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The migrant tragedy in Texas is the result of a broken system
By Enrique Acevedo
Roberto Marquez adds crosses on June 30 to a makeshift memorial at the site where dozens of suspected migrants died in an abandoned tractor-trailer in San Antonio. (Eric Gay/AP)
Enrique Acevedo is a Mexican American journalist who works as a correspondent for CBS News and a contributor for “El Tiempo Latino.”
On May 14, 2003, a group of 73 migrants was found near Victoria, Texas, locked in a trailer without water, food or air conditioning. Nineteen people lost their lives, including a 5-year-old boy who was found in his father’s arms; the father also died. Nothing like this had ever happened in the United States.
On Monday afternoon, nearly 20 years later, the bodies of 53 migrants were found inside an abandoned tractor-trailer near San Antonio. When local authorities arrived at the scene, located 155 miles from the border with Mexico, the dehydrated bodies of the victims were still radiating heat. Just like in 2003, there was no trace of water, food or air conditioning in the vehicle. The scene was so chaotic, first responders took nearly an hour from the moment they found the bodies to rescue the victims who were still alive, including four children.
Read this piece in Spanish: La tragedia migrante en Texas es el resultado de un sistema descompuesto
Unfortunately, these two incidents are not exceptions. In 2012, 23 migrants were traveling in a van when it collided with a tree in South Texas, killing 15 people. In 2017, 10 men died in the bed of a trailer carrying 200 migrants. A similar incident occurred in August 2021.
The script and the protagonists are always similar. That’s why this week’s tragedy demands a reassessment of the actions the United States and Mexico have undertaken at the border over the past 30 years. We need comprehensive immigration reform, more work visas, fair treatment for refugees and asylum seekers and fewer walls. Policies to seal the border, the lack of coordination between the countries involved, and the inflammatory rhetoric against migrants that has escalated during the past decade, have had lethal consequences for those seeking to enter the United States without documents. These vulnerable groups are easy prey for human-trafficking organizations, mostly run by Mexican drug cartels.
These criminal organizations exploit the migrants’ needs and the corruption in both countries to generate vast profits and operate with impunity. Migrants pay thousands of dollars to smugglers to get to “the other side.” Sometimes the transaction works out, sometimes it doesn’t. In some cases, they are captured; in others, they end up losing their lives in the attempt.
Ana, who spoke with me on the condition of only using her first name to protect her identity, arrived in the United States two weeks ago from Puebla, Mexico. She paid $4,000 to a smuggler who promised to get her across the Sonora-Arizona border at the start of summer. She traveled by bus to Nogales, Mexico, where she estimates she stayed four or five days in a house with dozens of migrants. They only had one bathroom in that house and no air conditioning, food or water. During this time of year, temperatures in Nogales frequently reach 104 degrees.
“There were times I thought I would not come out of this alive,” she said. “Some of the people who were with me passed out from the heat and lack of water. Several women from Central America told me horrible stories about what had happened to them on the trip.”
When the smugglers finally came for them, they asked them to prepare to cross the desert at night with the bare minimum to survive the journey. They reached Tucson, where each departed to their final destination. For migrants who cross the border undocumented, aware of the dangers they face, stories such as Ana’s are considered a blessing.
That’s because at least 650 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year, the most since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection registered 557 deaths on the southwest border during the 2021 fiscal year, an increase from the reported 254 deaths in 2020 and 300 in 2019. Humanitarian organizations warn that the number is even higher due to the deaths of migrants on the Mexican side of the border not being reliably reported and the U.S. government’s systematic failures to recover the migrants’ bodies in its territory.
The militarization of the border — with its roughly 620 miles of wall and 19,000 officers, as well as drones, ATVs and surveillance equipment — combined with the anti-immigrant rhetoric promoted by politicians such as former president Donald Trump or Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, has not stopped the flow of migrants. But it has resulted in more deaths and allowed criminal organizations to profit from smuggling.
On Monday, Abbott tweeted that the dead migrants this week were on President Biden. However, facts tell a different story. The victims are on an entire political system that has shown itself incapable of tackling the problem through comprehensive immigration reform.
Instead of perceiving border security as part of a broader strategy, Washington became obsessed with sealing off borders to stop undocumented migration. It’s a failed experiment with severe consequences for the lives and human rights of those crossing the border.
Immigration is a complex phenomenon for which there are no simple, popular solutions. The best way to limit spaces for the illegality that led to the death of at least 53 people southeast of San Antonio this week is to expand and strengthen legal options for migrants. Without the political will to commit to a comprehensive reform on this issue, both criminalization and the list of tragedies will continue to grow.
What the tragedy in San Antonio reveals about migration from Mexico | 2022-07-01T21:12:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The migrant tragedy in Texas is the result of a broken system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/san-antonio-tragedy-migrants-broken-system/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/san-antonio-tragedy-migrants-broken-system/ |
We have been warned
Abortion rights advocates demonstrate June 25 outside the U.S. Supreme Court. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Regarding Eugene Robinson’s June 28 op-ed, “It’s not a court. It’s a junta.”:
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade left me in a daze. I understood that my nieces and great-nieces have lost reproductive rights that I’d enjoyed in my earlier years. I could also see that the separation of church and state has gone up in smoke.
But I felt a sense of doom that I couldn’t articulate. Mr. Robinson helped me understand what could be on the horizon. Are we to become a Christian nation? Who else, in addition to women, could become second-class citizens with a single Supreme Court vote? What about affirmative action? What happens to the rights of LGBTQ citizens? Will states’ rights cease to have any impact?
I don’t know if the United States will continue to feel like my country. At least I’ve been warned.
Linda Linton, Columbia
Well, it seems that the South has finally won the Civil War. Make no mistake about it. Remember that the Southern states insisted that they were not fighting to preserve the institution of slavery, but that they were fighting to preserve and protect states’ rights. And now Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and others have done just that. They have turned over the entire bundle of civil rights to the states. Oh, it hasn’t happened yet, but you can see the state legislatures scrambling to undo civil rights legislation as we speak. It won’t be long, as people are speculating, before gay rights, students’ rights, immigrants’ rights and others are taken away, just as a fundamental women’s right has been.
Frankly, I fear that this eviscerating of civil rights won’t stop until the states have revoked Brown v. Board of Education. Then the clock will rewind until we arrive at 1896 and Plessy v. Ferguson. Separate but equal. And a new era of Jim Crow. Just look at a map of the red states: the solid South and the old Civil War territories that run up the spine of America from Oklahoma to the Dakotas. The Supreme Court just finished what 150 years of agitation by those states couldn’t.
It was not a good week for America.
Michael D. Abell, Marriottsville
The June 26 front-page article “Many Americans fearful that wave of repeals could be on horizon” referred to several rights that could be on the chopping block, but it missed a big one: Title IX. Though Title IX is a law, not a Supreme Court decision, it could be collateral damage from the ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
As the article stated, the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade “rested on the view that the individual liberties guaranteed by the 14th Amendment protected only rights that had ‘deep roots’ in states when it was ratified in 1868.” Women had virtually no rights in 1868, and Title IX is a mere 50 years old, so there are no deep roots protecting it. If it is challenged and the case reaches the Supreme Court, would the court apply the same rationale to Title IX as it did with the Roe v. Wade repeal for the sake of consistency? If so, Title IX could be in serious jeopardy. It would be horrible to see Title IX fall, but, based on the rationale for overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s certainly possible.
The time to prepare to defend Title IX is now.
George Miller, Warrenton
Government is for those who will not govern themselves.
Pregnancy is not a moral issue, a religious issue or a legal issue. It is a result of action. It takes two.
If you don’t want to have children, then don’t have intercourse. It’s called body autonomy. Birth control is readily available for females and males.
The only thing it takes is personal responsibility: cause and effect.
Julie Thostenson, Lancaster, Va. | 2022-07-01T21:13:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We have been warned - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/we-have-been-warned/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/we-have-been-warned/ |
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testifies about Donald Trump’s actions and behavior on Jan. 6, 2021, during a House select committee hearing in Washington; relatives mourn at the funeral of British journalist Dom Phillips who was killed in Brazil’s Amazon region; Ketanji Brown Jackson signs her oaths and becomes the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
June 28 | Washington, D.C.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson arrives to testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Hutchinson delivered devastating testimony about Trump’s behavior that day and the actions of others around him.
June 28 | New York
Veronica Alvarez, 21, of Ulster, N.Y., stands for a portrait during New York City’s Pride parade in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post
June 26 | Niteroi, Brazil
Relatives mourn as Alessandra Sampaio, center, embraces her sister-in-law Sian Phillips during the funeral of her husband, British journalist Dom Phillips, at the Parque da Colina cemetery. Phillips was killed in the Amazon region along with the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.
June 29 | San Marcos Atexquilapan, Mexico
A friend of Misael Olivares Jimenez laments in front of his photo while waiting for news about the disappearance of Jair Valencia Olivares, Yovani Valencia Olivares and Misael Olivares Jimenez, after migrants were found dead inside a tractor-trailer sweltering under the sun in San Antonio.
Felix Marquez for The Washington Post
June 26 | Lysychansk, Ukraine
Wounded soldiers from the Ukrainian Airborne unit are treated outside the embattled city. Eight soldiers were wounded, two seriously, after a Russian cluster bomb attack hit them as they moved into the farm village of Verkhniokamianske.
Heidi Levine for The Washington Post
July 1 | Moscow
American basketball player Brittney Griner, left, is escorted from court. A Russian prosecutor accused the WNBA star of transporting a “significant amount” of cannabis oil, according to Russian media reports on her trial, where she faces 10 years in prison if convicted.
Photo for The Washington Post
June 24 | Bethesda, Md.
Fans line the hillside near the 10th tee box to get a glimpse of the leader In Gee Chun during the second round of the Women’s PGA Championship at Congressional Country Club.
New Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signs her oaths of office beside her husband, Patrick, left, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Jackson was sworn in as the 116th justice and its first Black woman on the bench, a historic change for an institution that for the first time is not composed of a majority of White men.
U.S. Supreme Court/Reuters
June 24 | Topeka, Kan.
Ramona Allen, 6, plays in a sprinkler on the grounds of the statehouse.
June 26 | Hillsboro, Va.
Fireworks burst over the Old Stone School, which was built in 1874 and is now used for city offices and public gatherings. The city celebrated Independence Day earlier than most towns to not compete with other local jurisdictions holding fireworks shows in the coming days.
Solstice at Stonehenge, U.S. abortion rights overturned and more of the week’s best photos
Photos: The scene during the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings on the Capitol riot in Washington
In photos: Pride celebrations in New York City and San Francisco
The scene in Texas after dozens of migrants were found dead in a sweltering tractor-trailer | 2022-07-01T21:13:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pictures of what happened this week: Cassidy Hutchinson testifies about Trump’s actions and behavior on Jan. 6 during a select committee hearing; Ketanji Brown Jackson becomes the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/07/01/best-photos-of-the-week/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/07/01/best-photos-of-the-week/ |
Antisemitism monitor lands in Saudi Arabia on first official trip
Deborah E. Lipstadt, nominated to be special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, on Capitol Hill on Feb. 8. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
(RNS) — Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s new special envoy to combat antisemitism, arrived in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for her first official foreign visit as the Biden administration’s foremost expert on what Lipstadt calls the world’s oldest hatred.
Lipstadt’s tour of the country comes two weeks ahead of President Biden’s planned Mideast trip, which includes stops in Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Her goals in Saudi Arabia and her next stop, the United Arab Emirates, are more specific. She wants to combat anti-Jewish sentiment.
In 2020, Israel and several Arab countries signed the Abraham Accords, a set of normalization agreements among Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, countries previously diplomatically, politically and militarily at odds.
The Saudis were not included in the accords, but they have since opened up to Israel and deepened commercial ties, especially as it relates to air defense technology. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is increasingly seeing Israel as a strategic partner in the fight against Iranian influence. The Wall Street Journal reported that in March that United States held secret meeting with Israeli and Saudi military chiefs to counter the Iran air threat.
With more Jews, primarily Israelis, traveling in greater numbers to the overwhelmingly Muslim Persian Gulf region, Lipstadt said she wanted to meet with government ministers and civil society leaders to raise awareness of antisemitism.
“I’m trying to see if there are ways we can address the normalizing of the treatment of the Jew and Jewish history and culture,” Lipstadt said in a phone interview with Religion News Service before her trip. “Jews have a rich history in this region, and that should be part of the conversation as well.”
She will also travel to the United Arab Emirates and Israel in the coming days.
Judaism is experiencing a revival in the UAE, where a couple of synagogues have opened since the Abraham Accords were signed. The government officially recognized the existence of Jews in the UAE. There’s even a kosher food service.
A world-renowned antisemitism scholar, Lipstadt took a three-year leave of absence from Emory University in March to become special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. The position, created in 2004, has the rank of ambassador and is intended to advance U.S. foreign policy on antisemitism abroad.
She said she saw her new role in many ways as a continuation of her teaching job at Emory, in which she instructed students about the historic ways antisemitism appears and spreads.
“Jews don’t present as other victims of prejudice,” Lipstadt said. “They appear to be well-situated and able to take care of themselves. People wonder, ‘Is it a serious thing?’ And I’m here to say, ‘Yes, it is a very serious issue.’ ”
She also stressed that the fight against antisemitism is not only about protecting Jewish lives.
“It rarely stands alone as a hatred,” Lipstadt said. “Antisemitism is a threat to democracy and global security. It’s a threat to the stability of society.”
Lipstadt said antisemitic tropes are so embedded in society that all it takes is a financial crisis or a pandemic for them to resurface. “If you say the Jews are behind it, people say, ‘Maybe there’s something to it,’ ” she said. “It becomes an easy target or way of explaining something that’s inexplicable.”
Biden nominated Lipstadt for the special envoy post a year ago, but the nomination languished for months after Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, objected, saying he was offended by a tweet in which Lipstadt
wrote that his comments about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection amounted to “white supremacy/nationalism.” (Johnson has said he would have been concerned had Black Lives Matter protesters flooded the Capitol instead of mostly White Trump supporters.)
Lipstadt was finally confirmed by the Senate on March 30.
She said the prolonged confirmation battle has not made her feel constrained now that she’s taken office.
“Much to my delight, I have found there’s very little I haven’t been able to say,” Lipstadt said. “My colleagues in this vast network of the State Department have been utterly supportive. I walk down the halls of the building and people say, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’ So far, I’ve been able to say what I want to say and what I passionately believe.”
Shortly after her Middle East swing, Lipstadt will head to Argentina to commemorate the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association building, the center of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires. The bombing killed 86 people including the bomber. After that, she heads to Chile to speak with Jewish community leaders.
Her new job, she said, is to raise awareness and understanding of the dangers of antisemitism.
“I may have taken off my mortarboard and put on whatever hat a diplomat wears, but I’m doing the same thing,” Lipstadt said. “I’m educating.” — Religion News Service | 2022-07-01T21:13:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Antisemitism monitor lands in Saudi Arabia on first official trip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/01/antisemitism-monitor-lands-saudi-arabia-first-official-trip/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/07/01/antisemitism-monitor-lands-saudi-arabia-first-official-trip/ |
Bobby Bonilla, shown playing for the Mets in June 1992, will get a check from the team for $1,193,248.20 every July 1 until 2035. (Osamu Honda/AP)
Of all the obscure holidays on the sports calendar, perhaps the most important to sports fans is July 1 — a.k.a. Bobby Bonilla Day — an occasion to observe the annual custom when the six-time all-star gets paid.
Bonilla hasn’t played in the majors since 2001, but every July 1 since 2011, the Mets have cut him a check on a day that’s come to be celebrated by fans and even new team ownership.
The contract dates back to the 1999 season, when the then-36-year-old Bonilla was struggling on the diamond and often clashing with manager Bobby Valentine. The Mets wanted to cut him but he was still owed the $5.9 million left on his contract, so Bonilla and his agent offered team executives a deal: He would go quietly if the Mets deferred his salary for 12 years, at an 8 percent annual interest rate, and paid it off over 25 years starting in 2011.
“I always wanted to be able to spend money in retirement the way I did as an active player and that was important to me,” Bonilla said during a recent interview with the Action Network.
Former team owners Saul Katz and Fred Wilpon had been heavily involved in Bernie Madoff’s investment schemes for years, earning 10 to 14 percent returns annually through the late Wall Street financier, who orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Under Bonilla’s proposal, they could take the $5.9 million that wouldn’t be paid to Bonilla and invest it with Madoff. They anticipated a $60 million-70 million profit off the arrangement, earning far more than the $29.8 million they eventually would have to pay Bonilla over 25 installments.
But three years before the payments were to start, Madoff’s scheme began to unravel. Now, every July 1 until 2035, Bonilla will get check for $1,193,248.20 from the Mets.
Bonilla also receives additional payments through a separate deferred-contract plan with the Mets and the Baltimore Orioles, with whom he played from 1995-1996. Those payments, which began in 2004, provide $500,000 a year for 25 years.
Bonilla told the Action Network that he does not celebrate Bobby Bonilla Day, though “it’s really amazing how I’m probably more famous for that deal than the career I had.”
On July 1, “my text messages blow up,” he added. “It’s way bigger than my birthday.”
Bobby Bonilla on every July 1st until 2035 pic.twitter.com/HAlbLPC0JA | 2022-07-01T21:13:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why July 1 is Bobby Bonilla Day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/bobby-bonilla-day-mets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/bobby-bonilla-day-mets/ |
FILE - Chicago Bulls’ Zach LaVine starts a fast break during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Atlanta Hawks Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, in Chicago. The Chicago Bulls remain hopeful All-Star guard Zach LaVine will choose to re-sign with them rather than join another team as an unrestricted free agent, executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas said Monday, June 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File) | 2022-07-01T21:14:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Day 2 of free agency: LaVine, Nurkic decide to stay put - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/day-2-of-free-agency-lavine-nurkic-decide-to-stay-put/2022/07/01/3ca67654-f97e-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/day-2-of-free-agency-lavine-nurkic-decide-to-stay-put/2022/07/01/3ca67654-f97e-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Dueling lawsuits by Amtrak, truck driver’s widow seek damages
Workers chat behind the remnants of the vehicle where an Amtrak train derailed Monday in Mendon, Mo. The train, traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago, struck a dump truck at a crossing, killing four people and injuring dozens. (Chase Castor/Getty Images)
Despite the “clearly visible approaching Amtrak Train 4, Barton failed to yield the right of way … and instead attempted to cross the grade crossing which resulted in a collision,” according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Missouri.
Death toll in Amtrak derailment climbs as probe begins
“Physical defects in the road made it dangerous and unsafe,” according to the suit. It cited “sloped approaches, brush, trees and vegetation blocking a full view of oncoming trains in some quadrants, and seasonal crops in surrounding fields that would further block a driver’s visibility.”
Steven Groves, who represents the Barton family, said Billy Dean Barton was in the right.
“This grade crossing was a trap,” Groves said. “It’s literally not possible to use it safely for someone who’s driving a truck like he was, when a 90-mile-per-hour train comes down the track like it did.”
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, there were about 2,148 grade-crossing incidents around the country last year, killing 236 people and injuring 662. | 2022-07-01T21:14:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Missouri derailment, lawsuits by Amtrak, truck driver’s widow seek damages - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/01/amtrak-missouri-derailment-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/01/amtrak-missouri-derailment-lawsuit/ |
Ex-leader of Mexico’s search for disappeared convicted in DNA scandal
Volunteers separate crushed and burned human bones from rocks and dirt found at a burial site in Torreón, Mexico, on Dec. 17, 2019. (Alejandro Cegarra for The Washington Post)
It was a bizarre turn in Mexico’s most acute human rights crisis: The disappearance of more than 100,000 people, most of them in the last 15 years. The staggering number reflects the explosion of violence during the U.S.-backed war on drug gangs and the growing quest by Mexican crime groups to control more territory. Criminal organizations are blamed in the kidnapping and killing of many of the victims, but others were hauled away by brutal security forces. In some instances, corrupt local or state police snatched people on behalf of cartels.
The search for the disappeared points to Mexico's darkest secrets
There was no allegation that Cabrera was paid to hand over the material. Yet officials discovered that ADN had outlined a potential $3.5 million contract with him in which the company would compare relatives’ DNA to the genetic material in a government database to help them identify missing loved ones. The company had already started contacting families of the missing, offering to perform the service free, prosecutors said. The contract was never signed. | 2022-07-01T21:14:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexico's disappeared: Roberto Cabrera convicted of mishandling DNA of missing persons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/mexico-disappeared-dna-roberto-cabrera/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/mexico-disappeared-dna-roberto-cabrera/ |
A Ukrainian service member on a HIMARS rocket launcher in eastern Ukraine on July 1. (Anastasia Vlasova for The Washington Post)
EASTERN UKRAINE — The premier weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal drove down a dirt road not marked on any maps, along a sunflower field, before its military minders parked it between trees — the branches shielding it from the Russian drones that are no doubt hunting for it.
The M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, commonly known as HIMARS, is one of four that Ukrainians received last month from the United States as part of a $700 million military aid package. The soldiers assigned to this one already adorned the inside with a picture of a scantily clad woman, an air freshener and rosary beads. The outside has three small black skulls stenciled on it — one for every target successfully hit.
After public frustration over Western delays in transferring promised heavy weaponry, specifically multiple-launch rocket systems such as the HIMARS, the Ukrainians have quickly put their new hardware to work more than four months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Kuzya and his comrades said their targets so far have focused on Russian command posts — warehouses where enemy officers and weaponry were stationed.
Ukrainian officials say the new tranche of Western materiel is already making a difference on the battlefield — a testament to the importance of continued security assistance and the painful cost of slow-moving deliveries as the Russian military slowly expands its control in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Artillery strikes from French self-propelled howitzers stationed in the port city of Odessa reportedly forced the Russians to withdraw Thursday from the strategically important Snake Island in the Black Sea.
The HIMARS is the most advanced U.S.-provided system and has the longest range of Ukraine’s ground weapons, nearly 50 miles, enabling its forces to precisely strike Russian military targets without endangering its own civilians in occupied territories. Ukraine had been asking for the weapons for about two months before the transfer was approved — after Ukraine assured the Biden administration that it will not use them to launch cross-border attacks into Russia.
The Biden administration promised to send Ukraine four more HIMARS as part of an additional $450 million in aid announced last week. All four were propositioned in Europe, and training on those systems has already begun with the Ukrainian troops who will use them, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
“What we used before was a lot more worrisome,” said the four-person team’s gunner, whose role is to input the target’s coordinates. His call sign is Moroz, which translates to “frost.”
The HIMARS also brings more peace of mind, the soldiers said. With their old equipment, they avoided rocket trajectories that passed through any population settlements, limiting them to only shooting through fields and forests, to avoid potentially harming civilians, Moroz said.
“I don’t have any doubts about what we’ll hit,” Moroz said. “I know the rocket will hit its target because it’s navigated by satellite.”
The system this unit used before was the Soviet-era Uragan, a self-propelled multiple-rocket launcher that had a maximum range of about 20 miles. It also had a margin of error of about half a mile, and was targeted in coordination with a drone or a reconnaissance team. The HIMARS is guided by satellite and deviates from its target coordinates by at most one yard, the soldiers said.
They asked to be identified only by their call signs as a security measure. With the systems considered a top-priority target for the Russians, the team members’ families don’t even know they work with them. They have to keep the HIMARS constantly on the move because staying in one place too long risks its location being uncovered.
The launcher holds six rockets and is attached to a dark green truck frame. Operations are mostly conducted at night — the soldiers standing at a distance and counting off before shouting “fire!” There’s a bright flash of light as each rocket takes off. Then they’re ready to move within two minutes — and speed is imperative to keeping the HIMARS safe because the Russians can quickly pinpoint the source of the shooting and fire back. The mobility is impressive — for a hulking vehicle, it can move at up to 60 miles per hour, they said.
“We were also surprised that such a high-precision weapon could shoot so quietly,” Kuzya said.
The unit eagerly awaited the HIMARS’ arrival for one month. Then they finally got firsthand experience at a secret location outside of Ukraine with American instructors for about two weeks. Rather than let the Americans simply demonstrate, Ukrainian troops asked them to explain what to do, let the students try and adjust from there.
“They were like, ‘Oh [expletive],’ ” he said with a grin, wearing a bulletproof vest emblazoned with a skull patch and “Welcome to Hell.”
The computer system is entirely in English, so at the time of training, interpreters explained what each button means — all documented in a notebook the soldiers regularly consult. But Google Translate is still needed on occasion.
Kuzya said it would be nice to have 50 HIMARS so that Ukraine could deploy four in each direction of a vast front that spans nearly its entire eastern border with Russia. “Sputnik,” the unit’s commander, said it would have been better to have had the equipment sooner — before Moscow’s forces took control of most of the country’s Luhansk region.
“I think it took too long to get them here,” he said. “Had they been here much earlier, I think we would’ve already been done with this war.”
Anastasia Vlasova contributed to this report. | 2022-07-01T21:14:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukrainian troops using US-supplied HIMARS system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/ukraine-himars-rocket-launch-system/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/01/ukraine-himars-rocket-launch-system/ |
Betty Rowland, the last grande dame of burlesque, dies at 106
‘Let’s put a little juice in the Ballets Russes,’ she would say in one of her signature routines, ‘and give the dying swan a little goose’
Betty Rowland was one of the last surviving queens of burlesque, performing during the art form's heyday in the 1930s and '40s. (Courtesy of Leslie Zemeckis from “Behind the Burly Q”)
Betty Rowland, the original “Ball of Fire,” was a grande dame of burlesque, a voluptuous 5-foot-1 dancer with flaming red hair — thus the stage name — and an energetic bump and grind. Her striptease, she liked to say, was more tease than strip, although she often left the stage wearing nothing more than sequined pasties and a G-string.
A contemporary of 1930s and ’40s burlesque stars such as Gypsy Rose Lee, Sherry Britton and Zorita, Ms. Rowland filled theaters from Times Square in New York to Main Street in Los Angeles, where West Coast promoters dubbed her “the biggest shake since the 1906 quake.”
As an orchestra played jazz standards like “In the Mood,” she pirouetted across the stage in a Grecian gown or a floor-length dress with a slit up to the hip. Then, to the horror of the Vice Squad, she would perform a languid maneuver known as the German Roll, in which she bent forward, touched her hands to the floor and rolled upward, with her feet turned out in the fifth position.
“Let’s put a little juice in the Ballets Russes,” she would say in one of her signature routines, “and give the dying swan a little goose.” She went on, “In a classical kind of way, do you mind if I put a bump in this ballet?”
Ms. Rowland was 106 when she died April 3 at an assisted-living center in Culver City, Calif. Her death, which was not widely reported at the time, was confirmed by her friend Leslie Zemeckis, who did not give a cause. It was reported by the New York Times on Wednesday.
“She was absolutely the last burlesque legend,” said Zemeckis, who interviewed Ms. Rowland for “Behind the Burly Q,” a 2010 documentary about the art form. In a phone interview, she described Ms. Rowland as a crucial link to an era when burlesque was more or less mainstream entertainment, a staple of theaters like the Minsky’s burlesque chain in New York, where dancers shared a bill with comedy acts, singers, jugglers and gymnasts.
Ms. Rowland never made as much money as peers like Tempest Storm and Blaze Starr, but she was still enormously popular, often performing four shows a day, seven days a week, to audiences that included film stars such as Lucille Ball. Orson Welles invited her to perform at wrap parties for his movies, often serving as emcee. He “was never in town more than 12 hours," she said, "before heading for the Follies,” one of the Main Street burlesque theaters.
Ms. Rowland launched her career in show business at age 11, performing in a vaudeville act with her sister Roz Elle, also known as Rosie. As she told it, they danced together for about four years before drifting into burlesque during the Depression, when they were booked for a week at the Old Howard theater in Boston.
“We told ourselves we wouldn’t pay any attention to those horrible people taking their clothes off and telling dirty jokes,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1966. “But we found that backstage it was like one big family. And those free Saturday night lunches! Well, we stayed another week.”
Ms. Rowland went on to work with comedians including Abbott and Costello, Joey Faye, Rags Ragland, Phil Silvers and Joe Yule, the father of actor Mickey Rooney. By the standards of the pornography and strip clubs that followed, her performances were tame.
“The girls now, they start where we used to leave off,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. She recalled that well into the 1940s, men came to her shows accompanied by dates. But over the next two decades, burlesque performances grew raunchier as they competed with television, movies and the rise of men’s magazines like Playboy.
Instead of dancers, shows featured “nudie cuties, and just nudies,” Ms. Rowland complained. “What is a lap dance, anyway?” she asked.
Even as audiences dwindled, she remained dedicated to her art form, and was still taking to the stage of the New Follies in Los Angeles at age 50.
“The theater was dingy beyond description, the band reduced to a drummer and a pianist and the midweek audience painfully spare,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 1966. “Yet to the unsteady strains of ‘Hello, Dolly’ out came the petite Miss Rowland, as regal and redheaded as ever, to prove that experience can triumph over youth, that grace and good humor can beat the passing of time to a draw.
“Amidst this dreariest of settings, Miss Rowland demonstrated that she is above all an artist.”
Betty Jane Rowland was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 23, 1916. Her father was an accountant who lost his job during the Depression, leading the family to rely on Ms. Rowland and her sisters’ dance shows for money. “I wanted to go to college, but we lost our home and I wound up in show business,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2006. “It put turkey on the table.”
By age 14, Ms. Rowland was doing a full striptease. She and her sisters settled in New York, where Dian, the oldest, performed as “Society’s Favorite,” carrying a diploma onstage and stripping with a cap and gown. Roz Elle was known as the “Golden Girl,” doing acrobatic routines while wearing nothing but a layer of gold paint. She later became a baroness after marrying one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Jean Empain of Belgium; when he died of cancer in 1946, she married his first cousin, who was also a baron.
In 1937, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia cracked down on burlesque theaters, blaming them for corrupting the city’s morals. Minsky’s shut down, and Ms. Rowland took her act to Los Angeles, where the owners of the Follies theater dubbed her the “Ball of Fire.”
She briefly flirted with Hollywood, appearing as a chorus girl in the 1941 film “Let’s Make Music,” and about two years later she sued the Samuel Goldwyn Co. over the release of the 1941 screwball comedy “Ball of Fire,” claiming that she was owed $50,000 for the use of the title and $3,500 for breach of contract.
Ms. Rowland had been hired as a technical adviser on the film, which starred Barbara Stanwyck as a nightclub performer hired to help a nebbishy Gary Cooper, who is trying to write an encyclopedia entry on modern slang.
According to Ms. Rowland, costume designer Edith Head came to her burlesque shows and visited backstage, where she examined one of the dancer’s floor-length paneled skirts and matching long-sleeved cropped blouses. The outfit allegedly inspired one of Stanwyck’s looks in the film, although the lawsuit was dropped for lack of evidence.
Ms. Rowland benefited from the publicity and was also flattered by the film, according to Liz Goldwyn, a granddaughter of the movie mogul, who interviewed Ms. Rowland for her burlesque book and documentary “Pretty Things.” “Betty said the blatant copy complimented her, as it was a signal that she had arrived — the famous studio designer was looking to Betty for her fashion sense.”
At times, Ms. Rowland’s striptease got her in trouble with the law. She was fined $250 for lewdness in 1939, after a police officer imitated her routine on the witness stand, and in 1952 her act was shut down altogether. According to Ms. Rowland, the theater manager was filling in at the box office that night and failed to recognize a pair of Vice Squad officers, refusing to let them in free.
Police arrested the manager and Ms. Rowland, charging that she was giving a “sadistic” performance. A judge sentenced her to four months in jail, although she was released after three weeks, having apparently promised to stop performing locally. She celebrated her freedom with a nationwide tour.
By the late 1960s, she was running Mr. B’s, a neighborhood bar in Santa Monica that she had inherited from friends. Under Ms. Rowland, the bar maintained fairly strict decorum: no tank-tops after dark, no profanity at the pool table. When customers crossed the line, she was known to shine a flashlight in their faces until they left.
Ms. Rowland had a longtime relationship with Gus Schilling, a burlesque comedian and character actor who died in 1957. Her marriage to Owen Dalton, an investor and lumber merchant, ended in divorce.
She leaves no immediate survivors.
Like other burlesque queens, Ms. Rowland effectively self-produced her own shows, selecting her music and wardrobe. “Zippers aren’t safe,” she observed. “The glamour’s all gone if you have to stop and wrestle with a zipper that gets jammed.”
She ran into other issues at the start of her career. During her first striptease performance, she became so involved in the music and dance steps that she forgot to take her clothes off. “I remember my one sister standing in the wings, and she’s saying, ‘Why don’t we take off a jacket?’ I was more interested in music,” she told Goldwyn.
The audience “all thought I was teasing,” she added, “and I really wasn’t.” | 2022-07-01T22:07:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Betty Rowland, the last grande dame of burlesque, dies at 106 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/01/burlesque-queen-betty-rowland-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/01/burlesque-queen-betty-rowland-dead/ |
The Supreme Court reminds the executive branch: Congress makes the laws
By Jennifer L. Mascott
Fencing surrounds the Supreme Court on June 28. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
Jennifer L. Mascott is an assistant professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and the co-executive director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Eli Nachmany is a recent graduate of Harvard Law School and a senior research fellow at the Gray Center.
The Supreme Court ended its term on Thursday with an important declaration: Using regulation as a shortcut to lawmaking will no longer fly. This limitation is long overdue.
The shift emerged in the court’s decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, a highly anticipated environmental law case about the scope of the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions. The court’s conclusion will impact not only emissions, but also regulation in many key policy areas of political and economic significance. The result may be a much-needed reinvigoration of Congress’s will to reclaim its legislative prerogative.
The 6-to-3 opinion, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., found that the Obama administration’s EPA overstepped its authority when it used a minor provision in the Clean Air Act to develop its far-reaching Clean Power Plan. The plan, which sought to regulate emissions from power plants, essentially would have shut down sizable portions of disfavored sectors of the energy industry, such as coal-powered plants. The court declared that the little-used Clean Air Act provision could not support the agency’s sweeping claim of authority to shift the power industry from coal to renewable sources.
The broader takeaway is this: If an agency tries to take significant action with national economic and political impact, the agency must identify clear statutory authority for that action to be lawful.
Congress must legislate policy requirements and grant authority through statutes empowering federal agencies to act. For decades, congressional gridlock has hindered significant legislation of this kind in response to modern problems. Instead, our nation’s lawmakers have favored headline-grabbing or less-permanent action through oversight, commissions, investigations or patchwork solutions in appropriations and emergency legislation.
The burdens of the legislative process are ones of design. The Constitution deliberately imposes high hurdles for the passage of legislation. Yet, administrative agencies have tried to sidestep this process by shoehorning preferred policies into attenuated authorities granted under old laws, justifying them with claims of necessity or emergency.
Consider, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s claim of authority under a 1944 law to declare a national moratorium on evictions. Or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s attempt, under a 1970 law, to impose a nationwide vaccine-or-test mandate in private workplaces. In both cases, the court held that the policy was unlawful.
In West Virginia v. EPA, the court for the first time expressly identified a doctrine that limits federal agencies from claiming such broad, novel authorities by issuing regulations of vast economic and political significance. Titled the “major questions doctrine,” it posits that for a court to conclude agency action of national significance is lawful, Congress must have clearly granted the relevant authority.
The court does not go so far as to require that an act explicitly address each potential regulatory proposal with specificity. But the four corners of the underlying statutory source must, by their terms, support the agency action. This will prevent agencies from claiming ever broader power from old, vaguely worded statutes as Congress sits on its hands.
The court went to great lengths to show that this doctrine has been in place for decades, pointing to several additional past rulings. These included a 2000 decision that the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of tobacco was unlawful and a 2006 opinion that the Controlled Substances Act could not be enforced against the prescription of medication for assisted suicide.
The practical consequences of this ruling will anger many who see agencies as essential generators of solutions to national problems. But the court’s focus on Congress is critical to democratic accountability and constitutional process. Congress must serve as the institutional actor reaching consequential policy choices by majority vote. The Constitution embeds this mandate by vesting legislative power exclusively in Congress, which comprises elected representatives from every region and state. That rich and varied representation reflects diverse geographic and cultural interests with far greater reach than the monolithic representation of interests provided by a single agency or a single, nationally elected president.
Under West Virginia v. EPA, overly general and outdated statutory language can no longer be the source of broad, novel regulatory initiatives. This holding will have far-reaching implications, potentially impacting a number of critical policy areas currently regulated under decades-old laws, including technology, telecommunications, health care and corporate governance. Lawmakers will now face greater pressure to reach policy consensus more routinely and update old regulatory schemes to address new technological and industrial innovations. Re-situating Congress as the locus of policy control better reflects democratic will and restores a more constitutional order. | 2022-07-01T22:11:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Supreme Court reminds the executive branch: Congress makes the laws - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/west-virginia-epa-supreme-court-ruling-carbon-emissions-congress-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/west-virginia-epa-supreme-court-ruling-carbon-emissions-congress-laws/ |
The tech giant collects reams of data on people, sparking fears it could be used in abortion prosecutions
Abortion rights demonstrators chant outside the Supreme Court in Washington on June 25. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg News)
Google said Friday that it would delete its users’ location history whenever they visit an abortion clinic, domestic violence shelter or other similarly-sensitive place, responding publicly for the first time to calls for the data giant to limit the amount of information it collects that could be used by law enforcement for abortion investigations and prosecutions.
The blog post also reiterates Google’s position that it pushes back against what is sees as overly broad or illegal government requests for data, but does not specifically say how the company will respond to abortion-related requests. Google already lets its users turn off location-tracking completely.
Google and other Big Tech companies have been under pressure over the last week to make clear how they will respond to such requests. Google already responds to hundreds of search warrants every day in the U.S., handing over its customers’ emails, location data and documents stored in the cloud. As law enforcement agencies become more tech-savvy, they’ve increasingly used the vast troves of data collected by Big Tech to bolster investigations and prosecutions.
Privacy advocates have long pointed out that these same tactics could be applied to abortion investigations, a hypothetical situation that has now become reality after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Google has fought the government on other data collection issues before, such as pushing back against the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection programs a decade ago.
Any battle between the tech companies and governments about data collection should be done in public, so that regular people and privacy advocates can have their say too, said Megan Graham, a lawyer at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley who advises public defense lawyers on tech and privacy issues.
“I hope if Google does make the decision to start pushing back when they get these, whether that’s in the abortion context or otherwise, that they do so in public,” Graham said. “Google’s voice is obviously important in the discussion because they have the data and they are the ones running he searches but their interests are not necessarily the same as the general public, or people who are concerned about privacy rights.”
Other tech companies are facing the same questions as Google. Facebook leaders have discussed legal strategies to respond to the decision since a draft version leaked in May, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. At Amazon, an employee petition asking the company to take a firmer stance on abortion rights and stop giving money to antiabortion politicians has received more than 1,500 signatures. On Friday, some Amazon employees called in sick to protest the company’s silence on the issue.
Caroline O’Donovan contributed to this report. | 2022-07-01T22:24:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Google will delete user location history for abortion clinic visits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/01/google-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/01/google-abortion/ |
Police identify man fatally shot by officers at Va. shopping center
Police had been searching for Christian Parker, 37, since Sunday, in connection with an incident in which he was accused of firing a gun inside a home.
An area of the parking lot outside of a Target in the Springfield Town Center is cordoned off by police. Fairfax County police said two of their officers shot and killed a man there after he did not drop a gun when police ordered him to do so. (Clarence Williams/TWP)
Fairfax County police Friday identified a man who was shot and killed by officers in a shopping center parking lot a day earlier, after authorities say he did not comply with repeated commands to drop a gun.
The man was identified as Christian Parker, 37, of Reston, Va., police said. They said the names of the two officers who shot Parker will likely be released within 10 days.
One of the officers is an 8-year-veteran of the Franconia Police District Station and the other is a 2-year-veteran of the Mount Vernon Police District Station, police said in a news release. Both have been placed on “restrictive duty” pending the results of an administrative investigation.
Police said Parker was wanted since Sunday on multiple charges, including larceny of a firearm and discharging a firearm within a home. The charges stemmed from an incident that occurred at Parker’s home in the 2000 block of Royal Fern Court. A family member told police that Parker stole a gun and pointed it at a relative before firing the gun inside the home, authorities said. No one was injured.
The department’s fugitive team learned he was in the Springfield Town Center area about 4:30 p.m. Thursday, police said. Officers working as part of a summer crime initiative team found Parker in a parking lot, and Parker got inside his vehicle, police said.
The officers pulled their vehicles in front of Parker to prevent him from fleeing and asked him to show his hands, police said. Police said preliminarily it appeared that Parker “reached across the passenger seat and retrieved a firearm,” and at least one of the three officers saw a gun in his hands and told the other officers.
Police said Parker “disregarded” their repeated commands to drop the weapon, and two officers fired their guns. Officers smashed Parker’s window to get inside his locked vehicle and provide first aid, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Body-camera footage and audio recordings are expected to be released within 30 days, police said.
A criminal investigation is ongoing, alongside a review by the police auditor, police said.
Attempts to reach Parker’s family Friday afternoon were unsuccessful. | 2022-07-01T22:37:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Christian Parker fatally shot by police at Springfield Town Center - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/christian-parker-police-shooting-springfield/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/christian-parker-police-shooting-springfield/ |
Teen shot and killed in Southeast D.C.
The killing comes at a moment in D.C. where homicides are surging and the city is pouring resources into public safety
A teen was fatally shot outside of a residence in the 800 block of Yuma Street SE on Friday afternoon. (Emily Davies/The Washington Post)
A teen was fatally shot in Southeast D.C. on Friday, marking a deadly start to the Fourth of July weekend.
The teen, who has not been identified, was shot outside of a residence in the 800 block of Yuma Street SE just after 2:30 p.m., police said. They did not identify the victim or give his exact age but said they believe he was a teenager.
Police were on the scene investigating the incident Friday afternoon. Family were also nearby, grief-stricken.
“If you can imagine having one of your loved ones taken from you, and certainly so violently and absolutely before their time, it’s unimaginable,” said Andre Wright, an assistant D.C. police chief.
The killing comes at a moment in D.C. where homicides are surging and the city is pouring resources into public safety. Thirteen people 18 or younger have been slain this year in the city.
Just a day earlier, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and other government officials announced new programs aimed at preventing violence this weekend. One of the initiatives will send teams of non-law enforcement officials into areas identified as high-risk on Sunday and Monday nights, with a mandate of working to mediate tension before it turns deadly.
The block on Yuma Street SE where the teen was killed Friday is not one of the specific areas assigned to a “Safety Go Team,” police said. But multiple of these teams will be stationed throughout the area, according to authorities.
On Friday afternoon, council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8), community mediators and neighbors gathered near the black tent where the teen lay deceased. Wails and sobs could be heard in the distance. | 2022-07-01T22:37:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teen fatally shot on Yuma Street SE - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/teen-killed-yuma-street/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/teen-killed-yuma-street/ |
‘Tiger King’ star charged with animal trafficking and money laundering
This image provided by the Horry County Sheriff's Office in Conway, S.C., shows Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, who was arrested by the FBI on June 3, 2022, on federal money laundering charges. (AP)
Bhagavan “Doc” Antle of Netflix’s wildly popular Tiger King docuseries could be finding himself in a cage of his own, adding to the string of misfortune for some featured subjects of the series who shot to fame and then notoriety.
Antle, 62, and four others, Andrew Jon “Omar” Sawyer, Meredith “Moksha” Bybee, Charles Sammut and Jason Clay, have been indicted on 10 counts of trafficking wildlife animals such as cheetahs, lemurs and chimpanzees. Antle and Sammut are also accused of laundering more than $500,000 in cash for smuggling illegal immigrants across the Mexican border into the United States, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina.
Millions grew to know Antle’s antics and alleged shady activity from a 2021 Netflix spinoff focusing solely on him, “Tiger King: The Doc Antle Story.” The limited-episode series highlighted allegations of sexual abuse and violence against former partners, relationships with minors and claims of animal abuse, animal killings and trafficking at his wildlife preserve, Myrtle Beach Safari, in Myrtle Beach.
The original “Tiger King” series, which debuted in 2020, captivated the masses stuck at home at the height of the pandemic, bringing attention to cartoonish personalities swirled in unbelievable situations.
The main character from the 2020 series, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, is serving 21 years in prison for a murder-for-hire scheme to kill an adversary and for selling and killing tigers. Erik Crowie, a zookeeper for Maldonado-Passage, died in October of acute and chronic alcohol use. In January, Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe, who took ownership of Maldonado-Passage’s animal park as he faced legal troubles, were permanently prohibited from showcasing animals after federal authorities discovered mistreatment of the animals along with other issues.
The second season of “Tiger King” premiered last November. The Antle-based series was released in December.
Attorney Andrew Moorman told The Washington Post in a statement that Antle has spent most of his adult life caring for animals and teaching people about the natural world.
“He has done nothing wrong, and he looks forward to vigorously challenging the Government’s allegations,” Moorman said.
Antle’s recent legal troubles highlight the accusations of animal abuse and rumors of animal killings hurled his way in the docuseries.
In October 2020, Antle faced 15 charges, including two felony counts, allegedly abusing lions and trafficking the creatures between Virginia and South Carolina.
He’s expected to face a jury trial in October for these charges.
In his most recent indictment, Antle is accused of violating the Lacey Act, which prohibits the illegal trafficking of wildlife, fish and plants and the Endangered Species Act, which bans the trafficking of imperiled species.
Antle, along with others named in the indictment, allegedly broke both these laws between June 2018 and September 2018. He and Clay are accused of creating false records and identification of a juvenile chimpanzee that would be transported across states, another violation of the Lacey Act, according to the indictment.
The wildlife charges were added to June charges of money laundering for Antle and Sawyer, an employee of Antle’s.
Authorities alleged that the pair laundered more than $500,000 in cash from smuggling immigrants and funneled that money into separate businesses they both owned, according to the complaint.
Antle and Saywer allegedly used checks that appeared to be used to pay for construction work on Antle’s 50-acre wildlife tropical preserve but were really a fake paper trail to give the appearance of legitimate income, according to the indictment. They allegedly received 15 percent of any amount laundered, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of South Carolina.
That same complaint also accused Antle of talking about his plan to conceal the cash he received by inflating tourist numbers at his business. He also allegedly used bulk cash receipts to purchase animals he couldn’t buy with checks, according to the complaint.
Sawyer’s attorney did not return request for comment.
Antle was granted bond on Monday and released on Tuesday on a $250,000 secured bond with location monitoring, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina.
Sawyer was previously granted a bond by a federal magistrate judge as a result of the charges in the federal complaint.
Bybee, Sammut, and Clay are awaiting arraignment. Legal representation for them hasn’t yet been listed. | 2022-07-01T22:42:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bhagavan 'Doc' Antle of 'Tiger King' fame accused of trafficking exotic animals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/bhagavan-doc-antle-tiger-king/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/bhagavan-doc-antle-tiger-king/ |
JERUSALEM — Summer travel is underway across the globe, but a full recovery from two years of coronavirus could last as long as the pandemic itself. Interviews by The Associated Press in 11 countries this month show that the most passionate travelers are thronging to locales like the French Riviera, Amsterdam and the American Midwest. But even as safety restrictions fall, places like Israel, India and Rome are reporting only fractions of the record-setting tourism of 2019. For them, a full recovery isn’t forecast until at least 2024. China, once the world’s biggest source of tourists, remains closed per its “zero-COVID” policy. That’s holding down the rebound in many countries.
DALLAS — The fireworks are still a few days away, but travel for the July Fourth weekend is off to a booming start. The Transportation Security Administration said Friday that it screened more people on Thursday than it did on the same day in 2019, before the pandemic. Travelers so far seem to be experiencing fewer delays and canceled flights than they did earlier this week. But it’s still early. Leisure travel has bounced back this year, offsetting weakness in business travel and international flying. Still, the total number of people flying has not quite recovered fully to pre-pandemic levels.
DETROIT — U.S. new vehicle sales tumbled more than 21% in the second quarter compared with a year ago as the global semiconductor shortage continued to cause production problems for the industry. Yet demand continued to outstrip supply from April through June, even with $5 per gallon gasoline, high inflation and rising interest rates. The low supply has raised prices to record levels, knocking many consumers out of the new-vehicle market. Edmunds.com said that automakers sold 3.49 million vehicles during the quarter, nearly 933,000 fewer than the same period last year. J.D. Power estimates that the average sales price of a new vehicle for the first six months of the year hit nearly $45,000, a record that is 17.5% higher than a year ago.
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has handed full control over a major oil and natural gas project partly owned by Shell and two Japanese companies to a newly created Russian firm. It’s a bold move amid spiraling tensions with the West over Moscow’s military action in Ukraine. Putin’s decree late Thursday orders the creation of a new firm that would take over ownership of Sakhalin Energy Investment Co. It’s nearly 50% controlled by British energy giant Shell and Japan-based Mitsui and Mitsubishi. Russia’s Gazprom had a controlling stake in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project that accounts for about 4% of the world’s liquefied natural gas market. Japan, South Korea and China are the main customers for its exports.
PRAGUE — The European Union’s executive arm has pledged to draft an emergency plan aimed at helping member countries do without Russian energy in the wake of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the initiative would build on EU moves to ditch Russian coal, oil and natural gas and would complement a bloc-wide push to accelerate the development of renewable energy such as wind and solar power. Von der Leyen spoke Friday in the Czech town of Litomysl, where she marked the start of the country’s six-month stint as holder of the rotating EU presidency. | 2022-07-01T22:42:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Summer travel, auto sales slump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-summer-travel-auto-sales-slump/2022/07/01/21883e12-f982-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-summer-travel-auto-sales-slump/2022/07/01/21883e12-f982-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
The move, aimed in part to win over Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), moves the United States further away from its global climate pledge
An offshore oil well platform in the Gulf of Mexico. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)
President Biden’s administration opened the door Friday to more offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters over the next five years, setting a course for future U.S. fossil fuel extraction just a day after suffering a major climate setback at the Supreme Court.
The plan moves the country further from its pledge to slash the nation’s planet-warming pollution in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, and help avert even fiercer fires, storms and drought driven by rising temperatures. Biden’s climate agenda now hinges on whether Democrats can pass a reconciliation package in the Senate that includes robust environmental policies.
“The Supreme Court just put a lead ball around his ankle with regard to his executive authority,” said John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “If you don’t get reconciliation, together with the constraints that the Supreme Court has put on, I think there’s no way you can get the 50 percent reduction by the end of the decade.”
But the offshore plan, along with other events this week, underscores the political and legal limits in the United States to tackle global warming, and carries risks for Democrats as Americans experience record-breaking gasoline prices ahead of November’s midterm election and as many on the left demand stricter limits on fossil fuels.
On Thursday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court struck a blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to compel power providers to give up on burning coal. And Biden’s Interior Department was compelled by an injunction from a lower court to lease acreage in the Western United States this week for onshore drilling.
The consequences of warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels by continuing to burn oil and other fossil fuels are enormous for humanity: If left unchecked, global warming may stall headway on combating hunger, poverty and disease worldwide. The International Energy Agency has urged halting investment in new fossil fuel supplies to meet that goal.
The Interior Department is considering 10 potential auctions in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Cook Inlet in Alaska. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland emphasized that the plan has not been finalized and that her department is considering the option of having no lease sales at all. The plan narrows areas considered for oil and gas leasing from one proposed under President Donald Trump in 2018.
In the Senate, there is growing optimism that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who effectively ended negotiations over a previous iteration of a sweeping package, can strike a deal. In recent days, Democratic leaders have agreed upon a proposal to lower prescription drug prices for seniors, a policy that would be part of the broader economic package.
Since December, when Manchin blocked Biden’s original Build Back Better proposal, the senator has expressed reservations about the price tag of any potential package, warning about the rising national debt and skyrocketing inflation. But with only 50 seats in the Senate, the party needs Manchin’s vote to pass any legislation. As a result, party leaders have relented and cut many of their domestic priorities from the proposed package.
Energy policy, though, is still expected to remain a centerpiece of the potential bill, as Manchin has long called for protecting the United States’ energy security and increasing its energy independence from foreign nations. But aides say negotiations over what the energy and climate components of the deal would look like are still underway and final decisions are probably weeks away.
Inside the administration, Biden officials said that the court’s decision was not a surprise and that they had largely expected to lose the case. But still, in the hours since the ruling posted, senior aides remain shocked and demoralized as they reckon with the limits on their ability to combat climate change, officials said. Administration officials are starting to chart the next steps about how to move forward with Biden’s climate agenda, they said, but they conceded that there is a sense of despondency pervasive throughout the offices working on climate policy.
Gina McCarthy, Biden’s national climate adviser who crafted the EPA rule at the center of the Supreme Court case, has emphasized in recent days that the administration is focused on finding alternative ways, particularly through the Defense Production Act, to continue to meet their climate goals.
Soon after taking office, he followed up with an executive order instructing Interior to pause all new lease sales on public lands and waters while it reviewed how to adjust the program. A federal judge in Louisiana last year blocked that pause. And Biden faced criticism over leasing from Manchin, along with many Republicans.
Republican lawmakers and oil industry lobbyists have urged the administration to boost America’s fossil fuel production to help curb record prices at the pump. The national average for a gallon of gasoline hit $4.84 Friday, according to AAA, up by more than 50 percent this year.
“If the administration is serious about reducing prices at the pump, they should be expanding access to oil and natural gas on federal lands, not killing it,” Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a recent statement.
It takes about five to 10 years to start producing oil from a new offshore lease, according to the Interior Department. That means the proposal issued Friday will have little immediate impact on current prices at the pump — though it could have significant implications for the United States’ ability to meet its pledge to cut emissions by 2030.
The western and central portion of the Gulf of Mexico makes up the heart of the U.S. offshore energy business, where about 1.7 million barrels of oil are extracted day mainly off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and piped to refineries to be turned into gasoline, jet fuel and plastics. The Gulf accounts for about a seventh of all domestic crude produced.
After the spill, President Barack Obama halted plans to expand drilling to parts of the eastern Gulf, near Florida, as well as along the East Coast. His successor, Donald Trump, sought to expand drilling up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, only to retreat after governors in both parties from Maine to Florida opposed the plan.
The Biden administration’s ability to carry out the president’s vow to stop new drilling is also being tested ashore, across hundreds of millions of acres managed by federal government out West.
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management netted $22 million by offering about 130,000 acres for drilling across seven states this week. Immediately, a coalition of environmental groups sued to stop the administration, urging it to find a way to forestall auctions despite facing a court order. | 2022-07-01T22:42:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden releases five-year offshore leasing plan Friday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/01/biden-offshore-drilling-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/01/biden-offshore-drilling-climate/ |
Sky watchers in Oregon, Washington, England and Canada have spotted “noctilucent clouds,” the rarest on Earth
Oliver Schwenn captured this image of noctilucent clouds on Thursday in Aarhus, Midtjylland, Denmark. (Oliver Schwenn/Spaceweathergallery)
She said the frequency of noctilucent clouds in the last few days has been higher than ever observed in at least 15 years of observations by the AIM mission. Yet the reason is a bit of mystery.
How the Tonga volcano generated a shock wave around the world
Deland said the- vibrant cloud activity at lower latitudes like Seattle is uncommon and is not sure if it will persist for the rest of the season. He says it depends on circulation patterns and if there are embedded waves that allow cold temperatures or extra water vapor to get drawn down to lower latitudes. On rare occasions in recent years, the clouds have appeared in latitudes as low as London, central California and Oklahoma. | 2022-07-01T22:42:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Noctilucent, night-shining, clouds are illuminating night skies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/02/noctilucent-clouds-night-shining/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/02/noctilucent-clouds-night-shining/ |
Abortion rights activists protest in Miami after Roe v. Wade was overturned. (Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images)
Health and science reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha recently wrote about the fear and confusion many doctors are facing since Roe was overturned.. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) joined numerous other professional organizations and medical journals over the past few days in warning that the ruling will affect health care beyond abortion, creating new risks for patients and potentially increasing maternal mortality. We interviewed Nisha Verma, an OB/GYN in Atlanta who is also a fellow at ACOG. She talked about the gray areas these laws and restrictions don’t cover.
“These laws don’t make any sense,” Verma told Elahe Izadi. While lawmakers point out that there are exceptions for the life of the pregnant person, Verma says it’s very unclear what that means.
“There's not a moment in time. This line where someone goes from being completely fine to dying. It's a continuum. People get sicker and sicker. And so we have to be able to make decisions in that continuum with all of the training that we have without having to worry about whether the person was sick enough or whether we're going to get in trouble under the law,” Verma said.
Also on the show, tech reporter Heather Kelly explains how to protect your privacy if you’re seeking abortion care — and why period-tracking apps are best avoided.
A SCOTUS term like no other
Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court — just after the court delivered a blow to President Biden’s climate plan. Today, we talk about the divided court and what it means for the future of our democracy. | 2022-07-01T22:43:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miscarriage, abortion and the legal gray area for doctors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/miscarriage-abortion-and-the-legal-gray-area-for-doctors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/miscarriage-abortion-and-the-legal-gray-area-for-doctors/ |
WASHINGTON — U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Friday that setbacks for President Joe Biden’s climate efforts at home have “slowed the pace” of some of the commitments from other countries to cut climate-wrecking fossil fuels, but he insisted the U.S. would still achieve its own ambitious climate goals in time.
Kerry spoke to The Associated Press after a major Supreme Court ruling Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency's options for regulating climate pollution from power plants. The ruling raised the prospect the conservative-controlled court could go on to hinder other efforts by the executive branch to cut the country's coal, oil and gas emissions. It came after Democrats failed in getting what was to be Biden’s signature climate legislation through the narrowly divided Senate. | 2022-07-01T22:43:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kerry: Despite setbacks at home, US to make climate goals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kerry-says-us-climate-setbacks-are-slowing-work-abroad/2022/07/01/98362a60-f987-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kerry-says-us-climate-setbacks-are-slowing-work-abroad/2022/07/01/98362a60-f987-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Kenyan McDuffie to seek at-large D.C. council seat after failed AG bid
McDuffie announced he would run for D.C. attorney general last year, but his campaign was derailed after a rival challenged his candidacy. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Nearly two months after he suspended his campaign for D.C. attorney general, council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) is switching his Democratic Party affiliation to run as an independent candidate for an at-large seat on the legislative body.
The move offers another chance at political relevancy for McDuffie, whose term as Ward 5 council member ends in January. Last year, he opted not to run for reelection and instead launched a campaign for attorney general. But despite being a leading candidate in the Democratic primary, his effort was derailed after a rival successfully challenged his eligibility to run for the position.
Since then, McDuffie’s political future has remained among the most intriguing storylines of this election cycle. At a May news conference to suspend his attorney general campaign, McDuffie said the situation had only “deepened his resolve” to serve in the city, though he demurred when asked about a potential November run. On Friday, he put those rumors to rest, stating in a text to The Washington Post that he had filed paperwork with the D.C. Board of Elections to run for an at-large seat.
His announcement creates a new dynamic in the at-large race, where voters will pick two candidates in November (by law, at least one of the seats must be held by a candidate who is not in the majority party — in this case, someone who is not a Democrat). McDuffie’s presence may complicate things for incumbent council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who holds one of those seats and is up for reelection. Incumbent council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who won the Democratic at-large nomination in the primary, will also be on the ballot.
The other independent candidates include city government veteran Karim D. Marshall, business advocate Graham McLaughlin, Fred Hill, who ran for Ward 8 council member in 2020, and minister Joe Little. The two top vote-getters in the general will be elected to the council.
McDuffie said he’ll formally launch his campaign in the coming days. To get on the ballot, he’ll need to collect 3,000 valid signatures from District residents by August 10. | 2022-07-01T23:08:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kenyan McDuffie to run for at-large D.C. council seat after failed attorney general bid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/kenyan-mcduffie-council/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/01/kenyan-mcduffie-council/ |
Amtrak, truck driver’s widow file dueling lawsuits seeking accountability in collision
Amtrak, truck driver's widow sue in collision
Despite the “clearly visible approaching Amtrak Train 4, Barton failed to yield the right of way . . . and instead attempted to cross the grade crossing which resulted in a collision,” according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Missouri.
2 officers killed while trying to serve warrant
Two law enforcement officers were killed and five were injured when a man opened fire on police attempting to serve a warrant at a home in eastern Kentucky on Thursday night, authorities said.
Police took Lance Storz, 49, into custody late Thursday night.
An emergency management official was also injured and a police K-9 dog was killed, according to the arrest citation.
Storz used a rifle to fire multiple rounds at officers around his residence on Main Street in Allen, Ky., the citation said.
Child left in hot car dies in N. Carolina: A 1-year-old North Carolina child died Friday after being left inside a hot car by the father after he went to work, police said. The Mebane Police Department said officers responded to a call from a manufacturing plant after 12:20 p.m. following a report of someone in cardiac arrest, according to local news outlets. When the officers arrived, CPR was being administered, but the child couldn't be revived, police said. The child's father worked at the plant and had left the baby in the vehicle, police said. Investigators have not determined just how long the child was in the car. Mebane is a community about 45 miles northwest of Raleigh. | 2022-07-01T23:51:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amtrak, truck driver’s widow file dueling lawsuits seeking accountability in collision - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/amtrak-truck-drivers-widow-file-dueling-lawsuits-seeking-accountability-in-collision/2022/07/01/b3195bf6-f435-11ec-be67-71a1c236feb4_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/amtrak-truck-drivers-widow-file-dueling-lawsuits-seeking-accountability-in-collision/2022/07/01/b3195bf6-f435-11ec-be67-71a1c236feb4_story.html |
Juan Soto says the Nationals can call agent Scott Boras “every day if they want.” (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
On Friday afternoon, ahead of a series opener with the Miami Marlins, Juan Soto sat in the back of the Washington Nationals’ clubhouse, scrolling on his iPhone. A gold plate above his locker says “Employee No. 11.” It is, of course, where Ryan Zimmerman used to be, meaning the wooden stall is a little bit more than just a wooden stall.
But whether Soto will also spend his entire career in Washington, as Zimmerman did, remains an open question. And after reports of a recent offer from the Nationals surfaced Thursday, Soto discussed his future and ongoing negotiations with the team with The Washington Post. He started by saying he had nothing to share, cracking a grin. Then he shared.
Earlier this season, the Nationals made an offer above the 13 years and $350 million they dangled to Soto last fall, according to three people with knowledge of the situation. The 23-year-old declined it but is open to further discussions, adding the Nationals can contact Scott Boras, his agent, “every day if they want.”
“We’re going back and forth and I feel good about that,” said Soto, an all-star for the first time last season. “They are talking to my agent, and I have nothing to do with it. He is just talking to them, and I want to play baseball.”
He has no role in the negotiations?
“Well, no, I do,” Soto answered. “I mean at the end of the day, I will make decisions. But first things first, they have to negotiate with Scott. For the most part, I want to be far from it because I want to concentrate on the game and not see my performance go down. I really just want to concentrate on baseball.”
Does he feel discussions of a long-term contract have distracted him?
“I mean … We’re human. It’s going to be a little bit on your mind,” said Soto, who entered Friday with a .224 batting average, .375 on-base percentage and .437 slugging percentage — all career lows. “But it’s not the reason that I’m struggling at all.”
Soto has expressed an interest in testing free agency when he is eligible after the 2024 season, making it seem hard for the Nationals to lock him up before then. Has that changed?
“Everybody wants to go to free agency and see how the market is going to be for them,” he said. “But for me, I really don’t know if I want to go there or if I want to stay here. I feel really good here. We’ll see what’s going to happen. For me, right now, the plan that we always have is go year by year. But you don’t know what the future has for you.”
So, under the right terms, he would consider an extension before free agency?
“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “Why not?”
And how does he feel about where the team is, especially after he expressed some frustration with its direction last August?
“I’m glad that a lot of my teammates are doing pretty well. That’s a good sign,” Soto said. “It’s good, but it’s also kind of sad because you know that most of them are going to get traded at the deadline. But I’m happy for them. I mean, they are going to get traded to good teams, and I hope that is going to make the Nationals better in the future. So for me, I’m glad they’re doing well and that I can be here to keep making this team grow and grow.”
Is it tough knowing a sell-off could very well happen for a second straight summer?
“This year, we’ve been hearing a bunch of stuff, that guys are getting traded, that the team is getting sold, that kind of stuff,” he said, alluding to the uncertainty of the team’s ownership situation. “In the long run, things might change for the good. I mean, I can’t really tell you how I feel. It does feel weird because I went through this last year, and it was kind of tough. But we did get some pieces, Josiah [Gray] and Keibert [Ruiz], who are helping already. We’ll see what happens in the next couple years.”
Does he expect to talk with the Nationals again soon about a possible extension?
“Whenever they want to talk, they can talk with Scott,” Soto said. “I mean, they have the numbers, they can call every day, they can negotiate with him every day if they want, and I won’t have a problem with that. I will be playing, and he’s going to let me know when they’re talking to each other. That’s it.”
“I feel great. … You’ll see. My swing is feeling better, my timing is feeling better. Whenever I hit a ball to the left-center gap, you can be 100 percent sure things are going to be better,” Soto said. “That’s going to be really soon. That’s a good thing you can put out there: Things are going to change.” | 2022-07-01T23:56:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals' Juan Soto says he remains open to a contract extension - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/nationals-juan-soto-new-contract/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/nationals-juan-soto-new-contract/ |
At Wimbledon, mixed doubles at dusk brings out Venus in twilight
Venus Williams and Scotland's Jamie Murray celebrate their first-round win over Poland's Alicja Rosolska and New Zealand's Michael Venus on Friday. (Alastair Grant/AP)
WIMBLEDON, England — Yet another impressionist painting of a day at Wimbledon had floated on by when one match lingered in the dusk, and that match happened to be some sort of dreamscape for the nostalgists. Some nostalgists might have had a drink, even.
Over at the second-most famous of the two behemoth stadiums, Court No. 1, the 34-year-old Kiwi Michael Venus and his mixed-doubles partner Alicja Rosolska of tennis haven Poland got into a three-set tussle with two faces firm in the memory banks around this place.
One would be 36-year-old Jamie Murray from Scotland, whose mixed-doubles title with Jelena Jankovic here in 2007 rollicked as much as any mixed-doubles title has ever rollicked — there was a durable standing ovation — and brought a first major title to the two Murray brothers who include Andy, and set Jamie Murray along his way to seven Grand Slam doubles titles, two in doubles and five in mixed.
As Andy Murray, Emma Raducanu exit Wimbledon, Brits keep calm and carry on
The other would be his 42-year-old teammate, also named Venus.
“I had no plan to play,” Venus Williams would say afterward. “I saw the grass and I got excited.”
Mercy, she looked happy, and not just because of their 6-3, 6-7 (3-7), 6-3 first-round win that sent them into an exhilarated hug. Where her news conferences in latter years could tilt toward excruciating, a weariness having settled in across her two-plus decades of fame and answers, she reappeared Friday after a 10-month absence and brought along her wink and wit.
“Are you guys in it to win it,” went one question, “or just to get past the third round?” — where Serena Williams and Andy Murray lost in mixed doubles in 2019.
“What kind of question is that?” Venus Williams beamed. “We’re in it for a stroll. C’mon.”
“Are you here for the experience or are you going to go all the way?”
“Huh?” Williams said.
“Are you going to write a good article or a halfway decent one?” she chirped.
Harmony Tan, doubles partner make up after Tan's Wimbledon withdrawal
The partnership seemed to pop up out of the ether just as this Wimbledon dragged out the tennis balls and got going. “Venus’s coach texted me asking if I wanted to play,” Murray said. “Last year she asked me, but I hurt my neck. So I was like, I want to do both [with doubles as well]. Can’t say no twice. We’re playing. It was a lot of fun tonight. We had a good time. So nice to play on Court 1, a load of people come out to watch, or stay out to watch. Yeah, it was cool. I really, really enjoyed it. Amazing to be on court with such a champion.”
“I’ve been trying to play with him forever,” Williams said. “He plays hard to get.”
She noted the technicality that she hasn’t won a mixed-doubles title here to place among her five singles plates and six doubles cups. “It’s one of the only ones I haven’t won [mixed doubles],” she said, “so I usually put a little more priority here. It was definitely super last-minute. Just inspired by Serena [and her return in singles] … I was just so happy to have so much help today.”
“You played great,” Murray replied. “Like, she hasn’t played for a long time. First match, big court, a lot of people. It’s not easy.”
It all happened 15 years after they shared a heyday of a closing weekend at ages 27 and 21, that weekend in 2007. Williams had dipped to No. 31 in the world but came zooming back to a fourth Wimbledon singles title and said, “I don’t take anything for granted anymore. I did, but not anymore.” Murray won with Jankovic and joked about the victory kiss as motivation, whereupon a reporter asked if Murray had a girlfriend and he said, “No,” then asked if Jankovic had a boyfriend and she, puckish as ever, said, “I have lots.”
Now Williams and Murray have 15 more years and umpteen more hubbubs outside of tennis, and the feeling of Williams here is almost similar to when Martina Navratilova would play mixed doubles in her beyond-40 years, but the grass …
“I was at the French Open, it’s a beautiful event, but my heart didn’t beat the same way,” Williams said. “Not that I could play, but … I had no plans. That’s why I was asking him last-minute. He just had a baby, too, so I know there’s a lot going on. Definitely I couldn’t have guessed that I would be here right now, taking it at the last minute. I haven’t played in a year, so you don’t know what you’re going to get. Practice is so much different from a match.”
So: “Just at the (ending) it was like, ‘Oh my god, wow. I just not only played a match but won a match. I’m never, like, that kind of player. I always expect to win. But when I sat there, when I sat there at the end, it was, like, real.
“Yeah, I felt something in my heart.”
“Yeah, it was everything it was cracked up to be,” Murray said. “Excited to get another match on Sunday or Monday, whenever that is.”
Williams had not played since last August in Chicago, a 6-2, 6-3 loss to Su-Wei Hsieh of Taiwan, shortly after reaching the second round in singles here last year. Her ranking stood then at No. 147. It stands after the inactivity at No. 570. It does not matter. Call her No. 1 in serendipity, and call their team an ongoing event.
“I was very busy when I wasn’t on tour,” said Williams, nowadays awash in projects. “It’s easier to be on tour than off tour. I should just come on back so I can sleep a little more. I have a lot of work off tour. I’m a professional athlete, so that’s who I am. But I’ll be all right without. I’ll be all right if I’m here, I’ll be all right if I’m not. But I’m a professional athlete.” | 2022-07-02T00:09:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | That's Jamie Murray and that's (whoa) Venus Williams over on Court 1 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/wimbledon-venus-williams-mixed-doubles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/wimbledon-venus-williams-mixed-doubles/ |
Columbia to skip U.S. News rankings after professor questioned data
The Ivy League university won’t submit information this year, as it works to ensure accuracy
A man on the Columbia University campus in New York in March 2020. (Mark Lennihan/AP)
Columbia University will skip the U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges this year, university officials announced, as they review data that had been questioned by a professor at the school.
“Columbia leaders take these questions seriously, and we immediately embarked on a review of our data collection and submissions process,” the university’s provost, Mary Boyce, wrote Thursday.
In light of that work underway, the university will not submit to U.S. News this year, Boyce wrote: The deadline was Friday, and given the analysis required to review the data, they could not complete the careful work needed by that time.
In February, a professor of mathematics at Columbia, Michael Thaddeus, raised questions about data the Ivy League university had submitted for the ranking of national colleges. Columbia had risen to number two nationally, tied with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thaddeus wrote that the school’s extraordinary rise over the years was gratifying, but it also made him curious. “I just wondered: How can this be that we’re performing so well in this ranking against universities that objectively have certain advantages over us?” he said Friday by phone. “They have much larger endowments. They have a lot more physical space.”
When he looked more closely, he wrote, he concluded that “several of the key figures supporting Columbia’s high ranking are inaccurate, dubious or highly misleading.” Undergraduate class sizes were one variable that jumped out at him; from his experience of nearly 25 years at the university, he was skeptical that more than 80 percent of the classes had fewer than 20 students. He pulled enrollment numbers, created a spreadsheet and concluded that the percentage was probably considerably lower.
The U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges and other similar rankings, released every year, are closely watched, relied on by many prospective students, intensely promoted by ascendant schools — and frequently criticized.
In his February post, Thaddeus quoted Colin S. Diver, who recently wrote a book about the rankings industry, its impact on institutions and what to do about it: “Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior.”
“Scandals happen all the time,” Thaddeus said Friday, with people and schools accused of manipulating data. “The system is extremely dysfunctional.”
More fundamentally, he said, it’s too difficult to reduce the complexities of academic institutions in a way that’s comparable place to place. “The greatness of a university is something that just can’t be measured by a linear ranking at all.”
Diver said that when he was dean of the highly competitive University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, he saw the influence of rankings on admissions decisions, giving an edge to applicants with higher standardized test scores. Then he became president of a well-regarded liberal arts school, Reed College, that has declined to submit information for rankings since the 1990s. It was a relief, he said — but he heard from friends at other schools who admired the stance but feared they’d “get hammered” in the rankings if they did the same.
Reed dropped precipitously after it stopped submitting data, he said.
Last fall, Christopher L. Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University, which has topped the list of national universities for more than a decade, wrote that rankings are a problem because they produce “damaging incentives. For example, some colleges avoid doing difficult but valuable things — such as admitting talented lower-income students who can thrive at college if given appropriate support — in favor of easier strategies more likely to add points in the U.S. News formula.”
He called them a misleading way to assess schools and a “slightly daft obsession that does harm when colleges, parents, or students take it too seriously.”
Kim Castro, editor and chief content officer with U.S. News & World Report, wrote in an email that “Columbia University’s acknowledgment they are unable to meet U.S. News & World Report’s data standards for the 2023 Best College Rankings raises a number of questions. We are concerned and are reviewing various options, including the review of data previously submitted by Columbia, to ensure our rankings continue to uphold the highest levels of integrity.
“U. S. News is committed to providing quality information on institutions across the country,” Castro said, “so prospective students and their families can make informed decisions throughout their college search.”
In Columbia’s statement, Boyce wrote that despite what they believed to be a “thorough process for gathering and reporting institutional data,” they are now “closely reviewing our processes in light of the questions raised” by Thaddeus. “The ongoing review is a matter of integrity,” Boyce wrote. “We will take no shortcuts in getting it right.”
The university will publish a Common Data Set this fall to help students and parents evaluate the school, she wrote.
Thaddeus said he’d like to see the university address the specific questions he raised.
Diver said he was pleased to see Columbia initiate a review — but he would prefer to see them seek an independent audit by a law or accounting firm.
And, he said, “I would love to see somebody like Columbia that has real stature and visibility take the lead and say, ‘You know what? These rankings are arbitrary. They’re anti-intellectual. They’re incompatible with our academic values, and we’re not going to cooperate with them anymore.’ ” | 2022-07-02T00:13:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Columbia to skip U.S. News college rankings this year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/columbia-usnews-college-rankings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/columbia-usnews-college-rankings/ |
Democracy advocates raise alarm after Supreme Court takes election case
The decision to consider “independent legislature theory” concerned voting rights advocates who say state lawmakers could twist the election laws to favor their party
A districts map is shown as a three-judge panel of the Wake County Superior Court presides over the trial of Common Cause v. Lewis at the Campbell University School of Law in Raleigh, N.C., Monday, July 15, 2019. (Gerry Broome/AP)
Voting rights advocates expressed alarm Friday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider a conservative legal theory giving state legislatures virtually unchecked power over federal elections, warning that it could erode basic tenets of American democracy.
The idea, known as the “independent legislature theory,” represents to some theorists a literal reading of the Constitution.
But in its most far-reaching interpretation, it could cut governors and state courts out of the decision-making process on election laws while giving state lawmakers free rein to change rules to favor their own party. The impact could extend to presidential elections in 2024 and beyond, experts say, making it easier for a legislature to disregard the will of its state’s citizens.
This immense power would go to legislative bodies that are themselves undemocratic, many advocates say, because they have been gerrymandered to create partisan districts, virtually ensuring the party-in-power’s candidates cannot be beaten. Republicans control both legislative chambers in 30 states and have been at the forefront of pushing the theory.
The Supreme Court’s choice to take up the case came less than a week after the nation’s highest court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving it to state legislatures to decide whether abortion should be legal, and two days after bombshell testimony before the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The committee has offered fresh evidence suggesting President Donald Trump sought to disrupt the congressional counting of electoral votes to allow state legislatures time to send alternate slates of electors as part of a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
State legislatures have already introduced or enacted laws in a number of GOP-controlled states that voting rights groups say make it more difficult to cast a ballot. Experts say if the Supreme Court adopts the independent legislature theory, it would give state lawmakers ultimate control over election-related decisions like redistricting, as well as issues such as voting qualifications and voting by mail.
“This is part of a broader strategy to make voting harder and impose the will of state legislatures regardless of the will of the people,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group. “It is a significant change to the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures.”
The case could also open the door for state legislatures to claim ultimate control over electors in presidential elections, said Marc Elias, a veteran Democratic voting rights attorney.
“If you believe the strongest form of [the theory] then the legislators can do what they want and there’s no judicial review of that,” Elias said. “The way I view it, Republicans tried to subvert the 2020 election, but were clumsy and they are now learning from that where the pressure points and vulnerabilities are in our election systems, and refining their tactics.”
The case that will go before the high court originates with North Carolina Republicans, who are appealing a state supreme court ruling that struck down the state’s new congressional map as an unconstitutional gerrymander.
The Republicans argue that the Constitution’s elections clause, which says that “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” means the legislatures alone have power over elections-related activities. Past interpretations have taken the clause to mean state governments as a whole, including voters and the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
“This phony ‘doctrine’ is an anti-democratic Republican power grab masquerading as legal theory. It was cooked up in a right-wing legal hothouse by political operatives looking to give state legislatures the power to overturn the will of American voters in future elections,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in a statement to The Washington Post.
The theory, Whitehouse said, was wielded by Trump attorney John Eastman as he sought to “overturn the last presidential election, and it could plant seeds of chaos in time for the next one. The fact that the Court is even considering a case involving such an extreme idea shows how beholden it is to the right-wing donors who got so many of the justices their jobs.”
Among the most outspoken advocates of the independent state legislature theory is the Honest Elections Project, an alias of the 85 Fund, a conservative nonprofit linked to Leonard Leo, the former longtime head of the Federalist Society. The 85 Fund reported revenue of more than $65 million in 2020, according to a tax filing, and its relationship with the Honest Elections Project is made clear in corporate records in Virginia.
The Honest Elections Project has made the case for the independent state legislature theory in amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in recent years. It cited the theory by name in a January brief in a dispute, also arising from North Carolina, over whether state lawmakers could intervene in litigation challenging the state’s voter ID law. The high court ruled 8-1 in favor of the lawmakers on June 23, but did not weigh in on the merits of voter ID laws or the legal theory.
In its amicus brief, the Honest Elections Project noted that the Supreme Court had discussed the theory but never made clear “that the doctrine is our law.”
“It should do so here,” the group urged in its brief.
The Honest Elections Project made multiple references to a 2021 article in the Fordham Law Review explaining the theory. The article’s author, Michael T. Morley, is a professor at the Florida State University College of Law and a contributor to the Federalist Society.
An earlier brief from the Honest Elections Project, in a dispute over the 2020 election between Pennsylvania Republicans and the state’s Democratic secretary of state, did not cite the theory by name but argued that state legislatures have sweeping authority over federal elections — unrestricted by state constitutions.
The lead attorney on the brief, David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said the theory, if embraced by the Supreme Court, would not shield state electoral maps from challenges based on racial discrimination or other claims rooted in the U.S. Constitution or federal statute. But it would nullify other grounds for rejecting state maps, including claims of partisan gerrymandering. The Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that federal courts had no jurisdiction over claims of partisan gerrymandering, leaving that issue to state courts.
Voting rights advocates point to that decision, specifically a quote from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as evidence that the Supreme Court has previously believed state courts have an oversight role.
“Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply” in policing partisan gerrymandering, Roberts wrote for the majority in Rucho v. Common Cause.
Rivkin, in an interview, touted his role in honing the theory. He dismissed concerns that it would pave the way for state legislatures to achieve the kind of election manipulation sought by Trump and Eastman. Rivkin said he placed no stock in “idiotic arguments used by Trump.”
“If you ask me as a strictly constitutional and analytical matter, state legislatures can indeed recapture the power to choose electors themselves,” he said. “I can also tell you as a pragmatic matter, I don’t know of any state legislature that has done that.”
Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project — created in 2020 to counter Democratic efforts to expand voting rights — similarly brushed off predictions that state legislatures would usurp power to choose electors. Snead, in an interview, argued that the doctrine “should be taken out of the context of Jan. 6 and what happened that day, which was absolutely terrible.”
“This is not a novel idea,” he said. “We’re talking about first principles and constitutional text.”
But the language in the Constitution pertaining to elections has never been interpreted that way. A version of the independent legislature theory got some buy-in during the Bush v. Gore lawsuit that determined the outcome of the 2000 election, in which the court sided with Republicans. Justices William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that the Supreme Court could overrule a state Supreme Court’s interpretation of its election laws to “preserve the state legislature’s power over how the state runs its presidential elections.”
Fifteen years later, the court narrowly rejected a challenge from Arizona’s Republican-led state legislature using the independent legislature theory to argue against an independent redistricting commission drawing maps.
In a 2020 case about mail-in ballot deadlines in Wisconsin, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch seemed to endorse the theory, writing, “The Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”
David Cohen, the founder and CEO of Forward Majority, a nonprofit aimed at electing Democrats in state legislatures, said the fact that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court is entertaining the idea makes his group’s work that much more urgent.
“To me, the scary versions of this are legislators who throw out valid American votes in order to achieve their partisan outcome,” Cohen said. “We should all be incredibly worried about any system that would allow for that possibility.”
Robert Barnes contributed to this report. | 2022-07-02T00:13:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democracy advocates raise alarm after Supreme Court takes election case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/democracy-advocates-raise-alarm-after-supreme-court-takes-election-case/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/01/democracy-advocates-raise-alarm-after-supreme-court-takes-election-case/ |
Ex-Georgetown tennis coach sentenced to 2.5 years in admissions scandal
Gordon Ernst helped secure admissions to Georgetown University in exchange for bribes
Gordon Ernst, former Georgetown tennis coach, departs federal court in Boston on March 25, 2019. (Steven Senne/AP)
The former head tennis coach at Georgetown University was sentenced Friday to more than two years in prison for taking over $3 million in bribes to help wealthy families game admissions to the school.
The sentence for Gordon Ernst — who pleaded guilty last fall to conspiracy and bribery charges — is the harshest punishment yet administered in a sweeping national college-admissions scandal that exposed the intense anxiety families feel about access to elite universities, and how vulnerable the system could be to corruption.
Federal prosecutors described a scheme in which a college consultant in California, William “Rick” Singer, offered wealthy parents, including some celebrities, ways into schools that decline most applicants — helping students to cheat on admissions tests, and bribing coaches and others to label applicants as coveted recruits, even if they had no particular athletic talent.
More than 50 people, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, coaches, business executives and others have pleaded guilty or been convicted in the scandal nicknamed “Varsity Blues” by federal prosecutors.
Ernst, the former head coach of men and women’s tennis at Georgetown, was so well-regarded that he had coached Michelle and Malia Obama. But for more than a decade, federal officials said, Ernst helped at least 22 students get into Georgetown as purported tennis recruits in exchange for nearly $3.5 million in bribes. He did not report all the income on tax returns, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Rachael S. Rollins for the district of Massachusetts.
‘Three spots’: Alleged bribery of tennis coach stings Georgetown admissions
Attorneys for Ernst did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
Ernst grew up in Rhode Island and graduated from Brown University, where he played tennis and hockey. He eventually began coaching tennis at Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania before moving to the job at Georgetown in 2006.
Prosecutors said he regularly used at least two, and as many as five, of the six recruitment slots Georgetown allowed him each year to recruit students in exchange for bribes.
Georgetown raised questions about Ernst’s recruiting methods in 2017 and asked him to resign in 2018. The university changed internal protocols to review athletic credentials of recruits.
Ernst later became head coach of women’s tennis at the University of Rhode Island. He resigned from that role in 2019, according to the Providence Journal.
Last fall, Ernst, who is 55 and lives in Rockville, Md., and Falmouth, Mass., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, three counts of federal programs bribery and one count of filing a false tax return.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani sentenced Ernst to 30 months in prison and two years of supervised release, with the first six months to be served at home. He was ordered to forfeit $3,435,053.
Monika Mathur contributed to this report. | 2022-07-02T01:44:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst sentenced in college-admissions scandal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/gordon-ernst-georgetown-college-admissions-scandal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/01/gordon-ernst-georgetown-college-admissions-scandal/ |
Men are silent partners in abortion. The choice isn’t ours, but we matter.
I was 16 when my girlfriend became pregnant. A baby would have derailed both our lives.
Perspective by Philip Lerman
Why do we not have a term for men who have had abortions? Men may not undergo the procedure, but they are in sexual relationships resulting in pregnancies that are terminated. What do we call them? “Father of the fetus” seems odd, as do “male counterpart” and the overly clinical “inseminating partner.”
It matters that we don’t have a name for the man in that relationship. Because in this moment, when abortion has again become a crime in so much of the country, the dissenters in the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade talk about the opinion’s ignoring “the importance of reproductive rights for women’s liberty.” Certainly, this is first and foremost a women’s issue — an issue of a woman’s health, a woman’s life, a woman’s freedom. And without a doubt, the decision about what to do about an unwanted pregnancy lies rightly and solely in the woman’s hands.
But the effect of having an unwanted child is a men’s issue, too. I know this because, whatever we call those guys, I am one of them.
I was 16 years old, and she was 18, and her period was two weeks late, and we were frightened. Abortion had been legalized in New York two years before — Roe was still a year away — but two terrified teenagers didn’t want to wait to find out that she was pregnant and have to undergo all that (and neither of us had anywhere near the $200 that an abortion cost back then). There was another procedure, my girlfriend told me, left over from the pre-legalization days — one that I think we may start hearing a lot about again — called “menstrual extraction.” A vacuum tube would be inserted to remove any contents of the uterus. Since it did not require knowing if a woman was pregnant, and no doctor had to be present, the procedure had been created to give women access to a form of abortion while allowing everyone plausible deniability.
After the procedure, she came out to the waiting room, her face ashen. “The nurse told me,” she said, “there was a fetus in there.”
That was 50 years ago; I don’t think a week has gone by that I haven’t pondered that parallel universe — the one in which that baby was born.
My whole life, at that moment, was devoted to getting out of town. Our part of the Rockaways was one of the worst slums in the city; I got beat up a lot, and my home life was a screaming, living hell. I was working two part-time jobs during high school and spent my money on SAT prep books, because I knew education was my ticket out.
But my stepsister had become pregnant a few years before, and the baby took turns living at our house and at the father’s house around the corner — a poor family in even worse shape than ours — and in that parallel universe, the one where my girlfriend’s baby was born, that was the fate that awaited me. I would remain trapped in that life of poverty and sorrow and shouting, continuing to work at the clothing factory and the burger joint to support the child, my dreams of becoming the first person in my family to graduate from college reduced to a few night classes here and there, if I was lucky.
It’s true that I wouldn’t have had to carry that baby inside me and run all the terrible health risks that mothers may face. There is no parallel there for men. It’s also true that men can run away and avoid responsibility. But that didn’t seem like a real possibility then, nor does it now. I would have had a moral obligation to that child, and I would have faced it. Abandoning the child, either to the vagaries of the adoption system or by leaving my girlfriend to fend for herself, seemed — and pardon the use of the word — inconceivable.
But I look at my life now, my wonderful, precious life, at my kind and caring wife and my astounding child and brilliant stepdaughter, and imagine living a life without them, and think: There but for the grace of Margaret Sanger go I.
I think of my sweet, kind, male-born, nonbinary 20-year-old with a beautiful voice and a great softball swing; the baby I walked the floor with a hundred times; the toddler I taught to perform a perfect “Who’s On First” with me; the young adult killing it at college. I think of how they wouldn’t exist in that other universe — a thought no father can bear to contemplate.
In that parallel universe, I did not go on to produce “America’s Most Wanted” for 15 years, did not get to champion the cause of missing children, did not get to help bring 40 of them home to their mothers.
My teenage experience was not the only time I was that guy we have no name for, either. Years later, I had an affair, and the woman became pregnant. Abortion was by now a constitutionally protected right, and she asked if I would accompany her. I told her I’d see if I could get the day off. Her fury was as intense as my idiocy was apparent: “You know,” she snapped, “I don’t get to decide if I’m going to be there!”
Would those two pregnancies, had they come to term — had actual babies been born — have affected those women more than me? Possibly destroyed their lives and dreams in ways I can’t imagine? Absolutely so. But would I have been unaffected?
With no clear options to terminate a pregnancy that nobody wanted, should my kid run away or face their responsibility — which would almost certainly mean dropping out of college to support that child? Of course they would stay. Of course their lives would be derailed.
And that’s why guys like I was — and dads like I am — need to see this issue as our own. Women have been demanding that their representatives restore the freedoms the Supreme Court has wrested away. But it is essential that young men, and their fathers, and their grandfathers, stand beside those women, and scream as loud as they do, and get as furious as they do. Because this is our fight, too. | 2022-07-02T01:45:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Men are silent partners in abortion. The choice isn’t ours, but we matter. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/father-abortion-decision-menstrual-extraction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/father-abortion-decision-menstrual-extraction/ |
I escorted women into an abortion clinic. Protesters were relentless.
A decoy operation staged next door to Planned Parenthood in Lincoln, Nebraska, knew all the tricks
Perspective by John Skiles Skinner
John Skiles Skinner is a software engineer and designer based in Austin, Tex., working in civic technology and informatics. Previously, he worked at Civic Nebraska. His hometown is Craig, Neb., population 200.
I was a volunteer patient escort at Planned Parenthood of the Heartland in Lincoln, Neb., from 2009 to 2011. Each Tuesday, the clinic performed abortions. Protesters gathered in front of the clinic on these days and sometimes surrounded it. A college town, Lincoln is liberal by Nebraska standards, but Lincoln’s Catholics, including traditionalist congregants, were out in force on abortion day.
I did not have strong feelings on the politics of abortion when I began as an escort, guiding patients through the maelstrom of protesters. A friend had told me of the obstacles she faced in getting an abortion. I volunteered because I wanted to help others in her position, and to better understand those obstacles. I now feel I know the political movement that overturned Roe v. Wade. Its ambitions are larger than simply restricting abortion.
Patients who arrived at the clinic on foot were running a gantlet. The anti-choice protesters would “sidewalk counsel” them, trying to push rosaries into patients’ hands and divert them in any way just short of physical assault. Escorts sought to be grounding and psychologically comforting to patients, walking with them, speaking calmly and moving them steadily. Most patients looked scared of the anti-choice protesters, or baffled. Some were very, very angry at them.
The protesters’ base of operations was the house next door to the clinic, bought by an antiabortion nonprofit organization, Lincoln Right to Life. The group describes itself as ecumenical, but the Catholic Church was the star of the show at the protests. The house had Stations of the Cross in the yard, as though it were a church, yet it had no congregation other than protesters and no services other than religious rites directed against abortion. There was no sign listing the building’s name or purpose. It served as a clinic decoy.
Protesters would flag cars obviously trying to drive to Planned Parenthood into the house driveway instead, then make it hard for them to leave. They wore medical scrubs as they tried to mislead patients into believing they were at a clinic. Patients were typically confused when presented with a clinic that looked mostly like a house and a little like a church. They described to me how anti-choice protesters would prolong and exploit this confusion to keep patients away from medical care for as long as possible, employing medical misinformation or simple guilt.
When a car did make it into the clinic parking lot, the protesters could not physically approach whomever got out of it without trespassing, so they just yelled at them. They had an elevated platform for this purpose, built right up against the clinic’s property line. Over the years, there was a gradual escalation in which the protesters built taller yelling platforms and the clinic built taller fences to block the yelling. The limits of the local building code were eventually reached, the volunteer coordinator told me, with the tallest platform zoned as a treehouse and the highest strip of fence classified as a “seasonal banner.”
On a typical abortion day, there were 10 to 20 protesters in front of the clinic, although once a month the bishop of the diocese accompanied several hundred. They spent a lot of time talking to us. Escorts were not permitted by Planned Parenthood to respond; we were a captive, passive audience for the protesters. They chose to talk about sex a lot. They tended to be opposed to birth control and were fond of explaining “God’s plan for human sexuality.” One woman illustrated this plan with unasked-for details about her virtuous married sex life. She felt that abortion and hormonal birth control were murder, and that condoms were undignified. Her husband learned to suppress his sexual urges, she said, and they now had sex only for procreation. To recruit others into this godly way of life, she protested in front of the clinic nearly every week for years.
We had a detente with the regular protesters. We called the cops on them occasionally for trespassing or blocking the driveway, but they knew the legal limits, and on the whole they stayed within them as long as they were being watched. When no patients were arriving, they mostly stood around, gossiped about church stuff, swapped medical misinformation about abortion causing cancer, and tallied all the women they claimed to have rescued from sin.
Though exasperated by the regulars, the escorts were more fearful of the people who would occasionally arrive by bus. Hundreds of them, at times, who didn’t know the locals, didn’t care about the detente and who often wanted to grandstand. Sometimes the visitors wore the robes of Catholic priests or seminarians. Sometimes they were private school students who mostly looked as though they did not want to be there. One woman arrived on what appeared to be some sort of tour bus. She delivered a meandering harangue asking humanity to “stop making sex.” A man wearing a hoodie with the hood up on a warm day mumbled angrily to himself that the clinic put babies into blenders. He scowled furiously at nothing in particular. I wondered if he would finally be the guy who would shoot up the place.
I was always careful to hide my identity as an escort. I arrived on the city bus, because I was warned that people who drove to the clinic risked having their license plate numbers run by the anti-choicers. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is true that protesters followed clinic employees into their personal lives. They showed up at employees’ homes, knocking on the door. They approached their children at school sports events to tell them how sinful their parents were. They protested at their churches.
Planned Parenthood clinic staff were physically attacked. Once, an angry man stormed out of the house-church and tried to force his way into the clinic. Because the clinic manager stood in his way he grabbed her by the neck and struck her in the ribs, then attempted to force her to the ground. Fortunately, the manager was able to push him out the front door. You could see her bruises for a long time afterward.
Once, the clinic was bombed with a Molotov cocktail. It caused only a little damage, probably because the attacker had a hard time throwing over the security fence built around the clinic in response to previous attacks. This event made a big impression on me, but others at the clinic didn’t seem to regard it as unusual. I think they had learned to habitually disregard this type of trauma. The firebombing received only brief mention in the local news.
A fellow escort was a woman who had worked with George Tiller in neighboring Kansas, until Tiller was murdered. An abortion doctor, Tiller was shot by an antiabortion extremist in his Wichita church while he was serving as an usher in 2009, a few months before I started volunteering. I hadn’t truly thought of our volunteer gig as dangerous until I heard this escort’s story. She was like a refugee.
The protesters had elaborate rituals. Throughout Lent, they kept vigil in front of the clinic 24 hours a day, they claimed. I saw them there at night, once or twice; it looked as if they were burning a ceremonial lamp. Once they encircled the clinic in a line of salt. It felt as if they were trying to use magic against us. Which shouldn’t be a big deal, because magic isn’t real, but it was scary to me because it seemed unhinged.
Anytime a man approached (including me, before they recognized me), the antis would shout, “Tell your girlfriend she doesn’t have to do this!” They assumed the women were not married. They were sentimental about motherhood, the proper role for women. Protesters expressed to me a binary view in which marriage and motherhood were mutually exclusive with abortion. In reality, 59 percent of abortion patients have already had a child, according to a Guttmacher Institute study.
I was confused by some protesters’ opposition to birth control and focus on virtuous motherhood. Because I was raised by blunt and truthful people, I first assumed the weekly standoff at the clinic was caused by an honest difference in opinion about abortion. This didn’t jibe with the protesters’ hatred of contraception — which of course prevents abortion — or their preoccupation with sex. All of society was telling me I was part of a cultural conflict over the question of when human life begins, but my experience was showing me the conflict was broader. The protesters appeared to want sexual expression and gender roles to be governed by conservative Christianity. They wanted this control not only within their church but also over anyone seeking an abortion or birth control.
In 2011, the clinic moved to a location where the arrangement of driveways, parking lots and entrances was more difficult for protesters to obstruct. A few months later, the Planned Parenthood affiliate’s head of security informed the escorts that with increased insurance cost and liability risk because of acts of violence, the volunteer escort program would be shut down. My role ended; the clinic was forced to hire professional security.
With little purpose other than to shadow the clinic — it also operated as a diaper exchange — the house was sold not long after Planned Parenthood relocated. In 2018, Lincoln Right to Life opened in another building, across the street from Planned Parenthood’s new location. The local Catholic diocese holds weekly worship services there, according to its news release. The services are not on Sunday, but Tuesday — abortion day.
The new building has dropped any exterior appearance of being a church. A former commercial building, it can function as a much more plausible decoy clinic than the old house-church ever could. Although I’m no longer there as an escort, I cannot miss the huge sign reading “Women’s Care Center” in a shade of pink that echoes Planned Parenthood’s branding.
The duplicity and pressure tactics I witnessed as an escort made an indelible impression on me. I cannot forget that this week, as every week, people with a keen interest in others’ sex lives and reproductive choices gather for a church service in a Nebraska building they have named Women’s Care Center, chosen for its proximity to a Planned Parenthood clinic. Publicly they claim the goal of saving unborn children. I sense that just below the surface there is a more ambitious dream: conservative Christian dominion over human sexuality and gender. With Roe overturned, we have taken a step into that dominion. | 2022-07-02T01:45:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I escorted women into an abortion clinic. Protesters were relentless. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/planned-parenthood-clinic-escort/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/planned-parenthood-clinic-escort/ |
From Roe to Casey to Dobbs, the writings of the Supreme Court justices grew more biting, blinkered and divergent
Perspective by Carlos Lozada
Carlos Lozada is the nonfiction book critic of The Washington Post and the author of "What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era." He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2019.
Patrik Swensson for the Washington Post
Supreme Court opinions are a series of legal interpretations, a catalogue of rights recognized, affirmed or withdrawn. But they are also markers of a culture forever in flux, a record of how different courts and different eras have wielded influence, viewed the past and understood the national moment.
Such is the case with the pivotal abortion decisions of the last half-century: Roe v. Wade (1973), which affirmed the right to abortion nationwide, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which accepted stricter limits on the practice while reasserting Roe’s central holding, and now Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturns the prior two decisions and leaves the regulation of abortion to state legislatures. The various rulings and dissents reveal divergent readings of history, conflicting perceptions of the role and agency of women, even contrasting attitudes toward philosophy and human nature.
Perhaps most striking, the recriminations, accusations and counterclaims found in these documents also showcase an institution that was politicized long before a draft opinion of Dobbs was leaked to Politico in May. In his Roe dissent, Justice William Rehnquist acknowledged the majority opinion’s historical inquiry and legal scholarship; despite his disagreements, he wrote, the opinion “commands my respect.” Such niceties disappear from subsequent court decisions. The plurality opinion that decided Casey warned that overruling Roe could constitute a “surrender to political pressure” that would undermine the court’s legitimacy; one justice even wrote of his “fear for the darkness” if his four colleagues who opposed Roe ever found one more vote. One of those four justices, in his own Casey dissent, disparaged the plurality’s “almost czarist arrogance.”
Now, with Dobbs, even these characterizations seem genteel. Different factions of the high court accuse one another and their predecessors of incompetence, duplicity, hypocrisy, and untruth. The Dobbs majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, dismisses Roe as an “elaborate scheme” that was “concocted” to divine a constitutional right, and assails the 1973 decision with adverbial abandon, calling it “egregiously wrong,” “exceptionally weak” and “deeply damaging.” And while the Dobbs majority asserts that Roe’s grasp of history “ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant. . . to the plainly incorrect,” it nonetheless makes selective use of U.S. history and tradition, and takes refuge in portions of the very rulings it has now overturned.
The dissent, meanwhile, denounces the majority for betraying its principles and letting personal proclivities overpower the rule of law, and derides the majority’s history lectures as “wheel-spinning” and “window dressing.” With Dobbs, the dissent states, “the court departs from its obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law,” a conclusion it offers not with respect but, in its own words, “with sorrow.”
Throughout these competing judgments and dissents, the justices bemoan how their opponents on the court have given in to insidious political impulses and pressures, whereas they alone remain uncorrupted. It is almost hard to remember that, at the outset of its opinion, the Roe majority declared that “our task, of course, is to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection.” Subsequent opinions are rife with both. If Supreme Court rulings indeed double as cultural artifacts, then it is fitting that the court has come to reflect the ideological division and political expedience of our time.
The justices sound just like the rest of us, even though their battles matter so much more.
One of the sharpest divides in the Supreme Court’s abortion rulings is over history — what the record shows, what aspects are most relevant, and to what extent history should matter at all in determining the limits or existence of a constitutional right.
The majority opinion in Roe attempts to normalize legal abortion as part of the American story, with mixed results. It began by surveying the laws of ancient Greece and Rome (including the Hippocratic oath’s admonition against “an abortive remedy”) as well as English common law, concluding that “it now appear[s] doubtful that abortion was firmly established as a common law crime.” The opinion highlighted the distinction between abortions carried out before so-called quickening — the first recognizable movements of the fetus — and those conducted later. It noted that the 1821 law barring abortion in Connecticut, the first state to enact such legislation, regarded post-quickening abortion as manslaughter but an earlier abortion only as a misdemeanor. After the Civil War, statutes regulating abortion proliferated, and by the mid-20th century, the Roe majority acknowledged, “a large majority of the jurisdictions” banned the procedure other than to save the life of the woman. Nonetheless, the opinion concluded, for a “major portion” of the 19th century “a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today.”
That history reads differently through different eyes. In his Roe dissent, Rehnquist also cited the Connecticut law, but he did so to emphasize the existence, not the leniency, of early 19th-century abortion restrictions. And while the Roe majority found the right to an abortion in the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, Rehnquist chided his colleagues for disregarding the intent of the drafters. When the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, he recounts, legislatures across the country had already enacted dozens of laws limiting abortion, and those provisions went unquestioned when the amendment went into effect. “The only conclusion possible from this history,” the future chief justice reasoned, “is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter.” A partial dissent in Casey, authored by Rehnquist and joined by Justices Byron White, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, reiterated how an “overwhelming majority” of states restricted abortion by 1973, and argued that “the historical traditions of the American people” do not support abortion as a fundamental right.
Such parsing of tradition is a critical exercise in Dobbs because, the majority argues, rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution must be “deeply rooted” in U.S. history and tradition. Reading the various opinions thus feels like attending seminars by professors whose views of the world are irreconcilable and whose assigned readings barely overlap. The Dobbs majority opinion writes that its counterparts in Roe “ignored or misstated” the real history of abortion and promises to “set the record straight.” For example, Alito’s opinion asserts that the legal distinction between pre- and post-quickening abortions cited in Roe does not matter “because the rule was abandoned in the 19th century.” And even if pre-quickening abortions were not criminalized, that “does not mean that anyone thought the States lacked the authority to do so.” It is a deft move by the majority: It picks the period it prefers to represent tradition, and when traditions sneak off course, the majority reminds that states still could have shaped the era differently. And so tradition endures.
The justices also part company on the impact of the Supreme Court’s past abortion decisions — that is, on the history of the court itself. The plurality opinion in Casey looked back with an excess of satisfaction on Roe as a rare moment when the court was able to “resolve” an antagonistic debate, calling on “the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.” In his partial dissent in Casey, Scalia scoffed at this “unrecognizable” account of U.S. social history. Not only did Roe fail to resolve the abortion debate, Scalia emphasized, “it did more than anything else to nourish it.”
But after chastising the Casey opinion for gazing upon the politics of the post-Roe era so favorably, Scalia did much the same for the pre-Roe years, regarding them as a more tranquil and stable time when “national politics were not plagued by abortion protests, national abortion lobbying, or abortion marches on Congress,” and state-by-state political compromises remained possible. “To portray Roe as the statesmanlike ‘settlement’ of a divisive issue,” he wrote, “is nothing less than Orwellian.”
At times the majority in Dobbs overreaches in its attacks on Roe’s vision of history, in ways that are small and unnecessary. For instance, it quotes the Roe majority opinion as supposedly implying that 19th century state laws against abortion in the United States emerged from a “Victorian social concern” regarding “illicit sexual conduct” rather than over the desire to protect fetal life. The Roe majority did mention that idea as an occasional explanation for such laws but immediately repudiated it, writing that “no court or commentator has taken the argument seriously.” Except for Alito, who 49 years later resurrected the passage to discredit Roe.
More consequentially, the Dobbs majority asserts that its ruling returns the abortion debate to the state level, where it belongs and where it had long been until Roe showed up and ruined everything. “For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens,” the majority asserts. Of course, for many of those years, those considered full citizens of the nation were a much more limited set. “The men who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and wrote the state laws of the time did not view women as full and equal citizens,” the Dobbs dissent reminds, charging that, “because laws in 1868 deprived women of any control over their bodies, the majority approves States doing so today.”
When the Supreme Court ruled on Roe, all nine justices were men; with Casey, eight of the nine were men; in the Dobbs decision, the court has three women and six men. The various opinions and dissents do not break down neatly along gender lines, but they do reveal much about how the high court has viewed women over the past half-century — sometimes as less able to think for themselves and, thus, requiring special protection from their own bad choices, and sometimes as so empowered that additional protection was no longer necessary.
The Roe majority highlighted the harm inflicted upon women when they are denied the choice of continuing or ending their pregnancies, whether medical and psychological injury or the “continuing stigma of unwed motherhood.” In Casey, the plurality opinion asserted that women are defined by far more than motherhood — no matter how long that vision has permeated American society — and that in the two decades since Roe, women had come to rely on the right the 1973 ruling enshrined. “The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives,” Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter contended.
Even while upholding the right to abortion, the Casey plurality opinion betrayed some condescension toward women intending to exercise their choice. One of the provisions in the Pennsylvania law contested in Casey was a requirement that pregnant women seeking abortions have access to printed materials describing fetal development and offering details on adoption agencies, medical assistance available for childbirth and child-support requirements for fathers. This provision, O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter concluded, supported the “legitimate purpose of reducing the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision was not fully informed.” They deemed another provision requiring a 24-hour delay before the abortion is carried out to be a “reasonable measure.”
In his partial concurrence and partial dissent in Casey, Justice John Paul Stevens argued persuasively that such compromises embodied “outmoded and unacceptable assumptions” about the ability of women to make their own decisions, and that “States may not presume that a woman has failed to reflect adequately merely because her conclusion differs from the State’s preference.” (Indeed, nowhere does the Casey opinion mention a parallel proposal requiring that women choosing to continue their pregnancies receive detailed information on possible complications during childbirth, health risks for a newborn or the average lifetime costs of raising children.)
Rehnquist, Scalia, White and Thomas countered that the Casey plurality opinion was “unconvincing” when asserting that women had come to rely on the abortion rights enshrined in Roe. “Surely it is dubious to suggest that women have reached their ‘places in society’ in reliance upon Roe,” they argued, “rather than as a result of their determination to obtain higher education and compete with men in the job market, and of society’s increasing recognition of their ability to fill positions that were previously thought to be reserved only for men.” Their logic seemed to be that women had progressed so much that additional right of abortion is superfluous, and, incidentally, that the power to decide when or whether to have children is irrelevant to competing in the employment marketplace.
The plurality opinion in Casey acknowledged that it could not quantify the extent of Americans’ reliance on Roe, but it figured it was significant and could not be dismissed. The four joint dissenters agreed that reliance upon Roe could not be easily specified, so chose not to try. “The joint opinion’s assertion of this fact is undeveloped and totally conclusory,” they wrote, and is “based solely on generalized assertions about the national psyche.”
The Dobbs majority likewise looks back on the question of women’s reliance on Roe and decides that the court “has neither the authority nor the expertise” to settle the matter. But it adds one more reason why establishing a generalized reliance on Roe is difficult: Women are all just so different. Abortion regulations can have disparate effects on women depending on their “places of residence, financial resources, family situations, work and personal obligations, knowledge about fetal development and abortion, psychological and emotional disposition and condition, and the firmness of their desire to obtain abortions.” Where women differ little, apparently, is in their political clout. Now that Dobbs has returned abortion rights to state legislatures, women on any side of the abortion dispute can shape their futures by voting, lobbying lawmakers or running for office themselves. “Women are not without electoral or political power,” the Dobbs majority reassures.
Consider the logic: Because the right to an abortion was not part of the American tradition back when women lacked political power, it cannot be a constitutional right today. And it need not be a constitutional right today because women, deprived of the right, at least still have the power to ask for it back.
The Roe majority held that the government has two legitimate interests regarding abortion rights. First is that abortion be performed safely for the patient, and second is the state’s interest in “protecting prenatal life.” The majority did not attempt to settle the question of when life begins but, rather, accepted that the latter interest is real because at least “potential life” is involved. Much of the court’s debate over abortion in the past 50 years has centered on how those interests come into conflict and when one overrides the other.
In Dobbs, that trade-off is crystallized in two nearly identical sentences, one in the majority opinion and the other in the dissent. “The most striking feature of the dissent is the absence of any serious discussion of the legitimacy of the States’ interest in protecting fetal life,” the majority opinion declares. Later, deep in their dissent, the opposing justices toss that sentiment back at the majority, almost mockingly, adding quotation marks to make sure someone notices. “ ‘The most striking feature of the [majority] is the absence of any serious discussion’ of how its ruling will affect women.”
Yes, this is how a dissent briefly lapses into a diss. Even so, the passages highlight the two sides’ competing priorities. The Dobbs majority claims that it takes no position on when life begins or when prenatal life acquires rights, but it laments that the dissenters “regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a pregnancy has passed.” The dissent, for its part, praises the “balance” that Roe and Casey brought to the competing interests, and laments “how little [the majority] knows or cares about women’s lives or about the suffering its decision will cause.”
The dissenters also worry that, given the logic of Dobbs, constitutional guarantees such as the right to contraception or to same-sex marriage may also be at risk. After all, they too may be insufficiently “rooted in history” to hold up. The majority insists, repeatedly, that only abortion is at issue here — and that abortion is “fundamentally different” from the other rights because it “uniquely involves what Roe and Casey termed ‘potential life.’ ” (Note the irony of the Dobbs majority repeatedly citing Roe and Casey, the two decisions it is overturning, to help explain why it will not do the same to additional precedents.) The majority seems exasperated, even insulted, by the suspicion that other rights could be in jeopardy. “It is hard to see how we could be clearer,” Alito writes.
It’s not that hard. Simply reiterating today that abortion is “different” does not preclude future iterations of the court from employing the Dobbs blueprint to conclude otherwise. In his concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Brett Kavanaugh promises that Supreme Court decisions allowing contraception, interracial marriage and same-sex marriage are all still safe. “I emphasize what the Court today states,” Kavanaugh assures. “Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.” Perhaps Kavanaugh’s use of italics is meant to convey seriousness of purpose — a sort of jurisprudential pinkie swear — but its already slight impact is lessened when one of the majority’s signatories lays out a separate opinion targeting some of those other rights by name.
Justice Thomas, who joined the majority opinion, nonetheless declares that the court “should reconsider” some of the “demonstrably erroneous” Supreme Court opinions on same-sex marriage, contraceptive use and gay sex — precedents that Kavanaugh and the majority insist are not in play. Thomas also appears forthright about how his personal beliefs and judicial assessments intermingle, ending his concurring opinion by citing the “immeasurable” harm of 63 million abortions carried out since 1973, according to a fact sheet from the National Right to Life Committee. If Alito argues by adverb and Kavanaugh argues by italics, Thomas seems to argue by Thomas — he cites himself 21 times in a seven-page opinion, a true testament to his judicial self-regard. The dissent in Dobbs highlights Thomas’s opinion (“at least one Justice is planning to use the ticket of today’s decision again and again and again”), but the Dobbs majority opinion keeps its distance from it, although though it contradicts the majority’s assurances. No matter. Even if Thomas does not find support on the court, his constituency and audience may reside elsewhere.
In all three cases, the decisive opinions acknowledge the complexity and divisiveness of abortion in American life. “Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views,” Alito begins in Dobbs. The Roe majority acknowledged “our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy . . . and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires.” The Casey plurality was the most contemplative. “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” it stated, adding that, on abortion, “reasonable people will have differences of opinion.”
It is inevitable, perhaps, the cases of this sort elicit such pondering of life and human nature. Nonetheless, in his partial dissent in Casey, Scalia could not resist ridiculing his colleagues’ philosophizing. Scalia concluded that abortion is not a protected right “not because of anything so exalted as my views concerning the ‘concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life’ ” but, rather, because “the Constitution says absolutely nothing about it, and [because] the longstanding traditions of American society have permitted it to be legally proscribed.” In his Dobbs opinion 30 years later, Thomas also criticized the Casey reflections as overly “ethereal,” while the Dobbs majority opinion says that it’s fine for people to think whatever they wish about the universe and the rest, they just can’t always act “in accordance with those thoughts.” In other words, enough with the big think — this question is straightforward enough.
One of the justices today seems more willing to wrestle with his thoughts, to engage for a moment in uncertainty, even ambiguity. In his separate Dobbs opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. agrees with the court’s decision to uphold the Mississippi law at issue in the case — which prohibits abortions past 15 weeks into a pregnancy — but does not see the need to overturn Roe and Casey. He proposes accepting the 15-week limit while still upholding the constitutional right to abortion, on the grounds that such a time frame provides “an adequate opportunity to exercise the right Roe protects.” Better to reach a narrower conclusion, Roberts suggests, and leave the larger decisions “for another day.”
It is a compromise that satisfies no one. The Dobbs majority is dismissive, stating that the chief justice’s middle ground “would only put off the day when we would be forced to confront the question we now decide.” Of course, that is precisely Roberts’s objective. He does not pretend to have the ultimate answer; he would rather change the question. “I am not sure, for example, that a ban on terminating a pregnancy from the moment of conception must be treated the same under the Constitution as a ban after fifteen weeks,” he writes. Roberts is willing to wallow in the in-between spaces that are prohibited in the political and legal debates over abortion; he is a Casey kind of guy in a Dobbs world. The dissenting justices in Dobbs treat him with only slightly more kindness, noting in a parenthetical near the end of their dissent that “we believe that the Chief Justice’s opinion is wrong too,” but adding that they agree there is indeed a large difference between a ban at conception and one beginning at fifteen weeks.
“Both the Court’s opinion and the dissent display a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share,” the chief justice writes. Except doubt is not popular, and self-doubt even less so. It is a sign of how the court has become one more political battleground that the chief justice is left flailing and lonely in the institution over which he nominally presides, and that somewhere between the dismissiveness of the majority and the parenthetical of the dissent reside the remnants of a possible, but doomed, compromise. Roberts’s failure is not in the specifics of his proposal or the logic of his argument. It is in daring to hope that in this moment and with this court and in this country, such an outcome ever had a chance.
Carlos Lozada is The Post’s nonfiction book critic and the author of “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.” Follow him on Twitter and read his recent book reviews, including:
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Authoritarianism is surging. Can liberal democracy fight back? | 2022-07-02T01:45:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court justices reveal a fractured culture in 50 years of abortion writings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/roe-casey-dobbs-abortion-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/01/roe-casey-dobbs-abortion-supreme-court/ |
New York tightens gun laws, revisits abortion rights after SCOTUS rulings
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) at the state Capitol in Albany on July 1. (Hans Pennink/AP)
The New York state legislature passed new gun-control legislation and started the process of protecting abortion rights in the state constitution, in an extraordinary session that ended late Friday.
The session was called by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) in response to U.S. Supreme Court rulings last week that expanded gun rights — striking down a New York law that sharply limited the ability to carry concealed handguns — and overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating a nearly 50-year right to seek abortion.
“We’re here because of a set of Supreme Court rulings that came down literally in the last day or two of session,” Hochul said at a news conference Friday. “And there, it was heartbreaking. It was a difficult week for our nation.”
The new gun legislation restricts people from carrying handguns in public by prohibiting them in locations including schools, libraries and parks. It also bars concealed carry at private businesses, unless the business expressly agrees.
“New Yorkers’ constitutional freedoms were just trampled on by Kathy Hochul and her pawns in the legislature,” said Nick Langworthy, chair of the GOP State Committee. “Only under the insanity of New York Democrats can you get out of jail free for possessing an illegal firearm, but be targeted by the government for being a law-abiding citizen exercising your constitutional rights.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul steps into the spotlight with first major address
The state Senate also passed an Equal Rights Amendment that would enshrine the right to abortion in the New York constitution in the event it becomes law.
Both houses of the state legislature are controlled by Democrats. Republicans were squarely opposed to the firearms law, but seven of their 20 senators voted in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment.
“The Supreme Court’s decisions were certainly setbacks,” Hochul said. “But we view them as only temporary setbacks, because I refuse … to surrender my right as governor to protect New Yorkers from gun violence or any other form of harm.” | 2022-07-02T02:19:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York lawmakers restrict handgun carry, move to protect abortion rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/new-york-restrictions-guns-abortion-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/01/new-york-restrictions-guns-abortion-roe/ |
After a strong run of five starts, Josiah Gray struggled against the Marlins on Friday night. “My confidence and everything is never going to waver,” he said. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Josiah Gray took a look toward the scoreboard in right field, then swiped at the dirt of the pitcher’s mound, his face full of frustration in the fifth inning of a sticky Friday night at Nationals Park. It had been a while since the 24-year-old right-hander had a start like this one against the Miami Marlins.
The visitors had their way with Gray in a 6-3 Nationals loss, Miami’s ninth win in 10 games over Washington (29-50) this year. Gray failed to make it out of the sixth, yielding 10 hits and six runs. Such are the growing pains for a pitcher who gave up only 13 hits over four June starts totaling 24 innings.
“It wasn’t good,” Gray said after Friday’s start. “Just a lot of — not so much hard contact, but a lot of contact. They put some contact on some well-placed pitches but also some poorly located pitches.”
Friday’s loss raised his ERA to a still-respectable 4.22, down from a season high of 5.44 after a tough late-May start against the Dodgers, his former team, when he admitted his emotions got the best of him.
Gray looked locked in again when he retired the first six batters of the game — the first three with flyouts, the next with three strikeouts.
But Gray gave up a home run to Brian Anderson to start the third inning, putting the Marlins (35-40) ahead, 1-0. He fanned the next two batters before allowing what proved to be a costly two-out walk to Jon Berti. Berti stole second, then Joey Wendle drove him in with a single. Garrett Cooper followed with a double, and suddenly it was 3-0. Berti’s sacrifice fly in the fifth tacked on another run.
The sixth didn’t go much better. He allowed four consecutive singles to open the frame, got two outs (one on a fielder’s choice that made it 6-1) before a walk finally led Manager Dave Martinez to come out and get him.
“When he works ahead, he’s really good,” Martinez said. “We’ve seen that in the past. … Today, you saw some of the hits they got. It wasn’t like he threw the ball awful, but, you know, he fell behind on a bunch of hitters, and that’s where they beat him up.”
On the season, Gray’s opponents have swung and missed 47.2 percent of his sliders and 37.5 percent of his curveballs. But Gray didn’t miss many bats Friday — and the growing pains were evident on his face as he walked off the mound.
“My confidence and everything is never going to waver,” Gray said. “Especially with the way I’ve been able to bounce back after the outings against the Dodgers or the Astros. Just an unlucky day at the ballpark, but I get to come back tomorrow and get back to work.”
When did Victor Robles exit Friday’s game and why? Robles hit a ball off his left shin in the third inning and grimaced. He finished the at-bat by striking out and played the field the following inning before being replaced by Ehire Adrianza to start the fifth.
When was Keibert Ruiz’s last home run before Friday night? June 10. His two-run blast to center field off Josh Rogers that scored Juan Soto in the sixth inning was his third of the season. Nelson Cruz drove in Soto in the fourth when he grounded into a double play, accounting for the entirety of the Nationals’ scoring. Rogers is 3-0 with a 2.25 ERA against the Nationals and 1-6 with a 6.58 ERA against everyone else.
Why did backup catcher Riley Adams get optioned? To get consistent at-bats and work on his defense at catcher and first base. Tres Barrera was called up to fill Adams’s spot. Adams was hitting just .192 in 88 plate appearances, notching 15 hits to go with 26 strikeouts. For Adams, 26, getting reps at first base could be important given the likelihood Josh Bell will be dealt at the trade deadline, though Martinez deflected when asked if that played a role in the decision to send Adams down.
Barrera, 27, made a handful of starts for the Nationals last July and August. Before Adams arrived at the trade deadline, Barrera filled in when Yan Gomes and Alex Avila were injured. After Adams joined the club, Barrera became his backup. And when Keibert Ruiz was called up in late August, Barrera was optioned to Rochester. He’d been there ever since, posting a solid batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage slash line of .256/.342/.439 this season.
Who else was called up and what corresponding move was made? Mason Thompson was recalled from Class AAA Rochester. To create a spot on the 40-man roster, Sam Clay was designated for assignment.
Thompson pitched a scoreless ninth after being on the injured list since April 10 with biceps tendinitis. He made three relief appearances for Rochester, and the plan was for him to throw in back-to-back outings before returning to the majors, but the team felt like he was ready.
“The last couple of months, I’ve been kind of trying to work on myself and my pitching,” Thompson said. “Coming back now, my goal is to go out there and compete and be a better version of where I was earlier this year.”
Clay, 29, signed with the Nationals as a free agent in November 2020 but never was able to control the strike zone in the majors. In 58 games last year, the left-hander compiled a 5.60 ERA. This year, Clay started in Rochester and bounced between there and Washington. He gave up five runs in 4⅓ innings for the Nationals. | 2022-07-02T02:58:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Josiah Gray hit hard as Marlins continue to dominate the Nationals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/marlins-nationals-josiah-gray/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/marlins-nationals-josiah-gray/ |
After an incubation period of usually one to two weeks, the disease typically starts with fever, muscle aches, fatigue and other flu-like symptoms. Unlike smallpox, monkeypox also causes swelling of the lymph nodes. Within a few days of fever onset, patients develop a rash, often beginning on the face then spreading to other parts of the body. The lesions grow into fluid-containing pustules that form a scab. If a lesion forms on the eye, it can cause blindness. The illness typically lasts two to four weeks, according to the WHO. The person is infectious from the time symptoms start until the scabs fall off and the sores heal. Mortality is higher among children and young adults, while people whose immune system is compromised are especially at risk of severe disease.
Monkeypox doesn’t usually spread easily between people. Contact with the virus from an animal, human or contaminated object is the main pathway. The virus enters the body through broken skin, the respiratory tract or the mucous membranes in the eyes, nose or mouth. Transmission from one person to another is thought to occur through respiratory particles during direct and prolonged face-to-face contact. But it can also happen through contact with body fluids or lesion material, or indirectly through contact with contaminated clothing or linens. Common household disinfectants can kill it.
Analysis of the genetic sequence of the virus collected from patients in Europe indicates that the current outbreak in non-endemic countries is caused by a strain that likely diverged from the monkeypox virus that sparked a 2018-19 Nigerian outbreak, according to a June 24 study in Nature Medicine. The authors, from Portugal’s National Institute of Health in Lisbon, identified some 50 genetic changes or differences compared with the original strain, including several mutations the authors associate with increased transmissibility. The changes are roughly 6-to-12 times more than scientists would expect based on the observed evolution of orthopoxviruses, they said. The strain belongs to the West African clade, or branch on the evolutionary tree that usually have a case-fatality rate of less than 1%. (That compares with 10% for a second clade called Congo Basin, which appears on the US government’s bioterrorism agent list as having the potential to pose a severe threat.)
A meeting of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee on June 23 determined that, at present, the event doesn’t constitute a public health emergency of international concern. Just over a week later, Hans Kluge, the WHO Regional Director for Europe, intensified a call for governments and civil society groups to scale up efforts to prevent monkeypox from establishing itself across a broader area, after cases in the region tripled in two weeks. Small numbers of cases have been reported among household members, heterosexual contacts, and non-sexual contacts, as well as among children. Where information is available, close to 10% of patients were reported to have been hospitalized either for treatment or for isolation purposes, and one patient has been admitted to an ICU, Kluge said.
(Updates number of cases in section 6; call from WHO official in section 8; US vaccine order in section 9.) | 2022-07-02T03:16:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Understanding Monkeypox and How Outbreaks Spread - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/07/01/d7948194-f9b3-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/understanding-monkeypox-and-how-outbreaks-spread/2022/07/01/d7948194-f9b3-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
U.S. men rout Honduras to qualify for first Olympics since 2008
Marcus Ferkranus, left, vies for the ball with Marco Aceituno during Concacaf U-20 tournament semifinal in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. (Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty Images)
An Olympic men’s soccer berth does not come close to carrying the importance of qualifying for the World Cup, but the U.S. program’s inability to secure passage to the Summer Games had become a source of quadrennial embarrassment.
On Friday, the Americans ended their drought in resounding fashion, scoring three times before intermission and routing Honduras, 3-0, to clinch their first Olympic berth since 2008.
The breakthrough came in the semifinals of the Concacaf under-20 tournament in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which served as the qualifiers of both the 2023 U-20 World Cup in Indonesia and 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Paxten Aaronson (Philadelphia Union) scored in the third minute, Alejandro Alvarado Jr. (Vizela, Portugal) extended the lead in the 22nd and Quinn Sullivan (Philadelphia Union) added a 43rd-minute goal.
Dominican Republic, an afterthought in the pre-tournament forecasts, earned Concacaf’s other berth by defeating Guatemala in a shootout, 4-2, after coming back from a two-goal deficit in regulation for a 2-2 draw.
All four semifinalists qualified for the U-20 World Cup. On Sunday, the Americans will attempt to win their third consecutive Concacaf U-20 title.
To prevent it from stealing the World Cup’s thunder, Olympic men’s soccer has been an under-23 competition (with three roster exceptions) since 1992. Though the Summer Games lack the prestige of the World Cup, the United States, a 2000 Olympic semifinalist, found itself failing to even qualify the previous three attempts and in four of five tries.
Usually, the qualifying tournament involves under-23 teams, but Concacaf decided to switch to a younger age group, hold a dual competition and conduct the event earlier in the four-year Olympic cycle.
With a roster of many MLS homegrown players, the Americans have a 5-0-1 record and 25-2 goal differential in this tournament.
On Friday, they got off to a dream start on a goal by Aaronson, the younger brother of Brenden Aaronson, a U.S. senior national team attacker. Brandan Craig served a free kick that Aaronson redirected into the net from close range for his fifth goal of the tournament.
Midway through the half, Mauricio Cuevas set up Alvarado for a one-timer deep in the box. And just before halftime, Sullivan tapped in the ball after Caden Clark wheeled around the goalkeeper and placed a low shot on target.
Honduras applied pressure throughout the second half, but Chris Brady recorded the team’s fifth shutout. Craig hit the post with an 83rd-minute free kick and Honduras’s Jefryn Macías was red-carded in the 87th.
The defeat ended Honduras’s streak of four consecutive Olympic appearances. In each of the previous two qualifying tournaments, the Hondurans defeated the United States in the qualifying-clinching semifinal.
D.C. United midfielder Jackson Hopkins, who turned 18 on Friday, entered in the 71st minute. | 2022-07-02T03:16:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. men U-20s rout Honduras to earn Paris Olympic berth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/us-mens-soccer-olympic-berth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/01/us-mens-soccer-olympic-berth/ |
And that is unfortunate. Miss Manners might have some sympathy for an establishment receiving conflicting feedback on subjective criteria, but these replies suggest that your reactions are out of line.
Dear Miss Manners: Approximately 15 years ago, I gave my niece a ring. It was a ring that my grandfather (her great-grandfather), a migrant farmworker, found. He gave it to my mother, and she gave it to me when I was 15. It is a class ring from my alma mater from the year 1918, and I wore it for many years.
Did your niece divorce the ring along with the ex-husband? Because otherwise, there is no reason to think that these two events were related — and the ring is still rightfully hers. | 2022-07-02T04:47:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I give unsolicited advice to businesses I patron - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/02/miss-manners-businesses-suggestions-rude/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/02/miss-manners-businesses-suggestions-rude/ |
In a letter, the marshal requests Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) to enforce laws that “squarely prohibit picketing at the homes of Supreme Court Justices”
Law enforcement officers stand guard as abortion rights advocates march in front of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's house. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court’s chief security officer has penned letters requesting that top Maryland officials direct police to enforce laws “that squarely prohibit picketing at the homes of Supreme Court Justices” following weeks of protests outside their houses in Montgomery County.
In two separate letters reviewed by The Washington Post, one addressed to Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and another to Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D), Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley says protests and “threatening activity” has increased since May at justices’ homes in Maryland.
“For weeks on end, large groups of protesters chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed Justices’ homes in Maryland,” the letter to Hogan said. “Earlier this week, for example, 75 protesters loudly picketed at one Justice’s home in Maryland for 20-30 minutes in the evening, then proceeded to picket at another Justice’s home for 30 minutes, where the crowd grew to 100, and finally returned to the first Justice’s home to picket for another 20 minutes. This is exactly the kind of conduct that the Maryland and Montgomery County laws prohibit.”
The marshal cited Maryland law, which states that “[a] person may not intentionally assemble with another in a manner that disrupts a person’s right to tranquility in the person’s home” and that law “provides for imprisonment for up to 90 days or a $100 fine.”
The letters dated July 1 also cite a Montgomery County law that says “[a] person or group of persons must not picket in front of or adjacent to any private residence,” and a law that says a group can march in a residential area “without stopping at any particular private residence.”
Following the release of the leaked draft, but before the court issued its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a California man was arrested near Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase and charged with attempting to kill a judge. Nicholas Roske, is accused of flying to Maryland with a gun and burglary tools with plans to break into Kavanaugh’s home to kill him. Prosecutors said he was angry over the leaked draft and the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Tex. Roske has pleaded not guilty. | 2022-07-02T04:48:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court marshal, in letter, asks Maryland officials to enforce anti-picketing laws - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/supreme-court-justices-picketing-homes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/supreme-court-justices-picketing-homes/ |
By Heba Farouk Mahfouz
Paul Schemm
Houseboats along the Giza bank days before their expected removal in Cairo, Egypt, on June 27, 2022. (Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images/AFP/Getty Images)
CAIRO — When Ekhlas Helmy married and went to her husband’s spacious new apartment in Cairo’s tony island neighborhood of Zamalek in 1961, she felt like she had moved into a prison. Born and raised in one of the ornate houseboats that adorn the banks of the Nile, she said nothing could compare to the river breezes and the lush garden she had left behind.
Her husband agreed, and together they designed and built a houseboat of their own where she has lived the rest of her days, with an army of cats, a dog and several ducks.
Until the government decided last week that Cairo’s few remaining houseboats were an eyesore and had to be removed.
“After I have lived very happily, now I hate my life,” said the 87-year-old as she watched volunteers help cart away her possessions from the once lavishly furnished two-story boat with its sky blue walls, carved balconies and white trim.
The African continent’s largest city has always been in a state of flux with more historic buildings than are found in most countries, but now more than ever, its managers are seeking to change and modernize it — often to the detriment of its older treasures. Trees are being felled, public spaces reworked and old neighborhoods bulldozed in a process inspired more by the glittering cities of the Persian Gulf than Cairo’s own heritage.
Saving the sounds of an ancient city
The houseboats, once found all over the city’s Nile banks, have been an integral part of the country’s history, hosting belly dancers, artists, intellectuals, even American diplomats and German spies, seeking a peaceful oasis amid Cairo’s intense bustle.
With a steady breeze coming down the river from the Mediterranean, the houseboats were cool even during the blazing heat of summer and cushioned from the blaring street noise by the riverside greenery.
The boats’ tenuous position between water and land, however, has also been their downfall, as residents had to appease a string of government institutions: the Ministry of Irrigation for their place on the Nile, the Ministry of Agriculture for their mooring spot on land and a host of other bodies including, eventually, the all-powerful military.
The increasing pressure on the boats came to a head these past weeks with the announcement that they would be either towed or demolished starting July 27. Half of the 32 vessels have been removed, with the rest expected to be gone by July 4.
Ayman Anwar, head of the Nile Protection Authority, has become the face of the government effort to clean up the river and said bluntly that despite repeated warnings, all the boat owners had failed to renew their licenses and were behind on fees.
“In 2016, we sent many notices through the Irrigation Ministry and gave owners the opportunity to sort things out by 2020,” he said on June 26 on ONTV. “Their status was in violation of the law. The state gave them many opportunities, but no one was responsive.”
“A decision has been made by the state, not the Ministry of Irrigation, that the Nile should not have residential houseboats,” he said, adding that it might be acceptable to remake them into commercial establishments.
His account is sharply disputed by residents of the boats, who describe an escalating campaign against them starting in 2016, with rising permit fees and taxes by several government bodies, climaxing in a refusal to accept money to renew the permits.
Even as boats are demolished and towed away, residents are told not only that they will not be compensated, but also that they owe hundreds of thousands in unpaid fees.
Award-winning Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, 72, dreamed of retiring on the Nile and bought and renovated a boat in 2013. She described an escalating process as more government bodies began charging the houseboat for being allowed to exist, with fees that jumped one year from $100 to $3,200.
“We got caught in this legal labyrinth,” said Soueif, whose activist nephew, Alaa Abdel Fattah, has been in prison for much of the past decade. “Every one of us has hired four lawyers.” At one point, she was told she owed $48,000 in back fees, but “that even if you pay it, you will be moved.”
“They will cut it up and sell it for scrap,” she said in tears, recalling how both her children had their weddings on the boat and its Nile-side garden. During the pandemic, her son and his family moved in with her.
“These houseboats are very much part of the cultural identity,” she said. “Everyone, and I mean all Arabs, know at least one iconic movie scene that was set in a houseboat.”
There have been reports of houseboats since the 19th century, but they seem to have reached their zenith in popular imagination during World War II. The patriarch in Nobel-winning author Naguib Mahfouz’s famous Cairo trilogy kept his dancer mistress on a house boat.
The U.S. envoy to Egypt during WWII, Alexander Kirk, had a houseboat decorated with bowls of white ostrich feathers where he held well-attended parties for the diplomatic corps and wore lavender silk tuxedos.
Nothing said Cairo quite like the ever-present water pipe — until Egypt banned them to fight covid
Most famously, two German spies were discovered living on a houseboat where they conspired with future Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (and a belly dancer) to pass information on British troop movements to Gen. Erwin Rommel.
Ahmed Zaazaa, an urban designer and researcher, said the removal or transformation of the houseboats into commercial properties is all part of the wholesale revamping of the city, which has gathered pace since 2017 and includes building a massive new capital out in the desert.
Whole neighborhoods, including public housing projects, have been bulldozed to widen roads and build new ones. There has been an extensive reworking of some areas along the Nile to accommodate high-end cafes and restaurants.
“They are commercializing all the public spaces and reintroducing them as public spaces, and of course these are not public spaces, these are food courts,” Zaazaa said, noting that many of the designers have taken their inspiration from the very young, skyscraper-ridden city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. “There is a very clear approach from the government that doesn’t see any kind of value in the heritage, any kind of value in the city memory.”
With their role in Egypt’s novels, movies and plays, he said, the houseboats are a big part of the city’s legacy that is all being swept away in a vision that has little time for the historic.
For Helmy, on her blue boat, it’s all about history. While her husband died before the boat was finished, Helmy lived a happy life along the Nile that she could never have imagined in the steaming concrete and cement that wraps around so much of Cairo.
“Someone who lives in a houseboat feels all the beautiful things around them, fresh air, animals and for a widow like me, you don’t feel alone, you feel like you have the whole world with you,” she said.
Volunteers have agreed take care of the dog and cats and ducks, but Helmy, who has no other home, doesn’t know what she will do.
“They should tow it while I am inside. Either we drown together or we live together,” she said.
Schemm reported from London. | 2022-07-02T05:48:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cairo's Nile houseboats face destruction amid government renovation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/egypt-cairo-houseboats-nile-demolition/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/egypt-cairo-houseboats-nile-demolition/ |
British Skepticism of the Courts Has Deep Roots
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 25: Abortion rights and anti abortion rightactivists fill the street in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during a protest in the wake of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade outside on June 25, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health overturned the landmark 50-year-old Roe v Wade case and erased a federal right to an abortion. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images North America)
Twenty miles west of central London there lies a memorial inscribed, “To commemorate Magna Carta, symbol of Freedom Under Law.” Sir George Mudie’s construction was paid for by the American Bar Association, not the native British.
Not long after the memorial was unveiled, British comic Tony Hancock finished a tirade against bureaucracy with the line: “Magna Carta, did she die in vain?” How many English school children today know that in 1215 King John bowed to the barons and signed the great charter that put restrictions on his arbitrary rule?
Hancock’s joke about British ignorance of their history conveys a deeper truth: The law plays a less visible and contested role in the UK than it does in the US — though that may be changing.
Many in the UK were shocked by the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. The British sometimes feel they “own” the US, just as Americans prize their special vision of the UK. The Black Lives Matter movement, for instance, resonated deeply in London and other British cities, although problems over race and policing over here are different in more than just scale.
How could “our” America take away a woman’s right to choose? When the news broke that Roe vs. Wade had been overturned, performers at the Glastonbury music festival vented their rage with expletives. Even prime minister Boris Johnson joined in, as if by right.
If more British observers understood the role of the Supreme Court in interpreting the US Constitution, there perhaps would have been less surprise, though dismay would hardly have been diminished.
The Washington DC beat is staffed by British correspondents versed in great power politics or Westminster veterans who relish getting to grips with the most sophisticated and well-funded democratic campaigning machines on the planet. Explaining the ramifications of Supreme Court decisions is not the most glamorous part of the job. Arguments about the opposing claims of federal government and states’ rights are seldom aired.
The British therefore remember Watergate but few recall President Nixon’s railing against “the liberal jurisprudence” of Chief Justice Earl Warren’s Court (1953-1969) for being unfaithful to the text of the US Constitution. We think of President Reagan’s “Star Wars” program and his sunny optimism, but overlook his election pledge “to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children.”
Yet opposing judicial philosophies and contested Supreme Court appointments are the bread and butter of American politics. The decisions of the Court from the time of Marbury vs. Madison (1803), the Dred Scott decision (1857), Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954) and Roe vs. Wade (1973) have helped shape the US, for good and ill.
On this side of the Atlantic, however, the British respect the law and the courts, but they don’t expect them to play a central role in politics. Governments may call in senior judges to chair inquiries into their failures, but both the politicians and the public are wary of judicial meddling.
The left and the trade unions still have a lingering suspicion of what they used to call the “Tory courts” and conservative judges. In pre-democratic times, the judges enforced reactionary laws against sedition and free speech. In earlier centuries, too, court decisions threatened the unions’ right to organize and withdraw their labor. More recently, the unions fought tooth and nail to stop the adjudication of labor-management disputes by a new (Tory-created) industrial-relations court.
On the political right, Tories have for decades trumpeted the virtues of “the rule of law.” Yet attitudes are shifting. Leading Conservatives these days have begun to complain that the judges have surreptitiously assumed new powers to curtail the executive.
Judicial review is becoming more commonplace. Policy Exchange, the most influential Conservative think tank in London, has a unit which monitors and criticizes judicial “activism.” Progressives in turn blame Tory politicians for hasty, ill-framed legislation that necessitates judicial “tidying up.”
Tectonic shifts in Britain’s relationship with Europe have also dragged the courts into the limelight. After the establishment of the single European market, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg took on a highly visible role because its job is to ensure that every nation applies the same commercial rules and standards. This development undoubtedly fanned the flames of Brexit sentiment among influential Tory lawyers.
Tony Blair’s Labour government also set up a Supreme Court for England and Wales — although it had no power to override the legislative as the American court can. In 1998, he incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — wholly separate from the European Union — that enabled people to bring cases in UK courts to uphold their rights rather than wait for lengthy appeals to the supreme tribunal in Strasbourg.
Many Tories dislike the role of the ECHR in limiting the freedom of the executive. Strasbourg recently stopped the government from deporting asylum seekers and migrants who had illegally entered the country after British judges had given ministers the green light. And Conservatives fear that far-reaching decisions about society’s values may be delegated to the judges. The rights of transgender people, for instance, are now hotly debated. Will the judiciary be called upon to adjudicate?
In these debates, British lawmakers could learn a lot from studying the workings of the US constitution. There is much to emulate — and to avoid. | 2022-07-02T06:19:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | British Skepticism of the Courts Has Deep Roots - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/british-skepticism-of-the-courts-has-deep-roots/2022/07/02/0bcac5f4-f9cd-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/british-skepticism-of-the-courts-has-deep-roots/2022/07/02/0bcac5f4-f9cd-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Fish is fried at Godwin's Fish and Chips, a longtime "chippy" shop in Preston, England. (James Forde for The Washington Post)
CHORLEY, England — It is a perilous time for fish and chips, the golden fried food for the masses, celebrated as Britain’s “favourite meal” and “the national dish.”
As it turns out, a lot of that fish comes from Russian trawlers and the sunflower oil from Ukrainian fields.
With Russia’s war raging in Ukraine, that means skyrocketing prices for hungry Brits. The ingredients for an order of fish and chips — by design cheap and caloric — now cost more than twice as much as at the start of the year.
And so we find ourselves with Andrew Crook, president of the National Federation of Fish Friers, standing outside of a shuttered “chippy” in this small town about 20 miles northwest of Manchester. His organization estimates that a third of the United Kingdom’s 10,500 fish and chip shops will go out of business in the coming year.
“We’ve survived through two world wars, a depression, multiple recessions. We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Crook, who owns a nearby shop, Skippers of Euxton, where he is about to raise prices in the hope of staying afloat.
Your average chip shop has always run on tight margins. But owners say they never imagined they would be victims of a 21st-century globalized commodity economy upended by World War II-style artillery engagements in Europe and then crippled by a naval blockade in the Black Sea.
This is our new world.
It’s hard to overstate the centrality of the chippy in British life — the traditional mom-and-pop joint, aromatic with grease, gleaming with stainless steel fryers, where the orders are dosed in salt and vinegar (or gravy or curry), before being tidily wrapped in a piece of paper. Even if many owners these days are recent immigrants, the shops remain one of the most reliable of British institutions.
Fish and chips were “originally the working man’s lunch, and it is the meal a family would eat together on a Friday night, that would fill you up, fill up all your kids, no matter how many kids you had, and the low cost and high calories were always part of that deal,” Crook said.
Nick Andronicou and his wife have run Charlie’s Chips in Chorley for eight years. Both are from Greece and wanted their daughters to get an English education.
“It’s been a good business, very reliable. Same customers — they come once a week, or three times a week. It is good for the pensioners, good for people on a budget,” said Andronicou, whose shop sells a small order of fish with chips, mushy peas, bread and butter and tea for about $5.50.
He just ordered new menus because he is about to increase prices. But the future looks bleak, in his view. He assumes he will lose even some regulars. “A lot of chip shops will close,” he said.
In some pubs, where fish and chips are also a staple, chefs say the dish is now more expensive to make than a steak filet. The businesses that manufacture fish fingers and fish pies on an industrial scale are feeling the squeeze, too. Schoolchildren will soon see a favorite lunch option disappear.
All sad news, but restaurants and schools can change the protein on their menus. The fish and chips shop cannot, nor can they easily switch the fish they serve. The chippy customer is highly resistant to experimentation; they want the same bland white fish that the shops have served for about 160 years — meaning cod or haddock, few of which are found in British waters.
The chippies have tried to peddle tilapia, skate and hake. They have not won fans.
Originally a food phenomenon of the Victorian era, fish and chips is as basic as can be.
Cod. Potatoes. Oil. Heat.
But the supply chain is highly complex.
Ukraine is the world’s leading supplier of sunflower oil, producing 50 percent of the global supply. But with its ports now a war zone, blockaded by Russia, the price of its sunflower oil has tripled. Shipping overland — via train and truck — jacks up costs further.
Many chippies have pivoted to palm oil from Asia, only to see prices for that climb similarly. Fearing it would run out of oil as global demand soared this spring, Indonesia briefly blocked palm oil exports. The move sent more shock waves through the commodities market.
There’s one more issue. While fish and chips is traditionally considered a quintessential “British” meal, this is not really true. Most of the whitefish in the market today comes from the fishing fleets of Norway, Iceland and especially Russia.
Cod and haddock are cold-water fish — and with climate change, they have been migrating north, about seven miles a year, to the higher latitudes.
“Our home waters have never produced much in the way of cod and haddock,” the traditional foundation of fish and chips, noted Barrie Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organizations.
Russian trawlers supply half of the whitefish consumed in Britain and between 30 percent and 60 percent of the fish for chip shops, depending on the year and price, according to Aoife Martin, operations director for the government monitoring agency Seafish.
To sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government announced that it would slap a 35 percent tariff on Russian whitefish. The action was to take effect in March but was delayed. Skeptics assume the government is fearful of a price hike and what it might do to the chippies. Government officials promise the tariff is “imminent.”
British fleets still catch a decent amount of cod these days, though they are hard-pressed by the soaring cost of fuel. Diesel has doubled, in part because of the Ukraine war and energy sanctions against Russia.
Deas says the British fishing sector has hit an economic tipping point, with many vessels idling in port. He pointed to recent reports by his organizations: A vessel in southwest England made a landing of fish worth $13,396, but fuel costs swallowed $12,630. In another case, a landing of $53,560 and a fuel bill of $35,240 plus other expenses left $2,290 for each of the eight crew members.
“This is a tough job,” said Deas, who said British captains have been struggling to find crews willing to risk their lives to go to sea for virtually no money.
Alex Bracewell runs Godwin’s Fish and Chips in nearby Preston. The business has been in the family for four generations. They’re a popular spot, with good parking.
“We’ll make it, I think,” Bracewell said Tuesday. “But the shops just hanging on?”
He shrugged, then darted back to deal with the lunchtime rush. | 2022-07-02T06:19:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. fish and chip shops face bleak future because of the Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/ukraine-wars-collateral-damage-britains-beloved-fish-chip-shops/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/ukraine-wars-collateral-damage-britains-beloved-fish-chip-shops/ |
SALT LAKE CITY — For Utah, one era is ending. For Minnesota, one seems to be beginning.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — San Jose Sharks coach Bob Boughner and his staff were fired two months after the regular season ended, a move the team said it made to clear the decks for the next general manager to pick new leadership behind the bench. | 2022-07-02T07:46:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Friday Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/friday-sports-in-brief/2022/07/02/3956c3ec-f9d2-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/friday-sports-in-brief/2022/07/02/3956c3ec-f9d2-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
A woman holds a sign that reads “I am a mother and I advocate legal and safe abortion” during a demonstration in Rio de Janeiro on International Women's Day on March 8. (MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP via Getty Images)
“What we see in Brazil and in other countries in Latin America where abortion is criminalized, on top of the law, there are barriers created that make it harder to access care,” said Debora Diniz, an anthropologist at the University of Brasilia who studies abortion rights. “And the most vulnerable people, the most fragile, are the most impacted.”
Diniz said cases such as the child’s could foreshadow what is to come in the United States now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade: “When there is a state of judicial insecurity, as we see now in the United States, with each state deciding its own policy, that insecurity creates a space ripe for misinformation and fear.”
More than 17,000 children aged 10 to 14 in Brazil become pregnant each year, according to government figures. These mothers are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women over 20, and also have greater chances of suffering uterine ruptures, preeclampsia and anemia.
In 2020, antiabortion activists, including several politicians, gathered outside a hospital in northern Brazil to protest a legal abortion for another 10-year-old. Authorities said the girl had been impregnated by her uncle, who raped her repeatedly. When her hospital in Espírito Santo state denied her an abortion, she was taken to a hospital in Recife, more than 1,000 miles away.
But public opinion is changing. Polls show support for complete abortion bans is falling, and abortion rights activists are hopeful the country will join the “green wave” of legalization that has swept Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. A case waiting to be heard by Brazil’s supreme court calls for the decriminalization of abortion through 12 weeks of gestation.
Federal law guarantees rape victims a right to the procedure at any stage of the pregnancy. But Brazil’s health ministry recommends that all abortions be conducted before 22 weeks. The hospital, citing that guidance, refused to perform the procedure without judicial authorization.
Mexico decriminalizes abortion, a dramatic step in world’s second-biggest Catholic country
“If it is possible to see something positive from this tragedy, it is the mobilization it generated,” she said. Even if this case is resolved, we understand we have to continue mobilizing, to call on the international community, to increase visibility and pressure. The fight for the legalization of abortion is here.” | 2022-07-02T10:23:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An 11-year-old rape victim in Brazil sought an abortion. A judge urged: Stay pregnant. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/brazil-child-rape-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/02/brazil-child-rape-abortion/ |
Miles Bridges, who averaged career highs in points, rebounds and assists for the Charlotte Hornets last season, was arrested on a felony domestic violence charge Wednesday in Los Angeles. (John Minchillo/AP)
Miles Bridges, one of the bigger names of this summer’s NBA free agency period, was arrested on a felony domestic violence charge Wednesday in Los Angeles.
The L.A. Police Department confirmed the details in a statement Friday, saying that Bridges was arrested for “intimate partner violence with injury” following an incident Monday in West Los Angeles.
According to online records, Bridges was booked and released on $130,000 bond Wednesday evening. His arraignment is July 20.
Bridges’s wife, Mychelle Johnson, shared photos of various injuries Friday on Instagram, as well as an apparent medical report. Dated Tuesday, the report listed her diagnosis as: “Adult victim of physical abuse by male partner; assault by strangulation; brain concussion; closed fracture of nasal bone; contusion of rib; multiple bruises; strain of neck muscle.”
“I hate that it has come to this but I can’t be silent anymore,” Johnson wrote on Instagram. “I’ve allowed someone to destroy my home, abuse me in every way possible and traumatize our kids for life. … I won’t allow the people around him to continue to silence me and continue to lie to protect this person.”
Johnson also said she suffered “torn muscles in my neck from being choked until I went to sleep.”
Bridges, a 6-foot-7 forward, averaged a career-best 20.2 points, 7 rebounds and 3.8 assists for the Charlotte Hornets last season, his fourth in the NBA after he was selected with the 12th overall pick in the 2018 draft out of Michigan State. He is a restricted free agent and the Hornets have given him a qualifying offer, meaning they can match offers from other teams. Before his arrest, he was expected to draw sizable offers from a number of teams, including the Detroit Pistons (Bridges hails from Flint, Mich.) and Indiana Pacers.
NBA free agency opened Thursday evening. Bridges has yet to sign with a team.
The Hornets said in a statement Thursday that they “are aware of the situation involving Miles Bridges. We are in the process of gathering additional information. We will have no further comment at this time.”
Charlotte reportedly is hesitant to offer Bridges a max contract because it already is paying sizable salaries to Gordon Hayward and Terry Rozier and would like to eventually re-sign LaMelo Ball and P.J. Washington to extensions. Giving Bridges a long-term deal would put Charlotte in danger of having to pay the NBA’s luxury tax, something the team has never done.
Still, General Manager Mitch Kupchak said Tuesday, before Bridges’s arrest, that the team intended to have him back next season.
“As an organization, we love Miles,” Kupchak said during a news conference introducing new coach Steve Clifford. “We’re going to bring him back. He’s been great for the franchise, and I believe with his work ethic he’s only going to get better.”
Thomas Floyd contributed to this report. | 2022-07-02T10:27:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LAPD confirms Miles Bridges’s domestic violence arrest; wife details injuries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/miles-bridges-arrested-domestic-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/miles-bridges-arrested-domestic-violence/ |
Metro transit police officers to get body cameras this year
Transit department officials say they hope the cameras will bring transparency and build public trust, but questions remain on how they will be used
The Metro Transit Police Department plans to outfit officers with body cameras this year as the department tries to increase public trust and erase a reputation among some riders of excessive force and biased policing.
The transit agency received a $905,000 grant from the Department of Justice to buy the cameras for the department, which has jurisdiction across Metro’s rail and bus systems in the Washington region. The new cameras are the latest change for Metro and the police department it oversees, coming after allegations of police using tactics that disproportionately affect Black riders.
The agency recently named a new police chief, created a civilian review board to handle police complaints and has refocused officer performance reviews away from arrest quotas. Police officials say body cameras are a next step in the transformation, while civil rights groups and elected leaders say proof of a commitment to transparency will depend on how cameras are used and how quickly footage of incidents is shared publicly.
Transit police said they are researching those issues as they create policies for the devices, which already are used at several police agencies in the area. The department set a goal to have officers patrolling with the cameras by 2023.
“This grant gives us the ability to move forward with implementing a body-worn camera program similar to those of our peers in the region,” Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Anzallo said in a statement. “Our focus remains on safety, transparency and building community partnerships. I believe implementing this new program is another positive step in the right direction for the department.”
The department, which has 490 sworn police officers and 64 special officers who serve as security, expects to have the cameras in use by 2023.
Acting Metro transit police chief will stay in role, agency says
The use of body cameras has increasingly become standard among law enforcement agencies. A National Institute of Justice survey six years ago found nearly half of police and sheriff’s agencies had acquired body-worn cameras, including 80 percent of large police departments. Growth in their usage can be traced to arrests and police killings of Black men within the past decade in cities such as Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and New York that sparked calls for greater scrutiny of police stops and practices.
The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a summer of nationwide protests two years ago pushed several states to pass laws mandating cameras for officers, including Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina and New Mexico, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In recent years, technology has improved to make cameras more reliable while police departments and elected leaders have altered policies to speed the release of footage in high-profile incidents.
Metro board member Tracy Hadden Loh said the work of other law enforcement agencies will serve as a guide for transit police. Loh was a Mount Rainier, Md., city council member in 2016 when the city’s police department became one of the first in the state to use body-worn cameras.
“A lot of the kinks have been worked out in terms of the technology and in terms of the best policies in order to govern how they’re used in the field and how the footage is stored and released,” she said.
The Metro board and transit police began working to improve transparency and community relations one month after Floyd’s death, creating an investigations review panel. The panel includes four people not affiliated with a police agency and three law enforcement officials from outside the department who critique finished internal affairs investigations and make recommendations to improve interactions with residents.
Critics say the panel has no power to sanction officers or change policies. Metro officials counter that a stronger and more autonomous board would require approval from the cities and counties served by the Metro system.
Metro board creates transit police review board; critics say it’s not enough
The department also began an overhaul of policies and strategies in summer 2020, including stepped-up efforts to recruit and retain minority and women officers, and changes to performance evaluations away from “quantitative metrics,” such as arrest quotas.
The changes came at the request of the transit police union after Floyd’s killing and were an acknowledgment of many Black residents’ contentions.
Carlean Ponder, co-chair of the Silver Spring Justice Coalition, charged that police continue to escalate minor issues to arrests, citing the case of Howard University student DeSean Smith, 21, who was arrested last month at the Silver Spring Metro station for fare evasion. Ponder said Smith was thrown to the ground and had a knee pressed into his back while being handcuffed and searched. Advocates protested the arrest last month at the Metro station to bring attention to the case.
Metro Transit Police union calls for reforms, including ending emphasis on arrests and ‘stop and question’
“The violence was not necessary,” Ponder said.
Not having body-camera footage makes lodging complaints against police difficult, said Smith’s father, Kevin Smith.
“It is an uphill battle,” said Kevin Smith, 40, of Philadelphia. “Visual proof is necessary, but in conjunction with visual proof, that proof needs to be seen quickly and by everybody to effect change.”
DeSean Smith’s father said his son didn’t want to comment on the incident. Metro declined to comment on Smith’s arrest, saying it remains an active case.
Group releases first report after reviewing complaints against Metro Transit Police
D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who has called for increased oversight and monitoring of transit police while holding hearings on police abuse allegations, said he will be eager to see the department’s body camera policies.
Allen said the agency needs to consider when officers turn cameras on, how long footage is stored, who can request the footage and when it will be released — issues the D.C. Council tackled while “creating an entire legal framework” for D.C. police body cameras, Allen said.
“It is unclear to me what [Metro’s] proposal on that is, as well as where is the oversight on the implementation?” he asked. “Should we expect that to come from local jurisdictions? Should that come from the [Metro] board itself? I think there’s a lot of question marks about that, because the video itself is a really good step, but what you do with the video and how you use it as a tool for transparency and accountability is pretty instrumental in having that tool be used correctly.”
Metro spokesman Ian Jannetta said in a statement that a transit police committee that includes police commanders, union members and lawyers is working to establish those policies. The policies will include best practices of regional police forces, including D.C. police, Metro said.
The transit agency has also sent drafts of policies to the Justice Department for review.
Ronal Serpas, a Loyola University criminology professor who served as the police chief of the New Orleans and Nashville police departments, said law enforcement agencies generally have adopted policies that call for the quick release of video footage.
“There’s laws that are different in all parts of the country, and if a prosecutor’s prosecuting a case and says ‘this is the type of video evidence I have to have to prosecute the case’ — then there may be some questions they might raise,” Serpas said. “But I think more and more, people are just erring on the side of — just release it.” | 2022-07-02T10:49:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Metro Transit Police to get body worn cameras - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/02/metro-transit-police-body-cameras/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/02/metro-transit-police-body-cameras/ |
Hart Island, the nation’s largest public cemetery, was created for the destitute but now serves a surprising range of people
By Mary Jordan
Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in the Bronx on April 9, 2020, during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. (John Minchillo/AP)
NEW YORK — Valerie Griffith’s final journey began on a battered ferry, a floating hearse bound for a most unusual island.
Nobody lives on Hart Island, a scruffy one-mile slice of land in Long Island Sound that New York’s tabloids call “Forgotten Island,” “Haunted Island” and “Isle of Tears.”
For 150 years, it’s been known as the place where the city buries its penniless — not art collectors like Griffith.
But on Dec. 7, 2020, Griffith’s coffin arrived at Hart Island’s dock and was loaded onto a truck for a quick drive to a trench the size of a tennis court. There, on a cold and wet morning, gravediggers lowered her simple wooden coffin into the muddy ground. No relative or friend was present and there was no mention of her remarkable life: how the English-born Griffith had helped the U.S. military during World War II, exposed antisemitism in the United States and married an American spy.
Griffith was simply No. 14 in plot No. 414.
Into the same mass grave, workers stacked 136 more coffins, three deep.
“I’m very surprised she ended up there,” said Pascal Imperato, a former New York City health commissioner who had spoken several times with Griffith and shared her interest in African art. “Valerie Griffith and her husband lived well. These are not poor people.”
But Hart Island, where New York City has buried more than 1 million people since 1869, is undergoing the biggest changes in its history. The city’s Department of Correction, which ran the burial ground like a penal colony for more than a century, relinquished control last year, and inmates no longer dig the graves. Millions of tax dollars are being spent to tame wild brush and demolish crumbling buildings.
Harder to see is the most significant change of all: a growing diversity of the people being buried here.
“It’s a wider mix of people,” said Melinda Hunt, who has spent years documenting the island and those buried on it. Hunt, the founder of the nonprofit Hart Island Project, said many families felt “shame” about its association with prisons, but light is coming to this “dark place.”
Along with Griffith, among those interred there recently are a professional ballet dancer, a nurse, a software engineer, a scuba instructor and an acclaimed musical composer.
New York City’s Hart Island is the nation’s largest public cemetery, but cities and towns across the country also run these potter’s fields, and many of them, similarly, are no longer just for the poor.
Several factors are driving the national shift, including a backlash against the steep cost of burials. Some people who can afford a private burial are refusing to pay for it. When police call a relative to inform them that their brother, mother or some other family member has died and to give them details of how to make funeral arrangements, many relatives do nothing. Some can’t afford burial costs that can easily reach $10,000.
Americans’ dramatic drop in religious affiliation means less interest in established rituals of churches and synagogues that mark milestones, including death. Today, many people don’t want the kind of funeral their parents and grandparents had.
And notably, the growing economic and social diversity of those interred in taxpayer-owned cemeteries comes amid spiking numbers of bodies that no one ever comes to bury. While no national count exists, a Washington Post investigation found that thousands of bodies go unclaimed every year.
When relatives of a dead person walk away, they force local authorities to make arrangements for the body left in the morgue. Medical examiners noticed a steady rise in the unclaimed beginning in 2009, during the Great Recession, and a surge in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“It’s one of the biggest issues we see — abandoned bodies. It’s almost an epidemic,” said Poul Lemasters, general counsel of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association.
Local officials who deal directly with the unclaimed, including Meredith Buck, the coroner in Bucks County, Pa., said people who end up this way are not all destitute.
“Some of these people owned a home,” said Buck. “But nobody really tells the police or the coroner, ‘Hey, I think this person has a bank account.’ ”
In New York City, the unclaimed typically wind up on the ferry to Hart Island.
In 2020, that boat was grimly busy. It carried 2,600 coffins — three times as many as the year before.
The body of Valerie Griffith was in one of them.
A penthouse life
Three weeks before her quick, anonymous interment, Griffith had died in her Manhattan penthouse. Cardiac arrest was her official cause of death. She was 101.
Her life story — reconstructed from interviews, U.S. immigration records, declassified FBI documents, university archives and a 12-page job application she once filled out — started thousands of miles from Hart Island.
Born Valerie June Courtenay in England in 1919, she first worked as a “kennel maid,” a caretaker of dogs. But when Germany began bombing London in World War II, she studied German, Italian and French, and those skills helped land her a secretarial job at the U.S. Embassy in London that often got her in the room with Averell Harriman and other top U.S. diplomats.
An avid reader and aspiring journalist, she wrote radio scripts for U.S. soldiers. She also sent European dispatches to the New York Herald Tribune when John Steinbeck, already a sensation for his bestseller “The Grapes of Wrath,” was the paper’s war correspondent based in London.
Along the way, she met Sanford Griffith, an older, divorced man born in Oregon who had a curious array of jobs: U.S. military interrogator with fluency in five languages, stockbroker, professor and correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He also was a spy working for British intelligence.
When she was 34 and he was 61, they married in 1954 in a Northern Virginia courthouse. Six weeks earlier, Griffith had arrived in New York City aboard a transatlantic ocean liner with two swimming pools and an art deco dining room covered in gold leaf.
“The couple are well known in diplomatic circles in America and Europe,” reported a 1954 article in the very local Sussex Agricultural Express in England. They went to Canada and Cuba for their honeymoon.
The horror of the Holocaust bonded the Griffiths. Both fought against antisemitism in the United States. In a widely reported incident in 1957, Valerie successfully booked into the Homestead resort in Virginia at the same time a Jewish woman with the last name Kaplan was told there were no rooms. The Anti-Defamation League, where Sanford Griffith worked, then filed a formal complaint.
In the 1960s, the Griffiths rented a penthouse apartment in the Shenandoah, a 74-unit building in the heart of Greenwich Village; they also owned a house in Middletown, N.Y., a two-hour drive away in the Hudson Valley. The couple traveled often to Africa and brought back hundreds of wooden and bronze art objects.
Then, in 1974, Valerie’s life shattered.
While she was making tea and her husband was reading the Sunday newspaper, Sanford Griffith died of a heart attack.
In shock, Valerie, then 55, called Brenda McCooey, Sanford’s daughter from his first marriage.
“ ‘I don’t know what to do now,’ ” her stepdaughter recalled Valerie saying. “She was in shock.”
McCooey said her father was not religious, and that when people in her family died, they were cremated, “instead of wasting money on funerals and flowers.”
McCooey described Valerie as quiet and the opposite of her gregarious father, a man who would suddenly turn a picnic into a skinny-dipping outing. “That 1974 phone call was the last time we ever spoke.”
After her husband died, Griffith gave lectures on African art at the New School in Manhattan, but she spent much of her time alone. She had been an only child, and had no children of her own. Her husband had been the organizer of their trips and dinners, and without him, her social life shrank.
She loved history, as she said on a 1949 job application for UNESCO. She grew up in a slower and more formal world. She often wore a tweed suit just to check for a letter in her building’s mailroom. In the 1980s, fast money on Wall Street sent rents soaring. Her penthouse was rent-controlled, but young stock traders were paying 10 times as much as she did.
Historian Thomas Mahl talked to Griffith in the 1990s for his book about British covert operations in the United States during World War II. Declassified documents and Mahl’s research showed how Sanford Griffith, on behalf of the British government, used fake public opinion polls and other deceptive propaganda to push Congress to join the war against Adolf Hitler.
Griffith spoke to Mahl for hours and told him unexpectedly intimate details, including that she had once been pregnant but lost the baby.
“I got the feeling she had no one else to talk to,” Mahl said.
Griffith gave others the impression she was not interested in talking to them, according to her stepdaughter and many neighbors. The Post spoke with two dozen residents in her building who had never said more than hello to the elderly woman in Apt. 15A. They knew little more than that she was about 5 foot 4 inches tall and spoke with a British accent. They didn’t know, for example, that she had worked with the U.S. military in France to create the famous cemetery at Normandy, a moving memorial to Americans who died overseas that is visited by 1 million people a year.
“She avoided people,” said Alfred Drapala, 92, a neighbor in Middletown who for years would see Griffith planting flowers in her garden. If he walked near her, she seemed to withdraw and didn’t say hello, he said. When he heard about her fascinating life and lonely burial, he said, “It’s very sad.” Drapala said he would have enjoyed talking to her about the war. He was living in his native Poland when German troops came to his town in 1939, a day he recalls vividly.
Another Middletown neighbor, Patricia Corn, lived near Griffith for decades but was busy juggling children and work and spoke with Griffith only once. In 1987, Corn knocked on her door and asked if she was interested in selling her century-old yellow clapboard home. “I never forgot her answer,” Corn said. “She said, ‘I need a place to store my books.’ ”
Jamila Dphrepaulezz was one of the few of her Manhattan neighbors who had chatted with her. Dphrepaulezz had her pug Onyx with her when they met in the building’s elevator, and after that, Griffith would always ask, “How’s your little dog?”
Dphrepaulezz described Griffith as shy. “She wasn’t one of those people who spots you from across the street and yells, ‘Hi!’ No. She was reserved.”
When Griffith was in her 70s, the internet began connecting people in new and faster ways. But Griffith never embraced the digital age. “She had no wires for cable, no internet,” said Kyle Moffitt, the manager of her Manhattan building. “She had a little TV — a 12-inch box with rabbit ears — and a bunch of VHS tapes.”
Rather than shopping online, she walked to shops well into her 90s. She bought tea, milk and other groceries at Gristedes, a store near the 14th Street subway stop.
She never owned a computer or cellphone.
Vanishing traces of a life
A caretaker helping Griffith in the final months of her life called 911 on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2020. Her heart had stopped. She became “M20-066908” in the city morgue.
A year earlier, movers had taken away many items from her apartment, which had been crammed with African statues and sculptures, according to Moffitt, the building manager. He said Griffith had told him they were going into storage, but he didn’t know where.
She no longer had her country home. When Griffith was 95, a man who lived on her penthouse floor in Greenwich Village, Alan Lechner, bought her Middletown house on two acres for $50,000. He declined to speak to The Post.
A little-known agency, the Public Administrator, handles cases in which a person has no next of kin and no will. That office sells off the deceased’s belongings and arranges a funeral. But an intake officer at the Manhattan Public Administrator said the office has no record of looking into Griffith’s estate. The agency relies on the medical examiner’s office, police, landlords and others to notify it, and then it sends out investigators.
The medical examiner’s office did not respond to inquiries about Griffith’s case.
With stunning efficiency after she died, all traces of Griffith’s long life — her art, books, photos, furniture, wedding ring — vanished.
What happened to her belongings is unknown. Estate lawyers say the valuables of isolated elderly people often disappear, taken by people who know that the person has no regular visitors to notice or complain.
Visiting Hart Island
In 1869, Louisa Van Slyke, a poor 24-year-old immigrant who died of tuberculosis, became the first recorded burial on Hart Island. Since then, the city has used the island to bury people with no money, friends or relatives.
Over the years, part of the island also had a military presence, including a unit of Black soldiers during the Civil War and a Nike missile base in the 1950s. Its brick buildings at different times housed people city officials called “vicious boys,” psychiatric patients, drug addicts and prisoners. In 1982, Mayor Ed Koch tried unsuccessfully to put small-time offenders, including graffiti vandals, to work there.
Every health catastrophe meant soaring numbers of burials. In the 1980s, when fear about a deadly new virus called HIV meant many funeral homes would not accept the corpses of AIDS patients, many were buried on Hart Island. Their relatives have been pushing for easier access to visit the gravesite.
Even now, only a small number of visitors are allowed — on only two days a month and if they make formal requests in advance.
On a rainy Sunday last September, The Post joined nine people, mostly relatives of someone interred there, for a rare glimpse of the island.
On that day, one visitor was on the verge of tears as he boarded the ferry. He said he had been traveling when his friend, a Manhattan hotel worker from Venezuela, died.
This man, a retired professional soccer player from the Netherlands, seemed embarrassed that he had to deal with prison officials to request to visit his friend’s grave. “It wasn’t easy to find out what happened to him. I had never heard of Hart Island.”
All visitors that day had to turn over their phones to a prison guard on the Bronx dock where the only ferry to the island departs. Jail officials were still running the island at the time, and so no phones or photos were permitted. That’s changed now that the city’s parks and transit departments are in charge, but park enforcement officers still shadow every visitor.
The ferry ride to Hart was only 10 minutes. A prison guard was waiting in a white van near the rocky shore and drove the visitors to the requested gravesites. On the short drive to Griffith’s plot, the island looked eerily empty. Deer, raccoons and geese were the only signs of life.
Decrepit buildings scheduled to be demolished made a dreary contrast with the stunning views. Faint laughter carried over the water from a passing sailboat.
“Number 414 is right there,” the prison guard said, pointing toward a patch of dirt.
There were no headstones, but three feet below were the remains of 137 people. Their names, according to interviews, were as diverse as America’s biggest city: Mark Grant, Jose Santiago, Deborah Healy, Tian You, Joseph Birbiglia, Kwo Sher, Kjodo Lack, Turan Akyol.
The bodies of many of these people had not been claimed by anyone, according to interviews with their relatives and acquaintances. But one, Noah Creshevsky, chose to be buried there.
Creshevsky was an acclaimed composer and electronic musician who taught at the famed Juilliard School. He created what he termed “hyperreal” sounds, mixing instrumentals with recordings from the street and TV. His husband, David Sachs, said in an interview that it was Creshevsky’s wish to be buried alongside “those who have nothing” and that the simple burial on Hart Island was his way of protesting the trappings and cost of traditional funerals. “He didn’t want to support the death industry and its expensive caskets,” Sachs said.
A blank canvas
Marjorie Velázquez, a New York City Council member, sees the day coming when those buried on Hart Island will be “honored like fallen soldiers.”
When she toured the island last year, she was surprised at its conditions. “When you get there, you’re shocked. You look around and say, ‘What the hell?’ ”
Valerie Griffith’s final resting spot was a weed-strewn stretch of dirt with a single concrete stake noting the number of her mass grave.
Many people interred there were unlucky or lonely, Velázquez said, and the island needs to be “a place where we all can reflect on the value of life and our priorities and remember that none of us escapes death. We all end up together.”
The pandemic and bureaucracy have slowed promised improvements to the island. But Velázquez would like to see a new ferry — perhaps leaving from Manhattan or some more accessible place — and a new visitors center that would “show how the island is an archive of the city’s history.”
“This is our moment when we’re starting with a blank canvas and designing how we will honor so many lives.” | 2022-07-02T10:49:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hart Island, New York's public cemetery, prepares for new era, more diverse burials - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/hart-island-new-york-cemetery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/hart-island-new-york-cemetery/ |
Demonstrators gather at the federal courthouse in Austin, Texas, on June 24 following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Eric Gay/AP)
Legal wrangling over abortions in Texas took a further twist overnight Friday, after the state Supreme Court blocked a lower court order issued just days earlier that had temporarily allowed the procedures to resume.
The Texas Supreme Court in Austin granted an “emergency motion for temporary relief” filed Wednesday by the state’s attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton, staying a temporary restraining order that had been granted earlier this week by Harris County Court. A further state Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for later this month.
Texas has left a nearly century-old abortion ban on the statute books for the past 50 years while Roe v. Wade was in place. With Roe struck down, Paxton had advised that prosecutors could now enforce the 1925 law, which he called a “100% good law” on Twitter. However, the claimants have argued that it should be interpreted as repealed and unenforceable.
On Tuesday, a Harris County judge granted a temporary restraining order until at least July 12 to allow clinics to offer abortions for at least two weeks without criminal prosecution, days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade to end a constitutional right to abortion.
Clinics that had sued the state had stopped their abortion procedures after the ruling, but raced to take advantage of a fleeting reprieve Tuesday after Judge Christine Weems (D) ruled that a pre-Roe ban enforced by Paxton and prosecutors would “inevitably and irreparably chill the provision of abortions in the vital last weeks in which safer abortion care remains available and lawful in Texas.”
Paxton then asked the state’s highest court, which is stocked with nine Republican justices, to temporarily put the lower court order on hold, which they did in Friday’s decision. The state Supreme Court order allows civil, but not criminal, enforcement of the ban.
Abortions in Texas can temporarily resume, judge rules
“These laws are confusing, unnecessary, and cruel,” Marc Hearron, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights advocacy group said in a statement following Friday’s ruling. The American Civil Liberties Union, also a party to the legal proceedings, said it “won’t stop fighting to ensure that as many people as possible, for as long as possible, can access the essential reproductive health care they need,” according to staff attorney Julia Kaye.
Texas had strict abortion laws in place even before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Last year, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed into law Texas Senate Bill 8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy — before many people even know they’re pregnant — with no exceptions for victims of rape, sexual abuse or incest. It also employed a novel legal strategy that empowered ordinary people to enforce the law, by suing anyone who may have helped facilitate the abortion.
Tuesday’s temporary restraining order had been seen by many reproductive rights advocates as a last chance for clinics to offer abortions, as Texas is one of 13 states in the country with a “trigger ban” in place. The “trigger ban,” which was preemptively designed to take effect if Roe was indeed struck down, is scheduled to take effect in the coming weeks.
Caroline Kitchener and Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report. | 2022-07-02T10:49:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas Supreme Court blocks order that allowed abortions to resume - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/texas-supreme-court-order-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/texas-supreme-court-order-abortion/ |
A New Yorker cartoonist chronicles the rise of a socialist state senator
Artist Sofia Warren shadowed New York legislator Julia Salazar to write the graphic memoir ‘Radical: My Year With a Socialist Senator’
Julia Salazar answers questions after winning the Democratic primary in a New York State Senate race in 2018. (Julie Jacobson/AP)
Sofia Warren’s belief in government was plummeting toward rock-bottom. Demoralized and disillusioned, she tried making political donations, but nothing was “changing the landscape of my life all that much.”
From such a low view, though, sometimes you stop to appreciate what’s growing at the grass roots. And in her community four years ago, a movement was gaining traction.
Warren, a cartoonist who contributes to the New Yorker, began to notice a new candidate who piqued her creative interest. This energetic woman from Brooklyn was nicknamed “La Esperanza (the Hope) de Bushwick.” She was Julia Salazar, and she was running for New York State Senate, buoyed by tenant-rights activists. In a moment of inspiration, Warren fired off an email to the campaign: “I’m interested in making a graphic novel about government,” it read. And it could be powerful to focus on Salazar’s initial stage as a state senator.
From the seed of that first message sprouted a sprawling project. Last month, Warren published a graphic memoir titled “Radical: My Year With a Socialist Senator.” It spotlights a then-freshman politician and her staff while providing a window into how local activism can help spark state-level change.
“Radical” is part civics primer for young-adult readers, yet its layered on-the-ground narrative can resonate with anyone interested in the convergence of money and power, the will of organized voters and the wheels of closed-door compromise.
The book also intertwines two budding careers. Salazar, who had not previously planned on holding office, would take readily to legislative life. And Warren, who had never created a graphic novel before, would embrace the fieldwork that sparked her own political awakening.
Yet as Warren began toting her art tools from snowy Brooklyn tenant marches to the vaulted offices of Albany, just what was she searching for — and what did she discover?
The candidate and the cartoonist first met up at a Brooklyn coffee shop in the fall of 2018. The two women were the same age — 27 — but their paths to this casual Sunday sit-down were starkly different.
Salazar had just won her Democratic primary in a Brooklyn district, making her a shoo-in to take office the following January as the youngest woman ever elected to the New York State Senate. Running on rent-law issues, the community organizer had unseated a Democratic incumbent — not unlike how another young Latina New Yorker and Democratic Socialist outsider, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had done several months earlier, on the way to winning a seat in Congress.
On the other side of the coffee-shop table, Warren was no activist — and she didn’t grow up in a particularly political family — yet she saw narrative potential in Salazar’s ascent. Her plan: Embed with the senator’s team so she could observe, question and sketch.
Salazar was not a reader of comics. Yet her intuition told her to trust Warren.
“I just took a leap and agreed to it,” the state senator says by Zoom from her Brooklyn home. The candidate already felt so exposed by her campaign trial by fire that she thought: “Well, nothing can hurt me now — sure, follow me around for a few months.” Months turned into nearly a year as Warren earned the confidence and insights of Salazar staffers.
Warren was also taking a leap of trust in herself: “I hadn’t done anything longer than 10 pages before this book,” Warren says by phone from Bed-Stuy. “This was quite a departure.”
Warren was savvy enough, though, to bring along a graphic novel that inspired her: the first volume from the “March” trilogy, the late Rep. John Lewis’s civil rights memoir that had recently received a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. “When she gave me a copy,” Salazar says, “it allowed me to get a stronger sense of what she envisioned.”
John Lewis finished this graphic memoir as he died. He wanted to leave a civil rights ‘road map’ for generations to come.
“I was never interested in writing a hagiography of Julia Salazar,” Warren says. Nor would this be a reporting assignment — “I’m not a journalist,” the author notes. Instead, this was a cartoonist’s personal journey into the belly of the beast. Through full access to Salazar, the author sought to illuminate the tensions and political tools at play when an outsider movement fights for a cause like affordable housing.
Warren asked herself: “How does it work when a Democratic Socialist insurgent [is] actually asked to complete the task of governing?” And how does a “compelling, young, scrappy” team of outsiders effect change in a district of high gentrification and entrenched real estate forces?
In some “Radical” chapters, the narrative aperture widens to explore the mechanics of street-level activism. The book draws the contours of the battle lines: “With market-rate rents skyrocketing and public housing wait-lists in the hundreds of thousands, tenants pushed out of rent-regulated homes often had nowhere to go.”
On the state level, “Radical” tracks how the Democrats gained power in the Senate in 2019 and depicts the looming presence of then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), with whom a statewide tenant-group coalition called Housing Justice for All is much dissatisfied. He might pose as a friend to the cause, Warren writes, but “talk is cheap.”
Warren, 31, believes in the power of graphic storytelling.
As the daughter of visual artists who met at the Rhode Island School of Design, she was raised in that state reading such syndicated strips as “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side,” and she warmly remembers her father reading the funny pages aloud to her brother and her when they were small — “to make sure we understood the jokes.”
Warren calls herself “somewhat of an introvert,” so taking on an artistic role helps her expand her horizons. “One of the things I love most about the medium of comics is that it gives me a kind of excuse to learn things and go into spaces I would otherwise not feel comfortable — or not feel like I had a purpose in,” Warren says. “That certainly was the case with this project.”
Warren also made clear that this would be a subjective memoir. The author, for instance, refers to “conflicting claims” over Salazar’s character during the campaign, as some media questioned her background and identity. (Salazar says she was born and raised in Florida to an immigrant Colombian father and an American mother, and that she identifies as Jewish).
Warren ultimately chose not to plumb those 2018 controversies for resolution. “It didn’t feel important on a personal level. I felt like I couldn’t not have it be a part of the story, nor would I want to exclude it entirely, because this is a part of her narrative” — yet the author chalks up much of the criticism to the mudslinging of a grueling campaign. “By the end, it just did not matter to me very much.”
Warren also insisted upon creative freedom. She says Salazar and her team believed in transparency in conveying day-to-day life of state politics. Says Salazar: “There weren’t any stipulations — I just thought that Sofia was so respectful in the way she went about it.”
Salazar flips through her copy of “Radical” during a Zoom call — what does she think of it? “I feel very fortunate to have this documentation of my first year in office,” the senator says, noting: “It came out even better than I could have imagined.” And because the entire book is set before the pandemic, “it makes me pretty nostalgic.”
Salazar was struck by one surprise: While seeing the book’s depictions of her own mannerisms and speaking style, she thought: “Wow, I feel like I’m reading scenes about my mom!” She also says “Radical” prompted her to “really reflect on how much I’ve grown” as a more confident person.
The book was a growth project for Warren, too. “At the beginning I felt reluctant around the term ‘democratic socialist’ — in part for lack of information,” she says.
Politically, “I would not have identified that way, and I would identify that way now.”
So what does she hope young readers might take from “Radical”?
She is no “cheerleader for our governmental system because it’s pretty messed-up,” Warren says, noting a Supreme Court ruling on concealed guns delivered just hours earlier. “It’s not a system that’s working for me.”
Still, “There’s possibility for it to work better.” | 2022-07-02T10:53:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Julia Salazar's political rise is the subject of a new graphic memoir - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/07/02/julia-salazar-radical-sofia-warren/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/07/02/julia-salazar-radical-sofia-warren/ |
In trainings, Florida tells teachers that religion belongs in public life
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced a new civics education program on Thursday. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel via AP)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — New civics training for Florida public school teachers comes with a dose of Christian dogma, some teachers say, and they worry that it also sanitizes history and promotes inaccuracies.
The First Amendment prevents the government from “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” which scholars widely interpret to require a separation of church and state.
DeSantis accused textbooks of ‘indoctrination.’ Here’s what he meant.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has made civics teaching a cornerstone of his education policy, and he says he’s fighting back against “woke indoctrination” of students by teachers from kindergarten to colleges.
“We’re unabashedly promoting civics and history that is accurate and that is not trying to push an ideological agenda,” DeSantis said at an event this week.
In Florida, he said, students are “learning the real history, you’re learning the real facts.” DeSantis has signed into law new civics curriculum standards, introduced last year for middle-schoolers, which met with little opposition from teachers, who say they are comprehensive and apolitical.
But the “civics bootcamps” DeSantis launched this summer to instruct teachers on how to implement the curriculum have alarmed many in public schools. Judd said the trainers told teachers, “This is the way you should think.”
“One of the insulting assumptions was that we’re all these woke indoctrinators, and so they were presenting a remedy for that,” Judd said.
The training sessions began last month and will continue through July for teachers who volunteer to take them. While not mandated by the state, they come with a $700 stipend for three-day sessions, with a chance to earn a $3,000 bonus and a “Civics Seal of Endorsement.”
“It was basically, it’s this way or no way, like there’s only one side to American history,” Fusco said. “Then they kind of slipped in a Christian values piece, ignoring the fact that this country is made up of so many different cultures and religions.”
Central Florida Civics teacher Abe Lopez supports DeSantis’s emphasis on civics and the way the governor believes the subject should be taught. DeSantis invited Lopez to speak at his June 30 event announcing improved civics assessment scores among middle-schoolers. Lopez, who was a member of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s staff, said he was surprised during his first year of teaching last year that his seventh graders knew so little about civics.
“I used this opportunity as a blank slate to help my students understand that their rights are intrinsic and do not come from a man, they do not come from a government. Our rights come from a creator,” Lopez said in his speech. “And once you acknowledge that your rights come from a creator, they can’t be taken away by a man or a government.”
In an interview, Lopez, who was a national committeeman for the Republican National Hispanic Assembly and who in 2020 posted information on Twitter for “Stop the Biden Steal” rallies in Florida, said he keeps politics out of his classroom.
“We need excellence in civics education, and I think Governor DeSantis’s program is a model for the nation,” Lopez said.
Analysis: How Florida Gov. DeSantis is trying to destroy public education | 2022-07-02T10:53:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Religion belongs on public life, Florida tells teachers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/02/desantis-civics-separation-church-state/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/02/desantis-civics-separation-church-state/ |
House GOP women are a crucial piece to party’s next move on abortion
There are 32 women in the House GOP conference, the largest number in history. And their ranks are expected to grow in a midterm year.
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) speaks during a news conference in Missouri in 2020. (Jeff Roberson/AP)
Serving in Congress for almost a decade, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) finally sees the opportunity to move antiabortion legislation that she has proposed one step closer to becoming law.
Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) is hoping to advance her legislation that would increase reporting about abortion pills, while also beginning to look at what other regulations can be used on such drugs.
And freshman Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) reminded colleagues last week that the Supreme Court ruling overturning the right to an abortion means that Republicans should go beyond protecting the unborn by also proposing policies that support women and their families.
After last week’s Supreme Court ruling, some Republicans leaders immediately called for codifying a nationwide ban on abortion, arguing that it was the logical next step in the right’s multi-decade quest to outlaw abortion. But if Republicans retake the House in this year’s midterm elections, they will likely need the backing of a key group of lawmakers to enact any new antiabortion legislation: the women in the House Republican conference.
It’s something Republican women have done before.
In 2015, House GOP leaders had to pull a 20-week abortion ban bill from consideration after about two dozen Republicans, most of them women, objected to a provision that dictated exemptions would only be given to women who had reported a rape to law enforcement. The likelihood of that bill becoming law also was nonexistent under Democratic President Barack Obama, making it a feckless exercise that could have hurt Republicans in the 2016 election, Republican women said at the time.
“I wouldn’t call them ‘women’s issues,’ but they’re issues that we live every single day, and I think it’s going to bring a breadth and depth to our conference that we haven’t seen in a very long time,” Wagner said in an interview. "When you come at something as a mother and a grandmother, you come there from a completely different perspective.”
There are 32 women in the House GOP conference, the largest number in history after 11 women flipped Democratic-held seats in 2020. And their ranks are only expected to grow: Almost 300 women filed to run in Republican House primaries, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee, at a time when the election cycle is favorable to Republicans. The GOP only needs to net five seats in the midterms to regain the House majority.
But, of the roughly dozen House Republican women who spoke to The Washington Post about current plans, few wanted to discuss the possible legislative implications of the recent Supreme Court decision. Nineteen offices did not respond to requests for interviews.
That lack of detail has not insulated them from criticism from the left.
“I’ll put it to you this way: It’s an anti-woman, anti-people of color platform. It’s taking us back to the days, the heydays, of the KKK without the hoods and where women are people to be controlled. That’s their vision for the entire country,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) said.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion that the Court should reconsider “substantive due process precedents” decided in landmark cases, specifically those that paved the way for contraceptives access, same-sex marriage and decriminalizing sodomy. Democrats have zeroed in on those comments, accusing Republicans of wanting to impose a nationwide abortion ban without exceptions, limit access to birth control and possibly risk women’s lives if they cannot abort ectopic pregnancies ― all questions House Republicans may have to address if they regain the majority next year.
“I mean, every woman should have access to birth control,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said in reaction to hearing Thomas’s concurrence.
Others were quick to attack Democrats’ efforts as fearmongering, without explicitly stating whether the cases Thomas mentioned should be revisited.
“The [majority] opinion was very explicit that it does not go into any of those areas [that Thomas detailed] whatsoever. The opinion couldn’t be more plain in terms of some of these other areas,” Wagner said. “These are scare tactics, and I find it, frankly, egregious that they’re trying to conflate the two.”
Most Republican women interviewed were united in their belief that those nuances should be left for state lawmakers to decide.
Asked whether she would support a federal ban on abortion, freshman Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Tex.) said it’s a decision that “belongs in the states.” Pressed on whether she supports exceptions in the case of rape and incest, she again pointed to state lawmakers’ acting based on what their constituents say is the best course of action.
“I think, at the end of the day, this was a ruling that gave the power back to the states as it should be. That’s really, I think, the precipice for this entire discussion,” Rep. Stephanie I. Bice (R-Okla.) said. She did not respond to follow-up questions about whether Republicans could codify other restrictions to potentially sweeping antiabortion legislation.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also skirted questions during a news conference last week, noting: “The Supreme Court is a separate branch of government. They take their own positions.”
Republicans have not introduced legislation that would criminalize miscarriages or bar access to birth control or in vitro fertilization, and several GOP aides, who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations within the conference, said there is little support for voting on issues that are not divisive, like access to birth control.
“We’ve been clear on the pro-life, abortion issues for decades. … No current legislation, or anyone in leadership, is for criminalizing miscarriages or banning birth control,” one senior GOP leadership aide said.
Several women in the conference have also publicly stated support for antiabortion legislation if it includes exceptions. Earlier this year, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) said she backed a bill in her home state that banned abortions once fetal cardiac activity is detected, but included exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest or if the life of the woman is at risk. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), whose mother was advised to terminate her pregnancy for the sake of her health, says she supports rare exceptions for a woman’s health and rape and incest when such a circumstance is reported to law enforcement.
Mace, at a roundtable conversation last month, said she has privately heard female colleagues agree with her position, that they would not support legislation if it didn’t include such exceptions.
“I can imagine that in a Republican-controlled Congress you’ll see some guardrails put in, but I don’t think it would be an extremity. I think it would just be guardrails, making sure we have exceptions in there,” she said.
Walorski, who was one of the women who had concerns over the 2015 legislation, did not say whether she would support the current version of that bill. The legislation, known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, is currently being amended by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) to ban abortions beginning at 15 weeks, down from 20, but it still includes the exceptions that faced backlash seven years ago. Leaders have said the legislation would be one of the first antiabortion bills a GOP majority would consider on the House floor.
Another bill that could be considered is Wagner’s Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act legislation, which would force health-care practitioners to care for a child who survives an abortion. Republicans are also seriously discussing voting on another bill Smith has introduced that would “ban the use of federal funds for abortions or for health coverage that includes abortions”— often referred to as the Hyde Amendment — and also prohibit abortions from being performed at federal health-care facilities or by a federal employee.
As Letlow mentioned moments after the Supreme Court ruling came down, women in the conference are also looking to pursue legislation they consider pro-family. Hinson has stressed the need to expand maternal health access in rural areas, where women often drive significant distance to get care. Rep. Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) is looking to tweak provisions in the Social Security Act to help redirect state funds toward online portals that connect families in need to organizations that can provide services, such as churches, foster care and donation centers.
Mace also plans to introduce legislation that would create a first-of-its-kind website, Life.gov, a central location for people all over the country to find family planning services, including where to get birth control, health services and information on how to put a child up for adoption.
Walorski, who could become chairwoman of the Worker and Family Support subcommittee in a GOP House majority, hopes to keep pushing bipartisan work, including reauthorizing funding to help and mentor women in need with young children. She also says her legislation dealing with expanded access to child care and paid family leave is part of a GOP task force’s recommendations that Republicans hope to introduce in the majority.
Because control of the Senate is in flux and Biden will still be president, there is a recognition among Republicans that any legislation must be nuanced and likely will need bipartisan support, even if the GOP takes back the House. But Democrats are asking where this bipartisan spirit was when Republicans voted against expanding the Child Tax Credit, increased funding for baby formula, and paid family and medical leave.
“The arsonists now want us to trust them to put out their fire? This is insulting. Republicans have been on a 50-year extremist crusade to snatch away a woman’s right to make decision about her own reproductive health. Voters won’t be fooled by Republicans’ hollow attempts to hide their dangerous plan to ban abortion nationwide,” said Helen Kalla, deputy communications director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Right now, Republicans are opting to leave the difficult questions regarding abortion laws to the states. But how far they may go and the barriers the women in the GOP conference may pose to a blanket nationwide ban remains to be seen.
“I think this is just the beginning actually, so states get to make their laws,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said last week. “I think that’s a huge win for the life movement and the unborn and for mothers. So we’ll see, we’ll see where things go from here.” | 2022-07-02T10:53:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House Republican women will be key in abortion legislation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/republican-women-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/republican-women-abortion/ |
The term that ended this week is eliciting comparisons to the most striking in the high court’s 233-year history
Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, left, and Brett M. Kavanaugh watch as President Donald Trump arrives to give his State of the Union address to Congress at the U.S. Capitol in 2019. (Doug Mills/AP)
The avalanche of change achieved by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority this term spans the breadth of American life, and its work draws comparisons to the most momentous decisions in the court’s history.
They continued a string of victories for conservative religious groups that dismantle the old rules regarding the role of religion in public life. After a decade of Supreme Court inaction, they expanded Second Amendment jurisprudence to bless the right to carry a weapon outside the home. And in a final flourish, the court’s dominant six-justice bloc limited the ability of government agencies to issue sweeping protections of health, safety and the environment without specific authorization from Congress.
The court’s landmark decisions were not handed down from the bench but posted on a webpage. The grand marble courthouse is off-limits to the public, the result of the pandemic and threats against the justices, who now work behind a high black security fence.
Inside, tensions reportedly are high, the result of a leak of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s draft decision in Dobbs and the investigation into how it happened. Police are positioned outside the justices’ homes, and a man has been indicted on charges he planned to kill one of them.
The purported target was Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, 57, nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed in 2018 after an explosive confirmation process that split the nation.
Kavanaugh was in the majority in 95 percent of the cases this term, and Vladeck said Kavanaugh has never been recorded on the losing side in one of the court’s emergency orders; he often is the deciding vote.
Kavanaugh has stepped into the role once played by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and that alone “shows how the court has shifted to the right,” Garre said. “Justice Kavanaugh now has enormous influence on how far the court goes. His separate concurring opinions [in Dobbs and the gun case] drew limits on the decisions that all but bind the court, for now, given his key role.”
The court’s liberals, in the final term of Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s four decades of judicial service, were largely sidelined. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan each were in the majority fewer times than last term, according to figures compiled by SCOTUSblog, and they vented in a series of sharply worded dissents.
Ginni Thomas’s emails with Trump lawyer add to tumult at Supreme Court
Alito responded by quoting Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s dissent in the same case.
It is the court’s reputation that has been Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s preoccupation, and he has pursued its protection in the past by advocating an incremental approach to change in many areas.
“Roberts differs from the other conservatives only about how quickly the court is moving, not where it’s ending up,” said Vladeck.
The Supreme Court of the United States
How a Supreme Court ruling on tuition aid could impact separation of church and state | 2022-07-02T10:53:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court’s conservatives ignite a new era with sweep and speed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/supreme-court-conservative-majority/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/supreme-court-conservative-majority/ |
Ray Jefferson in the clubhouse of his office building in Singapore on Sept. 21, 2020. (Ore Huiying for The Washington Post)
It’s a bad time for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to be without top leadership.
But the Senate has yet to confirm President Biden’s nominees for two crucial but long vacant positions — undersecretary for health and undersecretary for benefits — that are essential to guiding the department as it navigates these new developments. The benefits vacancy now seems hopeless, without Senate support for its well-qualified nominee, Ray Jefferson, who fought the ghost of refuted allegations.
The health slot has not had a confirmed undersecretary for more than five years. After the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs unanimously advanced Shereef Elnahal to head the Veterans Health Administration two months ago, chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) pushed for expedited full Senate approval. That was stopped by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), but Elnahal’s nomination probably will be voted on later.
“I sure hope he gets done quick, fast, and in a hurry,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said at a news conference. “Because we need him badly.”
During the confirmation hearing, Republicans cast doubt on Jefferson’s innocence, despite Labor’s reversal of the findings against him. During the confirmation hearing, the top Republican on the committee, Sen. Jerry Moran (Kan.), disagreed with Jefferson’s statement that the charges against him were found to be baseless and without merit, saying, “I think there’s a difference between baseless and without merit, and unsubstantiated.” | 2022-07-02T10:53:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Top VA posts need filling as nominee fights refuted allegations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/top-va-posts-need-filling-nominee-fights-refuted-allegations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/top-va-posts-need-filling-nominee-fights-refuted-allegations/ |
NFL Commissioner Roger Godell testifies to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform at last week's hearing about the workplace culture at Washington's team. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
When reports surfaced nearly two years ago that the Washington NFL team’s workplace was rife with sexual harassment, owner Daniel Snyder initially attacked the claims as “a hit job” and part of an orchestrated campaign to defame him. Later, amid scrutiny from the NFL, Snyder shouldered partial responsibility, saying that he had been “too hands off” in his stewardship of the team.
“Mr. Snyder himself fostered the Commanders’ toxic workplace,” Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the committee’s chairwoman, said at the outset of a June 22 hearing, summarizing the committee’s findings.
Daniel Snyder conducted ‘shadow investigation’ of accusers, panel finds
“The culture was how Dan wanted the culture at the time,” said Pauken, who testified under oath after being subpoenaed by the panel. “ … I think that in the end, it all stems from the owner, Dan Snyder.”
“He would call me Mr. Goody Two Shoes,” Pauken testified. “Or he would say to another executive, or friend or somebody that I don’t like girls. I’m Mr. Goody Two Shoes. … That was just part of what it was like being in an abusive relationship.”
Snyder “said that Larry was a sweetheart, and that Larry wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Lafemina testified. “ … it was obvious that he was fond of Larry and that he thought that Larry was well intentioned and that he didn’t want anything bad to happen to Larry.” | 2022-07-02T10:54:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daniel Snyder was not ‘hands off’ as an NFL owner, witnesses told committee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/dan-snyder-house-oversight-transcripts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/dan-snyder-house-oversight-transcripts/ |
Brittany Kaiser, the provocative Cambridge Analytica veteran, has become critical to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky. Not everyone is enthusiastic.
Brittany Kaiser, former employee of Cambridge Analytica, near the Capitol in Washington. The Chicagoan has remade herself as a crypto advocate and raised large amounts of money for Ukraine. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Brittany Kaiser burst into the limelight as a controversial Republican kingmaker — a young Chicagoan who, while running business development for Cambridge Analytica, helped marshal the data of tens of millions of Facebook users to press the 2016 presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.
Now Kaiser has taken on a sharply different role: helping to raise more than $100 million in cryptocurrency for Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Her involvement has been so essential to the country’s fight for democracy that Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, told The Post his nation’s war effort wouldn’t have been the same without her. “Brittany has been a great friend — a great friend for me and for Ukraine,” he said in an interview, citing both Kaiser’s strategic game-planning and social media connections as the country has fought against the bloody invasion. “We’re really happy to have her.”
In the world’s first crypto war, uncertainty about who will benefit
To many familiar with Kaiser’s story, championing Ukraine’s cause might seem like an unexpected transformation. At Cambridge Analytica, Kaiser not only worked closely with Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon but also helped foster the company’s relationship with Kremlin-linked Russian energy firm Lukoil. But Kaiser says her new work fits with a redemption tale that started when she began leaking damning information about her former employer after it came under fire in 2018.
The news of Kaiser’s role in aiding Ukraine adds a fresh twist to a complex character-study of a millennial (she’s now in her mid-30s) who combines cutting-edge digital tools with old-fashioned political instincts. And it raises questions of how to process a world in which technology can so often scramble ideology.
More than 100,000 people around the world have used crypto to donate to Ukraine’s war effort in a kind of grass-roots corollary to foreign-government aid. Ukrainian officials estimate that at least $100 million has come into its coffers, with tens of millions more pouring into NGOs such as Come Back Alive, which was started to benefit pro-Ukrainian fighters in the country’s east. The funds have enabled Ukraine’s purchase of everything from medical supplies to food to bulletproof vests.
FTC votes to approve $5 billion settlement with Facebook in privacy probe
Back during the 2016 presidential election campaign season, Cambridge Analytica — with the help of Facebook — improperly collected data on tens of millions of people so it could target “persuadables” in swing states with a barrage of ads. Many pundits believe the gambit got Trump elected.
Central to the effort was Kaiser, who in 2015 began working for the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL, securing numerous key partnerships. She gained a measure of fame as the scandal began to boil over in 2018, testifying at a parliamentary inquiry in the United Kingdom, releasing documents and positioning herself as a whistleblower. (Cambridge Analytica was also retained by Brexit’s Leave movement that led to the United Kingdom’s exist from the European Union.)
Her celebrity received a boost from the 2019 Netflix documentary “The Great Hack,” in which Kaiser came off as a kind of fraught hero seeking to atone for her privacy-invading sins. Kaiser also published a whistleblowing memoir, “Targeted,” and started an organization, Own Your Data, that advocates for citizens’ reclaiming their data from invasive exploiters.
Cambridge Analytica database identified Black voters as ripe for ‘deterrence'
She also worked with Gavin Wood — the crypto-tech pioneer who helped found the blockchain ethereum — to facilitate his donation of millions in the Polkadot currency he created, and recruited further donors within the so-called "Polkadot community.” To do this, Kaiser used what amounts to both a back-channel charm offensive and rallying public tweets. Crypto fundraising is much like the real-world kind — the skill lies in knowing where to look (and whom to thank). Wood did not reply to a request for comment.
“They’re up and down in bomb shelters, so me figuring out what to tweet was much easier,” Kaiser said, letting go a trademark big laugh.
She says that the exact amount she has been responsible for is difficult to pinpoint. But she can ballpark it. “It’s hard to say altogether — maybe a couple-hundred-million raised across wallets?”
What the life and death of Cambridge Analytica tells us about politics
Soon after she started raising money, Kaiser began traveling with high-ranking Ukrainian officials like Bornyakov and digital transformation minister Mykhailo Fedorov in their barnstorming tours around the world, even helping to convince them in May to travel to a crypto pavilion she had previously set up at Davos, her youthful energy matching the Ukrainian government’s can-do techie-ism. Her relationship with Bornyakov has become so close, she said, that they text “basically every day.”
Bornyakov said that in addition to bringing on big donors, Kaiser has helped with the setup of “multisig” wallets — the advanced crypto-storing app seen as safer because it requires validation from more than one user.
“It’s amazing what she’s doing,” he said.
But not everyone accepts Kaiser’s redemption story, seeing in it a story of opportunism more than selflessness.
“Brittany will do a lot of Machiavellian things in her career and makes it seem like she’s altruistic, when it all just depends on who she’s working for,” said David Carroll, a digital-rights activist who sued Cambridge Analytica and who has closely followed Kaiser’s work
“With Brittany, the tale she tells is never the whole story,” he added.
“At Cambridge, I didn’t realize that what I was doing most of the time had no ethical or moral compass,” she said. “But I’ve always been a very active human-rights activist,” citing her work as a member of Barack Obama’s media team during his first presidential campaign. “And this is as good a cause as you can find.”
Ukraine asked for donations in crypto. Then things got weird.
Kaiser seeks to turn even her Cambridge tenure as a noble moment. On the speakers’ website of CAA, which represents her, she identifies as “Cambridge Analytica whistleblower.”
Others, however, have questioned that view. Fellow ex-Cambridge employee Christopher Wylie criticized the whistleblower claim in his memoir, saying Kaiser’s willingness to spill the beans came only after she had little other choice.
And some reviewers of “Targeted” observed a strange lack of penance. “Like Breaking Bad, by the end of it you get the sense that she’s more concerned with her own legacy than reckoning with any wrongdoing of her own part,” NPR said in its review.
Some have also noted Kaiser’s involvement with polarizing players, such as Kaiser’s alleged links to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as chronicled extensively in a set of stories by the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr.
Kaiser’s latest turn will do little to dissuade some skeptics, given that the very value of a cryptocurrency rests on what those critics say is finding a greater fool to buy it. Kaiser’s actions go to the heart of crypto’s moral ambiguity, in which one person’s idealism is another person’s hustle.
"Crypto gives people access to services and funds they wouldn’t have had,” she said, citing bank freezes that would have made traditional-currency transfers to Ukraine much more difficult.
“It’s this overarching place that’s more consensual and democratic. And that really fits with what I believe.” | 2022-07-02T11:54:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cambridge Analytica's Brittany Kaiser has been working for Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/02/ukraine-crypto-brittany-kaiser-cambridge-analytica/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/02/ukraine-crypto-brittany-kaiser-cambridge-analytica/ |
The picks by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) were applauded by alumni resisting change at Virginia Military Institute
By Ian Shapira
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, gestures during an interview in his office at the Capitol in Richmond in February. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
In his first major step to shape the future of the nation’s oldest state-supported military college, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has named four White, mostly conservative members to the Virginia Military Institute’s Board of Visitors, including a former member who resigned in 2020 right before the vote to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson from the campus.
Two of the four new VMI board members appointed by Youngkin Thursday are well-known in Republican political circles or within the college’s conservative alumni wing.
John Adams, a McGuireWoods lawyer who graduated from VMI in 1996, ran unsuccessfully as the Republican nominee for Virginia attorney general in 2017. Adams, a former clerk for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, and his law firm were tapped by the VMI Alumni Agencies to consult on its response to an independent investigation ordered by Gov. Ralph Northam (D) into the college’s culture. The probe concluded that the school has a “racist and sexist culture” and must change.
A second Youngkin pick is Thomas “Teddy” Gottwald, the former VMI board member. Gottwald, who graduated from VMI in 1983, resigned his seat in October 2020 right before the body voted to remove from the Jackson statue from its prominent perch on the Lexington campus. The head of a petroleum additives holding company, Gottwald donated $77,500 to Youngkin’s campaign and another $25,000 to the Spirit of VMI political action committee — a group of alumni that has denigrated and mocked the investigation and reforms the college has made in response to the investigation’s findings.
The two other new VMI board members are: C. Ernest Edgar IV, a 1987 VMI graduate who is the general counsel of an engineering design and construction firm called Atkins North America, according to his LinkedIn page, and Meaghan Mobbs, a 2008 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., who is a consulting and public affairs firm vice president, and worked as a senior policy advisor to Youngkin’s campaign, according to her bio on her firm’s website.
Mobbs, a former member of West Point’s Board of Visitors, made news last year when she and other Trump appointees serving on similar boards at the Naval and Air Force academies were asked by the Biden administration to resign or be fired.
Mobbs refused to quit and tweeted that she found Biden’s move “unconscionable."
Adams, Mobbs and Edgar declined interview requests. Gottwald did not return messages seeking comment. In a statement Thursday announcing his selections at VMI and the rest of the state’s public colleges or universities, Youngkin noted that, among many of his priorities, were “protecting and promoting free speech, restoring the ability to have civil discourse."
Youngkin’s selections were highly anticipated by the VMI community.
Some graduates, students and faculty worry that the governor may completely overhaul the board — which oversees the school’s budget process and appoints its superintendent — with conservative members who would roll back some of the efforts designed to make VMI more inclusive and diverse. Just 6 percent of the college’s 1,650 cadets are Black, while women make up 14 percent of the student body.
Kasey Meredith assumed leadership of the Virginia Military Institute Corps of Cadets during the May 14, 2021 change of command parade. (Video: Virginia Military Institute)
“I am very unhappy with this chain of events,” said Shah Rahman, a 1997 graduate who helped spearhead the campaign for VMI reforms. “We’ve been worried about a reversal of progress even before Youngkin’s election, but especially now. The other side is not going to give up until the Jackson statue is back on campus. They didn’t believe in the investigation, and they’re completely against everything we’ve stood for and fought for.”
Matt Daniel, who helped launch and has chaired the Spirit of VMI PAC, did not return messages seeking comment. In a statement released Friday, the PAC said it “applauds” the appointments and said it had recommended two of the four picks, without saying who. “But all four reflect a respect and understanding of the educational and social rubrics and traditions that have made VMI great,” the statement read.
Youngkin also denounced critical race theory and issued an executive order once he took office banning Virginia’s public schools from teaching about systemic racism. Most recently, he’s begun rooting out the word “equity” from state government policies.
Youngin’s selections made VMI’s board slightly less racially diverse by replacing one Black member, Sean Lanier, a member of VMI’s Class of 1994. Lanier was appointed by Northam to replace Gottwald in 2020. The new makeup of the VMI board includes nine White men; four Black men; two White women; one Hispanic man; and one Native American woman.
“I would have liked to stay on the board,” said Lanier, a retired Army major who runs an Alexandria, Va.-based education non-profit called Resolve Solutions that helps minority students nationwide with their applications for colleges and ROTC scholarships. During his two years on the board, Lanier belonged to its diversity, equity and inclusion committee. He also helps administer an unofficial VMI Facebook group for the college’s minority alumni.
“When the former superintendent [retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III] asked me nearly a decade ago to help recruit more African-Americans to attend VMI, the percentage of Black VMI students commissioning was in the low single digits and, now well over 50 percent of Black students are commissioning,” Lanier said. "I’m very proud of that, but there’s still work to do.”
After Northam ordered the investigation in the fall of 2020, Peay, the longtime White superintendent, resigned. He was replaced by retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, a member of VMI’s Class of 1985, who became the school’s first Black superintendent.
Youngkin’s board announcements came shortly after he signed the state’s budget that pumped more money than usual into VMI and every other public four-year university or college in the state. For the 2022-23 academic year, VMI’s overall budget climbed to $111.3 million with about $29 million of that in state taxpayer funds. The prior year, the overall budget was $99.5 million with about $21.5 million from state funds.
One reason for the jump is that lawmakers agreed to give VMI an extra $3.7 million of general fund revenue in response to the college’s request to pay for academic support and cadet welfare initiatives, plus reforms recommended by the state investigation: the hiring of a slew of new employees in the admissions, Title IX, and chief diversity offices and an effort to rebrand or contextualize the campus’s Confederate tributes.
In the end, VMI’s $3.7 million allotment for its “One Corps, One VMI” initiatives has pleased school officials, according to the college’s spokesman Bill Wyatt. But the language of the appropriation appears to come with a slight caveat: the money may not be used to fund the expansion of the college’s chief diversity office, Wyatt said.
The General Assembly said that the money is designated to address several initiatives, such as the expansion of VMI’s Title IX office, the rebranding of its Confederate memorials and the adjustment of staff salaries. But the appropriation omits on the list of recipients any mention of VMI’s expansion of its chief diversity office.
The office is led by Chief Diversity Officer Jamica Love, the college’s highest ranking Black woman. Briana Williams, who is also a Black woman, was recently hired as the college’s deputy chief diversity officer. Wyatt said three out of the four positions for the diversity office have been filled so far.
“It was an expense we were hoping the state would fund,” Wyatt said. “But in the absence of state funding, we’ll find a way to fund it. We’re appreciative of the General Assembly and the governor for what they’ve provided this year. Any time you go into a budget session and come out with more money than you did before, that’s a good thing.”
Sen. George L. Barker (D-Fairfax), one of three members of the General Assembly who helped finalize the budget between the two chambers, said in an interview that VMI might be able to use some of the $3.7 million to cover the costs of its diversity office.
“My interpretation of the language is that VMI can clearly use the $3.7 million for the items listed, but that the language would not prevent them from using the money on the expansion of the diversity office if there was some money left over,” he said. “The intent of the House Republicans was to say that the expansion of VMI’s diversity office is not the starting point and that they wanted to fund the other items first.”
Barker said he didn’t fully understand why House Republicans didn’t want to include the expansion of VMI’s diversity office as one of the expressly stated recipients of the $3.7 million.
“There was not really a significant explanation from the Republicans, but it was clear that [allowing VMI to use the money for the diversity office] was something of a concern to them,” Barker said. “We had to really compromise on a few things.”
House Appropriations Chairman Barry D. Knight (R-Virginia Beach), who was negotiating with Barker and Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax), chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, over the final deal, did not return messages. | 2022-07-02T12:20:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Youngkin puts conservatives on VMI's board amid racism, sexism clash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/vmi-board-youngkin-racism-sexism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/vmi-board-youngkin-racism-sexism/ |
If it seems like a good fit, try a few sessions. Pay attention to how the interactions between the clinician and the other group members feel.
“I became anxious and depressed, and it disrupted my life,” the 43-year-old Minneapolis substitute teacher says. “I lived in a constant state of fear and worried that everyone I loved would die.”
Since 2019, America’s mental health needs have climbed. “More than four out of 10 adults, 43 percent, told a Census Bureau pulse survey in November 2020 they suffered from anxiety or depression,” The Washington Post reported last year. From late August 2020 through Feb. 1, 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans reported “symptoms of an anxiety or a depressive disorder increased significantly,” from 36.4 percent to 41.5 percent.
This is why it’s so hard to find mental health counseling right now
Unfortunately, many mental health professionals are too busy to accommodate the rising demand, says Vaile Wright, the senior director of health-care innovation at the American Psychological Association (APA). “We had a shortage of providers before the pandemic began, and it’s even worse now,” Wright adds.
Groups also foster benefits that individual therapy cannot, says psychologist Nicole Cammack, a clinical advisory board member for Sesh, a mental health platform that offers therapist-led support groups. “Not everyone is comfortable opening up right away, even to their own therapist,” Cammack says. In a group, however, people can hear from others facing similar struggles.
What is group therapy?
Therapist or coach: Understanding the difference and how to pick one
Lundberg’s group met three times a week via Zoom for several months. “The main benefit was being part of a caring group of people,” she says. “I looked forward to seeing them each week, and it helped me feel less alone.”
Another potential takeaway is that group therapy gives members the chance to receive feedback from many individuals. “This can lead to a broader perspective to solving life’s troubles,” Cammack says.
What is a peer support group?
After her mother died many years ago, Barri Leiner Grant, 56, a certified grief coach in Chicago, played host to a group event for motherless daughters. “I realized that we don’t ‘get over’ grief; we learn to live with the loss,” Grant says. Recognizing the need for more support, Grant was inspired to start “the Memory Circle,” a grief group for anyone coping with loss.
Tips for starting and getting the most out of therapy
Although each peer group differs, Wright says the underlying goals tend to be similar. “Peer support seeks to validate people’s emotions, help them feel less alone and create community,” she says.
Teri Brister, the chief program officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), says peer groups can be a good fit for anyone looking for personal support and to learn from others.
How to find a group
Health-care professionals including doctors and nurses can provide peer support and group therapy referrals. Online directories run by Psychology Today and the American Group Psychotherapy Association provide lists of therapy groups.
Teletherapy works, and it is vitally needed
To ensure confidentiality, check out whether your health information is sold, and if there’s a data breach, what recourse members have. | 2022-07-02T12:25:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Group therapy may hold answers for some - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/02/group-therapy-alternatives-mental-health/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/02/group-therapy-alternatives-mental-health/ |
By Leah Litman
Kate Shaw
Debbie Richerson heads into a polling place at John Chavis Memorial Park in Raleigh on May 17. (Eamon Queeney for The Washington Post)
Leah Litman is an assistant professor at the Michigan Law School and co-host of the podcast “Strict Scrutiny.” Kate Shaw is a professor at Cardozo Law School and co-host of “Strict Scrutiny.” Carolyn Shapiro is a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and co-director of Chicago-Kent’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States.
When the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, the justices in the majority insisted they were merely returning the issue of abortion to the democratic process. But a case the court has announced it will hear in its October term could make that democratic process a lot less democratic.
With that case, Moore v. Harper, the justices will review a North Carolina Supreme Court decision holding that the state constitution prohibits extreme partisan gerrymanders. The Supreme Court’s choice to take the case could presage yet another decision that will undermine democracy, by prohibiting other government institutions — here, state courts — from protecting voting rights and democracy.
Just three years ago, a 5-to-4 Supreme Court prohibited federal courts from addressing whether extreme partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution. But don’t worry, the court said, state courts can curb the practice if they conclude it violates state constitutions.
Harper invites the Supreme Court to go back on that promise. This invitation is based on an unsupportable legal claim known as the independent state legislature theory (ISLT). The theory would disable state courts from protecting voting rights in federal elections by eliminating state constitutional protections in those elections. And it would do so at a time when voting rights are under attack, including at the Supreme Court itself.
Less than a decade ago, the court eliminated the Voting Rights Act requirement that jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination in voting preclear changes to voting rules with the Justice Department or federal courts. And in July of last year, the court weakened what remained of the VRA, making it harder for plaintiffs to challenge voting regulations that impose disproportionate burdens on minority voters.
While those cases involved federal protections for voting rights, Harper could undermine state voting protections.
The issue in Harper is whether the federal Constitution prevents a state court from determining whether the state legislature violated the state constitution in setting rules for federal elections. The petitioners — Republican legislative leaders — are asking the court to hold that it is unconstitutional for state courts and state constitutions to protect federal voting rights.
This argument rests on a blinkered reading of two clauses in the Constitution that assign to the legislature of each state the job of identifying the “Manner” of appointing presidential electors and the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections. Neither clause suggests that state legislatures can violate their own constitutions.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist suggested this far-fetched theory in a concurrence in Bush v. Gore. But the theory failed to command a majority, and it was largely ignored for almost two decades.
But in the 2020 election litigation, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, in addition to Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas, expressed sympathy for the theory.
Since 2020, a mountain of scholarship has emerged thoroughly debunking the ISLT. Its historical bases are nonexistent. The Founders understood well that states could choose to have constitutions that constrain state legislatures, and that view has held sway in practice and law ever since. And state executive officials have also enjoyed considerable discretion to operate federal elections since the founding.
The ISLT is also wildly inconsistent with federalism. In our federal system, state courts have the final say over the meaning of state law; states also have considerable latitude in structuring their governments. The ISLT could transform cases about interpreting or applying state election laws into federal constitutional cases to be decided by the federal courts.
The theory would lead to a chaotic system in which states could not reliably hold unified elections for state and federal offices. Common state constitutional provisions guaranteeing that elections be “free,” “free and equal,” or “free and open” would not apply to laws governing federal elections, but would still apply to laws governing state elections.
So, for example, if a state court relied on a state constitutional provision to strike down burdensome registration or voter ID requirements, those requirements would nonetheless remain in place for federal elections. The state would end up with two systems — one for federal elections and one for state elections.
The ISLT would also empower heavily gerrymandered legislatures to make the rules regarding federal elections.
Fortunately, even if the court embraces the revanchist ISLT, that would not permit state legislatures to throw out votes already cast to appoint presidential electors of their choosing. The federal Constitution prohibits states from disregarding votes already cast, no matter what the court might say in Harper.
But the court’s endorsement of the ISLT would still create disarray and would enable anti-democratic power grabs. Given that the court, in overturning Roe, has just handed over what used to be a fundamental right to the political process, there could not be a worse time for making our democratic process less democratic. | 2022-07-02T12:25:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A Supreme Court gerrymandering case could further undermine democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/02/moore-harper-gerrymandering-supreme-court-state-voting-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/02/moore-harper-gerrymandering-supreme-court-state-voting-rights/ |
Yesli Vega, the Republican nominee for Virginia's 7th Congressional District, with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) on June 22 in Woodbridge, Va. (Steve Helber/AP)
“The left will say, ‘Well, what about in cases of rape or incest?’ I’m a law enforcement officer. I became a police officer in 2011. I’ve worked one case where as a result of a rape, the young woman became pregnant.”
So began Yesli Vega’s ill-informed comments on abortion, pregnancy and rape, caught on tape at a May event in Stafford County, Va., and published by Axios Richmond. Ms. Vega is the GOP nominee running to unseat Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. The two candidates differ dramatically: Ms. Spanberger is deliberate and moderate. Ms. Vega is bombastic and far-right — and, as evidenced by the tape, careless toward a key issue she’s running to have the power to legislate on. In the recorded conversation, Ms. Vega minimized the likelihood of pregnancy resulting from rape. An unidentified person asked Ms. Vega whether she’s heard it’s more difficult for a rape victim to get pregnant, since “the body shuts down in some way.” To which Ms. Vega replied: “Yeah, yeah. And the individual, the male is doing it as quickly — it’s not like, you know — so I can see why maybe there’s truth to that.”
Let’s be clear: Rape victims can and do get pregnant. Almost 3 million women in the United States became pregnant as result of a rape, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in a 2018 report. A 1996 study on rape-related pregnancy followed more than 4,000 women for three years; among the rape victims, 5 percent became pregnant, and almost one-third of the victims didn’t realize they were pregnant until the second trimester.
A good legislator shouldn’t write or vote for legislation using anecdotal evidence and ignorance. But on the issue of rape-related pregnancy, it seems that’s where Ms. Vega would be coming from. The Supreme Court’s consequential overturn of Roe v. Wade has made fraught access to abortion nationwide. Given these stakes, Virginia’s 7th District should elect a congresswoman who is clear and knowledgeable on their stance about abortion, which Ms. Vega has yet to be.
Identifying as pro-life on her website, Ms. Vega celebrated the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, tweeting a statement that she’s “glad [the issue of abortion is] returning to the state where we have a pro-life Governor at the helm.” Beyond that, she has not shared specifics. Ms. Vega expressed support for a 15-week ban at the state level that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is pushing for, according to Axios. But she hasn’t answered questions from multiple news outlets about whether she’d support a nationwide ban. She didn’t respond to our inquiries. Meanwhile, Ms. Spanberger’s position is clear: She was one of 215 co-sponsors of the Women’s Health Protection Act in 2021, which was blocked by the Senate and would have codified the right to abortion into federal law.
This race is one of the most closely watched in the country, key to which party will control the House. In 2012, GOP congressman Todd Akin tanked his Senate run by doubting the possibility of pregnancy resulting from rape, becoming a cautionary tale for future Republican candidates. Now in 2022, with all eyes on Virginia’s 7th District, voters should ask themselves: Is it really time to send the message that a candidate’s ignorance on rape-related pregnancy doesn’t matter anymore? | 2022-07-02T12:25:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Voters in Virginia’s 7th District should be wary of Yesli Vega’s ignorance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/02/voters-virginias-7th-district-should-be-wary-yesli-vegas-ignorance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/02/voters-virginias-7th-district-should-be-wary-yesli-vegas-ignorance/ |
Community scientists — even children — produce usable data for researchers
A family examines tidal pools in Santa Barbara, Calif. (iStock)
Citizen-science projects turn ordinary people into researchers, and in recent years such efforts have abounded, tackling everything from astronomy to weather information contained in 19th-century whaling ship logs.
But how good is the data these projects generate?
A study in the journal Research Ideas and Outcomes has an answer: Community scientists do surprisingly well in producing accurate data that, in turn, can further scientific research — even when the participants are young children.
The research was undertaken by students and staff at the Field Museum in Chicago, which invited museumgoers to participate in a community science project that measured the leaves of liverworts.
Citizen-science group tracks rainy day
The tiny, mosslike plants are extremely sensitive to temperature and moisture and can be used to monitor climate change. They’re also really hard to see, so museumgoers measured microscopic imagery of their leaves using a large touch screen.
Over the course of two years, participants were able to measure thousands of the leaves. Then, a Roosevelt University professor worked with her undergraduate mathematics class to analyze the data.
To everyone’s surprise, the majority of the data was usable, and all age groups produced high-quality information. Even the youngest participants produced great data; just over half of the measurements done by children under 10 was usable, and 41 percent of data produced by young children who weren’t being helped by adults or others was usable.
Not surprisingly, adults produced the most high-quality data, with 77 percent of their data passing muster. The adults did as well as professional scientists at producing usable measurements.
How long covid is accelerating a revolution in medical research
“This study demonstrates the wonderful scientific outcomes that occur when an entire community comes together,” Melanie Pivarski, an associate professor of mathematics at Roosevelt University and the study’s lead author, said in a news release.
The benefits didn’t stop with science: It was a chance for participants to learn and engage with not just science but also each other as they participated in a communal project. Further projects could produce even more benefit, the researchers write.
“Scientists, who have more specimens than taxonomists can measure or observe,” they write, can use crowdsourced measurements to “accelerate” scientific discovery — even as they provide fun fodder for museumgoers. | 2022-07-02T12:25:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Community scientists — even children — produce usable data for researchers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/02/community-science-good-data/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/02/community-science-good-data/ |
Marine biologist Alison Towner examines a great white shark carcass that washed up on a South African beach, probably the victim of an orca attack. Towner led a study that found orcas are displacing great whites as the apex predator off South Africa's coast. (Courtesy of Dyer Island Conservation Trust)
Orcas can grow to 50 percent larger than great whites, and a previous study showed that they displaced great whites off the coast of San Francisco. But they had never been documented doing so off South Africa, according to the study published Wednesday.
It turns out, great white sharks are scared of something, too
The great white shark next door | 2022-07-02T12:25:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Orcas are eating great white sharks’ livers off South Africa’s coast, study finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/02/orcas-eat-great-whites/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/02/orcas-eat-great-whites/ |
Evina Westbrook (4) made her debut for the Washington Mystics on Tuesday against the Atlanta Dream. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
As the Washington Mystics rolled to a 92-74 win over the Atlanta Dream on Tuesday, rookie Evina Westbrook waited for her chance.
Late in the third quarter, she got it. The former U-Conn. guard took off her warm-ups and entered the court for her first game as a Mystic — and her third chance to find a permanent home in the WNBA.
“People would die for opportunities like I have,” Westbrook said during pregame warm-ups.
Taken in the second round of the 2022 WNBA draft by the Seattle Storm, Westbrook played decently in the preseason, but was still waived by the team before opening night due to limited roster spots — an issue that’s taken center stage as the league considers expansion.
Westbrook was quickly picked up by the Minnesota Lynx but didn’t receive much playing time, averaging 2.6 points on 12.4 minutes a game. On June 24, with the league’s guaranteed contract deadline approaching, Westbrook was waived again.
“Twenty-four hours after I was waived from Minnesota, my agent got a call from [Mystics Coach Mike Thibault], saying they were interested in signing me to a seven-day [contract],” Westbrook said. “… Twenty-four hours after that, I flew out.”
Still a rookie, but already on her third team, Westbrook knows there are just 144 slots in the WNBA, and it takes a lot to earn one of those, especially on a permanent basis. But she also knows that, for the time being, she’s still here — and any chance she has is something she can’t take for granted.
“My brother is a really big advocate for me, and he’s been like, ‘You’re still in the league.’ This is an amazing blessing,” Westbrook said after practice Friday.
To her credit, Westbrook was active in that 11-minute opportunity, scoring three points and notching three assists and a steal while also committing three personal fouls and two turnovers.
While her first shot as a Mystic might’ve been an air-balled corner three, she drilled one a minute later for her only basket of the game.
“That felt good, like I'm shooting it again,” Westbrook said of her missed shot. “And my teammates knew that. So the second one, for it to go in and [seeing] my teammates' reaction, it gave me a sense of confidence.”
Coming to Washington on such short notice, not only did Westbrook have to learn a new system — one that emphasizes flow, movement and aggression over designed plays — but she had to unlearn most of the two systems she’s already played in.
But first, she had to pause and process the emotions that came with being waived from Minnesota, a place where Westbrook had envisioned herself settling in.
“I gave myself the night to be sad and be upset,” Westbrook said. “The next day … I was going to use everything that I felt and add that to my game. It’s adding fuel to that fire.”
And to hear her coaches and teammates tell it, that fuel has helped her adapt to her new surroundings quickly.
Though Thibault couldn’t attend her first practice, his assistants raved over how rapidly she picked up the system, something he later noticed during the Atlanta game. And after the win, her teammates had nothing but praise.
“She’s great,” all-star guard Ariel Atkins said, later quipping through laughter, “we have thrown a lot at her.”
“The energy she brings to the defensive end — she picked things up so quickly,” Shatori Walker-Kimbrough added. “She looks comfortable out there.”
But no matter how comfortable Westbrook looks or, frankly, how well she performs, she’s playing with one large caveat — she’s only allowed a maximum of three seven-day contracts.
Thibault said the likely plan is to offer her multiple seven-days, but after three, the Mystics must either sign her to a guaranteed contract for the rest of the season or cut her loose. When asked whether he’d be open to signing someone permanently or just wanted to keep the spot open for flexibility, Thibault waffled.
“There’s not an easy answer to your question, other than she’s got a chance to get paid as a pro player for a couple more weeks and try to make an impression,” he said.
After being waived twice, Westbrook knows that basketball is business. Thibault said the decision whether Westbrook stays or goes might not be about her at all.
All Westbrook can do is continue to improve and work hard, and hope that the gears of fate turn in her favor.
“I know I can give so much more, and I try to do that,” Westbrook said. “It’s just me telling myself, ‘Evina, you’re a dog. Play like that.’” | 2022-07-02T13:38:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rookie guard Evina Westbrook hoping to stick with Mystics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/evina-westbrook-mystics-rookie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/evina-westbrook-mystics-rookie/ |
Heavy downpours, gusty winds and rough surf are expected for coastal areas of the Carolinas through Sunday morning
Track forecast for Tropical Storm Colin. (National Hurricane Center)
An area of disturbed weather near the coast of the Carolinas has surprised forecasters, organizing into a tropical storm Saturday morning. The National Hurricane Center declared in a 5 a.m. advisory Saturday that Tropical Storm Colin was born.
Tropical storm warnings stretch from just south of Myrtle Beach, S.C., northward through the North Carolina Outer Banks.
“Tropical storm conditions are expected within the warning area along the northeastern coast of South Carolina this morning and will spread northeastward within the warning area along the North Carolina coast this afternoon into Sunday,” the Hurricane Center wrote, while cautioning that pockets of heavy rain could also cause areas of flash flooding in this zone.
The system was hardly on the Hurricane Center’s radar as recently as Friday morning. Its first public bulletin about the system came at 2 p.m. Eastern time Friday when it wrote: “Low pressure has formed near Savannah, Georgia. Although significant development of this system is not likely, heavy rains are expected across southeastern Georgia and portions of the Carolinas.”
In its 5 a.m. discussion Saturday, the Hurricane Center wrote that the storm had developed “rather unexpectedly” as thunderstorm activity embedded within the disturbance organized late Friday into early Saturday.
As of 8 a.m. Saturday, Colin was centered about 25 miles west-southwest of Myrtle Beach. It was a minimal tropical storm, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, heading northeast at 8 mph. Over the next day, it is forecast to continue northeastward, paralleling the coast of the Carolinas, before eventually pulling away more to the east.
Colin is not projected to strengthen but will be a nuisance for residents and visitors along the coast of the Carolinas. In addition to gusty winds up 40 mph or so, Colin could produce 1 to 2 inches of rain, with isolated amounts up to 4 inches.
The National Weather Service also issued a hazard statement for “dangerous rip currents” along the North Carolina coast.
Good morning E NC! Overnight Tropical Storm Colin spun up along the SC coast. Colin is forecast to move NE @ 8 mph taking the storm along or just inland of the NC coast today & Sun. The main impacts will be locally heavy rains, coastal wind gusts to 40 mph, & possibly a tornado. pic.twitter.com/YWzoQeyGMn
Between Friday and Saturday morning, the system had produced 2 to 4 inches of rain around Charleston, where the showers had mostly moved off to the north and east.
Computer model simulations indicate that most of the rain from Colin will remain east of its center, over the ocean, but that intermittent, scattered downpours are a good bet in northeastern South Carolina and southeastern North Carolina on Saturday into Saturday night and along the North Carolina Outer Banks through around midday Sunday.
Good Morning Tropical Storm Colin near Myrtle Beach, SC pic.twitter.com/oZqJAHCqud
— Bill Karins (@BillKarins) July 2, 2022
By Sunday night, Colin is expected to be well east of the Mid-Atlantic coast and in the process of dissipating.
As the third named storm of the Atlantic season, Colin formed about a month ahead of schedule; the average date of the third named Atlantic storm is Aug. 3. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a substantially busier-than-average hurricane 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.
While Colin scrapes the coastal Carolinas, Tropical Storm Bonnie is about to exit Nicaragua and enter the Pacific Ocean. Bonnie made landfall near the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border around 11 p.m. Eastern time Friday, packing winds of 50 mph. While passing through the two countries, it is likely to produce 4 to 8 inches of rain and “life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides,” the Hurricane Center predicted.
Bonnie is forecast to become a hurricane over the Pacific Ocean but avoid land. | 2022-07-02T13:56:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tropical Storm Colin forms near South Carolina coast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/02/tropical-storm-colin-carolinas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/02/tropical-storm-colin-carolinas/ |
The decision to accelerate her testimony has led to second-guessing but also produced some of the most memorable hearing moments to date
Amy Gardner
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, enters to testify as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds a hearing on Capitol Hill on June 28. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
For months, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol meticulously gathered evidence, carefully wrote and rewrote scripts, and painstakingly assembled video testimony to present at its televised hearings.
Public polling released in recent days offers little hint of whether the hearings have begun to change minds. A survey released Thursday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago shows that 49 percent of those surveyed say Trump bears responsibility for the Capitol attack, within the margin of error of the result in January, 46 percent.
Fox News, which did not air the prime time debut, has televised the panel’s daytime work, and one of its most recognizable personalities has even praised it. “This testimony is stunning,” Bret Baier, host of the network’s 6 p.m. news show, said Tuesday during a break in Hutchinson’s appearance.
“It’s just technical issues. The staff putting together all the videos, you know, doing 1, 2, 3 — it was overwhelming,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a committee member, told reporters that day in the Capitol. “So we’re trying to give them a little room to get their work done.”
“There’s been a deluge of new evidence since we got started. And we just need to catch our breath, go through the new evidence, and then incorporate it into the hearings we have planned,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters on June 22.
Isaac Arnsdorf and Scott Clement contributed to this report. | 2022-07-02T13:57:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Jan. 6 committee bet big with Cassidy Hutchinson. Did it pay off? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/jan-6-committee-bet-big-with-cassidy-hutchinson-did-it-pay-off/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/jan-6-committee-bet-big-with-cassidy-hutchinson-did-it-pay-off/ |
Skywatch: Early-rising Saturn leads July’s planetary parade
Against a star-spangled backdrop for July, a string of visible planets enters our heavens late, treats for morning sky-gazers. We get a slightly closer, larger full moon at mid-month, and we may see a few meteors at month’s end.
Saturn starts the parade of planetary activity as it rises now at nearly 11 p.m. in the east-southeast. Find the large, gaseous, ringed planet wedged between the constellations Aquarius and Capricornus. At +0.5 magnitude, bright, the ringed planet becomes a little brighter through July as it heads toward opposition (where Earth is between the sun and Saturn) on Aug. 14, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. In the latter part of July, Saturn rises much earlier — around 9:30 p.m.
The giant Jupiter rises now before 1 a.m. in the east, hanging out in the constellation Pisces. On clear nights, you can’t miss it at -2.4 magnitude (very bright), according to the observatory. Toward the end of July, this gaseous planet rises around 11:30 p.m. By the way, Jupiter is brightening like Saturn, as we’ll see its opposition in late September.
Mars, Earth’s reddish neighbor, follows Jupiter, rising now in the east-northeast around 1:30 a.m. The Red Planet huddles in the constellation Pisces, and later in July camps out between the constellations Aries, Taurus and Cetus (the whale).
Mars now is +0.4 magnitude, bright, but improves to +0.2 magnitude, bright, later in July, as it steadily becomes more vivid throughout the late summer and fall in time for its opposition in December, according to the observatory. Later in July, Mars rises before 1 a.m.
Venus, trailing Mars, rises now just before 4 a.m. in the east-northeast at the horizon, ushering in the sun’s morning twilight. It’s a brilliant -3.9 magnitude, very bright. Our effervescent neighbor starts the month in the constellation Taurus and ends July loitering with the twins in Gemini.
Find the full moon on July 13, which some may call a supermoon. The moon reaches perigee (the closest it gets to Earth for the month) on July 12, so astronomers call this a “perigee full moon.” At 221,994 miles away, according to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the moon is the closest it gets to us this year.
Days after the full moon, our lunar neighbor wanes and becomes a summertime planetary tourist. In the July mornings, the sightseer moon passes Saturn on July 15-16, then sneaks by Jupiter on July 19. The last-quarter moon passes Mars on July 21, and the fingernail sliver of the moon approaches the bright Venus by July 25 before becoming a new moon July 28.
Late in July, a small meteor shower may interest sky gazers: the Southern Delta Aquariids peak on the night of July 29-30, according to the American Meteor Society (amsmeteors.org).
These shooting stars will not be competing with a moon this year. The peak’s forecast is for 16 to 20 meteors an hour, according to the meteor society and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Meteors happen when the Earth speeds into the dusty cosmic trails of comets that have passed. The dust smacks our atmosphere and offers a light show. Astronomers think the shower’s parent is Comet Machholz (96P).
Down-to-Earth Events
* July 20 — “Tour of the Universe” — While the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on the Mall is closed as it undergoes renovations until the fall, enjoy a multistation tour at other Smithsonian venues from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Throughout the mall, find eight stations of hands-on activities and telescopes that unwrap answers about our sun, black holes, exoplanets and other cosmic fun. The National Gallery of Art, for example, hosts the exoplanets station, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture will have a station explaining gravity. Build a laser maze at the exploration station at the National Museum of American History, and investigate the sun at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. All stations will have properly filtered solar telescopes for viewing the sun safely. For complete detail: tinyurl.com/5x7hbavd. | 2022-07-02T13:57:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Skywatch: Early-rising Saturn leads July’s planetary parade - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/02/skywatch-early-rising-saturn-starts-julys-planetary-parade/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/02/skywatch-early-rising-saturn-starts-julys-planetary-parade/ |
On Friday, we celebrated half-year day, an annual summer landmark
It was half-year day Friday, and we celebrated the start of the second six-month installment of 2022 with heat, humidity, and reportedly even a little rain and hail in spots.
Appropriately, perhaps, the year’s concluding half began with 92-degree heat in Washington, three degrees above average for July 1. Arithmetic tells us that not every day can be above average, but a certain local pride almost requires it of an important summer calendar landmark.
In a show of meteorological continuity, the year’s final semester began by extending the thermal trend that ended the initial one. Thursday, June 30, had also registered in the 90s, with a high of 91.
But if Friday embodied atmospheric drama it may have been in its skies and clouds. In late afternoon, darkness in the west suggested the stormy imminence of thunder, lightning and rain.
By evening it seemed that storms had skirted the city. But, it may not have mattered too much. Their mere proximity had helped in our observance of the First of July.
The billowing masses of cloud created an almost theatrical effect. By screening the sun, they produced an almost eerie light. It seemed to suggest the watery dimness beneath the surface of an outdoor pool, and it added a touch of visual distinction to half-year day. | 2022-07-02T14:26:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | On Friday, we celebrated half-year day, an annual summer landmark - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/we-spent-half-year-day-friday-by-watching-storms-form-to-our-west/2022/07/01/7fcd8baa-f999-11ec-b665-98b884bdef6e_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/we-spent-half-year-day-friday-by-watching-storms-form-to-our-west/2022/07/01/7fcd8baa-f999-11ec-b665-98b884bdef6e_story.html |
Swing-state contests could shift the party balance and give the GOP more power, but election deniers could be the face of the party in some key races
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, gestures to the cheering crowd during his primary night election party on May 17, 2022, in Chambersburg, Pa. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Thanks to the Supreme Court, the battle for control of the House and Senate isn’t the only major story in this year’s midterm elections. Now there is renewed focus on the states, where a handful of gubernatorial races could change the balance of power between the parties and determine the future of abortion and voting rights, not to mention influencing who is elected president in 2024.
The high court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade moves the abortion issue to the states, where legislatures and governors will determine what access, if any, women will have to abortions. In the absence of federal action, states have begun enacting laws restricting voting rights, and depending on what happens in the Supreme Court’s next term, state legislatures could be even more empowered to set rules for future elections.
Roughly half a dozen states — not surprisingly, they are the states that decided the 2020 presidential election and are likely to decide the 2024 race, as well — have competitive contests for governor. Republicans’ hopes of expanding their hold on state government will hinge on the outcomes. But the GOP’s chances will be affected by the quality of its candidates — and right now, that’s a potential problem.
Republicans control both legislative chambers in 30 states, compared with 17 for the Democrats, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Republicans have full control of state government — legislature plus the governorship — in 23 states; the Democrats 14. For Democrats, winning control of state legislatures remains a major challenge, which makes holding or flipping governorships a major priority in the ongoing battle over the direction of state policies.
The lineup in these presidential battlegrounds looks like this: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have Republican legislatures but Democratic governors. Georgia and Arizona have Republican governors and Republican legislatures, while Nevada has a Democratic governor and legislature. All are expected to see competitive gubernatorial races in November.
A guide to the 2022 midterm elections
Republicans have nominated their strongest candidates in two of those states. In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp cruised to a primary victory over former U.S. senator David Perdue, who had the endorsement of former president Donald Trump. Kemp will face Democrat Stacey Abrams in a rematch of their 2018 race, with the odds slightly in his favor. In Nevada, Republicans nominated Clark County (Las Vegas) Sheriff Joe Lombardo to challenge Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak. Lombardo was the favorite of both Trump and establishment Republicans.
In the other four states, however, Republicans aren’t sure whether they have or will end up with their most credible general election candidates.
Pennsylvania’s general election is already set, pitting Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro against Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano. In Mastriano, Republican primary voters picked an election denier as their nominee, someone who has promulgated Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. In a state that remains closely divided, the question is whether a Republican with that profile can generate Trump-like turnout among the GOP base in the rural areas or turn off enough suburban and swing voters to put Shapiro in office.
Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona hold their primary elections in early August, and in each state, the competition for the Republican nomination has left open the question of whether the party will end up with its strongest candidates.
Start with Wisconsin: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers barely won in 2018, in what was a good year for the Democrats. Former lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who served two terms with then-Gov. Scott Walker, was seen as the likely Republican nominee and for most of 2021 and early 2022, say GOP strategists. She seemed to be doing everything right.
Then things changed. The primary has been scrambled by continued GOP infighting over the results of the 2020 election and the entry of more candidates. Businessman Tim Michels joined the race in April and later got Trump’s endorsement. Meanwhile, Kleefisch fell short of the 60 percent threshold needed to get the party’s endorsement at the recent state Republican convention.
A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed a statistical tie between Kleefisch and Michels among GOP primary voters. Both support an 1849 state law banning abortion and oppose exceptions for rape or incest.
The general election is expected to be close, but as Republicans sort out their differences, the Marquette Law School poll showed Evers leading both candidates, with Kleefisch trailing by four percentage points and Michels by seven. Republicans see either candidate as able to win in November, but some believe Kleefisch is more prepared for a tough contest.
In Michigan, Republicans have experienced even more problems in sorting out their challenger to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Privately, GOP strategists remain worried about the race in November.
At the start, Republicans thought they had an ideal candidate in James Craig, a former Detroit police chief. But he never lived up to advance billing. Recently, he was knocked off the primary ballot because he didn’t have enough valid signatures on his petitions; he was one of five candidates taken off the ballot for signature problems. He is mounting a write-in campaign, as is another of those who were ruled ineligible.
Ryan Kelley, another candidate, was recently arrested on misdemeanor charges as part of the federal investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Whatever that might mean for a general election race, the charges are seen as giving Kelley a short-term boost in a race where most GOP primary voters say President Biden was not legitimately elected.
There is no favorite at this point. A recent poll for the Detroit Free Press by the firm EPIC-MRA showed Kelley marginally ahead of the others in the race, but with just 17 percent. Nearly half of Michigan Republicans are undecided in the gubernatorial primary. With Biden significantly underwater in the state, Whitmer still faces a challenging reelection, but given all the problems among Republicans, she could have considerable opportunities to paint her eventual opponent as unsuited for the office.
In Arizona, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey is term-limited, so the state will have an open race.
Ducey drew Trump’s wrath for certifying the 2020 results, and the election remains a key issue in the primary campaign to select a GOP nominee. The party primary features a clear contrast between the Trump wing of the party and the establishment wing. Kari Lake, a former television anchor in Phoenix, has Trump’s endorsement and has put the former president’s false claim about a fraudulent election in 2020 at the center of her campaign. Karrin Taylor Robson, the other most prominent candidate, is running as a more traditional conservative Republican.
The Trump endorsement counts for a lot in the race, and Lake has been seen as the nominal front-runner. Some backers of Robson believe the recent decision by former congressman Matt Salmon to quit the race will bring more traditional GOP voters to Robson’s column. One wrinkle in the race came late last month: After Lake had been denouncing drag queens as dangerous to children, it was revealed that she had attended the shows of a drag queen in the past.
In a year favoring Republicans, party strategists believe Robson would be favored over Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is her party’s front-runner. Republicans have been fretting all year about the possibility of Lake as their nominee, fearing she would compromise their chances of holding the office. Still, given the environment and her communication skills, she, too, could be elected governor, although what kind of governor she would be is another question. There is one certainty: A Democratic victory in November would put a roadblock in front of the Republican-controlled legislature.
In red-state Kansas, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly — elected in 2018 against a flawed GOP nominee — is clearly vulnerable, and a GOP victory would give the party full control of state government. But before the November election, Kansas will provide an early look at the politics of abortion. The Aug. 2 primary includes a ballot measure that would essentially invalidate a state Supreme Court ruling that the Kansas Constitution includes a right to abortion.
The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter lists the gubernatorial races in Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin as toss-ups. The Cook team shifted Pennsylvania from a toss-up to leaning to the Democrats after Mastriano won the GOP primary. Which is why the August round of Republican primaries will be closely watched on both sides. | 2022-07-02T14:57:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Republicans should be nervous about their candidates for governor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/republican-governor-primaries-sundaytake/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/02/republican-governor-primaries-sundaytake/ |
A false positive on a drug test upended these mothers’ lives
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned the right to an abortion, reproductive health advocates say they are worried policymakers and law enforcement will take more steps to criminalize pregnancy outcomes — arresting women for miscarriages and suspected attempts to abort their pregnancies. This phenomenon isn’t new, advocates say.
“Even with Roe on the books, there has been a prosecution of pregnancy outcomes,” said Emma Roth, an attorney with the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
From Texas to California, women have faced murder charges for stillbirths and “self-induced abortion.” NAPW has tracked more than 1,700 cases between 1973 and 2020 in which being pregnant contributed to an arrest or detention, and some legal experts warn this could become more frequent in a post-Roe world. In many of these cases, Roth said, a medical provider called the police.
With Roe gone, women could lose more than abortion rights
One overlooked and common example of this phenomenon, experts say: medical providers drug-testing pregnant patients without their consent.
Drug screening for pregnant patients takes several forms: The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommends universal screening by surveying patients about potential risk factors. After that, a urine drug test is recommended if the screening points to possible substance abuse. Research has suggested that urine screening, generally, could have some value in early pregnancy, which could give medical providers time to intervene in any substance abuse issues before they affect the fetus.
But many medical experts say drug screening pregnant patients has been fraught in practice. While urine tests are taken routinely during pregnancy to monitor for conditions like diabetes, dehydration or preeclampsia, women may not know that they can also be used to screen for drugs.
Some legal and medical experts say the practice is common. One recent study, which analyzed data from five Massachusetts hospitals over a four-year period, found that verbal consent was documented in less than a third of maternal toxicology tests.
It’s “impossible” to give specific numbers of how frequently nonconsensual drug screening happens, because these hospital policies are not publicly available, Roth said. Only a small minority of hospitals have publicly stated that they will cease the practice.
Mishka Terplan, a medical director and senior research scientist at the Friends Research Institute, which specializes in the treatment of mental illness and addiction, noted that urine tests in particular are prone to false positives. And while they can identify drug metabolites in the body, they cannot differentiate between occasional and chronic use.
Testing a patient against their knowledge can undermine trust between them and their provider, Terplan said — particularly if the provider reaches out to law enforcement or social services based on these results (this is a large part of why major medical associations recommend against nonconsensual drug testing).
Given the potential harm of opening an investigation, which could lead to separating the child from their parents, Terplan said, “it would be ethical to disclose to people not only that you’re going to do a drug test, but how the information is shared, such that can have a right of refusal.”
A mother briefly lost her newborn after failing a drug test. Her doctor suspects poppy seeds.
The Washington Post spoke to two women, one in Illinois and one in New York City, who allege that they were drug-tested without their consent — tests that rendered false positives for both. And they are are fighting back: Both have filed complaints with state agencies against their respective hospitals. In their complaints, the women said they were reported to child welfare agencies without being granted a second, confirmatory test, and that investigations were opened based solely off the hospital’s reporting.
These investigations had far-reaching impacts, despite the fact that, in some ways, the women experienced the best-case scenario: Social services ultimately found no wrongdoing or abuse on the mothers’ part. The Illinois lawsuit is being brought forward by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the ACLU of Illinois, and the New York Civil Liberties Union is representing the client in New York.
It wasn’t what Crystal expected her maternity leave to look like: sprawled out on the large brown couch in her living room, surrounded by papers, her face glowing in the light of an ever-expanding Google doc. While her husband paced the apartment with their newborn son, she rang up law offices, trying to find an attorney who could take her case, she said. (Crystal is being identified by her first name out of concern of being stigmatized.)
Friends had told Crystal, 34, that she could expect to be “treated like gold” by hospital workers when she gave birth to her child — her first. After getting pregnant in the beginning of pandemic and experiencing a few pregnancy complications, including gestational diabetes, Crystal looked forward to being embraced by people there to support her and her baby.
What she alleges unfolded, however, was a “nightmare.”
A week before Christmas 2020, Crystal was admitted to Garnet Health Medical Center in Orange County, N.Y., after her water broke. Before going to the hospital, Crystal had eaten what was a heavier breakfast than usual: a bagel sandwich. At the hospital, she took a urine test, just as she had in the months before.
According to Crystal’s complaint, it wasn’t until a nurse delivered the results of the urine test that Crystal learned she had been tested for drugs: In fact, she had tested positive for opiates.
Crystal was shocked. She hadn’t ingested any drugs or controlled substances at any point in her pregnancy, she said. Then it hit her: The sandwich she had for breakfast was on an “everything” bagel, which is encrusted with sesame seeds, garlic, salt, dried onion — and poppy seeds. Crystal had seen reports of poppy seeds triggering false positives before. Was that what happened to her?
Crystal alleges that she immediately asked if she could retest but wasn’t given the opportunity to do so until after she gave birth — and after hospital staff had reported her to the New York Statewide Central Register, which investigates child abuse allegations.
The day after her son was born, Crystal learned that hospital staff had tested him for drugs, too, she said. That test was negative. By that point, the White nursing staff was treating Crystal, who is Latina, in an “accusatory and dismissive” way, her complaint alleges.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office told The Post: “A parent’s positive drug test, with no other factors present, would not in and of itself provide reasonable cause to substantiate a report of abuse or maltreatment.”
Garnet Health Medical Center, which is facing another complaint alleging hospital staff wrongly reported a false-positive test to state authorities, argued in a written rebuttal to the allegations that it was “medically appropriate” and “justified” in its screening of pregnant patients.
“The hospital’s practice of drug screening obstetrics patients and reporting such results to the State Central Register was part of the hospital’s efforts to protect both mother and baby and comply with its obligations as a ‘mandatory reporter,’” attorneys for the hospital wrote in their rebuttal, which was shared with The Post.
“GHMC does not concede that its staff treated [Crystal] improperly,” they added.
Within 12 hours of being discharged from Garnet, Crystal said, a caseworker showed up at her home.
A full investigation would take 60 days, she was told. And even if they found child abuse and maltreatment “unfounded,” the casefile would remain on her record for 10 years, accessible only to a select group of people, including child welfare workers and law enforcement.
Crystal felt forced into a fight she had never anticipated. And it consumed her, she said. She spent so much of her pregnancy, so much of her life, being “meticulous” — a habitual rule-follower. How could this have happened to her?
For much of the first year of her son’s life, she broke down at least once a day, Crystal said. But she remained dogged: becoming so preoccupied with fighting back — against the hospital, the state — that she lost time to bond with her child, she said.
“I was literally consumed by this,” Crystal said. “This can’t happen. This isn’t okay.”
After nine months of self-advocacy, Crystal was able to get her record expunged. But she’s still waiting for her complaint against Garnet to advance. Crystal is seeking an apology and damages from the hospital, that her false-positive be scrubbed from her medical records, and that Garnet cease drug testing obstetrics patients without their consent.
Garnet, in its rebuttal, said it updated its policy via a “practice alert” to its nursing staff, “which altered the practice of screening for drug use.”
For Crystal, the pain of the investigation lingers. There’s also the new distrust in authority. She was raised to put faith in medical providers. That’s changed, she said: “I feel now as though when I walk into a doctor’s office, that I have to have this armor on.”
‘Isolated and ashamed’
What Maggie couldn’t shake was the isolation.
A first-time mother at 44, Maggie and her husband had to hire a stranger to live with them — not to help with the newborn, but to keep an eye on the new parents. The state of Illinois’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) had mandated it, according to a complaint Maggie filed late last year. DCFS did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Before delivering her baby prematurely, Maggie, a nanny, had tested positive for opiates, despite not taking any drugs, she said. (Maggie is being identified by her nickname out of concern of being stigmatized.)
Maggie had eaten a poppy seed cake — a tradition in her native Poland — on Easter weekend, hours before her water broke, she said. Maggie alleges in her complaint that her hospital, St. Alexius Medical Center, reported the results to DCFS, despite her pleas to take a follow-up drug test to prove the first one was wrong.
In a statement to The Post, Ascension, a network of medical centers that includes St. Alexius, wrote: “While we cannot comment on pending litigation, the hospital takes very seriously its responsibility to provide the best care for its patients’ physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being.”
Part of the safety plan created by DCFS required a third party to supervise Maggie and her child at all times, according to her complaint. Maggie’s husband needed to return to work, and neither of their families were able to move in with them. So, for two weeks, Maggie paid someone she didn’t know — a friend of her in-laws — to come into her home and supervise her and the baby around-the-clock.
Then there was the pain.
Maggie said she opted to stop taking the pain medication her doctor prescribed to help her recover from her C-section. The pills contained an opioid, and Maggie feared what would happen if her baby drank her breastmilk (her complaint alleges that hospital staff screened her newborn for drugs, and that the results were negative). Even though abdominal pain from a C-section can last for one to two weeks, Maggie said she stopped taking the pills after a couple days.
Her first few months of motherhood were marked with regular visits from a DCFS agent — inspections that felt like intrusions, she said. There were also regular urine tests both she and her husband had to take at a local clinic. After a three-month investigation, DCFS sent Maggie a letter saying it found no credible evidence of child abuse. Still, for Maggie, there was only limited relief — the case file of her investigation would remain for five years.
More than a year after giving birth, Maggie doesn’t feel free of the ordeal. Roth, of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, who is representing Maggie, said her client feels as though she’s “on probation.”
As a nanny, Maggie worries about what that casefile could mean for her future: If employers find out, would they fire or refuse to hire her, even though she had done nothing wrong?
Maggie said she didn’t talk to anyone about what has happening, even her closest friends: “I was afraid they were going to judge us.” But Maggie didn’t think of fighting back — not when she was at the hospital and not during the months-long investigation. She was worried if she didn’t comply, her baby would be taken away.
“All the time, I was ashamed,” Maggie said. The only thing that eased her sense of isolation was hearing about other moms who went through the same experience she had — stories she stumbled across on social media. Maggie also learned that, through the courts, she might be able to hold the hospital accountable, which prompted her to get in touch with NAPW.
Maggie still has difficulty reliving that time in her life. Talking to The Post nearly a year later, Maggie said she still cries every time she talks about what happened. Now 46, she and her husband are trying to have a second child, though their experience had her reconsidering whether she wanted to get pregnant again.
Whatever happens, Maggie knows she will not return to St. Alexius.
“The joy was taken away,” she said. | 2022-07-02T15:24:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A false positive on a drug test upended these mothers’ lives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/02/false-positive-drug-test-mothers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/02/false-positive-drug-test-mothers/ |
Addison Bethea, right, poses for a photo with brother Rhett Willingham after a shark attacked her on a Florida beach. Bethea is in danger of losing her right leg. (Screenshot via YouTube/WCTV)
Addison Bethea was collecting scallops on Florida’s Gulf Coast ahead of the July Fourth weekend when she felt something latch onto her leg. The 17-year-old was swimming in water that was only five feet deep on Thursday, but she immediately knew that whatever was wrapped around her thigh had put her in danger.
Bethea was bitten twice by a large shark near Keaton Beach, Fla., and was pulled away only after her brother grabbed her and kicked the animal away, the teen’s father said in a Facebook post. The Taylor County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a statement that a “juvenile was bit by an undetermined type of shark, described as approximately nine feet long.”
She is in serious but stable condition as of early Saturday. Although the 17-year-old from Perry, Fla., survived the attack, she suffered “devastating damage to the soft tissue in her right leg,” according to a statement from Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, where she is being treated. After going through an emergency surgery to restore blood flow to the leg, the hospital said in a statement that Bethea is scheduled for another procedure Saturday afternoon “to further investigate the extent of the damage to her leg and determine what treatment options are available with the goal of saving her leg.”
“I remember from watching the Animal Planet to like … punch [it] in the nose or something like that,” Addison Bethea told “Good Morning America” from her hospital bed. “And I couldn’t get around to his nose the way he bit me.”
The hospital stressed that while Bethea “has a long journey to recovery,” she was in good spirits and appreciative of all the support she has received since the attack. Shane Bethea praised his daughter’s toughness through everything, saying she was “cracking jokes about beating up the shark” and asking for a Wendy’s Frosty when she was extubated. But he acknowledged the severity of a situation that could leave his daughter without a leg. | 2022-07-02T15:24:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shark attacks Florida teen Addison Bethea's leg on July 4 weekend; she faces losing leg - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/sharks-florida-attack-addison-bethea-july-fourth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/sharks-florida-attack-addison-bethea-july-fourth/ |
A couple and their three children, ages 4, 6 and 11, have been living out of a van
Family members who have been living in a van walk past St. Patrick’s Catholic Church on July 1. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
The children were hungry.
It was after noon on Friday, and they hadn’t yet had breakfast. They also didn’t know when, or if, they would get lunch.
And yet, none of them complained or cried. Not the 4-year-old in the pink baseball cap. Not the 6-year-old in the dinosaur top. Not the 11-year-old who wore winter boots on a 90-degree day. They seemed used to waiting.
“They shouldn’t be in this situation,” their father, Alberto, said in Spanish, looking in their direction. “They should be in a home, being taken care of, eating, resting, going to school.”
D.C. mom begs to move after finding mice in food and children’s bed
For the past year, the family of five has lived in the Washington region on the edges of edges. They are undocumented migrants, have serious medical issues and don’t have a home. The family has been living out of a van.
Some nights, they park their Honda Odyssey on a D.C. street. Other nights, they find a spot in Virginia. Where they end up each day usually depends on where they can find an undisturbed night and an easy drive to Alberto’s many medical appointments. He receives dialysis for his failing kidneys three times a week.
As he sat outside a church in Northwest D.C., he lifted his sleeve to expose large lumps on his right arm from the fistula that connects his body to the dialysis machine. He then lifted the rest of his shirt and revealed the bullet wounds that caused him to leave El Salvador with his family. He said he was shot six times by gang members because he wouldn’t cooperate with them. Scars appear above his heart, on his side and on his back. He said two bullets remain in him. Doctors have told him that the strong antibiotics he received after the shooting are likely what damaged his kidneys.
“I can’t work,” he said. “I can’t feel my left side. If I stand too long on my left foot, I fall.”
I learned about Alberto and his family from Food Justice DMV, a volunteer collective that formed at the beginning of the pandemic to make sure migrant families in the Washington region wouldn’t go hungry. Three years into the pandemic, much of the region has returned to its normal practices, but the collective continues to witness daily the elusiveness of stability for many of the area’s undocumented migrants.
Volunteers have seen a growing number of requests for help at a time when inflation is constraining how much they can do for families. On Thursday, for the first time, they could not afford to give more than 1,000 families oil or masa, staple ingredients for many Latino households.
Denise Woods, the founder of Food Justice DMV, said at the beginning of the pandemic, volunteers held the goal of serving 200 families. But they soon saw the need was much greater. Now volunteers serve more than 7,000 families. The collective hasn’t had to do any outreach to find those families. Those families have all found the volunteers through word of mouth.
While the collective focuses on addressing hunger, volunteers also get requests for toothpaste, laundry detergent and bars of soap. Recently, they delivered beds to an apartment after finding out that 12 people, including seven children, were living there and had nothing to sleep on.
Like many people across the nation, Woods watched with heartbreak the initial news reports that told of the deaths of 53 migrants who were trapped in a sweltering tractor-trailer abandoned on a San Antonio road. She also watched knowing that if any of those people had made it to the Washington region, her group would have fed them and provided them with basic comforts. She watched knowing that the horrors many migrants face continue long after they’ve crossed the border.
Food Justice DMV has been trying to help Alberto’s family for months, and while they’ve been able to provide groceries, clothing and funding for an occasional hotel room, they have not been able to get the family into a shelter.
The couple said they arrived in the Washington region last year and spent most of their savings, about $4,000, on the van. They agreed to share their story but asked that I identify them by their middle names because they fear deportation and being found by members of the gang that shot Alberto.
Imelda, the children’s mother, said some people come to the United States because they’re lured by the American Dream, but her family had no other choice than to come. She said her family told gang members that Alberto had died in that shooting, but they continued to watch her family closely. They even harassed her when she was with her children.
I wrote about falling with my baby. Now other moms email me.
In 2019, the couple said, they left El Salvador and settled for a while in Mexico, where Alberto had a humanitarian visa. After the gang members found the family there, they took a bus to California. Imelda said once they were in the United States, they found an attorney who helped them apply for asylum. But that hasn’t offered much assurance since they haven’t seen any movement on their case.
“We’re not very hopeful,” Alberto said. “There’s just not a lot of hope when it comes to getting asylum. But I need it. I can’t go back to El Salvador. And the kids have medical needs.”
He described Alberto Jr., who is 6, and Naomi, who is 4, as both having health issues that are being treated by a doctor in Virginia. He said Alberto Jr. has a brain tumor and has experienced seizures, and Naomi has kidney issues that can cause her to retain fluid.
As we talked, the children watched videos on a tablet and a phone. Occasionally, Naomi came over to hug one of her parents and smile. Her T-shirt told of whimsical hopes.
“Today I want to be a…,” it read. A line covered the word “princess” leaving only the word “unicorn.”
Helen, who is 11, said in a hushed voice that she dreams of becoming a singer. She then listened quietly as her parents talked about their living situation — the van. It sat parked in a nearby garage next to a Mercedes.
The family had started the day with $12, but that would go toward parking. That left no money for food, which they have to buy prepared, since they have no place to cook.
“It’s hard,” Imelda said. “The grown-ups make do, but for the children, it’s hard.”
She said she has tried to find employment, but without documentation or the ability to speak English, she has not been successful. Getting asylum, she said, would allow her to work.
It would allow her to not have to stand on the sidewalk with one of her children and ask strangers for help. She does that sometimes when the family is low on money and food — as they were on Friday.
On that day, the family was considering doing that. Then a volunteer with Food Justice DMV handed them money for groceries.
A march surrounded by reminders of why this time needs to be different
Washington’s 'burbs are weird and relatable. His cartoons capture that.
The danger of a politician blaming mass shootings on ‘emasculated’ men | 2022-07-02T16:54:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Migrant family in DC navigates hunger, homelessness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/migrant-family-van-hunger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/migrant-family-van-hunger/ |
A model illustrates one of the designs considered for Temple Heights, a complex of buildings Washington's Masonic community hoped to construct north of Dupont Circle after buying nine acres there in 1922. The stock market crash in 1929 put an end to those plans. Today, the Washington Hilton stands on the site. (Library of Congress)
On July 15, 1922, thousands of men and women (but mostly men) crowded around an ancient oak on a miraculously undeveloped parcel of land at Connecticut and Florida avenues NW. They were Freemasons with their spouses, and they had an audacious plan in mind. They vowed to construct one of the nation’s largest Masonic complexes on nine acres of woods north of Dupont Circle. It was called the Dean tract and it included the Treaty Oak, said by some to have once sheltered George Washington.
If you’ve ever been in that neighborhood, you will have noticed there is no Masonic complex. Instead, there is the Washington Hilton. To Chris Ruli, a historian and Mason who researches the District’s Masonic history, it’s a story of what might have been. Washington is full of — or, rather, empty of — similar grand edifices that were planned but never built.
The Masons weren’t thinking small in the 1920s. One of that day’s speakers said the world — “sadly shattered and groping” — needed Freemasonry, which would help reconstruct civilization. But first they had some constructing to do.
The pressing issue at the time, Ruli said, was that the local Masons had outgrown their existing headquarters. Built in 1908 at the corner of 13th Street and New York Avenue NW, the building served as a sort of clubhouse for Mason-related events. There were close to 20,000 Masons in Washington and the city was awash in their clubs: Masons who worked at the White House, or at the Treasury, or as steelworkers or in other jobs.
“They needed a place for all these people to meet and congregate,” Ruli said. “Instead of buying an old building, they thought, 'Let's build something new.'”
The Dean tract had been owned by the Woman’s National Foundation, which had planned to put its own headquarters there. Before that, city leaders had hoped to purchase the land for use as a park. It was the Masons who got it, at a cost of $900,000. In almost no time, local Masons raised a million dollars for the project.
The ceremony on that July day a century ago marked the Masons receiving the deed for the tract, which they soon dubbed Temple Heights. The committee in charge of building a Masonic temple there considered various designs before settling on one by Harvey W. Corbett, the architect responsible for the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, which was slowly rising in Alexandria.
For Tower Heights, Corbett envisioned a set of buildings to be used by different Masonic groups, including the Order of the Eastern Star, the Shriners, and the York and Scottish Rites. Only White Masons would use the facilities. No Prince Hall Masons — the order founded in 1784 for Black Masons — were invited to participate, Ruli said.
Corbett tapped artist and architect Hugh Ferriss to create dramatic illustrations of his design. Wrote Ruli in an article for the Voice of Freemasonry magazine: “In his drawings, the Corbett-Ferriss complex towered above the District of Columbia like a modern-day Acropolis, and great halls surrounded a giant Grant Lodge Temple with dramatic flood lights illuminating the hill as a beacon for visiting Masons.”
This was a noir temple, a comic-book concoction that included vast flights of stairs and an observation deck that took advantage of the site’s already high elevation. It would have afforded great views of the city.
But there was a problem: The design ignored the city’s strict height restrictions. The Masons were well connected in government and they urged Congress to give the design a waiver. The plans would also need approval from by the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Park and Planning Commission.
Even though the Masons would eventually get approval for their design, with some modifications, in October 1929, something else intervened.
“The stock market crash effectively course-corrected everything,” Ruli said.
A hilltop Masonic complex seemed a needless luxury at a time when the focus was on helping fellow Masons survive the cratering economy. Members decided to make do with their 13th Street building, as old and crowded as it may have been.
“Basically, the acquisition of Temple Heights removed any interest in the fraternity to build new things or build grand things,” Ruli said.
In 1947, the Masons sold the former Dean tract to a syndicate of developers for $915,000. They held on to their 13th Street building until 1982, when, pressed for cash, they sold it to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Though the grand Masonic complex never came to be, it lives on in the name of something at 1921 Florida Ave. NW: the Temple Heights Post Office.
If the Masons had been successful, Washington would look different today.
“It certainly would have made an indelible mark on the skyline,” Ruli said. “When you fly into DCA, you see this one big, tall Masonic tower in Alexandria. Imagine going into the District and seeing another big Masonic tower.”
It would have served as a symbol of the fraternal organization, whose very name and rituals are based on building with stone.
“They wanted to find the highest point and build the highest temple,” Ruli said. “They wanted to make it seem, ‘This is the progress of the fraternity.’ One of the ironies is, if they did build this massive complex to themselves, I don’t think they’d have been able to keep it.”
The cost of maintaining it would have outstripped the cost of building it.
Next week: Frank Lloyd Wright takes a crack at Temple Heights. | 2022-07-02T16:54:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Masons once hoped to build a huge complex in Northwest D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/temple-heights-masonic-project/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/temple-heights-masonic-project/ |
Vacations gone wrong: 6 stories of epic travel fails
Illustrations by Katty Huertas
Things don’t always go as planned.
That’s especially true when it comes to traveling. Over the Fourth of July weekend, flight delays and cancellations left thousands of Americans scrambling. And as the high season for summer vacation begins, travelers are bracing for more setbacks — from labor shortages and inflated prices to extreme weather events and an ongoing pandemic.
But some mishaps are just so unusual that they prompt the question: Was the trip doomed from the start?
Take By The Way reporter Natalie Compton’s first big work trip of the pandemic as an example: She wanted to try sleeping in a camper van in Hawaii to test drive #VanLife. The plan had a huge flaw, though. She didn’t check to see if the van had air conditioning.
“I assumed that was a given,” Compton says of the mistake.
She ended up spending two days driving around Maui sweating through her clothes, showing up for work appointments drenched and disheveled. It was a disaster but not a total loss, she said.
“Honestly, you get a better travel story out of a bad time than a good one,” Compton says. “No one wants to hear ‘everything went perfect, we had a great time!’ They want the blooper reel.”
As the holiday weekend comes to a close, we asked Post readers to tell us about their worst vacations. Like Compton, many of them left with a good story to tell — plus some long-running family jokes and memories they now cherish.
‘The stomach bug got us all in the end’
Autumn Gonzalez, 44, Portland, Ore.
When I was 10, back in 1987, my dad took my sister and me to Disneyland. The plan was to meet my uncle and my cousins at the hotel we were staying at in Anaheim, and we would all enjoy the three-day vacation together. Everything was going swimmingly until, on the first night we were there, one of my cousins just leaned over and threw up on the pier as we were walking back to the hotel from dinner. It turns out that my other cousin had caught some stomach bug on the train to Anaheim and had spent the day puking in the bathroom on the train. Cut to waking up to the sounds of my uncle throwing up into a trash bin the next morning, and later that morning, me chirping “I can’t believe we’re finally here!” at the gates of Disneyland and then immediately bending over and throwing up.
The pinnacle of the trip had to be when my cousin started throwing up and, to be “helpful,” my other cousin and I tried to prop her up and stuff her head into a trash receptacle so at least she wouldn’t be getting puke all over the Magic Kingdom. We managed to make it through the rest of the trip without much fanfare, but then my sister started puking as soon as we got home, and then my dad picked it up right when she finished! The stomach bug got us all in the end. This whole adventure has become part of family lore, and thankfully, now, we just howl with laughter, not horror.
‘She owes me a trip to Paris’
Lily Van Bergen, 18, Forest, Va.
When my mom and I were in Lyon, France, on a day trip to see the city, she fell off her electric bike and needed to go for an overnight stay at the hospital (everything was okay), but we brought only our day bags. We ended up needing to cancel all kinds of trips in Paris where we were staying, and I had to fend for myself in a foreign country by myself for two days at age 17.
Luckily, I spoke French to a sufficient level, and I was able to translate and give some information, but for the most part, I was completely panicked. Sometimes I would lose my ability to speak French altogether. It was an insane experience, and when we finally made it back to our VRBO rental in Paris, I couldn’t have been more relieved, but we had to fly back the next day. The whole thing put a real damper on our trip. Now, my mom likes to always say that she owes me a trip to Paris, but to me, it’s a great story to tell, and I learned a lot about myself and my abilities.
‘A minor kitchen fire’
Corrine Melissari, 38, Alexandria, Va.
When I was about 12 or 13, myself, my mom, and two great aunts and great uncle had rented a house at the Jersey Shore for a week. I was so excited to get spend time at the beach! I hadn’t been on a long family vacation to the shore in a few years since my mom and stepdad divorced. We settled in on the first day and decided to get pizza that night. We had some leftovers, and when one of my aunts decided to reheat a slice in the microwave the next day, she neglected to take the foil off it. This, of course, created sparks and a minor kitchen fire.
We called the property manager, the owners’ college-aged son, who came quickly to assess the damage and assist us. I felt so bad for him when he arrived, just seeing the look of horror on his face and clearly thinking, “How am I going to explain this to Mom and Dad?!”
He didn’t have a replacement, so we spent the week without a microwave, but at least we had an oven. This became a running joke in the family with my aunt anytime we were together and ordered pizza.
‘Our reservation had been lost’
Loralee Bergdall, 20, Berkeley, Calif.
When I was 16, I took a two-week explorative trip to Fiji with my school. We were sent to collect data to form a national park on their second-largest island, Vanua Levu. The night before the trip, our chaperone got a notification that our reservation had been “lost.” So eight hours before we were supposed to leave for the airport, they had to scramble to find the reservation for all 16 of us. It was a four-hour drive to the airport, and we were unsure if we would even be able to make it.
We got to the airport and were told at one check-in desk that our reservation had been handed over to an airline on the opposite side of the airport. Not only did we have to run through the San Francisco Airport with our 40-pound hiking packs, but we also had to run through security because we were going to miss our boarding time. We dashed through security but, as we boarded, realized that they had overbooked the plane, and two of us were not on board and were left behind. The two did not end up rejoining the group for a whole day.
The airline lost half of our baggage, and we were forced to make the trip without it. During our taxi to take off from LAX to Fiji, someone had a heart attack, and the flight attendants were frantically looking for a doctor. Luckily there was one on board, and the person made it off in time. Now two hours delayed, we made the 11-hour flight to Fiji.
Everything went smoothly for the two weeks, but on the way back, our flight was delayed due to bad weather, and we were stuck on the airport floor. Most of us had some mysterious stomach bug that made us extremely ill for the 24 hours, myself included. I remember sleeping on the floor, wrapped in my sleeping bag, crying because I was so sick and just wanted to get home. By the time we landed in San Francisco, I was so ready to go home, I left the airport at 3 a.m. and made the four-hour drive back home! It was such a wild experience, but I would absolutely go back to Fiji in a heartbeat.
‘We returned home two days late and much poorer’
Jeremy Rachlin, 42, Brookeville, Md.
When we arrived at the KLM counter in Amsterdam to check in for our return flight to the United States, I realized with horror that I had left my messenger bag with laptop, car keys and, yes, passports, on the train to the airport.
It was a Friday at midday. An Uber ride to the consulate, a mad dash through cobblestone streets with suitcases to the one photo store that could take passport pictures, a dash back to the consulate, a bribe to the local cafe owner to store our suitcases, a frantic call to our next door neighbor to break into our house and find our daughter’s birth certificate to email to the consulate, and many hundreds of dollars later (and 150,000 Flying Blue points to avoid $3,000 in change fees for the missed flight), we had temporary passports allowing us to fly home the next day and return tickets.
After nearly missing our connection in Paris, our parents met us at Dulles International Airport with our spare car keys, and we returned home two days late and much poorer — only to discover that our air conditioner had broken during our summer vacation. Our then 8-year-old was a trooper. On the plus side, we got to hang out with Woody Harrelson in Amsterdam. And my family has a permanent one-up on me anytime I get frustrated on vacation. | 2022-07-02T16:59:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vacations gone wrong: 6 stories of epic travel fails - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/02/vacations-gone-wrong/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/02/vacations-gone-wrong/ |
July Fourth travelers face thousands of flight delays, cancellations
Passengers make their way through a security line on Thursday at Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon Township, Pa. (Morgan Timms/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/AP)
An estimated 47.9 million travelers in the United States between Friday and Monday represents an increase of almost 4 percent, compared with last year, according to AAA — approaching the level of summer travel not seen in the country since before the coronavirus pandemic. While the bulk of those travelers will be on the road, more than 3.5 million are expected to be on airliners, that is, if their flights don’t get delayed or canceled.
Analysts with the travel booking app Hopper are projecting domestic airfare averaging out to $437 per round trip ticket, a spike of 45 percent, compared with 2019. Some of the most popular U.S. destinations this weekend include Las Vegas, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles and Miami, Hopper says.
Flight cancellations mar busy Father’s Day, Juneteenth travel weekend
The discussion surrounding air travel efficiency heightened this week when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the Transportation Department to “fine airlines $55,000 per passenger for every flight cancellation they know can’t be fully staffed.”
Lori Aratani, Hannah Sampson and James Bikales contributed to this report. | 2022-07-02T19:05:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | July Fourth travelers face thousands of flight delays, cancellations, high gas prices across U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/02/july-4-flight-delays-cancellations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/02/july-4-flight-delays-cancellations/ |
Mail carriers robbed at gunpoint in D.C. and Md., Postal Service says
A post office on 14th Street in Northwest D.C. is seen in April 2020. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Several mail carriers were robbed at gunpoint in the Washington area on back-to-back days ahead of the July Fourth holiday, U.S. Postal Inspection Service officials said.
USPIS officials said that two of the six robberies took place Thursday, in Takoma Park and Northeast D.C., and that the other four occurred Friday, in Northwest D.C. as well as Wheaton, Beltsville and Columbia in Maryland.
Michael Martel, a postal inspector and spokesman for the USPIS, said in a news conference that the first robbery occurred shortly after noon Thursday near 7401 Holley Ave. in Takoma Park, where he said two individuals approached a letter carrier, brandished a weapon and demanded property. The individuals assaulted the carrier and then fled in a black sedan, Martel said.
The Post reported in April on a rise in armed robberies of USPS letter carriers in connection with an increase in stolen checks. Martel called the robberies an alarming trend that needs to stop.
In two of the recent incidents, he said, the attempted robbers struck the mail carrier in the face or head. In others, Martel said, the subjects brandished a firearm but did not physically assault the carriers. The assaulted carriers sustained mild injuries and did not have to be hospitalized, he said.
“It is a sad state of things when it comes down to robberies against someone that provides an essential service to our communities,” Martel said. “But it’s happening here, and it’s got to end.”
Martel declined to speculate on a motive for the robberies because the investigation is still underway. He said the alleged robbers took personal property and Postal Service property but not mail. He did not provide specific examples of Postal Service property, citing the ongoing investigation.
A D.C. police spokesperson confirmed that the department is assisting the USPIS in the probe. | 2022-07-02T19:49:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USPS carriers in DC, Maryland robbed at gunpoint, officials say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/usps-robberies-dc-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/usps-robberies-dc-maryland/ |
Uvalde schools police chief resigns from city council post
Pete Arredondo, who was placed on administrative leave over his response to the shooting at Robb Elementary, had secretly been sworn in to the city council position
Pete Arredondo, police chief for schools in Uvalde, Tex., speaks at a news conference after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24. (Mikala Compton/Reuters)
Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, whose delayed response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., has been widely criticized, has resigned from his post on the city council, the local newspaper reported Saturday.
“After much consideration, I regret to inform those who voted for me that I have decided to step down as a member of the city council for District 3,” Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News. “The mayor, the city council, and the city staff must continue to move forward without distractions.”
Shortly after the article was published, however, the city of Uvalde released a statement saying it had not heard directly from Arredondo.
“While it is the right thing to do, no one from the City has seen a letter or any other documentation of his resignation, or even spoken with him,” read the statement, circulated by news outlets. Officials noted that they had learned of Arredondo’s resignation only from the Leader-News’s article.
Arredondo, his lawyer and a person who has handled media inquiries for him did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post.
Arredondo led a team of six officers who were chiefly responsible for assuring the safety of Uvalde’s schools. On the day of the shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead, it was his decision to have those officers wait for backup instead of rushing the classroom, according to state police.
“It was the wrong decision. Period. There’s no excuse for that,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven C. McCraw said, adding that wounded children were denied potentially lifesaving care during the wait.
In an interview last month with the Texas Tribune, Arredondo argued that his officers could not have burst into the classroom holding the gunman because the door jamb was made of steel, and therefore they had to wait for someone to bring them the keys. He also said that he was not aware that 911 calls were being placed from the classroom during that time because he and his team had left their radios outside the building, and no one informed them what was going on during the 77 minutes they were trying to find a way into the room.
Arredondo also told the Tribune that he did not agree with characterizations from other police officials that he was the scene’s incident commander and disputed charges that he told police to stand down.
Arredondo was placed on administrative leave from his school district position in late June. Around the same time, the city council also unanimously rejected Arredondo’s request for a leave of absence, and some members signaled to local media that they would be willing to oust him from the council if he missed three straight meetings, as permitted by the city charter.
Arredondo was elected to the city council before the mass shooting and sworn in one week after the incident, in secret. | 2022-07-02T19:53:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde schools police chief resigns from city council post - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/uvlade-city-council-resign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/uvlade-city-council-resign/ |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The Hard Rock casino reached agreement with Atlantic City’s main casino workers union on Saturday, removing the last threat of a strike during the busy holiday weekend and clearing the way for the gambling halls and their workers to concentrate on bouncing back from financial losses during the coronavirus pandemic.
Combined with agreements reached Thursday with the Borgata, Caesars, Harrah's and the Tropicana, Hard Rock’s deal leaves only two smaller casinos, Resorts and the Golden Nugget, without a contract. But the union said it expects both of them to agree to one in the coming days. | 2022-07-02T20:02:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hard Rock deal ends casino strike threat in Atlantic City - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hard-rock-deal-ends-casino-strike-threat-in-atlantic-city/2022/07/02/d7dca346-fa37-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hard-rock-deal-ends-casino-strike-threat-in-atlantic-city/2022/07/02/d7dca346-fa37-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Millions of bees were released on June 27, after a truck carrying the bees tipped over on Interstate 80 in Summit County, Utah. (Video: Wasatch Beekeepers Association)
Richey said the driver and a co-driver who was in the truck both suffered minor injuries and numerous bee stings and were treated at a hospital. Neither of the drivers was publicly identified.
A man shopping for groceries came back to find his car buzzing with 15,000 bees
Firefighters were alerted Monday by the trucking company that had been in contact with the owner of the bees that the owner wanted them to be sprayed down with firefighting foam for safety and liability reasons, Richey said.
Julie Arthur, president of the Wasatch Beekeepers Association, told The Post the truck was transporting 416 boxes of bees, each of which typically carries 50,000 or more, to be used to facilitate the pollination of food crops on the West Coast. She said the fire suppressant is deadly to bees and only about 10 percent of them survived.
A Florida couple saw bees coming out of their shower. A massive beehive of 80,000 was in the wall.
Arthur said volunteer beekeepers who showed up to help rescue the surviving bees were initially turned away, but once she received clearance on Tuesday, she started calling the volunteers back to help with what turned out to be a days-long rescue effort. She said that the volunteers started collecting the bees “pickup truckload by pickup truckload,” and passing many of them along to local beekeepers. | 2022-07-02T20:10:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | More than 25 million angry bees swarm over Utah highway after semi-truck crash, beekeeper says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/bees-escape-utah-crash-highway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/bees-escape-utah-crash-highway/ |
Manager Dave Martinez, left, and GM Mike Rizzo, center, with principal owner Mark Lerner during a pregame ceremony last month to honor Ryan Zimmerman. The Nationals exercised the option Saturday on the contracts of Martinez and Rizzo. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
As uncertainty trails the Washington Nationals — about the ownership situation, the upcoming trade deadline, Juan Soto’s contract negotiations — one part of the future was solidified Saturday afternoon: Mike Rizzo and Dave Martinez will remain in their positions into 2023.
The Nationals announced before their game against the Miami Marlins that they exercised next year’s options for both. Rizzo, the Nationals’ general manager and president of baseball operations, has been with the team since 2009. Martinez has been the team’s manager since 2018. Ownership had until July 15 to decide whether the pair would be back, according to multiple people with knowledge of their contract terms.
“I tried not to think about this much, to be honest with you,” Rizzo said. “We’re at work. I just assumed this was going to be the answer.”
“I know we’ve had a tough go, but I’m seeing some really good things,” Martinez said at the beginning of his pregame news conference. “Our young players are performing a lot better. … We had a plan coming into this year, so I think we’re in a good spot and I think we’re going to get better fairly quickly. I’m really excited about it. … I get to see this through another year and then we’ll see what happens after that.”
Together, their marquee achievement is leading the Nationals to a World Series title in 2019. But in the three seasons since, the Nationals are just 123-181 (entering Saturday), a departure from competing for division titles for the better part of a decade. The slide included trading Trea Turner, Max Scherzer and six others last July. It also includes Washington’s current last-place standing, 20 games behind the New York Mets at 29-50.
So as the July 15 deadline approached, two complicating factors were recent results and the potential change in ownership. Ultimately, though, the Lerner family chose to retain their most public-facing employees. Around 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, Alan Gottleib, the chief operating officer for Lerner Sports, walked out of a conference room in the Nationals’ clubhouse with Rizzo and Martinez, who each carried a piece of paper. Moments later, handshakes and black slaps could be heard from Martinez’s office.
Gottleib declined to answer questions about the decision to exercise the options. During his news conference, Martinez acknowledged players asked about his status, showing the unknowns were on their minds.
“It does bring some continuity not only to this organization, but to the players, as well, which is nice,” Martinez said. “And also to the coaching staff, training staff … it’s nice to know that we’re going to be together and that we’re going to continue to work the way we do.”
With his coaches, did he want to provide the peace of mind in knowing their boss has another season?
“For me, it was important when we hired the coaches that they all got a two-year deal,” said Martinez, who brought on hitting coach Darnell Coles, first base coach Eric Young Jr., third base coach Gary DiSarcina and bullpen coach Rickey Bones this past fall. “So they’re all going to be around here, as well.”
For Martinez, the immediate charge is to manage a roster that will likely get weaker in early August, as a handful of key veterans are expected to be dealt for more prospects. For Rizzo, the next month holds the amateur draft, the trade deadline and ongoing discussions with Soto, who said Friday he is open to a long-term extension. And while this draft and deadline are critical steps of the rebuild — especially since the Nationals have the fifth overall pick, their highest since 2010 — Soto remains a huge part of the process.
If he signs a long-term deal, Washington has a superstar it can build around. Fail to sign him and Soto could test free agency after the 2024 season, which may be when the Nationals are ready to turn the corner again. Of course, the numbers have to line up for the team and player, who in this case is represented by agent Scott Boras. But the club has made multiple efforts above the 13 years and $350 million they offered last fall. None of the offers have included payment deferrals, according to two people with knowledge of the terms, a notable shift in the Lerner family’s typical negotiating style.
But what mattered most Saturday was the assurance for Martinez, Rizzo and those working around them — even if many uncertainties persist.
“The reboot is going extremely well,” said Rizzo, who’s always opted for reboot instead of rebuild. “You can see a blossoming young major league core that’s developing right in front of our eyes. Our minor league system has never been better as far as talent and performance on the field. So we’re right where we want to be to challenge for championships in the very near future.” | 2022-07-02T21:33:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals exercise options for Dave Martinez, Mike Rizzo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/nationals-dave-martinez-mike-rizzo-contracts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/nationals-dave-martinez-mike-rizzo-contracts/ |
MS-13 members killed teens based on falsehoods to get gang promotions
Five men were convicted of murdering two teens in Virginia after a trial that pulled back the curtain on the group’s ruthless operations
A police line demarcates a crime scene in March 2017 after human remains were found in Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Fairfax County, Va. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
Nervously hunching in the witness stand, the former gangster recounted how he started a false rumor that led to the brutal killing of a teenager in a Fairfax County park in 2016.
Moris Castro, who was 15 at the time, said he told another MS-13 member that 14-year-old Sergio Anthony Arita Triminio was talking to police, which is punishable by death under the gang’s violent code. Castro did it, he said, to keep attention off his own dealings with law enforcement.
“I was the one that was talking, and didn’t want them to know it was me,” Castro testified in federal district court in Alexandria in June.
On Friday, a jury convicted five MS-13 members of racketeering charges in the kidnapping and murder of Arita Triminio, of Alexandria, and 17-year-old Edvin Eduardo Escobar Mendez, of Falls Church. The two-month trial provided an exhaustive account of MS-13’s ruthless, haphazard and transnational operations, showing how gang members in the Washington region killed the teenagers so that leaders in El Salvador and the United States would elevate them to higher ranks.
Castro began to spread the false rumor about Arita Triminio around the time he was taken to Escobar Mendez’s burial site and shown a grisly video of his killing, according to his testimony. Witnesses said Escobar Mendez also was killed based on a falsehood — that he was a spy from a rival gang. His remains were found buried 50 yards away from Arita Triminio’s in March 2017, months after their killings.
Ronald Herrera Contreras, Duglas Ramirez Ferrera, Pablo Miguel Velasco Barrera, Henry Zelaya Martinez and his brother, Elmer Zelaya Martinez — who was the leader of an MS-13 cell operating in Northern Virginia — face mandatory sentences of life in prison. All are in their mid-20s to early 30s.
Nine other MS-13 associates pleaded guilty as part of the investigation, prosecutors said. Six of them, including Castro, cut deals with federal prosecutors to give court testimony in hopes of reducing their prison terms. Castro, now 21, said he struck Arita Triminio’s body twice with a pickax. He received the maximum sentence of 30 years for maiming in aid of a criminal enterprise.
Castro said that he had known Arita Triminio for about two years and that their time in juvenile detention overlapped. “I just didn’t like him; I don’t know,” he testified.
Prosecutors showed reams of Facebook Messenger exchanges and encrypted voice messages from WhatsApp that authorities recovered, revealing how the defendants planned and celebrated the killings. Prosecutors also showed graphic videos of Arita Triminio’s nighttime slaying in a secluded area of Holmes Run Stream Valley Park.
In the footage, dozens of blows with a machete or other weapons can be heard as Elmer Zelaya Martinez curses the victim. According to one witness, he orders different crew members to take turns striking the 14-year-old. A video that lasts about two minutes shows men hacking at Arita Triminio’s inert body, which is face down.
After one of the videos was shown, a juror sent a note to the judge requesting that the jury be warned before a graphic video was to be played in the courtroom.
Both teenagers’ killings were filmed on cellphones so that the MS-13 members who participated could be promoted by the gang’s leaders, witnesses testified.
“The homeboys needed evidence, ma’am, and what evidence could be better than that?” one witness who participated in the 14-year-old’s killing, Yonathan Melgar Martinez, said in response to questions from Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebeca H. Bellows. He was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to murder in aid of racketeering.
Prosecutors said the teenagers were lured to the same park under the pretext of a gang meeting. Defense attorneys had argued that neither Escobar Mendez nor Arita Triminio was kidnapped, because they were eager to be part of the Park View Locos Salvatrucha, the MS-13 cell in Northern Virginia that carried out their slayings. Attorneys for the five defendants who went to trial said prosecutors had relied on “six murderers” who pleaded guilty to narrate the videos and other gory details from the fatal attacks.
Attorneys for two of the defendants on trial also argued that the jury should be told that their clients were under duress and feared retribution if they did not participate in the killings.
U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. rejected that argument Wednesday, finding in a written order that the defendants were “not under a real and specific imminent threat at the time of their alleged acts” and that they “voluntarily made the choice to join MS-13 and travel to the scene of the murders … recklessly placing themselves in a situation where they could be forced to engage in criminal conduct, including kidnapping and murder.” | 2022-07-02T23:00:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | MS-13 members killed teens based on falsehoods to get gang promotions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/ms13-northern-virginia-racketeering-convictions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/ms13-northern-virginia-racketeering-convictions/ |
Arnold Skolnick, designer of Woodstock promotional poster, dies at 85
Using paper cutouts, he designed the bird-on-a-guitar image that symbolized the 1969 music festival in upstate New York
Arnold Skolnick, designer of the poster for the Woodstock music festival, in 2021. (Portland Press Herald/Getty Images)
Arnold Skolnick, a graphic artist whose last-minute design for the poster promoting the 1969 Woodstock rock festival was one of the most indelible visual images of the era, died June 15 at a hospice in Amherst, Mass. He was 85.
Mr. Skolnick had worked on advertising campaigns and had designed movie titles, book jackets and corporate logos early in his career, but none of his prior work hadthe impact of the poster he created in four days in the summer of 1969.
A poster designed by another artist had been rejected because it showed a nude woman and didn’t leave room for the performers’ names. Mr. Skolnick got the emergency assignment after one of the Woodstock organizers saw a logo he designed for a hotel in the Virgin Islands.
Inspired by the paper constructions of Henri Matisse, Mr. Skolnick went to work, incorporating casual drawings he had made. He ultimately decided on a design with two primary elements — a bird standing on a guitar, balanced in the opposite corner by bold lettering describing the event.
“I was drawing catbirds all the time,” Mr. Skolnick told the Canadian news service CanWest in 2004. “I just took the razor blade and cut that catbird out of the sketchpad I was using. First, it sat on a flute. I was listening to jazz at the time, and I guess that’s why. But anyway, it sat on a flute for a day, and I finally ended up putting it on a guitar.”
At first, Mr. Skolnick tried a blue background before switching to a more vibrant red. He placed the white bird (often assumed to be a dove) in the upper left corner, standing on one leg on the neck of a guitar. A disembodied hand grips the guitar, which is depicted in green and blue and without strings.
Hand-cut orange and white paper lettering in the lower right corner announces “3 Days of Peace & Music.” (Mr. Skolnick’s signature appears below the letter M in “music.”) Early editions of the poster gave the location as Wallkill, N.Y., before it was changed White Lake, N.Y. In the end, the festival took place near Bethel, N.Y.
“They gave [the assignment] to me on Thursday,” Mr. Skolnick told the Stamford Advocate in 2010. “And I brought it by to them on Monday afternoon.”
The poster quickly came to symbolize not just the Woodstock festival but the ideals of a youth movement then at its height. At a time when much of the artwork associated with rock music had elaborate lettering and images meant to evoke the psychedelic spirit of the age, Mr. Skolnick’s design stood out in its simplicity: a bird representing peace, a guitar representing music.
“There are a million ways to approach something like that,” Mr. Skolnick said in 2019, “so you just pick one and see if it works.”
Although he had little interest in rock music — he preferred classical music and jazz — Mr. Skolnick had a backstage pass for the festival, which attracted more than 400,000 people.
Mr. Skolnick began drawing at an early age and attended New York’s old High School of Music & Art. He graduated from New York’s Pratt Institute in 1958 and later studied at the Art Students League of New York. He was an artist and designer for the Young & Rubicam advertising agency for several years before starting a freelance business.
The Woodstock poster was not Mr. Skolnick’s only memorable visual image. In 1971, he designed the book jacket for Ralph Nader’s “What to Do With Your Bad Car: An Action Manual for Lemon Owners.”
“I looked, and I said, ‘Just put a lemon on wheels!’” Mr. Skolnick told the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
From the 1970s to the 2000s, Mr. Skolnick designed many art books, and he was a prolific painter in his own right, with numerous shows in galleries.
His marriages to Iris Jay and Cynthia Meyer ended in divorce. Survivors include two sons from his first marriage, Alex Skolnick of Dresher, Pa., and Peter Skolnick of Turners Falls, Mass.; a sister; and two grandchildren.
Original copies of Mr. Skolnick’s Woodstock poster now sell for thousands of dollars, and his design has been copied and adapted countless times over the years. The bird he cut from his sketch pad in 1969 formed the basis of a 2019 postage stamp commemorating Woodstock’s 50th anniversary.
Mr. Skolnick received a one-time payment for the Woodstock assignment, but in the more than 50 years since then, he said he received less than $20 in residuals for the thousands of T-shirts, mugs and posters that have featured his design.
“There are no royalties,” he said. “Anybody in the rock-and-roll business knows you can’t get royalties from anybody. You’re lucky to get paid.” | 2022-07-02T23:04:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arnold Skolnick, Woodstock poster designer, dies at 85 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/02/woodstock-designer-arnold-skolnick-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/02/woodstock-designer-arnold-skolnick-dies/ |
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the VEC is now trying to collect more than $859 million in overpayments made in 366,308 cases since the start of the pandemic. Those figures don’t reflect incorrect payments due to fraud.
However, if customers have a pending waiver or appeal, they will not be referred to billing and collections until “all other options have been pursued,” the news release said. | 2022-07-02T23:05:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | VEC to resume trying to collect about $860M in overpayments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vec-to-resume-trying-to-collect-about-860m-in-overpayments/2022/07/02/dba4a3fe-fa53-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vec-to-resume-trying-to-collect-about-860m-in-overpayments/2022/07/02/dba4a3fe-fa53-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
A gurney in the execution chamber at the state penitentiary in McAlester, Okla., in 2014. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)
After a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled in early June that the state’s three-drug lethal-injection protocol was constitutional, O’Connor made his request, saying in filings that the prisoners had exhausted their criminal appeals. O’Connor argued for imminent execution dates as a matter of justice for the family members of those who were murdered. In a statement, O’Connor noted that the earliest murder by a prisoner currently on Oklahoma’s death row was committed in 1993.
Oklahoma death row inmate convulsed, vomited during lethal injection, witness says, as state resumes executions
The first execution is scheduled for Aug. 22, with subsequent executions scheduled for about once every four weeks through 2024. In Oklahoma, prisoners are automatically granted a clemency hearing within 21 days of their scheduled execution, at which point the state’s pardon and parole board can recommend the governor grant a prisoner a reprieve from death row.
The scheduled flurry of executions is expected to draw Oklahoma back into familiar territory: the center of the nation’s death penalty debate.
The first drug Oklahoma administers in its lethal-injection protocol, the sedative midazolam, has prompted legal challenges by prisoners arguing that it fails to reliably render them unconscious, raising the likelihood of an execution that would be considered “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The state suspended executions in 2015 after the botched lethal injections of Charles Warner and Clayton Lockett in which a still-conscious Warner cried out, “my body is on fire.” Lockett writhed for 43 minutes before dying of a heart attack.
Oklahoma lethal injection process muddled by ‘inexcusable failure,’ grand jury finds
Several of the Oklahoma prisoners scheduled for execution have strong innocence claims, histories of intellectual disability that should disqualify them for the death penalty or whose cases have claims of racial bias, their lawyers say.
Among them is Richard Glossip, whose 2015 case against the state’s lethal injection protocol went before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in the state’s favor. His assertion of innocence has not only made him one of the more high-profile death row cases in the United States but has also won him support from Republican lawmakers in the state who object to his execution, scheduled for September.
Glossip’s attorney on Friday filed a motion for post-conviction relief, a type of appeal that cites new evidence that was not available during his original 1998 trial. Last month, the law firm Reed Smith released an independent investigation on Glossip’s case commissioned by a committee of lawmakers led by Texas House Rep. Kevin McDugle (R). It found “grave” concerns with Glossip’s conviction, including allegations that Oklahoma City police, at the direction of prosecutors, intentionally destroyed evidence favorable to Glossip.
“The facts and evidence that we now know in this case prove Richard Glossip is an innocent man,” Glossip’s attorney Don Knight said in a statement Friday. “We urge the State of Oklahoma to grant this request for post-conviction relief based on the abundance of new evidence that has never before been evaluated by a judge or jury.”
Glossip was sentenced to death in 1998 after being convicted of a murder-for-hire scheme against Barry Van Treese, a motel owner who was Glossip’s boss.
Glossip, who has received several last-minute reprieves, including a near-botched execution in 2016, prompted the state to shutter its death chamber for five years. A grand jury investigation that year found “inexcusable failures” in the state’s death-penalty protocol.
In a 2020 court hearing, lawyers for the state said the Oklahoma Department of Corrections had addressed lapses with training for executions “to ensure what happened in the past won’t happen again.”
The following year, the state carried out its first execution since 2015. According to witnesses, the prisoner, John Marion Grant, went into full-body convulsions and vomited before dying. | 2022-07-02T23:05:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oklahoma plans to execute 25 prisoners over the next 29 months - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/oklahoma-25-executions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/02/oklahoma-25-executions/ |
Iga Swiatek, the 2022 French Open champion, lost at Wimbledon on Saturday. (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)
On a Saturday when this Wimbledon lost both its French Open women’s finalists in the third round, No. 1 Iga Swiatek and No. 11 Coco Gauff, Swiatek’s towering streak died as streaks do now and then: in a hasty fizzle. It ended as she lost 16 of the last 19 points and said, “I was pretty confused about my tactics.” It ended as the 21-year-old Polish marvel bowed 6-4, 6-2, to a crafty sort, 32-year-old Alizé Cornet of France, a marvel herself in her record-tying 62nd consecutive Grand Slam main draw.
Actually, she’s the same Cornet who beat No. 1 Serena Williams in the third round in 2014.
“As a solid player, she used (the confusion) pretty well,” Swiatek said.
Anyone following and listening could have learned all manner of curious sports realities. For one, Cornet has had her best big-tournament year just as she had reckoned she’d exit her sport, some sort of case of victory through appreciation. She reached her first major quarterfinal (at the 2022 Australian Open) in her 63rd major try. She reached the third round at the French. She’s not sure, but she thinks it might be this: “I think that’s why I’m playing so good, it’s because I know it’s almost the end.”
She walked to Court No. 1, the secondary of the stadium courts, remembering to smile because she might not walk to it again.
She won, then did not want to know the identity of her fourth-round opponent. “No, really, please,” she said. “I just beat the world number one. I want to enjoy for a few hours, not knowing what’s next, not envisioning and be like, I’m going to play her, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to know. Until tomorrow I’m not going to try to be on the social media because for sure I will find out.”
(It’s Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia, No. 44 to Cornet’s No. 37.)
Then there’s the reminder that grass-court tennis has left many a player lost between the blades, even a maestro such as Swiatek. Suddenly, she’s not contesting the points so much, and she’s got a sitter overhead at 2-4 and 15-all of the second set which she whales into the bottom of the wall behind the baseline.
Cornet has to dodge it.
Swiatek actually laughs at herself, always a good sign.
“Well, basically the thing that I changed this year is I started being more and more aggressive,” she said. “It was really comfortable for me to have the initiative and be proactive. But here I couldn’t control the ball. So I needed to slow down a little bit. I was kind of pushing the ball, which sometimes was actually okay … But there in the second set, yeah, I kind of made a few attempts to speed up again, and didn’t work out. I didn’t come back to being solid. Also, you know, when you play aggressively and you suddenly change the way you play, it’s not easy to keep that. Yeah, so I got a little bit confused.”
She said at one point, “I didn’t tank it, but I just didn’t know what to do,” as the grass retains the power to flummox even somebody who just won 37 straight and a French Open tucked amid.
It doesn’t flummox Gauff as much — she reached the fourth round here in 2019 at age 15 — but the French finalist faced grass and wind and, most importantly, the New Jersey-born Floridian Amanda Anisimova, whose 6-7 (4-7), 6-2, 6-1 win dismissed Gauff but did not disillusion her.
“I think I’ve grown a lot in my mentality over this trip,” said the 18-year-old.
To describe: “Well, I mean, the start of the clay season there were matches, there was my first match of the clay season, I was up 4-0 and lost the set, kind of lost the match really because of mentality. Today I was up 3-0 and went down a break. I was able to somehow find a way to win that set (from 4-1 down in the tiebreaker). For me, that just shows improvement in that aspect.”
She moved on to mixed doubles with Jack Sock, an opening win full of smiles from both Americans, and then she made the walk from Court No. 3 to the locker room, surrounded by a throng of admirers. She posed for umpteen selfies and signed umpteen autographs, a bustling signal of her budded stature, and she said: “For me, it’s crazy that people get nervous to meet me ’cause I’m not — well I guess the way I watch myself on the court, I do look intimidating. Off the court I’m not intimidating, so I try to tell them, ‘Just chill out. Let’s have a conversation.’ ”
As she walked through with the gathering blob of life around her, her opponent had fallen — onto the grass in wonder. Anisimova, 20, who beat Gauff in the 2017 U.S. Open girls singles final, had made a torrid run to the 2019 French Open semifinals, but had suffered the sudden death of her father at 52 before that U.S. Open.
By 2021, she had lost enough — only one match win in any of the majors — that she couldn’t believe her standing in the fourth round here. The slowing of the wind after the first set had helped her unforced errors dip from 26 in that set to 10 and four in the two others. She was powerful and masterful, as she tried to “soak in every moment that I had” on her first Centre Court trip, including the ending, of which she said, “Especially after last year, I wouldn’t have pictured myself in this position.”
Her year has been strong, and her winning streak has just reached a hard-won three. | 2022-07-02T23:05:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff out at Wimbledon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/iga-swiatek-coco-gauff-lose-wimbledon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/iga-swiatek-coco-gauff-lose-wimbledon/ |
Two people killed after a car hit a fireworks stand, D.C. police say
The crash happened at Minnesota Avenue, according to police
Two people were killed Saturday in Northeast Washington when a car crashed into a fireworks stand, D.C. police said.
Police said “multiple pedestrians” were apparently hit around 6 p.m. when the car crashed into the stand at Minnesota Avenue and Hunt Place NE.
Two other people were reportedly taken to hospitals, according to initial accounts.
It was not immediately clear why the vehicle left the roadway. However, some officials said the driver may have suffered a medical emergency.
Information about the driver’s condition was not immediately available.
A photograph indicated that the stand was severely damaged. It included a canopy supported by poles, with cardboard cartons that apparently contained merchandise.
The crash was reported about 6 p.m. at Minnesota Avenue and Hunt Place NE. | 2022-07-02T23:52:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Car crash at fireworks stand in Washington leaves two dead, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/dc-fireworks-car-accident/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/02/dc-fireworks-car-accident/ |
Australia’s Nick Kyrgios had a lot to say during his four-set win over Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas. “It felt kind of a circus, in a way,” Tsitsipas said after the match. (Hannah Mckay/Reuters)
WIMBLEDON, England — Wimbledon, which has a tradition of nuttiness squeezing out from beneath its elegance, had a nutty Saturday night.
A quick wrangle peppered the match on Centre Court between Rafael Nadal and Lorenzo Sonego. Before, during and after that, a protracted cacophony slathered itself all over the match on Court No. 1 between Stefanos Tsitsipas, the No. 5 player in the world, and that longtime hub of commotion, Nick Kyrgios, ranked No. 40 but forever capable of abbreviated brilliance.
Nadal, the reigning Australian Open and French Open champion, played his most frightful match so far here in a 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 wipeout. Kyrgios, still a magnet of attention while not reaching any Grand Slam quarterfinal in seven years, won a gripping fourth-set tiebreaker and advanced, 7-6 (7-2), 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (9-7).
There ended the tennis. On came the talking.
“Yeah, it felt kind of a circus, in a way,” Tsitsipas said of the match.
The circus had code violations for both players, Tsitsipas slamming a ball off the court that almost hit spectators after he lost the second set, Kyrgios griping to the chair umpire for not defaulting Tsitsipas, Kyrgios griping more, Tsitsipas hitting balls at Kyrgios, Kyrgios griping more, Tsitsipas fielding an underhand serve and slamming it up to the wall behind the baseline, Kyrgios griping more.
The fourth-seeded Tsitsipas lamented the ceaseless yakking. “There comes a point where you really get tired of it, let’s say,” he said. “The constant talking, the constant complaining. I mean, I’m about to serve, and there is a big gap there that there is no tennis being played, which is the most important thing on the court. We are there to play tennis. We are not there to have conversations and dialogues with other people, except — especially, actually, not ‘except’ — when you really know that the referee is not going to overrule what he decided, you know. It’s really silly, in a way.”
He said, “There is no other player that is so upset and frustrated all the time with something. It triggers so easy and so fast.”
Tsitsipas blamed himself for the slammed ball near the spectators even as he lent a sliver of the blame to how Kyrgios addled him. “Look, I have to say it was really bad from my side,” he said. “I have never done that before, throwing the ball outside the court in that way. I did apologize to the people. I don’t know what went through my head at that time. … It did hit the wall, thank god. For sure I’m never doing that again. It’s my responsibility, for sure.”
He praised Kyrgios’s distinctiveness and “good traits in his character,” but noted “a very evil side to him” and said, “He was probably a bully at school himself. I don’t like bullies.”
As for the reply to the underhand serve, he said, “I was aiming for the body of my opponent but I missed by a lot, by a lot.”
Mixed doubles in the London dusk brings out Venus at twilight
Kyrgios, a swirl of chaos this tournament which has featured him spitting toward an abusive fan during the first round, spoke in stages: in an on-court interview with “ultimate respect” for Tsitsipas and, after hearing some of Tsitsipas’s comments, with a respect sub-ultimate.
“Well, I would be pretty upset if I lost to someone two weeks in a row, as well,” he said, just getting going.
“I was just wondering why he was still on the court,” Kyrgios said, “because I know if the roles had been reversed, I would have been pulled off that court and defaulted, for sure.” He called Tsitsipas “soft” for getting rattled and suggested Tsitsipas’s dismay might help explain why he hasn’t crested at the top just yet.
“I wasn’t hitting balls at his face,” Kyrgios said. “I don’t know. I didn’t feel like there was any anger. I had no anger toward Stef today on the match. I don’t know where it’s coming from, to be honest. He was angry, because when he hit the ball out of the [court], it was directed at his box. Obviously, they had some friction, and obviously when you start losing and losing to me again, you get angry.”
Nadal, by contrast, sounded prim. He had called Sonego to the net during the third set after complaining to the umpire about a noise Sonego made midpoint. The players chatted at length at the net after the match.
“Well, first of all, I have to say that I was wrong,” Nadal said. “Probably I will not — I should not call him on the net. So apologize for that. My mistake in that. No problem. I recognize that. Then after that, all the stuff during the match that I don’t want to comment, because is something that I spoke with him in the locker room, and it stays there.” | 2022-07-03T00:05:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stefanos Tsitsipas-Nick Krygios, Rafael Nadal mark wacky night at Wimbledon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/stefanos-tsitsipas-nick-kyrgios-rafael-nadal-wimbledon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/stefanos-tsitsipas-nick-kyrgios-rafael-nadal-wimbledon/ |
Bodies of 3 children, woman found in Minnesota lake
Bodies of 3 children, woman found in lake
State plans to speed execution rate
After a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled in early June that the state’s three-drug lethal-injection protocol was constitutional, O’Connor made his request, saying in filings that the prisoners had exhausted their criminal appeals.
$3.5 million bail for suspect in cyclist killing: Bail has been set at $3.5 million for Kaitlin Armstrong, who is accused of killing professional cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson in a fit of jealousy. Wilson was found shot inside an Austin apartment on May 11. Less than a week later authorities issued an arrest warrant for Armstrong. On Wednesday, she was arrested in a hostel on Santa Teresa Beach in Costa Rica.
Man faces charges of stalking Taylor Swift: A 35-year-old New York man is facing trespassing and stalking charges after authorities said he entered two New York City residences linked to singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Police say the suspect, who was arrested Friday, entered one of the residential buildings in the city’s Tribeca neighborhood on March 26, walking through an unlocked door. On June 12, the same man entered another residential building linked to Swift on the same street, and “made threats through the intercom toward a 32-year-old female,” according to a spokesperson for the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information. | 2022-07-03T00:36:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bodies of 3 children, woman found in Minnesota lake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bodies-of-3-children-woman-found-in-minnesota-lake/2022/07/02/cf6844ce-f9b3-11ec-a7e4-03590838919f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bodies-of-3-children-woman-found-in-minnesota-lake/2022/07/02/cf6844ce-f9b3-11ec-a7e4-03590838919f_story.html |
Richard Taruskin, provocative scholar of classical music, dies at 77
He published a six-volume history of Western music and was known for his strong opinions of composers
By Tim Page
Musicologist Richard Taruskin, author of the six-volume “Oxford History of Western Music.” (Kyoto Prize/Inamori Foundation)
Richard Taruskin, a music scholar and historian of wide influence and spectacular fecundity who wrote the gigantic “Oxford History of Western Music,” died July 1 at a hospital in Oakland, Calif. He was 77.
The cause was esophageal cancer, said his wife, Cathy Roebuck Taruskin.
Dr. Taruskin, a longtime professor of musicology at the University of California at Berkeley, was best known for his writings about Russian music and particularly about Igor Stravinsky, whom he venerated. His “Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through ‘Mavra’ ” (1996) combined in-depth technical analysis of the composer’s scores with an exhilarating overview of Russian musical life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — two volumes and 1,800 pages that took the composer only to the age of 40.
Stravinsky’s later years were covered exhaustively in Dr. Taruskin’s “The Oxford History of Western Music” (2005), a six-volume (including the index), 1.25-million word study of classical music from 800 AD through the end of the 20th century that also contained thousands of other names and figures.
Dr. Taruskin had many admirers. Alex Ross of the New Yorker called him “the most important living writer on classical music, either in academia or in journalism” in a recent interview with musicologist William Robin.
“If you want to know how brilliant Richard Taruskin’s ‘Oxford History of Western Music’ is, just open the first of its five long volumes, and start reading right from page one,” the critic and composer Greg Sandow wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “I found myself on the edge of my seat.”
That first volume, “Music From the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century,” was often judged the most successful of the series. In storytelling both authoritative and transporting, Dr. Taruskin wove facts and impressions from histories, visual art and architecture together into a consistently engrossing narrative that may still be the best overall introduction to “early music” available.
Indeed, Dr. Taruskin made his name through his studies in the Renaissance, with revelatory performances in the 1970s of the music of the then-obscure composer Johannes Ockeghem. In a review of the “History” for the New Criterion, the critic and editor Patrick J. Smith fondly recalled some Manhattan concerts of Renaissance music by the choral group Cappella Nova, led by Dr. Taruskin, adding that “his notes on the concerts ran into the dozens of pages, meant to be read at leisure much later.”
As a PhD student at Columbia University, Dr. Taruskin worked with Paul Henry Lang, whose own history, “Music in Western Civilization,” with its then-pioneering efforts to place music within a broader sociocultural context, had a profound effect on him.
Dr. Taruskin published his first book, “Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced in the 1860s,” in 1981. He also worked with musicologist Piero Weiss on “Music in the Western World: A History in Documents.”
In the mid-1980s, Dr. Taruskin became a contributor to the New York Times, where he was given unusually free rein and soon became a figure of controversy. He reminded some readers of the late drama and film critic John Simon, who was similarly known for reviews that were lively, erudite, fiercely articulate — and sometimes unnervingly brutal. Dr. Taruskin attacked composers Carl Orff, Arnold Schoenberg and Sergei Prokofiev as well as contemporary American composers such as Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino and Elliott Carter.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Dr. Taruskin wrote a column in the Times about the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s decision to cancel performances of some choruses from “The Death of Klinghoffer,” an opera by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman about the murder of a disabled Jewish American by Palestinian terrorists.
“Censorship is always deplorable, but the exercise of forbearance can be noble,” Dr. Taruskin wrote. “Not to be able to distinguish the noble from the deplorable is morally obtuse. In the wake of Sept. 11, we might want, finally, to get beyond sentimental complacency about art. Art is not blameless. Art can inflict harm. The Taliban know that. It’s about time we learned.”
In reply, Adams said he discerned two modes of writing in Dr. Taruskin’s output — his formal musicological work and his “pop” pieces for the Times.
“In the latter he has made a specialty of character assassination,” Adams told the British newspaper the Independent in 2002. “This makes good copy. It’s sort of like watching those tacky ‘true crime’ shows on television: there must always be a body count at the end, whether the target is Prokofiev, Shostakovich scholars, or anyone else he decides to humiliate.”
Dr. Taruskin was at his strongest in Russian music, and he returned largely to that study after the publication of his history, which he referred to as “the Ox.” Indeed, he seemed at something of a loss in most 20th-century music without a Russian connection.
In his history, for example, there were no mentions of Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Duke Ellington, Ruth Crawford Seeger or Stephen Sondheim. The name of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, once voted the most popular composer in the world in a New York Philharmonic radio poll and the subject of a huge revival in the last two decades of the 20th century, appeared five times in 4,560 pages, and then only in passing.
Stephen Sondheim, central figure in American musical theater, dies at 91
Richard Filler Taruskin was born in New York on April 2, 1945. His father was a lawyer and amateur violinist, and his mother had taught piano in her youth. Dr. Taruskin took up the cello when he was 11 and once said jokingly that he knew he would become a cellist so that the family might play piano trios. Later, the instrument he played most often in public was the viola da gamba, from which the cello is partially derived.
He attended what was then called the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan and later claimed to have read every book of music history in the New York Public Library. He was a 1965 graduate of Columbia’s undergraduate college and won a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, which permitted him to travel to Moscow in 1971 and 1972.
After receiving a master’s degree in 1968 and a doctorate in musicology in 1975 from Columbia, he taught in the university’s music department until 1987, when joined Berkeley’s faculty. He was named a full professor in 1989 and retired in 2014.
In addition to his wife of 38 years, of El Cerrito, Calif., Dr. Taruskin’s survivors include two children, Paul Roebuck Taruskin and Tessa Roebuck Taruskin; a sister; a brother; and two grandchildren.
Dr. Taruskin was said to have grown gentler in his later years and he befriended many young critics and scholars, the same sorts of people he used to deride in public attacks and private postcards. He received numerous honors, and in 2012 a conference in his honor was held at Princeton University.
The conference was called “After the End of Music History” and several talks were devoted to Dr. Taruskin’s life and work. This pleased him enormously.
“As long as Taruskin is the one to beat,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Taruskin is happy.”
Tim Page is professor emeritus of musicology at the University of Southern California and won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for criticism for his writings on music at The Washington Post. | 2022-07-03T02:07:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Richard Taruskin, music historian, dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/02/musicologist-richard-taruskin-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/02/musicologist-richard-taruskin-dies/ |
Nationals rookie Jackson Tetreault struggled with his location Saturday, walking five and lasting only four innings. (Nick Wass/AP)
Jackson Tetreault’s formula for success in his brief stint in the majors has been predicated on his ability to throw his two primary pitches — a fastball and a cutter — for strikes. But it’s hard to have success at this level, let alone as a rookie starter, with just two pitches.
If one of those pitches doesn’t work, it can make for a short outing. That’s exactly what happened to Tetreault in the Washington Nationals’ 5-3 loss to the Miami Marlins on Saturday afternoon at Nationals Park. The loss was the Nationals’ 10th to the Marlins in 11 games.
“Today, to walk five guys like that, it’s unacceptable,” Tetreault said. “Putting the team in a bad spot. It doesn’t feel good, and, yeah, just really disappointed in myself.”
The right-hander never quite found a feel for his fastball, a pitch he throws around 60 percent of the time. Of the 84 pitches he threw Saturday, 43 were fastballs and just 18 of those were strikes. Only one was a swing and miss.
After the game, Tetreault said his mechanics caused his fastball to have a bit more movement than usual, leading to a loss of location.
He walked Jon Berti to open the game on seven pitches and Berti stole second, his third swiped base in two games. Then the Marlins started to make hard contact.
Garrett Cooper flew out to right field at 91.5 mph. Jesús Aguilar mashed a homer at 104.9 mph to put the Marlins ahead 2-0. Jesús Sánchez ended the inning with a 106.8-mph groundout.
His pitch count ran up, and his fastballs continued to miss the target. Tetreault became more jumpy and frustrated after each miss.
“I think he was yanking; his extension might have been a little longer than normal,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “So we’ll take a look at it. His misses weren’t terrible, but they were misses. … Built his pitch count up.”
The Nationals (29-51) tied the game in the second with a two-run single from Tres Barrera. But Tetreault couldn’t take advantage of the chance to reset. He stuck with his fastball and cutter to no avail — he threw only six curveballs in his four innings of work.
The Marlins (36-40) added single runs in the third and fourth off Tetreault, the first coming from a fielder’s choice from Avisail Garcia, the second on Miguel Rojas’s sacrifice fly after Nick Fortes tripled to start the inning.
By the time he got Aguilar to ground into a double play to end his outing, his ledger had five walks, four hits and four earned runs, raising his ERA to 5.14.
Tetreault isn’t the only young Nationals pitcher who struggled for the same reasons — Joan Adon’s difficulties (6.97 ERA in 13 starts) were due in part to an overreliance on fastballs and curveballs before he was sent down to Class AAA Rochester with hopes he would get more comfortable throwing a change-up.
It’s unclear whether Tetreault, 26, is an important arm in the Washington rebuild in the long run. But if he wants to be an effective pitcher moving forward, he will need another reliable pitch on days such as Saturday when his best pitch isn’t there.
“I tried to go to my curveball to a couple of the guys, Sánchez and Aguilar, and had some success with it and probably should have kept trying it,” Tetreault said. “But kind of got away from it a little bit, so that’s a mistake on my end. I should have tried to mix in other pitches to see if I can find an arm slot or something and find something that’s working.”
How did the Nationals score their third run of the game? Juan Soto went to the opposite field for a home run in the sixth inning. Facing Marlins starter Daniel Castano for a third time through the order, Soto took a 1-0 cutter tailing away, and it carried out for a solo shot.
In the first at-bat, Castano walked him on four pitches down and away. The following at-bat, Castano took a similar approach, burying pitches away until Soto pulled a ball and grounded into a 3-6-3 double play. But the third time around, Soto waited until the ball got deep in the zone and took it to left field, ending Castano’s outing.
What did Aaron Barrett announce Saturday? Barrett, who pitched for the Nationals in two stints, 2014-15 and 2019-20, announced that his last professional appearance would come Monday.
Barrett suffered a broken humerus while pitching in 2016 and spent the next three years working his way back from the injury before making three appearances for Washington in 2019 and cried after his first outing. He is with the Philadelphia Phillies’ Class AAA affiliate, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. | 2022-07-03T02:07:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rookie Jackson Tetreault struggles as Marlins beat Nationals again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/marlins-nationals-jackson-tetreault-struggles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/marlins-nationals-jackson-tetreault-struggles/ |
Dear Carolyn: My husband and I have been married for 33 years and shared in the raising of five children, now all grown with families of their own.
One of them, my stepson, was married 13 years ago and his wife and he are parents to a 13-year-old girl. Over the years I have tried to be a grandma to this girl and I have found it hard to do. Now that she is a teenager, it is becoming even harder and creating some family disputes.
I am often called out on what I say to her. It seems I have been on guard for some time. Last summer it became unbearable in some respects, and I told her and her mother that I believed they don't like me. They left the house and I have not spoken to them personally since.
As a family they have been invited to various birthdays, holidays, etc. They do not show up.
It has become an issue of how we handle these sorts of situations, and I frankly don’t want to be involved in something where I will feel uncomfortable, knowing how they feel about me. I am not sure how to approach this situation. My husband wants me included.
Anonymous: Not to oversell myself or anything, but if I chose not to attend things because I knew someone there didn’t like me, then I would never leave my house.
Is it uncomfortable sometimes? Very.
But who promised us comfort? Almost no one is universally liked. We all have to suck it up sometimes, even around some family members.
You have even better reasons to than most. For one, you're not just an adult — you're an alpha adult here, sharing the top of the family pyramid with your husband. And your personality clashes with your granddaughter's, apparently, which happens. And yes, it can be frustrating, upsetting, hard to bear.
Yet out of these two realities, you have made — with I hope the best of intentions — a mess.
When the top of a family pyramid is involved in making a mess, that is where the primary responsibility lies in cleaning it up. This is for you to fix by bringing grace, humility, maturity, patience and an open mind, deliberately, to every choice you make with your family now. To this branch of it in particular.
Certainly you can't ask a child to take the lead in setting things right. A young adolescent is nowhere near as equipped as her grandmother to make difficult social and emotional choices toward restoring family harmony. Some may have grace beyond their years, sure, but that's a bonus, not a plan.
Certainly you can't ask the girl's mother to take the peacemaking lead; she has already made her own calculation that she needs to stand up to you to protect her girl.
Certainly you can’t ask your husband or son to step in. Your mouth formed the divisive words. So it’s on you to:
Recognize that a “hard” child isn’t a bad child. “Hard” just means there are challenges you haven’t seen before and require you to update your playbook. That’s the grace part.
Admit you handled this conflict badly and paid more attention to your own wounded feelings than to what the girl needed from her grandma. That’s the humility piece.
Recognize that what’s done is done and this is now an uncomfortable situation — and that you, as an alpha adult and veteran parent and grandma, are the best person for the job of meeting the discomfort head-on and getting through it. That’s the maturity piece.
Understand you can prostrate yourself before them and they may still choose to hang onto their grudge. Accepting that and resisting the urge to double down on your own sense of grievance takes patience, along with dashes of the other qualities.
You can't expect to fix multi-person wrecks. Only your part of them.
The last one, the open mind, is to inoculate you against another mess like this. You are a parent, a stepparent, a grandparent — you bring a lot of experience to your interactions with extended family. I am not discounting that. But if you allow your accrued wisdom to harden into expectations for how things “should” be, with you as arbiter, then you become the person who (for example) provides the utterly extraneous detail that the wedding and the child both arrived 13 years ago — and who gets “called out” for comments made to a child. Kindnesses, after all, tend not to get “called out.”
Best part of choosing to act with grace hereafter is that it works even if my understanding of this situation is completely wrong and unfair. Even if you were always kind and nonjudgmental with your granddaughter, even if you embraced her as-is, even if your frustrated outburst was a once-in-her-lifetime exception — even with all of that, your best course is still to absorb the discomfort bravely and act kindly. On your own and your family’s behalf. | 2022-07-03T05:10:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Grandma offends stepson’s family over 'hard' grandchild - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/03/carolyn-hax-grandma-offend-grandchild-manners/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/03/carolyn-hax-grandma-offend-grandchild-manners/ |
Recruits in Poland's Territorial Defense Force go through weapons training south of Gdansk. (Kasia Strek/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)
WARSAW — A few days after Russian troops stormed into Ukraine in February, Eryk Klossowski issued an unusual request to senior staff at the Polish utilities company he headed. War was raging across the border. It was time, he reasoned, for his team to expand its corporate training. Everyone should learn how to shoot a gun.
“Russia can still take more military steps and can trigger asymmetrical threats, like terrorist assaults,” said Klossowski, 46, who now is planning weapons training for hundreds of rank-and-file employees in after-work sessions this fall. “Everybody needs to be prepared.”
The war in Ukraine has marked a new era of Russian aggression, rekindling the threat of nuclear war and unleashing global food and energy crises that have sent prices soaring worldwide. But for neighboring countries, long familiar with the Russian threat, the war is provoking something more: a national call to arms.
Across eastern and northern Europe, polls show strong support for the NATO alliance and faith in the United States to honor mutual defense treaties if the Kremlin — still facing a far more difficult fight than it bargained for in Ukraine — threatens others in the years ahead. But countries living in Russia’s shadow remain unwilling to leave their fortunes to chance. They are moving to rapidly build up domestic military might, while also witnessing a renaissance in civilian readiness that harks back to the darkest days of the Cold War.
Poland, a Warsaw Pact nation under the Soviet Union’s boot for more than four decades, is today Moscow’s harshest critic in Europe. To face down a belligerent Russia, officials here are vowing to double the size of their armed forces to 300,000 troops, even as some politicians seek to loosen strict gun laws to put more weapons in civilian hands.
About 94 percent of Poles see Russia as a “major threat,” up from 65 percent in 2018, according to a new Pew Research survey. And 14 years after doing away with the draft, a plurality of Poles favors bringing back some form of army conscription.
As they step up to be counted, the country with the lowest rate of gun ownership in Europe is witnessing a surge of enrollment in its Territorial Defense Force, akin to America’s National Guard, as well as sharp interest in combat and survivalist courses and slots for training at gun ranges.
“Society has stepped out of its glass bubble,” said Krzysztof Wojcik, the 29-year-old founder of a nonprofit that provides survivalist and weapons instruction to civilians and has seen a dramatic jump in interest since the war in Ukraine began.
“People have long thought they are completely safe, that nothing will happen and the army is not needed,” said Wojcik, standing under a hot summer sun at a training center 87 miles from Warsaw, where 40 civilians were taking military-style courses paid for by the government. “It is no longer the case.”
Ukrainian success in deploying armed civilians to augment regular forces appears to have inspired Poland and other nearby nations to see a winning model in the “civilian soldier.” Here, the call to arms is extending beyond the traditional military, into boardrooms and even Polish schools. As soon as September, children as young as 13 are slated to begin limited weapons training.
“This is clearly the effect of war,” Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek said in an interview. “Ten years ago, if a minister in office had proposed that elementary school students have these kinds of classes, he would have been laughed off. However, what we have witnessed [in Ukraine], and the way this war was waged with such atrocities, showed us that the danger is real.”
“These are needed skills,” he added. “It’s not about the militarization of children, it’s about skills that would be useful for safety and security if the conflict escalates.”
The invasion has prompted a similar rethinking in Sweden and Finland, which broke decades-long taboos and applied for NATO membership this year; both have witnessed a huge surge in recruits signing up for voluntary defense forces. Lithuania — a Baltic nation and former Soviet state — is also witnessing a spike in personal weapon sales, including handguns and semiautomatics.
Interest in both personal combat training and private gun ownership has skyrocketed in the Czech Republic, the site of the Prague Spring, which was violently put down by the Soviet Union in 1968. There, the number of volunteers signing up for active army reserves is so high that officials say they are unable to process all the applications. Czech weapon sellers and firing ranges have also been besieged by citizens eager to buy guns and learn or improve shooting skills.
“People don’t believe the state would be able to protect them,” said Martin Fiser, owner of a shooting school in Prague where skyrocketing demand has filled spots for new students until September. “Our army is tiny.”
In a country dominated by hard-right politics, the tough gun laws stood as a rare exception to the agenda of the ruling Law and Justice party. Per capita, Poland’s population of 38 million sees relatively few guns in civilian hands — with 2.51 firearms per 100,000 people, compared with 19.61 in France and a whopping 120 per 100,000 in the United States.
Observers here say that is largely a product of the communist era, when Poland’s Soviet masters frowned on private gun ownership to the point of discouraging even hunting. For better or worse, Russia’s attacks in Ukraine are giving lift to efforts to change and liberalize those laws.
“All of our neighbors have a larger number of guns per capita. The Czechs. The Germans. Why should it be the case that they have easier access to weapons?” he said. He added: “We can see in Ukraine the way that weapons and weapons training has helped their effort” against the Russians.
Civil defense classes, common in Polish schools during the communist era, largely disappeared in recent decades as the fall of the Berlin Wall and then Poland’s accession to NATO and the European Union seemed to make the notion of war obsolete.
As the threat roars back to life, Poland is tentatively moving to reintroduce weapons training in schools — including theoretical training in eighth grade and tactical, hands-on training in ninth grade. The instruction will combine virtual-reality technology and in-person shooting at gun ranges.
“If Russia should ever think to attack Poland, Russia must know, the Kremlin must know, that in Poland, 40 million Poles are ready to stand up, arms in hand, to defend their homeland,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in June while inaugurating a high school shooting range in the southern town of Myszkow. “There is no going back under the foot of Russia.”
Mixing guns and schools might shock some Americans, given the wave of horrific mass shootings in the United States. But the measure has met mostly muted opposition here, with the loudest criticism being that it’s class time wasted or a ploy by the ruling party to curry favor with its base.
“It is strange. We had weapons training when I was at school 30 years ago, and we didn’t think it would ever come back,” said Dorota Loboda, a parental activist and member of the Warsaw City Council’s education committee. “We are not so happy with this. We need more psychologists, more therapists, at school. Not weapons.”
The shift in threat has been most jarring for younger Poles, who largely grew up in an era of peace punctuated by Russia’s aggression in Georgia in 2008 and its forced annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014. Both paled in comparison with the full-on invasion of Ukraine, which shattered many Poles’ illusion of safer times.
Justyna Muszynska, a 17-year-old high school student, was among those spending a full day last month at the training center northwest of Warsaw — practicing how to build a shelter, put on a gas mask, fire a gun.
“After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I realized I know absolutely nothing and have no idea how to protect myself and my loved ones,” she said, taking a break after a lesson in battlefield first aid. “I wanted to learn basic skills.”
Poland is moving to augment its defense might through its Territorial Defense Force. Minted by the Law and Justice party in 2017, its ranks of professional and part-time volunteer soldiers have been derided as the government’s “personal army.” Since spring, it has seen a sevenfold rise in recruitment.
“They want to defend themselves, their families and their homeland,” said Lt. Pawel Pinkowski, 40, a company commander and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The situation in Ukraine has shown that, indeed, it is better to be prepared.” | 2022-07-03T06:11:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | War prompts some European countries to boost military and civilian defenses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/03/call-arms-polands-military-civilian-defenses-rethink-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/03/call-arms-polands-military-civilian-defenses-rethink-future/ |
Brexit Has the UK Traveling the Wrong Way in Time
LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 12: To celebrate the new series of ‘Doctor Who’ which returns to BBC One on Saturday April 15 the TARDIS and a huge 3D pavement painting artwork by 3D Joe & Max depicting an alien landscape are displayed on the Southbank on April 12, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Tim P. Whitby/Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images) (Photographer: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images Europe)
The idea of time travel is an old British preoccupation, from H.G. Wells’s 1895 novel to the seemingly immortal television series “Doctor Who,” which first aired in 1963, the year before I was born. Although I didn’t travel by Tardis or encounter any murderous Daleks, returning to my native land last month felt more than usually like a “Doctor Who” episode.
It was partly the bucolic pleasures of the Chalke Valley History Festival in Wiltshire that felt like time travel. It’s a medieval fair, complete with tents and amusements (only dancing bears are lacking), but with the main business a series of talks by historians of more or less all persuasions.
There is something uniquely British about sitting talking about the historical precedents for a war in Eastern Europe while in the background battle re-enactors march past, dressed up for the Battle of Waterloo, bearded blacksmiths demonstrate the craft of armor manufacture and a 19th-century steam-driven tractor roars into life. The verdant fields provide an idyllic backdrop. From a distance, with your glasses off, the cluster of cream-colored tents recalls Henry V’s camp on the eve of Agincourt.
“Nothing like this is possible in Germany,” said an enthused visitor from that country. Considering how much Second World War hardware and paraphernalia there was on display, that’s probably just as well. A Japanese television producer looked equally amazed to see such an unabashed celebration of a country’s past.
Yet the real time travel began even before I had set off for Salisbury, the nearest town to the festival — with the announcement of three days of strike action by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, or RMT. Ah, train strikes. Nothing reminds me more vividly of my boyhood in 1970s Scotland than the cancellation of the train I had planned to catch.
I have already argued here and here that the world is being transported back to the 1970s by a combination of inflation, political polarization and war. Nowhere is this analogy more compelling than in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and (for now) Northern Ireland.
It’s not just the return of rail strikes, complete with a rare appearance by Arthur Scargill, the former firebrand leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, now 84. Nor is it just the dogged refusal of Paul McCartney (80) and Mick Jagger (78) to join Scargill in retirement. (Both were headlining the same weekend I was in Chalke Valley: the former at Glastonbury, the latter at Hyde Park.) It’s Britain’s general sense of economic gloom and political disillusionment, which goes far beyond the post-Covid hangover and Ukraine-war headache that nearly every country is enduring.
Consumers all over the world are in the grip of a massive mood swing from post-pandemic euphoria to inflation-induced sticker shock. (So much for the “Roaring Twenties” thesis. As I warned last year, we got the Roaring 2021.) But the British case stands out among developed markets. In May, UK consumer confidence plummeted to its lowest level since data collection began in 1974.
Inflation is a part of the story. Over the past dozen years Britain’s prices have indeed gone up more than America’s or Europe’s, and Citigroup Inc. expects UK inflation to be “stickier over the medium to long term.” In Britain, as in Europe, inflation is being driven by higher energy prices, the result not just of the war in Ukraine but also of unrealistic green policies that have discouraged investment in natural gas and nuclear capacity.
The Bank of England has not handled this well. In late October, its governor, Andrew Bailey, signaled that the Monetary Policy Committee would raise its policy rate at its November meeting, but this did not happen. In March, the bank surprised markets with a dovish-sounding monetary policy statement. These were unforced errors.
Government regulation can do little to mitigate the energy shock. The reset of the UK’s household energy price cap in April created a sharp upward spike in most energy-related consumer price index categories. The base effects will persist throughout summer. The cap is due to reset to a higher level again in October, which will generate another spike in the UK all-items index before year-end, as Bailey acknowledged last week. Double-digit inflation is coming soon.
The energy crisis is also a headache for Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. In May he announced a £15 billion package to assist households with the “cost-of-living crisis,” funded by additional borrowing (£10 billion) and a windfall tax on UK energy companies (£5 billion). The package earmarked £6 billion to help households pay their energy bills. However, the headline measure — a £400-per-household discount on bills, which would kick in from October 2022 — would still leave average energy prices paid by the lowest quintile of households £900-£1000 higher than in 2021, according to a recent parliamentary report.
The Conservative Party’s Thatcherite wing opposes Sunak’s package. It wants to cut taxes rather than increase transfers. In June, Sunak previewed a range of targeted corporate tax cuts to be announced in the autumn budget. However, the Treasury is unlikely to cut personal income taxes this year. Sunak simply cannot afford to allow debt to rise any further: It has nearly tripled relative to GDP since the 2008-9 financial crisis hit. That’s as big a jump as in the first half of World War I.
The government needs to worry not only about inflation but also about the effect of rising interest rates on its debt-service costs — not forgetting the downward pressure on sterling, which will drive inflation even higher. The UK’s current account deficit was 8.3% of GDP in the first quarter of 2022, the biggest since quarterly balance of payments data were first published in 1955. Sterling’s real effective exchange rate has not recovered from the big declines that occurred during the financial crisis and immediately after the Brexit referendum.
And that brings us to what might be called the £350 million question: How much of Britain’s current malaise can be blamed on the 2016 popular vote to leave the European Union? Clearly not all of it. It is far from easy to disentangle the effects of Britain’s leaving the European Single Market from the effects of Covid and war — not to mention the structural problems, like the chronic shortage of affordable housing in the populous southeast of the country, which has caused a striking decline in British homeownership.
“As recently as 1996,” the Center for Policy Studies pointed out last month, “65% of those aged 25-34 owned their own home. Today, that figure is down to 41%. … Britain has the fifth lowest home ownership rate in Europe, lower than 22 out of 27 EU members.” That is a shocking reflection on 12 years of Conservative government. But you can’t blame it on Brexit.
Nor, however, can it seriously be pretended that there have been no costs to Britain’s departure from the EU. The Vote Leave claim that Brexit would save the UK £350 million a week was never plausible. However, as Tom McTague recently pointed out in the Atlantic, the Leavers’ other pledges “have been largely fulfilled: Liberated from the EU’s ‘freedom of movement’ principle, Britain now operates its own border outside the EU and its own immigration system; no longer part of the EU’s trading bloc, it operates its own trade policy and manages its own internal market, governed by its own laws; and, of course, it no longer contributes to the EU budget.”
So what are the benefits of this new autonomy?
Few people choose to get divorced in order to enjoy the delights of solitude. The authors of a new report by the Center for Brexit Policy, a pro-Leave advocacy group, argue that Brexit “was a victory of self-confidence over pessimism.” Unshackled from the EU, the UK is now able to make more of its relationships with the Commonwealth and the US. And these relationships matter more than in the past, the authors argue, because of the new challenges posed by the Russian Federation and China.
I have questions. Was it not possible before Brexit for the UK to foster its historic ties to the Commonwealth and the US? True, in theory Britain can now independently strike trade agreements with them, as well as with other groups of countries, which it could not do as an EU member. But is there compelling evidence that such agreements are within reach — and on a scale to compensate for Britain’s departure from the single market? (In 2021, the EU still accounted for around half of the UK’s total exports of goods.)
If a trade deal with the US proved elusive when Donald Trump was president — he who proclaimed himself “Mr. Brexit” — is it more likely under his Irish-American successor, Joe Biden, who is manifestly no Anglophile?
The report’s authors see the UK playing a bigger role in various American alliances and partnerships: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of course, but also AUKUS, the new security partnership with Australia and the US, and the Quad (to which the UK does not belong, though the report’s authors would like it to join). Certainly, few NATO members can match the enthusiasm of Britain’s commitment to the Ukrainian cause. And there may be something to be said for the UK once again playing a more expansive military role “east of Suez.”
But how much real geopolitical clout can the Commonwealth wield? And how important an ally can Britain really be for the US when its defense establishment is so much smaller than it was 50 years ago? According to one estimate, “Ukraine has lost more troops, killed and wounded [since February 24], than there are infantry in the British Army.”
Perhaps it’s not coincidental that, on the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China, Beijing is introducing school textbooks that assert the city was never in fact a British colony but always “part of China’s territory.” You see — the British Empire was a figment of the imagination all along!
American critics of Brexit have often claimed that Leave voters were inspired by nostalgia for the days of empire. I do not remember encountering that on the campaign trail in 2016, but talk of a revived Commonwealth may lend some credibility to such claims. (After all, what is the Commonwealth if not a residue of empire?)
Yet the somewhat different claim that Brexit was a vote against immigration — for a whiter Britain — is not supported by the migration trends. Immigration from the EU is down steeply since 2016, but immigration from the rest of the world is not. Net immigration from non-EU countries totaled 250,000 in the latest year for which data are available. This spring, according to the Spectator, 19% of all UK workers were immigrants, twice the rate of 20 years ago. As the EU share falls, the British workforce is becoming more ethnically diverse, not less.
Yes, but what about the economics? Wasn’t the main rationale for Brexit to free the British economy of the cumbersome burdens of EU regulation? Asked recently to name some burdensome EU-mandated laws that had been removed by Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg — the minister for Brexit Opportunities — replied that now road signs in tunnels could be expressed in round numbers of yards, because they no longer had to be aligned with European metric standards. It was a risible example.
Meanwhile, the costs are all too visible to any business trading with the EU. All goods moving from Britain to France now must be checked by EU customs officials, yet hardly any are checked by the UK in return. The resulting red tape has caused a “steep decline” in the number of UK-EU trading relationships, according to a study by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. The number of buyer-seller relationships has fallen by almost a third since the new customs checks came into force. Other Group of Seven countries have seen a much stronger recovery of trade since the pandemic’s economic nadir in 2020.
Business investment, meanwhile, has strikingly stagnated since 2016 and clearly lags behind that of other advanced countries, despite £25 billion of “super-deductions” in corporation tax. The timing of the deviation from trend makes Brexit look suspiciously like the culprit.
Simon Kuper of the Financial Times has argued that Britain’s economic stagnation is about something more profound than Brexit. “Neither main party now offers a vision of the future,” he wrote on Thursday. “No wonder: an ageing society doesn’t particularly need one.”
Yet Kuper has just published a book about Britain’s relatively youthful political class, most of whom were my contemporaries at Oxford in the 1980s or studied there more recently. They seem an unlikely group of people to want to turn the clock back to the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, which increasingly looks to be what they will re-live in a matter of five or six months, as the temperatures drop, heating bills rise and strikes spread.
Brexit was supposed to be a vision of the future. In the mind of Dom Cummings, the architect of Vote Leave and then of “getting Brexit done” after Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May as prime minister in July 2019, Brexit was not an end itself but the necessary precondition for a revolution designed to transform the British state into something more akin to a Silicon Valley tech company. But Cummings’s revolution was stillborn.
Without him, Johnson has lived up to his nickname (“The Trolley”), careening like an out-of-control shopping cart from one crisis to another. After the surge in popularity that propelled the Tories to victory in December 2019, they now trail the Labour Party by six percentage points in the Politico poll of polls. Two disastrous by-elections last month — one a loss to the Liberal Democrats’ candidate in Tiverton and Honiton in Devon, the other to Labour in Wakefield in the north of England — look like more than the usual difficulties of a party that has been in office too long. The Tiverton result was the third-biggest swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats in history, in a seat that has been Tory since 1841. If, in a general election, the Tories lose similar seats in the south to the Liberal Democrats and similar seats in the north to Labour, they would struggle to form another government.
As a senior cabinet minister said to me on Thursday night, the result of such a swing would not be a Labour landslide, but a close result. Yet that, he added, was just the kind of thing that happened repeatedly in Britain in the 1970s. Quite so.
The trouble about getting Brexit done, but aborting the revolution in government, is that you risk just turning the clock back to a time today’s politicians only remember from their childhoods, if at all — the time before Britain joined the European Economic Community, under the leadership of Ted Heath in January 1973.
If I had a time machine, 1972 isn’t the destination I would choose for Britain — not with so much inflation, strike action and strife just around the corner.
But then I suppose the Doctor never chooses to land just as London is falling to the Daleks.
Dust Off That Dirty Word Detente and Engage With China: Niall Ferguson
Seven Worst-Case Scenarios From the War in Ukraine: Niall Ferguson | 2022-07-03T08:13:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brexit Has the UK Traveling the Wrong Way in Time - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/brexit-has-the-uktraveling-the-wrong-way-in-time/2022/07/03/f3543962-faa6-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/brexit-has-the-uktraveling-the-wrong-way-in-time/2022/07/03/f3543962-faa6-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html |
Former Democratic Maryland Rep. Donna F. Edwards speaks with a voter in District Heights, Md., on June 18. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Glenn Ivey wasn’t planning on being in the parade, but as he pulled up behind it in District Heights on Juneteenth, he thought — why not?
He hopped out of the car, his hands full of campaign literature, his campaign staffers — his family, actually — carrying “Glenn Ivey for Congress” signs, and started greeting the voters who lined the street for the festivities or watched from their front lawns.
“I heard you’re the next congressman!” a resident yelled out as Ivey hustled to the next porch.
Never mind keeping up with the parade. If he wanted to be the next congressman in Maryland’s 4th District, Ivey had work to do. He’s up against Donna F. Edwards, the district’s former congresswoman, in a race for the Democratic nomination — arguably the state’s most competitive congressional primary.
In this deep-blue, majority-Black Prince George’s County-anchored district, Edwards is seeking to mount the rare congressional comeback, hoping to reclaim the seat she held for more than eight years during the Obama era by positioning herself as the most experienced candidate who’s already done the job. She has the most powerful member of Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in her corner, support from key labor unions and liberal advocacy groups, such as Emily’s List and the League of Conservation Voters, which recently spent $550,000 on pro-Edwards ads and mailers.
“I feel really confident in being able to go back and start delivering right away for the people of the 4th District,” Edwards said in an interview.
But some of the same criticisms that hurt her unsuccessful campaigns for Senate in 2016 and for Prince George’s county executive in 2018 have resurfaced, leaving Edwards at times on defense against charges that she had ineffective constituent services during her time in office. A super PAC associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — which has endorsed Ivey — has spent nearly $2 million on ads highlighting that criticism and supporting Ivey, a campaign Edwards acknowledged was “daunting” in the final leg of the race.
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel group that endorsed Edwards, has spent $660,000 on pro-Edwards ads and mailers to counter the negative narrative. And Edwards has too, at one point getting help from Pelosi to swat back at the super PAC’s claims. “When Glenn Ivey comes after me, I’m still fighting for you,” Edwards said in her latest ad, highlighting her support for unions, school meal programs and abortion rights, among other things.
Donna Edwards gets help from Pelosi to swat at attack ad tied to AIPAC
Still, the attacks have created an opening for Ivey, who’s built a campaign around pledging to boost resources for public safety and economic recovery in the district. He’s already run twice for the seat, dropping out of a primary bid against Edwards in 2012 and losing in 2016 to Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.), who is running for attorney general. Now, Ivey’s hoping for a third-time’s-a-charm victory.
“I think the principal focus for the voters, the point of distinction, is performance. Evaluate us on our track records and vote accordingly,” Ivey said — naturally, arguing that “I think I definitely have a better record of working with people in the community.”
Seven other candidates are also seeking the nomination, including former Prince George’s delegate Angela Angel, though none has been as competitive with Edwards or Ivey in fundraising or endorsements.
Because of how blue the district is — President Biden won it by 80 points — whoever wins on July 19 almost without doubt becomes the district’s next member of Congress after the November election.
With just weeks to go, the campaigns have reached for some late-game momentum. Accruing more Democratic star power for Edwards, Hillary Clinton held a virtual birthday fundraiser for her just last week. The next day, Ivey held a rare news conference where former Prince George’s County executive Rushern L. Baker III (who paused his gubernatorial campaign) announced his endorsement — support that Ivey argued was more valuable than national figures.
“There’s no one who’s going to fight harder to make sure we have the jobs we need in this state and in this district than Glenn Ivey,” Baker said, adding Ivey also helped him reduce crime during their time in office.
In a district just 20 minutes from the U.S. Capitol, the race indeed appears less about national politics and more about local personal relationships forged over the years — and local issues, among them public safety and gun violence and the cost of living, according to voters who spoke to The Washington Post.
Both Edwards and Ivey have centered those issues in their campaign ads, with Ivey touting his record fighting crime as the former Prince George’s state’s attorney and Edwards highlighting her support for gun restrictions in Congress and fighting for a living wage — attributes that have resonated with voters.
“I seen her on TV — she said she would support gun violence prevention,” said Sharrief Lee, a 59-year-old Temple Hills resident at the District Heights festival concerned about gun violence, who said she had never voted before but was ready to start now with Edwards.
“I know [Edwards] has done her due diligence for us as well, but I think [Ivey] being in law the way he has been speaks volumes to what he could do in Congress,” said Arlene Spann, an Upper Marlboro small business owner who liked Ivey’s record and some of the programs he created.
Though Ivey says voters probably will find little distinction between him and Edwards on liberal issues — both, for example, put out spots emphasizing the need to protect the right to abortion — the two candidates are pitting very different experiences in public office against each other.
It’s been over a decade since Ivey served as state’s attorney — but his wife, Jolene, serves on the county council and son Julian in the state House, boosting his familiarity across the district.
Ivey, a white-collar attorney, got his start on Capitol Hill working for several Democratic stalwarts including Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) in the ’80s and ’90s. Ivey was first elected state’s attorney in 2002, inheriting a local criminal justice system plagued by police misconduct necessitating federal oversight. Ivey says he sought to strike a balance between cracking down on violent crime and police accountability, frequently pointing to the fact that violent crime significantly fell by the time he left office in 2011. Ivey touted community-outreach programs he created to involve residents in crafting policy.
His office didn’t win favor with public opinion in every case, such as after Ivey announced he didn’t have the evidence to indict officers in the death of a man who was found dead in jail after being charged with killing a police officer. But the prosecution of other police officers such as Keith Washington, who shot two furniture deliverymen and killed one while off-duty, drew high-profile attention; Washington had argued self-defense and was recently released from prison after being resentenced.
Krystal Oriadha, executive director of PG Changemakers who served with Ivey on the county’s recent police-reform task force, described Ivey’s perspective on the task force as “forward thinking,” challenging members to “think outside the box” about how to transform policing tactics — something that has been personal to Ivey, who has noted he and his five Black sons have been stopped by police on “pretext stops” that appeared more tied to their race. Ivey said if elected he would seek to tie federal police funding to departments serious about rethinking policing tactics.
But Oriadha added that pledges to boost public safety resources and address violent crime still resonate in the blue county, where “I think overwhelmingly you hear an outcry from community members who want to feel safe,” said Oriadha, a county council candidate who added she is not making an endorsement in the race.
A county, hit by the pandemic, grapples with soaring crime after spending a decade lowering it.
Oriadha noted, though, that if Ivey and Edwards are similar on many of the issues, Edwards’s and Angela Angel’s argument that the liberal state of Maryland needs to have a woman in the delegation may be strongly appealing to some voters, particularly Black women. Maryland has not had a woman in its delegation since Edwards and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D) left office in 2017.
Edwards first came to Congress after defeating incumbent Rep. Albert R. Wynn in the 2008 Democratic primary, going after Wynn over his support for the Iraq War while leveraging her reputation as a community activist and lawyer who had worked on the Hill to pass the Violence Against Women Act.
“She was the beginning of what we call the Progressive Caucus on Capitol Hill,” Del. Nicole A. Williams (D-Prince George’s) said at a recent news conference in support of Edwards.
Edwards, who had a leadership role in the Democratic Caucus, says there is a difference between her and Ivey on the issues — she was advocating for them as a member of Congress before him. She noted she was an original co-sponsor of Medicare-for-all and a member of the gun-safety task force that advocated for an assault-weapons ban and closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole” to prevent abusive dating partners from obtaining guns, a provision that just passed in Congress.
Sitting on the House committee with oversight of the General Services Administration, Edwards also pushed to build a new FBI headquarters in her district — efforts that are still ongoing in Congress and that all the 4th District Democratic candidates said they would prioritize if elected.
But of her critics, few if any take issue with her record in Congress on liberal causes, or her work on issues such as transportation and infrastructure. For Edwards the hurdles go back to her record on constituent services, the work lawmakers do to assist constituents with problems with federal agencies or in their communities. And throughout the campaign she’s been trying to make amends.
“I hear the criticism,” Edwards told a voter at a senior-living community in Beltsville in May when asked whether her constituent services would be better this time. “And all I can say is the commitment that any legislator makes, which is that I’ll do better. I’ve heard it and I’ll do better.”
Ricarra Jones, political director of 1199SEIU, told The Post in May that Edwards made a similar pledge during the union’s interview with her before endorsing her. The union, which supported Edwards in her earlier years in office, withdrew its support during Edwards’s 2016 Senate race, citing issues with Edwards’s responsiveness to constituents who had Social Security issues and her support for a new non-unionized hospital.
But Jones said the union was willing to give Edwards another shot, seeing her as a strong pro-labor voice in Congress — and a voice for women.
Deni Taveras, a Prince George’s County Council member, said she, too, was willing to overlook her past concerns about Edwards’s constituent services record after having a conversation with her about it. For Taveras, her endorsement came down to Edwards’s experience level, believing she’d be able to build on existing relationships to bring more resources to the county.
“I’ve been a strong critic of her in the past with regards to her constituent services,” Taveras said. “That was troubling to me before. And I feel, and I hope, that is something she has learned from.”
Edwards, however, hasn’t been able to smooth things over with everyone. Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said the union decided to endorse Ivey because it couldn’t shake a negative experience it had with Edwards after it brought concerns to her office about racial bias within NASA Goddard’s performance-review system. Biggs said Edwards “didn’t do anything,” a disappointment that Biggs said cost her the union’s support in 2016 despite its past enthusiasm for her. (Edwards said her staff did work with Biggs on this issue but hit a roadblock when it learned there was pending litigation on the issue from an employee at the Wallops Island NASA facility; Biggs said he would have understood if that was the case but had never heard that until now.)
“Her labor votes were all good — we need every member to support our legislation,” Biggs said. “But when you’re not taking care of the people in your own backyard, that should really be a priority of any member of Congress. That just has not been the case with her.”
Edwards said in an interview she recognizes that people have had different experiences with her office, but noted there were also plenty of people her office helped with foreclosures during the housing crisis or other issues.
Back at the District Heights Juneteenth festival, several voters agreed. Edwards arrived just after Ivey left, drifting to the front of the crowd to greet them.
“You already got my vote!” retired teacher Charlotte Faison cried out, telling Edwards she had just seen the negative ad and didn’t believe the claims were true. “I have a personal connection with Donna,” she told a reporter. “She’s been with my church. She’s been so personable in the community.”
Edwards held out her hand to greet the other women in Faison’s group, introducing herself with perhaps the most potent few words at her disposal: “Hi,” she said, “I’m Congresswoman Donna Edwards.” | 2022-07-03T09:31:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Donna Edwards wants her Md. seat back. Glenn Ivey stands in the way. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/03/donna-edwards-glenn-ivey-maryland-4th-primary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/03/donna-edwards-glenn-ivey-maryland-4th-primary/ |
Scott Arnold poses for a photo July 2 at a surprise gathering in McLean in honor of his retirement. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
The dogs on Scott Arnold’s U.S. Postal Service route were the first to sense his arrival Saturday afternoon, panting with excitement even before Arnold’s mail truck had emerged into view of the families gathered on Wemberly Way. Pups and people alike eagerly waited to greet the man, now on his last day of work, who had brought them so much more than just their mail.
When Arnold’s white truck finally rounded the corner, cowbells rang. Kids and parents clapped. Some wiped away tears. Arnold, still in his light-blue uniform, was met by his adoring crowd, evidently in shock.
“I’m not worthy,” he said, shaking his head.
Arnold and his best friend in the Postal Service, Rob Receveur, both had served McLean for years, and this past week, both were celebrated as they hung up their mailbags.
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Arnold, 67, had worked the same route for about 30 years. He has comforted in times of death, celebrated in times of joy. He has known children since they were born and watched them grow up to have their own kids. His presence was steadfast through changing landscapes, both physical and political. He had, the neighborhood agreed, helped shape the people who live here into a community.
Eventually, the crowd gathered on a neighbor’s lawn for a picture. After they posed, Arnold spoke — albeit briefly.
“I usually have a lot of words. But I have none,” he started. “Thank you all so, so much.” The crowd echoed its thanks back.
“You’re all family to me, and you’re always here in my heart,” he said. “I will never forget this day, never.”
Cowbells rang out again as the crowd clapped. “You’re the man,” one man shouted.
It’s hard to quantify Arnold’s legacy, but you can sense his effect by how the neighborhood’s residents have shifted their lives to remain close to him. One man said that when he and his family were planning to move within McLean, they made sure to choose a house that would still be on his route. Another woman flew up from Florida for the chance to say goodbye.
But Arnold’s greatest fans might be the dogs of the neighborhood. Dog owners shared how their pets anticipated his truck before it showed up to their mailbox and would excitedly wait for their daily treat.
On Saturday, Kay Burnell wore a necklace fashioned from the personalized Christmas stockings Arnold makes every year for the dogs on his route. The tradition, which includes a note from “Santa Paws,” is one he will be remembered for, many said.
Receveur, 63, has served a nearby McLean route for about 13 years, he said, and would often sit in the back of Arnold’s truck helping him make those Santa Paws deliveries. On Thursday afternoon, Receveur’s customers gathered to honor his own last day, and all the essential days before.
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“Rob has not only been the letter carrier for many years, but he was our life line especially during the last 2½ years,” Maria Dakolias, who lives on Receveur’s route, wrote in a message to The Washington Post. “Early on in the pandemic, he was one of the only people outside our house that we actually saw in person. We anxiously awaited his arrival every day to see what he was delivering, we met him on our walks with the dogs, we chatted about American history and music and life during covid.”
After years of service, Receveur said, he realized it’s the people who make it worth it.
“In the long run, what has really got me through was the customers and their kindness,” he said. “That’s what you take home with you in your heart.”
Neither mail carrier was looking forward to leaving their community and professions, they said, but both look forward to spending more time on hobbies and with family.
“The one thing that was holding me back was leaving this, leaving them,” Arnold said, gesturing to the crowd Saturday. “But I was thinking with my heart instead of my head,” he continued. “I can’t do this forever. I want to spend some time with my grandkids.”
He and Receveur will also spend more time with their respective fan bases: Many of their customers, they said, have turned into friends.
When families began dispersing after Arnold’s send-off, he started heading back to his truck to finish. Walking back, he passed several lawn signs congratulating him on his retirement and celebrating his years in the neighborhood.
He got back in his truck, put on his glasses and waved. | 2022-07-03T09:31:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Beloved McLean mail carriers retire after years of USPS service - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/03/mclean-mail-carriers-usps-dogs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/03/mclean-mail-carriers-usps-dogs/ |
Dustin Johnson and his peers have shunned the PGA Tour in favor of LIV Golf. (Troy Wayrynen/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The first Million Dollar Challenge teed off just over 40 years ago. It was on a course carved out by Gary Player for a new resort and casino named Sun City in a stretch of semiarid farmland in the north of his native South Africa, a place with a million-dollar name to boot, Bophuthatswana. Half a million dollars were guaranteed to the winner, which was around 10 times what could be bagged then for finishing first at any PGA Tour event, including the majors.
So to Sun City the biggest names in golf eventually flocked. Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Seve Ballesteros, Lee Trevino, you name them. Even Lee Elder, who a few years earlier became the first Black golfer to play the Masters.
I note Lee Elder because South Africa’s brutal apartheid system, despite being condemned by the United Nations in the late 1960s, was in full throat by 1981. The minority Dutch settler colonial class was beating, jailing and killing the majority Indigenous Black South Africans it segregated with impunity. The country was a blight on humanity and, as such, a pariah in the world.
That’s not unlike what the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should be considered after being incriminated in the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; continuing to wage a years-old war against Yemen — which the Obama administration joined and the Biden administration pledged to depart — that has killed or contributed to the deaths of more than a quarter-million people and created arguably the world’s worst humanitarian crisis; and birthing nationals who executed the 9/11 attack.
Yet to Saudi riches some of the biggest names in golf flocked again last week, like, you could say nicely, Diptera to dung.
Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and dozens of others. They alighted at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club near Portland, Ore., where this country for the first time hosted the fledgling LIV Golf Invitational Series. The winner was promised $4 million, far larger than the biggest bag at a PGA tournament.
LIV is financed by the Saudi monarchy that is bombing Yemen, from a fund controlled by its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was fingered with orchestrating the murder of Khashoggi.
Dereliction is endemic to golf. It’s in its DNA.
Golf “lends itself to excessive wealth, solitude, and even selfishness — all of which can be seedbeds for a lack of ethics,” emailed Lane Demas, the Central Michigan University scholar who wrote the best book on golf I have ever read, “Game of Privilege: An African American History of Golf.”
It is the only sport in my time covering the industry that openly chose racial discrimination over inclusion. I had just finished covering Nelson Mandela’s summer freedom tour of the United States in 1990 when, a month after I migrated to the sports page, Butler National Golf Club in suburban Chicago passed on hosting the Western Open, as it had done for 17 years, because a new PGA rule required it to be open to all regardless of skin color. Butler was all White.
The new PGA rule stemmed from an admission by Hall Thompson, the head at the time of Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., where the PGA Championship was being held that year. He answered a question from a Birmingham Post-Herald reporter about Shoal Creek’s membership by saying, “We don’t discriminate in every other area except blacks.”
Legendary sports management professor March Krotee, now at North Carolina State, wasn’t surprised by the LIV development. He was posted up in Kenya for a spell during the 1980s and witnessed how South Africa’s financiers successfully tugged the greed of golfers in particular.
“Now we have the LIV tour; who’s the head of the LIV tour?” Krotee asked rhetorically.
“Greg Norman,” I answered, pointing to the Hall of Fame golfer from Australia who is LIV Golf’s CEO and commissioner.
“Who played in the Sun City golf tournament?” Krotee continued to quiz me.
“Greg Norman,” I said again.
“To me, the fly in the ointment is Greg Norman,” Krotee said. “Because anybody that has the gumption from around the world to go play in the Sun City tournament was either ahead of his times or behind the times. Make your choice of what you think of that.”
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Norman wasn’t alone then. His name was on a U.N. blacklist of more than 470 athletes and entertainers who snubbed probity for profit in Sun City and refused to sign a pledge against apartheid.
Some in the music world banded together behind a song titled “Sun City” written by Steven Van Zandt, best known as the guitarist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. It started:
We’re rockers and rappers united and strong;
We’re here to talk about South Africa we don’t like what’s going on.
It’s time for some justice it’s time for the truth;
We’ve realized there’s only one thing we can do:
I ain’t gonna play Sun City.
Tennis players were on that blacklist, too. Shirley Povich noted in these pages in 1983 how Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl shared $700,000 in the finals of a four-player Sun City tournament. But John McEnroe earned my respect back then by refusing an even richer purse to play Sun City.
“Golfers all have their heads in the sand, all of ’em,” late, great activist and tennis player Arthur Ashe said then. “They are the most apolitical bunch of athletes I know. They’re all 5-11, blond, went to Oklahoma; they’re all right-wing Republicans. As a group, they don’t give a damn.”
Still don’t, apparently, with a few notable exceptions. Rory McElroy did not hide his disgust for his competitors who defected from the PGA Tour for LIV. Black golfer Harold Varner III said he turned down LIV money after consulting with, of all people, Michael Jordan, who infamously didn’t publicly support the candidacy of Harvey Gantt, Charlotte’s first Black mayor, against one of the South’s more infamous segregationist lawmakers, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms.
Golf is by its nature and conservation a selfish sport. It isn’t about team, save the jingoistic cups it assembles biennially. It isn’t worldly; it just happens to be played around the globe. And it isn’t concerned about where or with whom it does business.
LIV Golf hasn’t exposed anything about Saudi Arabia we didn’t already know. But it has highlighted a truth about golf that so many who play it and promote it have willfully ignored.
Brooks Koepka the latest to leave PGA Tour for LIV Golf | 2022-07-03T09:36:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Before LIV Golf and its moral failings, there was Sun City - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/03/liv-golf-sun-city-morals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/03/liv-golf-sun-city-morals/ |
To Save Ukraine, Slow Down on the Autobahn.
Rather as the US is an outlier among developed countries in equating freedom with gun ownership, Germany is almost unique in defining liberty as the absence of speed limits on the autobahn. That mentality, however, is now slamming into the imperative to save energy, which is in turn part of the West’s common effort to resist the warmongering of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In Europe, only the Isle of Man keeps Germany company in eschewing categorical highway limits. But driving on the curvy roads of a windswept island is hardly the same as surviving in the fast lanes of the world’s most obsessive car culture.
Here’s what driving on the autobahn is like for me, an average dad in an aging minivan trying to get the people whining in the back row to their next potty break. The other day, I was coasting in the right lane but briefly had to venture into the middle and left lanes — in Germany you never, ever, pass on the right.
I checked my rearview mirror, which showed only tiny dots in the distance — basically empty highway. Seconds later, I was in the left lane, going 130 kilometers per hour (about 80 mph), and looked in the mirror again. Three Porsches were suddenly on my tail, each a car’s length apart, all signaling left and flashing high beams to bully me out of the way and back into the slow lanes.
In an otherwise bureaucratized, over-regulated and rules-obsessed society, limit-less autobahns have come to symbolize the last remnants of freedom. At least they play that role for about half of Germans. That demographic skews male and conservative-libertarian. Politically, it’s represented by the center-right, including the Free Democrats, one of the junior partners in Germany’s current government. They made autobahn freedom a condition for joining the coalition.
The other half of the country mostly considers autobahn racing self-indulgent, dangerous and crazy. And yet it’s surprisingly hard to argue that the absence of speed limits kills more people. Germany has relatively few traffic deaths compared to other countries, and the fatalities that do happen occur mostly on rural roads that have speed limits.
But there’s also that other line of argumentation, having to do with wasted energy. Owing to the laws of physics, driving faster requires a lot more fuel. In an era of climate change, that counts against speeding. In a time of war, it does so twice over.
Putin’s war machine requires Russia to be a petro-state. He uses his country’s coal, oil and natural gas in two ways. One is to earn money to pay his army. The other is to make other European countries, including Germany, dependent on his pipelines, and thus vulnerable to blackmail.
He’s already turned off the gas to Bulgaria, Poland, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark, and throttled it to Germany and other countries. Germany’s energy minister, Robert Habeck, warns that Putin may shut off the pipelines completely, and has declared the second of three stages in an emergency plan that could end in rationing.
Salvation, if it exists, will come from all of society conserving energy, Habeck suggests. He’s asked people to take shorter, cooler showers, which makes sense. So does turning down the air conditioning in summer and the thermostat in winter, to take the train instead of flying, and to cancel unnecessary trips altogether. And why not dry your laundry in the sun when it shines? The list of other tricks is long.
But lowering speed limits is at the top. It’s the first of ten suggestions by the International Energy Agency, based in Paris, to reduce oil consumption. In Germany, of course, that means rekindling the old controversy about introducing a limit in the first place.
The average speed on German autobahns in 2019 was 125 kph (as I said, I’m average). The German Environmental Agency reckons that introducing a limit of 100 kph (about 62 mph) on autobahns, as well as lowering the limit from 100 to 80 kph on rural highways, would save 6.4 million tons of carbon dioxide — and many lives, especially on those rural roads. Greenpeace, an environmental lobby, estimates that this would reduce German oil imports by about 2.5%.
Is that a lot or a little? Here politics take over again. About 57% of Germans now favor a — temporary — speed limit. The Free Democrats would certainly put up a fight, and have to be seen to do so by their supporters. But they should remember that they’re also asking their coalition partners, the Greens and the Social Democrats, to reconsider their ideological aversion to nuclear power. In a time of war, everybody has to keep an open mind.
My own instincts happen to be liberal (in the classical sense, not the American). I’ve always taken short showers and recently made them even shorter — and I didn’t need Habeck or a law to convince me. By the same token, I’m now driving more slowly, too, and would be happy if other people voluntarily did the same. But if it takes a statute, so be it.
We must hope that at some point in the future we’ll get all the energy we need from the sun, wind and oceans, so we can stop polluting our atmosphere and funding petro-dictators such as Putin. Until then, the best we can do is to change our lifestyles — sometimes a little, other times a lot. The Ukrainians are fighting for freedom with their very lives. We’re being asked to decelerate. It’s not too much to ask.
Many Winters Are Coming. Start Saving Energy Now: Javier Blas | 2022-07-03T09:44:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | To Save Ukraine, Slow Down on the Autobahn. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/to-save-ukraine-slow-down-on-the-autobahn/2022/07/03/54219fc0-faaf-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/to-save-ukraine-slow-down-on-the-autobahn/2022/07/03/54219fc0-faaf-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
A hemp grower trims and weighs hemp flower for a customer at a facility in Newport News, Va. (Kristen Zeis for The Washington Post)
The bill’s author, state Rep. Heather Edelson (D), said in a statement that “Minnesotans 21 and older will now be able to obtain the products they want in a safe and regulated manner.”
The law, which passed the Republican-controlled state Senate in May, was signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz (D) last month. But some Republicans told the Star Tribune after the law went into effect that they were caught off guard.
Cannabis for medical purposes is legal in 39 states, including Minnesota, and Washington, D.C. Not including Minnesota, recreational cannabis is legal in 18 states and the District, according to MJBizDaily, an industry news site. | 2022-07-03T09:45:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Minnesota Republicans legalize THC edibles, some possibly by accident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/03/minnesota-republicans-edibles-thc-accident/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/03/minnesota-republicans-edibles-thc-accident/ |
Zion Williamson picks max extension with Pelicans over nuclear option
Zion Williamson (left) signed a five-year maximum rookie extension with the New Orleans Pelicans after appearing in just 85 games over his first three seasons combined. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
When it came time to sign on the dotted line, Zion Williamson wasn’t a flight risk after all.
The New Orleans Pelicans agreed to sign Williamson, the No. 1 pick in the 2019 draft out of Duke, to a five-year maximum rookie extension worth at least $193 million, a person with knowledge of the deal confirmed Saturday. The Athletic and ESPN first reported the agreement, which will rise to $231 million if Williamson fulfills the NBA’s supermax criteria by earning all-NBA honors or being named MVP or defensive player of the year next season.
This was an undramatic conclusion to years of speculation that Williamson, the former high school phenom, might try to angle his way out of New Orleans, one of the NBA’s smallest markets. After missing the entire 2021-22 season with a foot injury, Williamson prioritized the security of a long-term contract over a more radical strategy that would have enabled him to become an unrestricted free agent in July 2024.
The 21-year-old Williamson joined fellow 2019 lottery picks Ja Morant and Darius Garland in inking five-year maximum rookie extensions during the first 48 hours of the NBA’s free agency period, which opened Thursday. RJ Barrett and Tyler Herro are among the other notable 2019 picks still waiting to sign lucrative extensions.
New Orleans has worked diligently to build itself into a winner around Williamson, whose 2019 arrival came shortly after Anthony Davis forced his way to the Los Angeles Lakers in a blockbuster trade. Injuries limited the highflying Williamson to just 24 games in his rookie campaign, but he returned in 2020-21 to earn all-star honors by averaging 27 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists.
With Williamson’s paint scoring and partnership with all-star forward Brandon Ingram as their foundation, the Pelicans executed a series of trades for veterans, including CJ McCollum, Jonas Valanciunas and Larry Nance Jr. New Orleans also found productive players in the draft, namely Herb Jones, Jose Alvarado and Trey Murphy III.
NBA trade tracker: Timberwolves get Rudy Gobert, Celtics land Malcolm Brogdon
Although Williamson hasn’t taken the court since May 4, 2021, the new-look Pelicans were a surprise success story last season, shaking off a 1-12 start to make the Western Conference play-in tournament and qualify for the playoffs as the No. 8 seed. There, they pushed the top-seeded Phoenix Suns to six games with Williamson cheering from the sidelines.
New Orleans’s impressive push to the finish line, aided by Ingram’s strong play and a deadline deal for McCollum, helped quiet questions about Williamson’s health and desire to remain with the Pelicans.
Entering last season, New Orleans didn’t disclose Williamson’s foot injury until media day, and its initial projection that he would be ready by opening night proved inaccurate. As the season unfolded, Williamson’s timetable was pushed back multiple times, and he reportedly left New Orleans to rehabilitate away from the team.
Given the restrictive nature of the NBA’s rookie contract system, star young players have less leverage than their veteran colleagues. Coveted first-round picks like Williamson typically sign four-year contracts when they enter the league and then, after their third seasons, sign extensions for up to five additional years, assuming they play up to expectations.
Even if such players don’t sign early extensions, their teams have the right to match any offers made to them after their fourth seasons in restricted free agency. This contract structure typically prevents high-level draft picks from changing teams for between seven and nine years total, depending on the terms of their extensions.
As the NBA’s player empowerment era has unfolded, some have wondered if a high-profile young star would attempt an end-around. Rather than sign an extension or pursue offers in restricted free agency, a player could sign a one-year qualifying offer covering his fifth season and then become an unrestricted free agent the next summer. This seldom-used path would allow the player to gain leverage in possible trade negotiations with the team that drafted him.
In Williamson’s case, he could have bypassed an extension this summer and instead signed a one-year qualifying offer worth $17.6 million for the 2023-24 season, the first year after his current rookie contract. By doing so, he would have become an unrestricted free agent in 2024, and his representatives could have used that timeline to pressure the Pelicans into trading him either this summer or next to a preferred destination.
Such a sharp-elbowed strategy would be financially risky given the possibility of injury between now and July 2024, but Williamson has off-court endorsement deals with Jordan Brand, Gatorade, and other brands to fall back on. And as long as he avoided a catastrophic health setback, he almost certainly would still have been able to command a maximum salary offer in two years.
If Williamson was eager to move markets, taking the qualifying offer was his nuclear option. Older stars have become increasingly aggressive in exerting their power to pick their teams: Davis made his trade request to the Pelicans in 2019 with more than a year to go before his free agency; James Harden pushed his way off the Houston Rockets in 2020 with nearly two years remaining on his contract; and Kevin Durant requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets this week with four years left on his contract.
Ultimately, though, Williamson’s lingering health concerns and the Pelicans’ progress this season combined to make this a quick and quiet negotiation. That Williamson was able to quickly command a maximum extension despite playing just 85 games over three seasons is a testament to his immense potential, and to the intense pressure the Pelicans must feel to keep him happy. | 2022-07-03T10:15:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Zion Williamson chooses max extension with Pelicans over nuclear option - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/03/zion-williamson-new-orleans-pelicans-extension/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/03/zion-williamson-new-orleans-pelicans-extension/ |
Participants of the Rainbow Gathering gather in the main meadow at the 50th anniversary of the Rainbow Family Gathering in the Adams Park area of the Routt National Forest on Friday. (David Williams for The Washington Post)
ROUTT NATIONAL FOREST, Colo. — High up in the forest-fringed meadow, there were hundreds of tents, many guitars and drums, a bit of nudity, whiffs of marijuana, vigorous vegetable-chopping, many hugs and a very, very long line for burritos.
In the towns below, there was no small amount of angst about what was happening up above.
The Rainbow Family, which bills itself as “the largest non-organization of non-members in the world” and each year descends on a national forest for one week of hippie-tinged communing with nature and prayers for peace, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. It announced in mid-June that it had chosen a remote spot of Routt County in northwest Colorado, the state where it first came together in 1972, for a gathering that began Friday and is expected to attract 10,000 people.
This one-with-the-land ethos was not exactly welcomed locally in an era of climate change and extinction. At the mere rumor that the group might choose the location where gatherings began five decades ago, in a neighboring county, commissioners there issued a statement saying, essentially: Don’t. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife department on Friday called on attendees to “respect our great outdoors.” Social media filled with locals fretting about the gathering. The newspaper in Steamboat Springs ran columns by environmentalists criticizing the selection of the site, host of a massive elk herd and sandhill crane nests, in a drought-stricken state traumatized by recent devastating wildfires.
And even as attendees flocked here for peace, authorities set up a roadside federal court to judge their alleged missteps.
“It’s basically a city” arriving at a biodiversity hotspot, said Michelle Stewart, executive director of the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council, a local organization. “If the Rainbows want to focus and center on prayer for world peace, then do it in a place where that’s the only thing happening, not tons of environmental impacts.”
But in a nation that often seems to be divided in two, the Rainbow Gathering’s half-century assembly told a story of many Americas. The U.S. Forest Service, which has repeatedly emphasized that the gathering is unauthorized, works with the Rainbow Family on-site cleanup. The event, though leaderless and disheveled, is highly organized and includes a fire watch that counsels participants about fire safety. Attendees skew left but probably also include a few “Trumpsters” and QAnon devotees, said one longtime camper. The era’s political divisions, in any case, did not dominate conversations.
“You have the whole continuum of people,” said Ray, 70, who on Friday was pulling a 100-pound cart of supplies up the 1.5-mile trail from a parking area to what is known as the Main Meadow, site of communal dinners and the event’s pinnacle, a July Fourth silent peace prayer and meditation. He did not want his full name published.
Ray said he attended the first gathering in 1972 and had been to at least 35 since, though he skipped the last two years, which were smaller and somewhat splintered over disagreements about the wisdom of gathering during a pandemic. Now, he said, he wanted to pass the torch to younger Rainbows — and continue making a point.
“There’s also politics here. The right of the people of America, United States, to gather peacefully — that’s supposed to be a right — on the people’s land … To practice spiritual belief, freedom of religion,” said Ray, a retired health-care worker from southern Oregon. “To assert those rights at a time when, in my view, fascism’s grip is getting tighter and tighter and tighter.”
The Rainbow Family insists that because it is leaderless, no one can sign an application for a permit, which the Forest Service requires for gatherings of more than 74 people. Though the agency has occasionally ticketed attendees for not having a permit, it has generally come to an uneasy truce with the Rainbows, rooted in the tacit acknowledgment that the agency cannot physically stop a huge gathering on public land without risking a dangerous confrontation.
Instead, the Forest Service has again mobilized a “national incident management team,” something it does for crises like forest fires. A Rainbow Gathering incident commander was appointed, and 40 federal law enforcement officers have been assigned to the event.
“We’re managing the event. We’re not endorsing it, by any means,” Russell Harris, now in his fourth year as incident commander, said at a virtual public meeting last month. But, he added: “In general, they work with us well with protecting the resources. And they are very good at rehabilitation.”
Routt County, meanwhile, stood up an emergency operations center, dedicated a dispatch line to the event, and was trying to staff an additional ambulance so the tiny town closest to the gathering wouldn’t be without one if its sole vehicle were sent up the mountain. Ryan Hess, the mayor of Craig — another town en route to the gathering — said staff placed dumpsters and portable toilets around town to prevent Rainbow travelers from overwhelming public ones. But so far, things had been “pretty seamless,” said Hess, who is also a sheriff’s deputy.
That was echoed by Routt County Commissioner Tim Corrigan, who said locals were upset in part because a 2006 Rainbow Gathering in another part of the county left bad memories of trash, dumpster diving and trespassing in Steamboat Springs. This time, he stressed to constituents, both the Forest Service and the county were better prepared.
“Counties have zero authority over what takes place on federal lands, so really we were not in a position to permit or not permit this event,” Corrigan said.
At the gathering, attendees greeted each other with “Welcome Home.” Social media battles over their presence were no worry; there was no cell service. Handwritten signs exhorted people to pack out trash, camp at least 100 feet from streams and stay out of ponds to protect endangered boreal toads. Campers showed off water filtration systems, temporary bridges and slit latrines, covered in lime and soil and serviced by Rainbows who — in the lingo unique to the community — “plugged in” to that camp job, or “focalized” on it.
A longtime Rainbow and unofficial guide who goes by Circus Maximus said he plugged into fire watch at the 1998 gathering in Arizona and was back, after living abroad, for his first in 10 years. He wanders the camp, reminding people that personal fires are discouraged, and that a shovel and bucket of water must be near all communal fires. (The Forest Service said conditions this year did not warrant a fire ban in the area.)
“When it comes to that sort of stuff, it’s not a police force,” said Maximus, wearing a black cowboy hat and carrying a Pulaski fire tool. “It’s a please force.”
The gathering is organized around large camps and communal kitchens that serve coffee, tea and food. No money is exchanged. At a trading post, kids and adults bartered for jewelry, stones, glass pipes and Snickers. A painted rainbow was being erected over the “Granola Funk” stage in the meadow, where a musical, a gong show and other performances would take place. At the Christian-themed Jesus Kitchen, one attendee said the nondenominational gatherings had made him a believer.
“I’d never seen Christians do it the way these guys do it,” said Gavin Boyd, 25, a carpenter from Fort Collins, Colo. It was, he said, less orthodoxy and more spirituality.
Below him was stirringly gorgeous meadow, cut by a flowing creek and new paths trod by campers. At the start of the trail, a sea of vehicles were parked atop a field quilted in Mules Ears, which resemble mini-sunflowers. Mountain bluebirds occasionally flew by. What couldn’t be seen were the recently-born elk calves that might be disturbed by the commotion, said Larry Desjardin, board president of Keep Routt Wild, a conservation group.
Desjardin circulated a petition last month urging the Forest Service to halt the gathering, calling it a serious risk to wildlife, soil, water and trees. But Desjardin said he also saw something more disturbing than a threat to nature, comparing the event to far-right extremists’ occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.
“Everyone is a public land owner. That’s something we should all be proud about,” he said. “But there’s a lot of entitlement with people saying, ‘I should get access anywhere and anytime I want.’”
The Forest Service, in a nod to the concerns, closed off a large section of the forest south of the gathering.
Maximus, the longtime Rainbow, said similar objections surround every gathering.
“Oh, I’ve got a really important reason why you shouldn’t do it here. Not in my backyard!” he said, describing the complaints. “Our goal is to do everything we can to lessen the impact and stay here and replant and restore things.”
Nearby, Rainbows sang a Simon and Garfunkel song around a fire, and culture clashes seemed far away.
But they had been front and center that morning, down the road from the parking area. There, a magistrate judge from Denver presided over a makeshift federal courtroom in a dirt lot. The defendants were about 100 people who had been ticketed for misdemeanors — a tactic Rainbows liken to harassment.
“Have you ever been in a more beautiful courtroom?” judge Michael E. Hegarty, flanked by security officers, said to a group on the other side of yellow police tape. He wore a black robe; many of the defendants were barefoot.
Several there said they’d been pulled over for minor reasons — an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, a bike rack blocking the license plate — then cited for possession of marijuana, something they figured was allowed in Colorado, where recreational use is legal. It’s not legal, to their dismay, on federal land.
Shortly before, a gathering participant who said he was an attorney told the group that it was a “kangaroo court,” and that federal law enforcement used the event as “training” because “we are docile.”
“They’re just trying to do their job,” Hegarty said of law enforcement. “You guys are trying to enjoy nature and fellowship with one another. And that’s all good. And sometimes those things collide.”
Julie Bray and Shanda Johnson spent two days at the gathering, before its official start. It was the Texans’ first time, and they described themselves as unprepared for the nighttime cold — and for the laws. When a federal cop pulled them over and asked if they had cannabis, Johnson said, they confidently said, “Yes, it’s Colorado, yes!”
Now they were at the court, and they planned to leave after their proceedings. Still, the gathering lived up to their expectations, they said.
“I read an article, and it said there was a group of people from different walks of life — hippies and bikers and Jesus freaks, and I just thought, 'Oh my God, that’s where I want to go!” said Johnson, 37, a massage therapist in Abilene. “But I’m done.” | 2022-07-03T10:33:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Rainbow Family gathering preaches peace but has escalated conflict - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/03/rainbow-family-colorado/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/03/rainbow-family-colorado/ |
Abortion rights supporters march to the U.S. Consulate in Toronto on June 29 to protest the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)
TORONTO — Winnipeg’s Women’s Health Clinic is stretched. The facility is one of a handful of abortion clinics in Manitoba, a Canadian province of 1.3 million. It fields about 100 inquiries each week and says it’s providing as many as 30 percent more abortions than it receives government funding for.
Even before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old precedent protecting abortion rights across the United States, some of those inquiries about abortion were from Americans. Now the clinic — 70 miles from the border with North Dakota, where a trigger ban goes into effect this month — is watching for more.
“It’s too soon to say” whether inquiries from Americans will increase and by how much, said Blandine Tona, the clinic’s director of programs. But even a small number could tax the clinic, “so one of the things we have been doing is to organize, to prepare,” including by considering whether to offer abortions on more days each week.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other Canadian leaders have condemned the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling; his government has said it won’t turn away Americans who can’t get abortions at home. But with long distances between many clinics, providers stretched thin and barriers to cross-border travel, that might not be much of a solution.
Canada decriminalized abortion in 1988, and abortion rights draw broad political support here. But even as access has improved over the decades, it remains limited outside of major metropolitan centers and dependent on one’s ability to travel.
“We’ve supported people where the closest abortion provider is multiple days driving distance from them,” said Jessa Millar, who manages the hotline for Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.
Some Women’s Health Clinic patients travel to Winnipeg from Kenora, Ontario, about 130 miles away. TK Pritchard, executive director of the Shore Centre, which provides medication abortions in Kitchener, a city in southwestern Ontario, said it has clients from northern Ontario. It’s booking appointments three to four weeks out.
The center has received calls from a small number of people in Michigan since the overturning of Roe who are curious about abortion access in Canada, Pritchard said, but it’s “not hearing from people who are actually looking to book appointments.”
“One of the challenges that we have is that … it’s really hard trying to keep up with the demand that already exists,” Pritchard said.
When abortion pills became commercially available here in 2017, there was optimism that they would help improve access, particularly in remote and rural areas. But advocates say it’s still patchy.
“Most family physicians will not prescribe it, and they’ll just refer out to an abortion clinic,” said Mohini Datta-Ray, executive director of Planned Parenthood Toronto.
“What that shows is that one of the impacts of the decision is that people are recognizing that there are access issues in their own country and that they wanted to be able to do something,” she said.
Canada’s Trudeau to raise U.S. crackdown on abortion with Pence
Even if access in Canada were improved, advocacy groups said, there are other barriers — including the need for a passport and the cost of the procedure, which could be as much as $600 — that would likely dissuade Americans from crossing the border and make them more likely to travel to other U.S. states.
Those costs “would put it out of reach for a lot of Americans,” said Joyce Arthur, executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. “It’s still early days, and we don’t know how it’s going to play out.”
There were more than 74,000 abortions in Canada in 2020, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Most abortions in the country are performed during the first trimester of pregnancy.
Each province and territory has different gestational limits for medication and surgical abortions, and rules governing whether and when parental consent is needed.
Is U.S. a liberal outlier on abortion, as Supreme Court opinion says?
In Prince Edward Island, where government policy kept the island abortion-free for more than three decades until 2017, surgical abortions aren’t provided after about 12 weeks. Islanders are often referred to other Atlantic provinces, including neighboring New Brunswick, where the procedure is covered only if performed in one of three hospitals.
Abortion after 24 weeks is limited in Canada, sending a small number of people to the United States each year — cross-border travel that advocates worry could be jeopardized by the court ruling.
Analysts and advocates are watching other potential cross-border ripples, particularly as some federal and state lawmakers indicate intentions to block women from obtaining abortions in other states, to penalize out-of-state medical practitioners or to halt the flow of abortion pills by making their shipment by mail illegal.
What if those prohibitions extend to other countries, or if people who are persecuted for obtaining or providing abortions in the United States seek refuge in Canada?
A key test under Canadian extradition law is “double criminality” — whether the conduct for which someone is wanted is also illegal in Canada. Since neither obtaining an abortion nor prescribing the abortion pill is illegal in Canada, such requests are unlikely to meet the test, said Robert Currie, a law professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
But in some instances, he said, the double criminality analysis could involve “transposing” U.S. legal background.
In a case in which prosecutors sought to extradite a Canadian who prescribed the abortion pill to an American, “we can imagine the court saying that the ‘essence of the offense’ was selling prescription drugs in a market where it was illegal to sell them,” Currie said, “and the fact that it was an abortion drug is just ‘background.’
“This could be a major issue.”
Canada’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in the 1988 case R. v. Morgentaler.
“Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a foetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman’s body and thus an infringement of security of the person,” the court said in a 5-2 decision.
The ruling did not establish a right to abortion in Canada, and there’s no federal law enshrining one.
Before the decision, abortion was limited to those who obtained approval from a “therapeutic abortion committee” of doctors at an accredited hospital. A majority on the panel had to agree that continuing a pregnancy “would or would be likely to endanger [the woman’s] life or health.”
Some hospitals didn’t have enough doctors for a committee. Others saw only patients who lived within a certain geographic area or imposed quotas on the procedure. All other providers of abortion, or women who got them, faced criminal penalties.
Some Canadian woman crossed the border for abortions. In 1984, more than 3,480 Canadian residents secured legal abortions in the United States, according to a Statistics Canada report at the time. At trial in R. v. Morgentaler, the director of a women’s health center in Minnesota testified that many Canadians clients faced delays at home.
Arthur, from the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, noted that history.
“The clinics were very welcoming, and I know there’s been expression up here that the tables are turned now,” she said. “We want to help Americans coming up here. We want to reciprocate but also recognizing that it’s going to be a challenge for us and we’re not going to be able to help as many Americans at the end of the day.” | 2022-07-03T10:45:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roe border fallout: Barriers to abortion access in Canada make it unlikely haven for Americans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/03/canada-abortion-access-roe-wade/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/03/canada-abortion-access-roe-wade/ |
Homicides are down about 30 percent, but carjackings and gun violence remain a concern
The "Our Streets, Our Future" event, created by Prince George's State's Attorney Aisha Braveboy, drew a crowd to Eastover Shopping Center in Oxon Hill, Md., on June 28. (Jasmine Hilton/The Washington Post)
As the band onstage played one of their final sets of go-go music, Brittany Hardy and her family headed home from a shopping center parking lot in Prince George’s County with food in their hands and smiles on their faces.
The 27-year-old mother, with daughters ages 7 and 9 and a stepson who is 14, said she attended Tuesday’s crime prevention and public safety rally in Oxon Hill, Md., because she is tired of “our babies dying” from gun violence.
“Put the guns down and keep the kids safe,” she said.
The “Our Streets, Our Future” rally — which brought together employment, counseling and mentoring resources — is one of several initiatives from county agencies this summer to help curb gun violence and prevent crime through community engagement. Though homicides have dropped about 30 percent compared with this time last summer, gun-related arrests and weapons recovery are up, and carjackings remain a concern, officials say. County police have investigated 45 homicides this year compared with 65 by this time last year, Police Chief Malik Aziz said at a news conference Tuesday.
Hours before the rally, which was organized by State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy, Aziz separately announced the department’s summer crime initiative.
The countywide effort will focus on reducing gun violence, Aziz said. Special attention will be given to Langley Park and Lewisdale, Dodge Park, Clinton Plaza, parts of Temple Hills and District Heights, and areas along the D.C. border, among other locations. Aziz said increased patrols and other resources have been deployed in those areas.
The department will put on more than a dozen community events, such as neighborhood walks, community meetings on crime prevention, athletic activities for young people, and trainings with seniors to help them avoid being targeted, Aziz said. The initiative aims to go beyond adding more cops on street corners, the chief said.
“What we did is to blossom our thinking, to move our thinking in a more holistic approach,” Aziz said.
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As of Tuesday, the department had recovered 828 guns so far this year, compared with 660 last year, and made 577 gun-related arrests, a 20 percent increase over last year, Aziz said. Carjackings were up to 219 this year, compared with 134 by this time last year. The department has made more than 80 carjacking arrests, which Aziz attributes in part to the establishment of a carjacking interdiction unit. And though carjackings are up overall, the county has seen a decrease in the past few weeks.
Violent crime is down 16 percent in the past month, Aziz said. That includes the start of the summer crime initiative, which began June 13 and continues through August 28.
However, Aziz noted that over the past two weeks, “high-powered weaponry” has been used in crimes. A 6-year-old girl was shot and critically injured in a shooting Monday in Fort Washington, and a 14-year-old boy was hospitalized with serious injuries in a shooting on June 21 in Riverdale, police said.
In neighboring D.C., homicides are up 21 percent compared with last year, and as of Thursday, 12 people 18 or younger have been homicide victims this year, prompting increased concern and efforts from city leaders to reduce violence. The city has been increasing the involvement of police and residents trained in conflict resolution to help address violence, in addition to stepping up its efforts over the July Fourth weekend.
In Prince George’s, Aziz said the department hopes to see youths involved in the activities and noted the department’s focus on addressing the “disturbing trend” of some youths committing crimes and gun violence.
Founded last summer in response to increased youth violence, County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks’s Summer Passport Experience, for 12-to-15-year-olds who applied for the program, begins this Tuesday. It provides activities throughout the county to keep kids safe and engaged during the summer, said Gina Ford, communications director for Alsobrooks. The county’s Summer Youth Enrichment Program, already underway, will provide summer employment opportunities for about 6,000 youths, Ford said.
The Oxon Hill rally, organized in partnership with D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. and Prince George’s County Council member Edward P. Burroughs III, drew more than 200 people to the Eastover Shopping Center parking lot, where local organizations, vendors, job readiness groups and local police agencies had set up booths.
Braveboy said fighting crime is about more than prosecuting people.
“We are focusing on protecting our communities by getting people out of our communities who mean us harm,” Braveboy said in an interview. “Now, there are people who have committed offenses in the past, they’ve been held accountable, they may commit another offense. But that’s because they don’t have the resources. This is what’s going to make the difference.”
A large white canvas provided by the Prince George’s Arts and Humanities Council stood next to the stage, blank except for the words “Our Streets, Our Future” in big, outlined letters. One by one, people stopped to contribute colorful designs and messages, including “GUNS DOWN” and “STOP VIOLENCE.”
Rhonda Dallas, executive director and chief curator of the arts council, said the canvas is the start of an effort, in collaboration with the state’s attorney’s office, to bring murals to areas that have been particularly affected by gun violence.
“We’re going to galvanize the community,” Dallas said. “We all have a creative side. Self-expression, self-awareness, just being respectful of your environment and making sure that it’s safe.” | 2022-07-03T11:11:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince George's County launches programs to fight summer crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/03/prince-georges-summer-crime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/03/prince-georges-summer-crime/ |
The Cataract Hotel in Sioux Falls, S.D., in the 1890s. (Courtesy of the Siouxland Heritage Museums)
Dark clouds and pouring rain greeted the steam train as it chugged to a stop in Sioux Falls, S.D., on June 1, 1891. Accompanied by her maid and private secretary, a smartly dressed woman of obvious high standing descended from the plush first-class rail car and took stock of the small city before her on the banks of the Big Sioux River.
The entourage, which also included her dog, Tweedles, then climbed into a horse-drawn carriage and rode to the well-appointed Cataract Hotel. This oasis of opulence on what was then the edge of the American frontier would be their home for the next three months.
The woman — 37-year-old Baroness Margaret Laura Astor De Stuers, known as Maggie since childhood — had undertaken this four-day trek from the East Coast so she could establish legal residency in Sioux Falls. While this was the end of her 1,500-mile rail trip, it was only the beginning of the New York City socialite’s journey to find personal independence and a new life.
The baroness — like tens of thousands of other women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — traveled to this remote outpost in search of divorce. They sought marital emancipation by relocating — temporarily, in most cases — to the state with the most lax divorce laws in the country. All that was required was 90 days of residency.
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Before Nevada allowed quickie divorces in 1931, South Dakota held the title of divorce capital. For a period of about 20 years, the state was known as the Divorce Colony — so labeled by news media, cultural critics and evangelicals alarmed by the trend of migratory divorces. Before statehood in 1889, the Dakota territory had the country’s biggest increase in divorces — 6,691 percent — between 1882 and 1886.
In the culturally repressive era of the 1890s, ending a marriage was social anathema — and virtually impossible legally. Most states had near-blanket laws against divorce, which was viewed as a form of moral decay.
Much like antiabortion regulations before Roe v. Wade — and perhaps again now that the Supreme Court has overturned that ruling — divorce laws reflected the religious and political ideology of the day. Many states allowed divorce only in cases where adultery could be proven — a difficult legal process. A few states, like South Carolina, had no provision for divorce.
“Women were at an extreme disadvantage then,” said April White, author of the book “The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier,” published last month. “A man could simply walk away from a marriage, but a woman had few rights under the law and faced extreme societal prejudice if they didn’t have a husband.”
It was different in the West, though. New states and territories had some of the most progressive laws in the land. The pioneers recognized that legislation needed to reflect the reality of living on the frontier, where life was hard and sometimes short.
White said Sioux Falls became a top divorce destination due to its relative accessibility. “Sioux Falls was most similar to the experience these people would have known from New York and Chicago. It had many of the amenities they were looking for, even though it was a city of 10,000 residents.”
While divorce was available to both sexes in South Dakota, it was embraced by women by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio — not a surprise given the legal and cultural restraints placed on women at a time when they had virtually no political power.
“The lack of divorce had a really profound impact on the way women could function in the world,” White said. “Much like abortion in the 20th century, divorce provided women with greater access to participating in society — whether through careers, education or other factors. It improved the lives of many women.”
Because of its location in the Upper Plains, Sioux Falls was a hub of commerce. Five major rail lines served the city, and the Cataract Hotel became a luxurious way station. As word of lax divorce laws spread eastward, the grand hotel — equal to those in New York, Boston and Chicago — was the perfect place to live until residency could be established while waiting to negate nuptials.
In 1891, Maggie rented a suite of rooms at the Cataract. She later bought a home to cement her claim of residency in South Dakota. Though she did not announce her intentions, she drew the attention of residents and the media as a woman without her husband. At the time, the phrase “going to Sioux Falls” was euphemistic for getting a divorce.
On July 14, six weeks after Maggie arrived in the city, the New York World reported on its front page that she was living in “the Divorce Colony.” It was viewed as a major scandal, since she was a descendant of real estate magnate John Jacob Astor and niece of Caroline Astor, matron of the ultrawealthy family and leader of “The Four Hundred” club, a group of the most influential New Yorkers at the time.
Sixteen years earlier, 22-year-old Maggie Carey had married Baron Alphonse Lambert Eugene De Stuers, a Dutch diplomat 12 years her senior. The couple had three children and lived grandly in Paris for several years, thanks to Maggie’s wealth and De Stuers’s social status.
Cracks in the facade soon appeared, however. Maggie tried to divorce her husband in 1890, but her aunt sniffed out the plot and convinced her to return to Paris. Even though Mrs. Astor’s own marriage was a sham — she essentially lived apart from her husband because of his drinking and carousing — she would not tolerate the disgrace of divorce within the family. That left Sioux Falls as one of Maggie’s only options.
“She is one of the first big names that goes out there,” White said. “Maggie really sets the dominos in motion. She is the spark that turns everyone’s attention to Sioux Falls.”
The Maggie’s plans became more apparent when her attorney filed her case at the Minnehaha County Courthouse in Sioux Falls on Sept. 3, 1891, 94 days after she moved to South Dakota. Those files were sealed until her husband could be served with papers in Paris three weeks later. That’s when the media storm descended like a Great Plains tornado. Reporters from major newspapers across the nation started filing stories from Sioux Falls.
In her divorce suit, Maggie alleged cruelty by De Stuers and concern that he was plotting to steal her inheritance. She described how he had taken control of finances and had tried to have her committed to a mental institution.
De Stuers countered that it was his wife who was the unkind one, displaying a lack of affection toward him and their children. He also alleged that Maggie was involved in an adulterous affair with a man posing as her private secretary under the name William Elliott. In reality, he was William Elliott Zborowski, also a wealthy New York socialite.
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The case went before Judge Frank R. Aikens on Feb. 8, 1892. The only testimony given was by Maggie and her maid. De Stuers did not travel from Paris for the trial. Instead, he had his attorney argue the case while presenting numerous depositions in his defense.
Aikens handed down his decision a month later, on March 5. In granting the absolute divorce, he found De Stuers guilty of “acts of extreme cruelty” against his wife.
Two days after the judgment was announced, Maggie was back at the courthouse. This time, she was there with Zborowski, requesting a marriage license. They were married about half an hour later in her suite at the Cataract Hotel.
“Most women in that era needed to remarry,” White said. “It was a path to security and respectability. Maggie probably didn’t have to remarry. She had a name and a lot of money. I think she really loved her second husband and wanted to be with him.”
The Divorce Colony would be shuttered in 1908, when South Dakota changed its residency requirement to one year. By then, public opinion had shifted. Two years earlier, President Theodore Roosevelt had proposed a constitutional amendment to enable Congress to set national marriage and divorce standards. When that effort failed, many states began altering their divorce laws to reflect changing cultural attitudes, though the first no-fault divorce law would not be enacted until 1970 in California.
White’s book cites the struggle of women like Maggie De Stuers in trying to free themselves from marriages they no longer wanted. In many ways, they were pioneers in forcing legislatures and society to reexamine how divorce was enforced and perceived.
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“These women changed the way we look upon divorce today,” the author said. “Those brave acts were only meant to be personal, but they ended up turning the tide toward the attitudes and access to divorce.”
Maggie found freedom and love in her new marriage, though her joy would be short-lived. The couple had a child together after rejoining high society in New York. Zborowski took up the new sport of auto racing and was killed in an accident in 1903. Maggie died eight years later. Their son also died in a racing accident in 1924.
In 1891, Maggie couldn’t have foreseen those tragedies. She wanted only the freedom to live the life she desired. She told a reporter that year, “I made up my mind to leave my husband to save myself.” | 2022-07-03T11:16:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sioux Falls, S.D., was U.S. divorce capital amid widespread bans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/03/south-dakota-divorce-capital/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/03/south-dakota-divorce-capital/ |
Spectators watch from Queens as fireworks are launched over the East River and the Empire State Building on July 4, 2021. (John Minchillo/AP)
“Come home, America.” That was the theme of the campaign launched 50 Julys ago by a senator from South Dakota named George McGovern as he accepted the Democratic nomination for president. McGovern was patriotic, courageous (he flew 35 combat missions in Europe in World War II), deeply religious and devoted to worthy causes. And he got whomped in the 1972 presidential election, after which the country got Watergate. McGovern made some bad mistakes in his campaign. (“For many years I wanted to run for the presidency in the worst possible way,” he told one audience. “And last year I sure did.”) And his politics were probably too far left for many voters.
But the idea of “Come home, America” should have some resonance on this summer day of both celebration and anxiety, because an awful lot of Americans seem to have fallen under the spell of very un-American thinking in recent years. Foreign dictators and others inclined to tyranny — a word that was much in use in July of 1776 and is still relevant today — have captured the fancy of some who might once have stood firmly for the ideals and devotion to duty of those who fought and died to create a new republic as an example for the world.
Perhaps persuaded by our 45th president, they have instead become infatuated with foreign leaders of the “strongman” kind — in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and other places. In one example, the Conservative Political Action Conference went traipsing off to Hungary this spring to hold a convention and learn at the feet of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Mr. Orban is imposing what he calls “illiberal democracy” on his country and excited some people’s worst instincts by sounding alarms about a wave of Syrian refugees who, in fact, never came. He and his administration have been accused of repressing the media, tinkering with electoral processes, fostering corruption, weakening the judiciary and committing other offenses that have endangered his country’s standing in the European Union. But he has been sufficiently popular to be entering his fourth consecutive term of office. The big question that hangs over all regimes such as his: What happens when things go bad and the chief is voted out? Does he go quietly and graciously, as the law requires, or does he use all the powers of the state, which he has gradually perverted to his own purposes, to hijack the election and install himself as leader for life, by any means necessary?
If the CPAC pilgrims were looking for inspiration and enlightenment, they would have done better to travel just one country farther to the east — to Ukraine, where the results of illiberal democracy, or whatever you want to call it, are on hideous display as Russian President Vladimir Putin — admired until recently by quite a few American “conservatives” — pursues his warped vision of national greatness with unrelenting savagery. The Ukrainian people, united as never before, have shown the true Spirit of ’76 by fighting hard against the invader, and their allies in the West have supported them with arms and sanctions that give new meaning to the old patriotic song about a free people whose “banners make tyranny tremble.”
Meanwhile, at home, America on this Fourth is troubled and divided. But it has seen and experienced worse — rioting, rebellion, terrorism, civil war, the Great Depression — and it has adapted and endured. In his long-forgotten acceptance speech, McGovern (who died 10 years ago) delivered some words worth recalling on this day: | 2022-07-03T11:16:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | George McGovern’s ‘Come Home, America’ speech is worth recalling this July 4 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/03/george-mcgovern-come-home-america-july-4/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/03/george-mcgovern-come-home-america-july-4/ |
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks at an event at a restaurant in Woodbridge, Va., on June 22, (Steve Helber/AP)
Virginia’s new Republican governor is seriously thinking of running for president in 2024. And that’s good news.
My Richmond-based Post colleagues Laura Vozzella and Gregory S. Schneider wrote last week of the telltale clues: Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently made an unannounced visit to New York City, where he met with a handful GOP megadonors. His speeches now are sprinkled with more references to the needs of “Americans,” not just “Virginians.” He is doing more media interviews outside the conservative bubble. He even sat down last month with The Post editorial board — which was not, to put it mildly, supportive of his 2021 gubernatorial bid.
Presidential soundings may be presumptuous for a former private-equity guy who never held public office until January and who is constitutionally limited to a single term there. There are plenty of Democrats who believe the man who campaigned as a sunny suburban dad in a zippered vest is really a Trump in fleece clothing. But Virginia — which was trending blue until his victory — is clearly warming up to Youngkin. His poll numbers have turned positive, and disapproval has shown a significant drop.
The reason I’d like to see him — or someone like him — make a serious run for president has more to do with an existential crisis that faces our democracy. It is crucial that this country have a healthy two-party system. Someone must test the proposition that there are still enough sane Republicans out there to create a path to the nomination for a candidate who offers himself as an alternative, rather than an amplification, of the worst aspects of Trumpism.
What we’ve seen so far — and it is early — suggests that former president Donald Trump himself is determined to run in 2024. We also know he stands a strong chance of winning the Republican nomination and a reasonable one, God forbid, of returning to the White House. If he doesn’t make another bid (and perhaps even if he does), there are a host of Trump wannabes making their preparations to flood the zone.
Leading that pack is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who not only refuses to say whether he accepts that Joe Biden legitimately won in 2020, but also has signed legislation to create the nation’s only police agency to crack down on what he acknowledged has been nonexistent voter fraud in his state. A federal judge struck down provisions of a restrictive election law DeSantis signed last year, agreeing with a lawsuit that claimed it “runs roughshod over the right to vote.”
Undermining election integrity is not the only area in which DeSantis escalates the worst impulses of his Mar-a-Lago constituent. He took away tax breaks from Walt Disney World after its corporate parent criticized Florida’s “don’t say gay” law banning instruction or classroom discussion in the lower grades of sexual orientation or gender identity. He also vetoed funding for a facility for the Tampa Bay Rays after the team spoke up against recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex.
Youngkin, it should be noted, has played close to the Trumpian line in some areas, and sometimes crossed it. But his has been a balancing act. He put “election integrity” at the top of his priorities during his campaign, but also acknowledged Biden’s 2020 victory and called the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection “a real blight on our democracy.” His first executive order banned teaching “inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory,” in K-12 public education, but he criticized his health commissioner, Colin Greene, for dismissing structural racism as a reason for poor Black maternal health.
As it happened, Youngkin was meeting with Post editors, reporters and editorial writers when the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade came down June 24. “I am a pro-life governor; I also am very, very aware of Virginia,” he said, before laying out his position in the post-Roe world: He would sign a bill putting a 20-week limit on abortion if the legislature sends him one, but he would prefer a 15-week ban. He would also allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.
That would allow the vast majority of abortions to continue to be performed in Virginia as they are today; the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics show that 93 percent of U.S. abortions are performed by 13 weeks’ gestation, which is before either cutoff Youngkin mentioned. Fewer than 1 percent happen at 21 weeks or later. Meanwhile, most Americans — even those among the majority who support abortion — also say the right should become more limited as a pregnancy advances.
It will be worth keeping a closer eye on Youngkin as he begins to lift his national profile. Republicans have won the popular vote in only one presidential election since 1988. He may not be the guy to end that drought. But it is past time for them to find someone who is. | 2022-07-03T11:16:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Glenn Youngkin should run for president in 2024 — or someone like him - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/03/glenn-youngkin-president-2024-campaign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/03/glenn-youngkin-president-2024-campaign/ |
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