives.
As word of the high court’s decision spread on Friday, racial justice and women’s rights organizations, alongside liberal lawmakers, condemned the decision, pointing to the ways it could harm people of color by restricting access to abortion and potentially criminalizing them for their pregnancy outcomes.
“Today is a dark day in our nation’s history and this decision is a devastating confirmation of what Black and brown reproductive justice organizers have been sounding the alarms about for years: this Court will stop at nothing to strip away our reproductive freedom and our fundamental human right to bodily autonomy,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a statement.
“This is a direct and pernicious assault on people of color, including Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities where the path to abortion care is riddled with language barriers, cultural stigmas, and low rates of insurance coverage among our most vulnerable community members,” wrote Isra Pananon Weeks, interim executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
Lupe M. Rodriguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, said her organization was “angry and crushed” by the court’s decision to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban — but not surprised.
“The courts have never served our communities,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “This decision will directly and disproportionately harm Latinas/xs and all communities of color; this is an attack on racial justice, economic justice, and equality.”
Tennessee state Sen. London Lamar (D) said she is devastated and angry at the Dobbs ruling. The state legislature in 2019 passed a “trigger” ban, which effectively outlaws abortion in the state.
“It is unconscionable that a group of politicians, who mostly neglect families that look like mine, now have the power to endanger women’s health and criminalize our doctors for offering appropriate, lifesaving care,” said Lamar, who is Black.
Many people anticipated that the court would strike down the constitutional protection of abortion after Alito’s draft opinion was leaked in May. Among those was Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor and author of “Cases on Reproductive Rights and Justice.”
Even with Roe as the law of the land, access to abortion has been “very limited” for marginalized groups, who often encounter financial and structural barriers to accessing medical care, Murray said — not having proper identification or documentation, a lack of sex education or not being able to afford or access contraception, for example.
“Women of color, poor women, Black women are often the canary in the coal mine on these issues,” Murray said. “Their experience really telegraphs where we are going with this.”
Friday’s decision “will have an immediate impact on these populations,” she added.
Advocates point out that difficulty accessing care will be compounded for trans people of color, many of whom report facing stigma or discrimination navigating the health-care system.
Transgender advocates say the end of Roe would have dire consequences
Tammie Lee, who lives in southeast Idaho, can no longer have children. But the Supreme Court decision and its potential aftermath made her worry for those who can. Lee, who is White, first learned about the overturned ruling as she was leaving for her job as a health educator on a Native American reservation. Throughout the day, her co-workers mourned the disproportionate effect the decision will have on Native American women, women of color and poor women, she said.
“I’m just so angry, and I feel so bad for the future,” Lee said.
Indigenous abortion rights advocates note that women and gender-nonconforming people “have long been subjected to a de-facto abortion ban,” The Lily reported last year. Because many Indigenous people cannot afford private health insurance, they have to rely on the federal Indian Health Service (IHS), which is subject to the Hyde Amendment, a provision that blocks federal funds from covering abortion services.
“The Supreme Court’s decision is particularly devastating for the Native community, who will undoubtedly see an increase in violence towards Native women and girls as a result of today’s decision,” said Crystal Echo Hawk, executive director of IllumiNative, a racial and social justice advocacy group.
Of the 22 states that have banned or may now severely limit abortion, many are in the South, which is home to nearly half of the country’s Black population. Abortion rights advocates worry how that will impact Black people and other people of color, who are more likely to die from childbirth-related complications.
Mississippi, which filed the Dobbs case, has among the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the nation. Those rates are even worse for Black people: In the United States, an average of 18 birthing parents will die for every 100,000 live births. For Black women in Mississippi, that rate is 51.9 per 100,000 live births, the Jackson Free Press reported.
The Rev. Heather Bradley, director of African American outreach for the antiabortion organization Democrats for Life of America, welcomed the Dobbs decision. “We have been working for years to see Roe v. Wade overturned. We are definitely concerned about the life of the unborn,” she said.
But the work is far from over, Bradley added: “It’s so important to have legislation that provides health care, especially for the mother.”
Bradley would like to see more lawmakers push for policies that support working parents, such as an expansion of pre- and postnatal care and paid leave. Bradley, who is based in Norcross, Ga., has also been doing outreach to Black churches so they will be more welcoming and supportive of pregnant parishioners — particularly those who are unmarried, she said.
Why some Black churches aren’t elated about the possible end of Roe
“There’s a saying that it takes a village to raise a child,” Bradley said, adding that she is hoping policymakers will work to create more support for those who may have no choice but to give birth after an unintended pregnancy.
Murray, the law professor, noted that the “legal landscape literally just changed on a dime” for many parts of the country on Friday.
Now, the United States looks like a country where the right to an abortion has been “hollowed out,” she said: Terminating a pregnancy will be either illegal or severely restricted in much of the middle and south of the United States. This will affect places where abortion is protected, such as the Northeast and the West coast, as demand for these services surge, Murray said.
In this landscape, every person seeking an abortion and other forms of reproductive care will be pushed closer to the margins, Murray predicts. This is true even for people with means — those who can travel to other states or out of the country or be plugged into networks and services that can help them, she said.
“But for women of color, poor women, women who lack the resources to travel, who don’t have the time to take off from work, who don’t have additional child care for their children, it’s going to be really grim.” | 2022-06-25T00:33:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women of color will be most impacted by the end of Roe, experts say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/women-of-color-end-of-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/24/women-of-color-end-of-roe/ |
Vivian Hewitt, collector of works by Black artists, dies at 102
Mrs. Vivian Hewitt in an undated portrait. (Tyrus Ortega Gaines/Harvey B. Gantt Center )
Vivian Hewitt, a librarian who spent more than four decades acquiring, with her husband, a major collection of museum-quality works by Black artists, died May 29 at her home in Manhattan. She was 102.
Her death was announced by the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, where a substantial portion of the Hewitts’ collection is housed. The cause was not disclosed.
Mrs. Hewitt and her husband, John H. Hewitt Jr., met in 1949 in Atlanta. Both were faculty members at historically Black colleges: He taught English at Morehouse College, and she was a librarian and teacher at what was then Atlanta University. They were married later the same year.
“We both had an appreciation for art going back to childhood,” Mrs. Hewitt told The Washington Post in 2000. “I loved the reproduction of Millet’s ‘The Gleaners’ that was in my home in Pittsburgh, and John grew up in New York City, with all the museums and cultural life. We were also fortunate enough to go to public school back when they still had strong art programs.”
Their collection began to take shape after they moved to New York in 1951, when there were still echoes of the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African American culture in the 1920s and ’30s. Mrs. Hewitt worked as a librarian for the Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and eventually the Council on Foreign Relations. Her husband became a medical journalist.
John Hewitt’s sister operated an art gallery in Harlem, and Mrs. Hewitt’s cousin, Eugene Grigsby, was an artist and teacher. The couple’s home on Sugar Hill in Harlem became an informal salon, and they developed friendships with artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Ernest Crichlow and Jonathan Green. In many cases, the Hewitts acquired the artists’ work before they became well-known.
Despite having limited means, the Hewitts began to collect prints and paintings by Henry Ossawa Tanner, who studied with Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, settled in Paris in 1891 and became one of the first African American artists of international renown. On their travels to Haiti, the Hewitts bought art by local artists. They went to Mexico, where Washington-born artist Elizabeth Catlett — who had been part of the Harlem Renaissance — had settled.
Elizabeth Catlett, pioneering D.C.-born artist, dies at 96
“It was a sacrifice,” Mrs. Hewitt told The Post. “But we just had a passion for art. We bought what we liked, instinctively, intuitively.”
The Hewitts’ artistic tastes tended toward the conservative, generally favoring representational works, including portraits, landscapes and interior scenes. They focused largely on New York-based artists and did not collect works by Black abstract painters such as Sam Gilliam or Alma Thomas.
“We bought from the heart, the things that moved us and that we liked,” Mrs. Hewitt told the Baltimore Sun in 2004. “Art is very subjective, and one brings to a painting or any other artwork something of one’s own background.”
In the late 1970s, the Hewitts began to mount occasional exhibits in their home and offered advice to others who sought to acquire art with a limited budget. They eventually amassed more than 500 items, as their collection grew into one of the country’s largest devoted to Black artists.
The Hewitts decided that they wanted to keep the core of their collection intact, instead of selling pieces individually. In 1998, they sold many of their major works to Bank of America. More than 50 of those paintings, drawings and prints were shown to the public during a two-year tour of museums around the country. The bank later donated the acquisitions to the Gantt Center, which calls the Hewitt Collection the “cornerstone” of its permanent holdings.
Vivian Ann Davidson was born Feb. 17, 1920 in New Castle, Pa. Her father was a skilled laborer and butler, and her mother had been a teacher.
Mrs. Hewitt graduated in 1943 from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa., then received a degree in library science a year later from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library School. (It is now part of the University of Pittsburgh but at the time was affiliated with what is now Carnegie Mellon University.)
She became the first African American librarian in the Pittsburgh public library system before moving to Atlanta. Mrs. Hewitt held leadership positions in the Special Libraries Association and retired in the 1980s.
Her husband died in 2000. Their son, John H. Hewitt III, died in March. Survivors include two granddaughters and 10 great-grandchildren.
Mrs. Hewitt said she and her husband lived frugally, saving their money to add to their art collection.
“I told my husband, ‘Don’t give me a sweeper or a dishwasher,’ ” she said in a 2001 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “ ‘Those are practical things. If you’re going to give me anything, give me a painting.’ ” | 2022-06-25T00:38:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vivian Hewitt, collector of noted works by Black artists, dies at 102 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/24/art-collector-vivian-hewitt-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/06/24/art-collector-vivian-hewitt-dies/ |
The day Roe v. Wade fell
On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned the fundamental right to abortion established nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade. Today, we take you from a clinic in Houston to protests and celebrations outside the court, and explain what this decision means.
Abortion rights demonstrators protest outside the Supreme Court announced its ruling for Dobbs v. Women's Health Organization. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the most anticipated of the term. But while this was a stunning reversal — it wasn’t surprising. A draft of the decision was leaked in May, indicating that the majority of justices were prepared to take this drastic step.
The decision has sent shock waves throughout the country, and in at least a dozen red states, trigger laws are already in place to ban virtually all abortions within 30 days. Caroline Kitchener reports from a clinic in Texas, which is one of the states where the news this morning meant abortion providers had to halt operations immediately.
Meanwhile in D.C., a crowd gathered outside the Supreme Court to celebrate, or protest, in an outpouring of joy and rage.
Robert Barnes, who covers the Supreme Court for The Post, explains what this moment means for decades of conservative organizing around restricting abortion, and what the justices’ opinions could tell us about what happens next.
The Amazon uprising
Today on Post Reports, we follow two union fights at Amazon warehouses with very different outcomes, and what they can tell us about what it takes to go up against a trillion-dollar company. | 2022-06-25T00:38:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The day Roe v. Wade fell - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-day-roe-v-wade-fell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-day-roe-v-wade-fell/ |
Hornets rehire Steve Clifford, the coach they fired four years ago
Steve Clifford made two playoff appearances during his first stint with Charlotte from 2013 to 2018. (David Zalubowski / AP)
Steve Clifford will become the next coach of the Charlotte Hornets, according to multiple reports, wrapping up an offseason saga in which the team agreed to hire Golden State Warriors assistant Kenny Atkinson, who reneged, before it circled back to Clifford.
Clifford, 60, was first hired to coach the franchise in 2013, when the team was called the Bobcats. His teams made two trips to the playoffs, losing in the first round each time, and he was fired in 2018.
His successor, James Borrego, failed to take the Hornets to the playoffs in four seasons. Charlotte lost to the Atlanta Hawks during this year’s play-in tournament, and Borrego was fired in April.
On June 10, just before Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the Hornets agreed to terms on a four-year contract with Atkinson, who has previous head coaching experience with the Brooklyn Nets. A week later, after Golden State won its fourth NBA title in eight years, Atkinson reversed course, opting to return to the Warriors’ bench.
“I think he would have been a good pick, but if he’s not comfortable here I would rather find out now than a year from now,” General Manager Mitch Kupchak said Thursday night, according to the Associated Press.
The Hornets also interviewed longtime coach Mike D’Antoni but reportedly sought a reunion with Clifford based on his relationship with team owner Michael Jordan and the club’s vision for its young, developing roster, which includes all-star guard LaMelo Ball.
Clifford, who went 196-214 during his first stint with the Hornets, led the Orlando Magic from 2018 to 2021 before they parted ways. Considered one of the league’s top defensive coaches, Clifford takes over one of the league’s top scoring teams but one that ranked 22nd in defensive rating.
In Thursday’s draft, Charlotte selected Duke center Mark Williams with the 15th overall selection. It added Nebraska guard Bryce McGowens in the second round.
The Hornets haven’t won a playoff series since 2002.
The Utah Jazz are now the only NBA team with a coaching vacancy. | 2022-06-25T00:38:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hornets rehire Steve Clifford, the coach they fired four years ago - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/hornets-rehire-steve-clifford-coach-they-fired-four-years-ago/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/24/hornets-rehire-steve-clifford-coach-they-fired-four-years-ago/ |
Tears of joy and rage as the constitutional right to abortion ends
Abortion-rights advocate Eleanor Wells, 34, wipes her tears during a protest for abortion-rights in Los Angeles, June 24, 2022. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
The day that carved a line between the past and the future turned out to be a summer Friday in June, a day long awaited by some and much feared by others, the day that marked the end of nearly 50 years of a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.
For abortion opponents, the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion in 1973, was met with celebration. There were tears of joy, grateful prayers, holidays from work.
For supporters of abortion rights, there was grief and rage and grim determination. By evening, demonstrations had erupted in cities across the country, with protesters vowing to fight for access to abortions just as prior generations of women once did.
Whatever their views on abortion, it was a moment of profound transformation for millions of Americans. In at least 13 states, abortion will be banned in nearly all cases within days. Meanwhile, leaders of other states pledged to protect it.
Around the country, Americans began to grapple with a fundamentally altered landscape for reproductive rights and prepare for new battles ahead.
For days, the tensions had been palpable at the lone abortion clinic in Mississippi at the center of the Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Antiabortion protesters and clinic escorts squared off daily in 90-degree heat.
At 9 a.m. local time Friday, Coleman Boyd, an abortion opponent, began preaching to the assembled journalists over a loudspeaker. Ten minutes later, Doug Lane, a fellow protester, jogged by. “Roe is overturned,” Lane said. “Thank you, Lord.” Coleman continued preaching.
Clinic escorts, who are known as the Pink House Defenders, gathered under a tent, looking at their phones. Three appeared from the clinic’s driveway holding speakers. Tom Petty’s ‘Won’t Back Down’ began to fill the air.
Forty minutes after the decision, a van attempted to approach the clinic. A man and a visibly pregnant woman were inside. The couple rolled down the passenger window and a protester began talking to them. “He’s telling them abortion is now illegal,” said one of the clinic escorts.
The van backed up and drove away. The gathered protesters began to cheer.
Minutes later, another car drove up. The same protester again tried to block the road.
“This clinic is open,” screamed Ren Allen, a clinic escort, holding a sign with those words above her head. “This clinic is open. Keep driving, on the right.” The car turned in.
Allen, 24, said it was hard to describe how she felt. “It’s easier to put a quantity to the emotion, which is just a lot,” she said. She was frustrated and angry but promised to keep fighting.
“Taking away hope is kind of like the last frontier,” she said. “When you throw up your hands and you say, ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ that’s when they win.”
— Sarah Fowler
It was not long after 8 a.m. and David Turok, an obstetrician and associate professor at the University of Utah, was already at work. He was meeting with patients participating in a study of a male hormonal contraceptive when his phone began to explode with text messages.
For weeks, he’d feared this moment was coming. Turok provides abortions at the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah clinic in Salt Lake City. In 2020, the state passed a “trigger law” that would ban abortion in nearly all cases once Roe was overturned. It could take effect within days.
Asked how he felt, Turok offered only a frustrated laugh.
“When you know an awful thing is coming, a thing that’s going to harm people who are in challenging situations … that’s extremely painful,” said Turok, who emphasized that he was speaking as a private citizen, not a representative of the university or Planned Parenthood. “I feel tremendously for people who are going to be in challenging situations who’ve determined that the best thing for themselves and their family is to end a pregnancy and won’t be able to.”
Turok’s next conversation on Friday was to speak with his partner at the clinic about how to handle the day ahead, a day when more than 20 people were scheduled to come in for abortions.
As a professor, he worried about the ruling’s impact on teaching future generations of doctors. The university’s ability to offer training in how to perform abortions is now in doubt, he said.
Turok said he would keep trying to provide medical residents with the best possible preparation for their field. “You cannot be a complete OB/GYN without knowing how to safely and effectively and compassionately help someone end a pregnancy for a million different reasons,” he said.
— Karin Brulliard
Laredo, Tex.
At St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Laredo on Friday, a steady stream of worshipers arrived to give thanks, reciting the prayer of Divine Mercy on a day when the diocese’s long-suffering hope was validated.
Charlie San Miguel rolled an old, cherished rosary that belonged to his father through his fingers as he recited the prayer along with about a dozen other worshipers. “The love of God is a flower,” they said in unison. “And mercy is the fruit.”
On Friday morning, San Miguel had been glued to his television waiting for the news. The 54-year-old had attended every antiabortion rally in his border city. He ran for mayor as an antiabortion candidate. His children counseled friends against abortion when they faced unexpected pregnancies.
When the decision was announced, his phone lit up with phone calls and texts. There was only one right response, he felt: “Praise God.”
The next logical step for San Miguel was to go to church. St. Patrick’s is home to some of Laredo’s most powerful and conservative citizens, including the lone antiabortion Democrat in Congress, Rep. Henry Cuellar. In church bulletin after church bulletin, Father Anthony Mendoza makes clear to parishioners that abortion is violence.
San Miguel knows the uncertainty of an unplanned pregnancy. He and his wife Gabriela were high school seniors in the 1980s when she first got pregnant. They were frightened but abortion wasn’t an option for the young Catholics. They went on to have three more children. Now they want to support other young people to make the same decision they did.
“The fruits of this are more beautiful lives,” said San Miguel. “And if they need help, we’ve got to be there.”
— Arelis R. Hernández
Odile Schalit woke up at 5 a.m. on Friday and sat down with a coffee and a smoothie in front of her computer to edit a note to her staff. She needed to convey the enormity of what was about to happen.
Schalit, 37, has worked for abortion rights for more than a decade. In 2016, she was studying for a master’s degree in London and thought her next step might be working abroad. After the presidential election, however, she decided to return home, knowing that the fight over reproductive rights was entering a crucial chapter. “Our country was backsliding,” she said.
Schalit became executive director of the Brigid Alliance, a New York-based organization that was founded in 2018 to provide funds and logistical help to people seeking abortions. Each month, its staff works with about 125 pregnant people who must travel more than 1000 miles, on average, to access care.
The group is planning to increase its staff from 10 to 15 but anticipates that the number of people seeking help in the wake of Friday’s ruling will far outstrip their ability to assist.
“It’s critical that we be honest with ourselves right now,” she said, particularly about “the ripple effects on communities disproportionately affected by this decision” — including those with low incomes and people of color.
After the ruling was announced, Schalit’s colleagues located across the country gathered online for half an hour, creating a space for people to grieve and breathe. Most were quiet. Some asked practical questions about the ruling.
Schalit said the group was briefly pausing its work to understand how to operate safely at a time when the legal landscape is in flux and increasingly hostile to those who help pregnant people access abortion. But they are committed to restarting quickly.
After the weeks of dread, the full impact of Friday’s ruling had yet to settle in, Schalit said. “This crisis has been brewing for a very long time,” she said. “We have many days before us and need to sustain ourselves.”
— Joanna Slater
At home in Tallahassee, Andrew Shirvell was overcome with emotion as he considered that the movement he had worked on for a quarter-century — ever since he was a freshman in college — had achieved a victory some had thought was impossible.
Shirvell, founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn, said he had been agitating to overturn Roe and ban abortion since 1998.
To be able to witness Friday’s decision is “just tremendous,” said Shirvell, 42, in an interview. “This is the first time I’m choking up, because it’s actually the first time I’m really stopping and thinking about my own personal thoughts on it.”
Shirvell moved to Florida in 2013 from Michigan, where he was an assistant attorney general before being fired and disbarred for anti-gay actions. In 2020, he founded his current antiabortion group.
For years, even those in the antiabortion movement did not believe that Roe would be overturned, Shirvell said. “It’s really starting to hit home that what we’ve been working on for decades has come to pass,” he said.
He wasn’t pausing to celebrate. Shirvell’s near-term goal is to enact an abortion ban in Florida. But he said the next battle for the antiabortion movement nationwide should be to push courts to recognize that personhood begins at conception, Shirvell said.
“That would have to come from the U.S. Supreme Court itself,” he said, something he predicted was “maybe a decade or two away.”
— Lori Rozsa
East Nashville, Tenn.
Laura Brown, 34, comes from a long line of Southern women. Many of them did not have a choice over what happened with their bodies after they got pregnant.
Through stories passed down in her family, Brown learned that her great-grandmother was raped in Alabama during the Great Depression. She became pregnant and was forced to marry her rapist. Other women in the family were teenagers when they became pregnant in the pre-Roe era, Brown said, and their own parents made them endure dangerous practices to induce miscarriages. Another relative almost died during an illegal abortion.
Brown lives in East Nashville and recently received her master’s in business administration. On Friday, she was in a strategy meeting over Zoom at the start-up where she works when she learned that Roe had been struck down.
She was so upset she could barely talk about it. “To know that I suddenly no longer have the same freedoms as my parents’ generation, to know that I would now be forced to carry a rapist’s baby in Tennessee, feels like more than just a gut punch,” Brown said.
In Tennessee, nearly all abortions will become illegal within a month. Although Brown has spent most of her life in the state, she doesn’t think she will call it home for much longer. Brown was already considering a move and Friday’s ruling cemented her resolve. “I cannot, in good conscience,” she said, “live in and contribute to a state that doesn’t recognize my right to make medical decisions for myself.”
— Jennifer Chesak
The future of abortion access looks like an unremarkable office park close enough to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport that commercial jets roar overhead as they take off and land.
The clinic is called Whole Woman’s Health of Minnesota and opened in February as part of a national network that helps people who lack access to abortion in their own states find help in terminating their pregnancies.
On Friday morning, the clinic’s phones began to ring nonstop, according to staff. On the line were women in states where abortion is about to be outlawed, trying to find appointments in a state where abortions remain legal.
In recent months, around 30 percent of the clinic’s patients have been from out of state, said Sean Mehl, the associate director of clinical services. He believes that in the post-Roe era, that proportion will rise.
The clinic sits just off Interstate 35, which runs from northern Minnesota all the way to the Mexican border in Texas. An increasing number of patients have driven north using that route, said Mehl, including women from Texas, where all but extremely early abortions have been banned for months.
The clinic has expanded its hours through July to accommodate people whose procedures in other states might be canceled at the last minute because of the overturning of Roe. “Our schedule is already pretty full, but we are doing what we can to get people in,” Mehl said.
At the clinic, Friday’s ruling was met with dismay but not shock. The decision felt “inevitable,” Mehl said.
— Holly Bailey | 2022-06-25T01:26:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Roe is overturned by the Supreme Court, a moment of profound transformation in America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/roe-abortion-americans-react/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/roe-abortion-americans-react/ |
Pride Parade in Oslo in 2021. Two people were reportedly killed after a shooting at a gay nightclub in Oslo on the night before the parade's 2022 version. (TERJE PEDERSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
At least two people were killed and several are injured after a shooting overnight Friday in central Oslo, local police said early Saturday.
The shooting occurred at London Pub, an LGBTQ nightclub that bills itself as “gay headquarters since 1979,” Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported. Pride Parade, a highlight of Oslo’s pride celebrations, is set to take place Saturday.
Law enforcement said that they had taken a person into custody near the scene of the shooting. They have not commented on a possible motive, though a police official told NRK that they did not currently believe it was a terrorist incident; the pub is located some 300 yards away from the Storting, Norway’s legislature.
Norway has some of Europe’s more gay-friendly laws. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store marked the 50th anniversary of Norway decriminalizing male same-sex relations by formally apologizing for its past treatment of the LGBTQ community. “I apologise for the fact that the Norwegian authorities conveyed, through legislation, and also a range of other discriminatory practices, that gay love was not acceptable,” he said.
Shootings are relatively rare in Western Europe, but in July 2011, a Norwegian man killed 77 people by setting off a bomb outside the prime minister’s office in Oslo and opening fire at a youth summer camp organized by the left-leaning Labor Party. The atrocity was one of the Nordic country’s most heinous crimes in recent memory. Since then, Norwegian lawmakers banned semiautomatic weapons, the type of firearm used in the 2011 rampage. | 2022-06-25T02:00:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two killed after reported shooting at Oslo's London Pub gay bar - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/oslo-london-pub-shooting-pride-norway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/oslo-london-pub-shooting-pride-norway/ |
Fred Kerley wins national 100 meters title, takes place among American elite
Fred Kerley claimed the national title in the 100 meters in 9.77 seconds Friday in Eugene, Ore. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Fred Kerley spread his arms out wide and stuck out his tongue as he floated down the front stretch, all alone, nobody close to him. He had spent the past year defying those who doubted him, validating — and then surpassing — performances that had once been surprises. In less than 10 seconds, Kerley had obliterated any remaining doubt about who is the fastest man in America, if not the entire world.
At the U.S. track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., Kerley claimed the national title in the 100 meters, established himself as the favorite in next month’s world championships and became one of the fastest men in American history. Kerley won the final in 9.77 seconds despite a subpar start, about 90 minutes after he had detonated a semifinal heat in 9.76 seconds, fastest in the world this year and a time only two American men — Tyson Gay and Justin Gatlin — have topped.
As Kerley affirmed the full arrival of a new leading man in American men’s sprinting, the women’s 100 meters provided a shock for the second consecutive day. One night after favorite Sha’Carri Richardson failed to escape the preliminary round, collegiate sprinter Melissa Jefferson out of Coastal Carolina, who two weeks ago finished eighth at the NCAA Championships, pulled an upset in 10.69 seconds, an astonishing time that will not count in record books because of a +2.9 tail wind.
At 27, Kerley has become one of the most distinct and dominant forces in track and field. He is one of three men ever, along with South African Wayde van Niekerk and American Michael Norman, who have sprinted 100 meters faster than 10 seconds, 200 meters faster than 20 seconds and 400 meters faster than 44 seconds.
Kerley won the 400 meters bronze at the 2019 world championships, and track adherents pegged him as an Olympic medal contender in the event — and then he stopped running it. At the urging of his coach, and to much criticism within track circles, Kerley dropped down to short sprints at the start of 2021. He validated his choice in Tokyo, winning the silver medal in 9.84 seconds, missing gold by four-hundredths of a second.
In the past year, Kerley has only strengthened his hold on the marquee event. Hugely muscled and towering over his competitors, Kerley powers down the track like a runaway truck, his violent strides building one on another.
Kerley revealed his form and intentions in Thursday’s opening round, dusting his heat in 9.83 seconds — a personal best and the fastest time in the world this year — even as he cruised at the finish. He separated in his semifinal race, too, crossing with the benefit of a strong-but-legal tail wind in 9.76 seconds, a time only two American sprinters — Gay and Justin Gatlin — had ever beaten.
In the final, Kerley broke behind the pack, a departure from the explosive starts from his previous two races. But he chewed up the track, pulled even with Trayvon Bromell, the winner at the U.S. trials last summer, and then pulled away from everybody. Marvin Bracy-Williams nipped Bromell for second in 9.85, but Bromell qualified for next month’s world championships with a third-place finish (9.88), giving himself an chance to redeem his performance in Tokyo, when he failed to make even the semifinals.
“I got another opportunity, man,” Bromell said in an on-track interview.
Christian Coleman, the reigning world champion, advanced to the final and then scratched, having already secured a spot in the world championships next month in Eugene by virtue of his world championship.
Coleman missed the Tokyo Olympics while serving a one-year ban for missing three drug tests in a calendar year, even though the Athletics Integrity Unit stated it found no evidence Coleman used performance-enhancing drugs. Coleman called this year “a learning process getting back into the art of sprinting.” He has yet to regain the form that made him a world champion and, at 9.76 seconds, the seventh-fastest man ever. But he believes he can by next month.
“I’m the same guy,” Coleman said. “I feel it’s there. If you have a long layoff, obviously it’s going to affect you in some kind of way. This whole season for me is a learning experience. But I feel like that same guy is still in me. I just got to pull it out.”
The women’s 100, at first, was defined by who wasn’t there. Richardson finished fifth in her Thursday heat in 11.31 seconds and didn’t make it out of the opening round. Two weeks earlier, she had finished second in 10.85 seconds at the NYC Grand Prix. She will attempt to make the world championships this weekend in the 200 meters.
Richardson was not alone in surprising. Neither Teahna Daniels nor Jenna Prandini, both Tokyo Olympians in the 100 meters last summer, reached the final.
Aleia Hobbs, the 2018 national champion, entered as the favorite. She came out of the blocks slow but gradually pulled to the front. In the final 30 meters, as Hobbs appeared ready to nudge into the front, Jefferson surged ahead and maintained the lead. She broke the tape with a lean. When she realized she had won, Jefferson’s eyes bulged and her mouth opened wide.
Hobbs still finished second, just in front of Twanisha Terry, and made her first national team as an individual. At the U.S. Olympic trials last summer, Hobbs endured a devastating series of events. Race officials ruled Hobbs had false started in her semifinal, a controversial decision that left Hobbs broken and confused. She was crying in the corner of Hayward Field when her coach informed her, minutes before the final, that the ruling had been reversed. Hobbs rushed to the start line with her blocks. Frazzled, Hobbs finished seventh and missed an Olympic qualifying spot.
Hobbs ended up making it to Tokyo as part of the U.S. 4x100 relay pool, and she eventually sprinted for the team that won a silver medal. Now, she’ll take on the dominant Jamaican trio of Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson on U.S. soil at the world championships.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” Hobbs said. “One of the best feelings.”
In the 400 meters hurdles, world record holder Sydney McLaughlin breezed to a semifinal victory in 52.89 seconds, the kind of race her dominance has rendered obsolete as a world-class time. Not long ago, breaking 53 seconds represented greatness in the event. Friday night, McLaughlin trotted the final quarter of the race, even stutter-stepping before flying over the final hurdle. | 2022-06-25T03:42:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fred Kerley 100 meters at U.S. track and field championships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/06/24/fred-kerley-100-meters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/06/24/fred-kerley-100-meters/ |
Ask Amy: How do I take a compliment without thinking it’s a red flag?
Dater: “Love bombing” is a term describing a specific kind of attention which is lavished on a potential partner in order to essentially ensnare the person in a relationship. This refers to showering (”bombing”) the person with affection, attention, gifts, compliments, and premature declarations of friendship or love.
When I was your age, I countered every compliment with a self-deprecating denial, until a friend responded: “Amy. Just say ‘Thank you.’ ”
But my husband loves it and I swear he lives for it. A little over a year ago, we lost our son.
I wrote a poem about this and texted it to my husband so he could see it. My sister-in-law told me, “That was a beautiful poem you wrote about your son.” She had seen it on FB.
I understand that Facebook is a good way to stay connected to family and friends and (in my husband’s case) total strangers. I now hate Facebook. It has become so annoying and not private.
Am I wrong for feeling angry about these violations of my privacy? It’s like it’s taken over the world.
Private: No, you are not wrong. Your husband either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care to understand, what it feels like to you when he violates your privacy.
LH: This is a great idea. | 2022-06-25T04:37:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: How do I take a compliment without thinking it’s a red flag? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/25/ask-amy-love-bombing-compliments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/25/ask-amy-love-bombing-compliments/ |
Carolyn Hax: Mother-in-law damages ‘very dear to me’ cookbook. Now what?
Dear Carolyn: My mother-in-law borrowed a cookbook that is very dear to me. She marked several recipes with a long and colorful sticky label that won’t come off without ripping the pages and peeling pictures and texts. She returned the book without mentioning it or apologizing. I am not sure whether she didn’t notice that the labels won’t come off without damaging the book or if she was too embarrassed to mention it.
I considered telling her that I wished she hadn’t used the labels. That way, I could have the satisfaction of an apology. But I worry that this will embarrass her and the satisfaction of an apology won’t be worth it, since it won’t change anything. My mother-in-law is otherwise very nice and I have a good relationship with her. What would you do if you were in this situation?
— Stuck
Stuck: Me? Nothing. But that reflects my priorities, which is to focus on the “very nice and I have a good relationship with her” part of it and to detach as much as possible from “very dear to me” things. If your cookbook is a priority you’re ready to stand by, then call your mother-in-law to warn her that she’s using labels that don’t peel off without damaging the paper — which is something she probably doesn’t know, or else she wouldn’t have used them on your book or anything else. To inform, genuinely, not scold.
I don’t understand why the “satisfaction of an apology” is even at issue, given that you see her as “very nice.” To my mind “very nice” comes with a built-in assumption that the first of your two possibilities is the correct one, that “she didn’t notice that the labels won’t come off.” I.e., that she made an innocent mistake. And innocent mistakes don’t need to be litigated, in my opinion, except to take steps to keep them from being repeated — an outcome any nice innocent perpetrator would want even more than you do.
Re: Cookbook: Take the damaged cookbook to the central library and ask to speak to the person who does book repair. They have all sorts of special solvents for removing things that get stuck on books. If your mother-in-law will tell you the brand, you may be able to just call with the question. An amazing array of solvents are sold at home improvement stores. I have had good luck with isopropyl alcohol and pure acetone, but a professional may know the best process to use.
— TreeLady
TreeLady: MacGyver crossed with librarians, I cannot freaking love this more.
More readers' comments:
· So many of us have had to learn the hard way about loaning precious books to others. I only loan now with direct, acknowledged communication about the care and return I expect. I would never deign to tell someone else how to care for their books or possessions, but I have no problem making it clear how mine should be treated.
· My daughter has made many notes into my beloved cookbooks and I cherish the notes! I don’t consider cookbooks as static things — in my mind they are meant to be notated, spilled on, dog-eared. Perhaps the OP can try to think of the label as reminding her of the time her mother-in-law liked her cooking so much she wanted to borrow it?
Carolyn Hax: Fellow patron’s persistent cough was not a fine dining experience | 2022-06-25T04:37:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Mother-in-law damages 'dear to me' cookbook. Now what? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/25/carolyn-hax-mother-in-law-book-damage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/25/carolyn-hax-mother-in-law-book-damage/ |
Lightning staves off elimination, sends Stanley Cup finals back to Tampa
Tampa Bay's Ondrej Palat (18) celebrates his Game 5 goal with Lightning captain Steven Stamkos late in the third period Friday night in Denver. Palat's goal lifted the Lightning to a 3-2 win, keeping it alive for Sunday's Game 6 in Tampa. (Harry How/Getty Images)
DENVER — The Stanley Cup was in the building Friday night at Ball Arena, sitting, waiting for the chance to be handed to the Colorado Avalanche. The hosts were a win from hockey’s biggest prize. And after a taut Game 5, the Avalanche will be the visitor Sunday in Tampa, still a win away.
The two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning staved off elimination with a thrilling 3-2 win, holding on after forward Ondrej Palat scored to break a deadlock with 6:22 remaining, just the latest huge strike for Palat in these playoffs. Colorado still leads the best-of-seven series 3-2.
It was a back-and-forth final frame, with the Lightning clinging to a 2-1 lead after two periods. Colorado defenseman Cale Makar knotted the game just 2:31 into the third with a rebound that bounced off a Tampa Bay skate in front and slipped past Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. It stayed locked at 2 until Palat struck for his 11th goal of the playoffs, coming free in the slot and beating Darcy Kuemper with a blast that the Avalanche goalie slowed but couldn’t stop from going through his legs.
The Avalanche pushed for the late equalizer, a capacity crowd urging it on, but Vasilevskiy had all the answers down the stretch. Colorado star Nathan MacKinnon, who has only one goal in the finals, had six shots on goal but couldn’t light the lamp.
“Listen, this is a huge challenge for us. … You’ve got to be excited for this challenge and embrace it,” Tampa Bay winger Pat Maroon said. “… We played good. Now we’ve got to play better.”
Vasilevskiy made 35 saves on a night when the Lightning needed him most. He was a wall during Colorado’s two power-play chances of the night, turning away multiple high-danger opportunities.
Tampa Bay never trailed, with Jan Rutta opening the scoring with 4:37 left in the first, beating Kuemper with a slap shot from the right circle.
The Avalanche answered with a strike from forward Valeri Nichushkin that tied the game at 5:07 of the second. Vasilevskiy lost the rebound, and Nichushkin pounced on it. It was Nichushkin’s ninth goal of the postseason; he registered a pair of goals in Colorado’s Game 2 win.
Tampa Bay winger Nikita Kucherov restored the Lightning lead at 8:10 of the second period on a four-on-three power play. It was the Lightning’s second power-play goal in the series and Kucherov’s first goal of the finals.
The Lightning bent but didn’t break after Makar’s early third-period goal and withstood a strong Colorado push before Palat’s heroics.
“He likes the big-time moments, and he plays extremely well under pressure,” Kucherov said of Palat. “You see it in past playoffs and these playoffs. So very happy to have him as a teammate.”
And while the Lightning stared down a 3-1 hole entering Game 5, it was confident about its chances headed into the elimination game. Two championships are great, Tampa Bay Coach Jon Cooper said Friday morning, but his group wasn’t ready to settle for just that.
“It comes down to finding just ways to win a series. It’s never a thought of sitting here saying, 'We’ve got two; that’s enough for us,’ ” Cooper said. “If we had our choice, we would just write our name all the way around the circle, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
The first period was a battle of special teams before Rutta’s goal. The Lightning was stifled twice on the power play in the opening 10 minutes.
Colorado had some of its best chances of the opening period on its own power play chance at 11:17 of the first but couldn’t find daylight past Vasilevskiy. MacKinnon had a wide-open breakaway with less than a minute left in the first, but his shot went wide of the left post.
Colorado will now try to rebound after the emotional letdown of falling short on its home ice. Teams that have held a 3-1 lead in a best-of-seven hold an all-time series record of 298-31 and a 35-1 mark in the Stanley Cup finals.
“It’s hard to carry momentum game to game when there’s a day in between,” said Makar, who had a game-high 28:09 of ice time. “If you’re thinking that they’re coming off momentum [from] tonight, I don’t know. We’ll see. But hopefully we can just have a quick start in Game 6, and that’s where we’re starting.”
Notes: Tampa Bay center Brayden Point did not play for the third straight game. Point suffered a lower-body injury in Game 7 of the first round and didn’t play again until Games 1 and 2 of the finals. …
Colorado forward Andre Burakovsky missed his third straight game with an upper-body injury, and his status for Game 6 is unclear. He was a game-time decision for Game 5. | 2022-06-25T05:07:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stanley Cup Game 5: Lightning beat Avalanche on Ondrej Palat goal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/25/lightning-staves-off-elimination-sends-stanley-cup-finals-back-tampa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/25/lightning-staves-off-elimination-sends-stanley-cup-finals-back-tampa/ |
Britain’s Summer of Discontent Is Thrashing Conservatives
At the nadir of the 1970s, when garbage piled up in streets and striking workers left the dead unburied, the UK was said to be in the grip of a “winter of discontent.” For most of the decade, the country lived with a sense of impending breakdown, brought about by unprecedented levels of inflation, union militancy and feeble government. CBS News told Americans that Britain was becoming as chaotic as Chile before the military coup.
These memories linger in Britain’s body politic. This week, as the railways ground to a halt in a national strike, the papers warned of “a summer of discontent.” A tsunami of strikes is being threatened by public-sector workers — teachers, doctors and nurses and even criminal law barristers, angry at underfunding of the court system. Private-sector unions in the airline industry and the post office are also weighing their options.
Voters are discontented, too. On Thursday night, the Conservative government suffered two massive by-election defeats, which, if replicated at a general election, would see the opposition Labour party take power. Boris Johnson’s own party chairman, Oliver Dowden, promptly resigned without the traditional tribute to his leader, dismayed at the lack of strategic vision from Downing Street. “We cannot carry on with business as usual,” he said.
The prime minister, however, promises more of the same, doubling down on what he sees as Churchillian grit while others worry it’s a deaf ear to looming national chaos.
British by-elections are shaky bellwethers. The Conservative government was always facing an uphill battle to retain its northern Wakefield seat after the last Tory MP was convicted for a sex assault on a minor. Labour had previously held the seat between 1932 and 2019. And the Conservative candidate Nadeem Ahmed never recovered after issuing an unflattering claim that voters would continue to trust his party despite its faults.
But the victory of the Liberal Democrats in Honiton and Tiverton clearly rattled Conservatives. In the prosperous southwest constituency, the Lib-Dems won with an enormous 29.9% swing from the Tories on a higher-than-average 52% turnout. Numerically, the Conservative’s 24,000 majority was the largest ever to be overturned in a by-election, the third largest as a proportion of the votes.
The question is why so many loyal Tories effectively voted against their tribe by abstaining. Johnson survived a badly organized leadership challenge only weeks ago. And no democratic incumbent, from Washington to Berlin, is having an easy time as the Russian invasion of Ukraine puts rocket boosters under energy and food prices.
Perhaps the general unease in the prime minister’s party and the country at large arises from the perception that he is a man without a plan. Bullish union leaders, becalmed for well over a decade, smell weakness — Johnson caved to the transport unions’ demands when he was mayor of London — and they have a political and economic incentive to try their luck again now.
Last month, prices rose at an annual rate of 9.1%, the highest level since 1982. The Bank of England predicts it could rise above 11% in the autumn and by some calculations even soar to 14%. As in the 1970s, rates exceed those of other developed Western economies.
The threat of persistent inflation is real. If the government gives in to public-sector demands for more pay, then private-sector sectors workers may stage demands as well. With a tight labor market, they may not even need to strike: Employees can simply vote with their feet. The specter of a ‘70s-era wage-price spiral looms.
Chancellor Risk Sunak has already announced measures designed to offer the most vulnerable households protection against rising prices. However, the reasonably generous package was crowded out of the news schedules by a series of policy announcements designed to appease Johnson’s restive right-wing. Impact on voters was small.
Can the prime minister hold his nerve as the storms intensify?
In the 1970s, when a Conservative government asked voters “Who rules the country?” people answered, “Not you, chum, it’s the unions.” Times have changed. Nearly 14 million workers were union members at the end of the 1970s, but numbers have been falling ever since. Less than a quarter of all employees now pay union dues, overwhelmingly in the public sector and in some former nationalized industries.
But other changes have also taken the edge off union power. Middle-class professionals can largely circumvent rail strikes by remote working, although the blow to retail and catering is evident in empty city centers, especially London at the beginning of the lucrative tourist season.
Speaking to a number of Cabinet ministers around London last week, I found them uniformly upbeat at the prospect of facing down industrial action. They relish the discomfort of Labour leader Keir Starmer. The unions — although not the striking National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers — help bankroll his party. Starmer ordered his front bench to keep away from the picket lines, but a few defied him in spirit by taking to social media to voice support for the strike.
The government hopes to put its opponents on the spot again by introducing legislation that will allow employers to use agency workers to break strikes. But these are “business as usual” tactics — scare the electorate into sticking with the Tories for fear of something worse. A wiser government would articulate an economic message that the country understands and which resonates with the concerns of workers worried about their purchasing power.
It took a decade of high inflation in the 1970s before Margaret Thatcher slammed on the brakes when she became prime minister in 1979. Boris Johnson has less time to find a way out. The first step is to accept that the new era of discontent is focused on him. | 2022-06-25T06:43:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Britain’s Summer of Discontent Is Thrashing Conservatives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/britains-summer-of-discontent-is-thrashing-conservatives/2022/06/25/db0fcb1a-f44c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/britains-summer-of-discontent-is-thrashing-conservatives/2022/06/25/db0fcb1a-f44c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
North Korean Hackers Have Crypto In Their Crosshairs
Geoff: In terms of how many there are, there’s a publicly quoted figure, which is 6,000, which has come from analysis of testimony from defectors who’ve come out of North Korea. To train these people, the North Korean government can’t rely on hackers in hoodies in bedrooms, kids who just go on YouTube, because in North Korea you can’t just pick up a laptop and go on the Internet. All the computer hackers in North Korea have come up through the school system. They’ve been spotted and groomed by the regime to go into elite universities, to hone their skills. A lot will go into either the nuclear program or government hacking. | 2022-06-25T06:43:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korean Hackers Have Crypto In Their Crosshairs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/north-korean-hackers-have-crypto-in-their-crosshairs/2022/06/25/dab31fdc-f44c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/north-korean-hackers-have-crypto-in-their-crosshairs/2022/06/25/dab31fdc-f44c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
What are War Bonds and Why Did Ukraine Sell Them?
Analysis by Abhinav Ramnarayan and Priscila Azevedo Rocha | Bloomberg
Ukraine’s allies sent in heavy weapons and protective gear to help its army combat advancing Russian forces. Yet without money to keep hospitals supplied and troops fed, the resistance might have quickly collapsed. Appeals for donations in cryptocurrencies helped to keep the government on its feet. It also relied on an old-fashioned tool that nations have often resorted to in times of peril: war bonds.
1. What are war bonds?
They’re debt instruments sold by governments to finance military production and operations, often alongside a propaganda campaign that promotes their purchase as a civic duty. War bonds tend to pay less interest than conventional sovereign debt, and repayments can be stretched over decades. Ukraine’s war bonds are similar in structure to the debt it sells regularly in peacetime, and they mature after three months to a year.
2. What difference did they make?
They helped to keep the government functioning after Russia’s February invasion sent the economy into free fall. Unable to borrow at rates it could afford (Ukraine’s foreign debt slumped to 22 cents on the dollar in early March), the finance ministry rebranded its regular domestic debt as “military bonds” to be sold in retail-friendly chunks of 1,000 hryvnia ($34). The one-year notes offer a yield of 11%. For buyers, which included local banks and more than 70,000 citizens and businesses, the investment was a leap of faith. Inflation was running at an annual rate of 16%, and there was no certainty the government that issued them would survive. It still managed to sell the equivalent of $3.1 billion of the bonds in 38 auctions from March to May. It also weighed a sale of so-called peace bonds to raise foreign currency as it lobbied international donors for as much as $50 billion in emergency funding.
3. How have war bonds been used?
History has many examples of governments spending heavily on a rapid military buildup, then selling war bonds to reduce the amount of cash in circulation and keep inflation in check. The UK issued National War Bonds to help fund its participation in World War I. They paid a yield of 5%, and the sale was supported by a huge advertising campaign intended to inspire patriotic fervor. When they were redeemed almost a century later, they were still owned by 120,000 investors. The US sold “liberty bonds” during World War I and “defense bonds” in World War II. The latter were recast as war bonds after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, which provoked the US to enter the conflict, and were bought by 85 million Americans, helping the government raise about $185 billion by the end of the war.
4. Have other nations sold war bonds?
Governments have used a variety of patriotic appeals to try to sell unconventional debt instruments in difficult times. Italy sold bonds backed by revenue from the country’s national lottery in 2001 when it was the European Union’s most indebted nation. Greece attempted in 2012 to sell “diaspora bonds” to draw in funds from citizens living abroad during the depths of that country’s debt crisis. The EU mulled a sale of what became known as “coronabonds,” a controversial risk-sharing instrument to help member states combat the economic impact of the pandemic. While that idea didn’t fly, the bloc’s 27 members embarked on their biggest-ever splurge in joint borrowing, known as the NextGenerationEU bond program.
5. How else did Ukraine raise funds?
Beyond the local sale of war bonds, Ukraine raised more than $60 million in foreign cash and cryptocurrency donations thanks to social media campaigns that tapped into worldwide sympathy for the cause. By asking for Bitcoin, Ether and Tether alongside ordinary money, and by leaning on equipment suppliers to accept crypto as payment, the government was able to quickly source bulletproof vests, helmets and medicines without relying on a local banking system that was in chaos and vulnerable to Russian cyberattacks. A dedicated crowdfunding platform allowed donors to see how their money was spent to make the process more transparent. Websites were set up to sell nonfungible tokens -- unique digital works of art -- that chronicled the conflict, with proceeds landing in a government crypto wallet. One image of the Ukrainian flag offered by UkraineDAO, an activist group backed by a member of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot, raised more than $6.7 million. | 2022-06-25T06:44:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What are War Bonds and Why Did Ukraine Sell Them? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-are-war-bonds-and-why-did-ukraine-sell-them/2022/06/25/20bed83c-f44c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-are-war-bonds-and-why-did-ukraine-sell-them/2022/06/25/20bed83c-f44c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Russia will soon exhaust its combat capabilities, Western assessments predi...
Live updates:Ukraine pulls back from Severodonetsk
Russia will soon exhaust its combat capabilities, Western assessments predict
Small shifts in territorial control matter less than the overall balance of forces, which analysts say could shift back in favor of Ukraine in the coming months.
ON THE ROAD TO LYSYCHANSK, UKRAINE-JUNE 21: Elenna, 24, a female member of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense forces together with the other troops as they stopped on a road that leads to Lysychansk, Ukraine on June 21, 2022. She was the only female soldier in the unit in the area of Lysychansk where they have been fighting against the Russian forces who have for weeks been concentrating their firepower on Severodonetsk and its sister city of Lysychansk across the river. (Photo by Heidi Levine for The Washington Post). (Heidi Levine/FTWP)
The Russian military will soon exhaust its combat capabilities and be forced to bring its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region to a grinding halt, according to Western intelligence predictions and military experts.
“There will come a time when the tiny advances Russia is making become unsustainable in light of the costs and they will need a significant pause to regenerate capability,” said a senior Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
The assessments come despite continued Russian advances against outgunned Ukrainian forces, including the capture on Friday of the town of Severodonetsk, the biggest urban center taken by Russia in the east since launching the latest Donbas offensive nearly three months ago.
The Russians are now closing in on the adjacent city of Lysychank, on the opposite bank of the Donetsk river. The town’s capture would give Russia almost complete control of the Luhansk oblast, one of two oblasts, or provinces, comprising the Donbas region. Control of Donbas is the publicly declared goal of Russia’s “special military operation,” although the multi-front invasion launched in February made it clear that Moscow’s original ambitions were far broader.
Capturing Lysychank presents a challenge because it stands on higher ground and the Donetsk river impedes Russian advances from the east. So instead, Russian troops appear intent on encircling the city from the west, pressing southeast from Izyum and northeast from Popasna on the western bank of the river.
According to chatter on Russian Telegram channels and Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Anna Malyar, the Russian military is under pressure to bring all of Luhansk under Russian control by Sunday, perhaps explaining the heightened momentum of the past week.
But the “creeping” advances are dependent almost entirely on the expenditure of vast quantities of ammunition, notably artillery shells, which are being fired at a rate almost no military in the world would be able to sustain for long, said the senior Western official.
Russia meanwhile is continuing to suffer heavy losses of equipment and men, calling into question how much longer it can remain on the attack, the official said.
Officials refuse to offer a time frame, but Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, citing British intelligence assessments, indicated this week that Russia would be able to continue to fight on only for the “next few months.” After that, “Russia could come to a point when there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources,” he told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview.
"They're in hell": Hail of Russian artillery tests Ukrainian morale
Russian commentators are also noting the challenges, emphasizing a chronic shortage of manpower. “Russia does not have enough physical strength in the zone of the special military operation in Ukraine …. taking into account the almost one thousand kilometer (or more) line of confrontation,” wrote Russian military blogger Yuri Kotyenok on his Telegram account. He estimated that Russia would need 500,000 troops to attain its goals, which would only be possible with a large-scale mobilization of military men, a potentially risky and unpopular move that President Vladimir Putin has so far refrained from undertaking.
The Russian onslaught has already outlasted forecasts that Russia’s offensive capabilities would peak by the summer. Aggressive recruitment of contract soldiers and reservists has helped generate as many as 40,000 to 50,000 troops to replenish those lost or incapacitated in the first weeks of the fighting, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia has been hauling ancient tanks out of storage and away from bases across the vast country to throw onto the front lines in Ukraine.
The Russians still have the advantage over Ukrainian forces, who are suffering too. Ukrainian officials put the number of their soldiers killed in action at as many as 200 a day. The Ukrainians have also almost entirely run out of the Soviet-era ammunition on which their own weapons systems rely, and are still in the process of transitioning to Western systems.
But conditions for Ukrainian troops are only likely to improve as more sophisticated Western weapons arrive, while those of Russian forces can be expected to deteriorate as they dig deeper into their stocks of old, outdated equipment, said retired Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. forces in Europe who is now with the Center for European Policy Analysis. At some point in the coming months, the Ukrainians will have received enough Western weaponry that it is likely they will be able to go on the counteroffensive and reverse the tide of the war, he said.
“I remain very optimistic that Ukraine is going to win, and that by the end of this year Russia will be driven back to the Feb. 24 line,” he said, referring to the boundaries of Russian-occupied areas in Crimea and Donbas captured during fighting in 2014 and 2015. “Right now it sucks to be on the receiving end of all this Russian artillery. But my assessment is that things are going to be trending in favor of the Ukrainians in the next few weeks.”
Already there are indications that the supply of Western weapons is gathering pace. Newly arrived French CAESAR howitzers were videoed in action on the battlefield last week, followed this week by German Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzers, the first of the heavy weapons promised by Germany to be delivered.
The first of the much anticipated U.S. HIMARS systems, which will give the Ukrainians the ability to strike up to 50 miles behind Russian lines, have also been delivered to Ukraine in recent days, according to U.S. officials, though these weapons have not yet been reported in use on the front lines.
It is difficult to predict the future because so much isn’t known about the conditions and strength of Ukrainian forces, said Mattia Nelles, a German political analyst who studies Ukraine. The Ukrainians have maintained a high level of operational secrecy, making it hard to know, for example, how many troops they still have in the Lysychansk area or the true rate of casualties, he said.
Another unknown is the extent of Russian artillery stocks, which Western intelligence estimates had initially underestimated, the Western official said. Expecting a short war in which Ukrainian forces quickly folded, the Russians made no effort to ramp up production before the invasion and although they have presumably now done so, their defense industrial complex does not have the capacity to keep up with the “enormous” rate at which Russia is expending artillery shells, the Western official said. “Their supply is not infinite,” he said.
And although Ukrainian forces are having a tough time right now, they do not appear in danger of collapse, said expert Michael Kofman, director of Russian Studies at the Center for Naval Analysis, speaking to the Silverado Policy Accelerator podcast, Geopolitics Decanted.
The Ukrainians are continuing to harass Russian forces north of the city of Kharkiv and have made limited gains in a small offensive outside the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, helping divert Russian resources away from the Donbas front.
The minor territorial gains currently being notched up by Russia are less significant than the overall balance of power on the battlefield, Kofman said.
“The most significant part of the war isn’t these geographic points, because now it’s a contest of will but also a material contest, of who is going to run out of equipment and ammunition and their best units first,” he said. “Both of these forces likely to get exhausted over the summer and then there will be an operational pause.”
At that point, assuming sufficient quantities of weaponry and ammunition have arrived, the hope is that Ukraine will be able to go on the counteroffensive and start rolling Russian troops back, Ukrainian officials have said.
If not, both sides will dig in to defend their positions, and a stalemate will ensue, barring the unlikely prospect of a diplomatic breakthrough, the Western official said.
“You’ll have two sides not seeking territorial advantage but on operational pause, focused on resupplying and relieving the front line, at which point you are into a protracted conflict,” he said | 2022-06-25T08:06:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russian military offensive in Ukraine could soon grind to a halt, Western intelligence predicts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/25/ukraine-russia-balance-of-forces/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/25/ukraine-russia-balance-of-forces/ |
Mass. Gov Charlie Baker is one of four GOP governors of blue states who have said they will uphold abortion rights. (Steven Senne/AP)
Larry Hogan of Maryland
Charlie Baker of Massachusetts
Chris Sununu of New Hampshire
Phil Scott of Vermont
States nationwide are free to ban or drastically reduce access to abortion after the Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, a landmark ruling that has for nearly five decades established a fundamental right to the procedure. In as many as 20 states — the vast majority of which are dominated by Republicans — bans are already in place or could be enacted within months.
Republicans also control the governor’s mansion in four blue states: Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire and Vermont. Polls indicate the four GOP governors are among the most popular executives in the country, and all have governed with a lighter touch on social issues relative to their conservative colleagues elsewhere. All four governors have said they will uphold abortion rights, though some have fought against expanding access to the procedure.
Here’s the latest on abortion rights in the four states.
Hogan is well-known nationally for his criticism of former president Donald Trump, who appointed three of the Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe. He is a Catholic who personally opposes abortion but has generally avoided weighing in on the issue.
On Friday, Hogan said via email that his state passed laws 30 years ago to protect access to abortion. “I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of Maryland, and that is what I have always done and will continue to do as governor,” Hogan said, as calls mounted for the legislature to enshrine protections in the state constitution. The 1992 law prohibits the state from interfering with “a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy,” while also providing immunity to physicians for providing the services.
In March, Maryland’s Democratic-controlled legislature strengthened abortion rights. Lawmakers approved measures that allow more medical professionals to perform the procedure and ban most insurers from charging patients out-of-pocket costs for an abortion.
Hogan, who will leave office early next year after being term-limited, vetoed the bills but was overruled by Democratic supermajorities in Annapolis. In May, he used a discretionary power to withhold $3.5 million that lawmakers had designated for training new abortion providers.
Baker, a moderate Republican who supports abortion rights, denounced the Supreme Court’s decision and signed an order expanding protections for abortion providers serving out-of-state patients.
“I am deeply disappointed in today’s decision by the Supreme Court which will have major consequences for women across the country,” Baker said in a statement. His term ends in January and he has declined to seek reelection.
The order bars state officials from assisting out-of-state investigations into people who seek an abortion in Massachusetts and bans cooperation with interstate extradition requests on charges related to receiving or providing the procedure. It also protects medical professionals from retaliation in Massachusetts if they are disqualified by another state for providing abortion services.
The Bay State permits all abortions up to 24 weeks. In 2020, Baker vetoed a bill that further expanded access to abortion within state law, saying that provisions such as allowing some minors to undergo the procedure without parental consent went too far. The state legislature overrode his veto.
New Hampshire’s legislature is controlled by Republicans and it does not have a law that explicitly protects abortion. But Sununu said in a Friday statement that abortion will remain legal in the Granite State.
After a draft of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe leaked, Sununu said that he is a “pro-choice governor” that would keep New Hampshire a “pro-choice state.”
But the governor has also been criticized by reproductive health group Planned Parenthood for signing a measure that bans most abortions beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy. After the measure became law in 2021, he boasted on a podcast of doing “more on the pro-life issue, if you will, than anyone.”
Scott supports abortion rights and on Friday said in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court decision and that a “woman’s right to choose is a principle we will uphold in Vermont.”
A 2019 state law that he signed codified the right to terminate a pregnancy. “That does not change with this ruling,” Scott said.
Vermont residents will soon be able to vote to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution. Proposal 5, which has already been approved by state lawmakers, will be on the ballot this November and Scott said he intends to vote for it. The constitutional amendment calls “reproductive liberty” key to the “exercise of personal autonomy.” | 2022-06-25T08:15:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Four Republican governors pledge to uphold abortion rights after Roe ruling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/25/abortion-gop-governors-roe-ban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/25/abortion-gop-governors-roe-ban/ |
By Jan M. Olsen | AP
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark’s Queen Margrethe and Germany’s deputy chancellor will inaugurate a new museum Saturday that tells the story of the generations of refugees who have shaped Danish society, starting with Germans who fled the Soviet advance during World War II.
Ingels has said that the new museum has become more relevant as Denmark has recently accepted refugees fleeing Russia's war in Ukraine, though the museum doesn’t address them specifically. | 2022-06-25T08:15:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen, politicians to inaugurate refugee museum in Denmark - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/queen-politicians-to-inaugurate-refugee-museum-in-denmark/2022/06/25/f360493c-f45c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/queen-politicians-to-inaugurate-refugee-museum-in-denmark/2022/06/25/f360493c-f45c-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
In this photo released by Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority, a convoy of truck carrying relief good including tents, blankets and emergency medicines for Afghanistan’s earthquake hit areas, prepare to leave for Afghanistan at a warehouse in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. (National Disaster Management Authority via AP) (Uncredited/National Disaster Management Authority) | 2022-06-25T08:15:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pakistan plane carrying aid joins Afghan quake relief effort - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistan-plane-carrying-aid-joins-afghan-quake-relief-effort/2022/06/25/bf6876ac-f459-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistan-plane-carrying-aid-joins-afghan-quake-relief-effort/2022/06/25/bf6876ac-f459-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
Serena Williams’s last Wimbledon was not her last Wimbledon
Serena Williams ranks No. 1,204, making her probably the best No. 1,204-ranked player in sports history. (Neil Hall/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
WIMBLEDON, England — The formidable soul walking through the door and up the steps to the dais in the elegant Wimbledon interview room on Saturday did turn out to be Serena Williams, a name that might ring a bell and a presence that can make a Wimbledon feel more complete. It turns out she sort of couldn’t bear the thought of last Wimbledon being her last Wimbledon.
“It was a lot of motivation, to be honest,” she said of her truncated 2021 Wimbledon, when she opened one match on Centre Court, played to a 3-3 score in a first set with Aliaksandra Sasnovich, then lost her footing, felt her right leg buckle and departed in various forms of pain. “You know, she’s a great champion, and it’s a sad story,” Sasnovich said that day, her own father having told her he long had dreamed she might oppose Williams on Centre Court.
The remainder of that Wimbledon plus the long grind of the three majors since went without Williams, leaving minds both nosy and rational to sense impending retirement. Yet all along, that wretched match No. 111 of a 23-year Wimbledon career just would not do for a finale, and “was always something that, since that match ended, it was always on my mind,” Williams said, and something that “absolutely” provided a push through workout drudgery. Here, then, comes match No. 112 and 24 years in the first round on Tuesday against Harmony Tan, a 24-year-old Frenchwoman ranked No. 113.
From the archives: A slip, tears fall, and Serena Williams’s bid for major No. 24 ends in first round at Wimbledon
Williams ranks No. 1,204, making her probably the best No. 1,204-ranked player in sports history. She once won an Australian Open (2007) from a ranking of 81. In doubles with Ons Jabeur at Eastbourne this past week and in practice, she said: “I felt more prepared than I thought I would like a month ago or two months ago or three months ago. Way more.”
She had strained last summer to make the 2021 U.S. Open, she said, but her hamstring protested and there came a point of realization “that I’m not going to make it,” so she “hung up my rackets” and called it “a tough injury to have.” (“It was no fun,” she said.) So, across ensuing months: “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t retire. I just needed to heal physically, mentally, and yeah, I had no plans, to be honest. I didn’t know when I would come back, didn’t know how I would come back, and obviously Wimbledon is such a great place to be and it just worked out.”
Unwilling to close her Wimbledon career in excruciation with a match record of 98-13, seven titles and four finalist appearances, she’s back at age 40, back at singles tennis for the first time since that dreary 3-3, and back sounding rather like Tiger Woods at the Masters and PGA Championship when that fellow star assessed whether he found himself capable of winning.
(Note: He did.)
“You know the answer to that,” Williams said to a question about what might constitute a good outcome here.
To a sprinkle of laughter in the room, she added, “Come on, now.”
She said: “I have high goals, but also, we’ll see. I’m not going to answer that.”
She deployed that right not to answer concerning two issues, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision of Friday, and the All England Club’s decision of April barring Russian and Belarusian players from participation this year because of the invasion of Ukraine. On Roe vs. Wade, she said: “Yeah, I think that’s a very interesting question. I don’t have any thoughts that I’m ready to share on that decision.” On Ukraine, she said, “Another heavy subject that involves a tremendous amount of politics, from what I understand, and government, and I’m gonna step away from that.”
She spoke fondly of multiple matters: her year pretty much out of the game, her amazement at having a movie she helped produce (“King Richard”) nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, of commitment to her work as an investor. “Its been totally different, honestly,” she said. “A part of me feels like that’s a little bit more of my life now, than tournaments,” and she laughed slightly at that.
“When you do have a venture company, you do have to go all in, and it definitely takes literally all my extra time,” she said. “And it’s fun. I’m currently out of the office the next few weeks. If you email me, you’ll get the ‘out-of-office’ ” notification, she said with air quotes. “I absolutely love what I do. I love investing in companies. And then the Oscars was really fun, just the whole tour, the whole tour of that whole moment was incredible to be a part of such an amazing movie, was something that I just, you don’t think about. At best, you think of winning Grand Slams, not being nominated for an Oscar for a film that you produced, so it was pretty awesome.”
Feinstein: Rafael Nadal — gracious, charming and brilliant — is the best of tennis
To the question about mental health, she looks at her own longevity, which she attributes by now to her judiciousness in her numbers of tournaments way back when. “There’s often times that I think, subconsciously, I take breaks,” he said. “I never played as much as the next player throughout my whole career. And I think that was all subconscious, me taking care of myself and knowing how to take care of myself. And a lot of people have to learn that, and I think that was something that my parents built into me, like, it was already programmed in me, and so it was just something that I always naturally did.”
Now she’s 40 and she’s here, and as French Open finalist Coco Gauff put it on Saturday: “I think whenever she’s in a tournament, she’s always a contender to win even if she hasn’t played in a year.” Then from here, Williams said: “Who knows where I’ll pop up next? You’ve got to be ready.” | 2022-06-25T17:10:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Serena Williams returns to Wimbledon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/25/serena-williams-wimbledon-return/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/25/serena-williams-wimbledon-return/ |
Man, 87, struck and killed in Rockville pedestrian crash
Police say the man was in the road, not the crosswalk, when hit
An 87-year-old man was killed when a car hit him early Friday morning, police say. The man, identified as Randall Dwight Gibson, was pronounced dead at the scene.
At 4:36 a.m., 4th District officers and Montgomery Fire Rescue personnel responded to a report of a pedestrian struck by a 2016 blue Kia Optima at the area of Georgia Avenue and Rossmoor Boulevard. Police have not released the name of the driver, pending an ongoing investigation.
A spokesperson for the Montgomery County Police Department said that the Collision Reconstruction Unit conducts a thorough investigation and presents fatality cases to the State’s Attorney Office before any charges are considered.
One of Gibson’s sons, Daniel, 47, said that his father sometimes would leave home, but family members were always able to locate him. Daniel Gibson said that his brother first learned of their father’s death from police about 5:30 a.m. Daniel Gibson’s mother was on a trip with his sister and cousin in New England when they learned the news.
When he later learned what happened, he headed to the site of the crash, where his brother had already spoken with police.
Daniel Gibson said that his father loved his family and had a long work history in engineering. Randall Dwight Gibson, born in Oklahoma City, received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, and later a master’s degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University.
He began working in engineering with the Vitro Corp. in 1958 and spent 50 years working as an engineer.
“He was a wonderful father and great family man,” Daniel Gibson said. “He was a very nice guy, and when he was growing up, going to church was always important to him.” | 2022-06-25T17:14:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rockville man, 87, killed in pedestrian crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/25/rockville-pedestrian-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/25/rockville-pedestrian-crash/ |
The Trump court limited women’s rights using 19th-century standards
Justice Alito gave a highly selective account of the nation’s “history and traditions” to achieve a longstanding conservative political goal.
Perspective by Reva Siegel
Reva Siegel is Nicholas deB. Katzenbach professor at Yale Law School. She co-wrote an amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization arguing that abortion rights are grounded in equal protection as well as liberty.
Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. sits during a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, April 23, 2021. He wrote the majority opinion in the case overturning Roe v. Wade. (Erin Schaff/the New York Times via AP, Pool)
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court justices President Donald Trump appointed to reverse Roe have just made good on Trump’s pledge. The decision so dramatically limits women’s constitutional liberties that one can almost hear the chants of “lock her up!” from Trump’s supporters.
On the right, however, the decision isn’t being viewed as a step backward. Rather, it is being hailed as a constitutional restoration — a triumph of “originalism” over “living constitutionalism.” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the majority opinion, sees himself as restoring constitution as law and cleansing it of politics.
But Dobbs is plainly a political project. Reversing Roe has been the animating goal of the conservative legal movement since it mobilized under the banner of originalism during the Reagan administration. Far from setting aside politics in favor of a neutral interpretation of law, Alito’s decision reveals how conservative judges encode movement goals and values undercover of highly selective historical claims.
Alito’s opinion — joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — follows a kind of originalism in tying the Fourteenth Amendment’s meaning to the distant past, even if it doesn’t purport to identify the meaning of the amendment to voters who ratified it. (Roe locates the right to abortion in the liberty guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.) Rather, Alito follows a case called Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) and interprets the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of liberty in light of the nation’s “history and traditions”; according to this view, only rights deeply embedded in that history are protected. And the right to an abortion is not, the majority said this week.
Justice Alito claims that tying the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s liberty guarantee to America’s “history and traditions” prevents the justices from imposing their own views on the case at hand. “In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to ’liberty,’” he writes, "we must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what that Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.” Here he echoes the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote, in “Originalism: The Lesser Evil,” that looking to history “establishes a historical criterion that is conceptually quite separate from the preferences of the judge himself.”
But Dobbs shows why both of these claims are wrong. A judge’s turn to the historical record can just as easily disguise judicial discretion as constrain it.
In Dobbs, the Trump court defines the Constitution’s protections for liberty largely with reference to laws enacted in mid-19th-century America. During that period — conveniently enough — there was a campaign to ban abortion across the nation. (Alito includes an appendix enumerating many of these state statutes.) But consider what else was part of this period’s “history and traditions”: The law did not protect a wife’s right to control property, earnings, or sex in marriage; this was a period when the Supreme Court declared states could deny women the right to practice law and states could deny women the right to vote.
Why would the Supreme Court today tether the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s liberty guarantee to laws enacted by men with such a cramped view of women’s rights? The move is unprecedented. To date, the Supreme Court had not read the Constitution’s great commitment to liberty in this time-bound way — for example, in upholding contraceptive rights, the right to interracial marriage and the right to same-sex marriage. The majority suggests that these other rights are not threatened by Dobbs’s logic — even as it adopts a method of interpreting liberty that discredits them (and even as Thomas calls for overruling the relevant cases in his concurrence). Reading the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees in light of evolving understandings of liberty has been so foundational in modern constitutional jurisprudence that even the Glucksberg case on which the court relied for its mandate to consider history and traditions recognizes abortion as a protected liberty.
Traumatic pregnancies are awful. Dobbs will make that so much worse.
Alito’s account of the nation’s history and traditions is shaped and whitewashed to justify his desired results. His version of the history of abortion laws, for example, deeply discounts the common law of the early republic, which only criminalized abortion after quickening. He also provided an outrageously incomplete account of the mid-century campaign to ban abortion — writing, for instance, that the opposition to abortion reflected in those laws was “sincere.” He therefore excuses himself from considering whether politicians’ views of gender roles, in a period when women were disenfranchised, shaped the campaign to ban abortion, which of course they did. During the 19th-century campaign against abortion, advocates for laws banning the practice argued that they were necessary to enforce women’s maternal and marital duties and to protect ethno-religious character of the nation. Claims about protecting unborn life were not free-standing as Alito claims, but deeply entangled with constitutionally suspect judgments, as documents from the period make clear.
In all this talk of tradition, Alito evades a fundamental question: Why should 19th-century antiabortion laws limit the ways we understand the Constitution’s liberty guarantee any more than the history and traditions of segregation limit the way we understand the Constitution’s equality guarantee? There is no good reason. The problem with anchoring the meaning of our commitments to this past, as Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan put it succinctly in dissent, is that “the men who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and wrote the state laws of the time did not view women as full and equal citizens.” Do those justices who joined the Dobbs majority? Apparently not.
They thought it reasonable to allow states to coerce women on the basis of laws enacted during a period when women were wholly disfranchised. And they signed on to an opinion in which a body of decisions and laws written by white men was presented as representing America’s history and traditions, without a single woman’s voice represented; and those traditions were sufficient to justify stripping of women today of a half century of constitutional rights. This is not an account of history that is “conceptually quite separate from the preferences of the judge himself.” It is history that expresses judicial preferences as the nation’s traditions
Had anyone bothered to look outside the statute books, they could find plenty of evidence that Americans in the 19th century demanded autonomy in decisions about parenthood, just as they do today. These demands were passionately expressed in the abolitionist and woman’s suffrage movements. Women may not have had the authority to vote, but they certainly had views about the importance of voluntary motherhood. If the Supreme Court wants to tie the meaning of liberty to the nation’s “history and traditions, it needs to include the voices of the disfranchised in such an account, unless it means to perpetuate their disempowerment as part of our present Constitution.
The Justices who decided Dobbs scoff at “living constitutionalism,” but these originalists are of course employing history and tradition toward living-constitutionalist ends. The justices’ efforts to hide their views about abortion in a story about the Constitution’s history and traditions reveals to us their view of women. | 2022-06-25T17:24:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Trump court limited women’s rights using 19th-century standards - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/25/trump-court-limited-womens-rights-using-19th-century-standards/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/25/trump-court-limited-womens-rights-using-19th-century-standards/ |
Curran O’Malley ad questions Brown’s qualifications in Md. AG race
In the first attack TV ad of the cycle, former judge Katie Curran O’Malley says her opponent, Harvard-educated lawyer Anthony G. Brown, has never tried a criminal case in Maryland
Former judge and candidate for Maryland attorney general Katie Curran O'Malley in a 2022 campaign photo. (Curran O'Malley Campaign)
The Maryland race for attorney general already had a contentious Democratic primary, but it entered a new phase this past week as former judge Katie Curran O’Malley released the first negative television primary ad of the year.
Looking directly at the camera in a 30-second television spot released Friday, Curran O’Malley listed her accomplishments — nearly three decades as prosecutor and judge — and criticized Rep. Anthony G. Brown’s credentials.
“My opponent, Anthony G. Brown, is a fine congressman, but he’s never tried a criminal case in Maryland and he doesn’t have the right experience for this job,” Curran O’Malley said. “I’ll be ready to fight for you on day one.”
Brown is a Harvard-educated lawyer who served eight years as lieutenant governor alongside O’Malley’s husband, former governor Martin O’Malley.
Since 2016, Brown has represented Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, anchored in Prince George’s County. He’s also a former military lawyer for the Army — where he commanded a unit of 80 legal professionals as a JAG officer, supporting soldiers in criminal defense, legal assistance and consumer protection matters — and has criminal experience in D.C., along with class-action and other civil experience.
While Curran O’Malley’s campaign said the ad draws a clear contrast between her Maryland-centric experience and Brown’s political career, the Brown campaign saw it as an attack.
“It is disappointing that former Judge O’Malley has decided to attack Congressman Brown — who has dedicated his life to public service and has a clear record of delivering results,” Brown’s campaign manager, Dylan Liau Arant, said in a statement. “The people of Maryland deserve better.”
Curran O’Malley is a former District Court judge and prosecutor in the Baltimore area who resigned from the bench before jumping into the race to succeed Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D), who is retiring. She’s also the daughter of Maryland’s longest-serving attorney general, J. Joseph Curran Jr. In her ad, filmed in a courtroom setting, she notes she’s been working on criminal justice issues for 30 years.
The former allies have battled outside the spotlight trained on the high-stakes, crowded primary race for governor as Democrats try to take back the executive mansion after two terms of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan. But in the lower-profile attorney general’s race, Curran O’Malley and Brown have raised millions and have divided many of the state’s political leaders and activist groups.
The Democratic primary has determined the state’s attorney general in every election since 1952. Republicans Jim Shalleck, the former elections chief in Montgomery County, and Michael Peroutka, a former member of the Anne Arundel County Council, are on their party’s primary ballot. Together, they’ve raised a fraction of what the Democrats have hauled in.
The attorney general’s office is the lawyer for the state government and the enforcer of consumer protection laws. But with violent crime on the rise in areas across the state, criminal justice has taken on a outsize role in the campaign.
During the candidates’ lone debate, they each made public safety a top priority. Curran O’Malley emphasized prosecuting and suing sources of “ghost guns” — firearms that are assembled at home and lack a serial number. Brown said his relationships with state lawmakers and experience with the General Assembly make him well-suited to push for tougher laws regarding guns.
Until this past week, no other Democratic candidates for any top office in Maryland had released an ad directly targeting a primary opponent this year. The ad will air in Baltimore and D.C. broadcast and cable markets, the Curran O’Malley campaign said.
A little more than three weeks remain until the July 19 election. Brown has so far raised more money than Curran O’Malley, according to the most recent campaign finance reports released this month. At that point, Brown had $1.2 million to spend, about $400,000 more than Curran O’Malley.
Brown’s campaign released its newest ad last week. It featured Brown bantering playfully with his wife, Karmen Walker Brown, about why he deserved her vote. | 2022-06-25T18:02:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Curran O’Malley ad questions Brown’s qualifications in Md. AG race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/25/maryland-attorney-general-ad-omalley-brown/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/25/maryland-attorney-general-ad-omalley-brown/ |
Resilient Lightning pushes the Stanley Cup finals back to Tampa
Game 6 of the finals is Sunday in Tampa. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)
DENVER — Tampa Bay Coach Jon Cooper has often referred to his players as “gamers,” during these Stanley Cup playoffs, praising his team’s efforts night after night.
But “gamer” is a vague term, more or less hockey-speak to the general public. So what, exactly, does he mean?
“You just watched the definition,” Cooper said Friday night, after Tampa Bay topped the Colorado Avalanche in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals. “I don’t even know what else I can say to describe the guys. You’re down in the series, Cup’s in the building. You’re in a great environment for the home team. And how do you show gamesmanship? Everything we just did.”
The Lightning staved off elimination with the 3-2 win at Ball Arena in Denver, which sent the best-of-seven series back to Tampa for Game 6 on Sunday night. Colorado leads the series, 3-2.
“That warrior mentality has been installed in this group for many years and has been a big reason why our group has had some success in years past and we’re striving to do that again this year,” Tampa Bay defenseman Ryan McDonagh said. “It’s a part of our DNA and it’s got to continue to be a part of our DNA.”
Tampa Bay came up big in Game 5 when it mattered most, jumping out to an early lead, playing tight defense and scoring on the power play. When it was searching for a big goal late, forward Ondrej Palat delivered.
Game 5 recap: Lightning staves off elimination, sends Stanley Cup finals back to Tampa
“We didn’t have a choice,” Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. “This was do-or-die for us. Sometimes you get caught in looking ahead a little bit. This group did a great job of focusing on the present.”
A Game 6 win at Amalie Arena is not guaranteed for the home team, Cooper said, but he believes the Lightning will have the edge. With its plethora of postseason experience, Cooper said his team is better equipped to handle elimination scenarios.
When the Lightning faced a 2-0 series hole against the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference finals, it climbed back to win the next four straight and clinch a spot in the finals.
“I do have to marvel at what’s gone on and how many times you can get kicked and get back off the mat,” Cooper said. “And that’s why I think teams don’t keep repeating because it’s easy to walk away. These guys won’t do it.”
Tampa Bay won the Cup in 2020 and 2021, but is facing a different road this year. It beat the Dallas Stars in six games for its first championship in 2020. The Lightning only needed five games in 2021 to top the Montreal Canadiens.
“We wanted to get back, push it back, see what happens, see where it goes,” said Tampa Bay forward Corey Perry. “We did our job [in Game 5] but there’s a big task at hand that we have to do.”
The last NHL team to trail 3-2 in the Stanley Cup finals and win was the Boston Bruins in 2011.
For Lightning forward Pat Maroon, the group’s resiliency comes from its work ethic. As cliche as it might sound, Maroon said, the Lightning was just wanted to play a single hockey game, and win that one game. Look too far ahead and the road will seem more daunting.
“You’ve just got to work hard,” Maroon said. “There is a huge challenge in front of us. It’s an exciting challenge. How are you going to embrace it? That’s it. Just because we have home ice doesn’t mean s--- to be honest. We’ve still got to work.”
Andre Burakovsky travels to Tampa
Colorado Coach Jared Bednar said Saturday that forward Andre Burakovsky is traveling with the Avalanche to Tampa. Bednar said Burakovsky remains day-to-day and is a possibility for Game 6. Burakovsky has missed three straight games with a suspected upper-body injury. | 2022-06-25T18:54:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stanley Cup finals shift back to Tampa for Game 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/25/stanley-cup-finals-tampa-bay-lightning-force-game-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/25/stanley-cup-finals-tampa-bay-lightning-force-game-6/ |
People gather outside the Supreme Court after the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Nobody should be surprised that the Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Friday jettisoned nearly 50 years of precedent upon precedent in overturning Roe v. Wade. Heck, they didn’t even honor their own precedent articulated 24 hours earlier.
In their opinion Thursday morning forcing New York and other densely populated states to allow more handguns in public, the conservative majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that medieval law imposing arms restrictions — specifically, the 1328 Statute of Northampton — “has little bearing on the Second Amendment” because it was “enacted … more than 450 years before the ratification of the Constitution.”
Yet in their ruling Friday morning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, setting women’s rights back half a century (and cracking the door to banning same-sex marriage and contraception), the conservative justices, led by Samuel Alito (who was also in the guns majority) and joined by Thomas, argued precisely the opposite. They justified abortion bans by citing, among others, “Henry de Bracton’s 13th-century treatise.” That was written circa 1250 and referred to monsters, duels, burning at the stake — and to women as property, “inferior” to men.
The right-wing majority’s selective application of history reveals the larger fraud in this pair of landmark rulings: Their reasoning is not legal but political, not principled but partisan.
Still, there is a commonality to the rulings. Both decisions foment maximum chaos and were delivered with flagrant disregard for the instability and disorder they will cause.
Ruth Marcus: The radical conservative majority’s damage to the Supreme Court cannot be undone
The high court was meant to be the guarantor of law and order. But the conservative justices, intoxicated by their supermajority, have abandoned their solemn duty to promote stability in the law and are actively spreading real-world disruption.
Worse, this invitation to disorder comes as the nation is trying to restore the rule of law after a coup attempt led by a president who appointed three of the five justices in the abortion majority. The spouse of a fourth — Ginni Thomas, Clarence’s wife — aggressively pushed state legislators and the White House to overthrow the election. Yet Thomas, the senior associate justice, has refused to recuse himself from related cases.
After decades of crocodile tears over imagined “judicial activism,” the conservative supermajority has shed all judicial modesty and embraced radicalism. The liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer, wrote in their Dobbs dissent that the majority’s brazen rejection of stare decisis, respect for precedent, “breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law.”
Opinion: The Supreme Court’s radical abortion ruling begins a dangerous new era
Even Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the gun ruling, scolded fellow conservatives for blithely overturning the Roe v. Wade super-precedent. “Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed,” Roberts wrote. The majority’s “dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary,” he said, “a serious jolt to the legal system” that could have been avoided with a narrower decision that would have been “markedly less unsettling.”
Alito, in his (characteristically) sneering opinion in the abortion case, dismissed Roberts as unprincipled and public opinion as an “extraneous” concern. He likewise dismissed the pain the ruling would cause, writing that “this Court is ill-equipped to assess ‘generalized assertions about the national psyche.’ ” He washed his hands of answering the “empirical question” of “the effect of the abortion right … on the lives of women.”
The dissent said the majority’s refusal to address real-world consequences “reveals how little it knows or cares about women’s lives or about the suffering its decision will cause.” It is a “radical claim to power,” the dissent went on, to assert “the authority to overrule established legal principles without even acknowledging the costs of its decisions.”
The liberals described the bedlam to come, with suddenly unanswered legal questions about rape, incest, threats to a mother’s life, interstate travel for abortion, morning-after pills, IUDs, in vitro fertilization. “The majority’s refusal even to consider the life-altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment,” they wrote.
Molly Roberts: My pregnancy was unlucky. My abortion wasn’t.
Thomas’s gun ruling was much the same, 63 pages of a cherry-picked history of gun laws, with no concern for the real-life effect of allowing millions of people to carry handguns, with virtually no restriction, in the streets of New York or Los Angeles. Breyer, writing for the same liberal justices in dissent, upbraided the conservative majority for unleashing more guns “without considering the state’s compelling interest in preventing gun violence and protecting the safety of its citizens, and without considering the potentially deadly consequences of its decision.”
Alito added a concurring opinion to express contempt for Breyer’s points about gun violence, saying “it is hard to see what legitimate purpose can possibly be served” by his mentions of mass shootings and growing firearm mayhem.
The radicals have cast off any pretense of judicial restraint. Now the chaos begins.
The terror returns for women | 2022-06-25T18:55:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court radicals’ new precedent: maximum chaos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/25/roe-guns-supreme-court-radicals-maximum-chaos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/25/roe-guns-supreme-court-radicals-maximum-chaos/ |
The Supreme Court rulings represent the tyranny of the minority
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at the Capitol in Washington on March 16. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Everyone knows that the Founders were afraid of the tyranny of the majority. That’s why they built so many checks and balances into the Constitution. What’s less well known is that they were also afraid of the tyranny of the minority. That’s why they scrapped the Articles of Confederation, which required agreement from 9 of 13 states to pass any laws, and enacted a Constitution with much stronger executive authority.
In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton warned that giving small states like Rhode Island or Delaware “equal weight in the scale of power” with large states like “Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York” violated the precepts of “justice” and “common-sense.” “The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller,” he predicted, arguing that such a system contradicts “the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.”
Hamilton’s nightmare has become the reality of 21st-century America. We are living under minoritarian tyranny, with smaller states imposing their views on the larger through their disproportionate sway in the Senate and the electoral college — and therefore on the Supreme Court. To take but one example: Twenty-one states with fewer total people than California have 42 Senate seats. This undemocratic, unjust system has produced the new Supreme Court rulings on gun control and abortion.
These are issues on which public opinion is lopsidedly in favor on what, for want of a better word, we might call the “liberal” side. Following the Uvalde, Tex., shooting, a recent poll showed that 65 percent of Americans want stricter gun controls; only 28 percent are opposed. Public opinion is just as clear on abortion: Fifty-four percent of Americans want to preserve Roe v. Wade and only 28 percent want to overturn it. Fifty-eight percent want abortion to be legal in most or all cases.
Yet the Supreme Court’s hard-right majority just overruled a New York law that made it difficult to get a permit to carry a gun, while upholding a Mississippi law that banned all abortions after 15 weeks. This represents a dramatic expansion of gun rights and an equally dramatic curtailment of abortion rights.
Now, the Supreme Court has no obligation to follow the popular will. It is charged with safeguarding the Constitution. But it is hard for any disinterested observer to have any faith in what the right-wing justices are doing. They are not acting very conservatively in overturning an abortion ruling (Roe v. Wade) that is 49 years old and a New York state gun-control statute that is 109 years old. In both cases, the justices rely on dubious readings of legal history that have been challenged by many scholars to overturn what had been settled law.
Conservatives can plausibly argue that liberal justices invented a constitutional right to abortion, but how is that different from what conservative justices have done in inventing an individual right to carry guns that is also nowhere to be found in the Constitution? The Supreme Court did not recognize an individual right to bear arms until 2008 — 217 years after the Second Amendment was enacted expressly to protect “well-regulated” state militia. The Second Amendment hasn’t changed over the centuries, but the composition of the court has.
The majority conveniently favors state’s rights on abortion but not on guns. It is obvious that the conservative justices (who are presumably antiabortion rights and pro-gun rights) are simply enacting their personal preferences, just as liberal justices (who are presumably pro-choice and pro-gun control) do.
So, if the Supreme Court is going to be a forum for legislating, shouldn’t it respect the views of two-thirds of the country? But our perverse political system has allowed a militant, right-wing minority to hijack the law. As an Economist correspondent points out, “5 of the 6 conservative Supreme Court justices were appointed by a Republican Senate majority that won fewer votes than the Democrats” and “3 of the 6 were nominated by a president who also won a minority of the popular vote.”
The situation is actually even more inequitable: In all likelihood, Roe would not have been overturned if then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had not broken with precedent by refusing to grant President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, a vote in 2016. McConnell brazenly held the seat open for President Donald Trump to fill. Now Trump’s appointee, Neil M. Gorsuch, is part of the five-justice majority that has overturned Roe. (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined with the other five justices to uphold the Mississippi abortion law but not to overrule Roe.)
Public faith in the Supreme Court is down to a historic low of 25 percent, and there’s a good reason why it keeps eroding. We are experiencing what the Founders feared: a crisis of governmental legitimacy brought about by minoritarian tyranny. And it could soon get a whole lot worse. In his concurring opinion in the abortion case, Justice Clarence Thomas called on the court to overturn popular precedents upholding a right to contraception, same-sex relationships and marriage equality. So much for Hamilton’s hope that “the sense of the majority should prevail.” | 2022-06-25T18:55:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court rulings represent the tyranny of the minority - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/25/supreme-court-rulings-abortion-roe-guns-represent-minority-tyranny/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/25/supreme-court-rulings-abortion-roe-guns-represent-minority-tyranny/ |
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Rwanda President Paul Kagame and Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations Patricia Scotland during the Leaders’ Retreat executive session on the sidelines of the 2022 Commonwealth heads of Government meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, Saturday June 25, 2022. (Dan Kitwood/Pool via AP)
KIGALI, Rwanda — The African nations of Gabon and Togo have been admitted into the Commonwealth group of nations.
Lizzo, Live Nation pledge a total $1M to Planned Parenthood, abortion funds | 2022-06-25T18:55:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gabon and Togo admitted into Commonwealth group of nations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gabon-and-togo-admitted-into-commonwealth-group-of-nations/2022/06/25/b4ba61ae-f4ac-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gabon-and-togo-admitted-into-commonwealth-group-of-nations/2022/06/25/b4ba61ae-f4ac-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html |
In D.C., seniors often struggle to find food
The city has highest rate of senior food insecurity in the country
Nancy McNeil leaves with her lunch at Bernice Fonteneau Senior Wellness Center in Washington, D.C., Friday. (Craig Hudson/For the Washington Post)
After brief prayers, a dozen men line up on a Wednesday afternoon to receive a dinner box outside of D.C.’s Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Columbia Heights. Fifth in line, Kenneth Bristow, 62, an Air Force veteran and former concrete abatement worker, waited for his turn.
Bristow grabbed a dinner that included a sandwich and potato chips. Then he hopped in his car and drove to a second food pantry three miles away, just on time to secure two more meals for the week.
“This is what you have to do to survive,” said Bristow. “I need more, but you can’t eat like you normally do, so you have to just do what you can.”
Bristow is among the around 11,000 older adults who are food-insecure in D.C. — the city with the highest rate of senior food insecurity in the country, according to the nonprofit Feeding America. And while D.C. has launched several supporting programs to help them access healthy meals, some like Bristow have fallen through the cracks.
Defined as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life, more than 7 million Americans 60 or older experience food insecurity every year. A 2020 state-level analysis from Feeding America found that 13.1 percent of the senior population in the city is food insecure.
More than two years into a pandemic that disproportionally affected seniors, D.C. advocates and officials said residents continue to use nutrition programs more than they than did before the virus arrived.
D.C.'s Department of Aging and Community Living — the agency in charge of monitoring seniors’ health, education and social services — says it delivered around 2 million meals last year, a 163 percent increase over 2019.
D.C.’s grocery gap reflects city’s income divide
Seniors experience food insecurity and hunger for a complex and intersecting range of reasons, from poverty, access to transportation, education, food choices and eligibility for federal programs, advocates and officials said. According to a 2022 D.C. Office of Planning Food Policy Division report about seniors’ food insecurity, the outreach to attract new enrollees to the programs is insufficient.
Isolation — which restricts access to food — is a big factor, and DACL officials said more than half of D.C. residents over 60 live alone, compared to just 27 percent nationally.
Poverty also exacerbates hunger in a city where 70 percent of seniors live on a fixed income, said D.C. Hunger Solutions Policy Analyst Melissa Jensen. “With a rising cost of living in the District, their incomes do not fluctuate with that, resulting in less money to spend on nutritious food,” she said.
Caroline Casey, Program Manager of Senior Nutrition at Mary’s Center, which serves 600 seniors in D.C., said the rising cost of food is what concerns her clients the most now. “I have heard that time and time and time again,” said Casey.
Disparities affect seniors differently depending on where they live.
While Ward 3, the highest income region of D.C., has more than 13 grocery stores, Ward 8, where Bristow lives, has only one, a 2021 D.C. Hunger Solutions grocery store report found.
Neighborhood Prosperity Fund grants through the mayor’s office has allowed D.C. entrepreneurs to start locally owned grocery and other foods businesses in Wards 7 and 8, Jensen said. But Bristow said he knew only about food pantries that require crossing the Anacostia river.
Services that traditionally address seniors and services that traditionally address hunger are not properly intersecting, said Alexander Moore, the chief development officer at DC Central Kitchen, a nonprofit organization serving meals to food insecure residents in D.C. Instead, those resources are spread across various city departments, programs, and nonprofits.
“We have so much expertise and great nonprofits here, so this is a solvable problem,” Moore said. “But the issue has been getting solid data and knocking down the silos.”
“I’m so tired of hearing about senior hunger being a hidden form of hunger. We’re not choosing to look at it. We have talked about violence interrupters. When it comes to seniors, we need hunger interrupters,” he said.
There are more than 14 government-funded programs for peoplewho need food, but many don’t know these services exist, advocates said. “The fact that we have this problem indicates that people are not accessing all those programs that they qualify for,” said Jensen.
The data the DACL collects is limited to those who are already in the system, city officials said. It’s hard to get comprehensive information about people who are most in need of services. Some food pantries that offer free food to the general public said they don’t identify whether those in need are from a specific group or not: They welcome everybody.
“We know that we need to take a deeper look at the data,” DACL Interim Director Jessica Smith said in an interview.
Smith said the agency is finalizing an agreement with a research organization to analyze the agency’s data about the demographics of the population they serve and where they live.
“There’s national data that we can look at, but we really want to ensure that we’re digging into the D.C. landscape,” said Smith.
Smith said the agency is partnering with nonprofits that are on the ground and is encouraging them to try innovative ways to reach people. In October, it will launch a grocery gift card pilot, and it will provide iPads to isolated seniors so they can become more connected.
It also urge its nonprofit partners to innovate. Mary’s Center, for instance, is already taking more aggressive approaches to reach people, Casey said.
“We’ve gone directly to senior buildings, hang fliers, talk to people. We’ve outreached to libraries, bus stops, just kind of areas where if someone’s not plugged into another program, they still might see us or hear about us,” she said.
First new supermarket breaks ground east of Anacostia in more than a decade
In 2021, six D.C. Council members introduced legislation to address this issue in the No Senior Hungry Omnibus Amendment Act of 2021. The bill proposes creating an Interagency Senior Food Insecurity Taskforce made up of nongovernmental service providers and seniors to advise the mayor. It would also create a Senior Food Security Plan and push DACL to reach more seniors.
The reporting requirements in the bill would also give District leaders a better idea of the problem’s scope.
Kyle Swenson contributed to this report. | 2022-06-26T10:08:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. seniors often struggle to find food - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/26/dc-seniors-food-insecurity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/26/dc-seniors-food-insecurity/ |
Abortion and birth control restrictions curtail women’s citizenship
Reproductive rights are central to women’s citizenship — and they always have been
Perspective by Anya Jabour
Anya Jabour is Regents Professor of History and Director of the Public History Program at the University of Montana. The author of "Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women’s Activism in Modern America" (2019), she is currently working on a biography of Katharine Bement Davis.
People gather to protest the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday in Portland, Ore. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade, the case that established women’s constitutional right to abortion in 1973, jeopardizes not only women’s access to safe and legal abortions, but also the availability of contraceptives.
Previous Supreme Court cases establishing the right to both abortion and contraceptives hinge on the right to privacy. In addition to relying on the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, Roe v. Wade also built upon the precedent established in 1965, when the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut declared contraceptive use by married couples to be a constitutionally protected right guaranteed by the right to privacy. In 1972, the Court extended this protection to unmarried couples in Eisenstadt v. Baird. Therefore, a threat to one reproductive right is a threat to all. Justice Clarence Thomas made this clear in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, which called for revisiting Griswold.
But that’s not all. As feminists have long understood, legal personhood depends upon voluntary parenthood. And voluntary parenthood requires safe and effective birth control, including both contraception and abortion. A century ago, women activists worked diligently to make clear what they knew to be true: limitations on birth control endanger not just women’s bodily autonomy, but their full citizenship.
Social work educator and social justice activist Sophonisba Breckinridge emerged as a vocal leader in shaping public understanding about why reproductive rights were central to women’s citizenship. Breckinridge, the first woman to earn her law degree from the University of Chicago, wrote an article for the Woman’s Journal in 1929 about women’s evolving legal rights, provocatively entitled, “How Women Came to be ‘Persons.’ ”
In this piece, Breckinridge reviewed the principle of the “feme covert,” or “covered woman,” enshrined in English Common Law. The legal doctrine of “coverture” stated that women’s legal identities were suspended, or “covered,” during marriage. Because the new United States followed common law precedent, well into the 19th century, married women could not own property, retain their wages or claim custody of their own children.
Statutory laws gradually eroded the common law tradition and granted women legal independence in some areas. Many states granted married women some property rights before the Civil War. New York, home to suffrage pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and the site of the first official women’s rights convention in the United States held in 1848, went the farthest in granting married women control over both the property they inherited and the wages they earned.
Yet, even after the 19th Amendment granted (some) women voting rights in 1920, the concept of the covered woman continued to govern women’s legal status. At the federal level, Breckinridge noted that only with the adoption of the Cable Act of 1922 had married women gained independent citizenship, rather than having their citizenship determined by the status of their husbands. (Previously, female citizens who married men ineligible for citizenship were subject to marital expatriation. In a famous example, Cady Stanton’s daughter, second-generation suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch, lost her citizenship as a consequence of marrying a citizen of the United Kingdom.)
Another issue was birth control. Both federal and state laws severely limited women’s access to information about birth control as well as to contraceptive devices, such as diaphragms. The draconian Comstock Laws, adopted in 1873 and named for their zealous enforcer, Anthony Comstock, literally made public discussion of birth control a federal crime. Many states adopted “Little Comstock Laws,” anti-obscenity laws that authorized criminal prosecution for discussing or providing either contraception or abortion. Breckinridge insisted that legal restrictions on birth control infringed on women’s status as “persons” in the eyes of the law.
Breckinridge shared these beliefs with prominent birth control advocates Mary Ware Dennett and Margaret Sanger. Years before, Sanger had proclaimed in her anarchist newsletter that “enforced motherhood is the most complete denial of a woman’s right to life and liberty.” Sanger’s short-lived publication subjected her to criminal prosecution under the Comstock Laws, as did her operation of a birth control clinic in Brooklyn in defiance of the state’s anti-obscenity laws. New York’s appellate court’s 1918 ruling against her in People v. Sanger demonstrated that states denied women the right to control their own bodies even when they allowed physicians to prescribe contraceptives to patients.
Whereas Sanger discussed and prescribed contraceptives in defiance of the law, Breckinridge used her status as a legal expert to promote the legalization of birth control. As she explained to Dennett: “I have been attempting to place the birth control movement and the sex education movement in relation to the legal status of women in a slightly different way from which it has been urged before.” Breckinridge framed birth control as a fundamental right. By presenting this argument in the pages of the Woman’s Journal, published by the respected League of Women Voters, she hoped to spread the gospel of reproductive rights beyond a relatively small group of birth control advocates to a wider cross-section of Americans.
Dennett helped bring this goal to fruition in the 1930 Second Circuit case, United States v. Dennett. Dennett challenged the Comstock Laws by printing and circulating a birth control pamphlet, “The Sex Side of Life.” When the former secretary of the National Civil Liberties Bureau faced criminal prosecution, the bureau’s successor organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), came to her defense. In this case, as in future cases, the ACLU became a powerful advocate for reproductive rights by casting sexual expression as a civil liberty.
These women recognized that — then as now — prohibitions on birth control had a disparate impact on less privileged Americans. In 1922, Dennett, then director of the Voluntary Parenthood League, used the pages of the Birth Control Herald to urge another mainstream women’s organization, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, to support birth control. Both state and federal laws “forbid this knowledge for the poor, but the well-to-do women get it and utilize it,” she asserted.
Dennett backed up her statement by referring to penal reformer and sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis’s recent study of birth control among affluent, White, married women, which showed that nearly three-fourths of her respondents practiced contraception. Since club members “are mostly of the well-to-do class that has already accomplished the control of parenthood,” Dennett declared, “it seems as if common humanity would impel them to help make the knowledge available for the millions of poor mothers who are still ignorant.”
Breckinridge, who shared Dennett’s concern for working-class women, advocated birth control throughout the Great Depression, paying particular attention to the plight of poverty-stricken parents. The Kentucky native planted editorials in the Lexington Herald — previously edited by her father, William C.P. Breckinridge, and her brother, Desha Breckinridge — by convincing managing editor Thomas Underwood to publish her ghostwritten pieces on a variety of social issues, including reproductive rights.
She pushed readers to understand that the “right to parenthood” was a fundamental right. However, she explained that unfortunately not all parenthood was freely chosen. Instead, responsible adults were — because of the Comstock Laws — denied access to information about contraceptives. The human cost of these legal restrictions on birth control, Breckinridge opined, was tremendous, measured both in the number of dangerous illegal abortions and in the number of poverty-stricken children. Breckinridge thus advocated an immediate repeal of anti-birth control laws to “make possible a truly voluntary parenthood.”
By the time Breckinridge penned this editorial, some birth control advocates — most notably Sanger — had adopted eugenics, replacing rights-based arguments with race-based justifications. Sanger and others cast birth control as a way to promote “better breeding” and produce “better babies” — increasingly defined as White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and able-bodied.
But in the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of feminists, aided by the ACLU, revived the notion of reproductive rights and used it to promote women’s sexual self-determination, resulting in important advances culminating in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. By the time more than 1 million Americans participated in the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, women of color were at the forefront of advocacy for what Black activist Loretta Ross called “reproductive justice.”
Today, as reactionary politicians strive to limit women’s ability to use contraceptives or procure abortions, Breckinridge’s insights about the vital connections between reproductive rights and women’s citizenship remain painfully relevant. Feminist activists and their free-speech allies may look to the past for effective tools to combat contemporary challenges to reproductive justice and to reassert birth control as a civil right. | 2022-06-26T10:09:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion and birth control restrictions curtail women’s citizenship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/26/abortion-birth-control-restrictions-curtail-womens-citizenship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/26/abortion-birth-control-restrictions-curtail-womens-citizenship/ |
Having Anne Frank’s version of her diary could change how we see it
Seventy-five years later, we still lack an English version of Anne’s imagined edition of her seminal work
Perspective by Rachel Conrad
Rachel Conrad is a professor of childhood studies at Hampshire College and the author of "Time for Childhoods: Young Poets and Questions of Agency" (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020).
Otto Frank holds the Golden Pan award, given for the sale of 1 million copies of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in London on June 14, 1971. (Dave Caulkin/AP)
June 25 marked the 75th anniversary of the publication of Anne Frank’s diary. Despite the growth of her posthumous fame, one element has largely remained unchanged over this time: The publication of Anne’s work was not carried out as she envisioned it. We know this because we have access to the version that she carefully edited and shaped — but that is not the version in general circulation today.
Her work was presented as a child’s wartime diary rather than as the edited memoir she planned. Through this process, her identity as a writer was diminished while her image as a young victim was tokenized.
Now, 75 years after her story began to be widely known, it is long overdue for Anne to receive recognition as a significant literary figure whose distinct voice, perspective and craft remain relevant for our understanding of the Holocaust.
Anne kept her diary from June 12, 1942 — weeks before she and her family (and eventually four others) went into hiding in a “secret annex” at her father Otto Frank’s office building in Amsterdam — through Aug. 1, 1944, three days before she and the others in hiding were arrested by Nazi forces. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, employees of Otto Frank’s company who helped those in hiding, rescued the red-and-white checked volume and the additional notebooks in which Anne wrote her diary (version A) and other writings, plus the hundreds of “loose sheets” on which she drafted her revisions (version B) through March 29, 1944.
After Anne’s death in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was confirmed, Gies handed these materials, then unread, to Otto Frank — the only survivor from the secret annex. He selected, edited and combined entries from both diary versions to shape the published diary, which appeared as “Het Achterhuis” (The Secret Annex or The House Behind) in 1947 in the Netherlands, over two years after Anne died. In 1952, the first American edition appeared as “The Diary of a Young Girl.” The book has remained in print and has been translated into over 70 languages across these decades.
While Otto Frank’s editing, along with that of other editors, made the diary’s publication possible at the time, aspects of Anne’s intentions were compromised in the process. For instance, the published diary begins with lists of her unfiltered comments about schoolmates instead of her intended opening reflection on keeping a diary and the possibility of a wider audience: “Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest.”
Anne repeatedly wrote in her diary about her desire to be a writer. Her explicit attention to remaking her diary for publication was prompted by a radio broadcast from London on March 28, 1944 in which a Dutch government official, Gerrit Bolkestein, mentioned the value of collecting diaries and other first-person accounts describing experiences of the Nazi occupation. On March 29, 1944, Anne’s diary entry indicates her awareness that she already had an audience for her project: “Of course, everyone pounced on my diary. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a novel about the Secret Annex. The title alone would make people think it was a detective story.”
That spring, she went back to the beginning of her diary, assiduously rewriting and crafting it into a version (version B) meant for a public audience. The 1947 publication of the diary involved undoing aspects of Anne’s editorial work and restoring parts of the original diary that the 15-year-old had removed, such as details about her brief romance with Peter van Pels.
The result bends her work into a strange text with multiple lead voices, with words and ideas by both younger and older Anne intermingling with Otto Frank’s and other adult editors’ priorities.
The published diary makes Anne more of a child victim and less of a writer with intention and purpose, as is evident in the English title, “The Diary of a Young Girl.”
This effect has been amplified by the numerous adaptations of Anne’s diary into other cultural forms, including plays and films, which began early on with Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s dramatization that opened on Broadway in October 1955.
As Cynthia Ozick, Alvin Rosenfeld and others have discussed, this popular play directed by Garson Kanin intentionally diminished or whitewashed Anne’s ethnic heritage and Jewish identity, as well as her power as a writer. She became more generalized as a child victim, more clearly a child many others could identify with — and less clearly a Jew.
Since the late 1950s there have been multiple challenges to the authenticity of Anne’s authorship. Claims that she did not write the diary herself have been based on antisemitism, Holocaust denial and disbelief that a young person could write in a sophisticated manner.
After the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation was bequeathed the diary manuscripts following Otto Frank’s death in 1980, they undertook an exhaustive study of the handwriting and original diary documents and concluded it was authentic. These results were included with other contextual material and the multiple versions of the diary in “The Critical Edition,” published in Dutch in 1986 (1989 in English). A “Definitive Edition” of the diary followed in 1991 (1995 in English), which restored missing passages from diary entries, included many more entries from Anne’s edited version B in a new translation and became widely available as the standard text.
Since then, the range of Anne’s writings have been brought together in comprehensive editions. The Dutch-language “Revised Critical Edition” appeared in 2001 (2003 in English), which also included Anne’s short stories or “tales,” known as “Tales from the Secret Annex.” Published in English in 2019 (2013 in German), “all known texts by Anne Frank,” including multiple versions of the diary, poetry, stories, letters and other compositions appeared in a hefty one-volume “Collected Works,” which acknowledges Anne as a writer with a body of work that spans multiple genres. In 2019, a German edition entitled “Liebe Kitty” (Dear Kitty) appeared based on version B, with an afterword by Laureen Nussbaum, a scholar and childhood friend of Anne who has advocated for viewing Frank as a writer. An online scholarly edition of her manuscripts launched in 2021 but is still unavailable in the United States because of copyright restrictions.
Scholars and critics continue to engage with Anne’s legacy, with recent examples including Oren Stier’s take on her as a “Holocaust icon” deriving symbolic importance through literary and visual modes and Dara Horn’s consideration of her cultural value as a “dead Jew” in a milieu that she argues is more interested in dead Jews rather than those who are alive.
At the same time, adaptations — or appropriations, as Ozick contends — continue apace. Recent efforts include a “video diary” series produced by the Anne Frank House and Ari Folman’s animated film, “Where is Anne Frank?” The film followed Folman’s graphic adaptation, illustrated by David Polonsky, and positions a personified diary at the center of a contemporary drama.
The energy and audience for these adult-authored and adult-produced adaptations direct people’s attention to Anne’s diary. Yet we still lack an accessible English edition of the version of the diary that she revised and edited herself.
There is one more version of Anne’s diary, therefore, that deserves to be published separately and made widely available in English: version B, the version that she prepared for publication.
The published diary and cultural adaptations present Anne as a child deprived of a future rather than as a person who accomplished something in her lifetime. Reading her revised version of her own diary will enable us to recognize Anne as a skillful writer aware of her social, cultural and political world, who grappled in her writings with her intertwined identities as young, female and Jewish. | 2022-06-26T10:09:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Having Anne Frank’s version of her diary could change how we see it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/26/having-anne-franks-version-her-diary-could-change-how-we-see-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/26/having-anne-franks-version-her-diary-could-change-how-we-see-it/ |
Conservatives on the march: GOP gains ground despite Democratic control
The landmark conservative Supreme Court victories this week on abortion and guns capped a year-long string of victories on the right
An abortion rights demonstrator holds a sign in front of Los Angeles City Hall on June 25, the day after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. (Etienne Laurent/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
President Biden quoted the liberal icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he first addressed Congress last year, laying out a policy plan with New Deal-sized ambition: curb climate change, reduce college and drug costs, raise corporate taxes, subsidize child care and continue tax rebates for parents, among other initiatives.
Fourteen months later — despite unified Democratic control of the House, Senate and White House — none of that has passed into law. At the same time, the conservative rebellion birthed in response to Roosevelt’s legacy notched major public policy victories in the courts and in states across the country.
The landmark conservative Supreme Court victories this week on abortion and guns capped a year-long string of victories on the right, especially in 23 states, including giants like Texas and Florida, where conservatives control all branches of elected government. Republicans have expanded school choice, reformed school curriculums, curbed voting access, lowered taxes and launched a new wave of culture war fights against gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.
With the court’s ruling on Friday overturning Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion and on Thursday curtailing restrictions on gun ownership, conservative activists have been hit by a wave of celebration amid growing hopes for retaking the House and Senate this fall.
“You don’t plant and reap at the same time. And this has been a long process. The fruit of yesterday has been a long time coming,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Christian conservative group, said Saturday. “There were times that I didn’t even think we would get to this point.”
Liberals, meanwhile, have grown increasingly concerned that they will lose their chance to fully capitalize on control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — a situation of unified power that has last only happened after the 1992 and 2008 elections. Leaders of both parties expect a Republican takeover of the House in the midterm elections.
For the conservative movement, the liberal frustration is its own victory.
“I don’t see what permanent structures that the Democrats created in their first two years. Obamacare was a permanent structure,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said of Biden’s presidency. “They missed, forgot, didn’t focus on the fact that the New Deal was passed when they were almost an 80 percent majority in the two houses. In 1964, after Goldwater loses, about 70 percent of House and Senate were Democrats and you passed the Great Society.”
At the root of the Democratic struggles is the tenuous nature of Biden’s victory in the 2020 election cycle. Although he beat President Donald Trump, Republicans nonetheless picked up a net gain of 14 seats in the House and flipped the New Hampshire state legislature. Republicans now control both the House and Senate in 30 states, compared with 17 states in Democratic control, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The 50 senators who caucus with Democrats have struggled since Biden’s inauguration to unite around his agenda.
“With Biden, the slimmest majority in the House only exceeded by the slimmer majority in the Senate is a difficult playing field,” Jim Kessler, a Democratic strategist at Third Way, said about the disconnect between conservative success and liberal frustration. “Republicans have had a 50-year plan to win the long game and Democrats have mostly worked to win the next cycle.”
The lack of progress by Democrats has resulted in pleas for Senate action over the next several months, before the midterms give Republicans a chance to shape Biden’s agenda. But a specific agenda, as negotiations continue with holdout senators like Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), remains elusive.
“We can’t just say, ‘Woe is me. This is how world events are going to happen,’ ” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “We can be bolder. We can have greater energy. We can do things that are outside the box. This is not the time for institutionalism or incrementalism.”
Biden’s political allies dispute the notion that the first months of his presidency have been a policy disappointment, pointing to similar frustrations that Republicans dealt with in the first years of the Trump presidency, when Republicans had full control but failed to repeal Obamacare.
They focus on the ambitions he has achieved, including a variety of executive actions, along with new bipartisan laws on infrastructure and gun safety and the passage early last year of the American Rescue Plan, which flooded states with funding at the end of the pandemic and provided stimulus payments to most Americans.
“As conservatives celebrate partisan decisions out of the Supreme Court that are completely out-of-step with the wants and needs of the American people, it’s clear to me that the Biden-Harris administration will continue to make good on the president’s goals,” Danielle Melfi, executive director at Building Back Together, a nonprofit group supporting Biden’s agenda, said in a statement.
She described the president as “laser-focused on building back better from the pandemic, including by initiating a historic economic recovery, making generational investments in communities nationwide, and restoring America’s global standing.”
But that focus has done little to protect liberal activists battling conservative efforts in the states. Strategists at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest advocacy group for gay, lesbian and transgender Americans, have been battling a wave of legislation to change curriculum, prevent the classroom discussion of sexual orientation and prohibit transgender men from competing in sports at the state level.
“We have seen these state legislatures that are jamming through these anti-LGBT bills, particularly anti-trans bills,” said Sarah Warbelow, the Human Rights Campaign’s legal director. “The flavor of the day has changed from year to year as conservatives try to figure out how to penalize the LGBT community.”
At the same time, despite administrative action by Biden that has enshrined new protections for the LGBT community, efforts to pass the Equality Act, a top priority of the Biden administration that would enshrine new federal protections for gays and lesbians, have failed to make progress in the U.S. Senate.
Teachers unions, a key part of the Democratic coalition, also have been battling a wave of conservative legislation aimed at curtailing what educators can teach in class, and the curriculum they can use. They include new state laws that prevent teachers from discussing sexual orientation in younger grades and curtail how race is taught.
“They are diverting public schools from their core mission of educating kids and they are just trying to create more anger,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. She said she expects the pendulum to swing back in the coming months, as parents work to connect with teachers and more moderate leaders win school committee elections.
“The one issue that we also have to be really clear about is frankly any conversation on issues of sex in schools; it has to be age appropriate,” she said. “Sensitive topics like race and gender always have to be taught in an age-appropriate way.”
Even if Democrats overperform expectations this fall, there is little expectation that they can do much to expand their elected power. Arizona and Georgia are the only states with Republican control of the legislature where the GOP is at serious risk of losing gubernatorial elections in November. At the same time, Republicans have a path to winning trifecta control of governor’s mansions and legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
That will set up another presidential election in 2024, where the country is once again narrowly divided. Even if Democrats win, they are likely to find themselves in a similar predicament, with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court and Republican domination in many states. Democrats have been left looking for new strategies to change the country’s political dynamics, including possible structural changes to the Supreme Court, an approach that Biden has so far ruled out.
“My main critique federally with Biden was that he was too slow to use that which he actually did control in the executive branch to tell a narrative of what was going wrong in the country and what he could do to fix it,” said Jeff Hauser, a liberal activist with the Revolving Door Project, a group that monitors federal appointees. “By constantly acting like we are one step away from a return to normalcy in American politics, Biden keeps downplaying the crisis in this country.” | 2022-06-26T10:09:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Conservatives on the march: Republicans gain ground despite Democratic control - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/26/conservatives-culture-wars-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/26/conservatives-culture-wars-abortion/ |
The trans Twitch star delivering news to a legion of LGBTQ teens
Known online as Keffals, Clara Sorrenti’s streams are one of the few spaces in media where people can hear the news from a trans person
Canadian Clara Sorrenti, known as Keffals online, has amassed over 3,000 subscribers as of May, who pay $4.99 per month to support her streams. (Hao Nguyen for The Washington Post)
For over a year after she first joined Twitch, Clara Sorrenti used the streaming platform like most of its users: to broadcast herself playing video games for a handful of viewers.
But when Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, launched a campaign against gender-affirming care for young people, it struck a nerve with Sorrenti, who transitioned as a teenager. The 28-year-old took to Twitch, talking openly about her experience in hours-long streams.
Now, Sorrenti is one of the most popular openly trans streamers on Twitch, amassing over 3,000 subscribers as of May, who pay $4.99 per month to support her streams. She is part of a new class of stars who have abandoned the platform’s traditional game-stream format to talk about news and politics. This cohort of creators, who have embraced the Just Chatting category, have emerged as pundits for a generation disconnected from cable news.
In the third quarter of 2020, Just Chatting became Twitch’s most-watched category and now accounts for 13.2 percent of content watched on the app, according to Streamlabs, a live-streaming software company. As “Keffals,” Sorrenti is a rarity on Twitch, a place known for its combative community of male gamers and the rapid-fire abuse often lobbed between streamers. As a wave of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation has swept the country, her stream is one of the few media outlets where viewers can hear the news from a trans person.
“When I came out as trans, there were no high-profile trans figures in the media at all,” Sorrenti said. “I think it’s important for there to be high-profile trans figures in the content creator world because that’s where young people are looking for news and information.”
Hosting from a spare setup in her London, Ontario, Canada, apartment, she narrates her shows in a trademark sarcastic deadpan. Sorrenti curses frequently, sighs often, but rarely yells as she reads from tweets and articles online. She breaks down the laws and political news for an audience she describes as primarily LGBTQ teenagers, frequently using the pronoun “we” to describe herself, her viewers and the trans community.
Followers are a valuable currency. Who should own them?
Describing an Alabama law making it a felony to provide gender-affirming care for those under 18, she slumped in her office chair and stared toward the camera. “They literally want these kids to f-----g kill themselves,” she said. “I don’t know what the future looks like.”
A flood of messages came in response: “So wack” and “I’m heartbroken,” her fans wrote.
She celebrated a federal judge striking down a Tennessee law that required businesses to post warning signs if they permit transgender people to use their preferred bathroom and railed against Ohio potentially reviving a bill banning gender-affirming care for kids under 18, even with parental consent. She intersperses the news with updates about her personal life and offbeat interludes, like riffs on the release of the Lego Star Wars video game or Elon Musk taking over Twitter.
Like all successful streamers, Sorrenti is an expert at driving attention and doesn’t shy away from conflict. The day after the Uvalde, Tex., school shooting, as trolls attempted to spread the baseless conspiracy theory that the gunman was a trans woman, she told her audience the world would be better without conservatives. Months earlier, she tweeted that she hates liberals even more.
Her response to the Disney CEO’s decision to keep donating to supporters of the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill came in a tweet: “centrism is a disease.”
When a tweet by Sorrenti attacking conservatives made it to the top of r/Conservative, a subreddit with nearly 1 million members, she leaned into the controversy. “Come watch conservative cringe with the only Twitch streamer currently on the front page of r/Conservative,” she implored her fans. She later released a YouTube video titled “I got to the top of r/Conservative.”
Sorrenti aspires to get bigger, like Hasan Piker, a left-wing political commentator who amassed more than 50,000 paid subscribers, and speak specifically for the trans community.
“Conflict equals growth,” said Brendan Gahan, chief social officer of Mekanism, a creative agency. “It’s not those that play it safe who grow audiences.”
Chelsea Manning, a trans woman and former intelligence analyst who went to jail after giving classified documents to WikiLeaks, has appeared as a guest on one of Sorrenti’s streams and called her a “pioneer.” “This is an environment that’s breeding an enormous amount of toxicity and here’s a person entering the space head-on, who would typically not be willing to. I see nothing that Keffals is doing that Hasan [Piker] isn’t doing, that Joe Rogan isn’t doing,” Manning said.
Sorrenti’s viewers say it’s powerful to hear a trans woman talking about the rash of discriminatory laws happening in America. For some, the community around her is a type of support group.
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“Especially with the laws coming out all over the country, a lot of kids don’t have an outlet to discuss their sexuality in an open way,” said Will Larkins, a 17-year-old student activist from Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has sought to ban transition-related care for transgender youths. “The appeal of live streams is feeling like you’re having a conversation with the creator and hanging out with them. Being able to have that outlet where you can talk to someone who you look up to as a creator but also went through the same thing, that’s a very powerful thing.”
About 5 percent of young adults in the United States identify as transgender or nonbinary, and 53 percent of those younger than 30 say they know a trans person, according to the Pew Research Center. Yet trans people are almost nonexistent in legacy media.
And on Twitch, a platform with no gatekeepers and few start-up costs, these new voices are finding an audience.
A new generation
Sorrenti used the name Keffals as her online handle growing up, to play games including “Team Fortress 2” and “Garry’s Mod.” By the time she was 12, she realized she was trans. She would come home from school and spend hours searching for information and community online. She joined chatrooms for trans people and found out about a trans youth support group in her city.
Her family was skeptical about her transition, but eventually became supportive. When she traveled to Thailand for gender-affirming surgery in 2013 at age 18, her parents accompanied her and paid for it. “My family realized,” she said, “that unless they were actively supporting me, things would get a lot worse.”
After Donald Trump’s election, Sorrenti threw herself into politics, attending rallies and events advocating for labor rights and Indigenous sovereignty and protesting U.S. foreign policy. She twice ran for office as a member of the Communist Party, first in 2018 for a seat in provincial parliament, then for Canadian federal office in 2019. She lost the races, receiving only 128 votes in 2018 and 127 votes in 2019. She now identifies as a socialist.
“I never expected I’d do well [in the races],” she said.” I was doing it for political experience. … I think if you can knock on hundreds of doors saying you’re part of the Communist Party, you can probably be a good advocate for a lot less contentious issues.”
As the coronavirus took hold, Sorrenti turned to the internet. She began spending more time on Twitch, mostly gaming to small audiences. By 2021, the platform itself had begun to shift as people began turning to it for news content, and the Just Chatting category surged in popularity. The shift on Twitch dovetailed with a rash of anti-trans legislation that had begun to emerge across the United States. In the first half of 2021, state legislatures introduced more than 100 bills to restrict trans rights.
“I felt like I had to cover this stuff and talk about it,” she said. She began following more journalists on social media and commentating on articles and news events during her streams. As she did, her following grew.
Up all night with a Twitch millionaire
There are few trans voices in the news and politics sphere, partly due to the relentless abuse trans creators face. Streamers from marginalized backgrounds are often targeted with vicious harassment and what are known as hate raids, where toxic communities flood into a streamers’ chat, lobbing attacks at them and their audience.
“Talking about [anti-trans policies] is mentally hard in a way that I don’t think is the same for straight or cis politics streamers because it doesn’t personally affect them,” Sorrenti said.
Last year, Twitch rolled out a revamped tagging system aimed at making it easier for users to discover content within certain categories such as “trans” and “lgbt.” But some trans streamers argued the new tags simply made harassment easier. Twitch declined to comment. Twitch is owned by Amazon; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
Sorrenti has openly clashed with Destiny, another politics-focused streamer who was recently banned from Twitch, and Tim Pool, a right-wing YouTuber. Her attacks on popular conservative influencers, including Candace Owens and Lauren Southern, as well as British author J.K. Rowling, have brought significant harassment her way — as well as attention and followers. She also has faced critiques from a handful of leftists and an endless barrage of bad-faith attacks from internet trolls and harassers.
Other large content creators defend her forceful online presence. “It’s not the same as a politician’s curated feed,” said Mike Beyer, a popular political Twitch streamer. “Sometimes things will be insensitive and she’ll walk it back. She’s a Twitch streamer and online organizer, she’s not a f-----g politician and it’s ridiculous to expect her to have focus-grouped tweets.”
Her scrapes with right-wing personalities happen largely on Twitter, where Sorrenti leverages one of the platform’s most reliable weapons — the ratio. A tweet becomes “ratio’d” when the replies vastly outnumber the number of likes or retweets, a signal to onlookers that the original post was contentious or wrong. Sorrenti has become known among her audience as the “ratio queen,” a tactic that shows the power of her fan base.
“I don’t think civility politics works when I’m engaging with people who don’t even view me as human,” she said.
Sorrenti said abuse has led her to become hypervigilant and sometimes unable to connect with her audience as directly as she would like. After a barrage of attacks she no longer keeps her private messaging on social media, or DMs, open. She’s frequently smeared as a pedophile and “groomer,” a term increasingly used by those on the right to imply that members of the LGBTQ community are pedophiles.
“I went from no one knowing who I was to all of the worst people on the internet knowing who I am,” Sorrenti said. “They document every single thing I do online. They hate-watch every one of my streams. It’s made me feel quite alone.”
More recently, Sorrenti has been leveraging her platform for fundraising campaigns. In single stream this April, she raised over $205,000 for the Campaign for Southern Equality’s effort to protect trans youth. “This money is literally going to save lives,” she tweeted.
Aside from her Twitch subscribers, Sorrenti has a Patreon page, where fans can pay from $3 to $200 a month for exclusive content, and she receives direct donations from fans though PayPal. She uses this money to support herself and a small staff. An editor helps cut together clips of her Twitch streams and format content for different platforms, and a graphic designer optimizes her YouTube thumbnails, creates custom-emoji-style reactions called emotes and animations.
Last month, she began working with a manager to streamline the business side of her growing operation. “When you’re becoming a Twitch streamer … you are inviting controversy, you are monetizing that, and that is the industry,” said Manning. “That is how you become a major political streamer, you have to play the game and there’s no other way.”
Sorrenti also has broadened the scope of what sort of political news she covers, shifting toward national and election news. “There’s no way to talk about anti-LGBTQ legislation without talking about the Democratic and Republican parties and people involved in the election process,” she said.
As she grows, Sorrenti has to navigate a contentious political climate. While right-wing content creators often skyrocket to popularity with little pushback, many leftist creators struggle with attacks from their own cohort. “It’s crabs in a bucket,” said Mike Beyer, a large political Twitch streamer. “Anytime someone rises up and gains prominence, there’s going to people who try to grab onto that person’s coattails and pursue their clout.”
Sorrenti has inspired some in her audience to start channels themselves.
“She’s moving things to a more progressive area and making it harder to argue against trans rights,” said Jay, a 19-year-old in Texas who asked to be referred to only by his first name fearing harassment. “She made me realize I can create a space for myself and other trans men on Twitch. Seeing Keffals get to the point she is as a streamer and a publicly known trans person, it’s like, wow, you can actually do that.” | 2022-06-26T10:09:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meet Keffals, the trans Twitch streamer delivering news to LGBTQ teens - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/26/keffals-trans-twitch-streaming-news/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/26/keffals-trans-twitch-streaming-news/ |
In this Wednesday, June 22, 2022, image provided by Caladan Oceanic, the three-tube torpedo launcher that was part of the USS Samuel B. Roberts can be seen underwater off the Philippines in the Western Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Navy destroyer that engaged a superior Japanese fleet in the largest sea battle of World War II in the Philippines has become the deepest wreck to be discovered, according to explorers. (Caladan Oceanic via AP) (Uncredited/Caladan Oceanic) | 2022-06-26T10:09:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Explorers find WWII Navy destroyer, deepest wreck discovered - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/explorers-find-wwii-navy-destroyer-deepest-wreck-discovered/2022/06/26/46246f76-f535-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/explorers-find-wwii-navy-destroyer-deepest-wreck-discovered/2022/06/26/46246f76-f535-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, left, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, center, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett attend a preliminary vote on a bill to dissolve parliament, at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem, Wednesday, June 22, 2022. Lawmakers voted in favor of dissolving parliament in a preliminary vote, setting the wheels in motion to send the country to its fifth national election in just over three years. Once it passes, Bennett will step down as prime minister and hand over the reins to his ally, Lapid. New elections are expected to be held in October. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett convened what is likely his last Cabinet meeting as premier on Sunday, with parliament expected to dissolve itself this week, triggering new elections in the fall. | 2022-06-26T10:09:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Israeli PM convenes Cabinet before parliament is dissolved - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israeli-pm-convenes-cabinet-before-parliament-is-dissolved/2022/06/26/94807c1c-f532-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israeli-pm-convenes-cabinet-before-parliament-is-dissolved/2022/06/26/94807c1c-f532-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Prince George’s schools at impasse with teachers union on contract talks
The system recently reached agreement with four other employee unions.
Students arrive for the first day of school in Prince George’s County at Deerfield Run Elementary School in Laurel, Md. on Sept. 5, 2021. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Prince George’s County Public Schools reached an agreement with four of its five unions following a vote by the school board last week, but it remains at an impasse with its teachers union.
The school system lauded the agreements with the four unions representing administrators, principals, facility service employees and education support professionals, noting it approved “historic compensation increases” for those groups. Each contract included a 5 percent cost of living increase and $1,000 retention bonus for eligible employees for the fiscal year that begins on July 1. The contracts run for three years — ending June 30, 2025.
Howard Burnett, the school system’s chief negotiator, has previously said the increase is the highest employees have seen in the past 30 years.
But the school system has yet to resolve issues with the Prince George’s County Educators’ Association, a union that represents about 10,000 of the county’s active teachers and other education professionals. The union announced it reached an impasse earlier in June, after it said the school system didn’t address the “crushing workloads and lack of competitive compensation.”
The union requested a roughly 8 percent pay increase instead of the 5 percent offered by the county. They also previously requested to extend planning time from 225 minutes each week to 320 minutes, but that proposal was declined.
“We don’t feel the school system has a realistic or strong understanding of what it means to serve our students in the capacity that they need to be served,” said Donna Christy, the teachers union’s president. She added that there are 800 vacancies that already exist within the system, and more educators will leave before the school system’s deadline to file resignation submissions on July 15, she said. The union’s current contract ends June 30.
The union previously ran a set of television advertisements that pushed the system to invest more into initiatives that would reduce class size and boost teacher pay. They held a rally earlier this month with support from Del. Alonzo Washington (D-Prince George’s).
Prince George’s teachers run ads calling for smaller classes, better pay
The requests for better resources has been urgent as schools across the country grapple with historically high learning losses incurred while students learned online. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also warned of a steep decline in teen mental health. Christy said that classrooms need more investments than ever, but educators are struggling to support students due to the lack of resources. The union was able to tentatively negotiate pay over an 11-month period for student services, so that counselors, school psychologists and other student wellness personnel can support students during the summer months.
Some Prince George’s County educators are struggling with their own mental health following incidents of violence and weapons discovered at their schools. During the last few days of school last week, a 13-year-old student at Isaac J. Gourdine Middle School in Fort Washington, Md., was arrested after he brought a loaded gun on campus. The school was in lockdown for roughly 90 minutes. A teacher emailed Christy afterward in desperation, noting the heightened tension after a shooting in Uvalde, Tex., that left 19 students and two teachers dead roughly a month ago.
Christy said teachers email her almost every day, documenting how they cried before they walked into the school building and after they left because of the struggles they’re facing in classrooms.
“Teachers didn’t sign up to put their lives on the line, but that’s the reality they feel like they’re living in,” Christy said. “That’s not helping to keep people in the classroom.”
The school system has said it settled through negotiation more than 100 of the 127 items proposed by the union. System officials also noted some of the offerings reached in the package, such as a 66 percent increase in substitute pay from $18 to $30 an hour, and added professional leave days.
“We remain hopeful that a resolution will be reached with PGCEA and that our employees, union and non-union alike, will soon celebrate the highest three-year salary and compensation increases recorded in nearly 30 years of negotiated agreements,” the school system said in a statement.
The union filed documents with the state’s Public School Labor Relations Board. An arbitrator is set to help reach an agreement on the outstanding items. Christy was unsure when the process would be complete, since the state labor board is also completing negotiations for Anne Arundel County teachers. | 2022-06-26T11:35:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Contract talks stall between Prince George's teachers union, school system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/26/prince-georges-teachers-union-contracts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/26/prince-georges-teachers-union-contracts/ |
A former nurse practitioner now living with long covid, Mallory Stanislawczyk suffers from fatigue and a racing heartbeat so severe she must use a wheelchair and receive saline infusions three times a week. She is one of many people trying to help others with long covid symptoms recognize their condition as a disability. (Matt Roth for The Washington Post)
Nearly 18 months after getting the coronavirus and spending weeks in the hospital, Terry Bell struggles with hanging up his shirts and pants after doing the laundry.
Lifting his clothes, raising his arms, arranging items in his closet leave Bell short of breath and often trigger severe fatigue. He walks with a cane, and only short distances. He’s 50 pounds lighter than when he was struck by covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Long covid refers to ongoing or new health problems that occur at least four weeks after a covid infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Much about the condition is baffling: There is no diagnostic test to confirm it, no standard definition of the ailment and no way to predict who will be affected. Common symptoms, which can last months or years, include fatigue, shortness of breath, an elevated heart rate, muscle and joint pain, sleep disruptions, and problems with attention, concentration, language and memory — a set of difficulties known as brain fog.
Ongoing inflammation or a dysfunctional immune response may be responsible, along with reservoirs of the virus that remain in the body, small blood clots or residual damage to the heart, lungs, vascular system, brain, kidneys or other organs.
What is long covid? Current understanding about risks, symptoms and recovery.
Effect on older adults
Only now is the impact on older adults beginning to be documented. In a study published in the journal BMJ, researchers estimated that 32 percent of older adults in the United States who survived covid infections had symptoms of long covid up to four months after infection — more than double the 14 percent rate an earlier study found in adults ages 18 to 64. (Other studies suggest symptoms can last much longer, for a year or more.)
A study released last month from the CDC found that 1 out of every 4 older adults who survived covid experienced at least 1 of 26 common symptoms associated with long covid, compared with 1 out of every 5 people between the ages of 18 and 64.
The higher rate of post-covid symptoms in older adults is probably because of a higher incidence of chronic disease and physical vulnerability in this population — traits that have led to a greater burden of serious illness, hospitalization and death among seniors throughout the pandemic.
“On average, older adults are less resilient. They don’t have the same ability to bounce back from serious illness,” said Ken Cohen, a co-author of the study and executive director of translational research for Optum Care. Optum Care is a network of physician practices owned by UnitedHealth Group.
For older individuals affected by long covid, the consequences can be devastating: the onset of disability, the inability to work, reduced ability to carry out activities of daily life, and a lower quality of life.
Difficult to recognize
But in many seniors, long covid is hard to recognize.
“The challenge is that nonspecific symptoms such as fatigue, weakness, pain, confusion and increased frailty are things we often see in seriously ill older adults. Or people may think, ‘That’s just part of aging,’ ” said Charles Thomas Alexander Semelka, a postdoctoral fellow in geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University.
Ann Morse, 72, of Nashville, was diagnosed with covid in November 2020 and recovered at home after a trip to the emergency room and follow-up home visits from nurses every few days. She soon began having trouble with her memory, attention and speech, as well as sleep problems and severe fatigue. Although she has improved somewhat, several cognitive issues and fatigue still persist.
50 percent of people who survive covid-19 face lingering symptoms, study finds
Bell, a singer-songwriter in Nashville, had a hard time getting adequate follow-up attention after spending two weeks in an ICU and an additional five weeks in a nursing home receiving rehabilitation therapy.
“I wasn’t getting answers from my regular doctors about my breathing and other issues,” he said. “They said take some over-the-counter medications for your sinus and things like that.” Bell said his real recovery began after he was recommended to specialists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
‘Significant differences’
James Jackson, director of long-term outcomes at Vanderbilt’s Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction, and Survivorship Center, runs several long covid support groups that Morse and Bell attend and has worked with hundreds of similar patients. He said he estimates that about a third of those who are older have some degree of cognitive impairment.
“We know there are significant differences between younger and older brains,” Jackson said. “Younger brains are more plastic and effective at reconstituting, and our younger patients seem able to regain their cognitive functioning more quickly.”
In extreme cases, covid infections can lead to dementia. That may be because older adults who are severely ill with it are at high risk of developing delirium — an acute and sudden change in mental status — which is associated with the subsequent development of dementia, said Liron Sinvani, a geriatrician and an assistant professor at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y.
Thomas Gut, associate chair of medicine at Staten Island University Hospital, which opened one of the first long covid clinics in the United States, observed that becoming ill with covid can push older adults with preexisting conditions such as heart failure or lung disease “over the edge” to a more severe impairment.
That wasn’t true for Richard Gard, 67, who lives just outside New Haven, Conn., a self-described “very healthy and fit” sailor, scuba diver, and music teacher at Yale University who contracted covid in March 2020. He was the first covid patient treated at Yale New Haven Hospital, where he was critically ill for 2½ weeks, including five days in intensive care and three days on a ventilator.
In the two years since, Gard has spent more than two months in the hospital, usually for symptoms that resemble a heart attack.
“If I tried to walk up the stairs or 10 feet, I would almost pass out with exhaustion, and the symptoms would start — extreme chest pain radiating up my arm into my neck, trouble breathing, sweating,” he said.
Life-changing infection
Erica Spatz, director of the preventive cardiovascular health program at Yale, is one of Gard’s physicians.
“The more severe the covid infection and the older you are, the more likely it is you’ll have a cardiovascular complication after,” she said. Complications include weakening of the heart muscle, blood clots, abnormal heart rhythms, vascular system damage and high blood pressure.
“A lot of times, it’s been difficult to go on, but I tell myself I just have to get up and try one more time,” he said. “Every day that I get a little bit better, I tell myself I’m adding another day or week to my life.”
Judith Graham is a columnist for Kaiser Health News, which produces in-depth journalism about health. KHN is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, an endowed nonprofit organization that provides information on health issues to the nation. | 2022-06-26T11:40:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Long covid symptoms are often overlooked in seniors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/26/long-covid-seniors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/26/long-covid-seniors/ |
How the Roe v. Wade ruling evolved: A behind-the-scenes visual tour
Warren E. Burger, left, and Harry A. Blackmun were justices on the Supreme Court during Roe v. Wade. (Stephanie Hays/Washington Post illustration; Papers of Justice Lewis Powell; John Rouse/AP; AP; iStock)
As the country grapples with a radically changed abortion rights landscape now that Roe v. Wade has been struck down, it’s worth considering that Roe very nearly didn’t happen in the first place — at least not the way it’s governed the country for the past half-century.
A review of internal Supreme Court documents reveals that the justices’ thinking on Roe evolved dramatically over the course of eight months of deliberations. If not for several key changes of heart — and strategy — we wouldn’t have ended up with an ironclad right to abortion before a pregnancy is considered viable.
In fact, Roe almost wasn’t the defining abortion case at all.
The court took up two related abortion cases together in 1971. Roe v. Wade arose out of Texas and concerned a century-old law that outlawed abortion except “for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.” Doe v. Bolton was a challenge to a less stringent Georgia law, passed in 1968, that allowed exceptions for the health of the mother, rape and serious fetal abnormalities.
Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who was assigned to write the opinions in both cases, originally envisioned Doe v. Bolton as the lead case. He did not want to strike down the Texas law on any basis other than vagueness (what does it mean to “save the life of the mother”?) because he feared it would overturn most state abortion laws.
Here is what he wrote in a memo to the other justices on May 25, 1972, about his reasoning when he delivered a draft ruling on Doe v. Bolton:
This approach did not last: Roe would eventually be lifted into the lead position because it would establish a broader precedent. Still, Blackmun’s first draft of Doe v. Bolton was significant, because it showed how he dealt with the question of whether the Constitution guaranteed the right to an abortion. His analysis in this first draft would be carried into the Roe decision.
Two things loom large in Blackmun’s first draft of Doe v. Bolton.
First, he recognized a woman’s right to privacy based on cases, especially Griswold v. Connecticut, which in 1965 established a right to use contraception.
On the other hand, while Blackmun found a constitutional basis for a woman’s right to choose, that right was not absolute; it had to be balanced and measured against the rights of the potential fetal or embryonic “life.”
What this meant, theoretically, is that some line in a pregnancy had to be established when fetal rights could override a woman’s right to choose.
The following passage is the heart of the analysis. Blackmun recognized that life begins at some point for the fetus, but he felt it was not for the judiciary “at this point in the development of man’s knowledge” to speculate on what that point was.
It therefore would be left to individual states to draw lines.
Had this been the decision that came down, the political landscape would likely look very different, with the abortion question handled state by state under the general guidance that a woman did possess a fundamental constitutional right to decide how to deal with her pregnancy.
And in fact, this limited version, as articulated by Blackmun, was voted upon and agreed to by a majority of the seven justices who sat in oral argument. Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Potter Stewart told Blackmun they would back his opinion, establishing a five-vote majority.
Douglas, for one, felt the decisions should be announced “forthwith” in June 1972, as he wrote on June 13:
But there was a problem: Justices Lewis F. Powell Jr. and William H. Rehnquist, appointed by President Richard M. Nixon, had recently been seated, and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger felt the court should have the lawyers reargue the cases so Powell and Rehnquist could join in the vote. Perhaps Burger, who had been elevated to chief justice by Nixon, thought the new appointees would favor an even more limited right to abortion.
Blackmun agreed with Burger. He wrote to the justices on May 31:
Why did Blackmun want a do-over? It may be that he was pushed by Burger, his childhood friend. But he also showed a surprising indecisiveness about how to handle all the complex issues raised by the two state abortion statutes, writing in the same memo:
It would prove a fateful move.
Through the process of reargument and the circulation internally of multiple draft opinions, Roe v. Wade became the lead case, and the court began to draw a line dictating when, during the course of a pregnancy, the potential for fetal life could counterbalance a woman’s fundamental right to choose.
But it wouldn’t happen overnight.
Reargument was scheduled for Oct. 11, 1972. In preparation for the second argument, Powell’s law clerk, Larry Hammond, wrote a memo for Powell, dated Oct. 9:
Hammond had read a recent abortion opinion, Abele v. Markle, out of a Connecticut federal district court, which he thought might be helpful in the cases before the court. This is where a discussion of “viability” entered the debate. No litigant in Roe or Doe had suggested it, but the clerks, who spoke frequently, were starting to line up behind the idea.
This is how Hammond presented it to Powell (note the hurried misspelling of “viable”):
Following the second argument, Blackmun circulated a draft opinion that used the end of the first trimester as the line after which a state might prohibit abortions (though he called this line “arbitrary”):
In response, using Hammond’s memo, Powell wrote to Blackmun on Nov. 29 to lobby for a viability test, as opposed to a first-trimester rule.
“I am not sending a copy of this letter to other members of the Court,” Powell added.
Blackmun responded to Powell on Dec. 4:
With Blackmun vacillating about where to draw the line, he decided to consult the other justices on Powell’s “secret” opinion, writing on Dec. 11:
The influence of Hammond’s bench memo can be seen in the second page of this memo:
Douglas responded that he supported a first-trimester cutoff, but others began to shift to the viability standard.
Once again, the clerks seemed to have stepped in to influence the final result. Hammond wrote to Powell on the same day as Blackmun’s memo that he was surprised by Blackmun’s “whatever will command a majority” attitude.
And then he got to the heart of his concern: A first-trimester line might not allow sufficient time for young women who may not know of or be willing to acknowledge their pregnancy to access an abortion.
To Hammond, viability was the logical cutoff. (Note Powell’s definitive “Yes” in the margin.)
In the following days, Marshall and Brennan echoed the sentiments expressed by Hammond. Here, for example, is Marshall’s note on Dec. 12:
With this breakthrough, Blackmun began drafting what would become the final draft of Roe v. Wade, one based on a trimester analysis but ultimately holding that the state’s interest in protecting fetal life did not become “compelling” until viability.
This final draft circulated just before the court’s announcement of its decision on Jan. 22, 1973:
The viability rule is found in this final draft:
Concerned about public reaction, Blackmun wrote an announcement summarizing the abortion opinions, hoping it would keep the press “from going all the way off the deep end.”
His summary explained the court’s reasoning:
For all his hand-wringing, he ended up with exactly the headline he feared, as Time magazine scooped the court’s announcement (using information leaked by Hammond) under the headline “Abortion on demand.”
It would set up a 50-year crusade by abortion opponents to overturn Roe — one that has finally achieved its goal. | 2022-06-26T11:40:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Roe v. Wade ruling changed as justices' thinking evolved - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/26/evolution-roe-v-wade-ruling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/26/evolution-roe-v-wade-ruling/ |
How the G-7 can tip the scales toward Ukraine
By Robert B. Zoellick
The flag of the Group of Seven, second from left, is flanked by the flags of Germany, left, and the European Union outside the International Media Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, on June 25 before the G-7 leaders summit. (Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg News)
Robert B. Zoellick has served as president of the World Bank, U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state. He is the author of “America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy.”
The United States and its Group of Seven partners must use their Bavarian summit starting Sunday to plan the next critical campaign of the Russian-Ukrainian war: the battle for Ukraine’s economic survival and reconstruction.
Russia is waging a war of attrition. Artillery shells and logistics dominate. If both sides maintain their will, economic resilience is likely to determine the outcome.
Moscow’s economy has declined, but Russia’s sales of commodities will keep Vladimir Putin’s regime supplied with the necessities of war for a long time. Ukraine’s productive capacity, on the other hand, has collapsed between 40 to 50 percent. Almost 13 million Ukrainians have fled their homes. Kyiv cannot export most of its harvest to earn foreign currency. The best guesses are that Ukraine needs between $5 billion and $6 billion in assistance each month just to stay afloat. Nevertheless, heroic Ukrainians have managed to maintain basic governmental functions while supporting an army at war.
The G-7 must create and commit to an economic plan worth hundreds of billions of public and private dollars to do much more than simply meet Ukraine’s immediate humanitarian needs. An economic mobilization of that size would signal to Moscow that Russia is waging a financial contest against a coalition that it cannot defeat. Such a commitment, combined with a blueprint for recovery and reconstruction, would offer hope to Ukrainians.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research, a network of economists based in London, recommends three phases: emergency aid; swift restoration of critical infrastructure and services; and building the foundation for rapid, sustainable growth. The work anticipates the human costs of divided families, labor force disruptions and children’s loss of education, in addition to the needs for physical infrastructure. The European Union’s pathway for Ukraine’s future membership guides the integration of infrastructure, standards, foreign private investment and supply chains.
Ukraine must co-own the plan. In doing so, Ukraine needs to confront the obstacles that stymied reforms since independence in 1991: corruption, the domination of oligarchs who resisted competition, manipulation of the energy sector, and out-migration of talent. Transparency and use of mobile apps for procurement, backed by international judges during a transition, can counter graft and theft. Fiscal decentralization will connect spending with local citizen watchdogs.
When security conditions enable Ukraine to look beyond emergencies, the assistance needs to encourage rapid recovery, conditioned upon accountability and achieving measurable, verifiable milestones. To jump-start economic life, Ukraine — like Europe in 1948 — needs basic shelter and housing, transport systems, social infrastructure such as schools and medical facilities, and primary inputs for production. The aid should be through grants, not loans; some 90 percent of the Marshall Plan support were grants.
With a sound recovery, Ukraine’s reconstruction offers great potential. The country enjoys high levels of education; the world has witnessed Ukraine’s powerful technological and digital capabilities. Modern productive capacity, designed for a zero-carbon future, will serve the world well.
The G-7 in Bavaria needs to agree on an agency to coordinate this effort in partnership with Ukraine. The European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and United Nations’ humanitarian agencies should all take part, but someone must be in charge. A central organizer will help avoid confusion and wasteful overlap, save the time of Kyiv’s stretched officials and ensure accountability. The Marshall Plan created a stand-alone agency that closed down when it finished its work; the E.U. should consider establishing such a model.
The G-7 needs to integrate economics with a geopolitical strategy. Open transit of the Black Sea is vital for global food supplies today as well as for Ukraine’s future economic geography. The G-7 and Turkey should propose and, if need be, ensure and protect neutral passage for food supplies; looking ahead, any settlement must assure Ukraine’s right of maritime transit. The coalition also should encourage China to help finance reconstruction and thereby distance itself from Russia’s blunder. The G-7 must also support developing countries facing food, energy, climate, covid-19 and other threats to resilience. Otherwise, the Global South will conclude that G-7 sympathies only extend to people who look like those in the G-7.
North America and the E.U. have already authorized huge sums. Yet the leaders of the G-7 need to decide whether they want Ukraine to survive — and eventually prosper — as an independent, sovereign democracy. Their legislatures and publics are more likely to maintain wartime resolve if governments can explain how assistance now contributes to a coherent plan for Ukraine’s ultimate victory.
Finally, the G-7 should declare that Russia owes compensation to Ukraine under international law.
During World War II, lend-lease helped U.S. allies defeat a common enemy. The G-7 needs to build upon that experience by resolving to give Ukraine the means to win both the military and economic campaigns.
The latest: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remained defiant in the face of what military analysts called an “abnormally large” barrage of nearly 50 Russian missile strikes across Ukraine on Saturday. The onslaught continued Sunday morning, and Kyiv’s mayor reported several explosions. “No Russian missiles, no strikes can break the morale of Ukrainians,” Zelensky said during his nightly address, vowing to liberate every Ukrainian city occupied by Russia. | 2022-06-26T11:40:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How the G-7 can tip the scales toward Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/g7-bavaria-meeting-economic-help-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/g7-bavaria-meeting-economic-help-ukraine/ |
The pandemic is in a twilight zone. Enjoy it — but stay safe.
Travelers at the Alaska Airlines ticket counter at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg)
The pandemic has entered a twilight zone, neither causing major disruption to the nation nor vanishing. Everyone is looking forward to a summer without masks or terrifying case spikes. The government has dropped the requirement that international air travelers test before entering the United States. We have vaccines, antivirals and diagnostic tests in surplus. So far, so good.
But there is still a nagging uncertainty, one that is not trivial. The biggest unknown is whether new variants will evolve. Omicron was an example of how mutation can deliver an unpleasant one-two punch. It could happen again. This possibility is particularly important in planning the formula of new vaccines and boosters. Moderna has announced that clinical trials showed good results for a bivalent booster — a vaccine against both the original strains beta and delta, and against omicron — and that will be the company’s lead candidate for a fall booster, pending approval. Pfizer says it is studying multiple platforms and approaches and will have data soon.
On the radar is the question: How long will omicron be around? A serious evolutionary change in the virus could pose a major challenge to everyone’s plans.
More certainty seems at hand for mRNA pediatric shots. Parents of children under 5 years old have been waiting a long time for a regulatory green light, and it arrived none too soon. It is still unsettling that the youngest people previously authorized for vaccination, from 5 years old to 17, have the lowest vaccine uptake; we hope parents of the smallest kids will not be reluctant.
The virus is still spreading. For a couple of weeks, the recorded U.S. seven-day moving average of daily new cases has been hovering around 100,000, and is probably much higher because of underreporting. The current levels are higher than during most of year one. The difference is that now there are diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics to fight back. Moreover, at this point, far more is known about viral transmission, such as the value of face masks and the importance of improved ventilation and filtration. Also, the population’s level of immunity, both vaccine and natural, is far higher than it was in 2020, even if overall vaccination has not reached optimum levels.
What’s happening appears to be the gradual transition from pandemic emergency to endemic predictability. Still, complacency is dangerous. Wearing face masks in crowded indoor spaces, including on mass transit, is prudent. So are boosters. The bottleneck for at-home diagnostic tests has eased, and while the rapid antigen tests are not foolproof, frequent testing is a valuable tool to be alert to possible infection. Do it all.
Public health must include mental health. At this point and considering the tools for protection, a careful return to normalcy, socializing and travel is welcome and necessary. If the virus threatens anew, then a pivot to more restrictions is always possible. But right now it seems proper to say: Welcome to the twilight zone; things are getting better. And stay safe. | 2022-06-26T11:40:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The pandemic is in a twilight zone. Enjoy it — but stay safe. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/pandemic-is-twilight-zone-enjoy-it-stay-safe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/pandemic-is-twilight-zone-enjoy-it-stay-safe/ |
The problem with self-driving cars? Many don’t drive themselves.
A Tesla sedan, left, in autopilot mode that crashed into a parked police cruiser on May 29, 2018, in Laguna Beach, Calif. (Laguna Beach Police Department via AP) (AP)
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report this month on crashes involving vehicles with automated technology. Self-driving cars may not really be the problem — the problem is cars that don’t drive themselves but manage to convince the drivers that they do.
The report includes data collected over a 10-month period following an order last summer that required automakers to report incidents that included cars with advanced driver-assistance systems. Fully autonomous vehicles such as Google spinoff Waymo or General Motors-controlled Cruise LLC ended up in 130 crashes, most of them occurring when the car was struck from behind, 108 of which resulted in no injuries and only one of which resulted in a serious injury. Meanwhile, cars with partially automated systems experienced nearly 400 crashes.(NHTSA did not provide the total number of hours or miles driven.) Six people died and five were seriously injured. A previous crash in a Tesla Model S ended in a fire that took four hours and more than 30,000 gallons of water to put out.
The study is a reminder not only that the fully self-driving future many people imagine is a long way off, but also that a present in which cars can perform on their own some functions traditionally reserved for humans can prove dangerous. The NHTSA also recently upgraded a probe of Tesla Autopilot to an engineering analysis; investigators are examining the feature’s responsibility for repeated collisions with parked emergency vehicles such as ambulances and police cruisers — which drivers should have been able to see about eight seconds before impact, but which they took no action to avoid until two to five seconds before impact.
The issue, it appears, may not be merely that automated systems themselves have flaws but also that drivers are relying too heavily on systems that aren’t designed to do all the work without human input. After all, when something is called “full self-driving” it’s easy to expect, consciously or subconsciously, that it will fully drive itself. Even when software supposedly requires drivers to pay attention, the fact that a car can take care of some things can lull people into thinking the car will take care of all things — or into relaxing more generally, so that if something does go wrong they are unprepared to respond. This is what the NHTSA means when it says it will examine whether Tesla Autopilot “may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks.”
So far, there’s no data to show whether partial automation features render driving safer or less safe. The NHTSA could certainly try to make the former more likely by imposing minimum performance standards in addition to restrictions on terminology that exaggerates a vehicle’s capabilities. But drivers themselves would do well to remember that the era of self-driving cars for the most part hasn’t yet begun — even when they’re at the wheel of a vehicle that does some of the work for them. | 2022-06-26T11:40:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The problem with self-driving cars? Many don’t drive themselves. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/problem-with-self-driving-cars-many-dont-drive-themselves/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/problem-with-self-driving-cars-many-dont-drive-themselves/ |
The racial ignorance of Virginia’s health czar
Dr. Colin Greene, Virginia health commissioner, at a session with the Board of Health on racial disparities in health outcomes on June 23. (Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post)
Virginia’s top health official seems to have missed some of the voluminous research in recent decades demonstrating the link between racism and disparate health treatment and outcomes among African Americans. Actually, he seems to have missed virtually all of it.
After spending his first five months on the job dismissing, playing down and otherwise head-in-the-sanding structural racism’s role in health disparities, Virginia health commissioner Colin Greene now says: Oops.
Earlier this month Dr. Greene retracted recent remarks that left state health officials aghast and, by some of their accounts, traumatized. He did so only after his boss, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, in an apparent effort to calm the uproar, said he was disappointed Dr. Greene did not “effectively communicate our mission.” He has since been reprimanded by the state Board of Health.
In fact, Dr. Greene’s sin may be that he too literally communicated the mission Mr. Youngkin set for his administration. On his first day in office in January, in “Executive Order Number One,” the governor ordered the end of public school instruction in what he called “inherently divisive concepts.” He singled out critical race theory by name, but made clear that a number of race-related topics were off-limits. Dr. Greene seemed to be following the same playbook by trying to ban what he sees as similarly divisive concepts involving race and disparate health outcomes.
To many Republicans, any discussion of structural racism — assertions that U.S. society continues to contend with the legacies of slavery, segregation and bigotry — is inherently divisive. For his part, Dr. Greene contended that the word “racism” itself is “politically charged” and would only alienate White people — a stance that predates his current job. “If you say ‘racism,’ you’re blaming White people,” Dr. Greene said. “Enough of the world thinks that’s what you’re saying that you’ve lost a big piece of your audience.”
He elaborated on those views in meetings with state health officials under his supervision, for example by casting doubt on widely accepted research showing that racial inequity and disparate treatment have contributed to high rates of Black maternal and infant mortality. The very word “racism,” Dr. Greene told The Post in an interview, conjures for him “fire hoses, police dogs and Alabama sheriffs,” images from the mid-20th century civil rights strife. It is a risibly constricted understanding of racism.
Dr. Greene now expresses contrition for his remarks, if not overt apology, writing in a note that “I am fully aware that racism at many levels is a factor in a wide range of public health outcomes and disparities across the Commonwealth and the United States.” He expressed regret that his staff members “feel discounted or disrespected.”
Unfortunately, Dr. Greene, having displayed his own ignorance and myopia, is the wrong person to address problems he now acknowledges are deep, real — and rooted in racism.
The Editorial Board on Virginia | 2022-06-26T11:40:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Virginia health commissioner wakes up to structural racism in disparities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/virginia-colin-greene-racism-health-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/virginia-colin-greene-racism-health-care/ |
Bette Howland, nearly forgotten, is now getting the notice she deserves
New editions of her books, including “Things Come and Go,” reveal Howland’s singular talent
Author Bette Howland (Jacob Howland)
In 2015, Brigid Hughes, an editor at A Public Space, was browsing a sale rack at the Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan when she came across a memoir called “W-3.” She was struck by the work’s lively voice and surprised that she had never heard of its author, Bette Howland.
Howland, in fact, had a storied past. She’d worked at small magazines, studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and had a long, flirtatious correspondence with Saul Bellow, whom she met at a writer’s conference when she was 24 and he was nearly twice that. She published “W-3,” a frank recollection of her time in a psychiatric hospital, in 1974. A few years earlier, as a single mother of two, Howland had attempted suicide in Bellow’s apartment when he was out of town. In 1978, she published her second book, the collection “Blue in Chicago,” which won her a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her third, “Things to Come and Go” (1983), helped her earn a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship the following year.
After that? Decades of silence.
Hughes set out to find Howland, and did — only to learn from her son Jacob that the 77-year-old writer wouldn’t be able to speak to her. The year before, she had been hit by a truck while walking home from the grocery store. Already suffering from multiple sclerosis and dementia, Howland lost her ability to communicate: “Her words scatter like vegetables bouncing on asphalt,” her son later wrote.
Two new books bring Lucia Berlin back to life
So began Hughes’s mission to rescue Howland’s work from obscurity. In 2019, two years after Howland’s death at age 80, A Public Space reissued Howland’s “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage,” a collection combining memoir, essays and fiction that first appeared in TriQuarterly. Last year came a new edition of “W-3,” and now we have a new edition of “Things Come and Go,” a slim volume containing three longish, exuberantly voice-y short stories.
As in the case of Lucia Berlin — a late, little-known author who won a new generation of fans when her stories were reissued as “A Manual for Cleaning Women” in 2015 — the growing interest in Bette Howland’s work was helped along by her son. Jacob Howland wrote and spoke about his mother’s oeuvre and her lifelong depression in Commentary and elsewhere, sharing his suspicion that winning the MacArthur grant in 1984 had “sapped her confidence.” It would be an understatement to say that’s a shame.
As Rumaan Alam points out in his introduction to “Things to Come and Go,” the strength of Howland’s work is the warmth and liveliness of her highly personable voice. “She’s good company, cracking wise about everything and everyone she sees.” Yes, she is. But beneath the bright patter and eye-catching descriptions, each story has sadness at its core.
Who was Vivian Maier? A new book explores the inspired life of the nanny with a secret gift for photography.
In the first story of the collection, “Birds of a Feather,” a young first-person narrator dishes the dirt on her father’s family, first-generation working-class Jews — “the big brassy yak-yakking Abarbanels.” The men are large, swarthy and “virilely pockmarked,” with “palpable noses” and when the women come down the street, arms linked, purses swinging, “three sets of hips bolstered their skirts like the sofas under the bedsheets.” (Howland was Jewish.)
While there’s a lot of action, there’s no overall plot — the story is basically a series of gossipy anecdotes and sassy character sketches. Of her uncle Reuben’s wife, Luellen: “What she liked was lying on the bed with her feet propped up — ten stubby frosty-pink toenails — smoking and reading confession magazines.”
Of her “very good-looking” boyfriend Donny: “He had that kind of curly grape-cluster hair that statues have, and his nose was like a statue's too; smashed.”
Of her spinster aunt Honey: “Honey's hair was red these days, medicinal red, the color of the cough syrup on the shelves at Dykstra's; her face was as powdered and pitted as the vaccination mark on her arm.”
Even as bad things happen — deaths, breakups, bad behavior — the emotional tone remains jokey and even. These “birds of a feather” may be linked by blood and resemblance, but what about love? Essayist Johanna Kaplan, who reviewed the book when it came out in 1983, called “Birds of a Feather” a story of “terrifying emotional coldness.” Very well hidden, though, behind a flood of energetic storytelling.
The second story, “The Old Wheeze,” circles around the problem of love in a different way, introducing four characters, and taking their perspectives in turn. Mrs. Cheatham is an older Black woman who works as a babysitter for a little boy named Mark. His single mother, Sydney, dates a much older man named Leo, who drives Mrs. Cheatham home at the end of these date nights.
Lonely Mrs. Cheatham is confused by Leo’s attempts to chat her up and bond with her on their drives. Finally she figures it out — he must a be a liberal. That explains it. Sydney is intimidated by Mrs. Cheatham, and by motherhood in general. “She loved [Mark] rashly, at times frantically — squeezing him to her as if her were her life, her breath, and she could scarcely catch him. Still, in her heart of hearts, she suspected that almost anyone would be better at her job, more qualified, than she was.” Her relationship with Leo, a professor at the college she attends, has come in the wake of the failure of her first marriage, and though she has focused her hopes for happiness on him, she sees that he likes her only because she is pretty and young.
The final story, “The Life You Gave Me,” also circles around an imperfect parent-child bond. A woman has flown to Florida to see her father after surgery. They say he is going to be all right, but she knows the reprieve is temporary; there has been another health scare 10 years ago, and — “Well? What are we waiting for? We know what’s coming, don’t we?” With the inevitability of loss staring her in the face, there are things she should say but doesn’t know if she will find the words, and is not ready to let him go.
The narrator distracts herself from the anguish of the immediate situation with meditations on her father's life and character, and observations about the Florida climate and landscape. “Builders in South Florida are like God in the universe. Their handiwork is everywhere but they are nowhere to be seen. They move on, leaving Gardens of Eden all over the place, and nothing quite finished.”
Perhaps the same could be said about Bette Howland.
Things to Come and Go
By Bette Howland
A Public Space. 156 pp. Paperback, $16.95 | 2022-06-26T12:41:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bette Howland, forgotten author, in the spotlight with Things Come and Go - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/26/bette-howland-rediscovery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/26/bette-howland-rediscovery/ |
Lawsuit seeks to stop Charlottesville Lee statue from being melted down
A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville is lifted off its pedestal in July. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
A lawsuit is seeking to block a Charlottesville museum from altering a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee — even though that monument has already been cut into pieces, according to court documents.
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center wrote in a legal filing last week that it had “disassembled” the bronze sculpture of Lee on horseback, which had stood in a Charlottesville park and been at the center of 2017′s deadly Unite the Right rally.
“What [the Center] owns,” it wrote in the filing, “is no longer the statue that stood in Market Street Park.”
After the sculpture was taken down last year, city lawmakers voted in December to donate it to the Jefferson School, a Black-led museum that planned to melt down the metal and turn it into a new piece of public artwork.
But Andrea Douglas, the museum’s executive director, said those plans are on hold amid the lawsuit — a feat that underscores how the Lee statue and its fate have continued to draw stubborn backlash.
The four-year legal battle over whether the statue could be toppled has now given way to a new fight in the courts: over what form the bronze sculpture can take, even now that it is off its granite pedestal.
Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue will be melted down by city’s African American history museum
The lawsuit was filed in December against the museum and the city of Charlottesville by the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation, which manages a museum in Russell County, Va., the “ancestral homeland” of Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart. A judge removed the museum as a defendant, but it remains a party to the suit.
The plaintiffs’ request for a temporary injunction to preserve the statue, which is being held in storage in an undisclosed location, has not been granted by a judge.
“We’re being accused of trying to erase history, when what we’re really trying to do is help our city to heal,” Douglas said. “It feels like these people are trying to dictate the ways in which Charlottesville responds."
David Dillehunt, a city spokesman, said in an email that Charlottesville generally does not comment on pending litigation. Buddy Weber, a spokesman for the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation, and Ralph E. Main, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Ratcliffe Foundation was one of several groups or individuals that had filed bids to the city to take ownership of the Lee statue as well as one of Stonewall Jackson that had also been taken down last summer. Lawmakers voted to send the Jackson statue to a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, which has said it plans to include it in an exhibit next year on the Lost Cause and Confederate monuments.
The two foundations filed a protest letter to the city, claiming that the process for bidding on the statues was “disastrously arbitrary” and that it resulted in a “capricious, illegal award.”
Robert E. Lee statue removed in Charlottesville; it had become focal point of deadly 2017 rally
Their lawsuit, filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court, alleges that the city violated the Freedom of Information Act, Virginia Public Procurement Act and state code in donating the Lee statue to the Jefferson School.
The plaintiffs have asked a judge to issue a permanent injunction that would force the city to pay to restore and repair the Lee statue to its original state as a sculpture. If it cannot be repaired and restored, they wrote in the lawsuit, the bronze ingots from the statue should be repurposed into a Civil War cannon that will be donated to display on a Civil War battlefield.
But Douglas said filing such a lawsuit was akin to a neighbor trying to stop her from cutting down a tree in her backyard. “It’s my tree,” she said. “I have the right to chop it down.”
The Jefferson Center earlier this year launched a public engagement process to consult Charlottesville residents on what form the bronze should take, including an online survey and a forum in March attended by about 135 people.
It will use the feedback collected throughout that process, Douglas said, to create guidelines for artists who could then submit their own ideas. But the museum will not be melting the statue down — at least, not yet.
"We are going to see how this plays out before deciding where we go next,” she said. “We feel confident that we will be able to do what we intended to do.”
Both plaintiffs are connected to the Monument Fund, a Charlottesville group that fought to keep the Lee statue from coming down in the first place after a vote from city lawmakers.
When city lawmakers first voted in 2017 to take down the Confederate general from his perch at Market Street Park, a group of local residents associated with the fund sued, citing a state law passed in 1997 that prohibited localities from removing Confederate war memorials.
The plaintiffs in the ongoing case have cited the same law, although the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in the first lawsuit that the 1997 statute applies only to monuments erected after the law was adopted.
It was amid the first legal fight that white supremacists descended on Charlottesville in violent protest of the statue’s removal in August 2017. One man drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. | 2022-06-26T13:07:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Plans for Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville at center of lawsuit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/26/charlottesville-robert-lee-statue-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/26/charlottesville-robert-lee-statue-lawsuit/ |
If Joe Biden wants to run for re-election, he should say so clearly and soon — and then start acting like it. Alternatively, if the president is not sure he wants to run again, he should take that as a strong sign that he shouldn’t — and then make that announcement soon, too.
The point, you may have noticed, is that whatever he does, he needs to do it soon.
Yes, it’s abnormally early for an incumbent president to be making an official announcement. But for all modern incumbents, a re-election campaign has been a foregone conclusion. For Biden, it isn’t. And for many Democrats in Washington, the presumption now — partly because of his age and party because of his policies — is that he’s not running.
Many Democrats see his tenure thus far as reflecting tendencies they usually see in a lame-duck president. He’s prioritized ambitious foreign policy goals — rallying the world against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and fighting a trade war with China — over domestic issues such as inflation. He’s compromised his diversity goals to hand out senior jobs to old friends such as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, while simultaneously outsourcing most of the staff work to the left wing of the party. (The Office of Presidential Personnel, for example, is run by a former chief of staff to Representative Pramila Jayapal.)
None of this means that he won’t run for re-election. But it does mean that many who prefer a moderate “Bidenist” Democratic Party to a more progressive one believe that he won’t — and are currently casting around for alternatives to Vice President Kamala Harris.
It continues to be the case, however, that the best standard-bearer for the Bidenist faction of the party is none other than Joe Biden himself. That means he has to become more like Primary Candidate Joe Biden — the one who prioritized popularity and electability over legacy items for the history books — and less like President Joe Biden, who in March 2021 convened a roundtable meeting with historians to discuss his potential legacy and his “think-big, go-big mentality.”
This is the kind of thing presidents normally do in the March after they get re-elected. That’s when they turn the page on practical politics in favor of efforts to define themselves in the eyes of history.
It rarely works out. George W. Bush capped his re-election with a doomed push to privatize Social Security, prompting a huge public backlash, and a grandiose Second Inaugural Address that vowed the “untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of the world.”
First-term Bush, like most first-term presidents, was more pragmatic and focused on giving the people what they wanted. Even at the height of his post-9/11 public approval, his administration focused on “compassionate conservative” agenda items such as including prescription drug coverage in Medicare and expanding eligibility for SNAP benefits. The hard-right pivot after re-election was supposed to leave a more lasting legacy, but it flopped politically. And that political failure helped discredit Bush-style politics in Republican circles.
Barack Obama, similarly, was laser-focused on public opinion during his first term. He advanced progressive social and cultural causes, but consistently “lead from the rear,” ending the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in late 2010, when doing so was overwhelmingly popular, and only endorsing marriage equality after advocates pushed its approval rating up above 50%. Not until his second term did he start throwing caution to the wind, taking big political risks for the sake of diplomatic breakthroughs with Cuba and Iran.
The problem here was similar to that which Republicans had faced eight years earlier: While Obama didn’t need to stand for re-election again, other Democrats did. Fighting with the Israel lobby and Cuban emigrés was politically costly. Donald Trump’s election in 2016 largely undid those legacy items, and even Biden’s presence in the White House can’t put the diplomatic Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Now the Biden administration is being similarly reckless with its politics — hostile to fossil fuel extraction amid high energy costs, picking aggressive fights over transgender issues that could be easily ducked, and more focused on the benefits of student loan relief than on its impact on inflation.
In retrospect, the historians’ advice to Biden to go big was borderline absurd. There’s a reason congressional Democrats ran consistently weaker than his presidential campaign — a margin of the public was voting for Biden despite the progressive agenda, not because of it.
Biden’s core promise was a return to normalcy and the expurgation of Trump from the political system. He’s actually delivered on more of this promise than most people realize, yet his historical legacy may still suffer. It could be something like: “Really high inflation discredited Democrats, allowing authoritarian elements in the Republican Party to regain control of the government.”
The best way for Biden to secure his legacy would be to focus on popularity with the cold calculation of Bill Clinton and crush the opposition with the ruthlessness of LBJ. Of course if Biden truly doesn’t want to run again, then acting like a lame duck is probably unavoidable. But either way, the best thing for the country, and for Biden, would be for the president to clarify his plans and act decisively on them — sooner rather than later.
• The 2024 Presidential Election Is Already Strange: Jonathan Bernstein | 2022-06-26T13:11:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden 2024? America Needs to Know Now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-2024-america-needs-to-know-now/2022/06/26/b211f09e-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/biden-2024-america-needs-to-know-now/2022/06/26/b211f09e-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Analysis by Emma Ashford | Bloomberg
After several months of will-he-won’t-he speculation, the White House confirmed that President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East next month will include a stop in Saudi Arabia. There, he will meet with Mohammed bin Salman, ending the crown prince’s diplomatic isolation over his involvement in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The decision is a staggering about-face from Biden, who during his presidential campaign vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state.
This isn’t the only apparent change in the Biden administration’s approach toward the Gulf. There are widespread reports that it is on the verge of signing a substantive new security pact with the United Arab Emirates. The deal is rumored to include regional economic and security cooperation, as well as the potential for a concrete U.S. security guarantee to Abu Dhabi.
All this has met with a wave of praise in Washington, with many of those who normally argue that realpolitik is immoral suddenly discovering the merits of realism when it comes to the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, declared that “a pure, values-centered approach to Saudi Arabia … is unsustainable.” Andrew Exum, a defense official in President Barack Obama’s administration, lauded the president for “sacrificing his values today in the interests of something we haven’t seen much of in the past two decades: realism.”
On closer inspection, however, the notion that Biden’s proposed pivot to the Gulf is a realist triumph quickly falls apart.
Saudi Arabia, of course, occupies a unique position in the global economy thanks to oil production, and the US cannot and should not cut off all ties with Riyadh. Until now, the Biden administration has walked a careful line, maintaining active diplomatic connections while publicly criticizing the crown prince, known as MBS.
With a major policy shift, it’s not merely that the administration would be embracing MBS and his human rights abuses, appalling though they are. The bigger problem is that it would do little to support US interests, while potentially obligating Washington to a host of new commitments in the region.
The most obvious benefit is the potential for the Saudis to pump more oil into world markets, helping to relieve the economic crunch and high gas prices that have followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The administration has also suggested that Biden’s trip will further cement the Abraham Accords, perhaps leading to normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and ensuring that regional states form a more effective front against Iran.
But both changes were already underway without U.S. involvement. The most recent production increases — agreed to by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on June 2 — merely sped up existing plans, and is projected to add only around 200,000 barrels a day to the market (in February this year, the Saudis alone produced almost 12 million barrels daily). Many analysts are doubtful that further major increases are possible; OPEC is already undershooting its production targets for 2022.
As for cooperation between Israel and the Gulf States, it has improved in recent years in part because of America’s pullback from the region, not despite it. And given the collapse of Israel’s coalition government, it’s hardly a time to be staking out long-term policy with the Israelis.
The potential costs of Biden’s changed approach to the region are high. The US would be renewing its commitments to Middle Eastern states in a more concrete form, risking entanglement and getting dragged into a future regional war. At a time when America is facing increasing demands on its resources in Europe and Asia, a decision to tie the hands of future US leaders in this way is frankly perplexing.
This move is also politically dangerous for Biden. President Donald Trump’s years were replete with stories of illicit and secretive connections between the president’s associates and the Gulf states, from Jared Kushner’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia to the involvement of the UAE in illegitimate lobbying efforts. Biden’s move to rehabilitate the Saudi crown prince or offer security guarantees to the UAE are already receiving substantial pushback in Congress, and are likely to be unpopular with his Democratic base.
But perhaps the biggest problem with this approach is that the growing divisions between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US were never solely about human rights. Instead, they reflected natural shifts in global oil markets. These states have growing ties with China — now among the biggest consumers of Gulf oil — and with Russia, their partner in the OPEC+ arrangement.
These shared economic interests are driving geopolitical bonds. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have both abstained on UN votes related to the war in Ukraine, and the Saudis hosted Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in March, just weeks after the invasion. The Saudi energy minister this month described the Saudi-Russian relationship “as warm as the weather in Riyadh.”
Biden’s policy reversal no doubt stems from a desire to be seen to be doing something about domestic gas prices. Yet this approach would do little to help at the pump, while incurring substantial strategic costs. There are other potential solutions.
For instance, the White House could reassure oil and gas companies about U.S. policy on decarbonization, a potential windfall tax and other proposed policies that made oil companies wary to invest in new production. It could suspend the protectionist restrictions on shipping in the Jones Act, reducing the cost of energy transport and increasing flexibility for producers and refiners. And it could consider softening sanctions on Venezuela, which could help to ease pressure on markets over the longer term.
Finally, resolving the standoff over re-entering the Iran nuclear deal, leading to lifting of sanctions against the Tehran government, would drop as much as a million barrels of oil a day onto world markets, with the prospect for more as Iranian production ramps back up.
The central obstacle to reviving the nuclear pact is Biden’s refusal to remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list. Doing so would be unpopular on Capitol Hill but would have little practical effect on the guard corps’ sinister activities. Reviving the nuclear deal would also bring foreign-policy benefits. Most notably, preventing a potential war between Iran and America’s Middle Eastern partners, and a potential regional nuclear arms race.
Ultimately, a policy of increased US support for the Gulf states is less savvy realpolitik and more a desperate gamble to improve oil prices. Disregarding human rights abuses is in some ways the least of the problems with this approach; it is politically dangerous and risks dragging the US back into Middle Eastern wars.
Biden can still embrace some of the viable alternatives to lower gas prices. Consumers — and future U.S. leaders — will thank him. | 2022-06-26T13:11:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s Reversal on Gulf States Is the Wrong Kind of Realpolitik - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/bidens-reversal-on-gulf-states-is-the-wrong-kindof-realpolitik/2022/06/26/b249a34a-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/bidens-reversal-on-gulf-states-is-the-wrong-kindof-realpolitik/2022/06/26/b249a34a-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade gets one thing right: The ruling doesn’t just open the door to states to ban abortion. It removes the key legal obstacle to a federal ban on abortion, too. Whether and how to take advantage of that opening will now become a strategic choice, and debate, for pro-lifers.
For opponents of abortion, there are weighty considerations on both sides.
Let’s start with the case for federal action. The 14th Amendment says that states must extend the equal protection of the laws to all persons and gives Congress the power of enforcement. The pro-life movement has argued that allowing states to deny unborn children protection against homicide breaks that promise. (The Republican platform has long said that the amendment’s protections should apply to the unborn.) Our country has for many decades acted on the conviction that basic human rights require federal protection.
If the federal government does not act, in some states unborn children will have no legal protection against elective abortion. If pro-lifers, by acting at the federal level, can provide legal protection for human beings who otherwise would not have it, they would seem to have a moral obligation to grant it.
On the other hand, we generally leave the prohibition and prosecution of homicide to state governments. We have good reasons for this arrangement, and some extra reasons for adopting it in the case of abortion. Even if we all agreed that abortion should be banned, we would not agree on the details of the laws that would follow from that premise.
Is it enough to take medical licenses away from doctors who perform illegal abortions, and impose steep fines on people who perform them without licenses? Or does justice and deterrence require tougher sanctions? Allowing states to enact different laws would shed light on which laws would work best to protect life while having the least negative side effects.
And then there’s the question of what politics will bear. Making a federal law a priority would divert pro-lifers’ attention away from pressing political battles in the states. It would also divide them.
A lot of Republicans who think of themselves as pro-life don’t want to ban abortion in cases of rape and incest. A lot of pro-life activists think making those exceptions would be unjust. Getting enough pro-lifers in any state to agree on a law they can pass will be challenging enough; getting them to agree nationally would be more difficult still.
The backdrop of this debate is that neither side has been able to enact much in the way of federal legislation. Pro-lifers have repeatedly failed in recent years to break a filibuster in the Senate to pass a ban on abortion after 20 weeks, even though most polls show Americans lean in favor of one. Pro-choicers have been unable to muster a majority even in a Democratic Senate for a law they describe (somewhat misleadingly) as codifying Roe v. Wade. Even when each side is on its strongest political ground, then, it has failed to prevail in Congress.
So even though the legal door may be open for a federal ban on abortion, the political door is, for now, shut. How hard to push on it raises a series of prudential judgments.
Let’s say a senator who has been a longtime ally of pro-lifers says that, in her view, the federal government should leave abortion to the states — but that she will keep voting for conservative judicial nominees and against federal funding for abortion, and in other ways continue to be an ally. Should pro-lifers attack her and try to get her replaced in a primary?
I think the answer is no. But unless pro-lifers apply that kind of stringent test to politicians, they will not be able to get federal legislation. A real campaign for federal anti-abortion legislation would mire pro-lifers in one internal battle after another.
The upshot is that pro-lifers should not rule out federal action in principle. Laws restricting abortion throughout the country should be our goal. But for the foreseeable future, the main place to fight for such laws should be individual states.
More on the Supreme Court in Bloomberg Opinion:
• Ending Roe Is Institutional Suicide for Supreme Court: Noah Feldman
• Can Companies Still Cover Abortion Costs?: Stephen L. Carter | 2022-06-26T13:11:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pro-Lifers Should Hold Off on Seeking National Abortion Ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pro-lifers-should-hold-off-on-seeking-national-abortion-ban/2022/06/26/b1dc85a8-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pro-lifers-should-hold-off-on-seeking-national-abortion-ban/2022/06/26/b1dc85a8-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
In fast-warming Alaskan village, fate of Biden’s climate policy could be decided
The Biden administration will soon weigh in on ConocoPhillips’s Willow project on Alaska’s North Slope
An aerial view of Nuiqsut, Alaska, in May 2019. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
NUIQSUT, Alaska — On the fifth day of the gas leak, Bruce Nukapigak loaded fourteen relatives into three cars and fled through a blizzard toward the nearest town of Deadhorse.
He passed his old caribou hunting campsite — now hemmed in by oil pipelines — and drove over the concrete bridge built by the energy giant ConocoPhillips, where he used to set nets for salmon in an Arctic stream.
Nukapigak, a 37-year-old power-plant operator, took pride in the fact that his remote hometown at the top of the world helped supply the country’s energy. But he had lived through oil disasters before — his infant son was airlifted from the village during a blowout a decade earlier — and he knew a knife’s edge could separate routine work from catastrophe.
“I understand this country needs energy. And we provide it,” he said. “But all the bad stuff that comes with it — we’re left to fend for ourselves when it happens.”
The dilemma Nukapigak wrestled with as he sped over the tundra in March is now facing the Biden administration, in what could soon become one of the administration’s most significant environmental decisions. At a time of soaring gas prices and mounting climate emergencies, the administration is weighing a proposal by ConocoPhillips for the next major phase in Arctic oil exploration: a network of new drilling pads that would further encircle Nuiqsut with oil infrastructure.
The $6 billion endeavor, known as the Willow project, includes hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines, airstrips, a gravel mine, and a major new processing facility — all in the middle of pristine Arctic tundra and wetland, on the nation’s single largest block of public land.
The decision will directly test how the administration is weighing pressure to deepen America’s ability to produce oil — at a moment that high energy prices, in part because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, represent a major political threat to Biden and economic threat to the country — against a desire to make progress curbing climate change and bolstering environmental protection.
Last year, a federal judge blocked construction permits for the project, approved during the final year of the Trump administration, because the government failed to assess how burning the oil pulled from the ground would warm the planet.
The Biden administration, which defended the Willow project in court, will soon complete a new environmental review. Conservation groups are warning that the impact from the project’s emissions — even if a scaled-down version is approved — could be larger than the Trump administration ever considered. A ConocoPhillips official last year told investors that the Willow infrastructure could ultimately help unlock 3 billion barrels of oil — far more than the 586 million barrels that the Bureau of Land Management used to evaluate its climate impact.
Willow, the company said in an accompanying slide presentation, will be “the next great Alaska hub.”
“This is the single biggest oil and gas proposal on federal lands. It’s just a massive carbon threat, a massive development project in an area that’s already being ravaged by climate change,” said Kristen Miller, conservation director of the Alaska Wilderness League. “It’s really sort of an existential crisis.”
But proponents of the project say if the administration is going to uphold any commitment to domestic energy production the project must proceed.
“You can only find so many more ways to delay a project that has gone through an extraordinary, extraordinary review,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in an interview. “You’ve got a company that has committed to the highest standards. They have worked every step of the way to meet the requirements, and this project should move forward and it should move forward now.”
But even top officials at the Kuukpik Corporation, which was created when 27 families settled Nuiqsut a half-a-century ago and has supported oil development here for decades, have serious reservations about the project’s scope.
In March, corporation president Joe Nukapigak, Bruce’s father, wrote to Stephanie Rice, the project manager for Willow at the Bureau of Land Management, saying they could support the project if it was “balanced and environmentally responsible.”
“But we continue to believe that the version of the Project that was approved in 2020 will cause unreasonable and avoidable impacts on subsistence resources that are vital to Nuiqsut and other communities on the North Slope,” he wrote.
The corporation’s concerns focus on issues such as the location of drill pads — particularly the northern sites near the ecologically sensitive Teshekpuk Lake, the largest Arctic lake, as well as disturbances from the roads connecting them. Willow, as proposed, would require at least 3 million one-way vehicle trips — about 270 a day for 30 years, according to the project’s August 2020 environmental impact statement.
“They need to minimize impacts for the caribou migration, that’s the main thing,” said George Sielak, 62, a corporation board member.
“We need less pollution,” he added. “We need cleaner air.”
A warming tundra
The residents of Nuiqsut already feel the extremes of climate change. The Alaskan Arctic has warmed at least three times faster than the rest of the country. Houses bend and crack on the warming permafrost. Caribou hunters notice new sinkholes when they traverse the tundra.
Whale meat used to be stored in underground cellars but many have melted. Now it’s kept in two industrial-sized freezers outside city hall.
The Willow project would bring fresh threats to the climate. Burning 586 million barrels of oil — the initial project estimate over the project’s three decade life span — is equivalent to 260 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the annual emissions from 66 coal plants, according to the Alaska Wilderness League.
These emissions would also eclipse reductions that Biden has called for in setting the goal to cut the nation’s greenhouse gases by more than 50 percent by 2030, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, that described Willow as a “carbon bomb.” Fossil fuel drilling and mining on public lands already account for nearly a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
ConocoPhillips officials dispute the notion that Willow undercuts Biden’s climate goals. Failing to build it, they say, would mean oil getting drilled elsewhere in the world, likely under more lax environmental rules. The project’s environmental impact statement — published five months before Trump left office — estimated that after foreign market substitutions, the net greenhouse gas emissions would be about 35 million metric tons.
“The marginal annual increase in emissions if Willow is built would be about the same as the greenhouse gas emissions from annual flights between New York and London,” said Chris Wrobel, supervisor of Willow’s environmental permitting and compliance for ConocoPhillips. “Relative to the renewable energy goals that the administration has, Willow is just a very small proportional factor in that.”
Environmentalists fear Willow will be one node in a larger web of Arctic drilling across the National Petroleum Reserve — Alaska. More than half the area is open for oil leasing but only two drill sites — both run by ConocoPhillips — are currently producing on this reserve the size of West Virginia.
The Alpine processing facility, where the gas leak occurred, is located just east of the NPR-A. It was approved more than two decades ago with a production estimate of 430 million barrels of oil equivalent. Nick Olds, ConocoPhillips’s senior vice president of global operations, last year told investors that since then, cumulative production has been nearly 600 million barrels of oil, with another 600 million of future production identified.
“That means our current estimate of ultimate recovery could be almost three times greater than our estimated project approval,” he said, according to a transcript of the June 2021 event.
Critics expect Willow to follow the same pattern: approving the project will pave the way for future drilling sites, meaning far more oil, and emissions, than currently considered.
“When you add this all up, if the Biden administration allows the project to go forward, they’ll be signing off on something that’s far worse than what was envisioned by the Trump team,” said Layla Hughes, a senior attorney at Earthjustice.
A spokeswoman for the BLM in Alaska said the agency’s ongoing environmental review will rely on the “most up to date production estimate for the Willow reservoir” but wouldn’t specify that number. ConocoPhillips said any future drilling proposals will be subject to additional review and analysis under environmental laws.
‘A horrendous few weeks’
As a young man, Bruce Nukapigak had worked at the Alpine facility as an apprentice electrician and pipe fitter and felt familiar with the risks inherent in oil drilling. The decision by ConocoPhillips to relocate about 300 of its own employees on March 7, the fourth day of the gas leak, convinced him it might not be safe for his own family, either.
The leak was caused when a well component, known as a casing shoe, broke about a half mile below ground amid high-pressure during a drilling test, according to a ConocoPhillips investigation into the incident released last month at what was known as the CD1 pad. The company estimated that 7.2 million cubic feet of natural gas escaped until it was mostly contained on March 8.
“No gas was detected beyond the CD1 pad, and no plants, fish, animals, or people were harmed by the release,” Andrew Lundquist, a Conoco executive, wrote to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) on May 10.
But the incident panicked some in Nuiqsut, while others felt that fear was overblown.
Early in the leak, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, the mayor of Nuiqsut and a critic of the oil industry, went on the village radio to warn residents, particularly the elderly and those taking medication, to be ready in the event of an evacuation. From the fire station across the street, chief Andrew Oyagak drove the ice-covered streets at night and counted 19 houses that had no vehicles and might need assistance to leave. The village clinic listed 41 homes — about a third of the total — as a top priority for evacuation due to chronic health problems or other vulnerabilities.
In those first days, both the fire station and the clinic received calls from people complaining of headaches and breathing problems they attributed to exposure to gas.
“It was a horrendous few weeks to go through in our village,” Ahtuangaruak said.
Nukapigak’s decision to leave cost him his job at the power plant. His employer, the North Slope Borough, said that Nukapigak was on a six-month probationary period as a new employee and he didn’t show up to work. It also cost him most of his savings to house his family for three weeks in Fairbanks.
But he couldn’t forget his one-year-old son Darion’s labored breathing after the brown cloud rolled into the village from the 2012 Repsol blowout of an oil well. Or the accident he witnessed at Alpine several years earlier when he was working near a gas flare pit, when flames erupted and crew members sprinted away in terror.
“The ground started shaking and the welder I was with, the look on his face, I still can see it to this day,” he recalled. “If that place goes out, that will wipe out my village. Anything at Alpine, it will wipe out my village.”
Crucial to the economy
ConocoPhillips is Alaska’s largest crude oil producer and is leading the push westward across the reserve.
On a recent tour of their North Slope facilities, company officials showed a reporter the Greater Mooses Tooth 2, a drilling pad surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of snow and ice. It was the westernmost oil site on Alaska’s North Slope. Beyond it was the bulk of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, 23 million acres of wilderness that in summer is a verdant swiss-cheese of lakes and rivers and wetlands overseen by the Department of Interior.
“This is the end of the road,” said Lisa Pekich, ConocoPhillips’s director of village outreach. “For now.”
To the west, if the company prevails, would be Willow.
The company, and the oil industry, remain crucial to the state’s fortunes. Soaring oil prices have led to a projected budget surplus and a dividend for all state residents of more than $3,000 per year. But oil production on the North Slope has steadily declined since its peak in the 1980s as oil fields have been used up. About half a million barrels of oil per day now flows through the trans-Alaska Pipeline, about a quarter of what it once moved.
Willow is how state leaders hope to reverse that decline.
“The reality is that oil and gas production is necessary, now and in the future, even as a transition to lower-emission energy sources occurs over time,” the late Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) wrote to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in February, less than a month before he died, urging her to ignore Democrats’ calls to freeze the project.
“P.S. Do what is right,” he scrawled at the bottom of his letter.
In other parts of Alaska, the Biden administration has been an obstacle to drilling. Last year, in a victory for environmentalists, the administration suspended Trump-era oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — which spans nearly 20 million acres east of the NPR-A — and major oil companies abandoned plans there. In May, the administration also canceled lease sales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
Haaland herself, before she became Interior secretary, signed onto a letter to her predecessor David Bernhardt urging him to suspend Willow. She and other lawmakers called it “a continuation of efforts by the Trump administration to advance its aggressive oil and gas development agenda, ignoring the public health, environmental, subsistence, and climate impacts these projects will have.”
But with record gas prices, and disruptions in supply from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden has also urged the oil industry to pump more crude, a message at odds with his climate goals.
Biden officials say at least some version of the Willow project is likely to proceed.
“The ConocoPhillips leases purchased in 1999 reflect valid and existing rights,” said a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “The mandate from the court was to go back and update the environmental review and that is what the department did.”
ConocoPhillips officials say their work on the North Slope is done to exacting environmental standards. Pipelines that traverse the tundra are elevated to at least seven feet so migrating caribou can pass beneath them. The gravel roads that link oil facilities are built with ramps to accommodate residents hunting with snowmobiles.
“The people that work here are so proud of this environment,” said Jim Brodie, the company’s Willow project manager, during a recent tour of the area. “They’re proud of the wildlife and proud of how clean we keep our operations.”
Supporters of the oil industry note that Nuiqsut is wealthier and more developed than other Native Alaskan villages. It’s laid out on a neat grid of wood-framed houses, some of them decorated with moose antlers. Subsidized natural gas from Alpine heats the homes.
The mayor of the North Slope Borough, which encompasses Nuiqsut, described the benefits of resource development as “apparent and abundant.”
“We have better schools, hospitals, emergency services, roads, and a much longer life expectancy while still being able to live a subsistence lifestyle and provide for our families,” Mayor Harry Brower Jr. said in a statement. “We see continued use of our lands as an important matter of self-determination for our local communities.”
ConocoPhillips also noted that half of all federal royalties from Willow — an estimated $2.6 billion with oil at $60 a barrel — will go into a state fund aimed at helping communities on the North Slope.
“These are, we believe, some of the most environmentally and socially responsible barrels that can be developed, that bolster communities on the North Slope, the state of Alaska, and U.S. energy security,” said Connor Dunn, Willow asset manager. “Those are the first barrels that should be developed.”
Even its critics in Alaska acknowledge the chances of stopping Willow are slim. The project may get smaller: The five drill sites originally proposed could drop to four or three, according to local officials and others briefed on the changes. But there is more public support for drilling in the petroleum reserve than in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Opponents hope that the bureau might approve a version of the project that’s too costly for ConocoPhillips to pursue.
“My hope is that Willow dies a death by a thousand cuts,” said Bridget Psarianos, a staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska which represented plaintiffs suing over Willow. “The oil industry is not going to be up here forever. It’s a dying industry. There’s no two ways about it.”
Anxiety in a time of change
On the first day of the spring festival — with cars still buried under snow — Nuiqsut held a goose-calling contest at city hall. A few dozen people showed up to hear who could best imitate the goose warble .
The contestants, though, were few. Many age categories passed without anyone rising to attempt a call. The mood in the room seemed subdued.
As oil development expands across the tundra, money and modernization brings subtle changes, eroding the traditions formed around living off the land, said Peter Tagarook, 39, the cultural coordinator for the village.
“Less and less people are going to our community feasts, the games we have,” he said. “The people here changed. We no longer get together like we used to.” He blamed the community’s dependence on oil royalties. Willow, to him, was just “more of our leaders leasing out our land.”
The original settlers of Nuiqsut lived in a cluster of white tents on a bluff overlooking the channel. Over the years, they witnessed the growing network of gravel roads and drill pads. Along with sturdy homes and oil royalties, the decades also brought more days with yellow-green haze on the horizon, they said.
“Everything has changed,” said Robert Nukapigak, 64, a village elder and one of the original settlers. “Today we’re breathing so much of that carbon pollution in our area because the oil companies; constantly they’re burning fuel.”
ConocoPhillips has been monitoring air quality in Nuiqsut since 1999, the same year it bought its first leases intended for the Willow project. Company officials say the air quality meets all national standards and is better than Anchorage. They deny any connection between their work and the common respiratory ailments in village, such as asthma, COPD, and chronic bronchitis. The project’s environmental impact statement cited a 2012 study saying that children in Nuiqsut reported a higher percentage of breathing problems (8 percent) than in the broader North Slope Borough (5 percent).
Many people smoke in Nuiqsut. Trucks idle outside of many homes, spewing fumes as they slowly warm up in subzero temperatures. Even so, some longtime residents remain convinced that the oil business amounts to a kind of poison they can’t escape.
Jimmy Oyagak, 45, a whaling captain, is considering leaving Nuiqsut because of the oil business. The air quality in the winter is becoming too hard on his asthmatic son.
He had put a lot into Nuiqsut, serving in the past as vice mayor, fire chief, city councilman, on the village panel of caribou experts, and as leader of the native dance group. Then he left politics.
“I got tired of fighting and fighting and fighting with the oil industry,” he said. “There’s no stopping it. That’s how we start to feel.” | 2022-06-26T13:11:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In fast-warming Alaskan village, fate of Biden’s climate policy could be decided - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/26/fast-warming-alaskan-village-fate-bidens-climate-policy-could-be-decided/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/26/fast-warming-alaskan-village-fate-bidens-climate-policy-could-be-decided/ |
The wild history of the Bavarian castle hosting this week’s G-7 summit
By Kate Brady
Leaders of the Group of Seven will convene at Schloss Elmau next week. The castle has served as a Nazi military vacation camp, a field hospital, a sanctuary for Holocaust survivors and the site of Germany’s last G-7 meeting. (Daniel Kopatsch/Getty Images)
BERLIN — Framed by the snow-capped peaks of Germany’s Bavarian alps, the castle set to host this year’s Group of Seven summit starting Sunday has a history almost as dramatic as its backdrop.
Built at the onset of World War I by philosopher and theologian Johannes Müller as a communal retreat for his followers, Schloss Elmau has served as a Nazi military vacation camp, a field hospital, a sanctuary for Holocaust survivors and the site of Germany’s last G-7 meeting.
The castle’s backstory tracks closely with Germany’s tumultuous 20th-century history. Now a luxury hotel, it is still owned by Müller’s family, despite falling out of the family’s hands temporarily during the denazification process following World War II because of the philosopher’s adulation of Adolf Hitler.
While intended as a mountain sanctuary, it has not always been so for all those associated with it. Dietmar Müller-Elmau, Müller’s grandson and the hotel’s current proprietor, was born in the hotel but said he had been “at war with it” for decades.
“My grandfather wanted to create a place of communal living where you could escape from yourself, from what he called self-interest, self-centeredness,” Müller-Elmau said. “The idea was to enable ‘freedom from oneself’ — which is contrary to what I want to enable: the freedom for oneself.”
Before Müller built the turreted Schloss Elmau between 1914 and 1916, he was already filling lecture halls across Germany. He’d attracted a following among Germany’s aristocracy, business elite and Jewish community.
Fans of Müller’s work — which criticized individualism, materialism and capitalism, as well as the Christian church — flocked to the castle, where they were immersed in dance and music. It hosted prominent politicians and cultural figures of the Weimar Republic, the German government between 1919 and 1933.
When the Third Reich began, Müller had what the Germany government described in 2014 as an “ambivalent attitude to the Nazi regime.”
The Holocaust survivor who fell in love with her American liberator
While the philosopher had lauded Hitler as “the receiving organ for God’s government” and a “leader of a national revolution of the common good over self-interest,” he thought Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies were “a disgrace for Germany.”
“He marveled at the Jews,” said Müller-Elmau, pointing to his grandfather’s close network of Jewish academic friends. “He thought they were the ‘better Germans.’ ”
Müller-Elmau said his grandfather justified his paradoxical stance with the argument that Hitler’s unexpected assumption of power could be interpreted only as a fate willed by God “and that one could recognize a God-sent leader precisely by the fact that he would not correspond to rational and wishful thinking.”
There was one particular Nazi slogan that struck a chord with Müller: “Du bist nichts; dein Volk ist alles.” (“You are nothing; your people are everything.”) Müller drew similarities between the Nazis’ collective nationalist ideology and his own emphasis on rebuffing self-interest.
His opposition to antisemitism and his ban on the Nazi salute at Schloss Elmau would have landed most people in a concentration camp — but Müller’s unwavering support for Hitler left Nazi officials with a dilemma. Ultimately, his connections and following protected him.
Still, he was constantly interrogated by the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police, and eventually his works were banned — although that didn’t shake Müller’s faith in Hitler.
In 1942, in a bid to prevent confiscation of the castle by the SS, the Nazi paramilitary group, Müller rented the castle out to the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany’s army, as a vacation resort for soldiers coming back from the front.
But two years later, Müller was placed under house arrest and Schloss Elmau was turned into a military hospital for German soldiers. The following year, as the Nazi’s surrendered, the U.S. Army took control of Elmau, and it briefly became a prison camp for the soldiers who were being treated there, then a military training school.
The war might have been over, but in its aftermath, Müller’s contradictory stance toward the Third Reich remained problematic.
In 1946, Philipp Auerbach, the Bavarian state commissioner for persecuted people and a Holocaust survivor, sued for a denazification trial to be brought against Müller on the grounds of his “glorification” of Hitler.
“My grandfather chose not to defend himself,” Müller-Elmau said. “He confessed to his political error, but not to the theological error on which it was based.” Given that Müller was neither a member of the Nazi party nor involved in acts of war, his conviction was controversial.
Auerbach, frustrated that legal appropriation of the castle was taking too long, took possession of it without legal title. Between 1947 and 1951, the castle served as a sanatorium for Holocaust survivors and displaced people.
Ernst Landauer, a Jewish journalist who survived several Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz, wrote about marking the Jewish holiday of Purim in Elmau in a text published in 1946. Silence prevailed during the religious readings, “at times interrupted by sobbing,” he wrote.
“Purim used to be a joyous festival and those celebrating it had not suffered directly,” he wrote. “Those celebrating it now did suffer. That is why the rejoicing is subdued. For later generations Purim will be a joyous festival again. It will be difficult for us, however, to rejoice again in this life.”
Auerbach’s control of Elmau was short-lived. His vigorous pursuit of former Nazis irked parts of the political establishment, and he was arrested on allegations of corruption. In 1952, he was convicted of fraud and embezzlement. Days after the verdict, he took his own life.
The reason for his conviction was the antisemitism that was pervasive at the time, German historian and author Michael Brenner said. “Three judges of the court were former Nazi party members,” he said. In 1954, two years after Auerbach’s death, an inquiry cleared his name.
This soldier fought for Finland, Nazi Germany and U.S. Special Forces
While Schloss Elmau reflects Germany’s complex history, it also reflects the country’s efforts to come to terms with it, said Brenner. In a country that loves compound nouns, there is, of course, a word for that process: “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” or coming to terms with the past.
“Müller-Elmau and his family didn’t avoid this past, but confronted it,” Brenner said.
The castle didn’t stay out of family hands for long. Fearing claims for damages by Müller’s family due the expected appeal of his conviction, the Bavarian state government leased the castle to Müller’s children in 1951. A decade later, they became the legal owners — the same year Müller’s sentence was annulled, 12 years after his death in 1949.
Müller-Elmau became proprietor in 1997 and set out to reestablish Schloss Elmau as a “cultural hideaway,” although he shunned his grandfather’s philosophy. Cutting up the communal dining tables, he said, was as symbolic as it was practical to the hotel’s new mantra: the freedom to choose.
“Previously, it had been a forced community,” he said, adding, “For me, it’s all about individualism.”
The opportunity to make the biggest changes came in 2005, when a fire ripped through the building. Most of the hotel had to be demolished and reconstructed.
“Watching the hotel in flames — well, was a great relief,” Müller-Elmau said. “It was the best thing that could ever happen to me because before I was putting new wine into old bottles. And now I could make a new bottle for a new wine. I could design Elmau as a place for cosmopolitans and for individualists.”
Today, some 220 concerts are held at the castle every year, which continues to pull in the biggest names in classical music from the world over. None of them expect a paycheck. They play to stay.
The isolated location makes Elmau a prime spot to host world leaders at this week’s G-7 summit. When it was last held here, in 2015, it was the scene for one particularly iconic photograph.
On a wooden bench sat President Barack Obama, relaxed, arms outstretched. In front of him was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, gesticulating with open arms against the backdrop of the majestic mountains.
“Every politician, every guest that comes here wants to have their photo taken on that bench,” said Müller-Elmau.
Loveday Morris in Berlin contributed reporting. | 2022-06-26T13:12:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bavarian castle hosting G-7 was Nazi vacation camp, Holocaust sanctuary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/26/schloss-elmau-castle-g7-germany/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/26/schloss-elmau-castle-g7-germany/ |
Telling a story of healing through a child's eyes
By Jack Hogan, The Frederick News-Post | AP
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Todd McElwee’s children sprung into action after their father was rushed to the emergency room on Christmas Day in 2018.
Evie was 4 years old when her father was hospitalized. In the book, she embarks on a “mission” with her then-2-year-old brother, Declan, to help their father recover.
“It may sound cheesy to say, but I think being optimistic was probably the most important thing,” he said. “If (your children) see you have a good attitude, their attitude or spirit is going to reflect yours.” | 2022-06-26T13:12:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Telling a story of healing through a child's eyes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/telling-a-story-of-healing-through-a-childs-eyes/2022/06/26/2a279cf6-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/telling-a-story-of-healing-through-a-childs-eyes/2022/06/26/2a279cf6-f550-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
An exam room is illuminated using a lamp at an abortion clinic in Detroit on May 5, 2022. (Brittany Greeson for The Washington Post)
A ban would pose an existential threat to clinics like Scotsdale, where patients have come for half a century to get reproductive health care in a safe and welcoming environment. The clinic has been run since the late ’90s by two generations of reproductive health care providers. Sam, Scotsale’s executive director, bought the facility with her mother, Kathy, who worked in clinical care since the ’70s. The Washington Post is not identifying the last names of both women due to safety concerns.
The threat to Roe v. Wade is driving a religious movement for reproductive choice
Sam knows her staff will have to take jobs elsewhere — in other kinds of health care, in other states — if abortion access becomes illegal in Michigan and the clinic. A Republican state legislator has introduced a bill styled after Oklahoma’s law that punishes abortion providers with up to 10 years in prison. Abortion rights groups are gathering signatures to get a voter referendum on the November ballot protecting abortion access in the state. | 2022-06-26T13:12:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michigan abortion clinic braces for a post-Roe era - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/26/michigan-abortion-clinic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/26/michigan-abortion-clinic/ |
Abortion live updates U.S. emerges from day of protests and celebrations
Graham tells Garland to put people ‘in jail’ for protesting at justices’ homes
Ocasio-Cortez wants investigation of justices who she says lied under oath
American Psychological Association condemns SCOTUS abortion decision
An abortion rights activist, left, argues with an antiabortion activist outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday. (Astrid Riecken/for The Washington Post)
The United States is still reverberating from two days of demonstrations celebrating and protesting the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections. The protests brought damage and temporary road closures in cities across the country, though the demonstrations were largely peaceful.
Abortion opponents on Sunday continued to celebrate a long-sought victory for the conservative legal movement, one made possible by President Donald Trump. “This is a huge victory for the pro-life movement,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Trump — who had nominated three of the six justices who voted to end the national right to an abortion — whipped up his supporters at an Illinois rally Saturday night, and lawmakers were looking toward the midterm elections in November with varying focuses on the post-Roe landscape.
President Biden on Saturday criticized the Supreme Court, saying the justices had “made some terrible decisions.” He is in Europe this week to meet with leaders of the Group of Seven nations.
By Kim Bellware10:33 a.m.
Michigan is one of several states that have unenforced pre-Roe abortion bans that probably will become a target in determining whether access remains legal.
A ban would pose an existential threat to clinics like Scotsdale, where patients have come for half a century to get reproductive health care in a safe and welcoming environment. The clinic has been run since the late ’90s by two generations of reproductive health care providers. Sam, Scotsale’s executive director, bought the facility with her mother, Kathy, who worked in clinical care since the ’70s. The Washington Post is not identifying the last names of both women because of safety concerns.
By Maxine Joselow10:32 a.m.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to arrest protesters outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Abortion rights advocates on Friday protested outside the Virginia home of Justice Clarence Thomas. Members of the crowd called the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, an “insurrectionist,” referring to her efforts to overturn the 2020 election and her attendance at a “Stop the Steal” rally before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A small crowd of protesters also gathered outside the Maryland home of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on Saturday.
Earlier this month, President Biden signed a bill to provide round-the-clock security to the families of Supreme Court justices. The measure passed shortly after the leak of the draft Roe opinion.
By Amy Wang10:21 a.m.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is calling for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate Supreme Court justices who she says lied under oath during their confirmation hearings with regard to Roe v. Wade.
Days ago, Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) had suggested that Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch had misled them in private meetings during their confirmation process about not overturning Roe v. Wade.
Ocasio-Cortez, who is not a member of the House Judiciary Committee, also criticized Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for not recusing himself in cases involving the 2020 presidential election after it emerged that his wife pursued efforts to overturn the election’s results. In March, Ocasio-Cortez had also called for an investigation of Thomas’s potential conflicts of interest and suggested he could be impeached.
By Kelsey Ables10:21 a.m.
The American Psychological Association (APA) has condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, saying it will exacerbate the mental health crisis in America. In a statement released Friday on its website, the organization, which represents more than 130,000 psychology professionals in the U.S., expressed “deep concern” and “disappointment,” noting that the ruling goes against both precedent and science.
“We are alarmed that the justices would nullify Roe despite decades of scientific research demonstrating that people who are denied abortions are more likely to experience higher levels of anxiety, lower life satisfaction and lower self-esteem compared with those who are able to obtain abortions,” APA President Frank C. Worrell said in the statement.
The organization’s remarks come amid nationwide protests in response to the decision, which is expected to result in 13 states banning abortion (with many more to follow) and rising concerns about a potential nationwide ban. The statement from the APA stands in contrast to claims made by antiabortion activists, who have long pointed to mental health problems in their arguments, claiming that the procedure leads to adverse psychological outcomes. The science, according to the APA, strongly suggests otherwise. | 2022-06-26T14:38:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fallout from the Supreme Court's abortion decision continue: Latest news - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/26/roe-v-wade-abortion-decision-protests/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/26/roe-v-wade-abortion-decision-protests/ |
The Supreme Court declares war on modern America
Abortion-rights advocate Eleanor Wells, 34, wipes tears during a protest in Los Angeles on June 24. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
It gives me no joy to say that my prediction in April that the Supreme Court was set to launch a war on modern America — on its social and legal progress over decades — was accurate. In a tone more reminiscent of a MAGA rally than a high court, the majority Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion overturning the right to abortion drips with disdain for women’s concerns about personal autonomy and for the principle of stare decisis.
As bad as this particular opinion is, the broader picture is about much more than abortion.
The right-wing court wants to lock 21st-century America into the Founders’ world or, at the latest, the late 19th century, conveniently skipping past the parts of history that disfavor its cramped view of individual rights. Women, minorities, gay people and others once had little political, economic or social power. And so they will again, if the court gets its way.
Look carefully at the court’s language hopscotching through history. “Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right [to abortion] was entirely unknown in American law,” the opinion proclaims. The past 50 years when Roe v. Wade followed a line of previous cases concerning personal autonomy (“privacy”) don’t count, it seems.
The court also leaps past the part of American history when abortion was generally legal up to “quickening.” (Oops, the majority gave it away: “We begin with the common law, under which abortion was a crime at least after ‘quickening’ — i.e., the first felt movement of the fetus in the womb, which usually occurs between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy.” After quickening, even in the majority’s telling.)
Why bother with all this selective, fatuous historical argument? This is where it gets scary and goes well beyond abortion. The court insists that our rights under the 14th Amendment were fixed in 1868. We therefore get a perverse result, as the dissent explains:
Because laws in 1868 deprived women of any control over their bodies, the majority approves States doing so today. Because those laws prevented women from charting the course of their own lives, the majority says States can do the same again. Because in 1868, the government could tell a pregnant woman — even in the first days of her pregnancy — that she could do nothing but bear a child, it can once more impose that command.
Women were denied lots of rights in 1868. Only in the 20th century did some states affirm their right to hold property or take out credit or hold certain professions. Gay people and minor children had no rights to speak of, nor did the physically or mentally disabled. This court declares we are stuck with the precise state of the law pre-civil rights, pre-women’s rights, pre-modern. And herein rest the absurdity and danger of a Supreme Court unmoored from precedent and unconcerned with the impact of its decisions on today’s America.
Still, perhaps my prediction was off by 100 years. It’s not the 1960s to which the right-wing court wants to take us but the 1860s. That radical, extreme view virtually guarantees outcomes in conflict with diverse, modern America. The notion that liberty and equality are ever expanding is kaput. The moral universe is bending backward.
How radical is this? Well, Justice Clarence Thomas provided the answer by arguing in his concurring opinion that the court should reconsider rights going well beyond abortion. President Biden was right to focus on the import of this: “[Thomas] explicitly called to reconsider the right of marriage equality, the right of couples to make their choices on contraception. This is an extreme and dangerous path the court is now taking us on.”
So it’s not right to say “Roe is on the ballot” in November. The 21st century is on the ballot. At risk is the America in which the definition of equality has expanded, in which the state is prohibited from micromanaging our lives, in which one’s right to make personal decisions is not governed by Zip code.
And it’s not just the court that is taking us back to the 19th century. Republicans at all levels of government cheered the decision. Former vice president Mike Pence asserted that a nationwide abortion ban should follow. This is a party of radicalism, of contempt for the modern America in which White males do not get to make all the rules. It’s a view of democracy akin to right-wing authoritarian regimes where elections (sort of) are held but individual liberty and human rights have no guarantee, given few constraints on government power.
Many thought Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) was grossly exaggerating when he declared in 1987: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, Blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors on midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the door of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.” It turns out he was simply premature — and failed to foresee a five-person majority of Robert Borks.
And it’s going to get worse if the Supreme Court decides in West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency that the administrative state (the EPA, but why stop there?) cannot regulate carbon emissions without detailed directions from Congress. And wait until the court considers a North Carolina case that state legislatures can pull off their own coups by reversing the popular vote of the people for president if it does not suit the lawmakers. (Donald Trump’s allies would have been constitutionally empowered to override the vote absent any evidence of fraud.)
Are we doomed to board the Republicans’ time machine back to the 19th century? Certainly not.
First, Congress can act to secure all the rights that Thomas identified for the chopping block. Let Republicans filibuster protection for abortion, for contraception and for interracial and same-sex marriage. And if they do, then voters can send Democrats with sufficient fortitude to modify the filibuster to protect their fundamental rights.
Second, since the Supreme Court is sending the most personal, intimate decisions to state legislatures and governors as well as local district attorneys and judges, those desiring a constitutional regime for the 21st century must fill every one of those offices with people who respect fundamental rights. The 21st century vs. the 19th century becomes the issue in every election.
But inflation! But gas prices! We will have the same rate of inflation (thanks to the Federal Reserve) with Republican majorities as with Democratic ones. The former has no secret plan to reduce prices. What we won’t have with Republicans in power is a country rooted in the 21st century.
For that, you need to vote out the people who apparently thought America was at its best in 1868. | 2022-06-26T14:43:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The court wants to take the country back centuries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/supreme-court-attack-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/supreme-court-attack-midterms/ |
Phillies lose Bryce Harper indefinitely with broken left thumb
Bryce Harper was hit by a pitch from the Padres' Blake Snell. (Denis Poroy/Getty Images)
Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper suffered a broken left thumb when he was struck by a pitch from Blake Snell Saturday night, an injury that immediately sidelines the reigning National League MVP for at least the foreseeable future.
Harper was injured in the fourth inning of the Phillies’ 4-2 victory over the San Diego Padres in Petco Park when he checked his swing as the pitch rose, and the ball struck his hand as he leaned away. The team announced that he will be out indefinitely, with further medical evaluations planned in the next few days.
“I’ve never had a hand injury like this,” Harper told reporters as he stood at his locker, wearing a splint on his thumb after the game. “Never broken anything in my life. This is new to me, so I’m just gonna go day by day, see kind of where we’re at and see the specialist in Philly. And if I do need to see another specialist somewhere, then I will.”
This is awful. Bryce Harper has a fractured left thumb
pic.twitter.com/Eq1SSDL23P
In immediate and obvious pain, he fell to his knees, holding his hand as Phillies trainer Paul Buchheit came onto the field. There were no immediate details on the fracture and Phillies General Manager Dave Dombrowski, who was traveling with the team, said it was unclear whether he would need surgery. Last season, Harper managed to miss only a few games after being struck in the face by a fastball thrown by Genesis Cabrera of the St. Louis Cardinals, but this is a clearly different type of injury.
“I kind of wish it would’ve hit me in the face. I don’t break bones in my face,” Harper said with a laugh. “I can take [a] 98 [mph pitch] to the face, but I can’t take 97 to the thumb. Yeah, I was kind of in protection mode a little bit trying to get my hand up there and not let it hit me again.
That was apparent as he left the field, angrily directing comments toward Snell, who gestured that it was not intentional. Moments later, Harper seemed to say, “I know, I know.”
Aaron Judge avoids arbitration, but will he be a Yankee for life?
“It wasn’t heated at all,” Harper said. “It was just the moment and a crappy situation. I’ve been playing against Blake since we were 10, 11 years old, so I know there was no ill will behind that at all. The inside pitch is part of the game. He is a great player and a great human being as well. I wish him the best, and I told him to keep throwing that inside fastball because it sets that slider really good.”
Snell told reporters that he had texted Harper. “Obviously, I felt terrible hitting him,” Snell said. “I don’t do that, and he knows that. We’ve talked. We’ve handled it. He plays with a lot of passion, and I can understand why he’d be upset. I’m just as upset as he is. … I just hope he recovers quickly and gets back out there and continues to compete.”
Harper, who will be placed on the injured list Sunday, is hitting .318 with 15 home runs, 48 RBI and a .985 OPS this season in 64 games. Because of a small tear in the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, he has not played in the outfield since April 16 and has hoped that a platelet-rich plasma injection and rest would allow him to continue to play while avoiding season-ending Tommy John surgery. | 2022-06-26T14:43:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bryce Harper out indefinitely for Phillies with broken thumb - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/26/bryce-harper-broken-thumb/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/26/bryce-harper-broken-thumb/ |
The National Labor Relations Board’s top prosecutor, Jennifer Abruzzo, poses for a portrait at National Labor Relations Board headquarters in Washington on Monday, June 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)
Currently, the agency is in the crosshairs of Amazon, which has been arguing in an NLRB hearing that began earlier this month that the union victory at one of its warehouses on Staten Island, New York, should be tossed out. The e-commerce giant claims labor organizers and the agency acted in a way that tainted the vote. In one of its 25 objections, the company zeros in on a lawsuit filed in March by the NLRB’s Brooklyn office seeking to reinstate a fired Amazon worker who was involved in the union drive. | 2022-06-27T01:22:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NLRB's top prosecutor seeks big changes, faces uphill battle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/nlrbs-top-prosecutor-seeks-big-changes-faces-uphill-battle/2022/06/26/6a460b80-f558-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/nlrbs-top-prosecutor-seeks-big-changes-faces-uphill-battle/2022/06/26/6a460b80-f558-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
NEW YORK — Aaron Judge drove a three-run homer in the 10th inning for his second walk-off hit against the Astros in four days, and the New York Yankees recovered after nearly being no-hit for the second consecutive game to beat Houston 6-3 on Sunday for a four-game split between the AL’s top teams.
ANAHEIM, Calif. — A lengthy bench-clearing brawl resulted in the ejections of six players and both managers in the second inning.
SAN DIEGO —Kyle Schwarber hit a go-ahead, three-run homer in the seventh off Nabil Crismatt (4-1) as Philadelphia rallied from a 5-2 deficit, one day after losing NL MVP Bryce Harper with a broken left thumb.
CLEVELAND — Trevor Story drove in two runs to reach 500 career RBIs, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez each had three hits and Boston finished a three-game sweep that extended its winning streak to seven.
MIAMI — Rookie Nick Fortes homered off Adam Ottavino (2-2) with two outs in the ninth, helping Miami avoided a three-game sweep by the NL East leaders.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Shane McClanahan (8-3) struck out 10 over seven innings, allowing one run and four hits. He lowered his major league-leading ERA to 1.77 ERA and grabbed the big league lead in strikeouts with 123.
CHICAGO — Dylan Cease (6-3) struck out a career-high 13 and allowed four hits over seven innings, Gavin Sheets hit a two-run homer in the second against Jordan Lyles (4-7) and Chicago avoided a four-game sweep,hhhhh
MINNEAPOLIS — Byron Buxton had three hits, including an RBI triple for the second straight game, and Minnesota opened a two-game lead over second-place Cleveland heading into a five-game series at the Guardians.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Seth Brown hit his 10th home run of the season and Nick Allen hit a go-ahead two-run single off Brady Singer (3-3) to overcome a 3-2, seventh-inning deficit.
CHICAGO — Willson Contreras hit a tiebreaking single in the 10th off Zack Thompson (1-1) to drive in his third run of the game, and Chicago overcame a 5-0 deficit.
MILWAUKEE — Rowdy Tellez hit a pair of two-run homers against his former team, going deep in the first and second innings off off José Berríos (5-4), and Milwaukee took two of three.
ARLINGTON, Texas — Jackson Tetreault (2-1) allowed one run in six-plus innings in his third major league start, Josh Bell had his second three-hit game of the weekend and Nelson Cruz drove in three runs.
SAN FRANCISCO — Tyler Mahle (3-6) struck out seven in 6 2/3 innings while allowing three runs and four hits for his first victory since May 13.
PHOENIX — Daulton Varsho hit a three-run homer, Pavin Smith had a career-high four hits with three RBIs and Arizona stopped a five-game losing streak. | 2022-06-27T01:23:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge's 28th homer gives Yankees 4-game split with Astros - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/judges-28th-homer-gives-yankees-4-game-split-with-astros/2022/06/26/624827f6-f5ad-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/judges-28th-homer-gives-yankees-4-game-split-with-astros/2022/06/26/624827f6-f5ad-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Noah Lyles runs down Erriyon Knighton, adds new layer to their rivalry
U.S. track and field championships
Noah Lyles had just enough time to point out his winning time in the 200 meters Sunday at the U.S. track outdoor championships. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
Before Sunday afternoon, Noah Lyles had not settled into the blocks alongside a sprinter with a faster 200-meter personal best than him since early in his days at T.C. Williams High in Alexandria. To his immediate left on the starting line of the USA Track & Field outdoor championships stood Erriyon Knighton, the 18-year-old who laid waste to Usain Bolt’s junior records and, earlier this year, surpassed Lyles as the fourth-fastest man ever over 200 meters.
When he roared around the corner, Lyles could see Knighton ahead of him. The Hayward Field crowd in Eugene, Ore., may have sensed a permanent shift in the event, but not Lyles. He believed — he knew — he would not let Knighton take his status as the American 200 meters king, at least not Sunday. Lyles thought to himself, “I’m going to catch him.”
The U.S. championships provided an eventful preview of next month’s world championships, also in Eugene — the first contested on American soil. Sydney McLaughlin pushed further into the 400 hurdles frontier. Athing Mu survived a rare challenge and exhibited her standard 800-meter brilliance. Fred Kerley cemented his world-class status in the short sprints. Devon Allen, the Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver, squeaked into the world championships. Sha’Carri Richardson stunned in her inability to qualify for the world championships in the 100 or 200.
The most electrifying moment may have been Lyles’s refusal to let Knighton seize his crown. Knighton appeared poised to make the race a passing of the torch. With his wicked finishing speed, his bravado and his words, Lyles made it the birth of a rivalry.
Lyles chased down, caught and passed Knighton to win his third consecutive U.S. championship in the 200, beating Knighton’s 19.69 seconds. At the finish line, Lyles pointed across Knighton’s face at the clock that displayed his time of 19.67, grinning as he broke the tape. He didn’t just maintain his title. He spiked the football.
(And I don't think Erriyon Knighton will forget about that anytime soon) pic.twitter.com/A0dPMPyAgo
Lyles, 24, has lost just two 200 finals as a professional, a Diamond League race to Michael Norman and the Tokyo Olympics final, where he took bronze. Many believed Knighton would make it three Sunday. He has destroyed Bolt’s under-20 record in the 200. During a small meet at LSU this spring, Knighton clocked a stunning 19.49 seconds, a time only three men have beaten — and 0.01 seconds better than Lyles’s best.
How Noah Lyles found peace after emotional Olympics
Lyles and Knighton race for Adidas, and Lyles has been quick to complement and support his young rival. But Lyles’s charismatic nature can hide his competitiveness. He saw Knighton coming, and he didn’t blink.
“When it’s time to line up, I’m going to have it,” Lyles said two weeks ago at a meet in New York. “I know it, automatically. I’m always going to be ready.”
In the first 100 meters, Lyles lagged behind half the field — including his brother, Josephus, who achieved the best result of his career with a fifth-place finish in 19.93. But he could tell he had conserved more than his competitors. He did not panic. Even when he took one too-long stride around the turn, he recovered with the next step.
“It came to that point where I knew I was going to overtake him,” Lyles said. “I knew the race was over.”
Lyles surged past the pack, pulled even with Knighton inside the final 30 meters and passed him in the last 10 — so secure in his victory that he glanced at Knighton and pointed at the clock as he crossed the line.
“I’m pointing at all those people who kept doubting me all year and all last year,” Lyles said later. “Everybody who keeps saying, ‘He’s out of the picture.’ Even NBC don’t want to talk about me no more. That’s cool, though. I’ll let you know. I’ll put you back in check, every time.”
Once he crossed, Lyles found a camera and screamed “Always fast!” as he held up his watch. Lyles lined up on the track next to Knighton and third-place finisher Kerley, who qualified in the 200 two days after he ran the fastest 100 in the world this year, for an interview with NBC.
“I do what it takes to win,” Lyles said. “Erriyon got the best of me on the turn. I ain’t worried about that. I saw he had reached his top speed, and I said, ‘Mine’s faster.’ I said: ‘I’m going to catch him. It’s just going to take the whole rest of the 100.’ That’s what I did.”
The interviewer turned to Knighton and asked about his expectations for the world championships.
“Just come back and win,” he said. “Job’s not finished. It’s never finished.”
Knighton stomped away, and Lyles shouted in his direction, “Never finished!”
“He just came and got me,” Knighton said later. “He got the better of me that race. That’s it.”
McLaughlin, 22, continued to rearrange what’s possible while leaping over 10 hurdles on one lap around the track. On Saturday evening, she reset her world record for the second time since she seized it at the U.S. trials last summer. On that night, with record holder Dalilah Muhammad running in the lane next to hers, McLaughlin lowered it to 51.90 seconds. At the Olympics, McLaughlin shattered her record in 51.46.
In Saturday’s final, she nudged it to 51.41. What stood out was not her speed, at least no more than usual, but the jarring lack of strain McLaughlin required. Ahead of her competitors by an acre with Muhammad taking her bye to the world championships, McLaughlin cruised to the finish line, breaking her record almost by accident.
“I knew it was going to be fast,” she said. “I looked at the time, and I was just really happy with it, being able to just slowly progress towards lower and lower times. There’s still things I can work on. I think there’s a little bit more in the tank there. Hopefully when it comes time, we can just empty it completely.”
The only reason McLaughlin cannot be considered the hands-down most dominant woman in the United States is Mu, a fellow Tokyo double gold medalist. She repeated as the U.S. champion in the 800 meters in atypical fashion: It appeared she had to try.
Mu might be the best runner in the world, at any distance. She usually destroys the field. Down the homestretch Sunday, Ajee Wilson pushed her — and even passed her with about 30 meters left. Mu receives few challenges, but she has proved she can withstand them. She retook the lead and edged Wilson, 1:57.16 to 1:57.23.
“I’m glad that I fought,” Mu said. “I’m glad I still had it my legs to come back and run.”
A close call for Mu counts as a surprise, but it paled to the shock of the championships. Three days after she failed to escape the 100 preliminary round, Richardson finished in 22.47 seconds in a 200 semifinal heat and failed to reach the final. A year after she missed the Olympics after a positive marijuana test at the U.S. trials, Richardson will not race in the world championships for the confounding reason that she just wasn’t fast enough.
Two weeks ago, Richardson won the NYC Grand Prix 200 meters in 22 seconds flat and ran the 100 in 10.85, both performances that would have advanced her to worlds.
I know what I say lol y’all can’t clown me 😂😂😂didn’t get it done,no excuses . Y’all don’t deserve my story 😘NEXT !! https://t.co/SWRYyAnA2f
It’s hard to know what went wrong. Richardson addressed reporters in Eugene only to chastise them and did not take questions or explain her performance.
“When you guys do interviews, y’all should respect athletes more,” she said. “… Athletes deserve way more respect than when y’all just come and throw cameras into their faces. Understand how an athlete operates and then ask your questions.”
Sha’Carri Richardson came through the mixed zone and issued the following statement pic.twitter.com/woymQOOgUE
Her absence cleared the way for Kentucky’s Abby Steiner to emerge as a potential superstar. Steiner won the 200 in 21.77 seconds, 0.03 faster than the NCAA record she set this month to win the collegiate title. “Coming off the college season, a lot of people put limits on you, want to say you’re burnt out,” Steiner said.
Gabby Thomas, the reigning 200-meter U.S. champion and Olympic bronze medalist, finished eighth and tearfully revealed to reporters that she had suffered a Grade 2 hamstring tear two weeks ago. “I had been working so hard to be here, and it was all just taken in one second,” Thomas said. “I did the best I could.”
The final day built toward the 110 hurdles, where Allen expected to challenge the world record. Two weeks ago in New York, Allen ran it in 12.84 seconds, the third-fastest time ever and 0.04 behind the record. Sweetening the deal for television execs, Allen is a two-time Olympian and a former Oregon wide receiver who signed with the Eagles after wowing them at the Ducks’ pro day.
Daniel Roberts didn’t care about any of that. He beat Allen and NCAA champion Trey Cunningham in 13.03 seconds. Allen finished third by a whisker in 13.09, which sent him to the world championships.
No one made the team in more dramatic fashion than Texas A&M’s Brandon Miller in the 800 meters. Behind champion Bryce Hoppel, Miller dived at the line to edge two-time Olympian Clayton Murphy for the third and final spot on the world championship team. “I just wanted to do it for everybody that believed in me,” Miller said in an NBC interview. “I just wanted it so much.”
Miller will advance to the world championships next month, where Lyles and Knighton will be headliners. Knighton’s future will be tantalizing to a global audience. But he still hasn’t beaten Lyles in a final, and Lyles plans to keep it that way. He was asked Sunday what he expects in July.
“Win,” he said, smiling. “What else?” | 2022-06-27T01:23:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Noah Lyles runs down Erriyon Knighton at U.S. track championships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/06/26/noah-lyles-erriyon-knighton-200-us-track-championships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/06/26/noah-lyles-erriyon-knighton-200-us-track-championships/ |
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