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Avalanche dethrones the Lightning, claims Stanley Cup for third time
Avalanche players celebrate after Sunday's win. (Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)
TAMPA — As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the players on the Colorado Avalanche’s bench streamed onto the ice in triumphant glee.
Following years of playoff disappointment, Colorado had reclaimed the Stanley Cup — and denied a powerhouse’s hopes of becoming a dynasty.
The Avalanche scored a 2-1 win over the mighty Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals Sunday night at Amalie Arena behind goals from Nathan MacKinnon and Artturi Lehkonen, giving Colorado its first championship since 2001 and the third in franchise history.
Tampa Bay was in front less than four minutes into the first period, but Colorado rallied to dethrone the two-time defending champion. Lehkonen got the winner at 12:28 of the second.
The Lightning was looking to become the first team to win the Stanley Cup three straight seasons since the New York Islanders won four straight from 1980 to 1983. But the dynamic Avalanche stole the spotlight over six games of an electric matchup highlighted by speed and skill.
Defenseman Cale Makar, 23, won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP after he notched eight goals and 21 assists in the postseason, anchoring Colorado’s blue line with unmatched offensive skill. Makar, who won the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s best defenseman last week, had 28 goals and 58 assists in a breakout regular season.
“I’m just so happy for all these guys, man,” Makar said on the ice afterward. “... Everybody that’s been here for so long and worked so hard, to finally have that pay off with all the success we’ve had the past few years, it’s so amazing for them. I’m so proud of the boys, and I don’t know what else to say — it’s amazing.”
MacKinnon, one of the best players in the world, was a driving force in the chase for the Stanley Cup. The 26-year-old had another tremendous regular season, recording 32 goals and 56 assists over 65 games in addition to his 13 goals in the postseason.
“It feels like disbelief. It’s crazy. Can’t wait to hug my family,” MacKinnon said. “Geez, it’s hard to describe. I didn’t really know what it’d be like to actually win it. Seeing all these warriors battle, it feels unbelievable.”
The Avalanche was unable to close out the series on its first try in a 3-2 Game 5 loss Friday in Denver, with the Lightning’s Ondrej Palat getting the game-winner late in the third period.
Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy was excellent in Game 5 and continued his stout performance in Game 6, but Colorado was too much for him — and the Lightning’s defense — to handle. He had 28 saves. For Colorado, Darcy Kuemper maintained his composure in the tight game, making a handful of timely saves to finish with 22.
The first period was all Tampa Bay. Captain Steven Stamkos opened the scoring by beating Kuemper in front at 3:48 off a turnover from Makar.
MacKinnon tied the score early in the second with a one-timer from the left circle on a delayed penalty. It was MacKinnon’s second goal of the series — his first was off his skate blade in Game 4.
Lehkonen, who had hit the post earlier, gave the Avalanche a 2-1 lead with 7:32 left in the second off an odd-man rush with MacKinnon. It was Lehkonen’s eighth goal of the postseason.
The Lightning tried to push for the tying goal in the third period but couldn’t find the equalizer. Colorado played the kind of period expected of a team eager to end a series. Tampa Bay had just a few scoring opportunities, and Kuemper was there each time.
The Avalanche was focused on keeping its emotions in check ahead of the series-clinching game. On the road, it felt more at ease with hockey’s biggest prize again within reach.
“Our team is comfortable on the road,” Coach Jared Bednar said Sunday morning. “Yeah, we’ve talked about that a lot — different venue, same game but maybe a few less distractions when you get out on the road.”
Colorado was one of the favorites to win the Stanley Cup at the start of the season but hadn’t advanced past the second round of the playoffs since 2002. More recently, they had lost in the second round in three consecutive postseasons, raising questions about whether they would ever get over the hump. Colorado’s response was going 16-4 this postseason, notching two series sweeps.
The Avalanche was dominant in the first round, beating the Nashville Predators with ease. Colorado’s toughest test was its second-round matchup with the St. Louis Blues. If not for Darren Helm’s game-winner with 5.6 seconds left in Game 6, the Avalanche could have faced a do-or-die Game 7. Colorado then swept the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference finals.
In the finals, the Avalanche looked like the better team during a 4-3 overtime Game 1 win and a 7-0 Game 2 rout. When the series flipped to Tampa for Games 3 and 4, the Lightning got redemption, throttling the Avalanche, 6-2, in a Game 3 beatdown. The series tilted back in Colorado’s favor in Game 4, with the Avalanche delivering a gut-punch 3-2 overtime win before the Lightning regained its footing to win a thrilling Game 5 in Denver.
Although the Lightning fell short of a three-peat, its accomplishments remain impressive. It reached the finals in three straight seasons, which hadn’t been accomplished since Edmonton did it from 1983 to 1985. Even when Tampa Bay had to replace major portions of its roster after winning its second straight title, it was still a composed, experienced group from top to bottom.
The Lightning had more experience than the younger Avalanche, which was out to prove itself on hockey’s biggest stage. There is no denying that Tampa Bay built a powerhouse, but it was Colorado’s turn for glory Sunday night. | 2022-06-27T03:46:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Colorado Avalanche wins NHL Stanley Cup over Tampa Bay Lightning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/26/stanley-cup-finals-avalanche-lightning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/26/stanley-cup-finals-avalanche-lightning/ |
Carolyn Hax: ‘Paranoid’ boyfriend tracks her period every month
Dear Carolyn: My boyfriend and I have been together for about six months, and he’s a great, loving, generous, fun and caring guy, but he’s so paranoid that I’ll get pregnant that it makes me crazy. When we got together, he told me that he’s not sure about kids and definitely isn’t ready now. That’s fine by me; I’m 24, six years younger than he is, just starting out in a competitive field and not even totally sure about kids yet, either. I’m on reliable birth control and have been since I was 18 with no problems. He also wears a condom, which is also fine by me.
On top of that, he tracks my periods, and on the day I’m expected to get it, he’ll text me until I assure him that I got it. It makes me feel as if he doesn’t trust me or have my back, so I finally talked to him and he said he went through a pregnancy with a girlfriend when he was younger, and although the woman terminated in the end, it was all horrible.
I’m finishing up something big at work, something that’s either make or break for the next step in my career, and, as always when I’m super stressed, my period was late last month. I explained this to him, but he still insisted I take a pregnancy test, which I did. Of course it was negative. He still didn’t relax until I got it. He asked whether the same thing could happen this month, and I said probably or that I might not even get it, and he’s completely freaked out but also asking me to be patient and not break up.
I think I might love this guy, but I’m also wondering whether he’s worth this stress.
— Is He Worth It?
Is He Worth It?: Yikes.
He didn’t ask me, but here’s my advice to him: Start work ASAP with a therapist on the trauma of the previous experience. If the anxiety doesn’t start to diminish soon, then talk to your doctor about sperm banking and getting a vasectomy.
He is 30, and unless you left something out, he is self-supporting, reasonably mature and has no significant health issues. If a reasonably mature and healthy self-supporting 30-year-old is this maniacally opposed to raising a child, even an oops, then he needs to take full responsibility for 100 percent effective birth control, which means surgery or celibacy.
My advice for you is to decide whether you see this as a potentially lifelong relationship. Obviously it’s early, but you probably have some idea. If you do think there’s something durable here, beneath the contraception-cray-cray, then it’s time to let him know that you will not live or scramble or talk/text/test in service of his trauma and that you would like him to get professional help.
Approach him kindly with this, but don’t mince words.
How he responds to that — to the line itself and to the fact that you’re drawing one — will tell you a lot about his willingness to face difficult things, which in turn is the single most useful predictor of whether people are able to hold up their end of a long-term commitment, to you or anyone else. | 2022-06-27T04:13:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: ‘Paranoid’ boyfriend tracks her period every month - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/27/carolyn-hax-paranoid-boyfriend-pregnancy-period/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/27/carolyn-hax-paranoid-boyfriend-pregnancy-period/ |
Miss Manners: How do I respond to intrusive questions about my health?
Dear Miss Manners: I was invited to a friend’s home for lunch with a group of other women. While we were all seated and enjoying the lovely lunch provided by our hostess, one of the women sitting by me began interrogating me about my health. She asked me very intrusive questions in a rude, loud, belligerent voice that could be heard throughout the house.
The other women at the table were all watching us and could hear the entire conversation. I am a very private person who doesn't like to make my health concerns public knowledge, and I am unhappy about having my privacy violated.
I have since thought that I should have stopped her by saying, “Is there some reason that you feel the need to know?” Or “If you would like to discuss my health, would you mind doing so in private?”
But I was caught off-guard and couldn’t think of those kinds of responses. What would you suggest for such a situation?
The trouble with the popular “why-do-you-need-to know?” response is that it prompts a reply from the defensive busybody, who will be sure to claim that she was only asking out of concern for you. This is a conversation you do not want to have.
Miss Manners’ answer to those nosy questions would be “I’m fine, thank you; how are you?” in the tone of voice that dismisses the inquiry as a mere convention.
You will probably have to keep repeating this, as it provokes the “But how are you, REALLY?” follow-up. That can finally be cut off with a firm “I appreciate your concern, but as I keep telling you, I am fine. Now how are you?”
Dear Miss Manners: After the birth of my child last year, my aunt surprised me with the gift of a new rocking chair. I graciously accepted, even though I had very little space for it in my home and I already owned a rocking chair.
Over time, it became apparent that the chair was poorly made and low quality. It creaks, has thin padding, does not fit both mom and a growing baby comfortably, etc.
The baby is now 1 year old, and I would love to reclaim the precious space taken up by this low-quality chair. Is it rude or ungrateful to get rid of an expensive gift if it no longer serves you well?
Once given, a present is yours to handle as you wish. You do not have to keep this chair, waiting for the day you can persuade the baby that it is just the thing for a college dormitory room.
Miss Manners guesses that you are wondering what to say in case your aunt finds her way into the nursery. The answer is nothing, unless the aunt makes the mistake of asking. With any luck, she will think your old rocker is the one she sent.
But should she ask, a useful, meaningless answer should be, “We were so glad to have it; thank you. But now Maeve is finally sleeping through the night, thank goodness.” | 2022-06-27T04:13:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: How do I respond to intrusive questions about my health? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/27/miss-manners-intrusive-questions-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/06/27/miss-manners-intrusive-questions-health/ |
The Supreme Court turns the U.S. into a cautionary tale
The American right loves to trumpet their nation’s “exceptionalism,” the myth that the United States’ political system and values are inherently unique and implicitly better than anything found elsewhere in the world. But whatever the merits of the belief, the United States in recent years has been seen by its closest partners as exceptional for all the wrong reasons.
The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol prompted myriad politicians in other advanced democracies to point to the relative health of their republics and the greater decorum and maturity of their transfers of power. The merciless toll of mass shootings in the United States reminds observers in places like Canada, Australia and Britain of the greater sanity of their nations’ gun laws.
And Friday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade — scrapping the constitutional right to an abortion — led to a host of world leaders from across the political spectrum holding the United States up as a cautionary tale, a warning to the world of how fundamental rights can be lost.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a center-left politician, described the ruling as “horrific,” tweeting that “no government, politician, or man should tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body.” Britain’s right-wing Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the decision “clearly has massive impacts on people’s thinking around the world” and called it a “big step backward.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, expressed his “solidarity” with those “whose liberties are being undermined by the Supreme Court.” French lawmakers on Saturday proposed a law that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the French constitution.
“Nothing is impossible, and … the rights of women are always rights that are fragile and are regularly called into question,” Aurore Bergé, who heads Macron’s party in Parliament, told French radio, explaining that the U.S. Supreme Court’s move motivated this legislative push. “I think we must not take any risk on the matter and therefore secure [the right to abortion] by inscribing it in our constitution.”
Full enjoyment of #SRHR is essential for individuals’ health and freedoms. Sweden 🇸🇪 is, and will remain, one of the most committed defenders of the right to abortion. Women and girls have the right to decide over their own bodies. #FeministForeignPolicy
— Embassy of Sweden USA (@SwedeninUSA) June 24, 2022
On reproductive rights, the United States is now moving against the tide. “Over the past several decades, more than 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global advocacy group that supports abortion rights,” my colleagues explained. “Only the United States, Poland and Nicaragua have reduced abortion access in the 21st century. Now many U.S. states are poised to enact much more restrictive laws than those in most other developed countries.”
U.S. reproductive rights campaigners already are looking outside the country for sources of inspiration. “Across Latin America, feminist green wave organizers have sustained strategic campaigns — and won protections for these fundamental freedoms, despite intense opposition,” Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, a leading social justice philanthropy organization, said in a statement. “We turn to their success as a roadmap for advocacy and a beacon for hope in the broader struggle for gender equality.”
At home, rights activists see a darkening picture. The conservative majority’s ruling overturning Roe, some worry, sets the stage for the possible further curtailing of other rights, including that of same-sex marriage as well as protections for racial and ethnic minorities.
“I think this is a perfect decision for the 18th century,” Rosalie Abella, a visiting professor Harvard Law School who retired last summer from the Supreme Court of Canada, told the Globe and Mail on Friday. In her interview with the Canadian newspaper, the former justice likened the new ruling to other infamous Supreme Court verdicts that deprived Americans of fundamental rights — such as Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, which said Americans of African descent could never become citizens.
“That to me is as inconceivable as what they did today,” Abella said. “And yet they did it. It’s a frightening precedent, and delegitimizes the integrity of a court.”
The conservative majority on the Supreme Court is now in the spotlight. The court’s weaponization by the American right is the end goal of decades of concerted effort and campaigning. “The conservative movement’s control of the Supreme Court, its success in skewing the electoral process through voting restrictions and gerrymandering, and the Democrats’ likely collapse in the coming midterms have bolstered Republicans’ confidence that they can drastically reshape American society on their terms without losing power,” wrote the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer.
It is clear now, Serwer added, that “the Supreme Court has become an institution whose primary role is to force a right-wing vision of American society on the rest of the country.”
In that regard, the United States finds itself in rather unflattering company. Analysts point to Poland, whose illiberal nationalist ruling party has spent years re-engineering the judiciary in its favor, much to the consternation of the European Union leadership in Brussels. Last year, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal issued a ruling that made abortion, or abetting an abortion, a criminal act, with exceptions only for rape, incest and to protect the mother’s life.
Some Poles, like many Americans, saw its determination as an ideological act. “Many people in both countries perceive judicial institutions to be politicized,” said Courtney Blackington, an American Fulbright scholar affiliated with the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw, to The Post’s Retropolis blog. “When the new abortion ruling came out last year, there were activists who told me that they could not respect it because they felt it emanated from an institution that no longer respected the law.”
In the emotional aftermath of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, countless Americans expressed similar feelings. | 2022-06-27T04:27:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision turns U.S. into a cautionary tale for the world - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/27/global-abortion-reproductive-rights-united-states-cautionary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/27/global-abortion-reproductive-rights-united-states-cautionary/ |
Nick Miroff
Andrei Renteria holds his courtroom sketch, where Homero Zamorano, Jr., the suspected driver of a truck packed with dozens of migrants who died in blazing heat during a Texas smuggling attempt, attends a court hearing in San Antonio on June 30, 2022. (Kaylee Greenlee Beal/Reuters)
The alleged smuggler had tried to hide in the brush — high on methamphetamines — as authorities pulled the bodies of dozens of lifeless migrants from the 18-wheeler he’d just driven up Interstate-35 and abandoned on a San Antonio street.
The truck passed through with the migrants inside but was not inspected by agents, said Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who represents Texas’s 28th Congressional District and shared details of his briefing from U.S. law enforcement officials with The Washington Post. A federal law enforcement official confirmed the finding that the driver was high on drugs when captured.
“The truck was waved through because the traffic was backing up,” Cuellar said, noting that many of the Border Patrol agents in South Texas are busy “taking care of migrants” arriving in record numbers.
Homero Zamorano, Jr., 45, appeared in federal court in San Antonio Thursday for the first time since the grisly discovery of the bodies. He and an alleged accomplice, Christian Martinez, 28, are facing charges of immigrant smuggling resulting in death, which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison or the death penalty, in addition to hefty fines. They are among four men charges in connection with the worst smuggling disaster of its kind on U.S. soil.
Zamorano’s court appearance came as families across Mexico and Central America are beginning to learn the fate of loved ones who’d embarked on a journey to America and ended up dead in a trailer. Fifty-three migrants have died and nearly a dozen remained in the hospital. Many were young and strong, eager to join relatives in the United States. Some were only teenagers.
Mexican and U.S. officials have begun piecing together a timeline of what happened — and why the truck’s human cargo was not detected while passing through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint. An official with knowledge of the probe said scouts working for smugglers in the area timed the truck’s passage during a shift change at the checkpoint, hoping to take advantage of the temporary distraction.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican running for reelection, has faulted the Biden administration for the tragedy. Democrats accuse the state leader of hypocrisy — noting that he did not make the same accusations against former president Donald Trump after 10 migrants died in July 2017 in San Antonio, barely four miles from the tractor trailer discovered Monday.
Abbott said this week he would add highway checkpoints to screen trucks, new “strike teams” to detect and arrest border crossers, and miles of concertina wire along the Rio Grande. But several Trump-era restrictions remain in place. Trump’s Title 42 border policy, which was enacted to allow the government to expel migrants during the pandemic, is still in effect because of a lawsuit filed by Republican-led states.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for the Biden administration on the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires some asylum seekers who enter the country, mainly from Central and South America, to return to Mexico while they await a hearing. The court said the administration had the authority to reverse the Trump-era initiative.
Cuellar, whose district stretches from San Antonio to the U.S.-Mexico border, said Border Patrol checkpoint footage showed the truck headed southbound Monday on Interstate 35 toward the border city of Laredo, where it likely picked up migrants from a “stash house.” The abandoned residences or warehouses are used by smugglers to hide migrants after they cross the border into the United States. Then they wait until it is safe to transport them north to bigger cities.
Security cameras spotted the truck at 2:50 p.m. Monday at a checkpoint in Encinal, Tex., north of the border city of Laredo. The surveillance footage in Encinal shared by Mexican officials showed Zamorano smiling as he leaned out the window, motioning with one hand, wearing the black and white striped shirt and a baseball cap.
The truck, Cuellar said, was “cloned” or disguised to look like vehicles that would normally transit the area and identified with registration numbers that are copied or falsified. A federal official confirmed that the truck had been outfitted to evade detection.
“These criminal organizations have cloned FedEx, UPS trucks and even Border Patrol vehicles,” Cuellar said.
Zamorano’s public defender declined to comment at the courthouse.
Authorities said they arrested the D’Lunas on the weapons charges after tracing the tractor-trailer’s state registration to their address in San Antonio.
Cynthia Orr, the court-appointed lawyer for D’Luna-Bilbao, 48, said D’Luna-Bilbao is the father of D’Luna Mendez and both live there with their family and work as mechanics. She said they owned weapons to defend themselves against crime in the neighborhood and emphasized that they have not been charged with smuggling. | 2022-07-01T01:22:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Driver charged in truck smuggling tragedy was high on meth, official says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/30/texas-migrant-tragedy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/30/texas-migrant-tragedy/ |
FILE— Democratic State Sen. Sydney Kamlager rubs her eyes as she listens to the debate on a measure she is carrying to place a Constitutional amendment on the ballot to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, June 23, 2022. The bill failed to get enough votes for passage and Kamlager was not able to get enough support to bring it up for another vote. California’s Constitution bans both slavery and involuntary servitude, forcing someone to provide labor against their will, but there is an exception for the punishment of a crime.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will not consider amending its constitution to eliminate indentured servitude as a possible punishment for crime after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration predicted that it could cost the state billions of dollars to pay minimum wage to prison inmates. | 2022-07-01T01:22:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Californians won't weigh 'involuntary servitude' amendment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/californians-wont-weigh-involuntary-servitude-amendment/2022/06/30/6e01e094-f8d4-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/californians-wont-weigh-involuntary-servitude-amendment/2022/06/30/6e01e094-f8d4-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
China marks Hong Kong handover anniversary, as doubts hang over city
The Chinese flag is raised at the Golden Bauhinia Square on Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule. (Magnum Chan/AP)
HONG KONG — China on Friday began celebrations for the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from British rule on a triumphant note, even as Beijing’s security clampdown and increasing control of the city has thrown into doubt its international position.
With wind whipping their faces, a small crowd of Chinese officials were instructed to “stand solemnly” as Hong Kong police raised the territory’s Bauhinia flower flag next to the Chinese national golden and red flag above Victoria Harbor.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is making his first trip outside mainland China since the start of the pandemic for the occasion, did not attend the outdoor ceremony. He will give a speech later in the day at the inauguration ceremony of John Lee, the territory’s former top security official and new chief executive.
On arriving in the city by high-speed rail on Thursday, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong declared that Hong Kong had “risen from the ashes,” even as many in the former British colony expressed concern about their rapidly disappearing freedoms and dashed hopes of a more democratic future.
In a video posted to Twitter, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Beijing was failing to comply with its commitments made during the handover. “It’s a state of affairs that threatens both the rights and freedoms of Hong Kongers and the continued progress and prosperity of their home,” he said.
Xi Jinping takes ‘victory lap’ in Hong Kong, as locals look on warily
Later on Thursday, Xi met with the city’s police force in a dedicated ceremony, a rarity for Chinese leaders visiting the city. Over the course of the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2019, police use of tear gas, rubber bullets and sudden, often brutal, arrests of suspected protesters made the force a primary focus of local criticism. But Beijing has regularly indicated approval for the heavy-handed approach.
In a sign of the growing similarities between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese law enforcement, Friday marks the official adoption of the goose-step march of the Chinese military as the parade-step of the city’s police.
“I think looking back that for a long time there was a misunderstanding that ‘one country, two systems’ was equal, but actually it’s not equal,” outgoing Chief Executive Carrie Lam said this week in an interview with Phoenix media, referring to Beijing’s position that the former part of the formulation takes precedence.
For a year after taking office, Lam added, she “had not learned the deep meaning” of Xi’s speeches on the primacy of “one country” and the “red lines” Beijing laid out for protecting national security.
It took the protests to “realize that President Xi had from the start given us very clear guidance; only by following it could Hong Kong be an important part of the nation,” Lam said.
Shepherd reported from Taipei, Taiwan. | 2022-07-01T02:54:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China's Xi Jinping visits Hong Kong for 25th handover anniversary - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/30/china-xi-jinping-visit-hong-kong-handover/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/30/china-xi-jinping-visit-hong-kong-handover/ |
He didn’t receive any gift (each bridesmaid and groomsman received a small gift), and was left out of groomsmen photos — until he specifically asked for at least one photo with the couple.
Wounded: It is standard to compensate the person who officiates at the wedding — even if that person is a friend who would perform the ceremony for free. This compensation can come in the form of paying for the person’s travel and hotel room, giving them a cash gift, and/or yes — a gift of appreciation to acknowledge the vital role the officiant has played in the wedding.
Exclusive: If you two are exclusively dating, moving forward you would naturally want to introduce one another to your friends on both sides. You don’t seem to have met your lady friend’s gentleman caller, but this would be a good first step.
Upset: I did not interpret this as “force-feeding,” but as young parents going through what I believe is a typical “clean your plate” phase with a toddler. | 2022-07-01T04:24:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My husband was 'demoted' from groomsman to officiant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/01/ask-amy-friend-wedding-officiant/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/01/ask-amy-friend-wedding-officiant/ |
Dear Carolyn: I am in the throes of a true dilemma with no good choices. I went through a nasty divorce when my kids were small and remarried fairly hastily. My husband brought his son into the marriage.
My husband took it upon himself to help discipline all the kids and tended to have a temper and be harsh. There was yelling but no physical abuse.
Fast-forward 30-plus years. My kids are in therapy and blame my husband for their unhappy childhoods and me for not doing more to prevent it. I am in therapy, too, because I never realized it was that bad, and I seem to no longer have much of a relationship with my daughters and son. I do get along with his son, his wife and their two kids, however. Mother’s Day came and went: crickets.
My kids feel as if I never chose them when they were younger but just wanted to keep the peace with my husband. Short of divorcing him, I (and my therapist) don’t know how to make this better. But I don’t want to be alone, which is probably why I married so quickly.
I can’t undo what has been done and wish we could move forward, but I don’t know how. Please be blunt with me: What would you do?
— Damned If I Do …
Damned If I Do …: I hope I would own what I did.
I hope I would apologize to my children for not protecting them.
I hope I would admit to them that my fear of being alone was in control, more so than my parental instincts, and that I lacked the courage to risk my own security to ensure theirs.
I hope I would admit that I failed them in this most fundamental way.
I hope I would be able to say to them now, without equivocating, that I understand my failure resulted in their verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of their hastily, poorly chosen stepfather. That a steady diet of “temper,” “harsh” and “yelling,” especially to a child, is abuse. No hitting necessary.
I hope I would tell them I didn’t see this clearly then, but I see it clearly now, and I will not unsee it.
I hope I would tell them that I love them and understand that they have to find their own ways to make peace with their childhoods. That if keeping their distance from me is their best chance at healing, then I accept that.
I hope I would tell them my door and heart are always open to them regardless.
I hope I would stop framing this for myself as having “no good choices,” because owning our behavior and its consequences is always a good choice, even when it hurts like hell.
And I hope I would find a way to forgive myself.
I say “I hope” these things, because I appreciate first-person and, at a gut level, the self-protective measures our minds take when we’re dealing with soul-crushingly hard truths about ourselves. I can’t say for certain that I would have it in me to own this truth at full strength. But I hope I would.
If you can do that, then you’ll have leapfrogged from being stunted by fear to being braver than most.
You say your children “blame” you — but that blame is the template for your redemption. They’ve spelled out the apology they need. There is no dilemma; just give it to them in full. (Under the care of a new therapist, if you’ve gotten all you can from this one.)
That may not get your kids back, but getting yourself back matters, too. | 2022-07-01T04:24:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Kids cut off mom over stepfather’s ‘harsh’ parenting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/01/carolyn-hax-children-contact-mom-stepfather-parenting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/01/carolyn-hax-children-contact-mom-stepfather-parenting/ |
Dear Miss Manners: My wife and I have a friend who often hosts gatherings at her home with an eclectic mix of people, including her next-door neighbors. They are nice people, but my wife and I have only ever had lukewarm, perfunctorily polite exchanges with them. It’s just an “oil and water” personality dynamic — cordial at best. The feelings appear mutual.
Had you been better friends, you might have said that you would get the money later when the wife returned. But this transaction was clearly not top of mind for them. | 2022-07-01T04:25:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I’m not a cheapskate but I asked for my money back - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/01/miss-manners-kid-money-back/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/01/miss-manners-kid-money-back/ |
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — El Salvador’s Bitcoin-boosting president was back at it again Thursday, doubling down on his country’s losing investment in the cryptocurrency by buying over $1.5 million more.
Ask Amy: I want to break up, but I don’t want to lose our friends
Miss Manners: They sign cards with their deceased relatives’ names | 2022-07-01T04:25:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | El Salvador's Bitcoin-boosting leader buys $1.5 million more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/el-salvadors-bitcoin-boosting-leader-buys-15-million-more/2022/06/30/d7a0ee54-f8ee-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/el-salvadors-bitcoin-boosting-leader-buys-15-million-more/2022/06/30/d7a0ee54-f8ee-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
A few years after the 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to China, officials in the former colony unveiled an ambitious new branding strategy. Post-colonial Hong Kong would be “Asia’s world city” — a preeminent entrepôt for global trade, a key staging ground for foreign investment into the emerging Chinese superpower, a cosmopolis of people from virtually every continent, and a de facto city-state with its own currency, immigration protocols, legal system and far greater civil freedoms than the mainland.
For the first decade of the new century, that branding seemed more or less accurate. Hong Kong boomed alongside China’s surging economy. Major U.S. and Western banks expanded their footprints in a city still governed by British common law and enmeshed in international financial markets. In 2008, Time magazine declared with a cover story (targeted, at the time, to an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland) the advent of “Nylonkong.” It argued that New York City, London and Hong Kong had become international triplets, and were jointly the engines driving an optimistic age, making “today’s global economy a phenomenon that has increased the life chances of countless millions.”
The story thereafter has not been nearly as cheery. Financial crises and recessions rocked the West. Among the American and European public, the very concept of globalization turned suspect. And while the mantra of Hong Kong and China coexisting as “one country, two systems” endured, it became steadily clear this was not a status quo that suited Beijing.
As Hong Kong marks the 25th anniversary of its return to Chinese control on Friday, an emphatically different vision of the city has taken shape. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in the city Thursday and heralded Hong Kong “risen from the ashes,” a gesture to the ordeals of the pandemic as well as months of protests that rocked the city in the years prior. The latter was met by a pervasive campaign of repression from Beijing and a new national security law rubber-stamped by Hong Kong’s pliant legislature. Ever since the bill was enacted two years ago today, the city has seen a deeply chilling effect on dissent and political life.
25 years of China's slow takeover of Hong Kong in pictures
VIDEO: "After weathering the storm, Hong Kong has been reborn of fire, and has emerged with bubbling vitality," says Chinese President Xi Jinping after he arrives in in the city to attend celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of handover from Britain to China. pic.twitter.com/Al8a56PQ0z
Hong Kong was once cast as a liberal precursor to what China could become. Under Xi, it’s a cautionary tale of authoritarian entrenchment. “Gone are former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s pithy pre-1997 promises that Hong Kong’s ‘horses will still be raced and dances will be danced’ after the handover,” noted our colleagues. “Replacing them are Xi’s views, as stated at the 20th handover anniversary, that ‘one country’ forms the deep roots of a system of governance ‘advanced, first and foremost, to realize and uphold national unity.’ ”
National unity, in Xi’s formulation, means the death knell for many Hong Kongers’ long-standing democratic aspirations. Legislators loyal to the mainland now almost entirely hold sway over Hong Kong’s local assembly. Dissidents have been thrown into jail and criminalized as foreign agents and terrorists. Critical journalists and once-leading media outlets have been suppressed. For years, Hong Kong was the site of mass demonstrations every June 4 in commemoration of the 1989 massacres at Tiananmen Square. Those vigils are now banned.
Hong Kong in 2022 is far from what it was supposed to be in 2001, when local authorities proclaimed its “world city” aspirations. Chinese companies, not U.S. banks, are the ascendant players in its financial sector. Myriad international businesses have chosen in recent years to quit Hong Kong as a regional hub of operations, opting for the safer, more stable politics to be found in cities like Seoul and Singapore.
While 130,000 people left Hong Kong this year alone, a steady stream of well-educated, well-heeled mainlanders fills the void. More Hong Kong work visas were handed out to mainlanders than foreigners last year — the first time that’s happened since records of these permits were collected. Rather than touting Hong Kong’s world-leading cosmopolitanism, Beijing officials now cast it as part of a regional megapolis in the Pearl River Delta, tethered to more-populous cities across the border like Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Xi’s strict covid policies prompt rumblings of discontent in China
To the Chinese leadership, Hong Kong should know its place. The waning of the city’s global brand comes alongside China’s increasing assertiveness and confidence on the world stage. “Beijing has been suspicious of foreigners meddling in Hong Kong affairs and this xenophobia became more pronounced under Xi,” Ho-Fung Hung, a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, told Today’s WorldView. “[Chinese Communist Party] leaders today really believe that the West is in decline and China is becoming the center of the world.”
The city remains a popular offshore destination for Chinese investment, but Beijing’s consolidation of political control over the city has already had downstream effects. Hung pointed to the National Security Law and a recent proposal to ban the public from accessing data in Hong Kong’s Companies Registry — a move which, he believes, has prompted apprehension among the international business community over transparency in the financial sector. “The foundation of Hong Kong’s institutional strength as an international, offshore financial hub of China has generally been eroding,” Hung said.
Eric Lai, a fellow at the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University, told Today’s WorldView that there’s an irony at the heart of China’s crackdown: “Hong Kong’s success as an economic and financial hub depends on values that Xi Jinping disapproves of.”
When Beijing assumed sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, it promised to respect the city’s freedoms. But Beijing broke that promise.
On the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty, Hongkongers are still resisting.
https://t.co/SJzPz7VyBf pic.twitter.com/e9fkgEbkQI
For Beijing, though, the tighter controls are likely worth the price. Chinese officials also believe that the relaxation of pandemic-era controls will help jump-start Hong Kong’s tourism sector and the city’s economy will soon be humming again.
But for many Hong Kongers, something fundamental has been lost. “Acceptance of a Beijing-designed future may be hardest among the generation born around the handover, who expected greater democratic freedoms and were introduced to local politics through protests against impositions from Beijing,” our colleagues wrote.
“Hong Kong has lost its own people, when you see that this place is no longer its former self, the place we recognize growing up, and when all we could see it would get worse, then there’s no more room for us to stay,” Adrianna, a Hong Kong emigre in Vancouver, told Asia Nikkei Review.
“How is it,” she added, “that we, the people who love Hong Kong, are forced to leave and become refugees?” | 2022-07-01T04:26:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hong Kong's global aspirations end under shadow of Beijing's Xi Jinping - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/hong-kong-global-handover-anniversary-beijing-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/hong-kong-global-handover-anniversary-beijing-china/ |
Russia-Ukraine live updates Odessa apartment strike kills at least 14; Russia warns of new iron curtain
Speaking at the NATO summit in Madrid, President Biden said June 30 that Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted a strengthening of the alliance. (Video: Reuters)
At least 14 people were killed and dozens injured after a Russian strike on a residential building in the Odessa area, Kyiv said early Friday. Regional officials said that two nearby buildings were also hit, resulting in three additional fatalities. The Kremlin more than doubled the rate of its missile strikes in the second half of June, according to a Ukrainian general, who said more than half of the Russian munitions date back to the Soviet era and are inaccurate, resulting in significant civilian casualties.
Ukrainian forces, while outgunned, this week retook strategically important Snake Island. But Russia continued to make minimal advances around the eastern city of Lysychansk and had “partial success” trying to seize the city’s oil refinery, according to Ukraine. Footage from Russian state media appeared to show some fighters inside the plant, one of the largest in Ukraine.
President Biden pledged to help defend “every inch” of NATO territory, as a summit that sought to reinvigorate the transatlantic alliance in the face of an expansionist Russia ended Thursday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made a stark Cold War reference the same day, telling reporters that a new iron curtain was descending between Moscow and the West.
Finland and Sweden are expected to formally sign the NATO accession protocol on Tuesday, the bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
WNBA star Brittney Griner’s trial is set to begin Friday in a courtroom outside Moscow. Here’s what to expect.
President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine has started exporting electricity to Europe, in an effort to help the continent reduce its reliance on Russian gas.
By Mary Ilyushina, Adela Suliman and Alex Horton1:25 a.m.
RIGA, Latvia — Russian forces say they have withdrawn from Ukraine’s Snake Island, a highly contested speck of land in the Black Sea they captured shortly after the start of the war — presenting a small but strategic win for Ukraine on Thursday.
Their retreat provided a welcomed morale boost for Ukraine as it continues a bloody and grinding fight in the east, where artillery exchanges and shifting control of vital terrain has produced few recent victories.
Russia’s Defense Ministry framed the withdrawal from Snake Island as a “gesture of goodwill” and an effort to create a humanitarian corridor for the export of agricultural products such as grain from Ukraine. However, officials in the nearby southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa said Russian troops had evacuated only after protracted missile and artillery strikes by Ukrainian forces.
On the 135th day of Brittney Griner’s detainment in Russia on drug charges, the WNBA star’s trial is expected to begin Friday in a courtroom outside of Moscow. However, rather than the promise of a fair trial and a chance at acquittal, U.S. officials and experts on Russia’s legal system expect the proceedings to be a show trial, with a guilty verdict all but certain.
“I’m fairly confident the trial is already rigged,” said Daniel Fried, an expert on Russia who served as an ambassador and top State Department official under three U.S. presidents and is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Given the track record of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Fried said, “respect for the rule of law is not something the Kremlin takes seriously.”
Griner, 31, was arrested Feb. 17 at an airport outside of Moscow when Russian customs officials allegedly discovered vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. If convicted, she could face up to 10 years in prison. A two-time Olympic gold medalist and eight-time all-star for the Phoenix Mercury, Griner was traveling to Russia to join UMMC Ekaterinburg, the EuroLeague team for which she plays during the WNBA’s offseason.
The latest: NATO leaders are meeting Thursday in Madrid for a third and final day. Kyiv and Moscow have also traded 144 prisoners each in an exchange that saw the return of some Ukrainian fighters who defended the Azovstal steel plant. | 2022-07-01T05:57:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latest Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-live-updates/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine live updates: Odessa apartment strike kills at least 14; Rus...
Griner’s trial on Russian drug charges set to open in Moscow courtroom
Live updates:Russian strike hits crowded mall, Zelensky says, amid push for aid at G-7
WNBA star could face 10 years in prison. U.S. says she’s being wrongfully held.
WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing just outside Moscow on June 27. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
RIGA, Latvia — American WNBA star Brittney Griner is scheduled to stand trial Friday on drug charges in a Moscow court after customs officials said they found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her baggage at a Moscow airport in February, a week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Griner could face 10 years in jail if convicted of possessing a “significant amount” of hashish. She has been in custody since February and has been remanded in custody until December pending the outcome of her trial.
Her case has been complicated by the severe downturn in relations between Washington and Moscow. Griner’s supporters in the United States say she is a hostage and political pawn.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed these claims last week, saying that drug offenses are treated seriously in Russia and many other countries. “We cannot call her a hostage. Why should we call her a hostage?” he said.
“There are a number of countries that you cannot enter with drugs,” Peskov said. “It is also prosecuted under Russian law. Russia is not the only country in the world that has strict laws in this sense.”
Griner’s supporters in the United States have called on President Biden to negotiate a prisoner swap like one in April, when Russia exchanged former Marine Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year prison sentence in Connecticut for drug trafficking. Reed had been jailed for nine years after being convicted of assault endangering the lives of police officers.
Griner is one of two Americans that the State Department says are being wrongfully held by Russia. Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan has been in jail since December 2018, when he traveled to Moscow for a friend’s wedding and was arrested in his hotel room. He was jailed for 16 years after being convicted of spying in a closed trial. He denies the charges and calls the case political.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that freeing wrongfully held Americans such as Whelan and Griner was his highest priority.
“I’ve got no higher priority than making sure that Americans who are being illegally detained in one way or another around the world come home, and that includes Paul Whelan and that includes Brittney Griner,” he said in an interview with CNN, declining to comment on whether the U.S. government was seeking a prisoner exchange involving Whelan and Griner.
Russian media has speculated that Washington could exchange Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving 25 years in the United States for conspiring to sell surface-to-air missiles to a foreign terrorist group and conspiring to kill U.S. citizens. Bout, the inspiration for the Nicholas Cage film “Lord of War,” allegedly smuggled arms to warlords in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia for years — sometimes arming both sides in a conflict — until his 2008 arrest in Thailand and 2010 extradition to the United States. Russia calls Bout’s arrest and conviction “unlawful and political” and has been demanding his release since 2008.
According to Russian customs officials, Griner was about to fly from Moscow to New York when a sniffer dog at Sheremetyevo International Airport “indicated that drugs may be in the carry-on luggage of a United States citizen,” a reference to Griner. Customs officials said they found vapes in her luggage, which were later analyzed and found to contain hashish oil. The customs agency posted video of the airport search apparently taken from surveillance cameras.
In early May, the State Department determined that Griner was being wrongfully held and shifted supervision of her case to Roger Carstens, presidential envoy for hostage affairs. The department has not elaborated on the basis for the judgment.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said at the time that the department weighed the circumstances in each case, “whether it’s the case of Brittney Griner, whether it’s the case of Paul Whelan, whether it’s the case of Americans in Iran. There are going to be unique factors in each and every one of those cases."
Price said Griner was “fortunate to have a network who has supported her from day one,” adding that the department had worked closely with her backers.
About a month before the invasion of Ukraine, the State Department issued a level 4 security warning to Americans, stipulating “do not travel” to Russia because of the risk of arbitrary enforcement of the law and harassment by Russian officials, as well as tensions over Ukraine. It warned that State Department officials had a limited ability to help U.S. citizens in Russia.
“Russian officials have unreasonably delayed U.S. consular assistance to detained U.S. citizens and have arrested U.S. citizens on spurious charges, denied them fair and transparent treatment, and have convicted them in secret trials and/or without presenting evidence,” the warning read. | 2022-07-01T06:57:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brittney Griner's trial on Russian drug charges opening in Moscow court - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/brittney-griner-russia-trial-jail/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/brittney-griner-russia-trial-jail/ |
India imposes ban on single-use plastics. But will it be enforced?
A boy walks on a water pipeline over a sewer canal filled with plastics and other waste in New Delhi. (Money Sharma/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW DELHI — India on Friday became the latest country to impose a ban on most single-use plastics, part of a growing but patchy global effort to tackle a leading source of pollution. The challenges of enforcement are enormous, experts say, but so are the potential gains.
Only a small fraction of the plastic produced globally is recycled. Most is single-use, or disposable. It often winds up in landfills, rivers and oceans, or is burned, a significant contributor to air pollution in developing nations. Though these plastics are used only briefly, they can take hundreds of years to decompose. By 2050, there will be about 12 billion tons of plastic waste in the world, the United Nations estimates.
Plastic debris is ubiquitous in India: stacked along roadsides, floating in waterways and choking drainage systems. The country is the world’s third-largest producer of plastic waste, trailing only the United States and China, according to a recent report from Australia’s Minderoo Foundation.
U.S. is top contributor to plastic waste, report shows
India announced its ambitious initiative last year. Now, the manufacture, sale or import of widely used items such as plastic cutlery, ice cream sticks, and film on cigarette packs and candy boxes are banned. Plastic bags, another major pollutant, are not on the list for now, but the government has mandated an increase in thickness to make them easier to reuse. Some plastic packaging used for consumer food products will be excluded from the ban, but manufacturers are tasked with ensuring that it is recycled.
Experts say bans are only a first step and must be followed by stringent, long-term enforcement.
“Plastic is cheap and a poor man’s commodity,” said Anoop Kumar Srivastava, founder of the Foundation for Campaign Against Plastic Pollution. “Such campaigns take years of sustained efforts. The gains are going to be enormous over a period of time.”
Legal manufacturers of single-use plastic are likely to shut down as the ban takes effect, he said, but unlicensed ones may spring up to meet demand, making vigilant monitoring imperative. Pollution- control bodies at the state and local levels are primarily tasked with enforcing the ban. Violators will be fined and can face jail time, the Economic Times reported.
“The large users of plastic packaging need to work with the supply chain on how they can shift to alternatives without affecting their financial bottom line,” said Suneel Pandey, director of environment and waste management at the Energy and Resources Institute in Delhi.
But consumers have a role to play as well. “Awareness is a big issue,” Pandey said. “If [consumers] get alternatives, they would switch. Otherwise, they will use what is convenient.”
Plastic manufacturers are already up in arms. They say that the government did not give them enough time to make the transition and that thousands of jobs are at stake.
“For so many units to change their product, their machinery, their manpower and adapt to newer technologies is a very big task that cannot happen in a year,” said Kishore Sampat, president of the All India Plastic Manufacturers’ Association. The ban will impact more than 80,000 companies making single-use plastic items and lead to billions of dollars in losses, he estimated.
India takes its place in a slow but building global movement away from plastics. China announced in 2020 that it would phase out plastic bags nationwide by the end of this year. A ban on single-use plastics in Canada will go into effect in December. There is no national ban in the United States, but California, New York and Oregon have limited the use of plastic items.
Canada banning single-use plastics to combat pollution, climate change
More than half a dozen state governments in India have passed similar regulations in the past, with mixed results. But there are small success stories that could serve as a model for the rest of the nation.
Twenty years ago, Supriya Sahu, a young government official charged with oversight of Nilgiris, a popular hill station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, saw a seemingly impossible problem. Tourists left behind mounds of plastic that would find its way into streams and forests and be eaten by animals. She joined forces with civil society groups, municipal bodies and village representatives to work toward a solution.
Before seeking a broad ban, she persuaded local councils to pass resolutions against plastic use. Her team distributed cloth bags to tourists at the district borders. To raise awareness, images of animals with plastic stuck to their intestines were displayed widely. Finally, authorities began to fine consumers and close shops using plastic bags.
“It worked like magic,” Sahu said. “There was absolutely no way that we could handle all the plastic” that was being generated.
Tamil Nadu later adopted many of these practices and banned most single-use plastic items in 2019. The state has seized 1,768 tons of plastic in the years since and collected $1.28 million in fines.
“It is not an easy decision for any government to take,” Sahu said. “But somewhere we have to start.” | 2022-07-01T06:57:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | India bans single-use plastics from July 1 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/india-single-use-plastic-ban-pollution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/india-single-use-plastic-ban-pollution/ |
People gather in Kinshasa as a military vehicle carries a gold-capped tooth belonging to independence hero Patrice Lumumba. (Samy Ntumba Shambuyi/AP)
Independence leader Patrice Lumumba, who served as the Democratic Republic of Congo’s first prime minister before his 1961 assassination, was interred on Thursday in a mausoleum in the heart of Kinshasa, the capital of the country he helped create.
Thousands gathered along the streets to pay respects on what was also the 62nd anniversary of Congo’s independence from Belgium. Lumumba’s only known remains — a gold-crowned tooth — were carried by a military vehicle to his final resting place. The anti-colonialist’s body had been dissolved and dismembered by Belgian authorities, who feared that a grave would become a pilgrimage site.
The relic was apparently kept by the family of a Belgian police official who took it six decades ago, before it was seized by Belgian authorities in 2016, according to the Associated Press. They returned the tooth to Lumumba’s family at a ceremony in Brussels last month.
Black Lives Matter protesters in Belgium want statues of colonialist King Léopold II to come down
Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi, who attended Thursday’s ceremony, called Lumumba an “inspiring figure on an international scale” and praised the founding father’s campaign against imperialism on the African continent.
Diplomats and other foreign leaders, including President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the neighboring Republic of Congo, also attended the service at the mausoleum, the AP reported.
Lumumba rose to prominence in 1958, when he became the leader of a major national movement as Congo neared independence from Belgian rule. The feat was notable as it was illegal to form political parties in the colony, said Norman Etherington, a historian of European imperialism at the University of Western Australia.
The slain leader advocated nonalignment at the height of the Cold War, which stoked fear in the West that Congo would come under Soviet influence. Investigations later indicated that Brussels conspired with Lumumba’s political rival to kill him in 1961, Etherington said. A Belgian parliamentary probe in 2002 said the country was “morally responsible” for Lumumba’s death.
“So many young Africans at the time saw him as a martyr to Belgian colonialism, to American imperialism, to the CIA, to international mining interests, everything that they hoped they were getting out of through independence,” he said.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was in office during Lumumba’s premiership, also approved his assassination, though the U.S. plan was never carried out, Etherington said. Eisenhower administration officials have also said that the president suggested that the Congolese leader be eliminated, according to U.S. government records.
The return of Lumumba’s tooth came amid a push within Belgium to reckon with its brutal colonial past. King Leopold II, whose name and image are omnipresent in Brussels, reigned over the deaths of millions of Congolese people during a rule that was notably brutal even for the time. In the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, some 10,000 protesters gathered in central Brussels to denounce racism, with many demanding that statues of Leopold be taken down.
On Thursday, a bust of military commander Émile Storms, who helped Belgium seize Congo, was removed from its pedestal in the Brussels area. The move was praised by Belgian activists.
Last month, Belgium’s King Philippe offered his “deepest regrets” for the abuses his country committed during the colonization of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but he did not offer a formal apology.
Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report. | 2022-07-01T08:28:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Congo independence hero Patrice Lumumba honored 61 years after death - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/congo-independence-patrice-lumumba-tooth-burial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/congo-independence-patrice-lumumba-tooth-burial/ |
LIV Golf’s wealth is absurd. So is its product.
Pat Perez made his LIV Golf Invitational Series debut at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club. (Troy Wayrynen/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Let’s go to Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club outside Portland, Ore., for the latest on the upstart LIV Golf series. Charl Schwartzel, lugging around the $4 million he won earlier this month outside London, lost the first ball he hit, opened with a double bogey and, well, who really cares that he finished the day buried near the bottom of the leader board? Graeme McDowell, captain of a team somehow known as the Niblicks, was 4 over par before an hour had elapsed, further forging his path to irrelevance. Brooks Koepka debuted for Team Smash, which has a logo that looks like, um, flatulence. Edgy!
Golf always has had a silly season. It has never before straddled June and July, when major championships are strung together with meaningful tournaments in between. The renegade series is, of course, trying to brashly change all that. It has high appeal as being both lucrative and stress-free for the players.
But as a product that raises the hairs on the backs of necks? It feels like second-rate reality TV, properly relegated to, say, the CW. (Or, actually, streaming on LIVGolf.com or YouTube.) In golf, iron has long sharpened iron. No one ever said gold sharpens gold. The most malleable of metals might, indeed, soften all who have stuck their snouts in the trough.
How golf’s rogue tour roiled a small Oregon town
It’s important to constantly keep in mind the source of LIV’s extensive — indeed, almost endless — wealth and funding: the Saudi Arabian government. Sure, it’s lightly laundered through something called the Public Investment Fund, which bills itself “sovereign,” a laughable notion given that the chairman of the board is none other than Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the board consists of members of the Saudi establishment. Each of these players has signed up to take money from a murderous regime, and that colors the entire entity.
But put the moral qualms aside for a minute, and what are you left with? It would seem a tricked-up mess of a product. That’s not just because it’s different. On the face of it, different isn’t bad. But start with that fact, and go back to what Jon Rahm — the Spaniard ranked second in the world who has pledged his loyalty to the PGA Tour — said before the U.S. Open. It rang true at the time. As LIV Golf stages the second event in its torch-the-establishment existence, it seems more pertinent now.
“Part of the format is not really appealing to me,” Rahm said. “Shotgun, three days, to me is not a golf tournament. No cut. I want to play against the best in the world in a format that’s been going on for hundreds of years. That’s what I want to see.”
And think about what played out over the week that followed at the Country Club outside Boston: a leader board that was dotted with the game’s stars — Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler among them. On the weekend, as has been true for generations, the leaders teed off not at the same time as everyone else but last, playing into the dying light. That left Matt Fitzpatrick and Will Zalatoris in the final group, staring each other down. It’s how these championships have been decided for years. It made for a thrilling Sunday.
By the final round — which, in the LIV world, is the third round — a LIV field is reshuffled so that the leaders indeed tee off from the first hole. But as they begin a round that determines who wins $4 million for coming in first and who takes $120,000 for placing last, the leaders tee off from the first hole at the same time those in seventh through ninth tee off from the second.
It’s a shotgun start, with all the disorder that implies. The leaders play the course as it’s meant to be played: The starting hole means something; the finishing hole means something else. Except for everyone else, who finishes not on the 18th but on the fifth or the seventh or wherever.
That doesn’t feel like a championship event. It feels like a Monday-morning shotgun to benefit the Four Counties Foodbank. Which, come to think of it, would do more good for the world than lining, say, Pat Perez’s pockets with $580,000 for finishing ninth.
This weekend, LIV Golf’s Portland-area event goes up against the John Deere Classic, a down-the-docket PGA Tour event that happens to have a history that dates back more than half a century. It was preceded by last week’s Travelers, outside Hartford, Conn., won by young star Xander Schauffele. The Travelers and the John Deere Classic aren’t exactly marquee PGA Tour events. But they at least have some history — Jordan Spieth holing out from the bunker on 18 and bumping chests with caddie Michael Greller, Jim Furyk shooting a 58, Iowan Zach Johnson winning at home, Bubba Watson tearfully winning for the first time.
LIV Golf is already vexing the PGA Tour and its sleepless players
LIV Golf can’t be expected to have history in a month’s time. But it also can’t pretend to be meaningful just because it exists.
“I’ve always been interested in history and legacy, and right now the PGA Tour has that,” Rahm said in those pre-Open remarks. “There’s some meaning when you win the Memorial championship. There’s some meaning when you win Arnold Palmer’s event in Bay Hill. There’s some meaning when you win L.A. [at Riviera], Torrey [Pines], some of these historic venues. That, to me, matters a lot.”
There’s some procedural stuff that lessens the LIV luster, too. Koepka, for one, has long said he cares most about major championships, of which he has four. That’s an admirable way of thinking, one shared by Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, to name a few.
But by joining LIV Golf, Koepka has — at least for now — potentially boxed his way out of majors. His ticket to the 2023 Masters is punched — assuming Augusta National doesn’t ban LIV players — because he won the 2018 U.S. Open. Winners of the U.S. and British Opens and the PGA Championship get invitations to Augusta for the following five years.
The path back to the Masters in 2024 and beyond, though, is harder than it was two months ago. Players who win a PGA Tour event in the year since the last Masters gain entry. Koepka and the others can’t win PGA Tour events if they can’t play in them, so that avenue is blocked.
Players who are in the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking at the end of the previous calendar year, as well as the week before the Masters start, are granted entry to Augusta. But right now — and perhaps forever — LIV Golf events don’t allow players to rack up OWGR points. That’s a coming crux point: LIV players currently play in tricked-up, irrelevant events. If the current rules don’t change, they may have trouble relying on the majors to maintain their relevance.
What’s true about this weekend outside Portland: Someone will win $4 million for coming in first, and the first loser will cash out for $2.125 million — nearly a million more than the John Deere champion. That matters to the players and their investment advisers, regardless of how dirty the money might be.
What matters to the golf viewer is the test provided and the tournament that follows. LIV players have pushed the idea that golf can be a force of good. That’s suspect at best, particularly when the golf being produced feels more like a second-rate carnival than a first-class competition. | 2022-07-01T08:59:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LIV Golf's product is as silly as its money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/liv-golf-portland-pumpkin-ridge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/liv-golf-portland-pumpkin-ridge/ |
House adjacent to Congressional Country Club offered at $4.8M
The 1995 house has six bedrooms and nine bathrooms and is next to the Gold Course’s 14th tee box
The mahogany-paneled library has a fireplace and a spiral staircase to the upper level. “That’s something that I would have never incorporated if I hadn’t seen it, but we use that space all the time,” said owner Karen Fickes. (Constance Gauthier)
Karen and Steven Fickes found the home of their family’s dreams. The only problem was it was in the wrong place, which is why they built this house in Bethesda, Md.
The Fickes had seen almost this exact house in another location, but it was bigger and on a one-acre lot. It also was on a busy street.
“That was the dealbreaker for us,” Karen said. “We loved the house. But at the time, especially with the kids being the ages they were, we just felt like the kids can’t ride their bikes on the street.”
Bethesda, Md., house | The house was built in 1995 by Griff Gosnell adjacent to Congressional Country Club. It is on the market for just under $4.8 million. (Constance Gauthier)
So they decided to build a smaller version of the house on a two-acre lot that abutted Congressional Country Club. They were attracted to that location because of its proximity and seclusion.
“We’re 11 miles from the White House,” she said. “We can walk to the canal. … It was very close to the schools that our kids were going to at the time. You can be in Tysons in 10 minutes; you can be at Montgomery Mall in seven minutes. … The fact that you’re as close to all of these places, but you have two acres that back up to Congressional [Country Club], and the entire neighborhood is one street, just one street, which ends in a cul-de-sac. It’s incredibly quiet.”
Being next to the 14th tee on Congressional’s Gold Course wasn’t a factor in their decision, other than that it provided lush green space behind their home.
“At the time that we built it, my husband was a golfer, although we weren’t members at Congressional,” Karen said. “I think that it was mostly just the fact that it’s a beautiful view and you don’t have to worry about something being built behind you that’s going to spoil your peaceful existence.”
The house was built to their specifications by Griff Gosnell in 1995.
“We made very few changes” to the design of the original house they saw, Karen said. That house “was actually bigger than this. We felt like what we have is large enough.”
The floor plan on the main level suited their needs. Karen particularly liked how guests could move easily throughout the house.
“I thought the layout was perfect for entertaining,” she said. “I had 16 people for Christmas dinner, and I can seat that in my dining room. I have had up to 80 people in the house for a party.”
Karen says she probably wouldn’t have wanted the two-story library had it not been in the original house.
“That’s something that I would have never incorporated if I hadn’t seen it, but we use that space all the time,” she said. “Both my husband and I are avid readers. I have used that space as my office. Actually, one of us has always worked out of that library, even though it looks like it was built as a showpiece. It’s been functional.”
Karen says she likes to browse the bookshelves and find books to read that she hasn’t read in years. Last year, when her son returned home for a working vacation, he worked in the library. Because the room has pocket doors, it could be closed off from the rest of the house, giving him the privacy he needed. The backdrop also provided an impressive setting for his video conference calls.
“He said that when he was on Zoom calls, people would ask, ‘Where are you?’ ” she said. “‘You’ve got mahogany wood all around you.’”
The basketball/squash court was an addition to the plans.
“When we did get to [planning] the basement, that’s when we put in the [multisport] court,” Karen said. “We knew that going in because that had to be dug. It was later when we did the basement that we came up with the idea of doing the walls in old brick. … That’s what my husband wanted. He wanted old brick walls and then he wanted that wood-slat ceiling.”
The six-bedroom, nine-bathroom, 15,700-square-foot house is listed at just under $4.8 million.
8600 Country Club Dr., Bethesda, Md.
Approximate square-footage: 15,700
Features: The house was built in 1995 by Griff Gosnell. It has a two-story foyer and a two-story mahogany paneled library. There are six fireplaces. A multisport court is on the lower level. The three-car garage is attached.
Listing agent: Robert Hryniewicki, Adam Rackliffe and Christopher Leary of HRL Partners at Washington Fine Properties | 2022-07-01T09:46:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House adjacent to Congressional Country Club offered at $4.8M - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/01/house-for-sale-near-congressional-country-club/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/01/house-for-sale-near-congressional-country-club/ |
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez delivers a speech onstage at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee, August 20, 2020. (TANNEN MAURY/EPA-EFE)
Baltimore County Executive John “Johnny O” Olszewski, Jr. (D) endorsed former Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez on Friday in the crowded and highly competitive Democratic primary race for governor.
Olszewski, leader of the state’s third largest county by population, said that while he didn’t plan to endorse, Perez “distinguished himself as someone who has put forward needed ideas for my region and for the entire state.”
“I’m very excited to endorse Tom Perez for governor,” Olszewski said in an interview. “It boils down to having a governor who both shares my values and knows how to get things done.”
Perez, who served as U.S. labor secretary in the Obama administration, has endorsements from AFSCME Councils 3 and 67, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO, among others.
In a field of nine active candidates, Perez is neck-and-neck with Comptroller Peter Franchot and author and former nonprofit executive Wes Moore as front-runners for the Democratic nomination, according to recent polling from Goucher College.
Perez, a Montgomery County resident, also won county executive Marc Elrich’s endorsement in the state’s most populous county, as well as an endorsement from former Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D).
Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D), leading the state’s second largest county by population, endorsed Moore.
Olszewski said in an interview that he and Perez both come from working class backgrounds which he believes has impacted their perspective and leadership style.
“Tom has clearly been someone who believes in the power of relationship and economic empowerment for those he’s served. He’s never forgotten who he represents, where he comes from, why he serves,” Olszewski said. “He happens to also, far and away, be the most qualified contestant among several worthy Democratic candidates.”
In a news release Perez said he was honored to have Olszewski’s support.
“'Johnny O’ is a bold, thoughtful, and transformative leader who has continued to deliver on his promises to build a more open, inclusive, and better Baltimore County,” Perez in a prepared statement.
Perez faces nine other Democrats in the July 19 primary, although former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III suspended his campaign. | 2022-07-01T09:47:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baltimore County Executive John “Johnny O” Olszewski, Jr. endorses Perez - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/perez-endorsement-baltimore-county-olszewski/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/perez-endorsement-baltimore-county-olszewski/ |
He threatened to kill Joe Biden. His family says he’s a casualty of war.
Scott Merryman, a combat veteran, has struggled with PTSD for years after mistakenly shooting a child in Afghanistan. His latest mental break brought in the Secret Service.
A portrait of Scott Merryman taken in basic training. The troubled ex-soldier from Kansas, now 37, is facing two federal charges for allegedly threatening to kill the president. (Michael Noble Jr. for The Washington Post) (Michael Noble, Jr./For The Washington Post)
There is no evidence that Scott Merryman, a 37-year-old war veteran, was motivated by political hatred when he trekked a thousand miles to the D.C. area, vowing to “slay the Anti-Christ,” as he called President Biden on social media.
The former paratrooper, emotionally troubled for more than a decade, had suddenly become delusional, obsessed with the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Believing he was a God-anointed prophet of the world’s final days, he set out, in his words, to “lop the head off the serpent in the heart of the nation.” When Secret Service agents intercepted him in January, he was carrying three bullets, though no gun.
Weeks later, at a pretrial hearing, the burly, bearded ex-soldier from rural Kansas, charged in an indictment with threatening to kill the president, walked to the witness stand in a federal courtroom in Baltimore. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder since 2009, and reportedly recovered from the temporary psychosis that led to his arrest, he moved with a weary gait, clad in a jail-issue orange jumpsuit, white socks and floppy shower sandals.
To those who know him best, especially his loved ones, Merryman is far less a culprit than a casualty of war — a living reminder of the price of America’s long conflict in Afghanistan. Over the years, in therapy with mental health clinicians in the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has said he is haunted by a firefight in an Afghan village in which he mistakenly machine-gunned a small girl. His doctors call this fatal tragedy his “target trauma,” or the main traumatic event at the root of his disturbance, a horrifying experience that he must somehow come to grips with if he hopes to ever get well.
Since returning from deployment in 2008, Merryman, like a lot of people with PTSD, has often been in denial about his illness, refusing to go to hospitals in the throes of mental crises, some of them mortally dangerous. Many times, he ignored VA’s outreach, while his family’s desperate efforts at interventions came to naught. Other times, when he was willing to undergo treatment, he encountered bed shortages in VA medical centers or labyrinthine hospital-admissions procedures that left him and his relatives angry and exasperated.
“I’m just — I’m losing hope,” he said.
As he sat in the witness box in U.S. District Court in Maryland, he was stuck in a kind of limbo.
The criminal case could drag on for months. In the meantime, Merryman’s lawyers argue, their client urgently needs in-depth care for his PTSD. They say he should be housed in a psychiatric hospital while he awaits a trial. Chief Judge James K. Bredar agrees, but insists that the treatment take place in a locked ward, with Merryman under guard. The problem is, defense attorneys and prosecutors have yet to find a mental health facility that meets the court’s security requirements and also would accept Merryman as a patient. Even VA has declined to help, citing its rules against treating prisoners.
So Merryman, despite his fragile equilibrium and suicidal tendencies, remains behind bars without access to comprehensive therapy.
On the bench that morning, Bredar sounded incredulous. “I’m very frustrated by the fact that this is a mental illness and … there’s just this black hole,” he told the lawyers, none of whom could offer a viable solution.
Prosecutor Michael C. Hanlon said: “I imagined that there were hospitals where you could hold a person pending trial if they had a mental health issue, and it was like detention. ... You see this on television.” However, in the federal justice system, Hanlon said he was surprised to learn, “we simply do not have hospitals that hold people on a pretrial basis” who require intensive psychiatric care in a secure setting.
“It just blows my mind,” said Elizabeth “Liz” Oyer, then an attorney for Merryman.
Before moving him to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Chicago for a 45-day mental evaluation this spring, the U.S. Marshals Service held Merryman in the Prince George’s County, Md., jail. A psychiatrist who examined him for the defense said that late last year, Merryman had abruptly cut back on one of the many prescription drugs he used for his PTSD, a change that might have caused his short-lived psychosis. After his arrest, when he began taking the proper dosage again, his delusions went away, the psychiatrist reported.
But his debilitating stress disorder persists, as ever.
In a video interview from the jail, talking with a reporter about his service in Afghanistan and his years of emotional turmoil, Merryman is lucid, soft-spoken and at times ruefully self-deprecating.
“I started having thoughts of worthlessness,” he says, recalling the night in his cell when he coiled the bedsheet. “Like, now the VA won’t help me. I’m a burden on Liz. I’m a burden on my family. I’m a burden on everyone.”
He says with an empty shrug, “I just started thinking it would be better if I wasn’t around.”
‘Please allow me to be a soldier’
Born in 1984 in the croplands burg of Neodesha, Kan., about 130 miles south of Topeka, Merryman grew up shuttling between there and Nevada after his parents divorced when he was a toddler. His mother, a medical billing manager, moved to Las Vegas, while his father stayed in Neodesha, working as a rural-route mail carrier on the tall-grass prairie.
After earning a GED, Merryman went into the Army in 2005. His mother, Terry Bryant, remembers how excited he was, talking about the military as a career, as “the kind of structure he needed.” Because Merryman had passed two bad checks at a gas station the year before, when he was 19, he had to compose a statement for the Army requesting a misdemeanor waiver to enlist.
“I want to join the Army so I can have a good life and serve my country,” he wrote. “Please allow me to be a soldier.”
As a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, Spec. Merryman was in Afghanistan for 15 months, starting in January 2007. At a sprawling forward operating base called FOB Salerno, in the Afghan province of Khost, near Pakistan, his platoon was assigned to a detention facility, keeping watch on captured Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, some of whom were brought in by Green Berets from the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group.
The Special Forces soldiers often carried out “snatch-and-grab” missions, ranging deep into the countryside and returning to Salerno with high-value prisoners. Like other paratroopers at the detention site, Merryman says, he occasionally accompanied the Green Berets.
“They would need extra bodies sometimes,” he says. “They’d be in some village, and we’d stay with the vehicles and just be dismounted and give rear-guard for them.” According to his service record, he also volunteered for “numerous missions” in support of a tactical intelligence-gathering team, prowling the Afghan hills and valleys while “knowing full well the hazards.”
In recent interviews, retired Lt. Col. Kenneth Ratashak, who was second-in-command of Merryman’s battalion, was initially skeptical that soldiers posted to the detention facility “would be outside the wire running combat patrols,” given the time demands involved in overseeing detainees. But after he checked with one of Merryman’s former platoon leaders, Ratashak confirmed “that they did do this type of activity,” unbeknown to the battalion staff.
Merryman says one firefight, indelible in his mind since 2007, occurred in Khost’s Nadir Shah Kot district during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which fell mostly in September that year. By then, he and his first wife, whom he had married after basic training, were parents of a baby girl. Merryman had been granted leave from Afghanistan the previous March to witness the induced birth and had returned to Khost buoyed by thoughts of his infant daughter.
The skirmish in Nadir Shah Kot, the shouts and adrenaline and staccato din of automatic weapons, erupted at dusk, he says.
“We were taking casualties. ... I had a machine gun, and instead of just doing controlled bursts, I was — I had to cover my area, my sector of fire — and instead of sticking to my training and doing ‘PID,’ they call it — positive identification — I was just dumping rounds at that point.”
He says he was outside a Humvee with an M-249 light machine gun.
“Through the chaos of just spraying rounds, a family was trying to get out of the area where more and more fighters were coming in — where we were taking casualties from my sector of fire. And I started going ‘cyclic,’ they call it. That’s holding the trigger down to where the machine gun would fire all the rounds that you have. And I ended up hitting a little girl who was trying to cross the street. ... I mean, she just panicked with all the gunfire going on and just ran out.”
He says she was maybe 4 years old.
“I knew the little girl was dead. After the smoke and everything from the gun had cleared up, I knew. And it had to be me.”
Of the 46,000-plus Afghan civilians who lost their lives in two decades of war, about 12,000 were killed by U.S. and coalition forces, according to political scientist Neta C. Crawford, co-founder of the Costs of War Project, based at Brown University.
In the years after his deployment, Merryman would rarely talk about Afghanistan outside therapy — and even in counseling, he would usually keep the worst bottled up. His mental health records, compiled by his lawyers, date to 2008 and fill the better part of a file drawer. With Merryman’s permission, they gave copies to The Washington Post. There’s the voice of a father in those 2,000 pages, a father who can’t find absolution.
“I took someone’s daughter away from them,” he would say in tears. “I took away someone’s joy.”
‘Am I weak?’
In Neodesha (population 2,100), Jeanne Irvine, 84, a self-described Christian “prayer warrior,” remembers the only phone call she got from her grandson Scott while he was in Afghanistan.
“It seemed normal at first, checking on the family and so on,” but she soon realized he was upset. “All of a sudden he said, ‘Grandma, I don’t understand — will God ever forgive me for the things I’ve done over here?’ ”
She said of course God would, and she left it at that, sensing he wouldn’t tell her more.
Plagued by nightmares and suicidal urges, Merryman was hospitalized for acute psychiatric care in 2008 while he was home on leave after deployment, the records show. In 2009, he spent two weeks in an Army mental health ward and was found to be suffering from PTSD, a diagnosis reaffirmed by VA specialists numerous times since. Next came three surgeries for knee and back injuries from his years in the airborne. By the time he was honorably discharged in 2010 and returned to southeast Kansas as a disabled veteran, he and his first wife had two small daughters, but their marriage was ending.
“He was just withdrawn into himself,” Terry Bryant says of her son, who moved in with her. Bryant had left Las Vegas and settled on a small ranch near Independence, Kan., 15 miles from Neodesha. “And so hypervigilant!” She says he went around with his head on a swivel; he had a panic attack in a Walmart.
“If you would walk up behind Scott and he didn’t know you were there, he’d jump out of his skin,” Bryant, 61, says. “He’d stay in his room and not come out. He’d sleep during the day and be up all night.”
Experts in PTSD say people are affected differently by traumatic stress based on myriad personal factors, such as temperament, childhood experiences and genetics. While many soldiers endure appalling violence without losing their mental health, others aren’t so fortunate. For Merryman, the records show, post-deployment life has been marred by depression, guilt, outbursts of rage, “intrusive memories,” alcoholism, opioid abuse, failed relationships and gruesome attempts to escape his suffering. A VA psychologist once described him as sobbing in therapy, slumped in a chair, wondering aloud, “Am I weak?”
From Neodesha and Independence, where he lived alternately with family members, girlfriends and by himself, the nearest VA medical centers are two to three hours away by car, in Wichita and Topeka. Getting him to make the trips was never easy for his loved ones.
In June 2010, a month out of the Army, Merryman was arrested in Independence for tampering with an oxycodone prescription, upping it from 60 pills to 80. He would later say that he had been doctor-shopping at “random ERs,” feeding an addiction to painkillers stemming from his three surgeries. With the criminal case pending, he began meeting with a mental health practitioner at a rural VA clinic, while his mother begged him to get more-intensive treatment. When she tried driving her son to the VA hospital in Topeka, she says, he jumped out of her pickup truck at 40 mph, “tucking and rolling” like a paratrooper on the highway shoulder. Not until May 2011, after he was put on probation for the script forgery, did he finally go through opioid detox.
Which didn’t stop his whiskey drinking.
Bobby Dierks, the Montgomery County, Kan., sheriff at the time, remembers June 16, 2011, when Merryman, “heavily intoxicated,” was holed up alone in his mother’s ranch house, threatening to shoot himself. Dealing with a mentally unstable combat veteran who might have a gun, deputies cautiously surrounded the place. But the sheriff, an old friend of Merryman’s family, decided not to wait.
“I knew Scott wouldn’t hurt me,” Dierks says. He says he strode into the house through an unlocked doorway and found Merryman semiconscious in his bedroom, “bleeding out” from a slashed wrist.
The scene was painfully familiar in America: From 2001 to 2014, an average of 19 to 21 veterans per day died by suicide, according to a VA study. Among younger veterans — those of Merryman’s generation, in the post-9/11 era — the per capita suicide rate was nearly two times the rate for nonveterans.
After Merryman spent the night in a local hospital, Dierks quietly put him in jail for a week without charges to keep him safe, on suicide watch, until a bed became available in a VA psychiatric ward. “If I would have got caught doing that, I’d have been in big trouble,” the former sheriff recalls. But Merryman’s mother was all for it, and Merryman says now he was grateful.
“We all love Scott,” Dierks says. “He’s a good kid.”
From the county lockup, Merryman went to Topeka for six days of acute care, and a couple of months later, in September 2011, he entered the VA medical center in Leavenworth, Kan., for long-term treatment.
Weeks into his stay there, he was stalled in therapy.
“We are approaching his PTSD trauma without being able to talk about it for more than 5 minutes,” psychologist Brandy Ellis noted in a progress report. When she suggested that his anguish seemed associated with a child’s death, Merryman “put his head in his hands” and cried, then got up and paced outside her office. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he kept pleading. “I swear it was an accident.” He said that he felt “like a pressure cooker,” that his nightmares were getting more vivid. Eventually, Ellis recommended that he undergo an emotionally taxing form of PTSD treatment called “prolonged exposure.”
Starting in mid-autumn 2011, in nine weekly meetings with psychiatrist Paul Neal, Merryman closed his eyes and visualized the firefight in Nadir Shah Kot, narrating it aloud, over and over, in the present tense. Some days he curled on the floor in the fetal position during the hour-long sessions. And between meetings, lying in his Leavenworth dorm room at night, he listened to recordings of himself recounting the clamor, the gun smoke and the child falling in the dust. “This little girl was the same age as one of his girl’s now,” Neal wrote. “It is clear he feels a great deal of shame and remorse.”
When he was discharged from Leavenworth in early 2012, having confronted his “target trauma” and begun the long work of trying to put it behind him, “I had some kind of peace,” Merryman says. “ ‘Salvation’ is a good word.”
Back home, “he did great for a while,” his mother says. To her knowledge, Merryman hadn’t shared his worst Afghanistan memories with anyone in the family except his ex-wife. After Leavenworth, Bryant says, “Scott and I were upstairs sitting on his bed, and he just said, ‘I know you’ve been wanting to talk about this, and I want you to know what happened.’ He said: ‘I killed a little girl. ... It was an accident during combat.’ ” When he finished his story, Bryant recalls, they embraced, and she thanked him, assuring in a low voice: “Remember, Scott, no one thinks badly of you. You were in a war.”
After that, she says, “he never talked to me about it again.”
The Book of Revelation
On June 12 last year, Merryman tried to kill himself with an electric table saw. Alone and drunk on Irish whiskey (“I was a fifth of Jameson in,” he says), he set up the saw in his father’s living room and held his right forearm lengthwise against the whirring blade — until spurts of arterial bleeding shocked him halfway to his senses. Then he whipped off his belt and used it as a tourniquet.
“I was a fumbling mess,” he says. “I thought to call 911 with one hand as I’m holding the belt on my arm with my feet.”
Nearly a decade had passed since his Leavenworth treatment, and the optimism spawned by his hospitalization there was long gone. The care he got in Leavenworth in 2011 and 2012 was the most comprehensive he has ever received, but he failed to consistently take part in follow-up therapy. “I thought I was cured,” he laments. Losing touch with VA for weeks and months at a stretch, he relapsed into despair, self-isolation and binge drinking, which tended to spiral into calamitous meltdowns. Although he kicked opioids, he twice pleaded guilty to drunken driving after leaving Leavenworth. He also enrolled in online college courses and supplemented his disability income with home-remodeling jobs, yet these were only lulls in the storm.
As he lay covered in blood on his father’s floor a year ago, he thought about his children, he says. In the past, his two girls, plus two boys born more recently, had been the reason he didn’t end his life. The boys’ mothers are ex-girlfriends of Merryman’s; they grew tired of his volatile mood swings and split with him. While acquaintances say he and the women had epic arguments, he was never charged with domestic violence, according to a statewide criminal database. The only assaultive behavior on his rap sheet occurred in 2018, when he got in a drunken tussle with police officers outside Stoney’s Grub and Pub and later made “physical contact with a judge on duty,” which cost him an $824 fine.
That night last June, after doctors in Neodesha stanched his bleeding, he was airlifted 115 miles to Wichita for emergency surgery, and in July, he checked into the VA hospital in Kansas City, Mo., for substance-abuse treatment. When he came home, he looked better, his mother says. In August, he married a woman he’d met in Independence that summer, a Christian pastor and mother of four. The outdoor ceremony, in the shade of oaks and evergreens, was “beautiful,” Bryant recalls. “It was the happiest I’d seen Scott in a long, long time.”
Merryman’s wife, 44, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy, says she knew early in their relationship that he had extreme PTSD. For most of last fall, he seemed to be holding up pretty well — he helped organize two big cookouts for veterans and their families in Independence and rode in Neodesha’s Veterans Day parade, smiling and waving from a float. But on Dec. 2, with Merryman intoxicated and threatening to kill himself, his wife put him in her Jeep and set out for the Wichita VA medical center.
“I was going 45, 50 miles an hour,” she says, when Merryman, not for the first time in his life, opened a door of a moving vehicle. “He just jumped out,” she recalls, still astonished.
She got help that evening from two of her husband’s buddies. Merryman says the friends, both veterans, locked him in a livestock trailer for six hours until he woke up, hung over, and banged on the walls to be let out. The friends arranged for him to travel to a private addiction-rehab center in western Pennsylvania — and it was there, a week into his stay, that he began having “hyper-religious thoughts,” the records show.
After he walked away from the facility Dec. 13 and was found sitting on church steps in a nearby town, Merryman told his wife by phone that God had spoken to him in chapel, that the Almighty wanted him to abandon rehab and return to Kansas on foot. She persuaded him to take a plane instead. Back in Neodesha, he visited Jeanne Irvine. “He said, ‘Grandma, I’d like to have Bible study with you,’ ” which she considered a blessing at first. In her living room, they turned to the Scriptures. “And then he went off on a tangent,” Irvine says.
In the Book of Revelation, which Merryman fixated on, it’s said that before the world’s fiery demise, God will choose two witnesses, or prophets, to go about the Earth for 1,260 days, heralding Armageddon and the second coming of Christ.
“He asked me, ‘Grandma, do you think it’s possible I’m one of the two witnesses?’ And I said, ‘No, Scott, I don’t believe that.’ I said, ‘Things are bad now — but not as bad as they’re going to get in the end times.’ ” The more they met for Bible study, though, the more he “truly believed” that Judgment Day was at hand, Irvine says.
“And he believed he’d been called to be one of the prophets.”
‘Lop the head off the serpent’
The road trip that landed Merryman in a Baltimore courtroom began Tuesday, Jan. 25, at the Little Bear gas station in Neodesha. Jay McGeary, a freight hauler who lives in town, was leaving for D.C. that morning in his Dodge pickup, pulling a trailer load of steel to a construction site near the White House. His pal Merryman asked if he could ride along. McGeary, glad to have company, said sure, and they agreed to meet at the Little Bear.
“I wished I hadn’t,” McGeary, 47, says now.
On Facebook, Merryman announced, “I’m going on a God led journey to our nations capital,” and urged, “Watch my strategic moves for the coming days,” which worried his family. When Bryant called her son on Tuesday, he and McGeary had been traveling for hours.
“He was rambling about his mission,” she says. “He told me, ‘I’m going to visit Joe Biden,’ ” and hung up.
After Merryman’s wife texted him, urging him to come home, he phoned the Independence police and reported that she was “stalking” him. This led to a flurry of calls among his wife, his mother and a police sergeant, in which the sergeant learned that a mentally ill veteran, a self-proclaimed prophet of the apocalypse, was headed to Washington to see the president. The sergeant alerted the Secret Service.
In the driver’s seat, listening to Merryman, McGeary says, “I let it go in one ear and out the other.” That first day, he kept teasing his friend: “Hey, Scott, you just going to knock on the White House door and ask if Joe’s here?” But the next day, as they were approaching Maryland, the joking abruptly ceased. A Secret Service agent had been trying to contact Merryman, who wasn’t answering his phone. So the agent called McGeary, which “scared the s--- out of me,” he says. Soon, Merryman was on the phone with the agent, ranting about a “serpent,” while McGeary thought, “They’re going to throw me in prison.”
The Secret Service said in a court affidavit: “Merryman stated that he had been told by God to travel to Washington, DC, to ‘lop the head off the serpent in the heart of the nation.’ Merryman denied that the serpent was the President.” By this point, McGeary had had enough. “Look, I love Scott to death,” he says — but when they reached Hagerstown, Md., 80 miles northwest of Washington, he pulled into an Exxon station and left Merryman there, then notified the Secret Service.
On Wednesday night, when two agents located Merryman in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Hagerstown, he reiterated that he was on his way to decapitate a serpent “but denied the comment was a threat towards the President,” the affidavit says. Apparently none of his ramblings thus far had amounted to a federal offense. After the agents searched his backpack — finding three .45-caliber bullets in a pistol magazine, but no weapon — they let him go. It wasn’t long, however, before Merryman allegedly crossed the line into making illegal threats.
He got a room at the Sleep Inn & Suites near the Cracker Barrel and allegedly posted lurid screeds on Facebook, warning: “I believe Joe Biden is the AntiChrist now and he will suffer a fatal head wound. I’ll deal that blow in Christ’s name. ... And I’m going to do it with bullets and no gun.”
The next morning, Jan. 27, he made similar threats on Facebook and by phone with a White House call-taker and a Secret Service agent, the affidavit says. Then he began loudly “bothering other guests” in the motel lobby, according to a police report. State troopers arrived, a struggle ensued and Merryman ended up in the local jail, charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The Secret Service took custody of him the following Monday.
“Scary, scary, scary” is how Bryant recalls those days and nights when she feared her son would commit suicide-by-cop.
Their last texts before his arrest:
What to do now with a broken war veteran?
“I wasn’t thinking right,” Merryman told defense psychiatrist Ronald J. Koshes in March, after he had been in jail for weeks. Referring to the delusions, he said, “I didn’t come out of it until I restarted my meds.”
Late last year, Merryman had sharply reduced his dosage of Cymbalta, an antidepressant, which could have caused his psychotic break, Koshes reported. Medications aside, experts also have noted a heightened risk for temporary psychosis, including delusions, in people with severe PTSD symptoms.
Koshes, a former chief of inpatient psychiatry at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said that Merryman is no longer psychotic or a danger to the public — that he “shows significant insight with regard to his actions” in January and “a desire to move past this terrible episode.” But his crippling PTSD remains, Koshes wrote, and given his “history of very significant suicidal ideation and attempts,” he needs “a high level" of treatment. “It is my opinion that this cannot be done on a mental health unit in a jail,” where resources are typically scarce, Koshes said. Echoing defense lawyers, he said Merryman should be getting comprehensive care in a psychiatric ward while he awaits his trial.
On the witness stand in Baltimore, four days after he tried to hang himself, Merryman described the care he had been receiving in the Prince George’s County jail. Mental health staffers delivered his meds to his cell, where he was on lockdown, he testified. “They said: ‘How are you feeling today? Are you homicidal? Suicidal?’ Check, check — and bye.”
Even though Merryman isn’t delusional anymore, Judge Bredar has insisted on tight pretrial security for a man accused of threatening to kill Biden. At the same time, the judge acknowledged Merryman’s urgent need for PTSD treatment and implored VA officials “to take the defendant into their care” under strict detention rules set by the court.
But VA said no.
To protect itself from the “untenable situations” of veterans being “transported to VA ... from jails and prisons,” the agency said, it long ago enacted regulations barring VA hospitals from treating veterans who are in the custody of the justice system. In the past, the “referral of prisoners to VA ... presented potential danger to other patients and VA staff or disrupted operations because of the presence of armed law enforcement personnel,” the agency’s general counsel, Richard Sauber, told Bredar in a letter.
“The VA very much wants to do whatever it can to help Mr. Merryman,” Sauber wrote. “We do, however, have certain legal and practical limitations.”
In searching for other options, the lawyers have come up empty.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, with limited space in its medical centers, said its “primary mission” is to treat inmates who have been convicted and sentenced. The bureau said it has no room for pretrial prisoners who require long-term therapy — except for defendants deemed mentally incompetent to participate in legal proceedings, and Merryman isn’t one of those. As for state-run forensic psychiatric hospitals, and the D.C. government’s St. Elizabeths Hospital, they have no contractual agreements with federal authorities to assist detainees in Merryman’s predicament, defense attorneys say.
And private hospitals aren’t secure enough to satisfy the Marshals Service.
“I’m really almost without words,” Bredar declared from the bench, wondering in an irked tone, “How is it that we have somebody who’s so clearly ill and we’re just not in the position to house him in an appropriate treatment center?”
“Your honor, I share your frustration,” said Hanlon, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, whose office declined to comment on the case.
That night when he fashioned a noose from his bedsheet, Merryman recalls, he saw no meaningful future for himself. “I was alone,” lying on the bunk, “and I guess I was just thinking about things too much.”
In a cinder-block room at the jail, staring into his lap, he says quietly, “You know, my brain, the way it works, sometimes I’m my own worst enemy.”
Photo editing by Mark Miller. Design by Alexis Arnold. Copy editing by Martha Murdock. Editing by Lynh Bui. Fredrick Kunkle and Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org. You can also text a crisis counselor by messaging Crisis Text Line at 741741. | 2022-07-01T10:04:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scott Merryman threatened to kill Joe Biden. His family blames his PTSD. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/veteran-threatens-biden-ptsd/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/veteran-threatens-biden-ptsd/ |
Trump’s demands to lead a march to Capitol Hill sheds new light on his mindset as the siege began.
Trump supporters make their way up Constitution Avenue toward the Capitol after President Donald Trump gave a speech at the Ellipse and encouraged them to go on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Toward the end of 2020, then-President Donald Trump began raising a new idea with aides: that he would personally lead a march to the Capitol on the following Jan. 6.
Trump brought it up repeatedly with key advisers in the Oval Office, according to a person who talked with him about it. The president told others he wanted a dramatic, made-for-TV moment that could pressure Republican lawmakers to support his demand to throw out the electoral college results showing that Joe Biden had defeated him, the person said.
The excursion that almost happened came into clearer focus this week, as the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 presented explosive testimony and records detailing Trump’s fervent demands to lead his supporters mobbing the seat of government. Though Trump’s trip was ultimately thwarted by his own security officers, the new evidence cuts closer to the critical question of what he knew about the violence in store for that day.
Trump has acknowledged his foiled effort to reach the Capitol. “Secret Service wouldn’t let me,” he told The Washington Post in April. “I wanted to go. I wanted to go so badly. Secret Service says you can’t go. I would have gone there in a minute.”
But as Trump repeatedly floated the idea in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, several of his advisers doubted he meant it or didn’t take the suggestion seriously. One senior administration official said Trump raised the prospect repeatedly but in a “joking manner.”
As a result, the White House staff never turned Trump’s stated desires into concrete plans. Press officers made no preparations for a detour to the Capitol, such as scheduling an additional stop for the motorcade and the pool of reporters who follow the president’s movements. There was no operational advance plan drafted for the visit. No speech was written for him to deliver on the Hill, and it wasn’t clear exactly what Trump would do when he got there, said the person who talked with Trump about the idea.
This account of Trump’s ceaseless plotting to join the mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is based on committee testimony and evidence as well as 15 former officials, aides, law enforcement officials and others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details.
Aides did not know where Trump got the idea, this person said, but it wasn’t from inside the White House. The chief of staff, Mark Meadows, discussed plans to bring Trump to the Capitol with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was leading the campaign’s efforts to overturn the election results, according to testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a close aide to Meadows.
Trump call on Jan. 6 to 'walk down to the Capitol' prompted Secret Service scramble
Meadows declined to comment through his attorney. Giuliani and a spokeswoman for Perry did not respond to requests for comment.
Hutchinson’s attorneys said Wednesday that she “stands by all of the testimony she provided yesterday, under oath.”
Hutchinson’s account was supported by other testimony played at the hearing. “He brought it up, he said, ‘I want to go down to the Capitol,” Max Miller, a White House aide now running for Congress in Ohio, said in taped testimony. But Miller’s entire testimony wasn’t played, where he suggested it was a short-lived idea, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some White House officials were out of the loop. Ordinarily, the White House’s legislative affairs staffers would be involved in a visit to Capitol Hill, but they were not briefed on any plans for him to go on Jan. 6, according to two senior administration officials. Aides to Vice President Mike Pence heard secondhand from other White House advisers that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol, but they were never given a formal plan and did not expect him to follow through, according to a Pence adviser with direct knowledge of their plans.
“There was no plan for what to do if Trump showed up,” the Pence adviser said. “Frankly, we didn’t think it was going to happen.”
Some of his allies said Trump never brought up the idea of going to the Capitol with them, even as he bandied it about internally with his aides and Secret Service team. “Not to my knowledge was he ever coming up here,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who regularly talked with Trump in the days leading up to Jan. 6. “To me, I don’t see him going to a riot.”
On Jan. 4, Trump raised the issue with several White House aides again, but Secret Service and senior staff warned him it would be logistically impossible and dangerous, a person familiar with the discussion said. Another adviser said the Secret Service was particularly skittish about a trip to the Capitol because a trip in November — when Trump went into a crowd of election fraud protesters in Washington — was viewed as nightmarish and difficult to manage.
Before, During and After: The Attack on the U.S. Capitol
The next day, on the eve of the rally, Tony Ornato, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, told a senior staffer there was no possibility they were going to the Capitol, saying, “That is not part of the plan,” the staffer recalled.
Trump, though, seemed to have other ideas. Just before he addressed the rally on the Ellipse, Trump gathered with family members and close aides in a tent backstage. As Trump looked at monitors showing a video feed of the crowd, Hutchinson testified that she overheard him complaining about unoccupied space in the shot and wanting more people to enter. According to her testimony, Ornato explained to Trump that some people in the crowd couldn’t go through the security screening because they had weapons.
“I overheard the president say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t care that they have weapons, they’re not here to hurt me,'” Hutchinson testified. She also recalled hearing Trump say, “Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol after the rally’s over.”
The moment was captured in photographs that the committee obtained from the National Archives and displayed during the hearing. The scene in the tent also appeared in a video recorded by Donald Trump Jr., showing the president looking at the screens and talking to Meadows and his daughter Ivanka while Kimberly Guilfoyle danced to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria.”
Other people in the tent at the time did not respond to requests for comment or declined to corroborate or dispute Hutchinson’s account on the record. Some Secret Service officials told the committee they did not recall Trump saying he wanted to admit more people despite being warned of weapons in the crowd, according to a person briefed on their testimony.
Trump denied wanting to let in people with guns. “Who would ever want that? Not me!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.
When Trump took the stage, he told the rally, “We’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you.” The remark stunned staffers who didn’t understand that to be the plan.
“I told people we were not really going to the Capitol,” recalled the senior staffer who has spoken with Ornato. “It never crossed my mind that was legitimate.”
But as Trump left the stage, he made clear he was serious. That’s when his personal assistant, Nick Luna, first became aware of Trump’s desire to go to the Capitol, according to his taped testimony played at Tuesday’s hearing.
Hutchinson testified that she overheard Meadows tell the president he was still working on arranging the trip up Capitol Hill. According to Hutchinson, she told Meadows that Ornato said the movement wasn’t possible, and Meadows responded, “Okay,” before getting into the motorcade.
Echoes of Watergate: Trump's appointees reveal his push to topple the Justice Dept.
“MOGUL’s going to the Capital [sic] … they are clearing a route now,” a National Security Council staffer posted to an internal chat obtained by the committee, using Trump’s Secret Service code name.
“They are begging him to reconsider,” another message said. When a planned route was posted to the chat, the log shows a staffer responding, “So this is happening.”
Inside the presidential SUV, Trump’s demands to go to the Capitol culminated in a dramatic showdown, according to Hutchinson, who said Ornato described the incident to her shortly afterward. By her account, Trump was under the impression from Meadows that his surprise trip to the Capitol was about to happen. In the car, Secret Service agent Bobby Engel told Trump the route to the Capitol could not be secured and they would return to the West Wing, Hutchinson said.
“The president had a very strong, very angry response to that,” she testified. “Tony described him as being irate. The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f-ing president. Take me up to the Capitol now.’”
When Engel insisted that the car was instead bound for the White House, Hutchinson said Trump reached toward the steering wheel. Engel grabbed his arm, Hutchinson testified, and said, “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.”
According to Hutchinson’s testimony about Ornato’s account to her, Trump used his other hand to lunge toward Engel. When Ornato told this story to Hutchinson, with Engel in the room, she said, he gestured toward his collarbones. When Hutchinson recounted this at the hearing, she placed a hand at the base of her neck.
Trump denied trying to grab the steering wheel, calling Hutchinson’s testimony “'sick' and fraudulent.” Ornato and Engel were not asked about the incident when they testified to the committee, the person briefed on the Secret Service testimony said.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich dismissed Hutchinson’s testimony in a statement Thursday: “The fact that The Washington Post is still trying to peddle testimony from a witness who has been widely discredited, and who many believe perjured herself — which is a felony — is an absolute embarrassment.”
Three agents who accompanied Trump on Jan. 6 are disputing that Trump assaulted or grabbed at Engel and/or the steering wheel, according to one current and one former law enforcement official familiar with their accounts. The three agents, Engle and Ornato are also willing to testify under oath to the committee about their recollection of events on Jan. 6 in the Secret Service vehicle, the two people said. The three agents do not dispute that Trump was furious that the agents would not take him to the Capitol.
Even after the car returned Trump to the West Wing, he still wouldn’t let go of wanting to reach the Capitol.
“When we got back to the White House, he said he wanted to physically walk with the marchers, and according to my notes, he then said he’d be fine with just riding the Beast,” former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in videotaped testimony to the committee, referring to the nickname for the fortified presidential limo. “He wanted to be a part of the march in some fashion.”
Trump was furious with Meadows for failing to make the trip happen, Hutchinson testified that Meadows told her. By the time they were back in the West Wing, the televisions were showing live coverage of the rioters overpowering police and getting closer to the Capitol’s doors and windows. Hutchinson testified that she entered Meadows’s office and asked him if he was watching.
“The rioters are getting really close,” she recalled asking the chief of staff. “Have you talked to the president?”
“No,” Meadows answered, while scrolling and texting on his phone, according to Hutchinson’s testimony, “he wants to be alone right now.” | 2022-07-01T10:04:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How close Trump came to joining Capitol rioters on Jan. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/trump-capitol-riot-march/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/trump-capitol-riot-march/ |
Isla McNabb became one of the youngest Mensa members after scoring in the 99th percentile on an IQ test
Isla McNabb of Crestwood, Ky., holds her Mensa membership card. (Courtesy of Amanda McNabb)
The culprit: their toddler. Isla’s colorful subtitles led her parents to have her IQ tested in May when she was approaching 2½, the McNabbs told The Washington Post. By the end of the month, they got the results: Isla had scored in the top 1 percent of the population. Her performance qualified her for membership in Mensa, an organization of people who score in the top 2 percent on IQ tests.
“That's out of 50,000 members,” Brown told WFAA.
Isla McNabb, a 2-year-old Mensa member, sounded out words such as “excited" and “rainbow” from flashcards on June 30. (Video: Amanda McNabb)
Isla McNabb, a two-year-old from Crestwood, Ky., read aloud “Pete the Cat” to her parents on June 30. (Video: Amanda McNabb)
Amanda said she’s sure of one thing. While she was eager to get her daughter tested and excited about the results, she will not be following suit. “I tell people that I'm not going to get tested,” she said. | 2022-07-01T10:13:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kentucky 2-year-old Isla McNabb becomes one of Mensa's youngest members - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/kentucky-toddler-mensa-iq/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/kentucky-toddler-mensa-iq/ |
Groups like the American Medical Association have been calling gun violence a public-health crisis for years and said the recent effort by Congress doesn’t go far enough.
By Caroline Anders
Police block off the road leading to the scene of a school shooting at Robb Elementary on May 24 in Uvalde, Tex. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post)
Christopher Colwell still can’t shake what he saw in the library of Columbine High School on April 20, 1999: the lifeless bodies of students who were left without time to defend themselves, crumpled under the desks they hoped would protect them.
“The victims’ faces — the ones that were recognizable — that still comes up almost as if it weren’t 23 years ago,” he said.
For many medical providers, the shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., which killed 19 children and two teachers, was the latest reminder of how depressingly skilled they have become since Columbine at responding to mass casualty events like school shootings.
“These tragic events have taught us a lot about preparations for mass shootings, how to focus on the greatest good for the greatest number in a better way than we knew back in 1999,” Collwell said. “I guess that’s a positive, but it’s also kind of bleak.”
“As we have said repeatedly since declaring gun violence a public health crisis in 2016, gun violence is out of control in the United States, and, without real-world, common-sense federal actions, it will not abate,” AMA President Gerald E. Harmon said in a recent statement alongside the group’s latest letter to members of Congress.
The group praised Congress for passing the recent gun violence bill that President Biden signed into law last week, but said more can be done. For now, the focus remains on training and preparing for the next slaughter.
‘Clinging for life and finding none’
After the Robb Elementary shooting, pediatrician Roy Guerrero gave the public a glimpse into what it’s like to treat kids in a nation where more than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine.
Guerrero, who attended Robb Elementary himself as a child, testified earlier this month at a congressional hearing on gun violence. He laid out what he saw that day in stark terms: the blood-spattered cartoon clothes, the children who were pulverized by bullets, “clinging for life and finding none.”
“I chose to be a pediatrician. I chose to take care of children,” he said. “Keeping them safe from preventable diseases I can do. Keeping them safe from bacteria and brittle bones I can do. But making sure our children are safe from guns, that’s the job of our politicians and leaders.”
Guerrero is far from alone. He’s now part of the ever-growing community of doctors who have had to see what an assault weapon can do to a child’s body.
School shootings in America didn’t start with Columbine. But that day, when two gunmen killed 13 people at a high school in Colorado and then themselves, was the first major school massacre in the nation and became a nightmarish blueprint for future shooters. At the time, it was the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
In the decades since, school shootings — not to mention mass shootings in general — have been on the rise. According to a Washington Post analysis, there were 41 in 2021, more than in any year since at least 1999. There have been at least 24 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during the school day so far this year.
More than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine
That’s aside from the everyday kind of gun violence that rarely makes the news but always makes it into trauma centers, which is also on the rise. Halfway through this year, more than 20,000 people have died because of gun violence in America. The firearm homicide rate in 2020 was the highest recorded in more than 25 years, and it’s expected to be even higher for 2021 and 2022.
But instead of seeing all of this and passing common-sense gun control legislation, Colwell said, the nation’s handle on guns has “regressed fairly remarkably” over the past two decades. Since Columbine, he’s treated victims of two additional mass shootings in two different cities.
He’s watched the emergence of an informal brotherhood of physicians who have seen this kind of devastation unfold over and over again. They stay in touch after discovering their shared experience at talks or conferences about trauma, or veterans reach out to newcomers after the latest tragedy.
They try to take care of each other, texting to check in after high-profile events or on difficult anniversaries. They’re saddened that there are so many of them, but they’re grateful to have people who understand what they’ve seen.
Walking onto the scene at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Richard Kamin didn’t realize just how much he was going to need that support. He considered himself a well-trained emergency physician. He’d worked with the Connecticut State Police, SWAT teams, and the FBI. But he’d never seen so many injured people, especially not children. And their wounds were catastrophic.
“Quite frankly, I’m not really sure how well you can prepare somebody for something like that,” he said. “Because people frequently say to me, ‘I can’t imagine.’ And I say, ‘Good. That’s good.’ ”
The Sandy Hook gunman shot and killed 20 children 6 or 7 years old and six adult staff members. Kamin knew what to do at the scene, but he wasn’t ready for what would come after. The intrusive thoughts about his small children, the images of death replayed in his mind, the boundless worry that he was broken, the sleepless nights.
After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet
That was the first time someone talked to Kamin about this kind of tragedy and acute stress, but he’d go on to have countless conversations on the subject and commit himself to making sure other emergency-responders were prepared for what they could see in the line of duty.
“We have to be transparent about what happens to people in the wake of these events, so that they can prepare themselves, become more resilient, understand better, have resources in place,” he said. “And it’s not just active shooters in schools, it’s sometimes, unfortunately, day-to-day work.”
"We owe it to the communities we serve to be prepared,” she said.
David Stoeckle was practicing trauma surgery at Woods’s hospital at the time. In his 44-year-long career, he said he would never again see the kind of solidarity he saw that day.
“It was just an awful experience, but I can tell you that I’ve never seen the hospital staff get together so quickly,” he said.
Ten years after the Virginia Tech shooting, objects of grief
And the hospital learned a lot from that tragedy, Stoeckle and Woods said. The main adjustments were organizational, Woods said, making it easier to track patients, organize visitors and media and set up a command center. The hospital rooms weren’t labeled clearly enough to be useful to providers and pastors and families looking for loved ones, so that was the first thing to change. They then shared what they learned from the Virginia Tech massacre with other hospitals and communities, giving talks across the country.
“It just immediately comes back to you,” Woods said. “You absolutely know and can connect with that community because you know what they're going through. You know what the days ahead look like. You know how difficult it's going to be to move on for those families. But you also know it'll strengthen that community like nothing ever before.”
For Lillian Liao, the director of pediatric trauma at University Hospital in San Antonio, the recent mass shooting at Robb Elementary wasn’t a first. Her hospital treated victims of the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, where 26 people were killed at a small Baptist church.
South Texas’s medical community learned a lot from the Sutherland Springs shooting, Liao said. They looked into cases where victims didn’t survive, and realized more blood needed to be available at smaller hospitals to keep patients stable. When the Robb Elementary shooting happened, the San Antonio hospital airlifted blood to Uvalde to make sure there would be enough.
“We know that the things that we implemented from Sutherland Springs did help save lives,” Liao said. “Not enough, but it did help.”
When her team was notifying the operating room of the Uvalde shooting, making sure beds were open and getting in contact with the blood bank as they waited to see how many children would arrive, the list of what needed to get done seemed much clearer than it had during the Sutherland Springs response. Her hospital hadn’t just trained for this, they had already been through it. By the time any patients arrived, they had around 100 physicians lined up, at the ready and snaking through the hospital’s hallways, Liao said.
She said the hardest thing she had to do the day of the Uvalde shooting was call off the mass casualty response, telling the rest of the hospital that they weren’t going to get as many patients as they expected. After all of that preparation, there just weren’t any more survivors to treat. | 2022-07-01T10:13:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Doctors react to school shootings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/school-shootings-doctors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/school-shootings-doctors/ |
Cain Velasquez is accused of chasing at high speed and shooting into a car containing the accused molester. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The family of former UFC champion Cain Velasquez is suing the man they say molested his 4-year-old son.
In a filing made with the California Superior Court in Santa Clara County, where the alleged abuse took place, Velasquez’s son and a legal guardian are presented as the plaintiffs. Velasquez, 39, is in county jail and facing charges including attempted murder after he allegedly chased at high speed and shot into a car containing Harry Goularte in February. Goularte’s stepfather, Paul Bender, was struck by gunfire and suffered nonfatal injuries.
Goularte, who is out on bail, pleaded not guilty earlier this month to a felony charge of a lewd or lascivious act upon a minor.
The Velasquez family’s lawsuit accuses Goularte of exposing himself to, disrobing and touching the genitals of the 4-year-old boy. Such episodes occurred frequently, the lawsuit claims, from last year until February.
Goularte’s mother, Patricia Goularte, ran a day-care center attended five days a week by Velasquez’s son. The day care operation was run out of a house in which Goularte, his mother and stepfather are said to have lived. The latter two are also named in the suit, as are the day care business, 25 of its employees and a concrete business owned by Goularte.
All of them were accused in the lawsuit of having “fostered, maintained, and allowed an environment for its attendees to fall victim to sexual abuse at the hands of [Goularte].” He didn’t work at the facility, but as a resident of the house he had “daily access to the attendees/children,” the court filing stated.
A spokesperson for the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office said last month that investigators were interviewing other attendees of the day care, in case any of them were “potential victims” of the 43-year-old Goularte. Per reports, he has a preliminary trial hearing set for September.
An attorney for Goularte did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Velasquez has twice had requests for bail denied, most recently in May, by a Santa Clara County judge who pointed to what she described as his “reckless disregard for human life” during the 11-mile chase. Prosecutors accused Velasquez, who held the UFC heavyweight belt from 2010 to 2011 and again from 2012 to 2015, of firing a 40-caliber semiautomatic handgun from his vehicle into the one transporting Goularte, his mother and his stepfather.
Velasquez is due back in court in August. If he is convicted of attempted murder, he could be sentenced to a term of 20 years to life.
“This case is a terrible tragedy with gut-wrenching irony,” Warren Paboojian, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, said in a written statement. “Harry Goularte, who allegedly molested my 4-year-old client, is out on bail. However, my client’s father, Cain Velasquez, who allegedly tried to shoot Mr. Goularte is still in jail without the benefit of bail. Mr. Velasquez cannot be with his son during this terrible time.”
“The day care facility should never be able to operate again,” added Paboojian, “and the owner should be held accountable both civilly and criminally for their neglect.” | 2022-07-01T10:13:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cain Velasquez’s family sues man who allegedly molested jailed UFC star’s son - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/cain-velasquez-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/cain-velasquez-lawsuit/ |
The potential party nominees disagree on a state plan to reduce traffic congestion by expanding the highways
The American Legion Bridge, seen here last summer, would be rebuilt and widened as part of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's plan to add toll lanes to part of the Beltway and I-270. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The results of Maryland’s July 19 primary elections could decide the fate of a state plan to widen part of the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270 with express toll lanes as Gov. Larry Hogan (R) faces possible delays in securing a key contract before leaving office.
Hogan’s administration has said it plans to seek approval from the state’s Board of Public Works this fall for a public-private partnership worth billions of dollars to finance, build and operate the lanes — one of the state’s largest infrastructure proposals. That would lock Maryland into a 50-year contract with a private concessionaire before Hogan, who is term-limited, leaves in January. It also would clinch Hogan’s signature traffic relief initiative while he still has a second vote of support on the three-member board from Comptroller Peter Franchot, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.
But that timing has become more precarious amid a bid protest that has lingered in court, expectations of an environmental lawsuit from opponents and a private concessionaire that has yet to hire a lead construction contractor. The uncertainty has increased the chances the toll lanes proposal could end up in the hands of a new governor, who could move it forward, scale it back or cancel it altogether.
Maryland board approves final rates for planned toll lanes on I-270, Beltway
Del. Marc A. Korman (D-Montgomery), a legislative leader on transportation issues and a toll lanes critic, said Hogan’s successor could alter his plan, as Hogan did when he approved a scaled-back light-rail Purple Line project while canceling a long-planned Red Line rail project in Baltimore.
“He should not be surprised if the next governor wants to put their fingerprints on a transportation project that he thinks is lined up and ready to go, which is exactly what he did,” Korman said.
The results of the primary elections will determine if the toll lanes proposal is even an issue in the November general election.
Both leading Republican candidates for governor say they support expanding the highways, although one said he would not pursue toll lanes. The differences are wider in the Democratic primary, where three of the five candidates leading in a recent Goucher College poll said they would either scrap the plan in favor of expanding mass transit or change it significantly. Their changes would include reducing the amount of highway widening, adding more transit or pursuing federal funding rather than profit-seeking private investors.
“The next governor will have an awful lot of work and an awful lot of evidence suggesting we have to address the congestion on these roads,” said David Winstead, a toll lanes supporter and former state transportation secretary under then-Maryland governor Parris N. Glendening (D).
More workers are returning to the office, but the commute might be changed forever
The Maryland Department of Transportation declined to answer questions about when it would seek approval of a long-term toll lanes contract. In an email, the agency said the timing would depend on the federal government’s approval of the project’s environmental impact analysis and the private concessionaire hiring a construction contractor.
A spokeswoman for the private consortium, led by Australian toll road operator Transurban, also declined to discuss the timing, saying the team was continuing its design and engineering work, and “concluding an active procurement” for a construction partner.
Supporters of the project say Hogan, who has weighed a presidential run and touts his own efforts to fix the nation’s infrastructure, still has time to get a toll lanes contract through the board before his term ends. However, they concede it would be tight and probably require taking the financial risk of signing a contract amid pending litigation — either the bid protest, an environmental lawsuit, or both.
Canceling the project also could require the state to reimburse the Transurban team up to $50 million of its predevelopment costs, according to an agreement signed last year.
Maryland could face millions in cost risks if toll lanes project stalls
The proposal evokes the age-old political debate about whether the Washington region’s crippling traffic congestion is best relieved by expanding roads or mass transit — or some combination of both.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly M. Schulz, Hogan’s former commerce secretary, said she’s “extremely supportive” of the toll lanes plan, saying other candidates had “silly ideas” that traffic congestion could be reduced by expanding mass transit.
“The majority of people commuting in the D.C. region are via the roads,” Schulz said. “ … We want to be able to make sure we keep those roads as operable and as efficient for the end user as we possibly can.”
Toll lane opponents say the election of a project critic would buy time to explore more cost-effective and environmentally friendly ways to reduce driving, curb auto-dependent sprawl and combat climate change.
Democratic candidate John B. King Jr., a former U.S. education secretary, said voters want frequent and reliable mass transit options, particularly in Baltimore. He and every other leading Democratic candidate said they would revive the city’s light-rail Red Line project that Hogan canceled after calling it a “wasteful boondoggle.”
“In general,” King said, “highway widening is bad for the climate and ultimately bad for traffic by inducing demand.”
Some Democratic candidates also said the state shouldn’t risk committing to a 50-year toll lanes contract amid potentially lengthy court battles that could result in design changes or construction delays.
Maryland pays $250 million legal settlement to salvage Purple Line's public-private partnership
The losing bidder on the toll lanes’ predevelopment agreement, a team led by Spanish firm Cintra, has alleged that Transurban’s winning bid “gamed” the selection process by assuming unrealistically low construction costs. Different aspects of the case are being considered in Montgomery County Circuit Court and the state’s Court of Special Appeals.
Anti-toll lanes activists would have five months after the project receives federal environmental approval to challenge it in court. The Maryland Sierra Club has said it’s considering a lawsuit. State officials have said they expect federal approval later this summer.
A judge’s surprise ruling in an environmental lawsuit against the Purple Line project after that 36-year contract had been signed stalled the light-rail construction for almost a year, the start of extended delays. The project is more than four years behind schedule and $1.46 billion, or nearly 75 percent, over budget.
Purple Line project delays, cost overruns reveal long-brewing problems
“I really think it’s important when you’re talking about potential 50-year obligations to make sure we’re asking all the right questions,” said Tom Perez, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former U.S. labor secretary who opposes Hogan’s toll lanes plan. “I think rushing something because a governor’s term ends in January is a recipe for potential disaster that obligates us for decades to come.”
The leading candidates for governor in both parties agree on some transportation issues. They generally support the state continuing to study how to reduce backups at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge with an additional crossing, although some Democrats said they also would analyze more transit options, such as adding bus or ferry service to the Eastern Shore. Many also agree the state needs to replace the 60-year-old American Legion Bridge, a chronic Beltway choke point.
Views on the toll lanes proposal diverge among candidates in the crowded race for the Democratic nomination.
High stakes, low attention: Dynamic Democratic field vies for Maryland governor
Under Hogan’s plan, four high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes — two in each direction — would run on the Beltway between the Virginia side of the American Legion Bridge and the I-270 spur, then up I-270 to Frederick, starting with the section south of Interstate 370. I-270′s carpool lanes would be converted to HOT lanes.
The American Legion Bridge would be replaced and widened, and the regular lanes would remain free. The HOT lanes would be free for buses and vehicles with three or more people.
Hogan has said the lanes would come at “no net cost” to taxpayers — the only way he said the state could afford to expand the highways — because the private consortium would finance, build and operate them in exchange for keeping most of the toll revenue.
Of the leading Democratic candidates, only Franchot said he would support the project in its current form. Another, former Maryland attorney general Doug Gansler, said he supports the idea but only if the state resolves what he called the “flawed” selection of the Transurban team. Gansler, a lawyer, represents the Cintra team in its bid protest. He said he also supports building light-rail between the Shady Grove Metro station and Frederick.
Judge allows most of bid protest on Maryland toll lanes project to proceed
Franchot said he doesn’t expect the board to consider a 50-year contract “until the very end of this year, if even that.” He said he successfully advocated to scale back the Hogan plan to avoid widening the Beltway east of I-270, where more homes and parkland would be affected, and for some toll revenue to be allocated more quickly to local transit projects.
“I can pretty much guarantee that people want us to make progress on both of these issues — mass transit and highways,” Franchot said. “ … This is important to the economy of the state.”
Virginia explores extending Beltway express toll lanes another 11 miles to Wilson Bridge
Democrat Wes Moore, an author and former nonprofit executive, said the tolls would be too expensive for most motorists and criticized the Hogan administration’s approach for “very minimal public oversight and transparency.” He said he would “make sure all ideas and concepts are heard” about other ways to free up the Beltway and I-270, such as by adding fewer reversible lanes, using the shoulders and increasing MARC commuter rail service.
Support for expanding highways is more solid among the leading Republican candidates, who say more mass transit wouldn’t provide enough help to the vast majority of commuters and travelers who get around by car.
Schulz’s opponent, Del. Daniel L. Cox (Frederick), said he would prioritize expanding roads over mass transit and that I-270 has enough room for the state to immediately add reversible lanes. The state also has ample government funds and financing capability to avoid having to charge tolls, he said.
“If the money isn’t there,” Cox said, “I’d like to know where the money has been spent.”
Transurban leader calls Maryland's planned toll lanes for Beltway, I-270 "transformative"
Toll lane supporters and opponents also are watching the primary elections for comptroller. The chief tax collector doesn’t generally oversee transportation policy. However, a governor needs at least a second vote on the three-member Board of Public Works, either from the comptroller or state treasurer, to approve a contract.
State treasurer Dereck E. Davis (D), who is elected by the General Assembly, declined to comment on the toll lanes project. His predecessor, Nancy K. Kopp (D), repeatedly objected to Hogan’s plan, saying the state hadn’t adequately investigated its potential financial risks.
Both Democratic candidates for comptroller, Del. Brooke E. Lierman (Baltimore City) and Bowie Mayor Tim Adams, said they favor expanding mass transit over roads. Both said the state needs to reduce the need to drive, rather than attract more traffic to wider highways.
Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, the unopposed Republican candidate for comptroller, said the state should resolve the toll lanes bid protest before approving any long-term contract. But the project should then move forward as soon as possible, he said, even if opponents file an environmental lawsuit.
“Time is money with a lot of these projects,” Glassman said. “Any change in course or stopping a proposal is just going to have additional construction costs down the road, not to mention the cost for commuters in time, and wear and tear on their vehicles.” | 2022-07-01T10:26:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Primaries for Maryland governor could determine I-270, Beltway toll lanes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/01/maryland-governor-primary-toll-lanes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/01/maryland-governor-primary-toll-lanes/ |
The District’s White population last year declined for the first time in two decades
People walk their dogs in the 16th Street Heights neighborhood in Washington on May 19. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
White people fled the District of Columbia in disproportionately high numbers during the first year of the pandemic, reversing a nearly two-decade trajectory during which the city had been steadily adding White residents, according to an analysis of new Census Bureau data.
In the four years preceding the pandemic, the city had been adding non-Hispanic White residents at a rate of around 4,000 to 5,000 each year. But between July 2020 and July 2021, it lost 10,285 people from that group, according to the bureau’s annual population estimates for the nation, states and counties by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, released Thursday.
Many of the region’s close-in suburbs also lost White residents at a much higher rate than previously, including Montgomery County, Md. as well as Fairfax and Arlington counties and the city of Alexandria in Virginia, according to an analysis of the estimates by William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution.
Some losses, especially among the country’s rapidly aging White population, are due to deaths rather than people moving away, but the change in the District was too dramatic to be explained by natural decline alone, Frey said.
“These numbers make plain that there was a substantial 'White flight” from D.C. and inner counties (as well as nationally from urban cores) during the prime pandemic year of 2020-2021,” Frey said. “Some suburban counties were recipients of White gains. But this makes clear, both in D.C. and the U.S., White movement had much to do with city losses.”
The District’s Black population, which had already been declining in recent years, also dropped precipitously between 2020 and 2021. The city lost 6,689 non-Hispanic Black residents that year, more than three and a half times the number it had lost the previous year. And the majority-Black Prince George’s County, which had also been losing Black residents, lost 8,552 during the first year of the pandemic, around three times as many as the previous year.
Is Prince George's still the richest majority-Black county in America?
The first year of the pandemic was an outlier in many ways, with major metropolitan areas across the country losing both Black and White people at unusually high rates, though the White losses were more pervasive.
Whites made up half the District’s decline even though Whites comprise only about a third of the city’s population.
Regionwide, the Washington metro area lost nearly 8,000 non-Hispanic Blacks after their population had steadily grown in the previous four years. It also lost over 40,000 non-Hispanic Whites after losing Whites at a much slower pace previously. The numbers for Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and mixed race residents remained relatively stable.
The changes come as the country is trending more diverse overall. The 2020 Census marked the first time the absolute number of people who identify as White alone had shrunk since a census started being taken in 1790, and the first time the percentage of White people dipped below 60 percent. The under-18 population is now majority people of color.
Many who left the District are young. More than half were between 15 and 29, whereas the losses in surrounding counties were more evenly dispersed between age groups. Young people who flocked to cities a decade ago after the Great Recession to be close to jobs and ride out the housing crisis are now starting families and seeking more space in the suburbs, Frey said, noting that many left larger cities for suburbs or smaller metropolitan areas.
Urban millennials may therefore have been already primed to relocate, “and the pandemic gave them an extra push,” he said, adding that the District’s plethora of jobs in government, nonprofits, and universities allowed many employees to work remotely, making it easier to move away.
Frey cautioned that the unusually high number of departures may not continue. “It might be just a one-time shock that has affected people,” he said, noting that the new estimates reflect the peak twelve months after pandemic lockdowns began and before cities reopened widely.
“It could very well be a blip, but there’s an asterisk,” he said “We probably won’t see a big surge of people moving back to the cities.”
More on the census
Here’s how America’s racial makeup has changed over the past decade. You can drill down by address to see how certain areas have shifted.
In the latest release, data showed that the number of White people in the United States fell for the first time since 1790. The White population also decreased in D.C.
Population growth across the United States was also at the second-slowest pace in history, and the “places to be” have also shifted. Meanwhile, America’s developed areas are growing.
Population changes also dictate a change in politics. Here’s a breakdown of which states gained and lost electoral votes and clout in Congress.
Historically, the census has never been delayed. But there have been past fears of an inaccurate count, and results have been used to target minorities. | 2022-07-01T10:30:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The District’s White population last year declined for the first time in two decades - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/census-dc-white-population-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/census-dc-white-population-pandemic/ |
Johns Hopkins ousts leader of summer programs canceled at last minute
Jeremy Kalfus, 14, prepares to attend a program run by the Center for Talented Youth last week. It was canceled late Friday afternoon. (Mason Kalfus) (Mason Kalfus)
The director of the prestigious Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth stepped down Thursday, less than a week after hundreds of families received last-minute notice of cancellations and after days of upheaval marred the reputation of the 43-year-old program.
Johns Hopkins University Provost Sunil Kumar announced that Stephen Gange, a professor and executive vice provost for academic affairs, would take over as the troubled program’s interim executive director. Calling Gange a “trusted leader,” he said he “played a key role in helping JHU navigate a safe and healthy return to campus for our students during the pandemic and is proud parent of a CTY alumna.”
Kumar promised a review of the decisions that precipitated the program’s partial collapse, with “a full report to university administration,” while pledging that on-site instructors and staff members affected by the cancellations will get their full salaries. Retention bonuses will be developed for on-site staffers and instructors, he said, and an operational support team for CTY programs will be established.
Jill Rosen, a university spokeswoman, would not comment on whether the previous executive director, Virginia Roach, was still employed by the school in another capacity. The university does not comment on personnel matters, she said.
Throughout the turmoil, CTY officials had attributed problems to staffing shortages — a national issue — and on Sunday apologized to families who had packed suitcases and planned their summers around the academic sessions, many of which were residential and set up at colleges across the country.
The cancellations were so late that some students were en route — or had arrived — from other parts of the country and world.
In all, 1,784 students were affected by program cancellations for the two sessions of the CTY programs, which claim alumni including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and pop superstar Lady Gaga, officials said. That number is about a third of the total, with some 3,500 students still participating in in-person programs, according to the university.
Johns Hopkins program canceled as some students are en route
Kumar acknowledged that the decision to cancel and its last-minute nature “resulted in many disappointed students and significantly inconvenienced families.” Families were notified at roughly 3:30 p.m. last Friday, for a program that opened Sunday morning.
“In its first summer of in-person programming since the onset of the pandemic, it is clear to us that CTY has not met Johns Hopkins University’s standards,” Kumar said.
For parents including Mason Kalfus, who had signed his son up for a $5,200 residential philosophy program, the need for a leadership change was beyond question.
“I can’t imagine anyone that had such a monumental failure would keep the same leadership,” he said. But Kalfus also said the university had been repeatedly pointing to the national labor shortage — which was clearly not the full story. “It’s mind-boggling to me that they fell so amazingly short of what they needed,” he said. “Someone was asleep at the wheel.”
Sunny Chanel, whose 16-year-old daughter was headed to the program on a plane when she received an email saying it was canceled, said she hoped the move would bode well for the future of CTY.
“This change, with someone who knows the program, is a good one,” said Chanel, who lives in San Francisco. “It’s such a wonderful program, and it’s helped so many kids. I hope that will be key to getting them back on track and getting them back to where they were before.”
Since the weekend, parents have shared stories of disappointment and disbelief, some of them posted on a Facebook page with more than 500 members called “CTY screwed us 2022.”
Some instructors and staff members have also posted about the dispiriting confusion and other issues in this year’s program. Teachers are paid $2,500 for a three-week session, plus room and board, and assistants get $1,600 plus room and board, officials said.
Students must test into the CTY programs, which are a mix of online, commuter and residential sessions for second-to-12th-graders. Programs were canceled across a variety of topics, including biotechnology, poetry, ethics, psychology, genetics, neuroscience, engineering, the graphic novel and zoology.
Roach, the leader who was replaced, became executive director of the program in 2020. Hopkins described her as having “a formidable track record as a nonprofit leader and higher education administrator.” From 2015 to 2020, she served as dean at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education. Earlier in her career, she was a professor of education and a department chair at George Washington University. | 2022-07-01T10:31:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | CTY leader is fired after last-minute program cancellations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/cty-leader-fired-hopkins/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/cty-leader-fired-hopkins/ |
A Declaration of Independence for everyone
How Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass expanded on the promise of American independence.
Perspective by Christopher B. Daly
Christopher B. Daly, a professor of journalism at Boston University, is the author of "Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism."
President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Alexis McGill Johnson, third from right, walks in the NYC Pride March on June 26, 2022, in New York. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) | 2022-07-01T10:31:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Declaration of Independence for everyone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/01/declaration-independence-everyone/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/01/declaration-independence-everyone/ |
The value of looking forward as we mark America’s next big birthday
Even as we salute seminal anniversaries of the Declaration of Independence by looking back, we’ve also used the moment to dream about the future
Perspective by M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska
M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska is associate professor of history at American University. She is the author of "History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s" (UNC Press. 2017) and is currently working on a new project called “Going to Washington.”
President Biden, first lady Jill Biden and family watch fireworks during the celebration of Independence Day on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Not many people know what a “semiquincentennial” is but they’re about to find out. Even though 2026 is almost four years away, many organizations and individuals have already begun thinking about — and planning for — the commemoration of the impending 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Discussion about the “semiquin” — even in its present nascent stage — has been focused on how the upcoming observances should address the contested and unequal legacies of the American Revolution. That especially means the promises of justice and equality that politicians, activists and others have been grappling with and fighting for ever since. Because of this, planners and commentators have been looking to the 1976 Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence — remembered for its abundant historical programming — for inspiration and perspective.
The political stakes of commemoration are high, as the heated debates around the New York Times’s “1619 Project” and Donald Trump’s proposed sculpture garden and the 1776 Commission have demonstrated. Many think that 2026 may be when the conflicts over these efforts — and the access to rights and representation that they stand for — will come to a head as the simmering culture war over American history boils over.
But commemorations haven’t always been about history. Earlier anniversaries looked forward, not backward. They were, on one hand, an opportunity for state and corporate interests to garner popular support for large-scale initiatives. On the other hand, they were a way for Americans to envision and appraise the world to come and to contemplate how best to plan or prepare for it.
Consider, for example, the 1876 centennial celebration, when local and federal governments, business leaders, and city boosters launched a world’s fair in Philadelphia. It was a year-long event that featured exhibits from countries and states, corporations and professional organizations, with displays and performances numbering in the hundreds. Visitors toured modern pavilions where they viewed new machines and inventions, including the telephone and the typewriter. For many Americans, this was a glimpse of life to come, and the radical transformations that continued industrialization and innovations were bringing to everyday life.
Less than two decades later, an even larger event, the 1893 Chicago International Exposition, marked the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ landing. Fairgoers rode a moving walkway, and the first Ferris wheel. They explored model kitchens and bathrooms equipped with new appliances and saw new inventions for farm and factory work. They watched early moving pictures and tried new foods like Juicy Fruit and Cracker Jacks. Again, here was an opportunity to see and experience the world to come.
Not everyone was given an equal stake in this future: the streetlight-illuminated “White City” at the center of the Chicago fair excluded African Americans; and elsewhere, fairgoers viewed and interacted with people from colonized nations in live exhibitions. The physical layout of the fair — including which nations were represented in the White City and which were placed at the perimeter — and the emphasis on comparison of races and nationalities all reinforced the ideologies of racial inequality and white supremacy that underwrote American ideals of “progress.”
Such commemorations reflected the United States’ burgeoning interest in overseas expansion and colonialism, which it would begin to realize just a few years later with the occupation of Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines. As historians have shown, national and commercial leaders wanted to promote the United States as an emerging player in global markets and to garner excitement and accord from the Americans — old and new — who visited the fair.
And it worked. In coming years, Americans eagerly adopted and bought many of the new technologies introduced at the fairs, helping grow national and international markets. And, fueled in part by the racial hierarchies presented at the fairs, they approved of and supported imperialist actions abroad and Jim Crow segregation at home.
But the 1893 fair was also an opportunity for Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass and other leaders to stage a highly visible protest over the marginalization of Black Americans — one which helped to galvanize the Black freedom struggle. Their widely circulated booklet, “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition,” laid out the most pressing issues faced by African Americans and urged organizers to include them in the fair and, by extension, the prospects that it set forth.
Following in this tradition, the 1976 Bicentennial actually started out with significant future-oriented components. After the 1966 establishment of the official Bicentennial Commission, several cities, including Philadelphia and D.C., competed to host a new international exposition. Other early proposals highlighted new infrastructure and expanded access to jobs training, early education and culture.
In the first several years of planning, Americans were looking ahead, not behind, following the mid-century legacies of programs such as John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. The initial ideas for the Bicentennial sought to both capitalize upon and reinvigorate this energy.
But that changed in the early 1970s. Planners and commentators began emphasizing the historical aspects of Bicentennial commemoration and programming. The standard explanation for this shift — and indeed, for a lot of 1970s “nostalgia culture” (think “Little House on the Prairie,” “Grease”) — is one that was first advanced by influential postmodern theorists in the 1980s and ’90s: because Americans could no longer clearly imagine the future (say, “Metropolis,” or “The Jetsons”), they looked to the past instead.
The past, in turn, became the site at which to hash out issues of representation, access and equity. In other words, because planners and commentators couldn’t agree about the most important ideas or issues for posterity, they decided to instead use the commemoration as a moment to question and engage history.
And so, the 1976 Bicentennial played out differently, with a focus on the past rather than the future. Soon, history became the dominant theme of the Bicentennial: new museums appeared like the African American Museum in Philadelphia along with new archival and engaging preservation and memory initiatives.
Through high-profile projects like the Tall Ships, the Bicentennial Wagon Train and Alex Haley’s “Roots,” the commemoration helped get many Americans interested and involved in history in myriad ways. The lasting impact of the Bicentennial became these new opportunities for engaging and finding meaningful connections to the past: new museums and historical societies, community-based preservation and oral history projects and personal and family histories and genealogies. Americans found commonalities — or at least understanding and new perspective — by thinking about history in new ways.
But this emphasis on history meant that the Bicentennial didn’t give Americans a large-scale opportunity to look ahead and to take stock.
Today, we aren’t having trouble envisioning what may come next. Now, people can visualize the future all too well, quite literally: the growing inevitability of climate catastrophe is foreshadowed in sophisticated visualizations and films like “2012” or “Don’t Look Up.” It touches our lives as rising temperatures, more extreme weather and global shortages.
Even as we try to grapple honestly with our past, returning to the old way of commemoration — by grappling with our future — would offer benefits. In the same way that the Bicentennial helped us find meaning in the past, the Semiquincentennial can help us find meaning in the future: one that is more just and equal than those imagined in Philadelphia and Chicago over a century ago.
In a sense we have no choice. In 2076, when this country reaches its next centennial milestone, the most well-known site of U.S.commemoration — the Mall, and many of its monuments — may be submerged in the Atlantic Ocean due to rising sea levels. Whether we like it or not, the future that we are headed toward will have profound effects on our ability to commemorate the past and the manner in which we do so.
As much as it is important to use the observance to reevaluate our understanding of the past, we must do so in a way that foregrounds the future, as well. Otherwise, we are missing perhaps the greatest opportunity to imagine and reimagine the world to come and to engage as many Americans as possible in this shared vision. | 2022-07-01T10:31:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The value of looking forward as we mark America’s next big birthday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/01/value-looking-forward-we-mark-americas-next-big-birthday/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/01/value-looking-forward-we-mark-americas-next-big-birthday/ |
An intense ‘cat-and-mouse’ game to preserve Ukraine’s Western weapons could determine the next phase of the war
Ukrainian forces transport a rocket launcher in the Donetsk region on May 30. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
The Russian military is increasing attacks on Ukrainian arms depots to deprive the country of Western weapons critical to prevailing in the four-month war.
But in response, the Ukrainian military is dispersing and decentralizing its weapons arsenal across an array of warehouses in an effort to lessen the potential losses caused by any one Russian strike, said U.S. officials familiar with the strategy.
The wider distribution of weapons has attracted more Russian cruise missile strikes in recent weeks, officials said, but has resulted in fewer strikes eliminating large supplies of arms and ammunition.
“This is consistent with how one would go about increasing the survivability of the weapons and ammo you need to bring to the front,” said George Barros, a geospatial analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that analyzes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine using open source data. “Wars are won by logistics. Those weapons systems are going to be decisive, especially as the Ukrainians attempt to create a counteroffensive, likely later this summer.”
Ukrainians are also taking special precautions while the weapons are in transit, U.S. officials said. When moving weapons by rail, Ukrainians have left some train cars empty. When transporting by road, convoys have included trucks with no cargo, limiting the potential losses of a successful Russian attack.
The game of cat-and-mouse comes as fighting intensifies in the eastern Donbas region, where an outgunned Ukrainian military is exchanging near-constant artillery fire with Russian counterparts in a highly lethal and grinding phase of the war, which began Feb. 24.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.
Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Kyiv’s distribution of weapons but said Ukrainian forces have displayed “remarkable battlefield nimbleness, creativity, tenacity, and courage as they defend themselves and their land from Russia’s reckless, unlawful, and deeply inhumane prosecution of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war.”
Sergey Nikiforov, a spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said he would not discuss “military strategy.”
U.S. officials recently briefed Congress on Ukraine’s sleight-of-hand tactics amid questions from lawmakers about whether the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid was surviving Russia’s airstrikes.
President Biden signed a $40 billion security assistance package to Ukraine into law in May. He has since added to that with $450 million in military aid announced last week, including multiple launch rocket systems and artillery ammunition, on top of a $1 billion package last month including howitzers and coastal defense systems.
The administration is expected to soon announce its purchase of an advanced medium-to-long range surface-to-air missile defense system for Ukraine, as well as other items of “urgent need, including ammunition for artillery and counter-battery radar systems,” the president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Monday.
Without the massive influx of weaponry, Ukrainian forces would be quickly overwhelmed by the Russian military, which fires more than 60,000 shells per day, 10 times more than the Ukrainians, officials in Kyiv told The Washington Post.
Determining Russia’s success in hitting Ukrainian arms depots remains difficult amid the fog of war.
Nearly every day, Russia’s defense ministry announces new strikes on Ukrainian depots, though its claims often come under scrutiny. On Monday, Ukraine said Russia bombed a shopping mall in the city of Kremenchuk, killing at least 18 people and injuring dozens of others. Russian officials denied the claim, saying they hit a nearby arms depot that caused an explosion that ignited a fire at the mall.
“In Kremenchuk, Russian forces struck a weapons depot storing arms received from the United States and Europe with high-precision air-based weapons,” Russia’s defense ministry said.
The Group of Seven nations, consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, called the attack a Russian war crime, while Zelensky described it as “one of the most defiant terrorist attacks in European history.”
“You never know whether they’re just lying,” said Rob Lee, an analyst of the Russian military at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Ukraine’s efforts to decentralize its weapons depots began in earnest in May and June after significant weapons stocks were lost in Russian missile strikes in the spring, said U.S. officials.
Ukraine’s arsenal would be in much more jeopardy if Russia’s air force controlled the skies, officials said, which would allow the Kremlin to disrupt the movement of supplies and reinforcements.
“They don’t have air superiority, so their main way of interdicting this equipment is to strike facilities when the equipment is stationary,” Lee said.
In some instances where Russian aircraft have spotted Ukrainian shipments en route to a depot, the pilot’s inability to fire upon targets without seeking higher approval has thwarted Russian efforts, officials said.
“On the battlefield, they always have to go up to their superordinate commander who then might have to go up to a higher level in order to get clearance,” Barros said. “That, of course, takes time and robs the Russians of the initiative on the battlefield, which they’ve been trying to correct.”
The vast majority of strikes on Ukrainian depots are from Russian cruise missile attacks. Those strikes, coupled with the need to respond to Russia’s artillery barrages, have created significant demand for additional weapons and ammunition in Ukraine.
The United States has improved the flow of weapons, a Ukrainian lawmaker said, after Kyiv promised not to use them to hit targets on Russian soil.
The fluid battlefield dynamics, in which needs in some areas can change quickly, highlight the need for a continuous flow of weapons and ammunition into storage depots around the country, said the lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss battlefield dynamics.
Oftentimes, the lawmaker said, it is better to send a large supply of weapons into the east, then disperse them to units as commanders see fit, while other times they may need to send small batches to resolve urgent shortages.
Besides defending its own depots, Ukraine’s military is also seeking to go on offense and strike Russian depots — something it can more easily do as a result of U.S. shipments of advanced long-range rocket systems known as HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System).
Barros, the geospatial analyst, said Ukrainians have used the HIMARS to hit Russian arms depots in the Luhansk region in recent days, an important tactic in defending the country.
“If you degrade the Russians’ ability to mass artillery, it degrades their ability to stand up an offensive,” he said.
Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-07-01T10:31:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine scatters arsenal to protect weapons from Russian strikes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/01/ukraine-weapons-russia-strikes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/01/ukraine-weapons-russia-strikes/ |
The Supreme Court said guns can be prohibited in “sensitive places,” but didn’t explain what makes a locale sensitive. That invites a flood of litigation.
Perspective by Darrell A.H. Miller
Darrell A.H. Miller is the Melvin G. Shimm professor of law at Duke University. He co-wrote an amicus brief, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen,, arguing that the two-step framework lower courts had used to decide Second Amendment cases should be retained. (It wasn't.)
Salesman John Licata shows a handgun that's available for purchase at SP Firearms on June 23 in Hempstead, N.Y. The U.S. Supreme Court last week struck down a New York law restricting concealed carry gun licenses. (Brittainy Newman/AP)
In its major gun rights case this term, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court closed one front in the culture war over guns, and simultaneously opened several others.
Bruen was the court’s most important Second Amendment decision in over a decade. In it, a 6-to-3 majority held that governments can regulate, but cannot prohibit, the public carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens for purposes of self-defense. Bruen answered one question: Whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms is limited to the home. (It’s not.) But it failed to answer another: When and why a government can designate a location “sensitive” — meaning, no guns are allowed — even under Bruen’s more relaxed standard for public carry.
The court said that legislators can continue to identify sensitive areas. But because the Bruen majority didn’t explain what counts as “sensitive,” we can expect that places as varied as college campuses, sports stadiums, bars, airports, domestic violence support centers and the sidewalks in front of lawmakers’ homes will become the next battlegrounds in litigation over the right to keep and bear arms.
In Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, made the judgment that was expected: The Second Amendment protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” But as Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted in a concurring opinion, “properly interpreted, the Second Amendment allows a ‘variety’ of gun regulations,” including “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings,” restrictions the court had endorsed in two prior decisions.
Conservatives sound like anti-racists — when the cause is gun rights
But how are lower courts to determine whether a place is sufficiently “sensitive” to prohibit firearms? According to Thomas, history and analogical reasoning will supply an answer. Because gun prohibitions near “legislative assemblies, polling places and courthouses” were uncontroversial in the past, he wrote, “courts can use analogies to these historical regulations” to determine what 21st-century areas are “sensitive” enough to ban guns.
This is awfully slender guidance from which to build a Second Amendment doctrine. The cabin of a commercial airliner feels pretty “sensitive” to most Americans, although it doesn’t bear any obvious resemblance to “legislative assemblies, polling places and courthouses.” Of course, that doesn’t mean there are no historical resources from which to draw analogies. The well of English and American law that forms the source of this “preexisting” Second Amendment right is deep. Harvard University prohibited guns on campus as far back as 1655, as did public institutions like the University of Virginia in 1825 and the University of North Carolina in 1829. In the 1800s, Missouri, Texas and the Oklahoma territory kept firearms and other weapons from places where people assembled for educational, literary, scientific or social purposes. These American laws have roots in Anglo prohibitions on weapons at “fairs” and “markets” that stretch back to the reign of King Edward III.
Before Bruen, lower courts had held that national parks and the parking lots of rural post offices were sensitive, and had indicated that libraries, museums, hospitals and day-care centers may also ban guns.
As Timothy Zick and Diana Palmer wrote recently in the Atlantic: Both red and blue states have created an archipelago of “sensitive places,” such as “public transit, polling places … athletic facilities, public swimming pools, riverboat casinos, school-bus stops, pharmacies, business parking lots, public highways, amusement parks, zoos, liquor stores, airports, parades, demonstrations, financial institutions, theaters, hotel lobbies, tribal lands, and even gun shows.” All these sensitive-place designations are now subject to challenge as insufficiently analogous to regulations that existed in the past.
Lower courts have held, unhelpfully, that what makes a place sensitive are “the people found there” or the “activities that take place there.” The implication is that guns may be prohibited from areas for reasons separate from personal safety, a point I’ve argued elsewhere. Long-standing historical prohibitions on guns on election day, or at polling places, or in schools, ballrooms, fairs, markets and public assemblies, for example, suggest that our ancestors’ concern was not only, or even primarily, with physical safety, but also with fostering a robust civic life that’s difficult to achieve in the presence of private arms.
On the other hand, some gun rights advocates insist that physical safety is the only legitimate reason to designate a place sensitive. And relatedly, such advocates say, a place can only forbid private weaponry if it supplies physical security through means such as guards or metal detection devices. If not, guns must be allowed.
Because Bruen gave little guidance as to why places are sensitive, lower courts are left with plenty of historical grist for making analogies, but no predictable way to decide whether the analog is relevantly similar. Justice Stephen G. Breyer aptly asks in his dissent, “What about subways, nightclubs, movie theaters, and sports stadiums?” How a 130-year-old regulation on guns at a public exhibition compares to a ban on guns at a 21st-century music concert is not at all apparent. Much less how a criminal prohibition on firing guns from the decks of riverboats resembles one forbidding loaded guns in the overhead compartments of jet aircraft. Where there’s a lack of clarity, there will be litigation.
I do not believe the court planned to consign every federal judge to act as the gun zoning authority for every city and town in every state. I do not believe the court wants to evaluate block by block, street by street, the sensitivity of every neighborhood in the country. But until the justices provide more clarity on why guns can be prohibited in sensitive places, and what makes those places sensitive, that may well be what we get. | 2022-07-01T10:31:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Supreme Court, in Bruen, invites more lawsuits about where they may be banned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/bruen-guns-rights-carry-sensitive-places/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/bruen-guns-rights-carry-sensitive-places/ |
USA. Tunbridge, Vt. 1974. Before the show. (Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos)
From 1972 to 1975, photographer Susan Meiselas spent her summers photographing the world of women who performed in small-town carnivals as striptease artists. The resulting work would go on to form one of the world’s most enduring photo books: “Carnival Strippers.”
Since the book’s publication, “Carnival Strippers” and Meiselas herself have achieved legendary status. For a while, the work went out of print. A quick Google search shows original copies going for hundreds of dollars.
But the German publishing house Steidl has worked closely with Meiselas to resurrect the book, and it is again available to the public at a far more affordable price. Steidl’s contemporary version of this classic comes with expanded texts and unpublished color photos, providing fascinating insight into this iconic work.
Meiselas herself was a bit of an anomaly in the world of photojournalism, a woman working in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry. “Carnival Strippers” helped her break into this more or less hermetic culture.
Five years after the original book came out, Meiselas would create yet another now-famous book when she covered the conflict in Nicaragua. “Nicaragua” would cement her reputation as an icon in the photojournalism world.
The photographs in “Carnival Strippers,” and honestly all of Meiselas’s work, are unflinching, intimate and courageous. Like the best of journalism, they pull back the curtain on a group of people living in the shadows.
Particularly important is that Meiselas covers her subjects from a woman’s perspective, bringing a fresh and perhaps more intimate look to her photography.
With the Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade, the reissue of “Carnival Strippers” takes on added relevance. The original book was made in the early years of the women’s movement, when women were struggling for equal treatment. As the publisher’s description of the book says:
“Meiselas’ frank description of these women brought a hidden world to public attention, and explored the complex role the Carnival played in their lives: mobility, money and liberation, but also undeniable objectification and exploitation. Produced during the early years of the women’s movement, Carnival Strippers reflects the struggle for identity and self-esteem that characterized a complex era of change.”
The court ruling has seemingly turned back the clock, bringing all kinds of questions back into play in the United States, not least of which is the basic question of equal rights. Who has them? Who doesn’t?
“Carnival Strippers” depicts women trying to make their way in what was then, and still is, a nation hostile to their dreams, self-esteem, and ability to forge their own path and make their own decisions. At least until last week, we could look at Meiselas’s photographs through a lens that said, “Well, that was then. I’m so glad that things are better, if only a little.”
There is now an added weight to this work, rooted in the present. It’s a heavy reminder of the sad, cyclical nature of our collective history of marginalizing and shoving people to the side. And the photos, and the women, are there in stark relief, unavoidable, real human beings asking us not to forget, not to go backward.
You can see more of Meiselas’s work on her website, here. And you can buy the book here. | 2022-07-01T10:31:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of carnival strippers in the 1970s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/07/01/these-photos-bring-us-into-world-1970s-carnival-strippers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/07/01/these-photos-bring-us-into-world-1970s-carnival-strippers/ |
Low blue crab counts have led to new restrictions on harvesting male and female crustaceans that go into effect July 1 in Maryland and Virginia
By Lizzie Johnson
A blue crab comes up with oysters in a Chesapeake Bay cage in 2019. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Chesapeake Bay’s watermen have endured one crisis after another over the decades: persistent pollution, falling seafood populations, oyster-decimating diseases, shuttered processing plants, scarce pickers and rising prices for everything from gasoline to equipment. Now add a new crisis to the list: a shortage of crab sperm.
On Friday, new limits on how many blue crabs can be harvested from the bay will go into effect after an annual count revealed far fewer of the crustaceans than expected.
Blue crab population in Chesapeake Bay hits record low
The annual Baywide Blue Crab Winter Dredge Survey noted a serious decline in male crabs, leading to a new restriction on harvesting them. Scientists hypothesize that the falling number of male crabs has created a sperm shortage for spawning females, which could be one of the things contributing to the decreasing crab population.
Under the new rules, daily commercial harvests will be cut by 15 to 25 percent, hurting watermen who depend on crabs for their livelihoods and threatening the supply available for summer crab feasts and locally sourced crab cakes on restaurant menus. Already, the retail price of blue crab is about $399 for a bushel of small crabs and $499 for large ones. The season will also end two weeks early, on Nov. 30.
“It’s not the watermen that are doing it,” said Bubby Powley, 72, a fourth-generation waterman who has been fishing off Hoopers Island in Dorchester County for decades. “We’re not getting rich by no means. The price of everything is going up, and our limits are going down. That’s where we are at. It’s not good for us.”
Most concerning, scientists say, are the long-term implications of the dwindling crab population in the United States’ biggest estuary. For 32 years, researchers have dredged 1,500 sites around the Chesapeake Bay annually to get an estimate of the number of crabs that overwinter there and a tally of how many were plucked during the previous harvest season. Since 2019, the total crab population in the bay has decreased by 60 percent.
In mid-May, the two state agencies that run the survey — the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science — made an announcement with more dire news. Only 227 million crabs had been counted, the lowest number on record since the survey began in 1990.
The survey revealed a plunge in the number of female crabs, from 158 million in 2021 to 97 million this year. It also found a three-year continuation of a below-average number of juvenile crabs, estimated at 101 million.
“There were two big red flags,” said Allison Colden, Maryland senior fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “The lowest abundance on record since the survey began and also that we have lower numbers now than when Maryland and Virginia requested and were granted a federal fisheries disaster declaration in 2008. It’s hard to believe that the population was higher then than it is now.”
Then there was the decline in male crabs. With the count at only about 28 million, watermen will be limited to 15 bushels of males a day in August and September. In normal years, no more than 34 percent of the estimated male crab population is allowed to be harvested — a threshold so tough to surpass that only the harvest of females is usually monitored, ensuring that they continue to spawn.
Under the new restrictions, the harvest of females will continue to be limited — between nine and 17 bushels in July and August and 17 and 32 bushels in September and October.
Each female is capable of producing 3 million eggs in a brood, with up to three broods in a year, typically in mid- to late summer. They mate only once, releasing chemicals — akin to pheromones — into the water to attract a male. As the female sheds her shell, matures and hardens a new shell, the male protects her. In the process, she banks a cache of sperm that will last a lifetime.
Usually.
But scientists point to two studies that indicate a shortage of sperm in the crab population, possibly leading to lower numbers of juvenile crabs.
“The male numbers being very low — and consistently low — that’s where some of our research comes in,” said Matt Ogburn, who works at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Anne Arundel County. “If there are relatively few males proportional to the number of females that are maturing and mating, those males mate more frequently, as frequently as every few days.”
The problem with that, Ogburn explained, is that male crabs need about a week to rebuild their sperm stores. If they mate sooner than that, they’re not providing females with as much sperm as they normally would. A supply that should last years might last only one season.
“It’s estimated that females not getting enough sperm might be leading to a 5 to 10 percent reduction in the total number of fertilized eggs,” Ogburn said. “For the females that survive to a second summer, the amount of larvae they can produce is reduced.”
There’s a lot of other things that could be happening, too, researchers said.
Poor water quality with low-oxygen dead zones.
Loss of underwater grass beds that are critical nursing habitats for juveniles.
Predation by invasive species like blue catfish.
Pollution.
The new restrictions are stressing an industry of watermen already beleaguered by strict visa requirements that have limited seasonal migrant workers at the region’s crab houses and soaring prices on many supplies, including gasoline and paint.
“Unfortunately, everyone’s costs have risen significantly,” said Jack Brooks, owner of J.M. Clayton Seafood in Cambridge, Md. “We are working quite a bit thinner than we would like to. But I guess the restrictions are a necessary evil.”
When Powley was 32, he said, it cost about $8 to $9 to build a crab pot. Now, it’s $60 per pot.
“We just can’t stand it,” he said.
He’s not alone in those fears, though a good oyster season has helped offset them.
“We are very concerned about the male crabs, we are,” said Robert T. Brown, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association. “This is our livelihood. If it goes bad, it goes bad on us. We are willing to make some concessions and try to keep the stocks up and everything.”
Brown sighed.
“We hope that next year will be better.” | 2022-07-01T11:35:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crab sperm shortage challenges Chesapeake Bay watermen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/crab-sperm-shortage-chesapeake-bay-watermen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/crab-sperm-shortage-chesapeake-bay-watermen/ |
Bradley Beal has a deal to remain in Washington. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
In 2008, the Wizards gave Gilbert Arenas $111 million over six years, and words like “disaster” … “cluster bomb” … and “why God, why?!” are the nicest things that come to mind about that deal. Arenas appeared in just 55 more games for Washington, and his gunplay episode with Javaris Crittenton led to Washington circling the drain for the next several years.
Thanks to my colleague Neil Greenberg, we can see just how uninspiring these years have been. With Beal as the face of Monumental Basketball, the team has a 43.4 winning percentage in games he has appeared in — which would give Washington the eighth-worst percentage in the league over that stretch. In the 203 games Beal has played — he missed more than half of last season with a wrist injury — the Wizards were outscored by an average of 2.2 points per game, almost indistinguishable from the negative-3.7-points-per-game margin when he was inactive.
Kyrie Irving will return to the Nets on his $36.5 million player option
NBA free agency preview: Big money, big drama, big markets | 2022-07-01T11:44:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bradley Beal just got a $251 million participation trophy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/bradley-beal-contract-wizards/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/bradley-beal-contract-wizards/ |
They waited years to make the Hajj. A web portal could stop them.
Saudi Arabia abruptly changed how Western travelers book Islam’s holy pilgrimage. But the online portal’s botched rollout is leaving many would-be pilgrims in limbo.
Muslim pilgrims surround the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in 2019. (Amr Nabil/AP)
For two years, Sawsan Jabri set aside $1,000 every few months so she could make the Hajj, a pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca required of all able-bodied Muslims. Jabri had wanted to go for decades, but money or family commitments got in the way. This year, everything was in place for her journey from Atlanta to Saudi Arabia — until three weeks ago.
In June, just over a month before the July 7 start date, Saudi Arabia’s Hajj Ministry abruptly announced travel for Western pilgrims could only be booked through a single government-authorized online portal called Motawif. Hotels, airfare and special visas would all be organized and paid for through this system. Travelers who booked packages through the prior method — authorized travel agencies — would need to seek refunds.
Jabri rushed to fill out forms on Motawif. She tried paying for her $8,000 package nearly 50 times on the site before the reservation went through. Immediately, a pop-up notice said her booking had failed. She’s still trying to get $8,000 refunded.
Jabri is not alone. Motawif’s rushed rollout has left thousands of Muslims in limbo, with tech glitches precluding many from booking travel. Some say they’re scrambling for refunds, after the site took their money without booking travel. Others report showing up at the airport to be kicked off overbooked flights. Many pilgrims say the timing is particularly devastating, on the eve of a long-awaited trip.
“Hajj is once in a lifetime,” said Jabri, 58, who teaches biology at Georgia State University. “They ruined everything.”
Very different, symbolic hajj in Saudi Arabia amid virus
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of the Hajj said it is trying to course-correct by adding more flights from Western countries to Saudi Arabia and immediately issuing visas to those who travel. The Ministry of the Hajj did not respond to a request for comment.
The Hajj is a core pillar of the Islamic faith. It’s a five-day pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and nearby holy sites required of every Muslim who is financially and physically capable of undertaking it. Non-Muslims are prohibited from making the journey.
To prevent a crush of travelers, logistics for the Hajj are tightly controlled and numbers are limited. In 2019, the last pilgrimage before coronavirus protocols cut attendance, almost 2.5 million people traveled. This year, attendance is capped at 1 million, and restricted to people younger than 65 who can prove they have tested negative for the coronavirus.
A trickle of Hajj pilgrims, where millions once worshipped.
The Saudi royal family draws legitimacy from its custody of two of Islam’s holiest sites, experts note, and ensuring that the yearly pilgrimage runs smoothly is of paramount importance.
Normally, travel agents authorized by the Saudi government control the process, organizing flights, lodging and visas for all-inclusive packages that can run tens of thousands of dollars.
But on June 6, Saudi officials announced that the process would be scrapped for those coming from places including the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union. An online portal created by a Dubai-based firm Traveazy would be handling and processing bookings.
Saudi officials said the change was designed to limit Hajj fraud, where fake travel agencies sell bogus travel packages and run away with the funds.
Seán McLoughlin, a professor and Hajj scholar at the University of Leeds, said that the technology is also part of a long-term plan to nearly double the number of pilgrims who make the religious journey, part of the country’s Vision 2030 initiative.
He added that an online booking method could provide the government a way to scale up the infrastructure needed to serve millions more passengers a year, while keeping the profit margins.
“I guess this [portal] felt like the next logical step,” he said. “But it’s a sort of an epic fail, really.”
Representatives from Traveazy did not respond to requests for comment.
The online portal is meant to serve as a one-stop shop: a repository for documents, payment processor and a progress tracker for all travel details related to the Hajj. Western pilgrims interesting in making the trip were asked to upload passport and coronavirus documents between June 10 and June 13.
They were entered into a lottery, running June 15 to 18, to decide who could purchase a Hajj package, even if they’d bought one from a travel agent months ago. Winners could pay for their package on the portal, allowing it to generate a special electronic visa for the trip.
Technology infuses ancient hajj rites amid global pandemic
Despite the centralized process, things have been a mess, according to Muslims who tried to book.
Asif Siddiqui, who lives near Houston, was excited to finally make the journey with his wife. They were in a financial situation where they could manage the trip.
After the new process was announced, he hurried to get documents uploaded and applied for the lottery. Siddiqui was picked and had 48 hours to choose a travel package with his wife. They opted for one that allowed them to have a hotel room to themselves. It cost nearly $30,000.
Over four days, Siddiqui tried 61 times to book travel. They called customer service and got disconnected. On June 20, the payment finally went through, but a message informed them that the booking had failed.
With the Hajj a week away, they still don’t have confirmed travel plans — and a nearly $30,000 charge remains on their credit card.
“Emotionally, it’s both anxiety-producing and frustrating,” he said. “We just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
As for Jabri, the experience has soured her on ever booking travel for the Hajj again through the portal. She says Saudi officials should have done extensive testing to ensure that technical glitches didn’t prevent people from making such a special trip. Jabri prefers the personal touch of travel agencies.
“It’s unbelievably frustrating,” she said. “Technology can work, but test it on people. … Give it time.” | 2022-07-01T11:53:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A glitchy web portal is blocking pilgrims from traveling for the Hajj - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/01/motawif-hajj/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/01/motawif-hajj/ |
Former ‘Cryptoqueen’ is now one of 10 most-wanted fugitives
Ruja Ignatova, a founder of OneCoin, is accused of running a $4 billion pyramid scheme
Ruja Ignatova speaks at a 2016 conference at Wembley Arena in London. (Department of Justice)
In London’s Wembley Arena, there were stage lights flashing, pyrotechnics bursting and even flames going off to a cacophony of cheering as Alicia Keys’s “Girl on Fire” came on over the speakers. That’s when Ruja Ignatova, dubbed the “Cryptoqueen,” walked onto the stage in a long, sparkly red dress, promising her cryptocurrency, OneCoin, would take over the world and become “the bitcoin killer.”
The audience at the 2016 event went wild. Amid a crypto boom, OneCoin’s status was surging in the United States and across the globe. But the company’s meteoric rise would eventually meet a swift end.
Just one year later, Ignatova disappeared without a trace, and authorities in Europe and the United States have tried to catch her ever since. The FBI on Thursday added Ignatova to its list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives — a notoriety normally bestowed on suspected cartel leaders, terrorists and killers. Ignatova, meanwhile, is accused of spearheading a pyramid scheme that defrauded investors of over $4 billion, one considered to be among the largest in history.
“Today’s announcement is a pledge to redouble our efforts to capture Ignatova, to seek justice for her victims and to hold her accountable for her crimes,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a Thursday news conference.
Before her face was splashed across a wanted poster, Ignatova, a German citizen with Bulgarian ties, had a “sterling résumé” showcasing a law degree from the University of Oxford and a consulting job at McKinsey & Company, Williams said. How Ignatova, the only woman on the most-wanted fugitives list, came to join a docket of alleged murderers and gang leaders is a tale that dates back to 2014, when OneCoin was born.
The flashy idea pitched to investors and promoted across marketing materials was a revolutionary currency “for everyone to make payments everywhere, [to] everyone, globally,” as Ignatova quipped at Wembley Arena. OneCoin promised a cryptocurrency that would surpass any other and make early users see their investments yield a “fivefold or tenfold” return, according to a criminal complaint.
But the story, as outlined in court documents, isn’t one of overhyped promises that its founders couldn’t deliver upon — like the case of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Instead, OneCoin was meant to be a Ponzi scheme from the get-go, investigators allege.
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Despite supposedly being a form of crypto, OneCoin didn’t actually have a payment system or a blockchain model, the crucial technology that underpins cryptocurrencies — thus rendering OneCoin’s tokens essentially worthless. Ignatova and the company’s founders are accused of knowing as much. (In a statement to the BBC in 2019, OneCoin denied any wrongdoing.)
According to internal emails obtained by investigators, the point of creating OneCoin was to create a “trashy coin” that would fuse the frenzy surrounding crypto with multilevel marketing.
OneCoin relied on its users to bring in more participants by offering a slew of rewards, commissions and “trading packages” at different price points, according to federal investigators. In the end, the network of investors spanned over a hundred countries. More than 3 million people are believed to have been duped, Williams, the prosecutor, said Thursday.
Ignatova “appealed to people’s humanity, promising that OneCoin would transform the lives of unbanked people,” Williams said. “And she timed her scheme, perfectly capitalizing on the frenzied speculation in the early days of cryptocurrency.”
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The plan, however, was to “take the money and run and blame someone else for this,” Ignatova wrote to a co-founder in 2014, according to court documents.
The cracks around OneCoin started to show around 2016, Insider reported, when Sweden, Latvia, Norway, Croatia, Italy and Bulgaria — where OneCoin was headquartered — began adding OneCoin to lists warning about fraudulent operations. Lawsuits soon began to pour in.
Ignatova began fearing that law enforcement would catch up with her and even bugged her American boyfriend’s apartment after she grew suspicious of him, Williams said. The recordings eventually alerted her that he was cooperating with the FBI and precipitated her plan to flee, he added.
“She immediately boarded a flight from Bulgaria to Greece with a security guard. Not one piece of luggage. The security guard came back, but Ignatova didn’t. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since,” Williams said.
Despite her disappearance in October 2017, Ignatova was indicted by a federal grand jury that month and a warrant for her arrest was issued. She’s been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. The first four counts each carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, while the last is punishable by up to five years in prison.
OneCoin’s fate eventually came to mirror its founder’s. Left to Ignatova’s brother, Konstantin Ignatov, the company faltered after he was arrested by the FBI in 2019. He pleaded guilty to a slew of felonies and entered a plea deal to cooperate with authorities — which suggested he may enter the witness protection program and assume a new identity, according to court documents.
The FBI is now making a bid for the public to help with the investigation and offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to Ignatova’s arrest.
At the 2016 event in London, she said that “I’ve been called a lot of things and probably the best thing that the press called me was … the ‘bitcoin killer.’ ”
Now, she can add “most wanted fugitive” to the list. | 2022-07-01T11:57:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FBI adds OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova to list of most-wanted fugitives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/cryptoqueen-ruja-ignatova-fugitive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/cryptoqueen-ruja-ignatova-fugitive/ |
The more than 50% rise in US gasoline prices over the last year to almost $5 a gallon is shocking. What it isn’t is economically debilitating for the average consumer.
Fuel costs are the most visible evidence of surging inflation. They are impossible to ignore. Prices are posted along the roadside on huge signs at every gas station in America. High gas prices are a big reason measures of consumer sentiment have dropped to all-time lows. Politicians are under pressure to do something — anything! — to bring down prices. The White House is calling for a gas-tax holiday. California wants to send “millions” of its citizens as much as $1,050, in part to “help you fill your gas tank.”
Here’s another way to think about this: The previous high in gasoline prices was around $4 a gallon in 2008, or $1 lower than they are now. But back then, gasoline expenditures accounted for 4.5% of spending, enough to lead to what the RBC strategists described as “demand destruction.” Now, they estimate that the average price of a gallon of gas would need to rise an additional 35% to around $6.60 for the same to happen.
One would think that there would be a high correlation between rising gasoline prices and demand, but there’s not. The RBC strategists found that in the 30 years leading into the pandemic, retail gasoline prices increased by more than 30% year-over-year in 39 individual months. Of those instances, gasoline demand fell by 2% or more only 12 times. They added that five of those instances were during the 2008 global financial crisis.
And even then, 2008 is not a good benchmark for the historical comparisons, according to the RBC strategists. The reason is the 12 months leading into the all-time peak for oil prices in 2008 were accompanied by US household savings rates near a 60-year low of 3.5%, less than half of the historical average of 8.3% and comfortably below the current 5.4%. “Put simply, the last time gasoline prices hit record levels was during a period when the US consumer was never more financially vulnerable to energy price shocks,” the strategists wrote in a research report.
To be sure, demand for gasoline is falling as the price rises. According to Bloomberg News, implied US gasoline demand on a four-week rolling basis has fallen to 8.93 million barrels a day, the lowest seasonal level since 2014 (with the exception of 2020, when the pandemic first struck). But it would be too simplistic to conclude this has anything to do with high gasoline prices causing consumers to cut back. The Federal Highway Administration has data for only the first four months of the year, but despite gasoline prices soaring as much as 32% to around $4.33 a gallon, miles driven on all roads and streets rose by 4.5% from the same period in 2021 and is comparable to pre-Covid levels.
To summarize, gasoline prices are soaring and demand is falling, and yet total miles driven is not diminishing. There are two logical explanations. The first is that cars have become much more fuel efficient, requiring fewer trips to the gas station to fill up. The average fuel economy for a new passenger car in the US rose to 25.4 miles per gallon in 2020 from 20.2 in 2000 and 16 in 1980, according to the US Energy Information Association.
The second is that electric vehicles continue to grab an ever larger share of the market. Electric vehicle registrations doubled over the past year to 5% of new cars, and their share of North American vehicles could hit 28% by 2028 and 59% by 2035, Axios reported, citing consulting firm AlixPartners. To be plain, the end of the internal combustion engine era is in sight. The European Union this week endorsed a push to eliminate carbon emissions from new cars by 2035.
The stakes are high. Rising gasoline prices have become the No. 1 political problem for President Joe Biden, whose approval ratings just hit a new low at 39% and may cause Democrats to lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in the November midterm elections. But there’s really nothing the government can do to lower gasoline prices on a sustained basis. All the discussed short-term solutions, such as gas-tax holiday or issuing “rebates,” are likely to backfire by bolstering demand. The right thing to do would be nothing, but that’s not politically viable.
Still, if gasoline prices were truly hurting consumers economically, then why did auto-club AAA just forecast that around 42 million people will hit the road this Independence Day weekend, exceeding 2019 levels by half a million? (The group defines travel as moving 50 miles or more from home.) The fact is the average American has no real reason to gripe about gasoline prices, and their actions are proving it. More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
• Biden’s Gas Tax Holiday Won’t Save Summer: Liam Denning
• The Decline of Fossil Fuels Will Be Expensive: Justin Fox | 2022-07-01T12:01:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Surge in Gas Prices Isn’t as Painful as It Looks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-surge-in-gas-prices-isnt-as-painful-as-it-looks/2022/07/01/176c563e-f92d-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-surge-in-gas-prices-isnt-as-painful-as-it-looks/2022/07/01/176c563e-f92d-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
The Kanawha River coal-fired power plant in West Virginia closed in 2015. (Stacy Kranitz for The Washington Post)
Last year, Duke Energy burned coal to supply 22 percent of its power needs, after inching up slightly from 2020 when the pandemic hit. But Duke plans to shrink that share to 5 percent by 2030 and zero by 2035.
Nationwide, U.S. coal output tumbled 35 percent from 897 million short tons in 2015 to 578 million short tons in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration. The Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign claims 357 coal-fired power plants have closed down, with 173 remaining. And the unused Clean Power Plan, which was the center of Thursday’s case, was supposed to shrink coal’s share of U.S. generation to 27 percent by 2030; instead it fell to 21.8 percent by last year, according to the Environmental Integrity Project.
Richard Lazarus, a Harvard University environmental law professor, acknowledged that many companies would not alter plans — for now. “Yes, coal is going to lose in the marketplace,” he said in an email. “The utilities will not build new coal-fired power plants. That is irreversible, and why, even absent the Clean Power Plan, the U.S. met its regulatory objectives eleven years early.”
Pedro J. Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, agrees — even though his utility burns natural gas, also a fossil fuel.
“This case is about much more than any single or cumulative impact of the original (now obsolete) rule that got us here — but is more significantly about the limits of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority,” said Ashley Burke, head of communications at the National Mining Association, in an email.
Westmoreland Coal, which was part of the combined case taken by the Supreme Court, said in its brief that “the fundamental issue” was the EPA’s “asserted power to restructure entire industries by setting emission limitations.” Westmoreland said it empowered the EPA “to target any category of sources in the Nation — from refineries to factories to home kitchen ranges — for reduced utilization in service of the agency’s decarbonization objectives.”
But the crisis in Europe will come to an end eventually, analysts say; production of hard coal in the European Union in 2021 was only 20 percent as large as production in 1990, according to Eurostat. And when the crisis ends, mining companies will need to deal again with declining demand for coal. | 2022-07-01T12:02:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Despite Supreme Court’s EPA decision, U.S. is turning away from coal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/01/supreme-court-epa-coal-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/01/supreme-court-epa-coal-climate-change/ |
By Marsha Mercer
As Americans plan their summer vacations, states around the country are struggling with a persistent challenge: how to attract more Black residents and other visitors of color to their parks.
The racial gap in park visitation is long-standing.
Officials estimate that about 3 in 4 visitors to America’s state and national parks are White, well above their population rate of 60 percent. But since the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 sparked a national reckoning on race, state leaders have intensified their efforts to increase diversity. The pandemic has further sharpened the focus on access to state parks, state officials say.
Public health also is at stake, experts say. Studies suggest millions of Black and Hispanic Americans miss out on the health benefits of being in nature — stress reduction, weight control and physical exercise among them — because they lack access to parks. Those add up to larger health costs.
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“We all want our user base to be as diverse as possible. It hasn’t been,” said Rodney Franklin, director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Parks Division, in an interview.
Federal and state goals
Federal officials have made similar efforts. The National Park Service in 2013 opened an Office of Relevancy, Diversity and Inclusion and has developed several African American history sites, including in 2017 the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in New York and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Maryland, where federal and state agencies operate a visitor center together.
States have used various strategies to increase diversity, including building new parks in underserved areas and creating panels to recommend ways to encourage people of color to participate in outdoor recreation. State parks give away free park passes, lend camping equipment, teach families how to put up a tent and make a campfire, invite community influencers such as pastors to visit parks, fund groups that organize outdoors trips for diverse groups of visitors and sponsor Black History Month events.
Since 2020, more state park systems have hired diversity and inclusion coordinators and are seeking to recruit more diverse staff and open new parks closer to urban areas to meet demand. And many leaders agree that if visitors see staff at state parks who look like them, they will feel more comfortable.
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For example, in Texas, already a state where fewer than half the residents are non-Hispanic White, the parks agency has set up employee affinity groups to explore how to make the workforce more diverse.
“People don’t even realize a career in parks is possible because they haven’t been exposed,” said Franklin, who is African American. “My family didn’t take me camping.” Instead, he got interested in the outdoors through scouting.
Franklin is secretary-treasurer of the National Association of State Park Directors (NASPD), which in September 2020 sponsored a webinar intended to raise awareness about racial issues. “I’m here because someone thought enough of me to invite me to become an intern in high school,” he said. In that role, he mowed grass, gave tours and found a career.
Myron Floyd, now dean of the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University, co-led the wide-ranging webinar discussion, which asked big-picture questions such as, “How do we get to the point where Black visitors are not an anomaly in state parks?” The session encouraged officials to consider how Black people perceive their parks, how they prepare their visits and how they are treated.
State parks’ focus on low-income people from diverse backgrounds is important, Floyd said in an interview, but he warned against limiting outreach.
“There is ethnic and socioeconomic diversity within the Black and brown community,” he said. “Middle- and upper-class people have the discretionary time and money, and they are doing things.”
Diversity will be on the agenda again at the park directors’ convention in Oregon in September, when Earl Hunter Jr., formerly one of the few Black executives in the RV industry, is scheduled as keynote speaker.
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Hunter founded Black Folks Camp Too, a business that educates park officials in how to promote camping for Black people, after he took a three-month RV trip with his son Dillon in 2017. They stayed in 49 campgrounds in 20 states and provinces — and saw only one other Black family camping.
“For a lot of Black people, particularly in the South, we were told the woods are not for you,” Hunter said in an interview. “My great-grandmother told us not to go into the woods because of the heinous things that happened there.”
“I educate state parks on why they haven’t seen us,” he said. “We don’t know how to make a campfire. We don’t know what poison ivy looks like. We don’t know what the endangered flower on the trail is. Don’t treat us like we’re ignorant.”
And, he said, if Black campers see Confederate flags all around, “It’s not a welcoming place.”
Some states have begun to pay more attention to where their parks get built and who visits.
California, which has the largest state park system with 279 parks, including 340 miles of coastline and 4,500 miles of trails, estimates 6 in 10 residents live in “park-poor neighborhoods,” with less than three acres of park and open space per thousand residents.
“Parks were the perfect antidote” to being inside during the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, said Armando Quintero, director of California state parks, in an interview. “Our parks were overwhelmed.”
California state parks announced grants in December of $548.3 million to revitalize about 100 community parks, largely in underserved areas, and build a new one.
Michigan, which operates two state parks in downtown Detroit, announced in March a new $30.2 million state park to be built on the site of a former Chevrolet plant a mile from downtown Flint. The riverfront park will be the first state park in Genesee County.
“We want to go where people are and where they can have a healthy, clean and safe experience at a state park close to home,” said Ron Olson, chief of Michigan Parks and Recreation.
Residents who have never ventured outside Detroit can get a taste of Michigan’s great outdoors at the state Department of Natural Resources’ Outdoor Adventure Center on the Detroit riverfront. They can see what it is like to sit in a kayak, catch a fish, ride a snowmobile and shoot a hunting rifle.
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State legislatures considered at least 27 bills over the past two years related to diversity, equity and inclusion in state parks and other outdoor areas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. At least five states — Colorado, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — enacted laws aimed at reducing barriers to the outdoors.
Maryland began a process to create new parks and expand existing ones. New Mexico transferred administration of its Outdoor Equity Grant program, which was created in 2019 to support outdoor activities for low-income and disadvantaged youths, to the Outdoor Recreation Division of the Economic Development Department.
Oregon established a committee to make recommendations on outdoor recreation policy, including how to increase public access. Washington appropriated $85,000 for a work group to develop recommendations on how to increase participation of Black residents in state parks and other public recreation areas.
To remove cost as an obstacle to park visitation, some states are making annual park passes free.
The California State Park Adventure Pass allows fourth-graders and their families free day use of 19 parks for a year. It’s similar to the National Park Service’s Every Kid Outdoors pass for fourth-graders.
And the newly revamped California Golden Bear Pass gives free vehicle day-use passes to more than 200 parks and beaches to families with low incomes.
Prospective parkgoers’ limited economic resources, proximity to parks and feeling of security are also potential obstacles to visitation, said Lewis Ledford, NASPD executive director and a former director of North Carolina state parks. Someone who has never spent time outdoors might not know how to protect themselves from injury, overexertion or a wild animal, he said.
In South Dakota, physicians can write a prescription for exercise that patients can turn in at a state park for a free day pass. State parks also work with nonprofit groups such as Outdoor Afro, Latino Outdoors and GirlTrek, all of which sponsor outings.
The Texas Outdoor Family program lends camping equipment to families, teaches them how to use it and guides them on their first camping trip
Public libraries in Colorado offer free backpacks for checkout containing park passes, maps, wildlife brochures and binoculars. Despite Colorado’s many outdoor opportunities, not all youth have access to them, said state Rep. Leslie Herod (D), a fly-fishing enthusiast, in an interview.
One new Colorado law will issue a discounted state park pass to everyone who registers a vehicle in Colorado, unless they opt out.
“Just because we have these programs, though, doesn’t mean every park is welcoming,” Herod said. As a woman of color and queer woman, she said, she at times has felt unsafe in state parks and has heard from constituents who also have felt unsafe.
‘With open arms’
When Jimmy Warren was growing up in Memphis, his family felt comfortable only visiting T.O. Fuller State Park, about two miles from their home. It was the first state park built specifically for, and only for, Black people east of the Mississippi River.
It was built in 1938, a time when Black visitors were barred or excluded from Whites-only parks around the country. But even after Tennessee integrated its state parks in 1962 and the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination, the Warrens wanted to visit only the formerly segregated park, he recalled.
Warren, now 59, learned to swim in the pool and danced to the jukebox at Shelter 2, and he still marvels at the delicious hamburgers, shakes and malts at the park’s concession stand.
After he retired with 30 years’ service as a Memphis police officer, Warren began a second career four years ago as a park ranger and manager of the 1,200-acre park. Today, he makes a point of greeting groups such as, recently, a large birthday party of Hispanic visitors, Indian American athletes playing cricket and Black RV campers.
“What we’re trying to do now is be more diverse,” he said. “We want to be all-inclusive. We welcome everybody with open arms.”
This article is from Stateline, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts. | 2022-07-01T12:02:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | State parks want more diverse visitors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/01/racial-gap-state-parks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/01/racial-gap-state-parks/ |
President Donald Trump shouts at members of the media as he returns to the White House on Oct. 3, 2019. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)
In the last days of President Donald Trump’s term, he cussed up a storm, attacked a Secret Service agent and threw his lunch, causing ketchup to drip down the White House walls, according to Tuesday’s congressional testimony from White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. She also said there were other times she was aware of Trump “throwing dishes” or “flipping the tablecloth” to express anger.
These were some of the more colorful claims on a day full of bombshells. But how uncommon is it really for a president to turn the Executive Mansion into a hostile work environment?
Turns out, not that uncommon. Throughout American history, from Founding Fathers to Tricky Dick, a handful of presidents have been saddled with fragile egos, sharp tongues and even flailing fists.
John Adams, the country’s second president, is infamous for having such a thin skin that he passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, making it illegal for anyone to publicly insult him. Adams didn’t practice what he preached, though; he enjoyed insulting people, repeatedly writing to friends that Alexander Hamilton was a “bastard brat of a Scotch ped[d]ler.” After he flew into a rage at a Cabinet meeting, his secretary of war resigned. Adams was still mad a few days later and fired his secretary of state.
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He even called George Washington a “muttonhead” and “too illiterate, unlearned, unread, for his station and reputation.”
Speaking of Washington, in 1796, freshman congressman and future president Andrew Jackson was so mad about Washington’s policies that when the first president delivered his final address to Congress, Jackson refused to applaud.
Jackson was also involved in a number of duels as a younger man. As president, he generally confined his outbursts to insults and threats, like proposing to hang his vice president, John C. Calhoun. There was one (perhaps understandable) exception in 1835. While Jackson was leaving the Capitol, a man attempted to shoot him. Both of the would-be assassin’s pistols failed. Jackson proceeded to beat the ever-loving daylights out of him with a cane until a congressman pulled the president off the guy.
Warren G. Harding is little remembered now, and if he is, it’s usually related to the recent revelation that he fathered a child with a mistress. But he also allegedly attacked his head of the Veteran’s Bureau, Charles Forbes, who was getting kickbacks for government contracts. A visitor arriving early for an appointment found Harding with his hands around Forbes’s throat, shouting “you double-crossing bastard!” according to a widespread rumor at the time. The president only released Forbes when he realized they were no longer alone.
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Historian Rosemary Stevens points to an unknown journalist as the likely “visitor” who told the story. True or not, she wrote, Harding and his aides never denied it, believing it made him look good.
More memorable presidents had bad tempers, too. Historian Mark Perry, writing for Politico Magazine, described Dwight D. Eisenhower’s struggles to control his rage. When angry, he would try to calm himself down by reciting a proverb or writing down names to put in an “anger drawer.” He even took up golf to help him mellow out.
Still, White House staff called him “the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang,” Perry wrote, and he once got so mad on the golf course that he threw a sand wedge and nearly broke another man’s leg.
At least Eisenhower tried. Lyndon B. Johnson seemed to savor scaring pretty much everyone around him. He yelled at, cursed at and loomed over aides and other politicians on the daily. Once during an off-the-record briefing, when journalists pressed him about why the United States was fighting the Vietnam War, he exposed himself and said, “This is why.” Amazingly, none of the reporters present said a word about it at the time – perhaps respecting the off-the-record agreement, or maybe just because they were so afraid of Johnson.
When Richard M. Nixon found out about the Watergate break-in in 1972, he threw an ashtray in a rage, according to testimony from aide Charles Colson. A few months later, Nixon got so annoyed with his press secretary, Ron Ziegler, outside an event that he stuck his finger in Ziegler’s chest, physically turned him around and then shoved him away – in full view of Dan Rather, who soon reported the incident on CBS News.
Nixon railed about “Jewish cabals” and “f---ing academics” and frequently made racist remarks about a variety of ethnic groups. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said several times, “If the president had his way, we’d have a nuclear war every week,” according to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their book “The Final Days.”
In the nights before his resignation, Nixon began drinking heavily and talking to paintings of other presidents. The secretary of defense was so concerned he told generals not to follow any orders from Nixon without checking with him first — a move that was almost certainly unconstitutional, though perhaps understandable when your commander in chief is having a chat with a picture of a dead guy.
A few presidents have blown up at one another in the flesh. Both Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt could be vindictive, and when the latter beat the former in the 1932 presidential election, they spent months fighting over policies during the transition. This was back when new presidents weren’t inaugurated until March, so the conflict lasted four months.
Hoover thought Roosevelt was “ignorant” and a “madman” and felt his New Deal plans were doomed. He released their terse telegrams to the public. At a White House tea gathering with their families, they got into a shouting match. Roosevelt said his son wanted to punch the outgoing president in the face. The night before Roosevelt was set to take office, Hoover called him over and over again, well past midnight, to keep arguing.
The next morning, on the way to Roosevelt’s inauguration, Hoover refused even to look at the president-elect, let alone speak to him. The episode was long seen as perhaps the bitterest moment in the history of peaceful transfers of presidential power.
That is, until the 2020 election and Trump, who to this day has not conceded to President Biden. | 2022-07-01T12:02:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Before Trump, presidents from Jackson to Nixon had rages, tantrums - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/01/donald-trump-ketchup-angry-presidents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/01/donald-trump-ketchup-angry-presidents/ |
The Supreme Court strikes again — this time at tribal sovereignty
By Gregory Ablavsky
Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese
Sasafane stands with a protest sign in Tulsa in response to the Supreme Court's ruling June 29 that Oklahoma can prosecute non-Native Americans for crimes committed on tribal land when the victim is Native American. (Manuela Soldi/Tulsa World via AP)
Gregory Ablavsky is a professor of law and Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese is an assistant professor of law at Stanford Law School.
Amid many momentous decisions from the Supreme Court in the final week of its term, the importance of Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta — a jurisdictional fight involving Indian reservations — may go overlooked. But its effects will reach far beyond Oklahoma and its land disputes.
The 5-to-4 decision, released Wednesday, blunts the effects of the court’s 2020 ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which reinforced that much of Oklahoma was, legally, Indian country, where many crimes were beyond the reach of the state and its laws. With its new, sweeping ruling, the court reinstates a piece of Oklahoma’s pre-McGirt power over this territory by upending the law on reservations throughout the country.
The court held Wednesday that all states have, as a matter of state sovereignty, the power to prosecute non-Indian crimes within Native lands. And in a bold claim that departs from centuries of federal Indian law precedent, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, “Indian country is part of the State, not separate from the State.”
To put it bluntly, this decision is an act of conquest. And it could signal a sea change in federal Indian law, ushering in a new era governed by selective ignorance of history and deference to state power.
The majority opinion describes the question of state jurisdiction over crimes as having “newfound significance” only after McGirt and further insists that the “exercise of state jurisdiction here would not infringe on tribal self-government.”
This is hardly the first struggle over state power in Indian country. Native peoples have long fought desperately to prevent state interference on tribal lands.
In McGirt, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s opinion eloquently begins, “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise.” To understand Castro-Huerta, we must look to why the Trail of Tears happened in the first place.
In the 1830s, Southern states including Georgia wanted Indian land. They aggressively claimed jurisdiction over Native territory within their borders so they could stamp out tribal communities. Seeking to expel non-Indian missionaries aiding the Cherokee, Georgia made it a crime for any non-Indian to be on Cherokee land without the state’s permission.
The Cherokee Nation challenged Georgia’s law and took its case to the Supreme Court. In Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in 1832 that the Constitution granted the federal government exclusive power to manage relations with Native nations. The criminal laws of Georgia, he held, “have no force” on Cherokee land because the Cherokee Nation remained a “nation” — “a distinct community, occupying its own territory” that, despite being part of the United States, did “not thereby cease to be sovereign and independent.”
Georgia ignored the court, sold Cherokee lands and sent in its militia. In despair, some Cherokees signed a treaty agreeing to be removed to present-day Oklahoma, with a promise that their new lands would remain free from state control. Others refused, only to be forced at bayonet point.
Despite its brutal aftermath, and subsequent erosions at the margins, Worcester’s hard-won holding — that Native nations remain independent of the states — has remained good law, until now.
The Castro-Huerta court picked up where Georgia left off, claiming that “the Worcester-era understanding of Indian country as separate from the State was abandoned” later in the 1800s.
As scholars who have dedicated our lives to studying this area of law, we are baffled. When and how did this supposed abandonment happen? The majority relies not on Founding-era understandings or canonical federal Indian law cases, but on cherry-picked ancillary cases and late-19th-century arguments with subsequently overruled foundations.
This is not how originalism is supposed to work. Originalism would look to the Founding-era history that supported Worcester. As Gorsuch traces in his Castro-Huerta dissent, this context underscores the importance of tribal independence from state law in ensuring peace in the early days of the republic. “Truly,” Gorsuch wrote, “a more ahistorical and mistaken statement of Indian law would be hard to fathom.”
Now, as in the 1830s, jurisdiction is about power. Then, states sought to control Indian country not to protect Native people but to erode tribal sovereignty. Perhaps today, states will choose not to use their newly conferred power to usurp tribal authority over their lands. But there is good reason to doubt this.
For example, last week there were scenarios in which tribes or the federal government could protect access to reproductive care on tribal lands. Now, following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, there is nothing to stop a surrounding state from entering tribal lands and prosecuting non-Indian doctors or women — no matter what the tribe has to say about it.
We hope that much of this unnecessarily broad opinion will be interpreted narrowly and carefully by future courts. But Castro-Huerta is more than a jurisdictional dispute. It is, like the other cases decided in the final week of the court’s term, a radical remaking of current law that casts aside foundational precedent — and could have profound consequences for Native nations and their authority. | 2022-07-01T12:02:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court strikes again — this time at tribal sovereignty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/castro-huerta-oklahoma-supreme-court-tribal-sovereignty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/castro-huerta-oklahoma-supreme-court-tribal-sovereignty/ |
A banner reading "World help us" is displayed on the covered and protected monument of Olga of Kiev, in central Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 30.
Iuliia Mendel is a journalist and former press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On June 25, Russian forces launched missile strikes at Kyiv, hitting an apartment complex and playground and killing at least one, while injuring several others. Two days later, a Russian airstrike on a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk left at least 20 people dead.
For Ukrainians, it was yet another harrowing week that will leave lasting scars. After four months of this war, I can now tell the difference between explosions from the air defense shooting down a missile and a missile reaching its target. I shudder at loud noises, and I know that is just one way the war will live in people’s hearts and minds long after it is over.
Indeed, emotional trauma has become a part of life for millions of Ukrainians after the brutal Russian invasion of our country. Signs of post-traumatic stress disorder — including strong emotional reactions, reliving painful memories, insomnia, detachment and anxiety — have become commonplace and are palpable all around.
Alina Drobashko, a fitness trainer, is originally from the Donbas region. She delivered her second child in Kyiv in early March, when Russians were trying to capture the city. The doctors refused to give her epidural anesthesia so she could go down into the bomb shelter in case the sirens began ringing. She begged for, and ultimately received, anesthesia and prayed that there would not be a missile attack.
“When the siren sounds, I get very anxious inside,” Drobashko shares. “I don’t like planes, I don’t like when military planes or helicopters fly over. My body reacts, it shrinks, as if a fist beats inside my chest.”
Some Ukrainians hear the terrifying noise even when it is not there, are overwhelmed by recurring memories or feel fear at any loud sound. This is also true for Ukrainian children, describes Maria Hrabovska, a lawyer from the Kyiv region, who took her 7- and 11-year-old children abroad during the hottest period of the war.
She explains that, while in Europe, she could tell which children she encountered were Ukrainian. “As soon as a plane flew over, they either shrank or fell on the ground," says Hrabovska, who recently returned home.
Psychologist Kateryna Artyushenko says that PTSD often begins to show itself four to six months after a traumatizing event. She took a course organized by a charity fund, Hope Around the World, so she could volunteer providing psychological help for those with PTSD. Artyushenko tells me kids cope faster than adults. But at any age, people who have endured deep trauma can find themselves unable to do the everyday things that bring joy, and instead live in expectation of fear and anxiety.
“It happens because of negative memories that flood in. Some people don't know how to control them,” Artyushenko explains. “They recollect again and again an explosion, a missile flying over, a plane, seeing a corpse or blood and cannot control the memory.”
This is what Maksym Chaikovskyi remembers of his first brush with peaceful life when he came back from the front line in Donbas in 2014.
“I came back to Kyiv and was walking on the streets and watching the roofs. I was looking for snipers there,” he recounts.
Back then, PTSD was a new concept to many Ukrainians, and not discussed as openly. Chaikovskyi worked to treat his condition and later helped other soldiers cope with nightmares and uncontrollable flashbacks. He lost one of his legs defending Donbas but, in 2022, he still joined the military defense unit and fought to protect Kyiv when Russians were attacking during the early months of war. He knows that soon, more work will need to be done to support all the military and volunteers who experienced life on the battlefields.
“Soldiers appreciated when they were talking to someone who experienced the battlefield, experienced the same that they went through,” Chaikovskyi explains. “They began to trust and reveal emotions.”
When he returned from his first experience with war in Donbas, he heard many similar stories about how people were not able to cope with the trauma and started drinking too much alcohol, dissolved existing relationships or became aggressive. Many were drawn back to the war.
Artem Dzhepko, who has turned into a military reporter and covers this war in different regions, understands the “attraction” that comes from the focus and sense of heroism on the front lines.“In war, everything is very simple, there are no half-tones there,” Dzhepko says. “The enemy is there, we are here, they are bad, we are good. And when we return to Kyiv, we understand that life is ‘cleaner’ at war.”
Millions of Ukrainians — both on and off the battlefield, in Ukraine or displaced elsewhere — will need long-term support to cope and heal from the violence they have lived through. And despite the work of many compassionate psychologists and supporters like Artyushenko and Chaikovskyi, these wounds cannot be fully confronted as the war rages on and people are re-traumatized over and over again.
Ukraine must win this war. And then, individually and collectively, we will have to face the long road to recovering from the physical and emotional wounds. | 2022-07-01T12:03:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Flashbacks, anxiety and PTSD: Trauma is all around us in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/ukraine-trauma-ptsd-recovery-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/ukraine-trauma-ptsd-recovery-war/ |
Russian activist and Post contributing columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza attends in October. (ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images)
PRETRIAL DETENTION CENTER 5, Moscow — June is my favorite month in Moscow. Summer has finally arrived, but the heat is not as overwhelming as it can be in July or August. The days are long. And the Boulevard Ring — the circular road around the center of the city — is covered with the rich foliage of lindens, poplars and maples. The Boulevard Ring is among the most picturesque areas of Moscow; there was a time when I took the tram along it every day, to school and back. In recent years I haven’t taken it very often, but on the day of my arrest in April, I happened to drive home along the ring, as if saying farewell.
It’s June in Moscow, but I don’t get to see much of it. The view from my cell window looks out on to a barbed wire fence. The exercise yard is covered by a roof, with only a narrow strip of the sky visible beneath it. The prisoner vans in which I get transported have no windows. The only glimpse I get of the sun and of the treetops is during the 10 seconds or so that I am escorted, in handcuffs, from the prisoner van to the detainee holding room of the Basmanny District Court, which rubber-stamps the extension of my arrest every two months. These 1o seconds — and again on the way back — are almost worth the exhausting day-long trip in a hot, overpacked van that distributes prisoners to various Moscow courts.
The most important bonus, of course, would be to see my friends and colleagues, even if only through the glass of the cage in which defendants are kept during the court’s deliberations. At the hearing in early June — the one that extended my arrest through mid-August — the court honored the prosecution’s request to ban any spectators, including journalists and diplomats, from the room. It was a scene reminiscent of the dissident trials of the Soviet era. Even if the outcome is predetermined, the last thing the Kremlin needs is to have the uncomfortable truth about its bloody war in Ukraine publicly voiced in a courtroom in downtown Moscow.
It is this truth that is being meticulously hidden from the Russian public. Since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion in February, more than 3,000 websites, both Russian and foreign, were blocked by the government censorship agency by early May for violating its order to only report “official information” — that is, the Kremlin’s propaganda message — about the war. More than 200 media outlets have been blocked or shut down altogether — among them Echo of Moscow radio, TV Rain and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta , which have stood as the last major bastions of media freedom in Russia. (Novaya Gazeta’s editor in chief, Dmitry Muratov, was last year’s co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.)
Parallel to his stuttering invasion of Ukraine, Putin has conducted a highly effective blitzkrieg against what remains of political freedoms in Russia, turning his regime from highly authoritarian to near-totalitarian almost overnight. As someone who now has to endure Orwellian “news” programs on Russian state television on a daily basis, I can judge for myself the skillfulness of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, which successfully manipulates tens of millions.
This is a point worth stressing — especially to those Western commentators who continue to play into Putin’s hands by uncritically repeating Kremlin claims of “overwhelming public support” in Russia for the war. The fact is that most Russians are not aware of the horrendous war crimes being committed by Putin’s forces in Ukraine.
Propaganda is not the only reason; repression is another. Anyone who publicly criticizes Putin’s war in Ukraine could face arrest and years of imprisonment — as I now do under one of the hastily instituted new articles of the acriminal code. There are already more than 200 criminal cases connected to antiwar protests or the “distribution” of antiwar information — and more than 2,100 cases under the parallel defamation clause in the code of administrative offenses. Those arrested or charged include journalists, lawmakers, mayors, artists, clergymen, teachers, police employees — and many others in Russia who refused to stay silent in the face of Putin’s aggression, even at the cost of near-certain imprisonment. In all, there have been more than 16,300 police detentions at antiwar protests across Russia since the start of the invasion.
Each of the thousands of Russian antiwar protesters is standing up not only for the people of Ukraine and for the international rule of law but also for the future of our own country. Each one is giving another reason to hope that a renewed, reformed post-Putin Russia can one day take its place in the community of democratic nations — and in a Europe that would finally become whole, free and at peace.
And even if I cannot see the outside world from my cell, and only catch small glimpses of the sun on my way to court, I still believe this future will one day come.
More on Vladimir Kara-Murza
The truths Vladimir Kara-Murza spoke that Putin wants suppressed
Evgenia Kara-Murza: My husband is in a Russian jail for speaking the truth | 2022-07-01T12:03:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Vladimir Kara-Murza: Prison doesn’t give me many views of the sun - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/vladimir-karamurza-letter-from-prison-june-moscow/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/vladimir-karamurza-letter-from-prison-june-moscow/ |
3 takeaways from the Supreme Court's big climate ruling
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we're thinking critically about how we frame climate stories. But first:
For activists, the Supreme Court's big climate ruling could have been worse
The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, removing a key tool in the federal government's toolbox for tackling climate change.
The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the majority that the EPA lacks the authority to make sweeping changes to the nation's power sector without explicit approval from Congress. Justice Elena Kagan penned a scathing dissent for the court's liberals.
By now, you've probably read a variety of takes on the ruling, including my reporting and stories by our Washington Post colleagues Robert Barnes and Dino Grandoni.
Rather than rehashing that coverage, we're bringing you a fresh look at three main takeaways from the decision, including its implications for the power sector and the planet:
1. It wasn't climate activists' worst nightmare
Instead, the justices said the agency cannot resurrect President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, a now-defunct rule that would have forced utilities to engage in “generation shifting,” or switching from coal-fired power generation to natural gas or renewable energy.
“The West Virginia decision is damaging but still leaves many tools available to EPA, other federal agencies, states, cities and the private sector to cut greenhouse gas emissions,” Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School, said in an email. “It’s a bad bump but far from the end of the road.”
Cara Horowitz, a professor at UCLA School of Law, agreed.
While the decision restricts the EPA's power, it still “preserves large swaths of EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases across a range of sources,” she said in a statement. “In some ways I’m actually relieved. With this court we were bracing for almost anything, so this could have been worse.”
Harvard Law School's Jody Freeman:
Seeing some misleading media accounts suggesting EPA now can't regulate GHGs. That's NOT true. EPA can regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act, set standards for cars/trucks; oil and gas; AND new & existing power plants. Can't do generation shifting -- which EPA already expected.
— Jody Freeman (@JodyFreemanHLS) June 30, 2022
2. America is ditching coal anyway
Regardless of the ruling, the United States is moving away from coal, as the chief executives of electric utilities pledge to abandon the dirtiest fossil fuel, our colleague Steven Mufson reports this morning.
U.S. coal production dropped 35 percent between 2015 and 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The Sierra Club's anti-coal campaign contends that 357 coal-fired power plants have shut down, with 173 remaining.
The Clean Power Plan was supposed to shrink coal's share of U.S. power generation to 27 percent by 2030; instead it fell to 21.8 percent last year, according to the Environmental Integrity Project.
“We don’t really see that there would be any immediate impact on our transition plans,” said Vicky Sullivan, director of climate policy at Duke Energy. “We still plan to transition out of coal by 2035 and we don’t see the Supreme Court’s decision having a material impact on that.”\
3. Republican attorneys general are just getting started
In the majority opinion, Roberts invoked the major questions doctrine, which says that federal agencies need explicit authorization from Congress to decide issues of “major economic and political significance.”
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) made clear on Thursday that he plans to wield the major questions doctrine to continue challenging President Biden's climate agenda.
“West Virginia is ready for President Biden’s workarounds,” he said at a news conference. “We took them all the way up to the Supreme Court and we beat them this time. And we are prepared to do it again, again and again.”
In particular, Morrisey hinted that he plans to sue over the Securities and Exchange Commission's recent proposal to require all publicly traded companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from climate change. “That would also fall into the major questions category where the Biden administration is trying to transform all these agencies and turn them into an environmental regulator,” he said.
Offshore drilling plan may focus on Gulf, excluding other waters
The Interior Department has recommended to the White House that any new offshore oil and gas auctions over the next five years be in the Gulf of Mexico, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, Jarrett Renshaw and Nichola Groom report for Reuters.
The plan, which was due to be released on Thursday, is not yet publicly available. It is unclear whether the proposal will follow Interior’s suggestions and focus solely on the Gulf, where the fossil fuel industry has had a huge presence for decades, or whether the administration will include other regions such as the Arctic.
Interior held its most recent offshore lease sale for the Gulf of Mexico in November, but a federal judge later blocked it, ruling the agency had failed to account for its impact on climate change. The department cannot hold additional sales until the new plan is in place.
Interior raises $22 million from onshore lease sales
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management on Thursday raised about $22 million from its first oil and gas lease sales on public lands, Nichola Groom and Liz Hampton report for Reuters.
The oil and gas industry bid on nearly 55 percent of the roughly 130,000 acres in play, according to a review of the results on online auction site EnergyNet.
More than 90 percent of the acreage offered was in Wyoming, which accounted for $12.9 million of the winning bids. Smaller auctions in Montana and North Dakota brought in $7.2 million, with auctions in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado and Nevada making up the balance.
Last year, the BLM increased the royalty fees that oil and gas companies must pay to drill on public lands. The agency has not yet released official results from the lease sales, which will probably include the names of winning bidders.
Rep. Pallone urges Biden to halt oil exports to lower gas prices
House Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) on Thursday sent a letter to President Biden pushing him to halt crude oil exports in an effort to boost domestic supply and help lower gasoline prices amid the war in Ukraine.
In the letter, Pallone thanked Biden for his attempts to address record fuel costs while urging him to restore a pause on the export of crude oil. In 2015, the Republican-controlled Congress repealed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act's crude oil export ban, which had been in effect for more than 40 years.
“Stopping crude oil exports would increase the domestic supply of oil available to U.S. refiners and would consequently help reduce prices at the pump here at home,” Pallone wrote in the letter. “I, therefore, urge you to exercise your authority to halt the export of U.S. crude oil, except for those exports that directly help Ukraine and other U.S. allies weather the effects of Russian aggression.”
Ahead of President Biden’s July visit to Saudi Arabia, the kingdom and its oil-exporting allies on Thursday agreed to slightly increase crude oil output while waiting to see if additional spare capacity would be needed in light of Russian oil embargoes and other output disruptions in countries such as Libya or Nigeria, The Post’s Steven Mufson reports.
OPEC Plus — a combination of the 13-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and an informal group of non-OPEC members led by Russia — met virtually and extended an earlier decision to add 648,000 barrels a day to oil markets in July and August. Virtually all of that would come from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
During his visit, Biden is expected to push the kingdom to take action to lower oil prices by increasing capacity. But some energy analysts say there are production shortfalls in many OPEC states, raising questions about the size of OPEC's spare capacity.
When asked at a news briefing in Spain whether he would ask the crown prince and other regional leaders to raise oil production, Biden said “No, I’m not going to ask them.” But he added: “I’ve indicated to them that I thought they should be increasing oil production, generically — not to the Saudis particularly.”
Think U.S. gas prices are high? Here’s how far $40 goes around the world. — Alexa Juliana Ard, Ruby Mellen, Steven Rich and Júlia Ledur for The Post
San Antonio had 17 days of triple-digit heat in June. There’s usually two. — Ian Livingston for The Post
Fireworks could have ‘devastating’ effects during 4th of July celebrations, Bay Area fire officials warn — Annie Vainshtein for the San Francisco Chronicle
Today’s first @washingtonpost TikTok features heat waves, climate change, and FANTASTIC disco song:https://t.co/DXEgNW4LSS pic.twitter.com/duACan1znz
10:45 AMNoted: Trump wanted to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, for made-for-TV moment
10:43 AMNoted: Texas thrusts itself into battle over personal freedom | 2022-07-01T12:03:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 3 takeaways from the Supreme Court's big climate ruling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/3-takeaways-supreme-court-big-climate-ruling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/3-takeaways-supreme-court-big-climate-ruling/ |
Post Politics Now Biden to keep abortion ruling in spotlight by meeting with Democratic governors
Analysis: For activists, Supreme Court’s climate ruling could have been worse
On our radar: Biden to huddle with Democratic governors on abortion
On our radar: The Trump ‘playbook’ on witness testimony
Noted: Trump wanted to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, for made-for-TV moment
Noted: Texas thrusts itself into battle over personal freedom
President Biden waves on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday after returning from a trip to Europe to meet with foreign leaders. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Today, back from a six-day trip to Europe, President Biden plans to meet virtually from the White House with a group of Democratic governors who are moving to protect abortion access in their states in the wake of last week’s decision by the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. The meeting will keep an issue in the spotlight that Democrats are hoping will drive up voter turnout in November.
It comes a day after Biden, at a news conference in Madrid, chastised the Supreme Court for “outrageous behavior” and said he would support an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rules to make it easier to write abortion rights protections into law — a plan a couple of key Democrats are resisting. Biden, meanwhile, celebrated the swearing-in of his nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, on Thursday.
1 p.m. Eastern time: Biden convenes a virtual meeting with Democratic governors to discuss efforts to protect access to reproductive health care. Watch live here.
1 p.m. Eastern: First lady Jill Biden visits a clinic in Richmond to urge parents to vaccinate their children under age 5 now that coronavirus vaccines are available for young children.
2:30 p.m. Eastern: Biden leaves the White House en route to Camp David for the holiday weekend.
In a decision handed down on the final day of its highly significant term, the Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, removing a key tool in the federal government’s toolbox for tackling climate change. The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the majority that the EPA lacks the authority to make sweeping changes to the nation’s power sector without explicit approval from Congress.
Writing in The Climate 202, our colleague Maxine Joselow writes that the decision actually wasn’t the worst nightmare for climate activists. Per Maxine:
Instead, the justices said the agency cannot resurrect President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a now-defunct rule that would have forced utilities to engage in “generation shifting,” or switching from coal-fired power generation to natural gas or renewable energy.
You can read more from Maxine here.
In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading antiabortion group, says her group’s priority now is “helping states be as ambitious as they can be” in restricting the procedure.
Dannenfelser spoke with The Early 202, helmed by our colleagues Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell.
“My biggest concern is states that have a plug in the system, like a bad governor, or a handful of legislators that are the problem,” Dannenfelser said.
Among those she cited: North Carolina, where Democrat Roy Cooper sits in the governor’s mansion.
“There’s a whole group of battleground states — states like Virginia and North Carolina,” Dannenfelser said. “In North Carolina, there’s a governor who would never sign a 15-week limit. We need a new governor. In Virginia, we need a couple of votes in the legislature in order to pass the governor’s 15-week, pain-capable proposal.”
You can read the rest of the interview with Dannenfelser here.
Back from a six-day trip to Europe, President Biden plans to meet virtually from the White House on Friday with a group of Democratic governors who are moving to protect abortion access in their states following last week’s decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
According to the White House, attendees will include Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
The meeting provides an opportunity for Biden to continue to highlight his opposition to the court ruling and talk about what avenues are available to protect reproductive rights in its aftermath.
Speaking at a news conference in Madrid on Thursday, following a NATO conference, Biden called for altering Senate filibuster rules to codify into law abortion rights and privacy protections, the most aggressive position he has staked out on reproductive rights and one that could reshape a roiling national debate ahead of the midterm elections.
Biden is also facing calls from Democratic lawmakers and advocates to declare a national health emergency to increase financial resources and flexibility in states that continue to allow abortion access.
At Tuesday’s hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chairwoman, said that committee members have asked each witness connected to Donald Trump’s administration or campaign whether they have been contacted by former colleagues or others who have “attempted to influence or impact their testimony.” Cheney described two responses that she said raised “significant concern.”
The Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman, Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany report this is hardly the first time something like this has happened:
Our colleagues quote former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who said he was cajoled in 2018 ahead of offering damaging information to federal prosecutors.
Toward the end of 2020, President Donald Trump began raising a new idea with aides: that he would personally lead a march to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig report that Trump brought it up repeatedly with key advisers in the Oval Office, according to a person who talked with him about it. They write:
The president told others he wanted a dramatic, made-for-TV moment that could pressure Republican lawmakers to support his demand to throw out the electoral college results showing that Joe Biden had defeated him, the person said.
The excursion that almost happened came into clearer focus this week, as the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, presented explosive testimony and records detailing Trump’s fervent demands to lead his supporters mobbing the seat of government. Though Trump’s trip was ultimately thwarted by his own security officers, the new evidence cuts closer to the critical question of what he knew about the violence in store for that day.
You can read our colleagues full story here.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s historic decision to overturn of Roe v. Wade, Texas appears poised to cement its place at the center of the battle over personal freedoms that have been guaranteed by law for decades.
The Post’s Annie Gowen reports that leaders in the Republican-dominated state have enacted one of the most restrictive abortion policies in the nation and been in the forefront of devising measures that would criminalize parents’ efforts to seek medical treatment for their transgender children. More from Annie:
Now, the state’s conservative attorney general, Ken Paxton, has signaled that he is willing to revisit the state’s anti-sodomy law, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003 to protect intimacy between same-sex partners.
“People are still reeling from Roe, and we’re in an incredibly toxic political environment right now,” said Oni Blair, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “But we need to recognize that nothing is off the table at this moment. All of our rights and liberties — from LGBTQ equality, voting and even contraception — could be at risk.” | 2022-07-01T12:03:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden to keep abortion ruling in spotlight by meeting with Democratic governors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/biden-abortion-democratic-governors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/biden-abortion-democratic-governors/ |
President Richard M. Nixon included Ted Williams (right) on one of his all-time baseball teams. (Bettmann Archive)
That effort, which also involved some of his soon-to-be-infamous aides, culminated with a nearly 3,000-word opus for the Associated Press, which appeared in newspapers across the country 50 years ago this Saturday. Nixon’s list — or lists, as it turned out — included many of the sport’s greatest stars (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson), but also some deep-cut surprises (Dick Groat, Bobo Newsom). Nixon, not especially remembered for his soft side, copped to “sentiment” playing a role in some of these unexpected selections.
“When you regard him as a sports writer, you can’t help feeling that he really ought to go back to being President of the United States,” New York Times sports columnist Red Smith wrote. “That’s a dreadful, difficult line to write.”
The 50th Anniversary of Watergate
Nixon’s baseball-writing journey originated from a pair of questions from RKO General Broadcasting reporter Cliff Evans on June 22 — five days after five burglars were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex. Evans first asked Nixon to name some of his favorite players, and Nixon reeled off five Hall-of-Famers: Williams, Robinson, Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial.
“Mr. President,” Evans followed up, “as the nation’s No. 1 baseball fan would you be willing to name your all-time baseball team?”
“Yes,” Nixon replied.
The next day, in a secretly recorded conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, the president approved a plan for the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate break-in. It became known as the “smoking gun” tape, and it helped lead to his resignation two years later.
President ‘all cranked up’
But even as he plotted in late June to thwart the Watergate probe, Nixon was working diligently on his baseball list — tapping White House aides such as Haldeman and press secretary Ron Ziegler, remembered in history for dismissing the Watergate break-in as a “third-rate burglary.”
Nixon collaborated on the baseball piece with his son-in-law, David Eisenhower, the grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, at Camp David — the White House retreat that Ike had named for him. On Sunday, June 25, they “opened the records books,” as Nixon later wrote in his story. David Eisenhower brought some baseball chops to the assignment, having worked for the Washington Senators in 1970.
“It was one of the most enjoyable things that I’ve done, because we had a fine afternoon with rain that afternoon at Camp David, and we couldn’t go outside,” Nixon recalled a few days later in a White House conversation with Evans, the RKO reporter. “So we pored over these numbers and names, and all the fascinating stories of the great men of baseball for two or three hours.”
Haldeman took notice. “The President all cranked up about his baseball all-time great story,” he dictated in an audio diary entry the next day. “Wants Ziegler to figure out how to handle it as a Nixon byline. He apparently dictated it yesterday at Camp David and has figured out a super all-time team. One prewar, one postwar, one for the National League, one for the American League.”
But as Timothy Naftali, a former director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, said in an interview, “That weekend he was actually concerned about the payoffs to the Watergate burglars. He was multitasking, and he was trying to keep himself busy, but there’s no doubt that that weekend he was scheming.”
Indeed, Haldeman’s diary recorded that Nixon had something else on his mind besides baseball.
“He got into a number of political things today … The problems on Watergate continue to multiply as John Dean runs into more and more FBI leads that he has to figure out ways to cope with,” Haldeman dictated, referring to the White House counsel, who would later testify that Nixon was directly involved in the Watergate coverup.
“The President got into quite a thing on his baseball piece he’s written for the AP, the all-time great teams. He dictated it Sunday afternoon and he’s spending an incredible amount of time today on the whole thing. Working out all the little details of which relief pitcher the American League prewar should be on, and all that sort of stuff. Kind of fascinating and not just a little amusing.”
That day — with White House domestic policy John D. Ehrlichman concerned about the “Watergate caper,” according to Haldeman — Nixon peppered Ziegler with questions about that AL relief pitcher, using Haldeman as an intermediary, a secretly recorded White House tape shows.
“The president said to ask you who the relief pitcher was for the American League prewar,” Haldeman said to Ziegler on a telephone call.
“Just a moment. The memo just came in, let me get it in,” Ziegler replied, then told someone in his office to get him a copy — “quickly.”
After retrieving the memo, the young press secretary said, “I’ve got three suggestions … Either Hugh Casey, or Mace Brown, or Doc Crandall. Now, I have their games won-and-lost and so forth you may want to look over.”
Ziegler reads each pitcher’s win-loss record, which Haldeman repeats to Nixon in a monotone voice, as if he’s taking down a delivery order. Then Nixon can be heard telling Haldeman to ask Ziegler about a Pittsburgh relief pitcher, and the call descends into an unintentional parody of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First.”
Haldeman: “What was the name of the Pittsburgh relief pitcher, Face? What’s his first name?”
Ziegler: “Mace Brown? Mace Brown.”
Haldeman: “No, the Pittsburgh relief pitcher whose last name is Face?”
Ziegler: “I haven’t the slightest idea, Bob, I don’t know a goddamn thing about baseball (laughs). Mace Brown, however, did pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.”
Haldeman: “We don’t want that one. Check that out. It’s a guy named Face. Pitched about 1950 for Pittsburgh.”
Ziegler: “But he wanted pre-war!”
Haldeman: “I’m asking a different question now: What is the name, the first name, of the Pittsburgh relief pitcher whose last name is Face?”
Ziegler: “All right, fine, good.”
Haldeman: “What is his first name?”
Ziegler: “Right on. I’ll get that right for you. Roger.”
Face’s first name, for the record, is Roy, and Nixon wound up choosing him as his post-World War II National League relief pitcher, while Mace Brown got the nod as the prewar NL relief pitcher. Both spent the majority of their careers with the Pirates, and had nearly identical (and not particularly all-time worthy) ERAs of 3.48 and 3.46, respectively.
“Nixon’s mind collected data in the way that later generations would engage in rotisserie baseball,” said Naftali, the director of New York University’s undergraduate public policy major and co-author of “Impeachment: An American History.”
“This was natural to him. Whether it was learning the statistics of his favorite ballplayer’s, or figuring out who might become secretary of state of some part of the Midwest, that’s how his mind worked.”
How one team became four
“To select a team of nine was just too hard for me to do,” he told Evans. His prewar teams started with 1925, when he first started following baseball in the sports pages as a 12-year-old boy; his other two teams covered the period from 1945-1970.
(“The President named 80 players to the nine positions which, in this period of galloping inflation, is still preposterous,” wrote Tim Horgan of the Boston Herald Traveler and Record American.)
Nixon’s story appeared in newspapers on July 2, 1972. The Post ran excerpts inside the sports section, with an AP byline, alongside a boyhood photo of a grinning David Eisenhower holding a baseball and sporting a Senators cap.
But other papers published the whole story with the byline, “By Richard M. Nixon,” including the New York Times, which ran the piece near the top of the front of the sports section. The newspaper also teased the story on the front page, which had the news of John Mitchell resigning as Nixon’s campaign manager.
Nixon began the article by calling the assignment “about as difficult a task as a President or any other baseball fan could possibly undertake,” but added that he got help from Eisenhower, “the most avid fan in the Nixon family.” The duo set out to write a list that would “stand up under the scrutiny” it would receive from sportswriters and baseball fans, the president wrote.
(Despite Nixon’s notorious contempt for journalists, he once stunned a White House reception full of 400 baseball VIPs, including Hall of Famers, all-stars and sportswriters, by telling them, “I just want you to know that I like the job I have, but if I had to live my life over again, I would have liked to have ended up as a sportswriter.”)
In addition to Ruth and Gehrig, his prewar teams included stars such as Joe Cronin, Joe DiMaggio, Lefty Grove and Hank Greenberg in the American League, and Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy Dean, Pie Traynor and Mel Ott in the National League. Nixon took a progressive view in selecting Satchel Paige as one of his AL pitchers, despite the fact that Paige, the great Negro Leagues star, didn’t pitch in the major leagues until his 40s.
“Every baseball man I have talked to tells me that Satchel Paige in his prime was as fast as Lefty Grove or Bob Feller,” he wrote.
Then there were the odd choices. Nixon admitted that “some sentiment enters into” his choice of Dick Groat — a good shortstop who had a lifetime batting average of .286 — as a reserve infielder. The president said that Groat was a roommate of his younger brother, Ed, at Duke University, and Nixon wrote he respected Groat as “fine player” and “leader of men.”
Bobo Newsom, meanwhile, compiled a lifetime 3.98 ERA but still earned a spot as one of five starting pitchers on Nixon’s prewar AL team.
“I must admit some sentiment in this respect since he pitched in Washington during the lean years when I attended baseball games as a Congressman and a Senator,” Nixon wrote.
‘New, Slow Boy on the Baseball Beat’
The day after Nixon’s story appeared, Red Smith of the Times panned it in a piece headlined, “New, Slow Boy on the Baseball Beat.”
“Allowing the cub two or three times as much space as a staff member would get, the New York Times published his essay in full Sunday, all 2,800 cliche‐ridden words,” Smith wrote. “Frankly, the new boy has a long way to go if he’s ever going to cut it in this department.”
“Above all, he's got to cover the assignment,” Smith wrote. “He was asked to pick his all‐time all‐star baseball team and he blew it. He picked four teams, with spares.”
The criticism didn’t stop Nixon. In 1992 — 18 years after resigning as president — the 79-year-old Nixon and Eisenhower updated their picks at a fundraising luncheon at the Nixon Presidential Museum in California, an event featuring a host of Hall of Famers. The Post called it “a cross between the Academy Awards and an old-timers game.” | 2022-07-01T12:23:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Richard M. Nixon picked his all-time baseball teams as Watergate simmered - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/richard-nixon-baseball-all-time-teams/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/richard-nixon-baseball-all-time-teams/ |
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic nomination to the Supreme Court inspired letters, art and other tributes, such as these cards from a third-grade class, as seen in her chambers on June 29 in Washington. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
Ketanji Brown Jackson’s history-making confirmation as the nation’s first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court inspired an outpouring of letters from schoolchildren throughout the country, colorful artwork and even a crocheted doll of the new justice, complete with tiny glasses, a string of pearls and black robe.
“More than anything, your position has brought me joy. I screamed down our school halls with joy!” wrote a high school teacher from Los Angeles.
“I think it’s cool you followed your dreams and did what you wanted without other people telling you what to do,” wrote a third-grader in a letter decorated with a rainbow-colored courthouse. “I bet it feels good to be the first.”
Jackson allowed The Washington Post a glimpse of some of the mail and other tokens of appreciation that have arrived at her judicial chambers at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since she was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the Senate in April.
Hundreds of letters, enough to fill a mail bin, and other mementos are being sorted and organized to be stored in the justice’s personal archive at the Supreme Court.
“You are the start of justice!” wrote a third-grade student in a letter illustrated with the scales of justice favoring women over men.
Jackson, a federal judge in D.C. for the past decade and a former federal public defender, is the eighth justice in the court’s 233-year history who is not a White man. She officially became a justice on Thursday afternoon in a small ceremony at the court, surrounded by her family and new colleagues — and by the retiring justice she replaces, Stephen G. Breyer.
The daughter of a school principal and an attorney, Jackson grew up in Florida, where she was a high school debate champion before attending Harvard. Her ascension to the Supreme Court does not significantly alter its 6-to-3 conservative bent because Jackson is replacing a liberal justice for whom she once was a law clerk.
But when Jackson takes the bench in the fall, the court will for the first time have four women.
The fan mail sent to her chambers reflected excitement over the milestone.
“You have set a standard for other women of color to follow!” wrote one high school student. Added another: “About time!” | 2022-07-01T12:36:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, an outpouring of fan mail and other tokens of admiration - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/01/ketanji-brown-jackson-fan-mail-letters-gifts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/01/ketanji-brown-jackson-fan-mail-letters-gifts/ |
France fetes the man who solved the Rosetta Stone mystery
By Mary Winston Nicklin
A statue by Auguste Bartholdi depicts Jean-François Champollion in the pose of Rodin’s “The Thinker.” (Photos by Mary Winston Nicklin for The Washington Post)
Deep in rural France, in a medieval courtyard in Figeac, I almost tripped on the Rosetta Stone. Unlike the surrounding sandstone houses and half-timbered facades, the enormous slab stands out in black granite, inscribed with three different scripts, including Egyptian hieroglyphics. This isn’t just a reproduction of the famous stone that unlocked the mysteries of ancient Egypt. This is a monumental work by American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth that pays homage to the town’s native son and hieroglyphics decipherer, Jean-François Champollion.
Two hundred years after this earth-shattering discovery, I went on a quest to learn about the man who cracked the code. From modest origins, Champollion would go on to determine the chronology of Egyptian pharaohs, launch the Egyptian antiquities department at the Louvre and help found the field of Egyptology — all before an untimely death at age 41. The decipherment is an extraordinary story of passion and perseverance, particularly considering he never even saw the real Rosetta Stone. France is throwing a party this year to celebrate.
Taking place all over the country, the bicentennial is a veritable Egyptomania fest of exhibits and events. Here’s a sample: The French National Library is hosting an ambitious show, three years in the making, featuring Champollion’s unpublished documents alongside spectacular artifacts; the Arab World Institute in Paris has opened a virtual-reality experience called “The Horizon of Khufu,” taking visitors “inside” the Great Pyramid; the Mucem in Marseille is staging “Pharaoh Superstars,” equating the fickle nature of the pharaohs’ posthumous fame to present-day pop culture; and the Louvre’s northern satellite in Lens will stage an autumn exhibit on hieroglyphics and Champollion’s story, accompanied by an “Egyptobus,” or mobile museum, touring the Pas-de-Calais region.
Stop to smell the roses in an unsung corner of Paris
But it’s Champollion’s birthplace that’s going all out, with a six-month program called “Eurêka!” Running through October, the cultural extravaganza includes concerts, movie screenings, theatrical shows, museum exhibits and seminars with leading Egyptologists. Restaurants are offering themed dishes, combining French and Egyptian flavors. There’s even an initiative whereby local Figeacois pay homage to Egypt in their shop windows. But perhaps the coolest part of all is the sound and light show that will be projected on the historical facades of the Place Champollion on Thursday and Saturday nights in July and August.
“Champollion was a child of the Enlightenment who illuminated the era,” says Hélène Lacipière, a city councilor and vice president in charge of culture and patrimony for Grand Figeac. “We designed ‘Eurêka!’ to showcase how this territory [an aeronautics hub] is one of invention and discovery. … We are simultaneously a land of traditions, heritage and innovation.”
Champollion retained a lifelong connection to Figeac. As I walked in his footsteps, I noticed myriad references to the great scholar, but I also fell under the charm of the town’s architecture and ambiance. Figeac had been a major market hub in the 12th to 14th centuries but later declined during the Hundred Years’ War and the Wars of Religion. By the 20th century, the buildings in the town center were degraded and falling apart. It was Mayor Martin Malvy who, in the 1970s, championed a policy of heritage preservation. Since then, this priority has enlivened the city center by retaining local businesses. The revitalized central district was classified with historical protected status in 1986, and Figeac was awarded the “city of art and history” label in 1990.
The medieval edifices are museum-quality, but an even bigger draw for visitors is the town’s authenticity: This is a vibrant place where people live and work. “The Saturday market is an institution,” says local guide Aymeric Kurzawinski. “It’s been taking place here in the same place for a thousand years.” Designed in metal in the Parisian Baltard style, the covered market on Place Carnot is flanked by businesses such as the Mas butchery, the Champollion bookstore and the popular Sphinx restaurant, with tables spilling across the pavement.
Equally as packed is Café Champollion on Place Champollion. It faces the Champollion Museum, which incorporates the house where the scholar was born in 1790. Dedicated to the history of the world’s writings, the museum has an eye-catching double facade: Behind the original stone, a copper wall is carved with letter cutouts, filtering the light.
The Napoleonic origins of Egyptomania
Pyramids, sphinx, mummies: Ancient Egypt exudes a powerful attraction. Since the days of the Greeks and Romans, academics have hypothesized about the civilization that flourished for nearly three millennia along the life-giving Nile. This intrigue has only deepened over the centuries, with blockbuster museum exhibits breaking attendance records (such as “Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh” held in Paris in 2019) and new discoveries fueling the fire (the most recent being the May archaeological find of 250 sarcophagi in a necropolis near Cairo).
But there was perhaps no greater frenzy for Egypt than after Napoleon Bonaparte’s failed military campaign in Egypt in 1798. Champollion was 7 years old when this general with Pharaonic ambitions embarked on the expedition. Along with his soldiers, Napoleon brought a team of about 160 scientists and artists to gather research. It was an officer’s discovery of a mysterious stone that would change the course of history. The stone was inscribed with three types of writing (Greek script, Demotic Egyptian and hieroglyphics), thought to convey the same message. When the French were defeated by the British in 1801, the Rosetta Stone was seized, along with other antiquities, and now has pride of place in the British Museum.
Upon Napoleon’s return to Paris, his scholars amassed their observations into publications that together were known as “Description of Egypt” (published between 1809 and 1829). The books spawned a craze of Egyptomania that’s still visible in Paris today: sphinx sculptures, Egyptian water fountains, architectural friezes outside the Passage du Caire. There are even references underground in the obelisks painted on the walls of the Catacombs. Soon Europe was also gripped by an academic frenzy — both collaborative and competitive — to decrypt the Rosetta Stone. It was the puzzle of the era, not unlike today’s foremost scientific enigmas: developing mRNA vaccines to combat a pandemic and seeking solutions to the climate crisis.
The power of writing
“How could we forget this writing which existed right before our eyes?” said Vanessa Desclaux, one of the three curators, at the April preview of the “Champollion Adventure” exhibit at the National Library of France. Yet when Pharaonic Egypt became Christianized in the 4th century, the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics was lost for about 1,500 years. Over time, the characters were perceived not as a type of writing, but as pictograms. “They were considered pagan, magical symbols with an obscure meaning,” said curator Hélène Virenque.
It was a mystery that Champollion devoted his life to solving. Strides had been made by European scholars, particularly Thomas Young in England, but it was Champollion who would ultimately crack the code by determining the phonetic sounds of hieroglyphics. He made the leap because of his knowledge of the Coptic language, which is considered the living link to ancient Egyptian. An obsessive polyglot, he had learned over a dozen languages as a child. “He had a unique skill in understanding Coptic,” said Guillemette Andreu-Lanoë, curator and honorary director of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre. “He also had a strong will, retracing his steps and going back over his mistakes.”
Throughout the 14-year process, he meticulously copied inscriptions from steles, statues and papyrus. His calligraphy was painstaking and perfect, much like the Egyptian scribes whose work on scrolls of papyrus was revered above that of all other professions. “Je tiens l’affaire!” (“I’ve got it!”) Champollion shouted to his brother when he finally solved the puzzle at age 32 on Rue Mazarine in Paris.
Running until July 24, the National Library exhibit was conceived as an immersion into the decipherer’s methodology and scientific approach, rather than a chronology of his life. His discovery wasn’t a flash of genius but the result of rigorous trial and error. “I sleep two or three times a week with the Rosetta inscription,” he wrote in June 1814. “So far I’ve only gained headaches and two or three words.” His color-coded pages are exhibited next to some of the artifacts he studied; other highlights include the Padiimenipet sarcophagus, the Prisse papyrus (nicknamed “the oldest book in the world”) and — my favorite — the sunglasses Champollion wore on his expedition.
The Louvre and its pyramid
Champollion’s discovery opened up an entire world. By studying Egyptian literature, scholars could understand millennia-old traditions, funerary rites and everyday life under the pharaohs. It was this approach that Champollion brought to the Louvre when King Charles X appointed him to oversee the newly acquired Egyptian collections.
“Champollion was revolutionary, because he obtained a place for ancient Egypt as a civilization,” says Vincent Rondot, director of the Egyptian antiquities department at the Louvre. “His accomplishment was to show the humanity behind the idea of Egypt, the global totality: the peasants who worked in the fields, the civil society, the pharaohs. … And because of this, he fundamentally changed humanity’s worldview.”
Under Champollion, the Louvre took a step toward its modern incarnation. “The 1827 inauguration of the Musée Egyptian was an important symbolic date because of the Louvre’s definitive transformation from the palace of the kings of France to a museum,” Rondot says. Now the world’s most-visited museum, the Louvre has an exceptional Egyptian arts collection, a reminder of which looms large in the vast courtyard. The glass-and-steel pyramid, designed by I.M. Pei as a new entrance and completed in 1988, was built with the exact proportions, on a smaller scale, as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The Louvre’s Egyptologists continue Champollion’s mission — even expanding our perspective into the African continent. For a decade, the Louvre sponsored archaeological excavations in the Nubian Desert of Sudan, and the mission resumes in 2022 at El-Hassa, not far from the pyramids of Meroë. Showing at the Louvre until July 25, the “Pharaoh of the Two Lands” exhibit reveals a trove of artifacts associated with the Kushite kings, who briefly ruled Egypt in the 8th century B.C. Having conquered their Egyptian conquerors, these “Black pharaohs” ruled over a kingdom stretching from the Mediterranean to present-day Khartoum.
A short walk from the Louvre’s pyramid is another important symbol of ancient Egypt: The Luxor Obelisk presides over the Place de la Concorde and one of the prettiest panoramas in Paris. Now a city icon, it was a diplomatic gift from Muhammad Ali, the viceroy and pasha who is considered the founder of modern Egypt. (In that era, the country’s antiquities were the direct property of the viceroy. It would be another passionate French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, who established Egypt’s antiquities service to safeguard heritage.) The viceroy initially offered two obelisks from Alexandria, the so-called Cleopatra’s needles, but Champollion suggested the Luxor Obelisks as a substitute, because of the exquisite quality of their hieroglyphics. (Instead the Alexandria obelisks were offered to Britain and the United States, and they can be found today in London on the Victoria Embankment and New York outside the Met in Central Park.)
The journey to transport the Luxor Obelisk to Paris was so long and expensive that the second never made the trip. (President François Mitterrand officially “returned” it to Egypt in 1981.) A flat-bottomed boat was custom-built in Toulon to fit under the Paris bridges, then there was a months-long wait for the Nile to flood, not to mention the technical installation in Paris that required three years. In fact, Champollion didn’t live to see it erected on the Place de la Concorde. He died in 1832, exhausted after the expedition to Egypt he finally made in 1828-1829. His tomb in Père-Lachaise Cemetery is marked with an obelisk.
Two centuries after Champollion’s illuminating achievement, the Luxor Obelisk has emerged from a six-month restoration that removed urban grime and pollution. The original pink color of the Aswan granite is once again visible, the hieroglyphics gloriously legible. The oldest monument in Paris — dating to the 13th century B.C. — now captures the light the way the ancient Egyptians intended.
Nicklin is a writer based in Paris. Her website is marywinstonnicklin.com. Find her on Twitter: @MaryWNicklin.
Mercure Figeac Viguier du Roy
52 Rue Emile Zola, Figeac
bit.ly/viguier-du-roy
This hotel is a heritage site beloved by locals who drop by for drinks or strolls in the garden. There are only 33 guest rooms, spread out in an ensemble of medieval houses, connected by courtyards and salons dressed in period feature. Contemporary decor pays tribute to Champollion, with references to writing. Rates from about $135 per night in summer.
La Racine et la Moelle
6 Rue du Consulat, Figeac
A favorite of the Figeacois, this friendly bistro is run by a French-Irish couple who previously trained in popular Paris restaurants. The menu focuses on seasonal ingredients sourced locally from producers. Open Tuesday through Saturday for lunch and dinner. (Closed Wednesday dinner.) Mains about $19.
Rue de Rivoli, Paris
louvre.fr/en
Champollion was the first curator of the Louvre’s Egyptian collections. “Pharaoh of the Two Lands,” which focuses on the Kushite kings who once ruled Egypt, runs until July 25. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and until 9:45 p.m. on Friday. Last entry one hour before closing. Closed Tuesday. Tickets about $18 per person. Free for visitors under 18.
National Library of France
Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, Galerie 2
Quai François Mauriac, East Entry
bit.ly/national-library-france
Located in the 13th arrondissement, the François-Mitterrand site of the National Library was designed by architect Dominique Perrault as towers resembling open books. The “Champollion Adventure” exhibit showcases Champollion’s manuscripts alongside loaned artifacts and prized items from the library’s collection. Exhibit open until July 24. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 7 p.m. Tickets about $9 per person; reduced-price tickets for students under 35, teachers and more about $7 per person.
“Eurêka!” in Greater Figeac
eureka-figeac.fr
Champollion’s birthplace is celebrating the bicentennial of the decipherment with a program of events concluding in October. Highlights include concerts, culinary dishes, a special exhibit at the Champollion museum, and a sound and light show. Check website for full program.
Arab World Institute
1 Rue des Fossés Saint-Bernard, Paris
011- 33-140-513-838
imarabe.org/en
The Jean Nouvel-designed landmark is hosting a virtual-reality experience called “The Horizon of Khufu: A Journey in Ancient Egypt,” developed in partnership with Peter Der Manuelian, an Egyptology professor at Harvard University and director of the Giza Project. Wearing a headset device, visitors take a 45-minute virtual trip inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Runs through Oct. 2. Open Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday until 7 p.m. Closed Monday. Tickets for virtual-reality experience about $31 per person.
99 Rue Paul Bert, Lens
louvrelens.fr/en
The first Louvre outpost, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, was built on a former coal mine. For the bicentennial, an exhibit called “Champollion: The Path of Hieroglyphics” will take place from Sept. 28 to Jan. 16. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Tuesday. Admission to the Galerie du Temps and Pavillon de Verre is free. Tickets for temporary exhibitions about $12 per person. Tickets for people 18 to 25 about $6 per person. Free for under 18.
7 Promenade Robert Laffont (Esplanade du J4), Marseille
mucem.org/en
Mucem — Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean is running the “Pharaoh Superstars” exhibit until Oct. 17. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Tuesday. Closes at 8 p.m. from July 9 to Aug. 30. Tickets about $12 per person.
Champollion Museum
45 Rue Champollion, Vif
bit.ly/champollion-museum
Champollion was raised by his brother Jacques-Joseph in the town of Vif, and their former home is a museum. The permanent exhibit shows how they contributed to the founding of Egyptology. During this bicentennial year, “Restoring Ancient Egypt” shows Jean-Claude Golvin’s watercolors until Sept. 18. Additional Champollion exhibits planned in the Isère department in the fall. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. until Oct. 31; closed for lunch, 12:30 p.m. to 1:30. Closed Monday. Free entry. Reservations recommended.
Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon
20 Place des Terreaux, Lyon
mba-lyon.fr/en
Running from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, the “François Artaud — Jean-François Champollion” exhibit will show how the museum’s first director aided Champollion in his research. Open Wednesday to Monday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Tuesday. General admission about $8 per person; free for those under 18.
11 Place Marcelin Berthelot, Paris
bit.ly/college-de-france
Champollion was appointed the first chair of Egyptology here in 1831. His statue, channeling Rodin’s “The Thinker,” is found in the courtyard. A Champollion exhibit will take place Sept. 15 to Oct. 28.
france.fr/en | 2022-07-01T12:37:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | France celebrates Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered Rosetta Stone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/01/france-rosetta-stone-egyptology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/01/france-rosetta-stone-egyptology/ |
By Tamar Haspel
I’ve been writing this column, trying to find out what’s really true about food, for some eight years now. In that time, I’ve dug into some questions that turned out to have surprising answers.
You can always gauge exactly how surprising by the number of people who call you an idiot on social media, and that’s pretty much what happens when you try to put a stake through the heart of zombie ideas. What doesn’t happen is that the ideas actually die.
I am shocked, shocked that I have persuaded basically nobody that these four things are true. But the fight continues.
1. We eat junk food because it’s cheap.
If there is just one idea I would like to exile from food discourse, it’s this one: We eat junk because of subsidies.
Junk food is cheap! That’s because the building blocks of junk food — refined grains, sugar, oil — are cheap. But those building blocks are cheap because of the inherent qualities of the plant, not because the government has been subsidizing them for decades.
If you have any doubt about this, check out the estimates that agriculture schools publish of costs to produce an acre of corn versus an acre of broccoli.
According to an estimate from researchers in the University of California system, the cost to produce a 23-pound box of broccoli is about $15.
According to an Iowa State estimate, the cost to produce a 56-pound bushel of corn is about $4.
And the corn is way more food. That bushel makes 1,500 tortillas (6-inch tortillas, 60 calories), each with a quarter-cent’s worth of corn. The box of broccoli makes 70 2-cup servings (roughly 150 grams, 60 calories), each with 21 cents’ worth of broccoli. Yeah, we’re not eating tortillas; we’re eating Twinkies. The example is just to bring the inherent cheapness of the ingredients into perspective. I’ve talked to a lot of economists about this over the years, and most tell me that subsidies aren’t responsible for more than about 10 percent of the price of commodity crops. And since food costs are typically 10 to 15 percent of the cost of processed food, that’s 1 percent of the price of your Twinkie.
We eat Twinkie-esque foods because food companies with bazillion-dollar budgets and no concerns about our health stay up late trying to figure out how to make cheap food irresistible. And, guess what? They’ve gotten very good at it.
2. Diet soda is totally fine.
There is zero evidence that diet soda is bad for us.
Oh wait, except for those big observational studies. In those, diet soda correlates with everything bad. Cancer, obesity, diabetes, just for starters! But a funny thing happens when you actually feed people artificial sweeteners: nothing. Unless you count losing a little weight.
In the real world, drinking diet soda demonstrates that you don’t listen to nutrition authorities, who have been recommending against it for decades. And if you’re not listening about that, what else might you not be listening to? The cancer, obesity and diabetes that correlate with diet soda are most likely not caused by the diet soda, but by other eating and health habits for which diet soda is a marker.
If you’re like most health-conscious people, the idea that artificial sweeteners are bad is deeply ingrained. But the most important thing to remember about them is that you consume them in tiny quantities. A Splenda packet contains 12 milligrams of sucralose. Of course, it’s possible for 12 milligrams of something to do you harm, but if something’s that dangerous, it’s pretty easy to figure it out.
People have been trying to find problems with artificial sweeteners for decades, and they just haven’t. If you drink them in soda, or use them to sweeten things you make at home. Keep on keeping on. It’s just fine.
3. Local foods aren’t better for the climate.
I go out of my way to buy local veg and meat. I want agriculture in my community. I like going to the farmers market.
But any way you slice it, local foods aren’t better for the environment. They’re just not.
Intuitively, it makes sense that they should be! If your lettuce travels crosstown instead of cross-country, that’s a couple thousand fossil-fueled miles that don’t have to happen. But it turns out that transport is a very small fraction of the climate impact of food: less than 10 percent, most of the time.
Climate isn’t the only thing I think about when I choose dinner. Local farms can contribute to local economies, provide community touchstones and just be a place where a kid can meet a pig. If you want to cut the climate harm of your diet, eat more of the crops that have the smallest environmental impact: grains, legumes, nuts, tubers, tree fruits. It doesn’t mean you have to stop buying local.
4. Salad is a first-world luxury.
Let’s get one thing straight. Lettuce is a vehicle to bring refrigerated water from farm to table.
If you have an intuitive sense that a food that’s 96 percent water is a waste of resources and a nutritional zero, you’re right. If you don’t, you could be one of the bazillion people who came down hard on me when I wrote about the leafy green climate menace that is salad.
Okay, that’s a little unfair. Salad isn’t a menace; it’s just a luxury. It uses too many resources for too little food to be a smart choice for either human or planetary health. It graces my table because I like it and because it can help me say no to seconds of lasagna. But that’s a solution to a first-world problem: too much food. The idea that we’re deliberately growing and eating food specifically because it’s low-calorie makes sense only in a world of overabundance.
But there’s a hitch there, too. Lettuce lends its health halo to anything that gets put in a bowl with it, and the salads we think of as healthful generally aren’t. If you buy a salad, and then remove the lettuce, you see what you’re really eating for lunch: sad little brown piles of croutons, dressing, shredded cheese, and chicken strips.
Of course there are grain- or bean-rich salads, populated with bona fide nutritious vegetables like kale and broccoli, that are genuinely nutritious and a fine choice. But they’re the outliers. Most salads are nutritional and environmental losers.
And, just in case you haven’t found something to disagree with yet, I’ll add that all eggs taste the same. Blindfolded, you can’t tell my pampered backyard chickens’ eggs from the ordinary supermarket caged-bird variety. You think you can, but you can’t.
That’s the lot: four, plus a bonus, zombie ideas. Feels good to get all those off my chest! At least until I check in on Twitter … | 2022-07-01T13:07:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 truths about food it's time you believed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/01/food-truths-mythbusting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/01/food-truths-mythbusting/ |
Youngkin pushes for more say in Virginia community colleges search
As the state system seeks a new leader, the governor seeks a voice in the search
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin delivers remarks as he talks about his budget accomplishments at a restaurant Wednesday, June 22, in Woodbridge, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Some Democratic lawmakers objected to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to influence the search for a chancellor for the Virginia Community College System, accusing him of strong-arming and politicizing the process.
The Republican governor last month told members of the board that oversees the community college system that his administration was eager to work with them to “find this exceptional leader as soon as possible.” He asked any members unwilling to commit to the “transformation” he envisioned at community colleges to resign — by Thursday.
Leaders of the system responded this week by granting him a nonvoting voice in the search. It will be the second chancellor search in less than a year. Youngkin, who acknowledged the board has final say in a decision, had previously voiced concern about the earlier hiring process, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
The controversy was particularly fraught because Youngkin’s education policies have ignited culture-war clashes and protests in the commonwealth, as he took steps such as banning the teaching of critical race theory and giving parents the right to opt out of mask mandates in schools.
Virginia community colleges are dropping President John Tyler and others from their names amid racial reckoning
And the community colleges serve more than 200,000 students at 23 colleges, magnifying the impact of any decisions.
“I’ve expressed to every member of the board that I have really high expectations for our community college system,” Youngkin said Thursday in a statement. “And our community college system is critical to developing the kinds of academic opportunities and workforce development opportunities that the Commonwealth needs. If the members of the board are eager to lead and serve with that vision — then great. This is all about mission alignment and making sure we have agreement on where this community college system needs to go.”
In his letter to the Virginia State Board for Community Colleges last month, Youngkin wrote that nothing is more important to the future strength and agility of the workforce than hiring a “strong, proven, results-oriented leader” for the system.
But some lawmakers bristled at what they perceived as a threat to fire those board members who didn’t comply with his agenda.
“The governor’s actions are completely inconsistent with how we govern our institutions of higher education in Virginia,” said state Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax). “The governor doesn’t get to pick or even have a say in,” who’s chosen as president of the University of Virginia or Virginia Tech, and the community college system is the same. “It’s way too heavy-handed.”
“The last thing we want to do is inject a bunch of politics in how our universities are governed,” Surovell said. “ … The Republican Party often demonizes our institutions of higher education. They’re a convenient political football for people that are in power.”
The boards are designed to insulate institutions from that, he said.
Community colleges continue major enrollment decline
The state system’s longtime leader, Glenn DuBois, stepped down this week from the job he has held for more than 20 years. Last fall, the State Board for Community Colleges launched a national search for his successor.
That search committee had 15 members led by Nathaniel Bishop, who was then chairman of the board. It included eight members of the board, a couple of student representatives, a college president, a faculty representative, the chairman of the state charitable foundation, a senior staff member at the system office and a representative from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
The board voted in March to hire Russell Kavalhuna as chancellor. But in June, Kavalhuna announced he would continue as president of Henry Ford College in Michigan, and the board launched a new presidential search. Sharon Morrissey, a vice chancellor with the system, will serve as interim chancellor.
Surovell said Youngkin met with Kavalhuna after he had accepted the job, and that shortly afterward Kavalhuna announced he would be returning to the Michigan college, instead.
Kavalhuna declined an interview request Thursday.
Douglas Garcia, the incoming chairman of the Virginia Community College System State Board, said Wednesday in a statement that they are “committed to working with the governor and his team on the search for the new Chancellor who will lead Virginia’s Community Colleges in the coming years, and we will work to ensure that our programs remain affordable to all Virginians. We welcome a representative of the Administration to serve as a nonvoting member of our search committee.”
The board plans to meet July 21, with its executive committee expected to discuss a plan for the new chancellor search, said Jim Babb, a spokesman for the system.
Belle Wheelan, who is president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the system’s accreditor, and a former education secretary in Virginia, said the governor had not yet had a chance to appoint anyone to the board, and that may have spurred him to speak up. “He doesn’t have a spokesperson, if you will,” on the board.
That is expected to change quickly, as terms ended for three members of the board Thursday.
Youngkin announced more than 70 education appointees Thursday, to positions on boards such as U-Va.'s and the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia. No appointments to the community colleges board were announced at the time.
Youngkin said in his announcement that the appointees would help him work toward goals including “providing equal access to educational opportunities regardless of background or Zip code, protecting and promoting free speech, restoring the ability to have civil discourse, keeping tuition affordable, and ensuring that all Virginians have access to in-demand career pathways.” Youngkin has also emphasized the need to keep tuition low.
Wheelan said the college board had responded appropriately to the situation with the governor. It effectively thanked the governor for his input, she said, and then told him, “It’s our decision, we’re going to make it.” | 2022-07-01T13:20:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Youngkin pushes for say in selection of community college system chancellor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/youngkin-virginia-community-colleges-chancellor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/youngkin-virginia-community-colleges-chancellor/ |
An anthem reflecting the wonder and warts of the nation that sings it
Review by Colin Woodard
An American flag in 2014 in Washington, D.C. Mark Clague argues that the "Star-Spangled Banner" is “a primary document, a living record of the American experiment in flux.” (Matt McClain/ The Washington Post)
It’s no surprise in this era of U.S. historical reckoning that our national anthem has come under scrutiny.
Its author was an enslaver, a founder of an organization that sought to send emancipated African Americans to Africa, and friend, ally, and brother-in-law to Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision that denied U.S. citizenship to Black Americans. The rarely sung third stanza of Francis Scott Key’s “Star Spangled Banner” asserts “no refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,” words that have sown division ever since. The lyrics are militaristic and set to a tune that is notoriously difficult to sing.
Indeed, controversy is nothing new for the anthem, whose lyrics were repeatedly used in the antebellum period to highlight the gap between the nation’s promise to be “the land of the free” while permitting the hereditary enslavement of millions. At the outset of the Civil War, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a new stanza celebrating the effort to free the enslaved; it was published in public school texts after the conflict ended, triggering book purges and originalist-minded anthem censorship laws in several states. During World War I, peace activists wrote and performed pacifist versions of the song, which triggered a media backlash that presaged cancel culture. Americans didn’t even settle on it as a national song until the early 20th century.
If the purpose of a national anthem is to foster unity and patriotism, not a few have argued that other songs with less baggage — “America the Beautiful” and “America (My Country ’Tis of Thee)” are often cited — might better serve the purpose than an homage to a largely forgotten battle in the barely understood War of 1812 set to the tune of an exclusive British social club’s ceremonial song.
Diving into these treacherous waters is Mark Clague, professor of musicology at the University of Michigan and board president of the nonprofit Star-Spangled Music Foundation, which seeks to separate fact from fiction for musical educators when it comes to national and patriotic songs. His timely new book, “O Say Can You Hear: A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner” argues that our anthem is valuable precisely because its baggage is the nation’s baggage, “a primary document, a living record of the American experiment in flux.”
“I have come to embrace its contradictions and to celebrate its controversies,” he writes. “To replace The Star-Spangled Banner may be a mistake. It would discard the power of history, the use of both the troubles and triumphs of Key’s song as a compass navigating toward a more constructive future.” The anthem forces us to confront our uneven legacy and “is less a call to sing than a call to compose. The Star-Spangled Banner is an invitation to citizenship.”
Readers may agree or disagree with Clague’s assessment — does the socially compulsory singing of a politically fraught song at a sports stadium or official ceremony really further national self-examination? — but his book matches rigorous scholarship with clear, engaging writing on a wide range of anthem-related questions: Who was Key, and how did he come to write the lyrics? Where did the tune come from? How did Key’s song beat out rivals to become our official anthem in 1931? When and how did it become a sports ritual? Why the fuss when patriotic Americans performed it in Spanish or with soul, gospel, jazz or psychedelic rock interpretations? How have its lyrics been rewritten in political protests or protested when they were performed?
Clague also dispels a number of popular myths about Key and the song’s creation. The Georgetown lawyer and future D.C. district attorney didn’t write the lyrics on the back of an envelope — he had days stuck on his truce ship to compose it at a writing desk — and he consciously wrote it to the already familiar melody of “The Anacreontic Song,” the anthem of the London club of the same name which was already a popular template for America’s songwriters. This was not a “drinking song” but, rather, an intentionally challenging piece ritualistically performed at each meeting of the Anacreontic Society since its composition for that purpose in the 18th century. (The drinking would occur afterward.)
Clague shows how the song slowly and organically gained acceptance as a national anthem, receiving a boost with each military conflict, to vanquish its rivals (especially “Hail, Columbia”) long before Congress gave it official status in 1931. As a musicologist, he has the vocabulary to bring melodies and specific performances alive with words, a skill he deftly uses to parse examples as diverse as the tune of the Anacreontic Song and Jimi Hendrix’s epic “Banner” performance at Woodstock.
On Key himself, Clague takes a moderate position. He acknowledges that the Maryland native owned more than a dozen enslaved people; that he co-founded and passionately supported the American Colonization Society (whose goal of shipping free Black Americans to West Africa was vehemently condemned by Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent abolitionists); and that his aggressive and legally flawed prosecution of a local abolitionist helped trigger the Washington City “race riot” of 1835, when a White mob attacked Black churches, schools, restaurants and businesses. But Clague gives far more attention to the antislavery side of Key’s complicated ledger: his regular denouncement of slavery as “a great moral and political evil”; his professional record of supporting Black men, women and children who were seeking freedom in the courts, including a successful effort to free 131 people held captive aboard of an illegal slave ship; and his freeing of many of his own enslaved people during his lifetime.
“Key was on the wrong side of history, and his words and actions cannot be excused,” Clague writes. But Key’s “attempts to find a pragmatic solution to slavery exposes a more chaotic struggle, one at odds with a simple narrative of slavery’s acceptance. It is likewise the messy, tumultuous and evolving story of America.” Readers, again, may agree or disagree with his stance — my reading of the evidence is less sympathetic — but he presents his case competently.
Clague also assembles a largely exculpatory argument in regard to the notorious third stanza of our anthem. Most accounts consider “hireling and slave” a reference to two types of infantry units deployed against Fort McHenry: the British regulars (the hirelings) and Colonial Marines, the Black men who had escaped slavery and taken up the King’s invitation to fight for the crown (the slaves.) Clague argues based on a careful analysis of what Key did and did not know about the battle when he wrote the lyrics — and the fact that the words are singular — that they were meant to describe British Maj. Gen. Robert Ross, who had been killed in the attack and was, unlike the Americans, a salaried soldier (or “hireling”) and a “slave” or subject of the King, which was a common aspersion directed at the British in 1814.
Regardless, Clague notes that Key never intended to write a national anthem as he watched the shelling of Baltimore’s defenses from the deck of a ship. But the song nonetheless burrowed itself “deep within the collective American psyche” in a way no other song has. “Reinforced by more than two centuries of use, the sheer weight of this cultural legacy is the song’s most powerful asset,” he writes. Clague suggests this may be for the best: “An anthem lyric like Key’s that celebrates the nation’s ideals while carrying the burdens of its contradictory history — both its triumphs and struggles — may be an advantage, helping to chart a path forward.”
Colin Woodard is the author of six books, including “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” and “Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood.” He is a senior visiting fellow at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.
O Say Can You Hear
A Cultural Biography of The Star Spangled Banner
By Mark Clague
Norton. 320 pp. $28.95. | 2022-07-01T13:34:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of O Say Can You Hear: A Cultural Biography of The Star Spangled Banner by Mark Clague - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/an-anthem-reflecting-wonder-warts-nation-that-sings-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/an-anthem-reflecting-wonder-warts-nation-that-sings-it/ |
How spiritualism linked the Lincolns and the Booths
This engraving published by Currier & Ives in 1865 depicts John Wilkes Booth shooting President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre as the president and his wife, Mary, were watching a comedy with their friends Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division)
If, as Wallace Stegner declared, national parks are America’s best idea, spiritualism is probably our strangest. The spiritualist movement — that hash of table-rapping, seances, ectoplasm-sightings and purported messages from the dear departed — originated one night in 1848 when Maggie and Kate Fox, two bored sisters in Upstate New York, hit upon a way to bamboozle the rest of the family: by snapping their double-jointed toes and attributing the noise to ghosts. Years later, Maggie publicly confessed it was all a hoax, but in the meantime the girls’ tomfoolery had evolved into an international para-religion whose practitioners peddled illusory comfort to millions of adherents, many of whom refused to accept Maggie’s disavowal.
The patriarch of that family of actors was Junius Brutus Booth, an alcoholic whose departures from sanity included trying to kill a close friend in what Alford calls “a midnight attack with an andiron,” and enlisting his wife in an effort to reanimate a beloved horse by “wrap[ping] herself in a sheet and [lying] on the horse’s remains while he marched around her with a gun, reading from a book.” The nag stayed dead.
Papa Booth’s bizarre behavior took a toll on his children. His handsome son Edwin, for example, fared well on the stage but was ashamed of his poor education and emotionally distant from one and all. The even handsomer son John Wilkes had star power but felt cursed with bad luck. “In Columbus, Georgia,” Alford writes, “he was accidentally shot in the thigh by his manager. In Montgomery, Alabama, he was threatened for opinions considered too Northern. In Albany, New York, he was threatened for opinions considered too Southern. He fell on his stage dagger, slicing the muscle under his right arm. Then he was stabbed in the forehead by an actress whose affections he trifled.” John became obsessed with Abraham Lincoln and aspired to be a Confederate version of John Brown, whose violent actions had led to his becoming a martyr to the anti-slavery cause.
John Wilkes had little truck with spiritualism, but Edwin once patronized none other than Maggie Fox before she turned against her own brainchild. Edwin heard raps galore on the occasion and was sure he’d felt a disembodied tug on one of his trouser legs. In one of a host of coincidences noted by Alford, Edwin once saved the life of the Lincolns’ son Robert without knowing who the kid was. Edwin would surely have come to the rescue in any event, though — he voted for Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 election and was horrified by his brother John’s monstrous crime.
All of which is quite entertaining but a bit perplexing. Alford, a professor emeritus at Northern Virginia Community College who has also written a biography of John Wilkes Booth, offers no thesis to unify the sundry interactions, coincidences and ironies of his material. In his telling, spiritualism gained enough traction to appeal to two quite different American families — but so what? Would John Wilkes Booth have refrained from murdering Lincoln if the young Fox sisters had kept their toes quiet on that seminal night in rural New York? It’s hard to see why.
“In the Houses of Their Dead” is nonetheless worth reading for its wealth of Ripley’s Believe It or Not characters and their foibles. Take, for example, the medium Charles J. Colchester, who gave private performances for the Lincolns, got drunk with John Wilkes Booth, and acted in a play at Ford’s Theatre during the interlude between Abraham Lincoln’s reelection and his assassination in the same venue. In a bravura paragraph, Alford tells how Colchester managed to convince patrons he could read messages written on pieces of paper rolled up into pellets and left unopened.
Dennis Drabelle, a former contributing editor of Book World, is working on a book about the romance of Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane and medium Maggie Fox.
The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits
By Terry Alford
Liveright. 298 pp. $27.95 | 2022-07-01T13:34:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits," by Terry Alford - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/how-spiritualism-linked-lincolns-booths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/how-spiritualism-linked-lincolns-booths/ |
The legacy for which this Cuban dissident fought is still unfolding
Review by Vanessa Garcia
Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá greets supporters in 2003 in Havana. In "Give Me Liberty," David E. Hoffman charts the life and suspicious death of a man who challenged the Castro regime. (Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images)
A year ago, Cubans took to the streets in massive protests shouting, “Down with the dictatorship!” Some of the demonstrators and many of the protest’s leaders held out their thumb and forefinger in the shape of the letter L.
That L traced back to a man named Oswaldo Payá, a Cuban activist who defied Fidel Castro’s despotic regime and ultimately lost his life for the cause. The L was Payá’s familiar symbol of the fight for liberation.
In “Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and his Daring Quest for a Free Cuba,” David E. Hoffman delivers a moving, deeply researched and long-overdue biography of the man who launched the Varela Project, a citizen initiative that challenged Fidel Castro’s rule by petitioning for democracy.
The initiative was prompted by what Payá called a “crack in the wall” of tyranny. In a pre-Castro constitution, written in 1940, Cubans were granted the right to propose laws by presenting a citizen initiative with at least 10,000 signatures. Under Castro, that constitution was torn up and a new one written. In the process of creating the new constitution, however, some portions “were simply cut and pasted from . . . the 1940 constitution,” Hoffman writes, including the citizen initiative. “Perhaps Fidel did not notice it, or perhaps he concluded that no one would ever dare to use it.”
Hoffman details the ways in which Payá used the initiative to demand “free speech, a free press, freedom of association, freedom of belief, private enterprise, free elections, and freedom for political prisoners.”
The movement presented the petition to the National Assembly in 2002 with 11,020 verified signatures. More than 14,000 signatures were added the following year. Taken by surprise, Castro and his state security apparatus acted quickly. As Hoffman reveals, “Oswaldo and his movement paid a heavy price.”
Not only were the signatures not accepted, but 75 activists and independent journalists were arrested and sentenced to as many as 28 years in prison. This round-up became known as the Black Spring of 2003. “The arrests over three days,” Hoffman writes, “struck at the heart of Oswaldo’s movement.” Many of those locked up were active in the Varela Project, in one way or another.
Payá himself was not arrested. Instead, state security “subjected [him] to a different torment: relentless psychological warfare,” Hoffman recounts. Warned repeatedly that he would not outlive Castro, Payá told a visiting U.S. diplomat that “people aren’t taking seriously enough the threat that they’d liquidate me.”
Hoffman skillfully leads us through Payá’s narrative, as if “Give Me Liberty” were a historical thriller. The tragedy at the center, of course, is that it’s a true story, not only of one man’s “journey into the whirlwind of dictatorship” but also of a country and its suffocating struggle for freedom.
As a young man, Payá was forced into a labor camp that was meant to mold and “reeducate” him and other dissidents into “new men,” who would defend the revolution. It didn’t work. As Hoffman observes, “for Oswaldo Payá, the experience was the opposite. They had not conquered his soul. They had nourished it.”
The stronger his soul became, however, the more dangerous were the threats against his life. As far back as 2004, Payá recognized he was a marked man when he told Swedish democracy activist Henrik Ehrenberg: “I see very few chances of getting out alive.”
Eight years later he was dead, four years before Castro.
The last chapter, detailing the car crash that killed Payá on July 22, 2012, reads like a nightmare-inducing horror story. We ride along as Payá travels with his protege and family friend, Harold Cepero, to Santiago de Cuba, 545 miles from Havana on the other end of the island. In Santiago de Cuba, Payá hoped to organize and train young activists under a program he called Paths for Change.
In the car with Payá and Cepero were two foreigners, who were working with Payá. At the wheel was a young Spaniard named Ángel Carromero, a leader in the Madrid youth wing of the country’s ruling People’s Party. Also in the car was Jens Aron Modig, a youth organizer of Sweden’s Christian Democrats.
Along the way, their rented Hyundai was tailed by what Payá believed were state security men in a red Lada. After a stop for lunch, Payá sang to a Beatles CD they had bought on the trip and warned Carromero to drive carefully to avoid provoking the vehicle shadowing them. As they passed through a construction zone, the Lada suddenly lurched forward and hit the Hyundai from behind. Carromero lost control of the car, which slid off the road and hit a tree. The Hyundai’s roof caved in where Payá was sitting. Modig curled into a fetal position, and Carromero passed out, then regained consciousness as he was being pulled out of the car by two “brawny” Cuban men who shut him into a van. Someone then hit him in the head, and he fell unconscious again. Modig woke up in an ambulance.
“Unanswered questions linger,” Hoffman writes. “Where did the blue van and ambulance come from? What explains the ambulance and van showing up so quickly in the middle of nowhere? Were they already in position — because someone knew what was about to happen?”
Payá’s family would soon be told that Oswaldo was dead. But state officials revealed little about what had happened. At the request of Payá’s wife, Ofelia, two friends rushed to the hospital and were told by a police captain that two witnesses reported seeing the crash. Neither witness mentioned anything about a collision, only that the Hyundai went off the road. “They recalled a passing red Lada had halted to help the wounded,” Hoffman writes. “Then a blue van arrived and took one of the foreigners away. An ambulance arrived very soon thereafter.”
The family was left with grave — and growing — suspicions. The Payás’ daughter, Rosa María, later told a government forensic officer: “We have reasons to believe this was not an accident.”
The government withheld information on the circumstances and cause of Payá’s death, including his autopsy. At the funeral home, Ofelia was handed a document that said only that her husband died from an “injury to the nervous system.” That was all.
But that would not be all for Payá’s legacy. The writer Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo recalled that at Payá’s funeral, there arose from the pews spontaneous clapping accompanied by chants of liberty. It was, Lazo said, “a farewell to our hopes for a life in truth. It was a clapping from the soul.”
Yet the Cuban soul persists, as was evidenced through last year’s fresh burst of protest. As Hoffman observes, “an important legacy of Oswaldo’s quest was that gradually, painstakingly, despite all the obstacles and hardships, Cubans began to lose their fear and raise their voice against despotism.”
Vanessa Garcia is a screenwriter, novelist and playwright. Her children’s book, “What the Bread Says: Baking with Love, History, and Papan,” due out in October, explores baking and family history, particularly her grandfather’s escape from three tyrannies, including Castro’s Cuba.
The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and his Daring Quest for a Free Cuba
By David E. Hoffman
Simon & Schuster. 519 pp. $32.50 | 2022-07-01T13:34:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and his Daring Quest for a Free Cuba by David E. Hoffman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/legacy-which-this-cuban-dissident-fought-is-still-unfolding/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/legacy-which-this-cuban-dissident-fought-is-still-unfolding/ |
The transformative 1960s still have a grip on America
Review by Michael Bobelian
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act in the East Room of the White House on July 2, 1964. Standing directly behind Johnson, from left, are Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.), Rep. Charles Halleck (R-Ind.), Rep. William McCullough (R-Ohio) and Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.). (AP) (Anonymous/AP)
Refusing to fade into antiquity, the 1960s grudgingly maintain an irrepressible hold over the nation’s imagination. Although nearly two-thirds of Americans were born after 1969, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and others from that epoch live on as mythological figures. Hollywood and the publishing industry, meanwhile, in their continued glamorization of the decade’s political accomplishments, cultural icons and social revolutionaries, seem unconcerned that Congress last passed a major civil rights bill in 1968, the Beatles released their final album two years later, and the flower children are now babysitting their grandchildren.
The social changes were equally consequential. The “Long 1964” saw the arrival of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Muhammad Ali. Betty Friedan’s best-selling “Feminine Mystique,” along with the “Sex and Caste” memo drafted by Mary King and Casey Hayden, inspired the women’s liberation movement. Sparked in large part by the Freedom Summer, what McElvaine considers “the central event … that marked the arrival of the sixties,” the youth-driven culture that challenged authority emerged during this epoch.
To further woo the region’s White population, Eisenhower repeatedly declined to endorse Brown v. Board of Education, the groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling ending segregation, going as far as threatening to skip the 1956 GOP convention if the party’s platform gave his administration credit for the ruling. He also downplayed the South’s efforts to resist desegregation, framing, for instance, the Southern Manifesto, the toxic decree supported by more than 100 Southern congressmen urging the region to “resist … integration,” as a tempered proclamation rather than the radical challenge to federal authority it represented.
The book shines when serving as a reminder of why the public remains infatuated with the decade. The 1960s, McElvaine explains, “still define the political, social, cultural, and economic battle lines along which Americans contend today.”
For its admirers on the left, like McElvaine, the era remains “the most intense, meaningful, and — on balance — positive period of change in American history,” even when taking into consideration the violence, radicalism and hedonism it unleashed.
One can draw a direct line between these contrasting viewpoints of the 1960s to modern-day battles over the 1619 Project, the removal of Confederate statues, and the standing of many of the nation’s founders and leaders. These conflicts stem from irreconcilable views of America’s character and a clash over how to judge its virtues and transgressions — a divergence unleashed during the “Long 1964.”
The perpetuation of these divisions has fueled the nation’s preoccupation with the sixties as well as today’s noxious political climate. “Should we return to what 1964 was all about,” McElvaine asks, “or should we seek to bury the accomplishments that began to be achieved then?” No matter the outcome, it’s fair to say that the answer will inevitably keep America fixated on the 1960s for years to come.
Michael Bobelian teaches journalism at Columbia University and is the author of “Battle for the Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court.”
The Times They Were a-Changin’
1964, the Year the Sixties Arrived and the Battle Lines of Today Were Drawn
Arcade. 480pp. $29.99 | 2022-07-01T13:34:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "The Times They Were a-Changin’: 1964, the Year the Sixties Arrived and the Battle Lines of Today Were Drawn” by Robert S. McElvaine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/transformative-1960s-still-have-grip-america/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/transformative-1960s-still-have-grip-america/ |
Technoblade, a top YouTube creator who specialized in Minecraft let’s-play videos, has died at age 23. (Courtesy of YouTube)
A popular American gamer, known to his 11 million YouTube followers as “Technoblade,” has died of cancer at age 23, his family said on Thursday night.
In a video entitled “so long nerds” his father is seen sitting on a chair, playing with a family dog as he tells fans of his son’s death.
He goes on to read out a message his son had prepared before he died.
“Hello everyone, Technoblade here. If you’re watching this. I am dead. So let’s sit down and have one final chat,” his father says.
“My real name is Alex,” the message continues, revealing only his first name after many years of anonymity and an inside joke where users thought he may have been named Dave. His videos, which had millions of views, didn’t show his face. Instead, he used an avatar — a pig wearing a crown — and his voice was well known to many as he battled, built and joked with others playing the popular game “Minecraft.”
The video included photos of Alex with friends, and in a hospital gown, finally giving Technoblade’s fans a chance to catch a glimpse of his face.
In the posthumous message, he thanked fans for buying his merchandise and subscriptions, joking: “My siblings are going to college, well if they want to — I don’t wanna put any dead brother peer pressure on them.”
“That’s all from me. Thank you all for supporting my content over the years. If I had another 100 lives, I think I would choose to be Technoblade again every single time, as those were the happiest years of my life.”
“I love you guys,” the message added. “Technoblade out.”
His father told viewers that Alex had wanted to record a longer message but “we waited too long” and he ran out of time. He adds that his son had a hard time focusing as his health deteriorated.
Alex mustered the strength to write the farewell message on a laptop on his death bed, some eight hours before he passed away, his father recalls, tearfully.
“He was the most amazing kid anyone could ever ask for,” he said. “You meant a lot to him.”
The video, watched more than 16 million times by early Friday, prompted an outpouring of grief from his followers and fellow gamers online. Some recorded videos of their reaction to the news, others posted messages to social media.
“You’ll always be a legend,” tweeted YouTuber and Twitch streamer Jschlatt.
“I had the opportunity to express to Technoblade how much admiration and respect I had for him, not only for the massive impact he had on all of us, but also for keeping his incredible humor even in the darkest moments. I will miss him so much. Rest In Peace,” tweeted the YouTube gamer known as Quackity.
Technoblade told his subscribers in August he had been diagnosed with cancer, after reporting some arm ache, in a video called “where I’ve been.” He never specified the type of cancer, but had fundraised with the Sarcoma Foundation of America, which supports those with a rare cancer that can arise in tissue structures, usually in limbs.
In a statement posted at the end of the farewell YouTube video and widely shared on social media, signed by “Techno’s mom,” she praises her son’s “good-natured humility,” “self-deprecating wit” and “sportsmanship” when playing “Minecraft.”
The video game sees players create and break apart various kinds of blocks in three-dimensional worlds, as they explore, build, survive and sometimes fend off mobs of moving creatures.
She thanked all those around the world who supported her son and said he had “adored and respected his fans and colleagues.” She added that he “didn’t complain” about his battle with stage four cancer, instead he “kept using his famous strategic mind to try to beat what he knew were almost impossible odds.”
“My son’s bravery on this path was a shining lesson to all of us who were privileged to walk it with him,” she added. | 2022-07-01T13:35:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Technoblade,’ Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, dies of cancer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/01/technoblade-cancer-dead-minecraft-youtube/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/01/technoblade-cancer-dead-minecraft-youtube/ |
Woman found severely burned in D.C.
D.C. police homicide detectives are investigating after a woman was found severely burned Friday morning in the Truxton Circle neighborhood of Northwest Washington, according to a department spokesman.
The woman was taken to a hospital in critical condition, police said, noting that hours later, police had not determined what happened.
“We’re exploring all possibilities,” said the spokesman, Dustin Sternbeck.
Police said a person flagged down an officer a few minutes before 5 a.m. near North Capitol Street and Hanover Place in Northwest, about one block north of New York Avenue.
The person reported that a woman was on fire, Sternbeck said. Officers found the severely burned woman walking out of an alley between Hanover Place and O Street, Sternbeck said. | 2022-07-01T14:34:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman found burned, critically injured in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/woman-burned-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/woman-burned-dc/ |
Ukrainian borscht gets spot on U.N. protection list, after invasion
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine live updates: Brittney Griner trial begins; Kyiv says 20 dea...
A simmering spat with Russia over the placement predates this year’s conflict.
Ukrainian refugees arriving in Poland are welcomed with steaming hot borscht at a makeshift welcome center in a supermarket parking lot in Przemyśl. (Max Bearak/The Washington Post)
Ukraine’s version of borscht — the eastern European beetroot soup produced in various forms in countries throughout the region — has been added to a United Nations’ protection list, fast-tracked due to the Russian invasion.
Ukrainian borscht was already on the U.N. intangible cultural heritage list but as of Friday it has been upgraded to the grandly-named List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. According to the U.N. citation, “the displacement of people and bearers threatens the element, as people are unable not only to cook or grow local vegetables for borscht, but also to come together to practice the element, which undermines the social and cultural well-being of communities.”
Ukraine seeks U.N. cultural status for beloved borscht. A culinary spat with Russia could be brewing.
Borscht is cooked in many different forms, from a pure beetroot barszcz common in Poland, to recipes including mushrooms, fish or sweet peppers. Core ingredients include beet, cabbage, onion, potato and carrot. It is also common in Russia and Romania, leading to culinary disputes about which kind of borscht is tastiest or most authentic.
“Borscht is considered part of the fabric of Ukrainian society, cultural heritage, identity and tradition,” says the U.N., while noting that inclusion on its urgent safeguarding list “does not imply exclusivity, nor ownership, of the heritage concerned.”
Borscht and the best way to cook it has long been the subjects of fierce dispute between Russians and Ukrainians, well before the invaded in February, with Ukrainian chefs drawing up a compendium of regional variations. And, like arguments in Middle Eastern countries about hummus, it is a subject with many partisan advocates but no undisputed claimant, born of traditions that predate today’s national borders.
In a Telegram post Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Borscht originated among “Russian residents of Kiev, citing an obscure 16th century document. "Now live with it,” she wrote.
“Food, like language, is the first and last cultural bastion,” Marianna Dushar, a Ukrainian anthropologist and food writer, told The Washington Post in 2020. “We grow up with it, and we associate ourselves with it. Countries communicate with other countries through food.”
Immigrants to the United States from borscht-making regions have also made the recipe their own. In an article for Bon Appetit magazine, food writer Claire Saffitz called an Ashkenazi Jewish preparation “the greatest recipe of all time.”
Duplain reported from London, and Tsui from Washington. Robyn Dixon in Riga, Lativa, contributed to this report. | 2022-07-01T14:38:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukrainian borscht gets spot on U.N. protection list, after invasion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/ukraine-borscht-un-unesco-list-russia-invasion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/ukraine-borscht-un-unesco-list-russia-invasion/ |
By Gabriel Popkin
More severe storms are predicted for the D.C. area as a result of climate change. (Kevin Ambrose for The Washington Post)
Gabriel Popkin is a science and environmental journalist in the D.C. area.
Like, I suspect, most of the nearly 1 million people who have made the D.C. area their home over the past decade, I moved here not for the climate but despite it.
In the 15 years I’ve lived in the Mid-Atlantic — a period during which much of the rest of the country has been beset by semi-apocalyptic fires, storms, heat and droughts — I’ve changed my thinking. I’ve come to view this region not as a place cursed by the weather gods but rather as a potential climate refuge for people fleeing places that are rapidly becoming unlivable.
I realize this might sound absurd. The term “climate refuge” probably evokes for most people a spot high on a mountainside or a northerly place that’s frozen much of the year — Duluth, Minn., perhaps. In other words, places too frigid for most people today but that are forecast to be pleasant, or at least bearable, in an overheated future.
Here in the Mid-Atlantic, half of us already complain that summers are too hot, and nearly everyone complains about the humidity. But we do have some crucial things going for us that I think we don’t always appreciate. Perhaps most important, we have abundant fresh water resources that are not going to dry up. We have fertile soil and varied landscapes of forests and farms — two ecosystems essential to human survival. And we’re protected by geography from the most severe extremes that near-term climate change will inflict. Most of our great cities are far from the coast, relatively sheltered from hurricanes, storm surges and sea-level rise.
The biggest climate challenges the Mid-Atlantic will face in the coming decades, according to scientists, are intense rain events and summer heat waves. These won’t always be pleasant. I, for one, am not excited about more 90-degree days. They will require planning and preparation, but they are manageable. They are not like the megastorms, megafires, megadroughts and rising oceans putting much of the country in existential peril.
Some regional climate changes could even yield benefits. Longer growing seasons, for example, could allow farmers to grow new crops, though summer droughts could pose a challenge; beautiful Southern trees such as live oaks could thrive here.
I sometimes think of what Capt. John Smith wrote about the Chesapeake region more than 400 years ago: “Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation. … Here are mountains, hills, plaines, valleyes, rivers, and brookes, all running into a faire Bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitful and delightsome land.”
Though Smith’s antiquated language should probably be read to some extent as real estate marketing, I think he was on to something — as, of course, were the Indigenous people who made their living here for thousands of years before Smith arrived. The Mid-Atlantic was, and still is, a beneficent place for humans. The story of America since then has been to a large extent one of defying natural limits and enabling people to live in harsh, unsupportive environments — the desert Southwest, for example, still booming despite the worst drought in a millennium. But climate change will eventually outstrip human hubris. And when people start looking around for hospitable places, some will have the same realization that Smith did.
Unfortunately, not all people will have this option. Unless immigration policies change, many potential climate migrants from other countries won’t be able to get here.
Climate-driven population growth would boost the regional economy, but it would also present challenges. Our environment is already straining under the pressures of today’s population. Our roads are choked with cars, and our streams and rivers are polluted with water running off pavement and roofs.
But if we start to prepare now, we will be able to welcome climate migrants rather than see them as a burden. Most important, we can kick our addiction to single-family housing and build more densely and affordably across the region. We can preserve the protective forests and wetlands we still have. We can commit to finally developing world-class public transit systems and bicycle networks that will incentivize more people to not drive cars. We can deploy energy-efficient heat pumps and solar panels to make the air conditioning we unfortunately will need as climate-friendly as possible. We can support our local farms so they will be there when the unsustainable desert agriculture that supplies our grocery stores dries up. We can plant and care for climate-resilient trees that will provide shade, cooling and flood control for future residents.
Since I moved here, I’ve had countless friends and acquaintances decamp for the West, drawn by open spaces, big mountains, the Pacific Ocean and that cool Western mystique. I’ve envied them sometimes and wondered if I was missing out. But when I see news of fires turning the air orange and people fleeing their houses while I look at the verdant ecosystem in my yard and listen to the songs of birds that also make their home here, I realize I have it pretty good. I’m not gloating; I want to share the good with as many people as possible — including former East Coasters who, I assume, might move back. I hope my fellow Mid-Atlantic-ers want to share our bounty, too. | 2022-07-01T14:56:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The D.C. area, with planning, can be a climate refuge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/dc-area-with-planning-can-be-climate-refuge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/dc-area-with-planning-can-be-climate-refuge/ |
By Melissa Riley
Emily Mathon speaks in support of an anti-racism policy and aligned curriculum as a part of open public comment during Albemarle County Public School’s School Board meeting as seen via livestream on a laptop on Jan. 13. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
Melissa Riley is one of several parents who, along with students, sued the Albemarle County (Va.) School Board.
As a single mom of a teenage boy, the last thing I ever wanted to do was to sue my local school district for what was going on in his classroom. And believe me, my hesitancy only increased with the subject matter of the lawsuit being the sensitive topic of race. But when four other families and I realized there was no other way to ensure our kids weren’t treated differently because of the color of their skin, we filed a lawsuit against Albemarle County Public Schools through our attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom. A judge dismissed our lawsuit, but we filed an appeal this week.
I had raised some concerns with school staff members when I first discovered that they were bringing in a series of lessons centered on race. As it happens, my son has a mixed heritage: part White, part Native American and part Black. He is one of the few kids in his school with a darker skin tone. I didn’t want him to be in an environment in which everyone was focusing on his different skin color. But, shockingly, the school told me its proposed solution was that children of color would be offered a “safe space” outside the classroom while everyone else continued with the lessons.
To me, that was clear segregation.
Sadly, as things progressed, it became clear that the “anti-racism” policy behind these lessons was actually pushing a racist agenda rooted in critical race theory (CRT). Far from ensuring equal treatment of all students, the school district was teaching them that their skin color would determine their future. The policy pigeonholed students into “privileged” or “subordinate” categories based on lazy stereotypes that did not reflect their own personal drive, work ethic or ingenuity.
Rather than acknowledge parents’ concerns with the policy’s race-based classifications, the message from the school district was that CRT-based concepts were going to be woven into every aspect of our kids’ education — whether we liked it or not. If anything, once parents objected, the school district doubled down. It prioritized a racially divisive narrative over academic excellence.
It’s not that schools shouldn’t be teaching about the uncomfortable lessons of history or the evils of racism, including the sad fact that racism still exists in America. In fact, the families involved in the lawsuit come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and are strongly united in the belief that racism is to be opposed at every opportunity. The problem is that our school district’s proposed solution was to counter racism with more racism. And that solution violates the Constitution. It’s a bad deal for all kids, no matter their skin color.
When I spoke up in the media about the lawsuit, I knew some people would disagree with me, but I was horrified to see malicious attacks on my relationship with my son. The same people cheering on “anti-racist” agendas in schools seemed to have no problem accusing me of racism for sharing my experience. It is so hurtful to know that people will happily misrepresent who you are just so they don’t have to respond to your arguments.
But these bad-faith attempts to ridicule me into silence won’t work. I know what a great privilege it is to be a parent, and I hope anyone who takes the time to look at the lawsuit will understand why I took the stand I did. I draw the line at a school policy that treats kids differently based on the color of their skin. Some people might disagree with that, but at the end of the day, I’m the one responsible for looking after the best interests of my son.
School is hard enough without being told by teachers you trust that your race will determine your outcome in life. I want my son and every other kid in his class to know that, if they put in the work, their skin color isn’t going to hold them back. I want them to know that they can trust each other and work together, even if they look different. These are messages I believe every kid needs to hear to thrive in America today.
Virginia’s top health official needs an education on racism
The long road to overturning Roe started in Virginia
A test arrives for Fairfax County’s attorney | 2022-07-01T14:56:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | I spoke up against racism in Virginia and was attacked by ‘anti-racists’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/i-spoke-up-against-racism-virginia-was-attacked-by-anti-racists/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/i-spoke-up-against-racism-virginia-was-attacked-by-anti-racists/ |
By Beverly Silverberg
WASHINGTON, DC - May 12: A Red Line train pulls up to the Rhode Island Avenue station in D.C. on May 12, 2020. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Beverly Silverberg was the Metro spokesperson from 1983 to 1992. She also served as assistant general manager for public service, encompassing the offices of planning, marketing and public affairs.
There was a time in the 1980s that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority system was touted as being “clean, safe and reliable” and won the American Public Transit Association’s title of America’s top transit system. What has happened?
Headlines blare about safety problems: stations closed for repairs and upgrades, an entire fleet of cars taken out of service, train operators without necessary refresher training and Metro’s own track workers in danger. Sadly, the list of problems goes on, reflected in decreasing ridership and increasing operating costs.
On June 1, the Maryland House of Delegates’ subcommittee on transportation and the environment conducted a hearing on Metro’s safety record. It was an eye-opener, and not in a good way. In addition to Metro top brass, David Mayer, the head of the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, testified. This independent committee was set up in 2017 to address Metrorail’s many safety problems. It was given enforcement authority with teeth and the power to “restrict, suspend, or prohibit rail service” if deemed necessary.
At the hearing, Mayer said, “Metro is not following its own safety processes.” He went on to say that Metro has a culture that accepts noncompliance with its own rules and is bypassing its own regulations, endangering its employees and passengers. In responding to questions from the committee members, Metro Chief Safety Officer Theresa M. Impastato referred to “organizational complexities” as part of the problem. Metro Board Chairman Paul C. Smedberg said communications was a problem.
I agree, communications is always a problem; but those problems need to be addressed. Much was said during the hearing about “safety culture” and the lack of it. Culture starts at the top of an organization and is reflected by everyone who works there. Hopefully, the new general manager will give safety the attention it needs.
Carmen E. Turner, the first Black woman to run a major transit agency in the United States, was Metro’s general manager in the mid-1980s, when safety, cleanliness and reliability were top priorities. Everyone who worked at Metro understood safety was paramount. If she were still alive, Turner would be devastated to know how far the system she helped build and nurture has fallen.
The age of the system is a factor. Certainly, the pandemic has been a mighty blow to ridership, but it doesn’t explain away all the other failures the system is experiencing.
I know it’s not easy running a transit system that operates in and is governed by two states, D.C. and the federal government. I know because I had the opportunity to work with Turner when she became general manager. As spokesperson, I was often under fire to explain why it was taking so long to build the then-103-mile system; why the trains failed to run in a blizzard; why there was no dedicated funding for the regional Metro; and why accidents happened. There were certainly communication failures then, too. But there was also a very strong sense of belonging to and working for a special organization that was providing an important community service.
Metro was once the pride of the region and bound it together, literally and figuratively. Now, on some lines, people have to wait 15 minutes or more for a train. Passengers are eating and drinking in buses and rail cars. I recently watched a young man jump the fare gates. Safety comes in many forms, and all require attention in a well-functioning transit system.
Safety culture is real. It’s essential. Turner’s focus was always on the people who made the transit system run smoothly: from the bus and rail operators to the Board of Directors and elected officials. They were all part of the team she enlisted, encouraged and prodded to make the bus and rail system an asset to the region and the nation.
She nurtured a culture of caring for employees and riders.
It is people who care who make any enterprise work well. When employees are valued and consider it to be their job, their duty and their privilege to serve the riders, Metro can again be clean, safe and reliable. With a sense of pride, they can call Metro “America’s transit system."
It was once. Hopefully, it can be again. | 2022-07-01T14:56:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Metro then and now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/metro-then-now/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/metro-then-now/ |
On June 12, the legendary Paul McCartney of Beatles fame performed in front of some 40,000 fans at Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a 40-minute drive from downtown D.C. The now-80-year-old McCartney sang without a break for nearly three hours. Although this might well be his last concert in the Washington area, the event merited not a single mention in The Post.
Dan Schecter, Alexandria
With every mistake, we must surely be learning
In the June 5 Washington Post Magazine, there was a Damon Young column titled “Cruelty is more American than compassion.” The beginning of the third paragraph said, “I want to write about how abortion is an apolitical act that’s become politicized. And how the GOP’s support of it is an act of political pragmatism to galvanize White Christians.” I assume the word “it” in the second sentence refers to abortion, and, if so, I believe the writer meant to say “non-support” instead of “support,” in keeping with the entire context of his piece.
Val Kehl, Manassas
Yesterday came suddenly
Did I wake up in the 1950s? Apparently, the June 16 Local Living cover illustration for “Dads answer: What it means to be a man” is a Ward Cleaver/Ozzie Nelson White businessman off to win bread behind an executive desk in an office building for his “traditional” White family.
The collection of present-day ruminations from fathers across the country on what being a man means to them was lovely. Unfortunately, all the good feelings generated were needlessly usurped by a hackneyed trope of warped nostalgia. Why not feature a collage of images of the actual fathers who shared their modern-day, real-life experiences?
Adding insult to injury, you turn the page only to find a stock photo depicting a Black woman wearing denim jeans and rubber gloves scrubbing nonexistent grease from a gleaming (and expensive) range hood for an article on how best to clean them [“When cleaning range hoods, don’t forget the filters”]. Is she “the help” for the family from the cover?
As June Cleaver would have said, “Washington Post, I think you were a little hard on the reader.”
Jared B. Hughes, Takoma Park
I was somewhat disappointed with Donald Graham’s June 17 op-ed, “Watergate resonated because The Post reported the truth,” about The Post’s important role in bringing the Watergate story to the public. Why does The Post continue to ignore or downplay the important role that the paper’s local editor at the time, Barry Sussman, played in developing the story and guiding Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as the story evolved? It is like talking about the Beatles without mentioning George Martin’s role in crafting their recordings.
Also, Graham wrote, “Today, those on both the left and the right decry stories they don’t like as ‘fake news.’ ” “Fake news” is primarily the creation of conservative and conspiracy talk show hosts, and implying an equality is neither accurate nor truthful.
Maybe The Post needs to do a report on where the term came from and how it is being used and misused today.
Finally, The Post’s Watergate stories resonated not only because they were factual but also because they were written in a political environment in which many senior members of the GOP put country way ahead of their own political careers. That’s not the situation today.
Steve Schoen, Silver Spring
You’ll be older too
I was enjoying the June 10 Style profile of Chelsea Handler, “Chelsea lately? She’s just mad about him.,” — until Handler was asked what, if anything, makes her hopeful. Her response: “Children,” she said. “The next generation. I think this is just kind of like a death cough of old White men.”
Here’s my question: Was Handler referencing the old White men who saved the world for democracy in World War II? Or the old White men who froze fighting in Korea? Or the old White men whose lives were interrupted, at best, by Vietnam? Or more broadly, is it the old White men responsible for the world’s most vibrant economy over the past 75 years?
I’ll guess I’m not alone, as an old White man, in wondering how it is our demographic group can be so publicly disparaged, while other groups get an editorial pass. Here’s hoping the death cough of this old man comes after The Post learns how to expand its social sensitivity.
David Boldt, Herndon
In the midst of our anguish and pain when reading about the raw violence on Jan. 6, 2021, the pain and suffering as a result of gun violence and the war in Ukraine, it is a balm for the soul to be able to turn to the Metro section, where Martin Weil writes his daily report on the weather of the previous day. His language soothes the soul and quiets the heartbeat. His choice of words in describing the weather takes us back to another time, when hushed and eloquent language took the place of loud and hateful discourse. His June 11 Metro article, “A delightfully warm and bright start for mid-June,” said: “With the summertime bane of high humidity seemingly banished, Friday offered the soft comforts of sunlit hours spent beneath blue skies amid breezes that beguiled with the promise of warm mid-June delight.” It should be required reading for all but especially for our politicians and media personalities.
Monica C. McCarthy, Chevy Chase
Regarding the June 20 news article “Former rebel Petro will be Colombia’s first leftist president”:
Gustavo Rojas Pinilla founded the National Popular Alliance (Alianza Nacional Popular, or ANAPO) in Colombia and served as president of Colombia from June 1953 until May 1957. Wikipedia describes ANAPO’s political position as “left-wing” and its ideology as “left-wing nationalism,” “populism,” “progressivism” and “socialism.”
It appears there was at least one leftist president of Colombia before Gustavo Petro.
Paul B. Manchester, Silver Spring
The writer was a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia from 1964 to 1966.
The June 16 KidsPost article “Top golfers get rich on Saudi-funded tour but flub their legacies” did an excellent job of laying out the issue of golfers jumping from the PGA to the LIV tour. My understanding of KidsPost is that it is intended to enable youngsters to decipher news events by addressing them in simpler terms. The major points were covered in words a child can understand. However, the headline was slanted, and the last two paragraphs were purely editorializing:
“By taking the Saudi money instead of standing up for what is right, the LIV golfers have lost something much greater than a golf tournament. They have lost their good reputation.
“From now on, they will not be known as champions but as men who could be bought.”
I understand The Post’s involvement in this story and its connection to Jamal Khashoggi. However, the editorial comments do not belong on a kids’ news page. The facts are powerful enough.
Betty James, Manassas
But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out?
As a fellow photojournalist, I was awed by Michael S. Williamson’s forceful image of a voter known as “Burnitdown” in action that accompanied the June 12 front-page article “The town crier.”
The sight of oily orange flames encircling a hooded figure conjured vividly for me a portent of 21st-century Torquemadas hard at work.
Thanks for some ugly, apocalyptic truth!
Jonathan Chris Earnshaw, Washington
Regarding the June 12 front-page article “The town crier”:
I am at a loss to explain why The Post continues to spend time and resources on yet another profile of an activist for the minority in this country. Why not spend more time with those in the middle who don’t feel aggrieved and fearful all the time? Giving publicity to those on the fringe encourages the spread of their nonsensical beliefs.
That said, I did agree with something the subject of the article said. Yes, we despise their unnecessary ignorance and fear.
Cathy R. Haggerty, Clearwater, Fla.
I’m looking through you
I am a big fan of composer John Williams, and presumably so are many of your readers. That’s why Michael Andor Brodeur’s June 19 Critic’s Notebook, “Fanfare for John Williams” [Arts & Style], informed us of his honor at the Kennedy Center. Why, then, did the article open by telling us what kind of movie fan the writer is not? Who cares?
Why does The Post use reviewers who think things are all about them and their baggage? I don’t care. I care about the artist and his work. Please tell editors to stop soliciting this approach and stop accepting it.
Yvonne Dennis, Philadelphia
Lucy in the sky
The June 16 “Classic Peanuts” “Powder Puff Derby” strip was not just cute and funny; it was also timely. On June 21, the derby’s successor, the Air Race Classic, started, with 115 female pilots competing in a 2,500-mile cross-country race for cash prizes and glory.
The derby started in 1929, continuing through the 1930s and evolving into the All Women’s Transcontinental Air Race (better known as the Powder Puff Derby) after World War II. In 1978, it became what it is today: the Air Race Classic, a nonprofit educational organization. The ARC encourages and educates current and future female pilots while preserving and promoting the tradition of pioneering women in aviation. Competitors range from college-age to octogenarians, competing for cash prizes and glory.
My own “Team DC3” (three pilots from the D.C. area) has raced 10 times. We have multiple sponsors who have contributed thousands of dollars, enabling our group to fund many aviation scholarships to help women pursue their aviation goals.
Deb Dreyfuss, Potomac
Pink, brown, yellow, orange and blue, I love you
The June 20 The World article on forced food stall color uniformity in Mexico City’s Cuauhtémoc borough, “Mexico City trades colorful food stalls for uniformity,” has an interesting counterpart in D.C. in reference to the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, which houses the Department of Housing and Urban Development, at 451 Seventh St. SW, designed by architect Marcel Breuer. The building was hailed as an important contrast to boxy federal buildings.
As for the employees, we considered the building a prison. HUD Secretary Jack Kemp described it as “10 floors of basement.”
In the 1990s, then-Secretary Henry Cisneros wanted to create a colorful Mexican marketplace in front as a contrast to Breuer’s brutalist architecture. I served as the representative of the employee union. We supported the concept of a colorful marketplace. We also suggested that it include water elements, greenery and shade. We wanted the plaza to be open to the community and to include diverse local vendors.
Instead, when Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo succeeded Cisneros, he initially wanted to shelve the entire project. Ultimately, Cuomo agreed to erect the “spaceship component” of the project. He changed the diverse color scheme as an appropriate counterpart to the stark building. Instead, Cuomo, like Cuauhtémoc’s mayor, made those structures a dull, uniform color. There was no water, no greenery, no shade and no marketplace. The union rejected Cuomo’s modifications but was ignored.
Sadly, the Seventh Street HUD plaza continues to be an empty, concrete jungle, uninviting to tourists and the community, except occasionally when a protest takes place.
Hopefully, Cuauhtémoc’s mayor will reconsider her order.
Eddie Eitches, McLean
The June 18 “Non Sequitur” comic, “The Not-So-Sharp Learning Curve,” could perhaps not have been more poorly timed given its proximity to Father’s Day. I presume I am not the only person to have lost a parent to cancer because of cigarette smoking. My father, whose obituary was published in The Post, had a difficult life: His father was emotionally and physically abusive, and he was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, serving admirably as a medic. He is now buried at Arlington National Cemetery for his service to our country. Smoking, as I imagine it is for many people, was a means of coping. He tried several times to quit but found it too difficult. Is every person who dies from substance abuse also stupid, in cartoonist Wiley Miller’s estimation? Miller has insulted not only my family but also every person who has lost a loved one to an addiction.
Casey Chalk, Reston
It’s a steady job, but he wants to be a paperback writer
Kudos to the headline writer for the weekly Free for All page. The headlines are invariably a treat: cogent, clever and fitting. In fact, the headline is often better than the letter that follows.
Caswell O. Hobbs, Alexandria
Readers critique The Post: The town of Pound deserves to be on the map | 2022-07-01T14:56:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Readers critique The Post: Paul McCartney's Baltimore concert wasn't covered - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/readers-critique-post-paul-mccartney-baltimore-concert/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/readers-critique-post-paul-mccartney-baltimore-concert/ |
By Richard B. Karel
The Towson Town Center Mall's Apple Store on June 20. The store's employees voted June 18 to unionize. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Richard B. Karel is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.
The June 18 vote to join a union by workers at Apple’s Towson Town Center location has amplified the growing union movement in Maryland and across the nation and has garnered attention internationally. The vote follows similar decisions by workers at other major transnational corporations, including Amazon, Starbucks and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.) President Biden, who has made backing unions a key part of his presidency, weighed in with praise for the Maryland workers.
The Apple workers’ vote to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) might have broader, positive implications for Maryland and retail workers nationwide, said state Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore City), who is running for comptroller. “When employees at retail locations begin to unionize, it not only has an economic benefit for those employees and their families, but [it] can help raise wages at surrounding stores as well — producing an economic lift for the entire community,” she said. “Moreover, we know that when a collective bargaining agreement is in place, the gender and racial wage gap are minimized.”
The successful vote in Maryland stands in contrast to an earlier attempt to organize at an Apple Store in Atlanta by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which was withdrawn following the CWA’s allegations that Apple had engaged in illegal union-busting tactics that would have rendered a free and fair election impossible, according to Bloomberg Law. Apple employees at the Maryland store alleged similar tactics, but this failed to deter a vote.
The successful vote in Maryland should galvanize other workers across the country to organize and fight for better working conditions, IAM’s General Vice President David Sullivan said.
Maryland workers’ union participation, at 11 percent of wage and salary workers as of 2021, is only slightly above the national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Maryland has an effectively neutral stance regarding the right of employees to unionize and, unlike most states, does not have a so-called right-to-work law that expressly prohibits any requirement that an employee support or pay dues to a labor union.
The reemergence of unions is likely to become even more significant in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights. Unions are virtually certain to find themselves playing a key role in pressing employers to guarantee access to abortion in states where it is or soon will be unavailable — even if that means promising to pay for out-of-state travel to states where it remains legal — such as Maryland — or risk losing many of its best employees, particularly women.
Maryland has long played a leading role in supporting various aspects of the social contract, including reproductive rights, housing equity, environmental protection and health care — sometimes legislatively and sometimes from grass-roots movements such as the push by workers for collective bargaining agreements.
The Apple retail employees’ vote to join IAM has added weight, given that IAM represents nearly 700,000 active and retired workers from a diverse range of North American industries, including aerospace, defense, airlines, rail, public transit and health care, making it one of the largest and most influential unions in North America. Although there is some dissonance in the statistics surrounding union growth, a recent report from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that in the first six months of fiscal 2022, labor unions nationwide filed 57 percent more representation petitions than during the same period the prior year.
One indicator of the likely impact of the Maryland Apple Store workers’ vote has been an outpouring of interest from other workers interested in unionizing, according to IAM’s Sullivan, who said that the union had “received phone calls from all over the country.
It appears likely that the groundbreaking vote by retail employees at the Towson Apple Store will spur unionization efforts by Apple workers nationwide, based on the ripple effect that followed early unionization efforts at Starbucks, for example, where an initial pro-union vote led nearly 300 other stores to push for union elections. Given Apple’s iconic role in the tech sector, the union victory in Maryland might be a harbinger of broader unionization efforts across the tech sector.
Marc Elrich is working to improve Montgomery County
Maryland’s offshore wind will help the climate and create jobs
Is it time for a monorail? | 2022-07-01T14:56:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What the union vote at Towson’s Apple Store means for Maryland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/what-union-vote-towsons-apple-store-means-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/what-union-vote-towsons-apple-store-means-maryland/ |
HOUSTON, TEXAS - AUGUST 12: A home, available for sale, is shown on August 12, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Home prices have climbed during the pandemic as low interest rates and working from home has become more abundant. Home prices around the country continue to surge in the second quarter as strong demand continues to overwhelm the supply of homes for sale. Nationwide, the median single-family existing-home sales price increased by 22.9% in the second quarter. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) (Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America)
There may be signs the overheated housing market is cooling, but many buyers still feel like it’s near-impossible to get a house without an all-cash offer, or something close to it.
One way to get your hands on that amount of cash is to borrow against an investment portfolio. It’s a strategy billionaires have used for years to fund their lifestyles: wielding assets such as long-held stock as collateral so they don’t have to sell and be subject to taxes. These days, more of the well-to-do are turning to their portfolios to come up with cash and seal the deal on a home.
It’s a risky strategy, especially given how volatile stocks are. But there are some real advantages, and it could actually be a worthwhile move for a careful borrower with a sizable portfolio. The most important thing to remember, though, is that borrowing against investments should never be used to overextend, or buy a home that’s more than you had planned on.
First, a quick explainer on how using investments as collateral works: Borrowers can ask their brokerage firms or banks to set up either a margin loan or a securities-backed line of credit tied to their investment account. Most firms will specify a minimum account size in order to do the transaction. For example, at Raymond James it’s about $150,000, says Randy Carver, a financial adviser at Carver Financial Services in Mentor, Ohio.
Keep in mind, this is just for certain taxable accounts — retirement accounts like IRAs are prohibited. The mix of assets in a portfolio will determine the amount that can be borrowed (it’s typically set as a percentage of the account).
If the value of the account goes below a certain threshold, there’s a margin or maintenance call, where the borrower is responsible for depositing additional money into the account — otherwise the brokerage firm can sell the accountholder’s securities to meet the call.
One of the most attractive features of borrowing against investments right now is that it is relatively cheap to do so. While it can vary based on factors such as the size of your investment account (the bigger your account, the lower the rate), margin loans are being offered at about 3% compared with 5.8% for a 30-year mortgage.
In addition, since there is a pre-existing relationship with the bank or brokerage firm and different regulatory guidelines, there is typically no real underwriting that happens, making for a much faster and easier process than obtaining a mortgage.
Another advantage is particularly relevant now — you don’t have to sell any holdings to come up with the cash. Investors who have to do that to make an all-cash offer are likely selling stocks that are down from their all-time high last year, but still are up overall from when they bought them — meaning they would be subject to substantial capital gains taxes. And they would be locking in those losses, rather than giving those investments time to recover.
Despite those benefits, the biggest danger of course is that the market will tank and you would be on the hook to come up with extra cash, or be at the mercy of the brokerage firm selling whatever is necessary to come out even.
And don’t forget, while the rates on margin loans or securities-backed lines of credit are lower than those for a 30-year mortgage as of now, they typically are variable rates, meaning they will fluctuate with the market.
That’s why the smartest play is to use an investment portfolio as a means to an end, in effect a bridge from the sale of one home to the purchase of another. And then after the home sale is complete, pay off the margin loan or securities-backed line of credit and take out a more traditional mortgage.
Still, given the uncertain economic environment, you’ll want to be conservative. Firms will typically allow borrowers to tap up to 50% of the market value of their account, but sticking closer to 30% will give you more of a cushion to play it safe. Likewise, if you are banking on selling your home to pay off the margin loan, be realistic about what your home can sell for if the market continues to cool.
Jim Miller, a certified financial planner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, suggests that margin-loan holders check rates quarterly — once the rate on a fixed mortgage becomes comparable to the margin loan, it’s time to make the switch. In the interim, make sure you have a budget in place to pay it down, Miller says.
If you do borrow against your investment portfolio, remember that the interest you pay for a margin loan generally isn’t fully tax-deductible. You can only deduct that interest against any investment income you earn. With a traditional mortgage, you can deduct all the interest for loans up to $750,000 if you itemize your deductions.
Margin loans have a bad rap for getting reckless borrowers into hot water. But if used carefully, they’re a wise way for some homebuyers to become all cash-buyers, at least temporarily.
Homebuilders Hold Their Own in a Cooling Market: Conor Sen
Is Flipping Homes in a Bubble Storing Up Trouble?: Chris Bryant | 2022-07-01T15:04:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A 3% Mortgage? Leveraging Your Stocks to Buy a Home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-3percent-mortgage-leveraging-your-stocks-to-buy-a-home/2022/07/01/b91dee24-f942-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-3percent-mortgage-leveraging-your-stocks-to-buy-a-home/2022/07/01/b91dee24-f942-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 01: California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference after meeting with students at James Denman Middle School on October 01, 2021 in San Francisco, California. California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California will become the first state in the nation to mandate students to have a COVID-19 vaccination in order to attend in person classes. The mandate will go into effect at all private and public schools in the state when the FDA approves the vaccinations for students age and grade level. It is expected that 7th to 12th graders will likely have to have the vaccine by January of 2022. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) (Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
The extreme inflation currently afflicting the US has multiple causes, but without a doubt one of them is the large stimulus package passed by congressional Democrats in 2021. While some economists were keen to this danger at the time, President Joe Biden can at least claim that the country was in the midst of a pandemic and he had to act despite great economic uncertainty.
No such defense is available to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is planning further stimulus — in the form of $17 billion in tax rebates — as part of an “inflation relief package.” Newsom, like a lot of Californians, likes to say that “the future happens here first,” but in this case California has failed to learn from the US’s recent past.
Many Democrats in Washington still say that inflation is not their party’s fault. It is the result of a one-two punch, they say: first Covid, then Vladimir Putin. The evidence shows otherwise.
Compare inflation in Europe and the US, which use different methods for calculating how fast prices are rising. There is nothing nefarious about that. An exact measure is a complex mathematical feat, but under normal conditions the various techniques give roughly the same answer.
Unfortunately, times are not normal. The US method, called the CPI for the Consumer Price Index, is likely to understate slightly compared to the European method, called the HICP for the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices. Nonetheless, the comparison is informative.
On first glance, the two look similar: 8.6% for the CPI in May, 8.1% for the HCIP. This has led some Democrats to argue that the US is simply experiencing the same supply shocks as the rest of the world. When you strip out food and energy prices, however — the things most likely to be affected by the war in Ukraine — the stark difference between the US and Europe becomes evident: 6.1% in the US and 3.5% in the euro zone.
Of course, Ukrainian grain and Russian natural gas are far more important for the European economy than they are for the US economy. So while only a bit of US inflation can be tied to food and energy, the vast majority of European inflation results from those two components.
Then why is the US experiencing inflation worse than what Europe is experiencing? The timing of the inflation bumps makes it clear. US core prices — excluding energy and food — jumped in the spring of 2021, just as people started spending their stimulus checks. Eurozone core inflation, by contrast, didn’t rise above 2% until October 2021, and has remained lower than the 4.4% rate the US reached last summer.
The case that stimulus is responsible for inflation is so overwhelming that even the former chair of former President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors has made it. So why is Newsom attempting to fight inflation by providing even more stimulus?
His official statement betrays no evidence that he has seriously considered the issue. He even compounds the misguided economics by suggesting the final package will include a gas tax suspension and a rent subsidy, both of which are likely to drive up prices in those very sectors.
In fairness, there are two mitigating factors in his favor. The first is that some of the stimulus will “leak” from California and show up as inflation in neighboring states. The second is that this is all really congressional Democrats’ fault. Despite forecasts suggesting that the stimulus relief was more than enough to keep state budgets stable, they insisted on adding another $350 billion in state aid in their stimulus package. As a result, states are running surpluses even as they have yet to tap all of the funding made available to them.
There is little chance that Newsom’s inflation-relief package will actually relieve any inflation. Instead, it is likely to lead to even higher prices in California and the Western US. What Newsom and other Democrats need to understand is that too much stimulus is part of what got us into this mess — and adding even more stimulus is not the way out.
• California’s $17 Billion Rebate Plan Is Economic Illiteracy: Jared Dillian
• Inflation Is Soaring. So Where’s My Pay Raise?: Chris Bryant | 2022-07-01T15:05:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joe Biden Has a Few Lessons for Gavin Newsom About Inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/joe-biden-has-a-few-lessons-for-gavin-newsom-about-inflation/2022/07/01/ea748e48-f946-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/joe-biden-has-a-few-lessons-for-gavin-newsom-about-inflation/2022/07/01/ea748e48-f946-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
‘Of course go after the billionaires first,’ the CEO of the high-end Florida facility told fundraisers while coronavirus vaccine shots were still scarce
MorseLife CEO Keith Myers urged company fundraisers to give wealthy donors priority for scarce vaccines, according to directions made public by the Justice Department. (Damon Higgins/Palm Beach Post/Zumapress)
After The Post’s revelations, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) directed the state’s chief inspector general to conduct an investigation in conjunction with the state health department. People familiar with the case said agents with the inspector general’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services also began conducting interviews.
“This specific vaccination program was designed to protect some of the nation’s most vulnerable individuals at a critical time when the covid-19 pandemic was devastating that population,” Brian M. Boynton, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a news release about the settlement.
The Justice Department said MorseLife facilitated the vaccination of ineligible people by falsely characterizing them as nursing home staffers and volunteers. All told, 567 of the 976 people vaccinated at a Dec. 31, 2020, clinic were ineligible to receive the shots under guidelines for the federal nursing home program, according to the Justice Department. At the time, elderly residents of MorseLife facilities and caregivers had yet to receive the shots, their relatives told The Post last year, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal against family members. | 2022-07-01T15:05:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | MorseLife, Florida nursing home, pays $1.7 million after giving donors early access to covid vaccines - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/01/morselife-nursing-home-settlement-covid-vaccines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/01/morselife-nursing-home-settlement-covid-vaccines/ |
Cassidy Hutchinson and the all-knowing presence of Washington’s aides
The former West Wing insider testified to the latent power of multitasking assistants.
Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, is sworn in to testify during the June 28 hearing of the House Jan. 6 select committee. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; Washington Post illustration)
Washington is run by aides, or at least it runs on the work of aides: the gophers, the schedulers, the advisers, the consiglieres, the speechwriters, the deputy assistant whatevers, the advance teams, the surrogates and spokespeople, the bag men and body men and boss whisperers, the young women who arrange everything and get credit for nothing. The aide is just out of frame, or blurry in the background, or seated against the wall of the conference room. Head down, taking notes, sending texts. Crafting a plan, a response, a lunch order. The aide’s responsibilities can be vast or pinpoint, consequential or quotidian. But even at a lower rank, even with modest experience, an aide has a source of formidable power: proximity. The aide sees and hears and knows, because they are, simply, around.
“Principal aide” was how Cassidy Hutchinson, 25, was described by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) Tuesday during the sixth hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee. Cheney used her opening remarks to situate Hutchinson at the nexus of power, calling her “a familiar face on Capitol Hill” whose desk was “several steps down the hall from the Oval Office.”
“Ms. Hutchinson,” Cheney said, “was in a position to know a great deal about the happenings in the Trump White House.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, while working for White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Hutchinson was surrounded by unfolding drama as the West Wing reacted to the insurrection. She was just around the corner from — or in earshot of, or behind the scenes with — the major players. Under oath she testified that she heard Meadows say that President Donald Trump condoned the mob’s vitriol toward Vice President Mike Pence. She said that a deputy chief of staff told her that the president had been informed before his speech that some rallygoers were armed. She said she heard and then witnessed the aftermath of a presidential tantrum that involved broken plateware.
The subtle stagecraft behind the Jan. 6 hearings
Trump called her sworn testimony “fake” and “sick.”
“In my judgment, Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony today would not withstand a basic cross-examination,” said Meadows’s lawyer, George Terwilliger, on Tuesday.
A LinkedIn profile that appears to be Hutchinson’s describes her job then as “executive assistant” to Meadows, which makes her sound like a glorified secretary, and also “special assistant to the president for legislative affairs” in the “office of the chief of staff,” which sounds so officious that “aide” is a better term, though also inadequate.
But the point is: Whoever has access to the chief of staff has access to the president and anyone in his orbit.
“When I worked in the White House, I was always told: ‘If you really want to know what’s going on, talk to the assistant,’” says Eli Attie, who was a speechwriter for Al Gore and then a writer and producer for “The West Wing.” “They’re the ones listening to all the calls, talking to other assistants. They know who’s delisted from various meetings. They know the private rantings of their bosses. They hear the stompings of the president. In a town and culture where proximity is power, the aides have the proximity.”
Hutchinson’s desk was located outside Meadows’s door in the West Wing, in a small reception area mere seconds from the Oval Office. “Mostly I was there to serve what the chief of staff needed,” she told the committee, while describing her typical day as “varied,” which was both true and an understatement.
Jennifer Palmieri watched the first hour and a half of the hearing from her home in New Jersey. She saw and heard a version of her younger self. Palmieri had Hutchinson’s job — and was near her age — when Leon Panetta was Bill Clinton’s second chief of staff in the mid-’90s. The job may be lower-ranking and thankless, but aides to the chief of staff have an intimate grasp of what’s going on in the West Wing, Palmieri says. Higher-ranking staffers vent or confide in them, or make telling demands of them, because they can’t do so to their own bosses.
When Panetta left the White House in 1997, Palmieri recalls a Clinton policy adviser asking her this: “What are you going to do now, after running the federal government for two and a half years? Because that’s what you’ve been doing.”
“That corner of the West Wing, with the chief and the chief’s aides and the deputies: It really does run things,” says Palmieri, who went on to head communications for the Obama White House and for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “I do think people would be shocked at the proximity of all these things. You’d definitely hear plates smashing against the dining room of the Oval Office.”
Aide — from the 17th-century French military term “aide-de-camp” — is a squishy label. In Washington it can mean anyone who serves a higher-up, in any capacity. Aides are the ones who get chewed out by U.S. senators for forgetting to procure utensils for the boss’s salad. Aides are the ones who had to scour McAllen, Tex., in 1988 for Clamato juice, because someone overheard the wife of vice-presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen remarking about how she liked the beverage. Aides are the ones who, in 1994, had to figure out how to proceed with a planned event in the yard of the White House after a pilot with cocaine and alcohol in his system crashed a Cessna into the South Lawn and died.
But how can “aide” possibly capture the role that Hutchinson appears to have had? The hearing conveyed that she knew of pardon requests and security protocol; she worked on policy issues and scheduling; she was a conduit from Congress to the White House, the White House to the Cabinet and from one West Wing staffer to another; she flew on Air Force One and walked the colonnade by the Rose Garden with various elected officials. She testified that at least four of Trump’s close advisers each expressed revealing thoughts about Jan. 6 directly to her. She testified that White House counsel Pat Cipollone asked her to ensure that Trump did not go to the Capitol on Jan. 6. She testified that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called her directly during Trump’s speech on the Ellipse while Hutchinson was in a backstage tent with members of the Trump family. (Cipollone and McCarthy could not be reached for comment. A day before the hearing, McCarthy’s Twitter account retweeted a fellow House member who referred to the committee’s work as a “sham.”)
In her recollections, Hutchinson seemed to cast herself as the voice of reason, nudging her boss to do his job at a moment of crisis.
“You watching the TV, chief?” she recalled saying to Meadows, in his office, as the mob closed in on the Capitol.
“Have you talked to the president?” she said she asked him.
“You might want to check in with him, Mark,” she recalled saying of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
During Tuesday’s hearing, alumni of the Obama White House traded knowing texts when the committee showed the location of Hutchinson’s desk in the West Wing, according to Sean Sweeney, a former aide to Rahm Emanuel when he was Barack Obama’s first chief of staff.
The Jan. 6 hearings and the spectacle of confidence
“They can try to dismiss her as a low-level person or a young person, but that’s not how it works,” Sweeney says. “If that’s where she sat and that’s the job she had, then she certainly knows what went on.”
“She was definitely very omnipresent,” recalls a former fellow aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak about workplace dynamics. “I truly don’t know if I could come up with an accurate title” for her. “It really is hard to define just because it encompassed a lot.”
In 1973, Alexander Butterfield — an assistant to Richard M. Nixon’s first chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman — told the Senate Watergate Committee about the president’s audiotapes. Multiple former White House aides interviewed for this article name-checked Butterfield as an analog to Hutchinson.
Nixon “wanted Haldeman to be more a thinker, to be the follow-through guy on things that were important to the president that needed to get done,” Butterfield told the director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library Museum in 2008. “And there was a lot of minutiae to the other stuff, administrative minutiae, and I took that on. I had about 28 separate jobs …”
Hutchinson had many, too, it seems. Her workload in the final weeks of the Trump presidency, she implied from her testimony, ranged from receiving officials’ objections to the commander in chief’s urges to wiping lunch debris off the wall of the Oval Office dining room after Trump allegedly threw a tantrum.
“Her cleaning the ketchup off the wall? That could not be more Amy Brookheimer in our world,” says David Mandel, a showrunner for the HBO satire “Veep,” referencing a capable but subservient character. “I don’t want to be too flippant about it, but this is why we stopped doing the show. It just got to the point where, what’s the point of making up the story when this is reality?”
In the Clinton White House, Bill Burton’s title was “deputy assistant to the president,” but that told you nothing about his job as a right-hand man for Clinton’s first chief of staff, Mack McLarty. Burton sat right outside McLarty’s office, in the same small area as Hutchinson would nearly 30 years later.
“Everyone called her a top aide to Meadows, and I wondered what that meant,” he says. “Was she [Meadows’] chief of staff? His executive assistant? Was she a policy person? And then as the hearing went on and I found out more and more, I realized she is essentially his chief of staff.”
Sometimes aides — because of luck, timing and proximity — make or witness history. In 1988, as a 23-year-old campaign aide, Matt Bennett helped to stage the infamous photo op of Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis riding in a tank. Later, when Clinton was in office, Bennett was in a holding room near a NATO meeting in Brussels when Clinton and his national security adviser stepped in to privately discuss the deal they were cutting to remove nuclear weapons from Ukrainian territory.
Margaret Sullivan: The Jan. 6 hearing was horrifying. It also gave me hope.
“So you’re a fly on the wall for a lot of things,” says Bennett, who would become deputy assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs (or, simply, an aide). “They could be funny, they could be dramatic. They could be windows into the character of these people. You’re just around for a lot of stuff, and they’ve got to trust you to keep their confidence.”
If you betray that confidence in a self-serving way, Bennett says, your career in politics will likely end. Hutchinson, however, “did the right thing.”
She “didn’t have enormous power,” Bennett says. “She had enormous access,” which can be its own kind of power. “It’s a power that is very tough to use outside of very, very rare circumstances.”
That rare circumstance arrived Tuesday: A young civilian, previously unknown to most Americans, told Congress what she saw and heard while in the innermost sanctum of government at a crucial moment in history.
“We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie,” Hutchinson told the committee, nodding to both the position she had and the position she occupied physically. “And it was something that was really hard in that moment to digest, knowing what I’d been hearing down the hall...” | 2022-07-01T15:05:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cassidy Hutchinson is evidence of the power Washington's aides can have - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/01/cassidy-hutchinson-washington-aides-power/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/01/cassidy-hutchinson-washington-aides-power/ |
FILE - This 1997 image provided by the CDC during an investigation into an outbreak of monkeypox, which took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, and depicts the dorsal surfaces of the hands of a monkeypox case patient, who was displaying the appearance of the characteristic rash during its recuperative stage. Health authorities in Africa said Thursday, June 30, 2022 they are treating the expanding monkeypox outbreak there as an emergency and are calling on rich countries to share the world’s limited supply of vaccines in an effort to avoid the glaring equity problems seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. (CDC via AP, File) (Uncredited/CDC) | 2022-07-01T15:06:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | African officials: Monkeypox spread is already an emergency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/african-officials-monkeypox-spread-is-already-an-emergency/2022/07/01/ad3fd386-f944-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/african-officials-monkeypox-spread-is-already-an-emergency/2022/07/01/ad3fd386-f944-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
What LNG Can and Can’t Do to Replace Europe’s Imports of Russian Gas
Analysis by Sergio Chapa and Anna Shiryaevskaya | Bloomberg
<p> </p> (Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg)
A crucial part of the European Union’s plan to wean itself off Russian energy is to greatly increase purchases of liquefied natural gas from other producers. The EU, however, isn’t yet equipped to receive enough LNG to replace Russian gas entirely and will need to outbid rival buyers. And because the world’s supply of LNG can’t expand quickly, routing more of it to Europe leaves other would-be buyers wanting.
1. Why liquefy gas?
The places where natural gas is found are often hundreds or thousands of miles away from where it’s used in power plants, factories, refineries and homes. It can be moved relatively cheaply by land through pipelines, but only to fixed points. Over the past six decades, a multibillion-dollar industry has developed to cool the gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius), at which point it changes into a liquid that can be loaded aboard refrigerated ships and sent across the globe. At the other end, it must be received at a specially built terminal where the fluid is converted back to gas.
2. What’s available for Europe to buy?
3. What’s Europe doing?
Germany, the biggest buyer of Russian gas in the EU, intends to build several LNG import facilities, its first, despite its goal of abandoning fossil-fueled power by 2035. It ordinarily takes several years to obtain the permits and land contracts and billions of euros in financing necessary to construct such terminals, though Germany temporarily authorized an acceleration of the approval process. A number of countries, including Germany, announced plans to hire ship-borne floating terminals that can be put into operation in a matter of months rather than years. To move gas from coastal import terminals to demand centers elsewhere, new pipelines are being laid and plans have been launched to reverse the flow in an existing one built to bring gas from Azerbaijan to Italy.
4. Why can’t supply easily expand?
Although a new gas well can be brought into production within weeks, the process of approving and financing a plant that liquefies gas takes years. So, for the immediate future, the world is limited to about four dozen LNG plants around the world, along with some 600 specialized tankers that can ferry cargoes. A fire at a Texas LNG plant in June temporarily knocked out almost a fifth of US exports.
5. How do increased EU purchases affect other importers?
A tug of war over limited cargoes caused the price of LNG to soar. Thailand, for instance, paid twice as much for supplies in June as it had a year before. For some buyers, prices were out of reach. Emerging economies in South Asia such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were having to turn more to fuel oil, which is more carbon-intensive, to produce electricity, intensifying pollution and compromising efforts to contain global warming. Pakistan was also forced to cut electricity to households and industry. | 2022-07-01T16:36:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What LNG Can and Can’t Do to Replace Europe’s Imports of Russian Gas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-lng-can-and-cant-do-to-replace-europes-imports-of-russian-gas/2022/07/01/27c3c3d8-f954-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-lng-can-and-cant-do-to-replace-europes-imports-of-russian-gas/2022/07/01/27c3c3d8-f954-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Why Closer Ties Between Russia and China Have Democracies Worried
Rivals for centuries, China and Russia now have a partnership that has “no limits,” Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin said in early February. The energy, military and political ties nurtured over the past decade between the world’s two most powerful authoritarian states — both of which aim to upend at least parts of the US-dominated, post-Cold War order — have aroused growing concern among democratic leaders from Washington to Tokyo. Just weeks after the joint statement, when Russia invaded Ukraine, China refused to condemn the move. Still, the support Beijing has shown its ally since has been anything but boundless.
1. What pushed China and Russia closer?
The rapprochement was driven by a common alienation from America that deepened after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and became increasingly overt after the 2008 financial crisis, which originated in the US. Both states concluded that the meltdown would undercut faith globally in the US economic and political model. They increased ties cautiously until 2014, when Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula triggered sanctions and a definitive break between Russia and the wider West. That forced Moscow to look for new partners and especially new markets for its energy exports. China was a good fit, proving a massive and fast-growing buyer of Russian commodities and weapons. The two states also share a deep hostility toward US alliances in what they consider their own rightful spheres of influence. For Russia, that’s the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe; for China, it’s Washington’s network of bilateral defense treaties in the Indo-Pacific region. Though short of a formal, treaty-based alliance, the partnership between China and Russia has been enhanced by a strong personal bond between Putin and Xi.
2. Why the bromance between the two leaders?
Products of tough childhoods, both men have evinced a determination to crush dissent at home and restore their nations to greatness, ending their perceived humiliation by the US and Europe. They have met more than 30 times, making dumplings together in Tianjin and pancakes in Vladivostok. In 2019, Xi called Putin his “best friend.” In a joint statement in February, they spelled out their shared contempt for Western ideas of democracy. They defined democracy without reference to elections, independent courts or free media and said it was about economic development, with all models for public political participation equally valid.
3. What’s the history between the two states?
In the 1800s, Russia was among European powers that imposed so-called unequal treaties on China’s Qing dynasty, including one ceding the territory where the Russian city Vladivostok sits today. Relations improved dramatically for a short period after Mao Zedong led China’s Communist Party to power in 1949, finding a natural ally in Josef Stalin. But Mao opposed the political reforms known as de-Stalinization that followed the Soviet leader’s 1953 death and, in 1961, he split from Moscow. In 1969, the two countries fought a brief border war over disputed territories and, in 1972, China did the unthinkable by turning toward the US. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev took charge in the Kremlin, that relations began to thaw again.
4. What can they offer each other now?
Since 2014, Russia has sold China some of its most advanced weapons systems, including $5 billion worth of S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems and SU-35 attack jets. Within two months of Crimea’s annexation, Russia’s Gazprom PJSC signed a deal it said was worth about $400 billion to supply China with natural gas through a pipeline called the Power of Siberia. A second pipeline deal has been struck since. In addition, the two countries have increasingly coordinated their positions at the United Nations Security Council, where both wield vetoes.
5. What worries the democratic powers?
The growing cooperation between China and Russia has led some policy makers in the US to fear that the country could be forced to fight wars on two fronts, for example if Russia were to threaten an American ally in Europe to distract the US during a confrontation with China over Taiwan. US Senator Jim Inhofe argued last year that, adjusted for purchasing power parity, the two nations combined spend more on defense than the US. There’s a wider concern that the combination of economic, military and political muscle the two can muster is emboldening other world leaders with autocratic tendencies, undermining confidence in democracy as a political system, and threatening the version of the rules-based international order promoted by the US and its allies since the end of the Cold War.
6. How has the war in Ukraine played in the relationship?
China avoided criticizing the invasion, blamed the US and NATO for the conflict, and bought Russian oil that was being shunned by some other countries, indirectly funding Moscow’s war machine. But Xi proved reluctant to unequivocally back the war or help Russia cushion the financial impact of US and European Union sanctions. With a gross domestic product almost eight times the size of Russia’s, China has substantially more at stake in a global economy that’s still dominated by the US and other developed democracies. | 2022-07-01T16:36:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Closer Ties Between Russia and China Have Democracies Worried - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-closer-ties-between-russia-and-china-have-democracies-worried/2022/07/01/73519812-f953-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-closer-ties-between-russia-and-china-have-democracies-worried/2022/07/01/73519812-f953-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
University officials said they will not fire the Supreme Court justice, who has taught at the university since 2011
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, seen in Washington in October 2021, has co-taught a class at George Washington University since 2011. (Drew Angerer/Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty)
George Washington University rejected calls to remove Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from its law school faculty by students and others frustrated over the judge’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and his urging to reconsider other landmark civil rights cases.
The school’s stance, however, has left many students unsatisfied, said Jon Kay, a rising junior who started a petition demanding Thomas’s termination. The petition amassed nearly 9,000 signatures, including from people not from GW, in less than a week, and organizers are considering other ways to pressure administrators into changing course.
The conflict is yet another flash point in the college free speech debate, as students demand greater say over who should be on a university’s payroll and what ideas can be tolerated on campus. In another recent case in the D.C. region, students at Georgetown University’s law school similarly clashed with officials over Ilya Shapiro, a former administrator whose tweets about President Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman for the Supreme Court triggered a months-long investigation. Shapiro, after being placed on paid administrative leave, was cleared of wrongdoing but resigned, citing a hostile work environment.
Georgetown Law official resigns, had been cleared in probe into tweets
Meanwhile, administrators are under increasing pressure to showcase their schools as places where students and faculty can openly disagree with one another, while also ensuring community members feel safe and welcome. Leaders at GW — referencing the school’s academic freedom guidelines — said “it is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals within or outside the university from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
Other graduates support the university. “I am not fond of the idea of, ‘this teacher is repugnant for something outside of the classroom and therefore should be fired,’ ” said another of Thomas’s former students at GW who works as an attorney for a government agency and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be associated with the controversy at his alma mater. He does not agree with many of Thomas’s past judgments but thinks “the school is absolutely right.”
In a concurring opinion released after the court struck down Roe v. Wade — which legalized abortion nationwide — Thomas wrote the court should reconsider other cases that relied on the same legal reasoning. Those cases include Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the right of gay couples to marry; Lawrence v. Texas, a case that invalidated sodomy laws and legalized same-sex sexual activity throughout the country; and Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling that established the right for married couples to buy and use contraception. | 2022-07-01T16:36:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | GWU defends Justice Clarence Thomas as students call for removal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/clarence-thomas-george-washington-unversity-class/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/clarence-thomas-george-washington-unversity-class/ |
A video of former president Donald Trump is played on a screen as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
If there any criminal referrals come out of the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation, witness tampering could be a big one. At the end of Tuesday’s hearing, the committee shared messages they said two of their witnesses received, urging them not to testify to the committee.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the No. 2 on the committee, said that, after being asked if “any former colleagues” had contacted them before their testimony, one witness described receiving phone calls:
“What they said to me is as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in the good graces in Trump world … And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just keep that in mind as I proceed through my depositions and interviews with the committee.”
She also quoted a witness describing a call they received:
“[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”
“I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses, to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns,” said Cheney.
But what is witness tampering, exactly?
It requires three things be present, said white-collar criminal lawyer Jack Sharman, who served as a special counsel to Congress during its investigation of President Bill Clinton.
1. That there is a proceeding going on, like a grand jury (or, in this case, a congressional hearing).
2. That there is an intent to influence witness testimony in that proceeding.
3. That the intent is wrongful, meaning the person wanted to prevent the truth getting out to avoid being accused of wrongdoing. (The statue says: “whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person”) “I tell people that lawyers attempt to obstruct Congress all the time,” Sharman said. “The question is whether it’s wrongfully or corruptly.”
How often is a crime like this prosecuted?
Not very often. Sharman said that the majority of witness tampering cases happen in the context of a judicial proceeding, like a grand jury. It’s rare to have these cases revolve around someone preventing testimony to Congress. (In 2019, Trump ally Roger Stone was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering. He was going to go to jail before Trump pardoned him.)
That doesn’t mean these kinds of prosecutions can’t happen; it just means the Jan. 6 committee could be fighting an uphill battle if they refer such a case to the Justice Department.
The Jan. 6 committee has referred four people to the Justice Department for prosecution so far — all for contempt of Congress charges, for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify. The Justice Department has prosecuted two: former Trump political adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who faces a trial this month, and former White House adviser Peter Navarro.
What’s Trump’s potential liability?
It’s unclear. The committee only shared two messages that it said witnesses received from Trump allies. We don’t know the identity of the witnesses who received these messages, nor who sent them — and, crucially, whether the senders were acting at Trump’s behest. Cheney said the committee would reveal more in later hearings.
But the seeds are there for a witness tampering charge, either against the president or the people who made the calls, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a prominent white collar criminal lawyer. “To me it’s clear tampering if an upcoming witness is told the president reads the transcripts,” he said. “The person who called engaged in tampering. If Trump encouraged or asked someone to make the call, he would be criminally liable as well.”
With regard to the Jan. 6 committee, The Post and other media outlets reported that former top White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson was one of the people that Trump world tried to influence with calls before her testimony.
If that’s true, it would be significant. Her testimony has been crucial to the Jan. 6 committee investigation — she testified four times in taped interviews, and for more than two hours live on Tuesday, painting a picture of a president who wanted to stay in power at all costs, even at the risk of political violence. If there was an attempt to influence Hutchinson’s testimony, of all people’s, that could raise the stakes for the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute.
The committee has also previously hinted at the possibility that Trump engaged in witness tampering with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), noting how his statements since the attack have changed over time to become more Trump friendly. Committee chair Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote a letter to McCarthy asking, “At that meeting [on Jan. 28], or at any other time, did President Trump or his representatives discuss or suggest what you should say publicly, during the impeachment trial (if called as a witness), or in any later investigation about your conversations with him on January 6th?”
(McCarthy said such conversations “never happened” but acknowledged if they did, they’d probably be illegal.) | 2022-07-01T16:37:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is witness tampering and could Trump be charged? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/witness-tampering-trump-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/witness-tampering-trump-jan-6/ |
Woman found dead with gunshot wounds in Pr. William County, Va.
Police said they did not know a motive for the killing
A woman was found dead with gunshot wounds early Friday morning near woods in Prince William County, Va., police said.
Police responded to a call just before 4:30 a.m. and found the woman in the 13900 block of Jefferson Davis Highway in Woodbridge, authorities said. A police spokesperson said the woman had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The area where the woman was found is near a 7-Eleven store, but a police spokesperson said officers think she was killed in the wooded area.
Police said they do not yet know a motive for the slaying. | 2022-07-01T17:06:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman found fatally shot in wooded area in Prince William County, Va. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/woman-shot-prince-william-woods/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/woman-shot-prince-william-woods/ |
Simone Biles poses wearing her bronze medal from balance beam competition during artistic gymnastics at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Aug. 3, 2021, in Tokyo. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)
President Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. to 17 people in a wide variety of endeavors, including gymnast Simone Biles, Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington and posthumous recognition of inventor Steve Jobs and the late Sen. John McCain.
Biden’s list of recipients, his first as president, include stalwarts of politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights and the military. He will present the awards at the White House on July 7.
“President Biden has long said that America can be defined by one word: possibilities. These seventeen Americans demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation — hard work, perseverance, and faith,” the White House said in a statement.
The honorees range from Biles, 25, the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history who has advocated for sexual assault victims, to former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), 90, the sharp-tongued ex-governor who served 18 years in the Senate and was outspoken on the issue of fiscal responsibility.
‘Olympic athletes are human’: Simone Biles withdrawal puts mental health in global spotlight
The president also is recognizing Washington, actor, director, and producer who has served as the national spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for more than 25 years; and Megan Rapinoe, gold medal-winning soccer star and advocate for gender pay equality.
During his four years in office, Donald Trump, honored 24 people, a list populated by practitioners of his favorite sport of golf — Tiger Woods, Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam — and some of his fiercest supporters, such as radio host Rush Limbaugh, former congressman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Trump to give ally Nunes the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Biden’s list of political honorees includes Republicans and Democrats. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), co-founded Giffords, a nonprofit focused on preventing gun violence, after she was shot in the head at a constituent event in Tucson in January 2011 and gravely wounded. She is married to former astronaut and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who is up for reelection this year.
Biden served in the Senate with McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and decorated Vietnam War veteran who died in 2018 of brain cancer. McCain’s widow, Cindy, endorsed Biden in 2020 as the Democrat reversed the party’s fortunes in Arizona, winning the state. Cindy McCain is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture.
In the announcement, the White House said the recipients “have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities — and across the world — while blazing trails for generations to come.”
Julieta García, the former president of the University of Texas at Brownsville and the first Hispanic woman to serve as a college president;
Analysis: What is witness tampering? And could this charge apply to Trump? | 2022-07-01T17:15:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | President Biden to award Presidential Medal of Freedom, nation's highest civilian honor, to 17 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/biden-medal-of-freedom-honor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/biden-medal-of-freedom-honor/ |
A separate tropical rainstorm is drenching parts of the upper Texas coast and southwest Louisiana
Forecast track for Tropical Storm Bonnie. (National Hurricane Center)
The disturbance that forecasters have tracked for more than a week crossing the Atlantic and Caribbean has finally earned a name. The National Hurricane Center declared that Tropical Storm Bonnie formed at 11 a.m. Friday about 195 miles east-southeast of Nicaragua.
The storm is bolting westward at 20 mph, and is forecast to make landfall near the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica on Friday night, where tropical storm warnings are in effect.
“Heavy rainfall is likely across portions of Nicaragua and Costa Rica today into Saturday. Areas of life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides are expected,” the National Hurricane Center wrote.
Bonnie is one of three tropical systems forecasters have been monitoring. One disturbance, which formed in the western Gulf of Mexico, has already moved over the upper Texas coast and southwest Louisiana. Although it did not organize sufficiently to become a named storm, it has unloaded torrential rain north of Houston.
A third disturbance, on the heels of Bonnie, is given a 10 percent chance to become a tropical depression or storm through the weekend. But it is expected to bring gusty showers Friday into Saturday in the Windward Islands, which bridge the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Bonnie, the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, formed 16 days ahead of average. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects a busier-than-normal season — with 14 to 21 named storms, including six to 10 hurricanes and three to six major (Category 3 or higher) hurricanes. The Atlantic season typically peaks in late August and September.
Bonnie is a minimal tropical storm, packing winds of 40 mph. The Hurricane Center forecasts modest strengthening before landfall, when peak winds could hit 50 mph.
While such winds will be rather gusty and could cause downed trees and power outages, the primary hazard is heavy rainfall as the storm transits Central America.
The Hurricane Center projects 4 to 8 inches of rain and localized amounts up to a foot in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Bonnie could also generate a minor ocean surge — or rise in water of 1 to 3 feet above normally dry land near and just north of where its center makes landfall.
After sweeping across Central America, Bonnie is expected to emerge in the Pacific Ocean, where it is predicted to gain strength and potentially become a hurricane early next week. However, it is not expected to threaten land.
According to tropical weather researcher Phil Klotzbach, Bonnie is somewhat of a rarity — among one of six named storms on record to form in the Caribbean during July.
Tropical Storm #Bonnie has formed in the western Caribbean. Since 1950, only five other named storms have formed in the Caribbean during July:
Anna-1961
Cesar-1996
Claudette-2003
Dennis-2005
Dolly-2008 pic.twitter.com/OH3tONT0hU
Texas-Louisiana tropical rainstorm
Meanwhile, the disturbance that formed over the western gulf is bringing a flood threat from around Galveston, Tex., to Lake Charles, La., on Friday.
Flood watches cover this entire zone through the afternoon or evening. As of midday, the heaviest rain had moved north of Houston and Galveston but was drenching the Golden Triangle area, which includes Beaumont and Port Arthur, where flash flood warnings are in effect until 3:45 p.m.
“Between 4 and 8 inches of rain have fallen,” the National Weather Service wrote. “Additional rainfall amounts of 1 to 3 inches are possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is already occurring with several reports of street flooding received from Port Arthur and surrounding areas.”
The Weather Service issued a special bulletin warning that rainfall rates could exceed three inches per hour at times.
Radar showed torrential rain between Beaumont and Lake Charles at midday Friday, but forecast models project downpours to gradually subside by evening.
While as much as 8 inches had fallen in the Golden Triangle region, most areas of Houston had seen about one-tenth of an inch. The rainfall skirted much of interior Texas, which is enduring extreme drought and relentless heat. | 2022-07-01T17:37:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tropical Storm Bonnie forms and is a barrelling toward Central America - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/01/tropical-storm-bonnie-costarica-nicaragua/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/01/tropical-storm-bonnie-costarica-nicaragua/ |
Viktor Orban’s foreign minister says he is ‘constantly’ consulting Republican lawmakers on opposition to plan to tax multinational firms
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban looks on ahead of a meeting of the North Atlantic Council during the NATO summit in Madrid on June 30, 2022. Hungary has resisted a global tax deal backed by the Biden administration. (Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images)
Senior Hungarian officials say they are working with Republican lawmakers in the United States to defeat a global minimum tax backed by the Biden administration, as European and American leaders struggle to enact a groundbreaking international accord targeting multinational corporations.
Peter Szijjarto, Hungary’s foreign minister, said this week that he is taking advice from GOP officials on resisting the U.S.-supported attempt to set an international floor on corporate taxation, although the extent of that communication is not clear. With a right-wing government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary is effectively holding up implementation of the tax deal in Europe, because each country in the European Union has veto power over the bloc’s tax agreements. All other E.U. member countries support the proposal. The United States has not implemented the agreement yet, either, amid a broader standoff in Congress over President Biden’s economic agenda, and some Democrats are cautious about implementing the new international tax rules if the Europeans do not do so simultaneously.
The global pact, a long-standing goal of Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, would establish a minimum 15 percent tax on large multinational firms in an attempt to arrest the decades-long decline in corporate tax revenue collected by Western governments. The Biden administration has said the proposal is necessary to ensure that governments can fund social services and avoid a mutually damaging “race to the bottom” by nations to cut corporate tax rates to attract businesses. But those efforts have been strongly resisted by Republicans, who say the new rules include loopholes that will hurt the international competitiveness of American firms.
Yellen pushes new global minimum tax
The deal appears at risk because of the roadblocks in Europe and in Congress. That dynamic is self-sustaining: Several Hungarian officials have in recent days pointed to resistance to the plan among Republican lawmakers as a reason for Hungary to hold off, and American opponents of the plan have in turn pointed to resistance to the effort in Europe, hardening an impasse that the White House has not been able to resolve.
“We are constantly consulting with the Republicans. There is a constant professional consultation on this issue,” said Szijjarto, a member of Orban’s government, in an interview posted on Facebook. Hungary has one of the lowest tax rates in Europe. “We think that the lower the taxes on labor and businesses the more it helps in terms of competitiveness.”
The extent of the GOP collaboration with Hungarian officials was not immediately clear. GOP Reps. Adrian Smith (Neb.) and Mike Kelly (Pa.), top members of the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to the ambassador of Hungary last week commending that country for rejecting the global tax deal. The letter was released by Hungarian media and later confirmed by spokespeople for the lawmakers, who did not post it to their congressional websites or social media pages. Spokespeople for both lawmakers said they were not in contact with Hungarian officials beyond the letter. The anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist also released a letter in June praising the Hungarians but said in an interview that he has not lobbied individual Hungarian lawmakers. Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) also commended Hungary’s stance, although an aide to Toomey said the senator has not met with Hungarian officials. Toomey has met with officials of Britain, France and Ireland to build opposition to the deal, the aide said.
U.S. conservatives have built close ties to Orban’s political movement in recent years, hailing Hungary as a bastion of traditional Christian values that stands up against immigration, same-sex rights and what the right decries as “woke” liberalism. Fox News host Tucker Carlson broadcast from Budapest for a week last summer, meeting with Orban and praising his government. “If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now,” Carlson told viewers.
Former vice president Mike Pence addressed a conference on “family values” and demographics in Hungary last fall, and the Conservative Political Action Conference hosted a meeting in Hungary in May. Former president Donald Trump issued a formal endorsement of Orban before Hungary’s elections this year, which Orban’s party won more easily than had been expected.
“The Hungarian government is desperately looking for common topics with U.S. Republicans, because the international reputation of Hungary in the West has never been worse. ... One more topic is to kill this global minimum tax,” Peter Kreko, the director of the Hungary-based Political Capital Policy Research and Consulting Institute, said in an interview. “They feel Republicans will come back in the midterms, and then in the next presidential elections.”
The tax proposal consists of two components — an overhaul of how large multinational firms, particularly digital companies, are taxed and where they owe taxes; and a separate agreement on the minimum tax floor. Details of the digital tax accord, which many experts believe requires two-thirds support from Congress to alter U.S. treaties, have not been proposed. European and American leaders are hoping to ratify the global minimum tax promptly, and the Biden administration has argued that it can approve that part of the deal through the budget reconciliation process that allows Democrats to pass certain legislation with their narrow Senate majority alone, bypassing any Republican filibuster.
But Democrats are assured control of the Senate for only a few more months before the midterm elections this fall, and it is all but certain that Republicans would defeat the minimum-tax plan if they regained control of Congress. Still, Europe’s inaction is deepening reticence among some American officials about overhauling the U.S. tax code. General Electric lobbyist Lisa Wolski told a conference last month that it made no sense for the United States to increase its global tax rate before other countries adopt their own minimum taxes, according to Tax Notes. Some congressional Democrats have raised similar concerns amid negotiations over a scaled-back economic package pushed by the Biden administration, according to two people briefed on the ongoing talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
With progress in Washington stalled, Republicans have sought to kill off the deal’s momentum in Europe as well. In their letter, Smith and Kelly acknowledge that the president retains power over foreign policy and treaty negotiations. But they also say that U.S. tax law can be changed only through congressional action.
“We question the prudence of the entire world moving forward toward a system that forces countries to relinquish their sovereign taxing authority,” the letter states. The letter ends: “We would like to extend an offer for a direct dialogue with Congressional Republicans as you consider Hungary’s position on the global tax agreement.”
The comments have been widely cited by Hungarian officials trying to defeat the tax deal. Balazs Orban, the Hungarian prime minister’s political director and a member of the Hungarian parliament, pointed to them on Facebook in a recent post. “It’s good to see that we are not alone,” Balazs Orban said.
Szijjarto, the foreign minister, also said on Facebook: “Republicans in the United States are against this law. It was just yesterday that we received a letter from the Republican leaders of the House’s taxation and commerce policy subcommittees, from two Republican representatives, in which they expressed their appreciation for us not supporting the global minimum tax.”
A spokeswoman for the Hungarian foreign minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Liberal — and some conservative — critics assailed the GOP for working with the Hungarian government.
“I am not surprised the Republicans are doing whatever they can to defend large multinational corporations, even if it means working against the interests of the U.S. government to work with a foreign government,” said Frank Clemente, a tax expert at Americans for Tax Fairness, a left-leaning group. “Their patriotism evaporates when it comes to protecting tax loopholes for multinational corporations.”
Added G. William Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Republican staff director for the Senate Budget Committee: “From the beginning, the Constitution was very clear that politics stops at the water’s edge. When we get involved with individual lawmakers, it’s a question of who speaks for the United States government.”
But other tax experts defended GOP officials, arguing that their efforts reflect long-standing conservative concerns about a complicated and cumbersome new international tax regime. They also pointed out that lawmakers of both parties are frequently in touch with foreign officials about their policy priorities.
“Republicans have real concerns about this, and to the extent they’re working with other folks to explain their reasoning and make the case, I don’t blame them for it,” said Daniel Bunn, an international tax expert at the Tax Foundation, a center-right think tank that has been critical of the global tax deal. “If folks have concerns about a policy and need to talk to other people about those concerns, I think there’s room for that. There’s congressional delegations all the time to talk to foreign officials about things that are going on.”
Andras Petho in Budapest and Tyler Pager in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-07-01T17:37:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | GOP working with Hungarian officials to tank new global tax deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/01/hungary-gop-tax-deal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/01/hungary-gop-tax-deal/ |
From left to right: Alejandra Caraballo, Dustin Martinez, Travis Jackson. (Courtesy of Alejandra Caraballo, Dustin Martinez, Travis Jackson/Washington Post illustration)
As a teacher, Kyle Casey Chu, 33, harbored reservations about sharing his sexual orientation with his students for many years. But the first time the San Francisco-based educator presented his drag queen persona, Panda Dulce, at a Drag Queen Story Hour in 2017, he realized he didn’t have to choose.
“It was the first time I felt comfortable bringing my whole self to my youth work. It was the first time my identity was welcomed, and even encouraged,” he said.
In June, Dulce was reading the children’s book “Families, Families, Families” at a Drag Queen Story Hour at a library in the San Lorenzo suburbs when things took a scary turn for her and the kids. (Dulce goes by she/her pronouns when in drag.)
Proud Boys disrupt drag-queen reading event, prompting hate-crime probe
“I didn’t know if they were armed, but the shirt with the assault rifle on it, accompanied with the message ‘Kill your local pedophile,’ made me immediately think gun violence was a looming inevitability,” she said. Eventually, law enforcement removed them from the library.
But she has also used her new platform to advocate for diverse role models — people like her who are unapologetically themselves and can inspire children to do the same, she said.
“They truly messed with the wrong queen.”
But this year — amid a surge in anti-LGBTQ legislation and harassment and violence targeting queer and trans people — Pride events around the country have come under attack.
Pride events targeted in surge of anti-LGBTQ threats, violence
In Baltimore, two neighboring homes decorated with Pride symbols were set on fire, injuring three people. In northern Idaho, police arrested 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front for planning to riot at a local Pride event. In a Dallas suburb, LGBTQ supporters formed a “human shield” against Proud Boys who were trying to storm a Family Storytime event.
The vitriol and violence spiking online and in person has marked a “terrifying sea change” for LGBTQ individuals in the United States, said Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and instructor at Harvard Law School. Caraballo, a transgender Puerto Rican woman, said the scale and speed at which anti-LGBTQ attacks have escalated is alarming.
Coupled with recent suggestions from the Supreme Court that fundamental rights, such as marriage equality and same-sex intimacy, could be struck down, Caraballo believes that the events of this year will “alter the shapes of our lives for potentially decades.”
But the wide range of emotions that LGBTQ individuals have expressed this past June — the fear, the defiance, the anxiety, the anticipation, the sadness, the joy — have always been baked into Pride, Caraballo added.
“There has always been this sense of grief, but also joy and conflicting emotions with Pride, because as a community, we’ve dealt with so many setbacks,” Caraballo said.
Caraballo has been marching in New York City Pride since 2017. This year, New York City Pride came on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the nationwide right to an abortion, a ruling that has stirred fear among LGBTQ Americans who believe their rights are now at even greater risk.
Caraballo’s Pride weekend typically begins at 7 a.m. on Saturday, so she can get dolled up with enough time to take her position as a parade marshal. For the Dyke March, usually held the Saturday before the city’s Pride parade, Caraballo favors a pair of faux leather combat boots with “giant block heels.” Her go-to outfit has been a blazer with nothing underneath; on her eyes, she applies pink, blue and white makeup — the colors of the trans flag.
But on the last Pride weekend of 2022, Caraballo felt a palpable, and at times literal, emptiness. Her favorite lesbian dive bar, a small, vibrant home away from home for Caraballo, was not as packed as it normally was — probably because people were protesting instead of celebrating, she said.
“The feeling I had [at Pride] was like being the watchman on the Titanic and seeing the iceberg, while everyone is inside happily dancing,” Caraballo said. Although people were trying to hold on to their joy, “there was definitely kind of this chill in the air.”
Erica Ciszek, a 36-year-old assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said Pride felt “anticlimactic” this year.
But this Pride felt different — like a “placeholder” on their calendar rather than the emotional catharsis it usually was, they said. Ciszek didn’t want to drink cocktails and dance to 1990s playlists, they said. They needed a space “for the mourning and the rage.”
In Alabama, Travis Jackson, a 36-year-old social justice and reproductive rights activist, has found a way to channel his outrage alongside his joy at Pride — like “a rainbow with fire mixed in.”
Jackson, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual (also referred to as “bi+”), was discharged from the military in 2009 under its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which permitted queer and trans people in the armed forces as long as they did not express their sexual or gender identity.
“This is like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ all over again,” said Jackson of the past six months. The fear of being criminalized or personally harmed is ever-present, Jackson said.
Pride is typically a time for celebration and personal reflection for Jackson. It is also one of the few places Jackson feels they can safely express their rage — an emotion that Black men like him say can be dangerous to share publicly.
He funnels his anger into his speeches and chants. In Montgomery last month, Jackson led a boisterous call and response: “When I say Alabama, you say ‘gay!’ ”
“The crowd loves that one,” Jackson said.
Martinez, a gay Mexican American originally from San Antonio, said that since coming out as a teen, he has been embraced by his family and community. The Texas of the last two years, where conservative lawmakers have championed some of the most restrictive anti-transgender policies in the country, is not one he recognizes, he said. He’s especially worried for those more vulnerable than him — trans people and drag queens, for example.
But he sees Pride parades and rallies are a way of signaling the LGBTQ community’s solidarity and defiance: “We’re here. We’re not going anywhere. We’re still fighting.”
David Zealy-Wright, 45, of Hickory, N.C., said he encountered challenges when he tried to host an LGBTQ family event last month. He wanted to replicate the success of the drag brunch and show he helped organize last year at L.P. Frans Stadium, home to the minor league baseball team, the Hickory Crawdads.
But after weeks of planning and discussions, Zealy-Wright’s husband, Derek, was told that the Texas Rangers, which owns the local team, had a change of heart this year, he said. Zealy-Wright believes it was because of a recent kid-friendly drag queen show in Dallas that was deemed inappropriate.
In the past year, the Zealy-Wrights’ celebrations have provided a safe, family-friendly environment for people to learn about queer affairs and give back to the community through local charity donations, he said.
Zealy-Wright said the event’s new name is a nod to the Bible verse John 3:16, considered foundational to Christianity because of how it describes God’s love for humanity: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“We survived,” she said. “For so many people, that’s such a huge thing.” | 2022-07-01T17:41:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pride Month, marked by attacks, looked different for LGBTQ Americans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/pride-month-lgbtq-americans-reflect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/pride-month-lgbtq-americans-reflect/ |
By John Feinstein
Future UCLA-USC clashes will be for Big Ten supremacy. (Mark J. Terrill/AP)
As with all the conference-jumping that has taken place in this century, this is all about one thing: money. This is no different than the golfers who have jumped to the Saudi-financed LIV Golf circuit claiming their goal is to grow the game. Just as they golfers are actually trying to grow their bank accounts, the college administrators are motivated by the welfare of their bottom lines. | 2022-07-01T17:50:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UCLA and USC to the Big Ten is all about money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/ucla-usc-big-ten-expansion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/ucla-usc-big-ten-expansion/ |
A ‘radical’ is coming for bank fees — and the industry hates it
Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, at a hearing held by the House Committee on Financial Services in October. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not happy with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and it wants you to know it. On Tuesday, the Chamber launched what it describes as “an extensive campaign to expose and defeat” the agenda of the agency tasked with protecting Americans from the predations of the financial services sector. It accuses agency director Rohit Chopra of being a “radical” with an “ideologically driven agenda,” responsible for “several unlawful actions including Chopra’s intentions to change rules without accountability, injecting great uncertainty into the market.”
One can see why the Chamber is nervous. In the nine months since the Senate approved the nomination of Chopra, a protege of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who previously served on the Federal Trade Commission, he has initiated a wide-ranging investigation into “junk fees,” the money banks and credit card companies charge consumers for everything from late payments on credit cards to checking account overdrafts. The CFPB has also put financial companies on notice that it will not allow AI-based credit decisions to replicate preexisting racial inequities. It’s looking into the burgeoning “buy now, pay later” apps, and how the tech giants are collecting and using information on consumer-payment behavior. Chopra has also made it clear that the days of slap-on-the-wrist fines are over, and that repeat offenders will face serious financial consequences.
But radical? Please. The only “radical” action Chopra has taken is using existing federal law to start to restore the balance of power between American consumers and the banks, credit card companies and financial technology companies that are supposed to be serving them, and doing so in a way that shows he means business.
I sat down with him via Zoom last week, before the Chamber went public with its campaign, but after many complaints from the financial services sector that he was an out-of-control Washington “bureaucrat” (as the Wall Street Journal recently called him) steamrolling over Beltway mores in service to his anti-industry vendetta.
“I think the largest firms are much more accustomed to having a relationship with their regulators that is more akin to friendship than to a traditional relationship between a regulator and a regulated entity,” Chopra told me.
Chopra is already getting results — even before the CFPB takes regulatory action. After a CFPB report revealed that banks earned $15 billion annually when customers overdrew their accounts, a number of banks, including Capital One, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America quickly moved to either eliminate or reduce their overdraft fees.
Similarly, in March, the CFPB announced it would review how the credit reporting industry handles the $88 billion in medical debt listed on the credit reports of individual Americans, including how and when errors are addressed, so that people do not feel pressured to pay money they might not even owe. In response, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, the three largest credit bureaus, quickly announced they would remove medical debt from individual reports as soon as it is paid off, and no longer list amounts in arrears under $500.
These sorts of moves leave opponents scrambling, lashing out like cartoon villains. Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who claimed the CFPB “bullied lenders and credit rating agencies” when it came to the matter of medical debt, said it could “discourage” people from paying their doctor bills. As for the Chamber, it would like you to know that when Chopra bashes “junk fees,” he wants to “vilify legal products that have well-disclosed terms.”
But everyone knows many consumers skip the fine print. And disclosure is not always good enough. “In today’s economy, very large firms have an enormous power over each of us. And in many cases we don’t even have the ability to negotiate. We sign boilerplate language, we click yes on terms of service,” Chopra pointed out.
The Chamber is also alleging that a regulatory revision that the CFPB is undertaking to combat discrimination by financial firms is in violation of federal law. The agency counters that this — along with all the other parts of the Chamber attack — is balderdash. “Scare tactics,” a CFPB spokesperson said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “We remain focused on ensuring fair, transparent, and competitive markets for American consumers and honest businesses who play by the rules.” The CFPB did not respond to the personal attack on Chopra.
If Chopra’s adversaries have complained less in the past, it may be because they were benefiting from CFPB inaction. They had few if any negative words to say about President Donald Trump’s agency picks of Mick Mulvaney and his deputy, the thoroughly unqualified Kathy Kraninger. Mulvaney once described the CFPB as a “sad, sick” joke. Under Kraninger, corporate fines for malfeasance were a mere pittance compared to those issued during the Obama administration.
Chopra’s actions are not abuse. They are the absolute opposite: a plan of attack to even the scales in the increasingly unequal relationship between consumers and big business. No wonder the financial sector and its lobbyists are so enraged. But it’s a fight the rest of us should relish — and one that should make the Biden administration, which is less aggressive on so many other fronts, take note. | 2022-07-01T18:08:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The CFPB's Rohit Chopra is reforming financial services - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/cfpb-rohit-chopra-financial-services-regulation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/cfpb-rohit-chopra-financial-services-regulation/ |
After a Black man is killed by police, a city cancels its July 4 celebratio...
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Jayland Walker, 25, was fatally shot by police in Akron, Ohio, earlier this week. (Screenshot via YouTube//Screenshot via YouTube/WKYC)
Days after a Black man was killed by police officers who reportedly fired almost 100 rounds during a chase that started as a traffic stop, officials in Akron, Ohio, announced that the Fourth of July celebration was canceled in response to a fatal shooting that has rocked the city this week.
Police tried to pull over Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old DoorDash driver, for a traffic infraction early Monday, authorities said. The Akron Police Department said that during the pursuit, Walker fired a gun from outside the vehicle — a claim that Walker’s family has refuted. As he kept driving away from police, Walker jumped out of his vehicle and was chased by officers on foot, according to authorities. It’s unclear why Walker fled police, as he had no criminal record, Bobby DiCello, one of the family’s attorneys, told The Washington Post.
Autopsy records show that eight officers fired more than 90 rounds at Walker, with more than 60 striking his body, DiCello told The Post. The account was corroborated by WKYC, the first to report on the number of gunshots fired.
Officers involved in the shooting have been placed on paid administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigation from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, according to Akron police. The number of officers involved in the shooting, as well as the number of shots fired, have not been released by police.
A weapon was recovered from inside Walker’s car, according to police. DiCello said there is no evidence showing that the firearm was in the car or that the firearm was discharged at an officer.
The killing has sparked protests and calls for accountability from Walker’s family and residents angry over the third fatal police shooting in the northeast Ohio city since late December. Akron police announced Friday that body-camera footage of the shooting would be released on Sunday afternoon.
The blowback led Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan (D), who called the killing “a dark day for our city,” to announce that the city’s Fourth of July celebration was canceled. The Rib, White, & Blue Festival was scheduled to begin Friday in downtown Akron and conclude Monday on Independence Day. The part of downtown where the festival would have taken place will have no activities or entertainment over the holiday weekend, according to the city.
The Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed to The Post that Walker’s death has been classified as a homicide. Walker died of multiple gunshot wounds to the face, abdomen and the upper part of his legs, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. Denice DiNapoli, a spokesperson for the medical examiner, told The Post that the homicide classification “refers to the medical term indicating death at the hands of another and is not a legal conclusion.”
“As it is with every investigation, the goal of the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office is to be able to provide an accurate assessment of the injuries sustained by Mr. Walker,” DiNapoli said.
The autopsy report is expected to be released next week.
More than 1,040 people have been shot and killed by police in the last year, according to a data tracked by The Post. Although half of those people were White. Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of Whites. Hispanics are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.
1,042 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year
Before working for DoorDash, Walker had worked for Amazon, DiCello said at a Thursday news conference. The Akron native’s high school sweetheart died in a car crash last month, local media reported.
Authorities said the incident began at around 12:30 a.m. Monday. When Walker got out of the moving car during a pursuit that lasted several minutes, he ended up in the parking lot for Bridgestone Americas Center for Research and Technology, police said.
After Walker was shot, police said, officers “immediately summonsed for EMS to as they began administering first aid until the arrival of paramedics.”
Once the state’s investigation is complete, the case will be handed over to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office for further review before being presented to the Summit County grand jury for evaluation, police said.
Protesters gathered outside the Akron Police Department’s office on Thursday and blocked traffic to demand “Justice for Jayland.” DiCello told The Post that the family has urged protesters to be peaceful over the holiday weekend, including when the body-cam footage is released Sunday.
“We are very concerned that this video is going to cause Akron to burn, and we don’t want that. Nobody wants that,” the attorney said. “It’s all about peace, dignity and justice for Jayland.”
His family has said Walker was a sweet man who never caused trouble. Relatives expressed their grief in news conferences and interviews with local media, saying they are “angry” and “sick” over a killing they say didn’t have to happen.
His mother, Pamela Walker, was left with one question to WKYC: “Why?”
“Why did this happen in such a manner, such a terrible, terrible way?” she asked. | 2022-07-01T18:59:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Jayland Walker fatally shot by police, July 4 is canceled in Akron, Ohio - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/jayland-walker-police-shooting-july-fourth-ohio/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/jayland-walker-police-shooting-july-fourth-ohio/ |
Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout at the Criminal Court in Bangkok in 2008. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images)
The fate of two Americans detained in Russia could depend on what the U.S. government decides to do with an imprisoned Russian arms dealer nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” whose wild exploits once inspired a Hollywood film starring Nicolas Cage.
Viktor Bout, 55, is a former Soviet military translator who became an international air transport mogul after the fall of communism. Bout is currently serving a 25-year sentence at a medium-security prison in Illinois for conspiring to kill U.S. nationals and selling weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The Kremlin has long pushed for Bout’s release, calling his conviction “unlawful.” And in recent weeks, media reports in Russia have hinted that he could be swapped for WBNA star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.
On Friday, Griner appeared in a Russian court to face drug charges stemming from her arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport in February. Whelan was arrested and charged with spying in 2018 — and has called the trial politically motivated.
U.S. officials have declined to say whether the Biden administration is seeking a prisoner swap involving Griner and Whelan. In April, another U.S. prisoner held in Moscow — former Marine Trevor Reed — was released in exchange for a Russian convicted in the United States.
Many, including Bout’s own lawyer in the United States, believe that he would have to be released for Griner and Whelan to be allowed back to the United States.
Bout’s lawyer in the United States, Steve Zissou, says that what Moscow wants is “obvious.”
“All that remains is for the U.S. government to have the courage to admit the obvious – get what we can for Viktor Bout,” Zissou said. “The alternative should be obvious – no Americans will be exchanged unless Viktor Bout is sent home along with them.”
What led to Bout’s arrest?
Why would Moscow care so much about him?
What is his link to Americans arrested in Russia? | 2022-07-01T19:08:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Viktor Bout, Russian arms dealer eyed in rumored prisoner swap? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/viktor-bout-griner-whelan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/viktor-bout-griner-whelan/ |
WNBA player Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom near Moscow as her trial begins on July 1. (Maxim Shipenkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Brittney Griner, the WNBA superstar, has been detained by the Russian government since Feb. 17. On Friday, a trial began in a Moscow suburb on the allegation that she was carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil when passing through a Moscow-area airport. But the word “trial” hardly captures what is really happening. Russia is not a state governed by rule of law; it is run by a strongman and his clans, including a powerful security service. They have her in their clutches.
The State Department has already determined that Ms. Griner, twice an Olympic gold medalist, has been “wrongfully detained.” Put simply, Ms. Griner is a hostage, taken by President Vladimir Putin and his sprawling police state. At the State Department, her case has been shifted to the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, a section that seeks the release of hostages and others classified as being wrongfully detained abroad.
Russian courts rarely acquit the accused; Ms. Griner’s “trial” could drag on for months, or as long as Mr. Putin wishes. He will undoubtedly want to trade her for a Russian incarcerated in the United States, such as convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout. This puts the United States in an extremely difficult position. A trade could win freedom for Ms. Griner but would encourage more hostage-taking; a refusal to trade would consign her to more agony in a Russian prison.
A state based on the rule of law does not seize individuals to use them as bargaining chits. A democracy does not imprison those who speak out. Mr. Putin’s regime thrives on such coarse gambits. Witness the unjust prosecution and jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, or political activist and Post opinion contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza, or Paul Whelan, a U.S. citizen held in prison for what he says is a fictitious charge of espionage. For Mr. Putin, kidnapping a sports icon at an airport or murdering thousands of civilians in Ukraine is all in a day’s crude behavior.
The Russian leader’s repressive security services have for months been sweeping up anyone who protests the war against Ukraine. In recent days, a prominent opposition politician, Ilya Yashin, one of the few remaining voices speaking out against the war, was arrested in a Moscow park, to be held for 15 days on charges of disobeying a police officer. “I am staying in Russia,” Mr. Yashin wrote on Twitter in March. “I have said before and I keep repeating: Russians and Ukrainians should not be killing each other. If I am destined to end up in prison for antiwar speeches, I will accept it with dignity.”
On Thursday, authorities also detained Vladimir Mau, who had been associated with liberal economic reformer Yegor Gaidar in the era of President Boris Yeltsin and more recently had close ties with top officials as a member of the board of Gazprom, the state-run natural gas giant, and as rector of a major university. He was accused of being involved in a fraud. But the real reason is probably connected to Mr. Putin’s shadowy power plays. | 2022-07-01T19:34:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Brittney Griner is Russia's hostage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/brittney-griner-russia-hostage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/brittney-griner-russia-hostage/ |
To many Americans, the idea that you might encounter numerous armed people on a routine trip to the supermarket seems like a dystopian nightmare of threatened violence and unceasing fear. To others — including a majority of the Supreme Court — it sounds like “freedom.”
The court’s recent ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which invalidated state laws requiring people to show a special need to carry guns outside their homes, essentially said that every state must have a gun regime of the kind that red states favor.
Already, New York state is out of the gate with a response: Legislators there are poised to pass a new system governing concealed carry that tries to restore some semblance of sanity after the court struck down the law that had previously been in place.
Hopefully, this is a sign that liberal states will by creating regulations that allow their citizens to live in something resembling the kind of society they want. What we don’t know is what new regulations the court’s conservative majority will tolerate.
The central problem the Supreme Court had with New York’s century-old law was that it rendered only certain people eligible to carry guns; setting aside a few narrow categories, such as former felons, the court insisted that just about everyone has that right. Even so, it left a few cracks through which meaningful regulations can pass.
Within that new reality, liberal legislators need to be as aggressive and comprehensive as possible, even knowing there’s a good chance the court will come back and strike down some of the new laws.
They have their work cut out for them. Justice Clarence Thomas’s decision in Bruen set out a positively deranged legal standard — that if any contemporary gun regulation doesn’t have “a distinctly similar historical regulation” from the 18th century, then it is presumptively unconstitutional.
This is the “heads I win, tails you lose” gun logic of the court’s conservative majority: History binds those of us who want regulations but liberates the gun fetishists.
If you asserted that the Constitution only guarantees the right to bear a flintlock musket, they’d laugh and say that “arms” means not what was available at the time the Second Amendment was written but whatever guns are popular today. Yet they also insist that only those regulations nearly identical to what was in place 250 years ago may be permitted.
Nevertheless, Thomas’s opinion acknowledged that ancient gun laws included restrictions on carrying weapons in “sensitive places.” He said it would be acceptable to keep guns from locations such as schools, government buildings and courthouses.
So New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) plans to create an expansive list of sensitive places where guns could be banned, including “government buildings, parks, mass transit, health and medical facilities, places where children gather, day-care centers, schools, zoos, playgrounds, polling places and educational institutions.”
She also wants an enhanced licensing system, which would include comprehensive background checks and the completion of a safety course. The state will also consider new rules on safe gun storage and requiring a permit to purchase ammunition.
Meanwhile, in California, Democrats are planning a new slate of requirements, as the Associated Press reports:
Gun advocates will no doubt howl at all this. They believe not just that they should have the right to own and carry weapons but also that they shouldn’t have to endure the most minor of inconveniences to do so.
But if you say, ‘The Supreme Court says I have the right to carry around this lethal instrument giving me the ability to murder anyone I encounter in an instant,” the rest of us are more than justified in responding: “Yes, that’s what the Supreme Court says. But we will take steps to protect ourselves from the danger you and other gun owners pose.”
This is what a compromise looks like: You’ll be able to get your guns, but just as you have to show you can operate a motor vehicle safely before getting a driver’s license, you’ll have to satisfy some requirements before getting a gun permit.
No doubt the gun industry and its partners will seek to have each and every new licensing requirement struck down, and the Supreme Court will likely oblige some of them. So liberal states should pass as many restrictions as possible that might potentially be allowable under Bruen and D.C. v. Heller. That’s the 2008 decision that drew a black line through the “well-regulated militia” part of the Second Amendment and declared for the first time that Americans have an individual right to own guns.
Both those decisions said some requirements and restrictions would still be allowed. If the rest of this court’s jurisprudence is any guide, that could just as easily be a feint as a promise; the court’s pro-gun majority may well slice and dice its way through new gun laws liberal states pass.
But some of those laws will survive, and in any case, the process could take years. Over time, there’s no telling how politics — or the court itself, if Democrats find the will and means to reform it — might change. Most important of all, a strict and comprehensive licensing system will save lives. So every blue state should get on it. | 2022-07-01T19:35:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democratic states must start passing new gun regulations right away - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/democratic-states-pass-new-gun-regulations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/democratic-states-pass-new-gun-regulations/ |
Ignore the progressives’ howling about the Supreme Court’s ‘legitimacy’
Abortion rights demonstrators protest outside the Supreme Court on June 24. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
Progressives are howling that the Supreme Court’s conservative turn this term heralds a decline in the court’s “legitimacy.” As if.
Nothing about the court’s legitimacy has changed. The only thing that has changed is its judicial philosophy, and if progressives don’t like it, they must do what others aggrieved at the court have done throughout our history: mobilize to turn the tide in their favor.
The Supreme Court in early U.S. history did not issue many decisions that determined which political faction prevailed. Indeed, it was not until 1857 that the court stepped into the political minefield with its outrageous ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford that no descendant of slaves could be an American citizen. Abraham Lincoln and other Republicans decried the decision and pledged to organize the court to ensure it was overturned. It took the Civil War to grant them that power.
Later, in the early 20th century, conservatives used their court majority to strike down state economic regulations, in what has been called the Lochner era. Liberals and progressives of the day responded by adopting a doctrine of deference to legislative bodies (which, not coincidentally, their allies were likelier to control). Franklin D. Roosevelt’s massive electoral victories in the 1930s, combined with the court’s aged conservative majority passing away, ushered in decades of left-wing dominance on the court. Supported by political majorities, those justices and their successors created modern constitutional jurisprudence.
Today’s 6-3 conservative majority is the result of a similar political mobilization to overturn that judicial philosophy. Most conservatives view that approach as wrong — and constitutionally illegitimate. The Federalist Society, of which I have been a proud member since 1987, considers that jurisprudence to be outcome-based rather than grounded in the Constitution and traditional rules of statutory construction. The conservative strategy — organizing politically to bring judicial doctrine in line with political philosophy — is exactly what all groups deeply disenchanted with the court’s direction have done since Dred Scott.
The success of this mobilization at the ballot box is the reason for the current court majority. The court’s composition was effectively on the ballot in 2016 as Justice Antonin Scalia’s unexpected passing meant that only Donald Trump’s victory would prevent Democrats from cementing a 6-3 majority of their own. (Liberals who complain that President Barack Obama was robbed of a court appointment are wrong. No justices can join the court without Senate approval, which Obama never secured.)
Indeed, one could say that the progressive triumph in Obergefell v. Hodges — the 5-to-4 decision that overturned centuries of precedent regarding the definition of marriage and the ability of states to regulate it — is why Trump prevailed. Many conservatives feared what a 6-3 progressive court would do and swallowed their qualms about Trump to keep that catastrophe from unfolding. In other words, the progressives’ great triumph might have ironically made the unraveling of their entire judicial edifice possible.
Progressives angry about the current court are in the same position as others unhappy with court rulings throughout history. They can prevail only by following the same course that liberals in the 1930s and conservatives in recent decades have taken: Win political victories that push the court in their direction.
There’s another theoretical solution: Reduce the court’s power or opportunities to decide so many politically contentious cases. It seems today that almost every federal executive action is turned into a judicial issue, with the opposing party immediately filing lawsuits. The same is true of state-level action. Americans also have a tendency to file lawsuits to influence policy. Is a football coach’s kneeling for public prayer after a game really such an egregious breach of rights to warrant a federal case? This litigiousness gives the court regular opportunities to make politically controversial rulings, which only fans our political flames.
The Constitution also gives Congress the power to regulate the court’s appellate jurisdiction. Congress could limit the type of cases the court can hear, preserving its ultimate judicial authority for cases involving serious breaches of constitutionally protected rights or the constitutional structure of government.
Neither side, however, is likely to curb its own litigiousness, and bipartisan agreement to limit the court’s jurisdiction won’t happen. As a result, the battle over judicial philosophy will intensify and become even more important in the political sphere. That’s not an issue of “legitimacy”; it’s our democracy doing what it always does, ensuring that the people ultimately interpret their own Constitution and thereby genuinely rule. | 2022-07-01T19:35:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ignore the progressives’ howling about the Supreme Court’s ‘legitimacy’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/supreme-court-abortion-roe-ignore-progressive-complaints-legitimacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/supreme-court-abortion-roe-ignore-progressive-complaints-legitimacy/ |
A military investigation faulted key leaders’ “lack of critical thinking, intellectual rigor, and self-assessment” as thousands fell ill during the public health disaster
Navy and civilian officials inside the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in December. (Mass Communication Spec. 1st Class Luke McCall/U.S. Navy/AP)
The U.S. Navy says it is examining who will be held accountable for a catastrophic jet fuel spill last year that poisoned the drinking water at a Hawaii military base, acknowledging this week that the public health disaster resulted from widespread failures and ultimately was preventable.
The incident sickened thousands of military family members and forced many more from their homes at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Officials said problems first emerged in May 2021 after workers at the Red Hill fuel-storage facility spilled about 20,000 gallons of petroleum product, which then was pumped into a fire-suppression line and became suspended in a pipe. In late-November a small train car struck the pipe, sending the contaminant into a nearby well that supplies water to 40,000 service members and their families, the Navy said in a report detailing its investigation.
Water contamination at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii forces over 1,000 military families from their homes
Navy officials quietly suspended work at the facility a week later — as families reported illnesses from water that they said tasted and smelled like fuel — but did not disclose the decision to pause operations for several more days. At that time, senior military leaders, including the base commander then, Capt. Erik Spitzer, sought to assure the community their water was safe to drink.
Spitzer was recognized in June with the prestigious Legion of Merit award following his departure from the post. Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.
Military families say they were ill months before jet-fuel leak brought scrutiny to Pearl Harbor’s tap water
For those who consumed or bathed with contaminated water, the fallout was dire. Military families reported a range of maladies with known links to toxic exposure, including severe nausea and gastrointestinal complications, skin rashes and memory loss.
The response fell “unacceptably short of the Navy standards for leadership, ownership, and the safeguarding of our communities,” Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Lescher wrote in his endorsement of the investigation, which was released publicly by the Hawaii Department of Health with extensive redactions late Thursday night. The Navy later published the same documents.
Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Samuel Paparo told reporters a “number of people” are no longer in their jobs as a result of the incident, but he did not disclose how many people have been disciplined or fired.
Built in the 1940s, Red Hill has been under scrutiny for years by environmental groups and declared a “ticking time bomb” by state officials. The massive tanks, located above an aquifer that feeds the base and civilian communities, are used to fuel military vehicles, ships and aircraft operating throughout the Pacific. Closing the complex poses a strategic dilemma for the Pentagon, which has indicated it is exploring scenarios to ensure that the military’s capacity to project forces won’t be disrupted.
The Navy’s investigation faulted a decision in February 2021 to remove military personnel from oversight of day-to-day fueling operations at Red Hill. It said that responders were neither trained nor equipped to stop the leak had no sense of the system’s intricate pathways that allowed fuel to flow into the water shaft. About 5,000 gallons were never recovered, officials determined.
The Navy has insisted the water at Pearl Harbor is free of fuel and safe to drink, and that there is no evidence of chronic exposure in any residents’ health records.
Williams said she toured Red Hill this week with Navy officials. The walk-through took them over a catwalk that allowed the group to see into the cavernous 20-story tanks, where workers had left chalk marks to highlight points of concern such as rust and dents. There appeared to be a mark every few inches, Williams said. A third-party assessment of the facility found dozens of problems.
The officials who guided the visit, she noted, relied on talking points about the importance of the facility as the threat from China grows, and seemed to dismiss the larger concerns of military families. “It’s like the gravity hasn’t sunk in,” Williams said. “They’re treating it like it’s a nonissue.” | 2022-07-01T19:39:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pearl Harbor fuel spill that sickened thousands is blamed on human error - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/01/pearl-harbor-fuel-spill-drinking-water/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/01/pearl-harbor-fuel-spill-drinking-water/ |
Medal of Freedom awarded to Catholic nun and Muslim human rights advocate
Sister Simone Campbell addresses the Democratic National Convention in 2012. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Two D.C.-area faith activists are among the 17 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the White House announced Friday.
The medal is the country’s highest civilian honor, “presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” according to the press release from the White House.
Among them is Sister Simone Campbell, a longtime anti-poverty activist known for launching tours of Nuns on the Bus, cross-country publicity trips organized by nuns looking to highlight policy issues related to health care, poverty, hunger and shelter. Campbell and others would sometimes run the tours in connection with elections, aiming at candidates whose budgets cut services to the poor.
The 76-year-old attorney lives in Southwest Washington and led the NETWORK lobbying group from 2004 until 2021.
“I am deeply honored by this unexpected recognition, which highlights the important work of lifting up the experiences of ordinary people in our nation in order to make policy that works for all,” she wrote Friday to The Washington Post. She said she is grateful to President Biden “for this honor and trust that our work for economic justice and political healing might receive a renewed focus in these challenging times.”
Another winner is Khizr Khan, an attorney and Gold Star father who became a national name in 2016 after criticizing then-candidate Donald Trump for his proposal to ban all Muslims from the United States. Khan, who now lives in Charlottesville, lost his son in Iraq in 2004 when the younger Khan, Humayun, an Army captain, was killed by a suicide bomber.
Khan is the founder of the Constitution Literacy and National Unity Center. He is a prominent advocate for the rule of law and religious freedom and served on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. | 2022-07-01T19:39:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden gives Medal of Freedom to Sister Simone Campbell, Khizr Khan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/01/medal-freedom-highest-civilian-award/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/01/medal-freedom-highest-civilian-award/ |
Retired judge Thomas Griffith on recent Supreme Court rulings
The Supreme Court has completed one of its most consequential terms in decades with blockbuster rulings on abortion, guns and climate. On Friday, July 8 at 1:00 p.m. ET, join Washington Post Live for a conversation with retired Judge Thomas Griffith, who served on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court assessing proposals for reform, about the impact of the recent decisions and perceptions of the institution.
Thomas Griffith
Former Federal Judge | 2022-07-01T19:40:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Retired judge Thomas Griffith on recent Supreme Court rulings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/08/retired-judge-thomas-griffith-recent-supreme-court-rulings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/08/retired-judge-thomas-griffith-recent-supreme-court-rulings/ |
Abortion rights advocates demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 25, a day after the court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Since last week’s Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, men across the country are rushing to get vasectomies. But common myths about vasectomies continue to circulate on social media, including that they are easily reversible and are a preventive measure until a patient is ready to have a child.
In this deluge of misinformation, some might be wondering what’s true about vasectomies. The Washington Post spoke to physicians about vasectomies and what to believe:
“Though reversals are possible, they’re not necessarily effective all the time,” said Esgar Guarín, an Iowa physician who specializes in vasectomies. “That’s why we insist that a vasectomy is a permanent contraceptive decision. It’s not like we turn it on and off.”
Misinformation has included viral tweets and Instagram posts alleging that vasectomies are easily reversible, as well as a meme from popular television show “The Office” in which the character Michael Scott, played by actor Steve Carell, says he has had three vasectomies.
“It’s a very famous joke — ‘snip-snap, snip-snap,’ like it’s that easy,” said Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Buffalo who specializes in understanding health misinformation. “Misinformation about vasectomies is prevalent, but again, it’s not the same as abortion misinformation because you still need to go through a doctor for a vasectomy,” he said. Ophir added that unlike abortion, there is no danger of a person who is not professionally trained performing a vasectomy on themselves.
Guarín acknowledged that reversing a vasectomy is generally easier than reversing a tubal ligation — a procedure to close a person’s fallopian tubes — but said “it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy.”
“The likelihood of a reversal being successful in someone who’s had a vasectomy for 25 years is far lower than the likelihood of a reversal being successful in someone who’s had the vasectomy for three years,” said Doug Stein, a Florida urologist.
Reversals also take longer than vasectomies and are more costly, said John Curington, Stein’s associate. Ultimately, the procedure is not a preventive measure for people who are not yet ready to have children but may want them in the future.
“If you’re going into this thinking that you can reverse a vasectomy then you’re not a candidate for a vasectomy,” said Meera Shah, a family medicine physician and chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, which offers reproductive health care at several health centers in New York.
2. Vasectomies won’t reduce sexual performance
“I think that myth is just based on a misunderstanding of anatomy,” Curington said. “A vasectomy is just a little procedure that snips the tubes that carry the sperm, but the semen is made in the prostate and the seminal vesicles, which are about two inches north of where we do the procedure. So there’s essentially no way that a vasectomy can actually cause a change in sexual performance.”
Philip Werthman, a California fertility doctor, emphasized that contrary to myths, a person’s sex drive is also unlikely to be negatively affected by a vasectomy.
“Men are under the faulty assumption that as soon as they get a vasectomy they’re sterile,” said Marc Goldstein, director of the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.
“Using contraception in that period is very important,” he said.
“There’s no consistent evidence that a vasectomy and prostate cancer are in any way related,” he said.
Men across America are getting vasectomies ‘as an act of love’
When a draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked in May, Ashley Winter took to Twitter to debunk common myths about vasectomies. Winter, an Oregon urologist, noted that while vasectomies are not easily reversible, most people who have received them can still generate a pregnancy.
Vasectomies are considered a PERMANENT form of contraception. While vasectomy reversal (called vasovasostomy or "VV") can be performed, it is often costly & not always effective. Additionally, the # of surgeons who do this surgery is VERY LIMITED.
— Ashley Winter MD || Urologist (@AshleyGWinter) May 9, 2022
“I always strongly recommend that they freeze sperm prior to the vasectomy and freeze at least two or three specimens and divide it up between two or three different sperm banks,” Goldstein said.
Overturn of Roe could make IVF more complicated, costly
A vasectomy reversal is another option, although the efficacy of the procedure varies and not all vasectomy surgeons are also skilled in reversals, Shah said. Stein agreed: “Until vasectomy reversals are 100% successful, we cannot call vasectomies reversible procedures in the same way that we can call other contraceptive options reversible.”
“You’re not going to get the best information from Reddit nor on Twitter,” he said. “People should talk to their doctors and read official websites by public health organizations.” | 2022-07-01T20:27:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Debunking 5 common myths about vasectomies during post-Roe rush - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/01/abortion-vasectomies-misinformation-roe-birth-control/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/01/abortion-vasectomies-misinformation-roe-birth-control/ |
Man arrested after taking ‘Star Wars’ R2-D2 droid at Disney, police say
“Star Wars” character R2-D2 is seen before the “Star Wars Kabuki” performance that was produced to promote the upcoming release of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” at Meguro Persimmon Hall on Nov. 28, 2019, in Tokyo. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)
David Proudfoot, 44, of Kissimmee, Fla., is facing charges of grand theft and obstruction by false information in a series of incidents earlier this year at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, according to several arrest warrant affidavits. He told authorities he had applied for a position on Disney’s security team and was attempting to point out weaknesses “in the hope of securing a better paying job,” according to one of the affidavits.
Proudfoot was arrested May 31 after he was seen at the Walt Disney World Swan Reserve wearing an orange work vest and a Disney World nametag and pushing a cart, but he seemed confused as to the proper hotel procedures.
Security called the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and when deputies arrived, Proudfoot told them his name was David E. Rogers and that part of his job at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort was to “move items from one location to another,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit. He told deputies his supervisor was James McDaniels, the affidavit read. | 2022-07-01T20:27:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida man David Proudfoot accused of posing as Disney World employee, taking 'Star Wars' R2-D2 droid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/disney-world-r2d2-theft/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/disney-world-r2d2-theft/ |
War in Ukraine may threaten a Syrian lifeline for aid
A truck carrying aid packages from the World Food Program is driven through the town of Saraqib in Syria's northwestern Idlib province on June 12. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images)
ISTANBUL — In a camp for displaced people in northern Syria on Friday, aid workers handed out cash, one-time payments of $120, to sustain people living on the edge of ruin. Prices of basic goods were soaring, and some families were surviving on bread alone.
Foundering economies in Syria and neighboring Turkey had contributed to the rising prices, and now the war in Ukraine and its accompanying global wheat shortages and spike in oil prices have exacerbated the crisis. Over the last month, hundreds of families have lined up for the payments in $20 bills. Without the cash, “I really think there will be disaster,” Muslem Sayyed Issa, a spokesman for the aid group Syria Relief, said in a text message from Syria’s Idlib province.
He and others said things might be about to get much worse.
Aid agencies are warning of a looming catastrophe in northwest Syria if a U.N. Security Council resolution that allows the passage of relief supplies across the Turkish-Syrian border is not extended for another year, before the mandate expires July 10. The resolution facilitates one of largest humanitarian operations anywhere in the world, aid officials say.
It allows the United Nations to coordinate aid shipments that provide food, medicine and other relief supplies to millions of people in the region, many of them displaced by war. If the corridor were cut off, it would cause “inexcusable suffering,” a group of aid agencies said in a statement released this week, the latest dire warnings from Western diplomats and relief agencies about the consequences of not extending the mandate.
Millions of Syrian civilians at risk if U.S., Russia fail to strike deal on aid deliveries
Russia has in years past threatened to veto the resolution, arguing that aid deliveries from Turkey into rebel-held areas of Syria violate the sovereignty of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Moscow’s ally. Now, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the breakdown of its relations with other Security Council members, including the United States, have cast uncertainty over the future of the aid corridor.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has advocated for aid deliveries from government-held parts of Syria. But people familiar with the relief operations have argued that a number of obstacles, including Syrian government restrictions on aid coming from its territory, mean such deliveries were not sufficient to replace the cross-border aid operation from Turkey.
Russia has not yet said which way it will vote on the resolution, but its deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said last month that Russia was “absolutely convinced that organization of humanitarian deliveries to all areas of Syria is possible in coordination with Damascus.” He added that aid shipments from government-held areas in Syria “may grow considerably” if the lone border crossing for aid deliveries from Turkey were closed — a prospect that is beyond alarming for relief groups.
Last year, in vastly different circumstances, the Security Council voted unanimously to continue the aid deliveries across the Turkish border. Both the United States and Russia hailed the vote as a success for diplomacy, and the product of a meeting between President Biden and Putin a month earlier in Geneva — the kind of cooperation that is now a distant memory.
“This is a moment when it’s absolutely vital that the people of Syria are not forced to pay the price of geopolitical division from Ukraine and elsewhere, in a way that interferes with vital humanitarian aid that they need now and that they need in increased quantities now,” David Miliband, the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, which signed the joint statement, said in a briefing last week.
Roughly 4.5 million people live in northwest Syria, a region controlled by opposition militant groups and riven by war in the years since the 2011 uprising against Assad. Worsening conditions mean 4.1 million of them now require humanitarian assistance, said Mark Cutts, the U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis.
“People can’t afford to buy food, can’t afford to buy bread,” he said. Families, he added, were resorting to worrying survival mechanisms, including child labor and adolescent marriages, to cope. Hunger was on the rise, and 1 in 3 people in the region was suffering from undernutrition, he said.
The worsening economic picture is hardly the only challenge. Turkey, which has facilitated the aid deliveries, has at the same time threatened a new military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish fighters — an operation that aid officials said would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.
U.N. votes to allow humanitarian aid to keep flowing into Syria across Turkish border
As the need has grown, the U.N. operation has suffered from dwindling access to Syria. When the operation began in 2014, the Security Council authorized aid deliveries through four border crossings into Syria, from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Two years ago, three of the crossing points were removed after vetoes by China and Russia, and now the entire operation runs through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.
Funding shortfalls for humanitarian operations had also decreased the numbers of trucks rolling across the border, Cutts said. In 2020, an average of 1,000 trucks delivering aid crossed the frontier. Over the last two years, the number fell to roughly 800 per month.
“One thinks of this cross-border operation as trucking food and supplies. It’s not just about trucking goods,” Cutts said, adding that the operation facilitated the running of hospitals, provision of clean water to the region’s residents, the assistance of people with disabilities and providing improved shelter to people in camps, among other activities.
In Syria’s war without end, refugee tent camps harden into concrete cities
Issa, the spokesman for Syria Relief, said his main worry was for the vast number of displaced people in northwestern Syria, uprooted by war, some multiple times in recent years. There were 2.8 million displaced people in the region, according to the United Nations, and for them, the recent challenges — the fivefold increase in fuel prices, and surging costs of other goods — were insurmountable.
“Everywhere in Idlib, there are camps,” he said.
In the last year, five aid convoys from government-controlled areas — Russia’s preferred method of delivery — reached northwestern Syria, Martin Griffiths, the U.N. humanitarian relief coordinator, told the Security Council during a briefing last month. “It is no small thing,” he said.
“But we need to face reality,” he added, saying there was “no alternative” to the aid deliveries from Turkey. “The needs of the people of Syria — the Syrian people, who should be our first attention — are rising, with more of them requiring our assistance and our protection.” | 2022-07-01T20:40:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S.-Russia tensions over Ukraine threaten northern Syria lifeline - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/syria-un-border-aid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/syria-un-border-aid/ |
Three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert is joining the Minnesota Timberwolves. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
The long-anticipated breakup of the Utah Jazz’s star partnership has finally arrived.
Utah agreed to trade all-star center Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves for a package of players and draft picks, a person with knowledge of the deal confirmed Friday.
The Jazz will receive four first-round picks, 2022 first-round pick Walker Kessler, guards Patrick Beverley and Malik Beasley and forward Jarred Vanderbilt for the three-time Defensive Player of the Year. Minnesota will send out unprotected first-round picks in 2023, 2025 and 2027 and a top-five protected pick in 2029. ESPN.com first reported the terms, which also includes Leandro Bolmaro going from Minnesota to Utah.
Gobert, 30, averaged 15.6 points, 14.7 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game last season, earning his third straight all-star selection. However, chemistry concerns between Gobert and all-star guard Donovan Mitchell contributed to Utah’s lackluster exit in a first-round loss to the Dallas Mavericks, and longtime Jazz Coach Quin Snyder announced his resignation earlier this month after eight seasons.
For Utah, which recently hired former Boston Celtics assistant Will Hardy to be the NBA’s youngest coach at age 34, the return package signals a long-term rebuilding plan. The Jazz didn’t receive an impact-making veteran nor a proven starting-caliber center to replace Gobert. Instead, Utah collected quality draft assets, surpassing the three first-round picks that the Atlanta Hawks sent to the San Antonio Spurs for all-star guard Dejounte Murray earlier this week.
In the Jazz’s first major move since hiring Danny Ainge as CEO, the former Celtics executive constructed a package that is reminiscent of his famous 2013 trade of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets. While Mitchell, 25, is now in place as Utah’s undisputed franchise player, constructing another trade around the three-time all-star guard would allow Utah to enter a full-scale teardown.
The Timberwolves, directed by aggressive new owners Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore and guided by new president Tim Connelly, have constructed an intriguing pairing of all-star big men in Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns. Gobert’s arrival will shift Towns to power forward, where Minnesota can utilize his elite scoring ability and three-point shooting. On defense, Gobert will cover up Towns’s limitations as a rim-protector, though Towns will now be asked to cover more ground on the perimeter.
While twin tower alignments have largely fallen out of favor in the modern NBA, the Timberwolves will be betting that Towns and Anthony Edwards can drive an elite offense while Gobert can captain a top-10 defense, as he did for years with the Jazz. Towns, 26, inked a four-year supermax extension worth $224 million on Friday, but the three-time all-star is still seeking the first playoff series victory of his seven-year career. Gobert is entering the second year of a five-year, $205 million extension.
This is no small philosophical gamble for the Timberwolves, who will be paying Gobert and Towns more than $71 million next season. Minnesota, which also signed versatile forward Kyle Anderson on Thursday, could still search for trading partners for guard D’Angelo Russell, but Beverley’s departure would make him more difficult to replace. | 2022-07-01T20:49:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Timberwolves land Rudy Gobert from Jazz in NBA blockbuster - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/rudy-gobert-trade/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/rudy-gobert-trade/ |
DOJ subpoenas two Arizona state senators in Jan. 6 probe
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann talks with media on Sept. 24 following the release of the results of an audit of the 2020 election. (Caitlin O'Hara/for The Washington Post)
The Justice Department has subpoenaed two Republican Arizona state senators for information tied to possible correspondence with former president Donald Trump’s attorneys as attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were underway.
Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann and Sen. Kelly Townsend received subpoenas last week, according to Kim Quintero, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans in Arizona. These subpoenas came as the Justice Department deepened its investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to include key Republican players in battleground states across the nation. Fann and Townsend are the first state lawmakers known to have received subpoenas as part of that push.
Jan. 6 probe expands with fresh subpoenas in multiple states
The Yellow Sheet Report, a political tip sheet, first reported the news. Both lawmakers received the subpoenas while at the state Capitol. Federal agents tried to deliver Townsend’s at her home, she said; she invited them to the statehouse, where she was working.
The subpoenas came the same week Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) testified before the U.S. House select committee investigating the Capitol attack. Bowers testified about efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the former president’s loss in Arizona.
Bowers told The Washington Post on Friday that he has not been subpoenaed, and he is not aware of any members of the Arizona House of Representatives who have been subpoenaed.
Before Townsend took office in the Senate in 2021, she served in the House and chaired the elections committee.
She was among the Republican lawmakers who pressed state legislative leaders to help appoint a slate of alternate electors from Arizona more favorable to Trump, despite his narrow loss. Townsend also attended a Nov. 30, 2020, event in downtown Phoenix, with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies where they claimed widespread fraud had tainted the election.
“As chair of the elections committee, we were trying to hold a committee and do investigations,” Townsend said. “Because it was in question, we wanted to have an alternate slate in case fraud was discovered and found.”
She said an initial review of records in response to the subpoena pulled 50,000 documents, almost all from constituents. Townsend said state Senate staff have asked the Justice Department to narrow its request.
Fann was among the state lawmakers who attended a Dec. 1, 2020, meeting with Giuliani, attorney Jenna Ellis and others who sought a formal legislative hearing to take up the accusations of fraud.
The hearing never took place, but Fann, on behalf of the GOP Senate, launched a months-long review of 2.1 million ballots cast by voters in Maricopa County. The review was widely criticized for falling below election-audit standards, and in the end it found no evidence of widespread fraud but cited flaws in the election process.
Here's what you need to know about the final report on the Arizona ballot review
The review concluded Democrat Joe Biden actually won by a slightly larger margin than the official election results. | 2022-07-01T21:06:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DOJ subpoenas two Arizona state senators in Jan. 6 probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/01/karen-fann-subpoena/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/01/karen-fann-subpoena/ |
Florida law limiting LGBTQ discussions takes effect — and rocks schools
White House urges challenges to the law
Marchers for the New York City Gay Men's Chorus perform while wearing T-shirts with "Say Gay" on the back, in opposition to Florida's law restricting LGBTQ discussions in schools, during the Pride March in New York last month. (Sarah Yenesel/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, popularly known by critics as the “don’t say gay” bill, went into effect on Friday, restricting what teachers can say about gender and sexual orientation. The White House called it part of “a disturbing and dangerous nationwide trend” of targeting the LGBTQ community and encouraged Floridians to challenge it.
The law, signed March 28 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), is the first of its kind in the country. It prevents teachers in kindergarten through third grade from discussing gender and sexual orientation in class and restricts what they can say in upper grades to what is developmentally appropriate, without saying what that is.
The law also legally empowers parents to sue school districts as a way to advance their “parental rights.” It is part of a push by DeSantis to restrict what teachers can say — an effort that also includes topics in race, racism and U.S. history. More than a dozen other states have seen similar bills introduced in their legislatures. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said he wants to make such a law “a top priority” in the next legislative session.
Part of the impetus for the Florida law, supporters said, was reports that some schools were not telling parents about children’s sexual orientation. Critics say that the vaguely worded law will force LGBTQ students and teachers to hide their identities, and that the threat of being sued will lead teachers to keep quiet about issues that are important for students to learn.
In a statement, the White House said in part: “This is not an issue of ‘parents’ rights.’ This is discrimination, plain and simple. It’s part of a disturbing and dangerous nationwide trend of right-wing politicians cynically targeting LGBTQI+ students, educators, and individuals to score political points. It encourages bullying and threatens students’ mental health, physical safety, and well-being. It censors dedicated teachers and educators who want to do the right thing and support their students. And it must stop.”
How Florida Gov. DeSantis is trying to destroy public education
The White House encouraged any student or parent experiencing discrimination to file a complaint with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona also released a statement expressing deep concern about the effects the law will have on LGBTQ students and their families, saying in part: “I’ve spoken to parents and families in Florida numerous times, and they’ve consistently told me that this legislation doesn’t represent them or what they want for their children, and that it put Florida students in danger of bullying and worse mental health outcomes.”
The White House statement referenced a number of reports coming from Florida about schools and districts taking steps to comply with what they think the law prohibits.
It said: “Already, there have been reports that ‘Safe Space’ stickers are being taken down from classrooms. Teachers are being instructed not to wear rainbow clothing. LGBTQI+ teachers are being told to take down family photos of their husbands and wives—cherished family photos like the ones on my own desk. — and about.”
But showing how confusing the various interpretations of the law are, a letter from the Orange County Public Schools’ legal department, sent to the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, says some of these reports aren’t true. It provided some clarification and guidance , saying in part:
“The statute limits classroom instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Nothing in that language “aims at sexual orientations and gender identities that differ from heterosexual and cisgender identities.” ECF 47 ¶ 15 (emphasis omitted). To the contrary, instruction on “the normalcy of opposite-sex attraction” would equally be “instruction on sexual orientation.” Id. ¶ 11. The statute is neutral on the proscribed subjects.” – page 17
“There is no merit, for example, to the suggestion that the statute restricts gay and transgender teachers from “put[ting] a family photo on their desk” or “ refer[ring] to themselves and their spouse (and their own children).” Id. ¶ 8. Those actions are not “instruction,” which is “the action, practice, or profession of teaching,” Instruction, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (last visited June 26, 2022).” – page 17
“For the same reason, the statute does not prohibit intervention against LGBTQ bullying, participation in extracurricular activities (such as “Gay-Straight Alliances” or books fairs), and even after-hours tutoring, ECF 47 ¶¶ 8, 118–19, 121, 184, among many other examples. That is not “classroom instruction” covered by the statute.”– page 18
Clinton McCracken, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, had tweeted that teachers in the district had been told that “they can’t wear rainbows.”
Meanwhile, on Tuesday night, the Leon County School Board approved an “LGBTQ Inclusive School Guide.” It says all students should be able to attend overnight trips but that if any parent or student has concerns about rooming assignments “based on religious or privacy concerns,” they can request an accommodation.
In May, the openly gay valedictorian of a high school in Sarasota County was told by his principal not to mention the word “gay” in his graduation speech or say anything about his activism, which includes being the youngest plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the law. The Pine View Senior Class President Zander Moricz said he was told his microphone would be cut off if he did. So, instead, he communicated his message by using “curly hair” as a metaphor.
Told not to say ‘gay’ in graduation speech, he made his point anyway
“I used to hate my curls,” he said, after removing his graduation cap and running his hands through his hair. “I spent morning and night embarrassed of them trying to straighten this part of who I am, but the daily damage of trying to fix myself became too much to endure. So while having curly hair in Florida is difficult due to the humidity, I decided to be proud of who I was and started coming to school as my authentic self.” | 2022-07-01T21:11:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law takes effect - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/dont-say-gay-florida-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/dont-say-gay-florida-law/ |
Demonstrators hold a “Black Bodies for Black Power” rally to advocate for abortion access on June 18. (Shuran Huang/Reuters)
The women’s Bible group leader leaned close to me. She lowered her voice. “You know, abortion was intended to be a form of genocide against Black people and Brown people.”
The implication was that she, as a Latina woman, and I had a special duty to our races — that fighting abortion was a form of fighting racism. “Did you know that Margaret Sanger wanted to exterminate us?”
It was 2010, I was 22 and this was evening ladies’ Bible study at the evangelical church I attended in a Dallas suburb. The women were planning a pilgrimage to an antiabortion march. While I had grown up in the church, that year I had gotten rebaptized and rededicated my life to Jesus. I attended church twice a week, and even thought about becoming a youth leader.
I was taught — and I believed — that Christians needed to infiltrate all walks of social, political and cultural life in America, to restore the nation to God before Jesus could make his return. Godly dominionism was more important than “worldly” democracy. Still, I felt uncomfortable protesting abortion clinics.
Why was it necessary for us to condemn others, including desperate pregnant women? Did God really want us to increase the suffering in the world?
Eventually, I left the church. But the seismic overturning of Roe vs. Wade reminds me of those days, and particularly of that antiabortion sales pitch customized to me as a Black woman: Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist eugenicist. Legalized abortion holds down the population of Black people in America.
But the story that the antiabortion forces want us to believe is exactly wrong. A post-Roe world will put Texas’s Black women under ungodly risk, both physically and legally.
This week, it is now much less safe for me to get pregnant in the state I was born in.
The statistics speak for themselves. The triumph of the 40-year evangelical crusade against abortion will mean that women will suffer, and Black women disproportionally. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are more than four times as likely to have had abortions as White women. Nationwide, Black women are also more likely to miscarry or have stillbirths — suddenly, in addition to being a personal tragedy, a moment of grave legal peril in many places — than White women. In Texas, which already has a higher maternal mortality rate than the national average, Black women died at a rate of 37.1 per 100,000 births. The comparable number for White women is 14.7.
Now, many Black women facing high-risk pregnancies — and who don’t have the resources to easily travel out-of-state — will have no choice to carry them out. All of this will lead to physical and economic hardships that will serve to keep many Black women and their families in the social underclass.
Churches in Texas, including the one I was part of, claim to thread the needle of compassion on abortion, not by vociferously advocating for better statewide health care but by pointing to church-funded crisis pregnancy centers and training programs for those who wish to become foster parents. To many people, this is the way to show Christ’s love. I once believed this, too.
But the foster system and adoption is far from a panacea. This is the United States, remember: Since slavery, we have a long, racist history of Black women’s children being legally taken from them by White state systems.
Indeed, white supremacy believes it is right to force birth on Black women while also being far quicker to conclude that Black parents are incapable of taking care of their children. Black people are more likely to be accused of child abuse and neglect in Texas; Black children in Texas are taken away at higher rates by child protective services. Black children also remain longer in the foster care system than White children. Expect all that to worsen now.
Already, here in Texas, I am worried for my privacy and speech rights on the subject of abortion.
Texans, including medical professionals, can report those who help women seeking abortions to police for a bounty. Already, a Latina woman was arrested this year; a medical professional reported her, claiming she had attempted abortion.
There is nothing Christ-like in expanding Texas’s ability to surveil and persecute Black and Latina women. There is nothing loving about threatening them with the tyranny of incarceration.
I know my former church community is celebrating the overturning of Roe. But there is much to grieve. Black women and children will surely suffer. There is the sadness — and guilt, even — for those of us ex-evangelicals who once were a part of the religious movement that helped bring this moment to pass. | 2022-07-01T21:11:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | As abortion rights collapse, Black and Brown women will suffer most - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/abortion-rights-loss-black-hispanic-women-suffer-most/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/abortion-rights-loss-black-hispanic-women-suffer-most/ |
These are signs of real masculinity
Missouri Senate hopeful Lucas Kunce in Independence, Mo. (Dominick Williams for The Washington Post)
The June 26 Washington Post Magazine article “The rise — and cost — of he-man politics” was important for two reasons. First, it drew our attention to the phoniness of political candidates who assert their masculinity by running advertisements in which they pretend to shoot those with whom they disagree (and, in one instance, apparently punching women and children). Second, and more important, it showed that authentic masculinity, properly understood, is not toxic but a substantial asset to political discourse and civic life.
It did so by following the Senate campaign of Lucas Kunce of Missouri, a combat veteran and serious person. As demonstrated by Mr. Kunce in the article, real masculinity takes risks, protects those who need protection and does the right thing regardless of personal cost. When Mr. Kunce’s press agent said, “Lucas has no filter,” it means that Mr. Kunce tells the truth, as he sees it. Another term for this is “honor,” and it has improved civic life from Marcus Aurelius through Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And it is not confined to men, as leaders such as Golda Meir have demonstrated.
Tim Treanor, Waldorf | 2022-07-01T21:11:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | These are signs of real masculinity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/benefits-real-masculinity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/benefits-real-masculinity/ |
The damage to the court doesn’t have to be permanent
Protests continued June 25 in front of the Supreme Court after Roe v. Wade was overturned. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
In her June 26 op-ed about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion, Ruth Marcus noted that “the damage to the court cannot be undone,” which suggests the court is like Humpty Dumpty. Though this particular court might be beyond repair, my take is that we should not give up on the idea and ideals of a Supreme Court.
We can start by trying to eliminate the conditions that led to this particular broken court. The blatant and hypocritical partisanship that blocked a Democratic president’s pick for the court during that president’s last year in office yet pushed through a Republican president’s court selection during his last months in office must not be allowed if we expect our Supreme Court to be above politics.
Christine Dymek, Potomac
The Supreme Court’s recent decisions on reproductive and Second Amendment rights provide ample evidence that the Supreme Court, as an institution, is long overdue for reform. Unfortunately, it has become as politicized as the rest of our government and risks losing legitimacy. Though lifetime appointments were intended to provide a court that would be less susceptible to political currents, it has produced the opposite effect — to the detriment of the republic. Lifetime appointments have simply produced a dance in which the Senate majority can delay or defer candidates of the opposite party while expediting the appointments from its own party.
Supreme Court justices should be subject to term limits. A term of 18 years would carry an appointment across at least three administrations, providing ample opportunity for both parties to appoint candidates across multiple administrations. In setting a term of 18 years, we would produce a regular process in which every two years, one justice would step down, to be replaced by a new judge.
Eliminating lifetime appointments and establishing a system of regular appointments with term limits would go a long way in restoring the erosion of the Supreme Court’s standing with the citizenry of this great nation.
Herb Kemp, Herndon
This Supreme Court majority should no longer be referred to as merely conservative. Ruth Marcus accurately described the conservative majority as “radical.”
It is intolerable that this ideologically extremist court has and will continue to subvert the will of the majority of the American people. After Citizens United, the curtailment of the Voting Rights Act, voting down sensible gun legislation and now the travesty of subverting the long-held precedent of Roe v. Wade, we sadly know there is more to come — and what comes next will continue to contribute to our collective slide toward a less safe, less equitable, less caring and less free society.
If we are going to overcome our backward drift toward authoritarianism, President Biden must add four more justices to the Supreme Court before the midterm elections. It is Congress, not the Constitution, that decides the size of the Supreme Court, the size of which has varied over the course of our nation’s history.
It is not enough to say, “Get out and vote,” as legislatures in the minority red states are plotting to decertify any election they disagree with.
Marilyn Higgs, Severna Park
Congress had almost 50 years to enact a bill to legalize abortion nationwide. The Democrats did not do it under President Barack Obama and control of both the House and Senate. They have not chosen to do it since President Biden came into office. Most glaring, there was no codification of Roe v. Wade after the draft Supreme Court opinion was leaked seven weeks ago.
Is it more important for the Democrats to work to protect women’s rights or to use this issue to get reelected?
Colleen Ligibel, Annapolis | 2022-07-01T21:12:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The damage to the court doesn’t have to be permanent - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/damage-court-doesnt-have-be-permanent/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/damage-court-doesnt-have-be-permanent/ |
Helping gifted students get through summer
Jeremy Kalfus, 14, with suitcase he packed as he prepared to attend a Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth residential summer program. It was supposed to start on June 26 but was canceled late on June 24. (Family photo) (Mason Kalfus)
Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth canceled dozens of on-campus courses across the United States [“Hopkins leaves 870 teenagers in the lurch,” Metro, June 28]. Though the loss of this unique opportunity has disappointed the families of about 870 expectant students, the cancellations have instigated a scramble in which many academically advanced high school students are now facing their worst nightmare as they look for replacement opportunities.
Advanced high school students rely on rigorous summer programs to gain unique academic insight, research experience and/or mentorship from academic professors, none of which is possible during the typical eight-hour school day. In the past two years, the coronavirus pandemic has opened a plethora of doors for students: Upon going virtual, software engineering internships targeted at undergraduates also hired high school students. However, the pandemic has exacerbated the emergent fad of “multi-interning.” For advanced high-schoolers, multiple “full-time” commitments have become more common.
This practice isn’t just a desperate attempt at the elusive perfect résumé. Rather, I believe the fear of program failure — having nothing to show for their summer — causes multi-interning, and CTY’s cancellations only exacerbate concerns.
Programs are unexpectedly canceled. Start-ups are discontinued. Mentors can lose interest. Though I do not condone multi-interning, students are reacting out of fear. As the “world leader in gifted education,” CTY needs to set a precedent of ensuring rigor and providing cancellation alternatives to discourage this damaging practice, for the benefit of both the program and students.
Alvan Caleb Arulandu, Herndon
It’s absurd that Johns Hopkins University officials indicated that they were “examining the reasons for the staffing issues” when it’s very obvious: This program is a cash cow for the university, but it refused to compensate staff appropriately.
As a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins, I was interested in instructing students in a field I’m passionate about, epidemiology, but the pay was measly compared with what I make at my full-time job. The university was offering $2,500 for instructors and $1,600 for teaching assistants (both pretax) while charging students $5,200 for a class for a potential net of, at most, about $90,000. (Classes are capped at 18 students.) In a tight labor market like the one we’re currently in, Johns Hopkins University can no longer get away with paying measly wages and expecting professionals to be interested.
The failure to notify families in a timely manner is, unfortunately, part of a broader pattern by the university of not prioritizing the communities they serve that I’ve witnessed, and a complete embarrassment. The students and families who were to participate in this program deserve so much better.
Tyler Adamson, Baltimore | 2022-07-01T21:12:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Helping gifted students get through summer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/helping-gifted-students-get-through-summer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/helping-gifted-students-get-through-summer/ |
The horsemen are coming
Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25 as the case of former Bremerton High School assistant football coach Joseph Kennedy was argued. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Regarding the June 28 front-page article “Court sides with football coach who prayed at midfield”:
The Supreme Court’s ruling that religious prayer on a football field is a constitutional right is its latest use of the potent blowtorch the justices wield at the wax wall that separates church and state. The right to same-sex marriage will inevitably follow the fate of abortion rights because the Bible refers to homosexuality as an abomination (Leviticus 18:22).
Of course, this is the same book that calls for the death penalty for working on the Sabbath, worshiping other gods, cursing one’s parents and committing adultery. If the Supreme Court continues to heed the words of the Bible and ignore the amendments of the Constitution, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will be greeting the United States shortly.
As president of Northern Arizona University, I asked the football coach to stop leading team prayers before each game. As individuals, he and his players were most certainly free to pray if they so chose. But collective, implicitly obligatory prayer in the name of one religion was not appropriate on a public campus. The chairman of my board, a conservative Republican, supported my point of view.
This was Arizona in the 1990s: conservative, Republican and mindful of the difference between protecting religious freedom and establishing religion.
Clara M. Lovett, Chevy Chase
I wonder if coach Joseph Kennedy had thrown down a prayer rug and prayed to Allah on the 50-yard line how the court would have ruled.
Biff Corning, Washington
In the case of Kennedy v. the Bremerton School District, the school exhibited brazen hypocrisy. How could it complain about the coach praying when it hired him with no football coaching experience and knowing that what he wanted was to impart moral values to the players? Joseph Kennedy should have applied for the job of pastor.
Perhaps the person who should have been fired was the one who hired him to coach.
Rhona Bosin, Silver Spring | 2022-07-01T21:12:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The horsemen are coming - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/horsemen-are-coming/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/horsemen-are-coming/ |
Former president Donald Trump appears on video during the Jan. 6 House select committee hearing on June 13. (Susan Walsh/AP)
To be sure, no one is above the law, even the president; but neither do we prosecute every provable crime. Other considerations often apply, such as preserving domestic tranquility and institutional integrity. The past eight years of politically fraught investigations — including criminal and national-security probes of Trump and Hillary Clinton, both major-party presidential nominees — should teach us that the intrusion of prosecutors into electoral politics has a corrupting effect on the democratic process and the Justice Department itself.
Of course, the Biden Justice Department would be better positioned to make the point that violence is a game changer if it were treating the radical left-wing violence of 202o with the same firm hand it has applied to the Capitol riot. That said, the riot is rightly condemned. If the public becomes convinced that Trump was not just a common demagogue but willfully complicit in fostering a threat of force that foreseeably devolved into the use of force, then the Justice Department would be on firmer footing in exercising its discretion to indict. | 2022-07-01T21:12:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony changes the calculus on indicting Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/hutchinson-testimony-changes-calculus-on-indicting-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/hutchinson-testimony-changes-calculus-on-indicting-trump/ |
Maybe the Democrats aren’t doomed in November
Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks during a graduation event on June 6, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Many voters right now are separating their views of President Biden from their voting intentions — that is, they are willing to back a Democratic candidate this November even if they don’t think Biden is doing a good job. This is one of the few good omens for the party’s electoral prospects and a path for Democrats to avoid a total blowout this November.
Only 39 percent of Americans approve of Biden, compared with 56 percent who disapprove, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of recent polls. But 43 percent would support a Democratic candidate for Congress, while 45 percent of Americans say they will back a Republican, per FiveThirtyEight. So some voters who don’t like Biden will support a Democratic candidate, and an even larger bloc doesn’t like Biden but isn’t sold on congressional Republicans.
Finally, in the few polls we have of individual races, several Democrats are leading outright, including in the critical gubernatorial contests in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
To be sure, polls this far out from an election aren’t very predictive. Nevertheless, there is a real chance Democrats will far outperform Biden’s approval rating and perhaps even keep control of the House and Senate and win key gubernatorial races in November.
Why? First, many of the people who say they disapprove of Biden also don’t like Republicans and are almost certain to vote Democratic, if they vote at all. Biden’s approval rating has declined by 12 percentage points since the start of his term, according to tracking by the Economist. If those breaking with the president were all moderates and swing voters, Democrats would be in deep trouble. But some of Biden’s approval decline is due to Black voters (-17), voters under age 30 (-18), Democrats (-12), liberals (-15) and other left-leaning parts of the electorate growing sour on the president. The overwhelming majority of those people aren’t voting Republican. For example, a recent Post-Ipsos poll of Black adults found that 70 percent approved of Biden’s performance, compared with 28 percent who disapproved. But 88 percent of Black adults indicated they would vote for congressional Democrats this fall, compared with only 9 percent support for Republicans.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that only 26 percent of Georgia voters ages 18-34 approved of Biden, but 61 percent of people in that age group said they were backing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Democrats don’t have to convince these voters that Biden is doing a great job — they only need to convince them that the party overall has done enough and that putting Republicans in charge will make things worse. That’s not a hard case to make. Ideally, in the months before the election, Democrats take actions that would excite people who are deciding between voting Democratic and not voting at all, such as forgiving student loans and adopting whatever climate change proposal can get 50 votes in the Senate. The details emerging from the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and former president Donald Trump’s continued presence in American politics will help Democrats in making the case to sporadic voters that the 2022 election is as important as the ones in 2018 and 2020. In those two elections, young people, Black voters and other left-leaning groups voted at very high rates, helping boost Democrats.
The party also needs to win over some swing voters, particularly people who have backed Republican candidates in the past but were leery of Trump and his political approach. And the Republicans are providing Democrats a big assist here. In races across the country, including in swing districts and states, Republicans are nominating Trump-loving politicians who don’t accept the 2020 election results as legitimate and in some cases were actively involved in trying to overturn them, as well as having extreme views on a number of other issues.
Trump essentially forced Republicans to make ex-football star Herschel Walker the party’s candidate in Georgia’s U.S. Senate race. Walker’s numerous personal controversies and inexperience in politics make him an ideal opponent for Democrats in a state they just barely won in 2020. In Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, Republicans nominated Doug Mastriano, who enthusiastically embraced false claims that Trump won the state in 2020 and wants a total ban on abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Facing such flawed opponents, incumbent Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock is currently tied in the polls against Walker, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is ahead of Mastriano in the governor’s race.
I don’t want to overstate the Democrats’ chances. They are facing a tough history — the party in control of the presidency almost always loses ground, particularly in the House. They are also facing an angry electorate that may just want to toss out any Democrat they can, because of high inflation and a general sense that the party is ineffective. It’s not clear if the party’s most important voice, Biden, can shift from his comfort zones, talking about the economy and emphasizing bipartisanship, to potentially more fertile terrain — casting the Republicans as radical, particularly on such issues as abortion and gun control. Finally, polls in both 2016 and 2020 overstated the Democrats’ standing, so the surveys we have seen this year could be similarly flawed.
I still think the most likely scenario for this November’s elections is Republicans winning the House, Senate and most key gubernatorial races. But if you were looking for conditions where the traditional norms of politics wouldn’t apply, 2022 has them: The favored party’s leader is being investigated for his role in a scheme to overturn the prior election; its Supreme Court appointees just eliminated what had been a valued constitutional right; many of its candidates can be accurately described as extreme. Maybe the Democrats can win this November — and I sure hope they do. | 2022-07-01T21:12:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maybe the Democrats aren't doomed in November - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/maybe-democrats-not-doomed-in-november/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/maybe-democrats-not-doomed-in-november/ |
Paul D. Clement, who until last month was a partner with the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, outside the U.S. Supreme Court in April. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Unquestionably, the end of the Supreme Court’s most recent term was one of the most epic in its history: the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the decision striking down a New York gun-control law, and one holding that Maine’s private school voucher program could not exclude religious schools.
Taken together, the rulings represent a confident and muscular conservative jurisprudence, and a direct challenge to a legal consensus carefully constructed over decades by generations of left-leaning academics and judges. Cue rage mixed with despair on the left, and exultation on the right. Cue also a whole lot of shouting.
Amid the hubbub, it was easy to miss another important Supreme Court drama. The winning side of that New York gun-control case was argued by noted appellate attorney Paul D. Clement. Yet instead of offering congratulations for a job well done, Clement’s firm, the venerable Kirkland & Ellis, abruptly announced that it would no longer accept Second Amendment cases. Clement and another Kirkland & Ellis partner, Erin Murphy, have left to start their own firm.
This contretemps might not matter much in itself; Murphy and Clement will undoubtedly be fine. Nonetheless, it neatly encapsulates the polarizing forces ripping the country apart and endangering the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
Lawyers used to have a standard response to people who complained about their choice of clients: Everyone, no matter how noxious, deserves representation. A Washington law firm might find itself representing Richard M. Nixon and Ted Kennedy at the same time; the American Civil Liberties Union could end up defending the right of Nazis to march through a Jewish neighborhood in Skokie, Ill.
So it’s troubling to see a major firm not just ruling out a whole category of cases but also forcing its attorneys to choose between representing their current clients or keeping their jobs.
This is not the first time this has happened to Clement, who in 2011 was forced out of King & Spalding over his advocacy of the Defense of Marriage Act. But this trend marks a striking departure from the profession’s old norms. And it’s hard not to see this as a symptom of the cancel culture that has overtaken a number of American institutions, including the elite law schools where Kirkland & Ellis recruits.
The firm itself might have no objections to conservative causes — this is, after all, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s former employer. But like many American institutions, it is under pressure from a younger generation of workers who are much further to the left, and much less tolerant of dissent, than their predecessors. It is also under pressure from corporate clients that are — partly in deference to their own youngsters — increasingly comfortable using their power to advance the left’s side of controversial social issues.
This is obviously bad for conservative lawyers, and for a society that aspires to liberal values. But it’s not great for the left, as it essentially doubles down on a strategy that has already failed: using the left’s control over key institutions to essentially rule some ideas, or policies, out of bounds.
The Supreme Court itself was one of the earliest and most successful examples of this, with liberal majorities discovering sweeping new rights in the Constitution that tied legislators’ hands on a number of contentious questions. Among those, of course, was the right to abortion.
This worked almost too well, frustrating conservatives so completely that they began setting up parallel institutions as counterweights to the left’s increasing dominance of mainstream ones. Academics started conservative think tanks, media moguls created Fox News and its brethren, and lawyers embarked on a long campaign to support conservative legal scholars and scholarship that could remake the courts.
Those efforts got a big boost when Republicans developed their own structural advantage — in the Senate, the House and the electoral college. That, plus some aggressive procedural gamesmanship, gave conservatives control of the Supreme Court.
The left still hasn’t adapted to this new reality. Instead, it is trying to recover lost dominance by hitting the “banish wrongthink” button again, harder.
After the flurry of rulings, academic Twitter and newspaper op-ed pages filled with outraged declarations that the Supreme Court had lost its legitimacy by becoming a partisan, ideological actor. Yet this is precisely how the right feels about media and academia, and increasingly about corporate America. It’s hard to argue the conservatives are wrong while you’re enthusiastically purging them from your ranks.
The more the left tightens its control where it has influence, the more it cedes the institutions it doesn’t control to the other side. Given that those institutions include the Supreme Court, now would be a good time to reflect on the limits of this kind of maneuver.
It would be a good time for the right to reflect on this as well.
No victory is forever, and a conservative court that aspires to true greatness would be thinking about building the future as well as rectifying the past. However justified the conservatives are in reversing the mistakes of their predecessors, they would be wiser still not to repeat them.
‘Ordinary self-defense’ doesn’t exactly apply to Black people | 2022-07-01T21:12:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A firm’s split with its star gun-case lawyer shows what ails the left - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/paul-clement-kirkland-ellis-supreme-court-gun-split/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/paul-clement-kirkland-ellis-supreme-court-gun-split/ |
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