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Woman killed in head-on crash in Prince George’s County
One woman died after a head-on crash in Prince George's County, police said. (Prince George's County Police)
Police in Prince George’s County said a driver died after a head-on crash in the county.
The incident happened early Thursday morning along Regency Parkway near Hil Mar and Stoney Meadow drives in the District Heights area, police said, when two drivers were headed in opposite directions on the road and one crossed “the double yellow line, striking the other head-on.”
One of the drivers, a woman, was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said. Her name was not immediately released, pending the notification of her family.
The other driver was taken to a hospital with serious injuries, police said. The crash remains under investigation. | 2022-07-07T11:12:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Drivers cross double yellow line, one dies in Maryland crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/driver-killed-in-prince-georges-county-crash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/driver-killed-in-prince-georges-county-crash/ |
Pedestrian in serious condition after Alexandria hit-and-run
A pedestrian was struck by the driver of a vehicle in Alexandria. The driver left the scene, police said. (iStock) (iStock)
Authorities said a pedestrian was left in serious condition after being struck by the driver of a vehicle in a hit-and-run in Northern Virginia.
The incident happened early Thursday morning on Route 1 near Huntington Avenue in the Alexandria area, according to Fairfax County Police.
Officials said the pedestrian has life-threatening injuries. The driver left the scene.
No other details were given at this time as to what happened in the crash. It remains under investigation. | 2022-07-07T11:13:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vehicle struck pedestrian in Fairfax County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/pedestrian-struck-in-fairfax-county/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/pedestrian-struck-in-fairfax-county/ |
Thirty years ago, a Virginia cardiologist took a chance on Nashville and a record deal. He doesn’t regret it, but his many admirers still wonder what might have been.
By Emily Yahr
Cleve Francis is a cardiologist who also made a name for himself, briefly, as a country music artist in the 1990s. He was recently honored by the Black Opry for his contributions to country music. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
But Dillard was insistent: “He said, ‘You are the only Black person on the face of the Earth who has this opportunity. You need to go. … You have to hold this spot. You weren’t given all these talents for nothing.’ ”
He got that idea because he saw the same patterns in Nashville that he did when he finished medical school and found it difficult to get a job as a Black doctor — so he started his own practice. “I said, ‘Well, maybe Black people need to start their own organization,’ … and the industry should support this,” Francis said.
Black artists have been sidelined in country music for decades. The Black Opry is here to change that.
Inspired by such legends such as Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Nat King Cole and Hank Williams, he started writing songs, and those who heard them told him to keep singing. A professor at Southern University in Baton Rouge canceled all his appointments one day, inviting members of the music department to listen to Francis play guitar in his office. At graduate school at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., in the late 1960s, Francis would perform at a coffee shop and people immediately asked if he could return again the next day.
“He has such a beautiful voice; a really pure country voice, almost Vince Gill-ish,” said singer-songwriter Rissi Palmer, who hosts Apple Music’s “Color Me Country,” focusing on the Black, Indigenous and Latino roots of country music. “It boggles my mind, but it’s a very common story from the time that if you didn’t hit right away, it wasn’t, ‘Let’s keep trying, let’s keep working with the artist.’ It was, ‘Okay, let’s move on to the next thing.’ ”
But as Francis kept performing concerts over the years (before the pandemic, he was a staple at the Birchmere), he has kept a close eye on Nashville.
Mickey Guyton has been ready for this moment. Country music kept her waiting.
Around the same time, he met with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and showed staffers a poll that said 24 percent of Black adult radio audiences listened to country music. This meeting helped spur the creation of “From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music,” a three-disc box set of songs released in 1998 that showed how the genre had its roots in Black history, with contributions from a variety of Black country singers. | 2022-07-07T11:17:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cleve Francis, still an inspiration to Black country music artists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/07/cleve-francis-country-music-black-opry/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/07/cleve-francis-country-music-black-opry/ |
Rouen Cathedral in Normandy was the painter’s most radical and lasting fixation
On an April night in 1892, Claude Monet had a nightmare. It was one of those blatant, tormenting dreams that seem embarrassingly easy to interpret. A falling dream, you could call it. Except that it wasn’t his own body falling through space: It was a cathedral, crashing down on top of him.
Specifically, it was Rouen Cathedral.
In 1892 and 1893, over two campaigns that stretched from winter into spring, Claude Monet worked on 30 canvases, all of them depicting the facade of Rouen’s great Gothic cathedral in the Normandy region of France. Built in the span of about 800 years, the cathedral was Rouen’s most famous landmark. Generations of artists had painted it before Monet. But no one had thought to paint it the way he would.
Monet omitted the cathedral’s most famous feature, the massive spire that, for a brief period in the late 1870s, had made it the world’s tallest building. Perhaps wanting to avoid cliche, he focused instead on its western facade.
He painted this complex plane, with its traceries, sculptures, pilasters and sunken portals jutting out and receding, 28 times, after first painting two close-ups of the Tour Saint Romain, one of the two western towers. Twenty of the 30 paintings are in public collections.
Contemplating them as an ensemble, as Monet intended, is eye-opening. One of the questions it prompts is: What does the replication do to the meaning of the image? How do we now see this singular structure — the focal point of Rouen, a building both sacred to believers and integral to France’s national identity — now that it has been dematerialized into colored light and multiplied, like one of Warhol’s soup cans? And how do the subtle changes from one canvas to the next affect our sense of what we are looking at?
The first and last time the paintings were reassembled was for a 1990 exhibition in Rouen. An analysis by the art historian Joachim Pissarro, who prepared that exhibition, showed that Monet painted the cathedral’s western facade in shifting weather. Mostly, the skies were sunny.
But sometimes, they were overcast or foggy.
And he painted at different times of day, capturing the cathedral in the morning …
and around midday,
as well as in the afternoon …
and in the evening.
With two exceptions, Monet painted the canvases from rooms across the square from the cathedral. Some he painted (usually in the afternoons) from an unoccupied apartment that provided the most frontal view of the facade. Others he painted from a ladies’ underwear boutique, just a few doors down to the right, and another store even farther down.
Eight of these staggeringly beautiful paintings — symphonic in color, both monumental and oddly unstable in composition — are in American museum collections.
Two are in the National Gallery of Art.
Two more are in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Most of the rest are in public museums in Europe.
Five are at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Two are at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
Impressionism is synonymous with the idea of a “light touch,” with broken, brightly colored brushstrokes that are sketchy and loose. What’s startling about Monet’s Rouen Cathedral paintings is the density of the paint.
On most of these canvases it’s like a thick encrustation of gunk. The surfaces have been compared to plaster and rough cement — less the result of an artist’s intentional handiwork than of an impersonal, cumulative process. They look weathered.
Yet the colors are jewel-like, opalescent. They sing with astonishing, ringing subtlety, like treble voices harmonizing in a choir. When you stand back, the blotches of color resolve and your eyes can make out the subject. Rouen Cathedral. Sheer mass, soaring vertiginously overhead. A structure hundreds of years in the making.
Your mind knows it to be a heavy thing, made of stone — a monument to faith, communal will and the human search for meaning. An enduring glory of Western civilization.
Monet’s composition, however, is far from sturdy. All but two of the 30 paintings present the facade at a slight angle, so that the parts of the building on the right are a little closer than those on the left. This asymmetry, along with the total absence of continuous lines, creates a feeling of instability, all of which may partly explain Monet’s collapsing cathedral nightmare.
What’s remarkable, when standing in front of just one of these complex, heavily worked paintings, is the knowledge that Monet painted 29 more like it. All in different light conditions. What was he getting at? What was he out to achieve?
These 20 paintings are in public collections. Select any painting for an enlarged view or continue scrolling
Monet’s aim, wrote art historian Virginia Spate, was “to embody a continuous perceptual experience.” This was an almost impossible task, because as we all know, perceptions come and go. “The longer he painted a work,” wrote Spate, “the more he saw; and the more he saw, the more he needed to paint.”
As the paint became thicker, the cathedral’s stable reality began to disintegrate. This caused the artist enormous frustration. “Good god, what work this cathedral is!” he wrote to his wife-to-be, Alice, in late February 1892. He worried that the canvases were “obstinate encrustation[s] of colors, and that’s all.”
Nevertheless, he pushed on with his work. Having painted in Rouen all that winter and into the spring, he resumed his campaign the following year.
Monet loved Gothic architecture. The cathedral’s west-facing facade was so much more intricate than the west-facing cliffs he had painted at Étretat or Belle Ile. It fascinated him. He became obsessed with registering how it received and reflected light. He kept swiveling his heavy, bearded head from his palette (where he mixed his colors) to the canvas on the easel and back to the cathedral.
The Normandy weather can turn quickly, from bright to murky and back. So Monet had several canvases underway simultaneously. He rotated them on and off the easel on the half-hour, or hour, or simply as the light changed. He hoped for good weather, but both winters were unusually miserable and gray. Still, as spring approached, the oblique light became stronger, starker, more vertical.
A view of Normandy's Rouen Cathedral in 1922. (Smith Collection/Gado)
Paul Cézanne’s famous critique of Monet was that he was “only an eye.” (“But my God!” he added, “what an eye!”) This has fed the idea that Monet was trying to attain a kind of machine-like objectivity, as if he were a dumb camera, faithfully depicting the motif precisely as he saw it. But that’s clearly not the case. If Monet were that kind of artist, he would never have settled on the astonishing color combinations he used for the cathedral, which go well beyond nature.
It’s true that his instincts were empirical. But Monet was as much a poet as a literalist, and he was trying to get the two things, canvas and cathedral, to speak to one another in ways that felt true to him. The process was intuitive and ongoing, like dream-work, and less like a closed loop than a spiral, always corkscrewing ahead. Resolution was elusive.
The paint on the scumbled surface kept getting thicker, more encrusted. The cathedral kept disappearing, and the image itself became ever more abstract, like an incantation you repeat aloud until it loses its sense. Why do this? Why strive to convert what is happening in reality, minute-by-minute, into fixed images destined to remain unchanged for hundreds of years?
The whole project threatened to defeat him. “Things don’t advance sensibly,” he complained in a letter to Alice, “primarily because each day I discover something that I hadn’t seen before.”
“What drives me to persist in researches that are beyond my strength?” he wondered. “I am doing nothing of value. I don’t know how many sessions I have spent on these paintings, and do what I may, they don’t advance. … It’s depressing.”
Explore Sebastian Smee’s Great Works, In Focus series
In mid-April 1892, Monet took all the cathedrals back to his studio in Giverny. He felt, he said, “absolutely discouraged.” He had all but lost faith in the project, and it was many weeks before he dared to open the crate and see what he had done.
When he did, he resumed work on them in his studio for many more months, making thousands of small adjustments, relying on memory but also responding to each work’s internal logic. (This is why they are all dated 1894, rather than 1892 or 1893, when Monet was actually in Rouen.)
Monet was keen for the entire series to be displayed together. But, much to his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel’s frustration, he continually delayed the planned exhibition (his first in three years). When 20 of them were finally put on display at Durand-Ruel’s Paris gallery in 1895, the artist’s friend Georges Clemenceau devoted the front page of his newspaper to lauding Monet’s series. Clemenceau — a former radical left-wing mayor of Montmartre who would become prime minister of France — tried to pressure President Félix Faure to buy the entire series for the French state. Monet, he correctly predicted, would be remembered and “celebrated throughout the world long after [Faure’s] name will have fallen into oblivion.”
But that effort collapsed and the paintings are now scattered throughout the world.
Claude Monet sits beside the water lily pond in his home garden in Giverny, France, circa 1910. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Impressionism can seem the most benign, the most complacent, the most cliched of art styles. All that sunlight and transience! All those pretty poppies and placid riverbanks! What does it actually amount to? What does it reveal of the world?
People were asking the same questions when Impressionism emerged in the 1870s. Many critics dismissed what they saw as undercooked sketches that should never have left the studio. A degree of acceptance ensued, but the voices of skeptics remained prominent, both within and outside the art world, reaching a crescendo in the 1880s and 1890s, when the innovations of the Post-Impressionists (Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat) indicated that Monet’s time might be over. Even today, and despite the movement’s proven durability and popularity, plenty of people in the art world tend not to give Impressionist paintings a second look.
But Monet was revolutionary. Not just in the late 1860s and 1870s when he developed the Impressionist technique of broken brushstrokes, unmixed color and flooding light. And not just near the end of his life, when his horizon-less views of his garden at Giverny suggested a new kind of poetic, pantheistic vision that inspired such abstract artists as Jackson Pollock, Ellsworth Kelly, Philip Guston and Joan Mitchell. He was radical at every stage of his career — and perhaps never more so than when he spent those two successive winters painting Rouen Cathedral.
To think about why, we can start with the most obvious.
This was the only time that Monet focused so exclusively on an existing work of art. He took a French Gothic cathedral — heavy, enduring, deeply symbolic — and turned it into a motif devoid of straight lines, stripped of symbolism. He made it express neither religious conviction nor national glory, but transience and lightness. Something, in fact, very close to meaninglessness. It was a bold, counterintuitive thing to do, and, given Monet’s predilection for painting nature, wholly unexpected.
The repetition — not just one cathedral facade but 30 — exponentially deepens the aesthetic intensity.
The paintings were propositions that, for all its beauty, a cathedral facade is merely another configuration of elements, no different from a cloud. (Some have speculated that Monet wasn’t painting the cathedral at all, but rather the ever-shifting “envelope” of air around it.)
A view of Monet's study in Giverny in 2017. (Ludovic Marin/AFP)
Of course, Monet’s awareness of transience chimed with certain discoveries in science in the late 19th century. Some of these, such as Michael Faraday’s discoveries that rays of light were affected by magnetic fields and James Clerk Maxwell’s recognition that light, electricity and magnetism were manifestations of the same phenomena (laying the foundation for special relativity and quantum mechanics), were undercutting the idea of a permanent, solid, objective reality. Everything, suggested the new science, was contingent and relative to everything else.
These ideas were echoed in the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche who, under the influence of various Eastern philosophies, speculated that there was no matter, per se, only energy and motion. All these profoundly disorienting notions fed the insecurity we associate with modernity.
“What were we doing,” asked Nietzsche in his 1882 book “The Gay Science,” “when we unchained this earth from its sun? … Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down?”
Monet’s vision of Rouen Cathedral possesses some of this untethered, plunging quality. Most people look to Monet for reassurance. But far from celebrating Catholicism or the beauty of the Gothic or the greatness of France, his vision in many ways epitomized modernity. “All that is solid melts into air,” wrote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their 1848 pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto.” “All that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life … ”
Clemenceau intuited that Monet could have painted as many versions of the cathedral as there are seconds in the day. The implication was that, under the sun, no moment was more important than any other and that no building or belief system was inherently enduring. All of which may be why Virginia Spate described the vision expressed in Monet’s Rouen Cathedral paintings as “inherently terrifying.”
We register such apprehensions today almost with a shrug. But in the 1890s, Monet’s expression of transience must have felt awesome. He was embracing a vision that, while staying true to the (by then) century-old tenets of plein-air easel painting, also pointed forward to existentialism and postmodernism, tapping into a sensibility that came to be identified with the work of such figures as John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Gerhard Richter.
At least one critic at the time, André Michel, sensed the series’ undertow of meaninglessness. Referring to Monet’s “arbitrary and compelling dream,” Michel suggested that the cathedral paintings represented “the last throes of oil painting which has nothing left to say.” That is exactly the sort of thing 21st-century critics say in front of paintings by artists like Richter.
This is not to suggest that Monet was a prophet, or that he was out to make political statements. He was, according to Spate, a “passionately detached observer” — a freethinker who remained pointedly mute on the subject of politics. But to Clemenceau, who contrasted Monet’s vision with what he called the “false miracles of Christianity,” the Rouen Cathedral series constituted “a revolution without a gunshot.”
Monet's “Rouen Cathedral, the Facade in Sunlight,” circa 1892-1894. (Clark Art Institute)
In France, the 1890s saw something of a religious revival, as people looked to the consolations of Catholicism’s moral order as an antidote to wider upheavals in society, which had reached a low point during the Paris Commune in 1871. Nor was the religious revival confined to Catholicism. Buddhism was another creed garnering enormous interest as the end of the century approached. So Monet’s transposition of the empirical world into colored light can also be seen in the context of Buddhist ideas about the interconnectedness of all things.
In a sense, the very transience Monet depicted depreciates value. When Milan Kundera wrote about “the unbearable lightness of being,” the author meant exactly this: “What happens but once,” he wrote in his 1984 novel, “might as well not have happened at all.” Registering this can be liberating. It can free us from the heavy burden of history. But what is lost is no less than our sense of reality, which is rooted in the feeling that our existence has weight and a set of meanings steeped in tradition, shadowed by consequence. Deprived of this weight, Kundera wrote, reality threatens “to splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.”
Toward the end of his career, Sigmund Freud wrote an essay called “On Transience.” He began by recounting a conversation with a poet friend who had told Freud that he struggled to find joy in the beauty of the countryside through which they were strolling, knowing that “all this beauty was fated to extinction, that it would vanish when winter came, like all human beauty and all the beauty and splendor that men have created or may create.”
Freud could find no way to dispute his friend’s apprehension. But, he wrote, “I did dispute the pessimistic poet’s view that the transience of what is beautiful involves any loss in its worth.” On the contrary, he claimed, its worth is increased. “Transience value is scarcity value in time.”
It’s a reassuring notion. Just as we place a higher value on certain objects because they are scarce, we might value moments in time precisely because of their transience. We may not be able to commodify transience as we can rare objects, but there are other, more intimate ways to confer value.
Monet understood the challenge of painting transience, of capturing time as it intersected with colored light. It meant working quickly, and learning to live with doubt and dissatisfaction. “One must know how to seize the moment of the landscape,” he wrote, “for that moment will never return, and one always wonders if the impression one received was the right one.”
He probably didn’t need Freud to interpret his collapsing cathedral dream. It was clearly a manifestation of the stress he was under as he attempted something no painter had tried. But Freud was more than just an interpreter of dreams, and he had a special way of tempering anxiety. His thoughts on transience — essentially, “if no moment ever returns, we should appreciate all the more each moment that is given us” — palliate Monet’s otherwise terrifying vision.
Freud’s conversation with his poet friend took place right before World War I, when so much of value, including millions of young lives and countless centuries-old buildings, would be destroyed. Mourning the loss of the things we love, Freud said, is inevitable and natural. But mourning ends.
“When once the mourning is over,” he concluded, “it will be found that our high opinion of the riches of civilization has lost nothing from our discovery of their fragility. We shall build up again all that war has destroyed, and perhaps on firmer ground and more lastingly than before.”
Perhaps. Perhaps. Repeat it 30 times and we may believe it more. Or less.
The Rouen Cathedral in Normandy. (Andre Quinou/Shutterstock)
Paintings in order of appearance: Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.; Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris; Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales; Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt; Museum Folkwang, Essen; J. Paul Getty Museum; Klassik Stiftung Weimar; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt; Clark Art Institute; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection; Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Editing by Janice Page and Amy Hitt. Photo editing by Moira Haney. Photo research by Moira Haney and Kelsey Ables. Copy editing by Angela Mecca. Design by Irfan Uraizee.
Sebastian Smee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic at The Washington Post and the author of “The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals and Breakthroughs in Modern Art." He has worked at the Boston Globe, and in London and Sydney for the Daily Telegraph (U.K.), the Guardian, the Spectator, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Twitter Twitter | 2022-07-07T11:17:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Perspective | What makes Monet’s Rouen Cathedral paintings so radical - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/monet-rouen-cathedral-paintings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/monet-rouen-cathedral-paintings/ |
My chatty coworker won’t get out of my office, and I can’t stand it
We have an open-door policy in our office, and my coworker won’t respect boundaries
Reader: I am at my wits’ end with a co-worker. Our offices adjoin and she is continually coming in, making herself at home, and peppering me with questions. The questions are not work-related as we are in different departments. She asks a question, I answer it, and she asks again as if whatever I said didn’t even register.
Prime example: We had a huge storm Friday afternoon. She asked me five times, “did you have electricity when you got home Friday?" to which I answered five times, “Yes, but I did not have it all day Saturday.” The sixth time she asked, I snapped, “I just told you that I had electricity on Friday, but not on Saturday.”
She said: “Well, you don’t have to be mean about it.”
My coworker is asking to borrow my clothes
I first thought it was early dementia. But she is in control of her faculties. I hear her with her supervisor; when he is explaining a new process, she waits until he is finished and then asks questions. I seem to be the only person she does this to.
I sometimes keep my door closed, but this is frowned upon in our office. I have even tried answering all her questions with “I don’t know,” and she still keeps asking.
Karla: There may be no dumb questions, but there are plenty of disingenuous ones where the goal is something other than getting a meaningful answer.
You can’t really compare your interactions with the interactions your co-worker has with her boss. I’m far from an expert on how the brain works, but it sounds as though her brain processes and retains information differently in work conversations than it does in nonwork chitchat.
Stop Slacking me. How to set digital boundaries for chatty colleagues
What is clear to me is that she’s trying to have conversations with you, but she’s bad at it. Her ask-rinse-repeat loop is reminiscent of a small child learning to socialize — a process that tests even the most doting caretaker’s patience — rather than an adult peer.
There could be any number of reasons: poor short-term memory, extreme anxiety, an attention disorder, subconscious bias causing her to dismiss anything coming from you, or possibly even the early stages of mental deterioration that she can still keep under control in a few key situations.
It’s equally clear that you’re not interested in having those conversations, and who could blame you. You don’t work directly with her. Her attempts at conversation are more like interrogations. You don’t mention enjoying her company, but rather enduring it. It’s not that she doesn’t listen to you so much as that she is wasting your time.
Maybe some of that sounds a bit harsh, or maybe it’s spot-on. Fortunately, there’s a range of solutions you can try depending on whether you find her intolerable or merely annoying.
At one extreme, you might ask your boss if you can relocate to a different workspace that’s less convenient for her intrusions.
If she respects a closed door, that’s an even simpler solution, even if it goes against your department’s general vibe. You can make clear to your boss and teammates that you are trying to ward off interruptions from your neighbor, but that they are welcome to approach you anytime.
Of course, that means potentially putting off people you need or want to be accessible to, all to avoid someone who doesn’t know how to respect your time.
Work Advice: When free speech clashes with keeping your job
A less-isolating approach would be to keep your door open but make your colleague’s interactions with you less-rewarding by giving only short, low-effort responses to her questions. “Yes” and “no” are complete answers, and you can soften as needed with a smile.
You can also cut her off at the threshold of your office: “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t talk right now.” Repeat as needed.
If that feels too stiff-armed, you can take “breaks” when she comes to visit. Stand up and invite her to come along while you go to the kitchen or bathroom. On your way back, scrape her off with a cheery “it’s been good catching up, but I have to get back to work now.”
Finally, the gentlest option might be to turn the interrogation around so you’re the one asking the questions. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve asked me the same question several times just now. Is something on your mind?” | 2022-07-07T11:17:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to get a chatty coworker to respect boundaries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/07/chatty-coworker-setting-boundaries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/07/chatty-coworker-setting-boundaries/ |
The Twisted Tale of Russia’s Sanctions-Driven Default
Analysis by Giulia Morpurgo | Bloomberg
Russia’s bond default isn’t going to follow the playbook. For one thing, there’s little precedent of a debtor -- even one at war -- that says it has the money and wants to pay bondholders, but has been blocked by a web of sanctions and frozen assets. For Russia, the default at the end of June has little immediate fallout beyond cementing its status as a pariah state in the eyes of the West after its invasion of Ukraine. For the bond market, though, it’s a watershed event, even though Russia’s $40 billion of outstanding foreign debt is small by historical comparisons. Get ready for a long, twisted tale full of potential surprises.
1. Why is this default unique?
Typically when a payment is missed, investors band together to declare the debt immediately repayable in full, then enter into talks with the government to work out a plan. The restructuring might involve a so-called haircut (when bondholders agree to take less than face value), swapping the bonds for new notes or extending maturities. With Russia, it’s not even clear who would act as trustee to marshal the bondholders. Contracts for the securities in question, which are denominated in euros or US dollars, don’t specify one, while sanctions block a role for western institutions and complicate interactions with the syndicate banks, which are all Russian. And should investors turn to the courts, it’s not clear what venue might have jurisdiction.
2. What does Russia say?
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has called the whole affair a “farce.” He says the blocked payments constitute “force majeure” because the sanctions were intentionally manufactured to force Russia into a default. In the months since the Feb. 24 invasion, Russian officials say the sanctions have prevented its funds from reaching the accounts of bondholders. “From Russia’s side, it is clear that they did everything, so they can say they haven’t defaulted,” said Viktor Szabo, a money manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in London, who has a small holding in Russian eurobonds. “You can start arguing whose fault that is, but the fact is that it’s not on bondholders’ accounts. Which means it’s a default no matter how you try to explain it.”
That’s unclear. There’s also been a pile-up of defaults from Russia’s corporate borrowers, and if those are anything to go by, expect a period of limbo: Investors have yet to make a move to accelerate those liabilities. Creditor claims on the sovereign extend for three years, so any immediate efforts to take action seem unlikely. Investors may opt to hunker down in the hope that international penalties against President Vladimir Putin’s government are removed, opening the way to payment. It could be that Russia acts first. In April, Siluanov told the Izvestia newspaper that the country planned its own legal action, though he didn’t say how or where. “Of course we will sue, because we have taken all the necessary steps to ensure that investors receive their payments,” he said. “It will not be an easy process. We will have to very actively prove our case, despite all the difficulties.”
4. What does it mean for bondholders?
They can hold on for the long haul or try to offload the debt in the so-called secondary market, where it traded at about 20 cents on the dollar at the start of July. However trading has been quashed by more US Treasury restrictions after banks handling Russian corporate and sovereign bonds were blasted for undermining the sanctions. US firms can hold or sell Russian debt, but can’t purchase it. That’s looking like a calculated bid to scare away so-called vulture funds from buying the cheapest, most battered assets in the hope of eventually wringing out a hefty profit. (In a parallel plot line, the Treasury’s move has also confounded the payout of credit default swaps, a type of insurance that typically uses a bond auction to establish a value for the contracts). Pacific Investment Management Co., which held the equivalent of about $1.8 billion of Russian sovereign bonds as well as exposure through credit-default swaps, warned the Treasury about the fallout on investors from the sanctions.
5. What’s the outlook for recovering the money?
Might we see some kind of replay of the dramatic seizing of the three-mast frigate, ARA Libertad, in 2012? In that famous case, Ghana temporarily impounded the Argentine naval vessel at the request of NML Capital Ltd., run by billionaire hedge fund investor Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. NML and other vulture investors were seeking to recover the full value of the Argentine securities that defaulted in 2001 after refusing to participate in a government debt swap. Russia offers a big, potential target: It has hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign reserves that are frozen abroad, the biggest example of what Putin calls the West’s economic “Blitzkrieg.” But assets of the central bank have a higher level of protection, as do diplomatic ones, which are shielded under the Vienna Convention. There’s also the matter of sovereign immunity, which means that a foreign state isn’t bound to the jurisdiction of another country, making enforcement of any ruling difficult. If investors were to still pursue legal proceedings to recover at least a part of their investments, the most likely jurisdiction to do so would be England, as the Russian Eurobonds are regulated by English law. But a legal battle could also unfold elsewhere: in the US, home to many of the creditors and to most of the financial institutions within the payment infrastructure, or Russia itself, albeit this would likely be picked as jurisdiction only if the sovereign were to pursue legal action first.
6. What happened the last time Russia defaulted?
The last time Russia fell into direct default vis-a-vis its foreign bondholders of external debt was more than a century ago, when the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin repudiated the nation’s staggering Czarist-era debt load in 1918. The Soviet Union signed an agreement to settle at least some of those claims in 1986, marking perhaps one of the longest-ever workouts. Then a balance-of-payments crisis in the late nineties triggered a default on $40 billion of local debt in 1998. The government budget was already gutted by the war in Chechnya before the Asian financial crisis of 1997 hammered oil prices, Russia’s key exporter earner. Russia also abandoned its defense of the currency, the ruble, triggering a cascade of bank failures. The biggest victim was SBS-Agro, the nation’s largest private lender, whose owner, Alexander Smolensky, famously said two years later that the bank’s foreign creditors deserved “dead donkey ears” instead of the $1 billion he owed them. Under Putin, Russia amassed one of the biggest foreign cash piles globally as oil roared back, allowing it to repay its Soviet-era debts to foreign governments and return to the Eurobond markets in 2010. It’s been a regular foreign issuer since, continuing even after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
7. What makes this default a watershed?
An unusual combination of factors makes Russia’s default groundbreaking, according to Hassan Malik, senior sovereign analyst at Loomis Sayles & Company LP, who is also author of “Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution.” In addition to the sanctions and the frozen central bank reserves, there are calls, including from UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to seize assets to provide reparations to assist with the rebuilding of Ukraine. That could complicate the picture. Malik points to echoes of Iran’s 1979 default in Russia’s current predicament. Sanctions prevented Tehran from using deposits in US banks to make interest payments on its foreign loans until a waiver allowed freshly transfered funds to be tapped. It’s similar to a move by the US Treasury to force Russia to burn through its cash held locally. Ultimately, Iran simply repudiated the debt, Malik said, much like the Bolsheviks in 1918.
8. What steps is Russia taking?
Days before a June deadline on $100 million of coupon payments triggered the default, Putin signed into law new rules stating that the sovereign’s liabilities have been met if payment on foreign bonds is made in rubles. A mechanism was set up to pay rubles into local accounts instead of the currency the bonds are denominated in. However with international sanctions, there’s no proven path for foreigners to get their money out. According to the plan, the funds will be held on so-called “I” accounts at the main Russian depository until investors have proved title to the bonds, after which they can request permission to convert and repatriate the funds. No foreign investors have taken up the offer, Itar-Tass quoted Siluanov as saying June 29. And as for attempts to seize Russia’s overseas property: “If we ultimately get to the point where diplomatic assets are claimed, then this is tantamount to severing diplomatic ties and entering into direct conflict,” he said. “And this would put us in a different world with completely different rules. We would have to react differently in this case -- and not through legal channels.”
• Analysis of Russia’s 1918 debt repudiation: “Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution.”
• The history of Russia’s 1998 default by Martin Gilman, then-head of the International Monetary Fund’s Moscow office. “No Precedent, No Plan: Inside Russia’s 1998 Default.”
• Bloomberg’s Big Take on how Russia spiraled toward default, and how its economy might adapt.
• A 2008 research paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research on the history of sovereign defaults in emerging markets.
• Bloomberg Opinion’s Max Hastings on centuries of Russian brutality.
• Bloomberg QuickTakes on the SWIFT payment system and the history of sanctions against Russia.
• An overview of sanctions related to the Ukraine-Russia conflict by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). | 2022-07-07T11:17:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Twisted Tale of Russia’s Sanctions-Driven Default - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-twisted-tale-of-russias-sanctions-driven-default/2022/07/07/8c9663ae-fdd9-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-twisted-tale-of-russias-sanctions-driven-default/2022/07/07/8c9663ae-fdd9-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
A worker wearing a protective face mask operates a forklift to move boxes of face shields ready for shipment at the Cartamundi-owned Hasbro manufacturing facility in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, U.S., on Wednesday, April 29, 2020. The factory is making 50,000 face shields per week for hospitals in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Governor Charlie Baker said. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
So it’s understandable that many Americans believe the US economy is already in recession. The tracking model from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank projects that real GDP growth in the second quarter will be negative. If that’s right, following on a 1.6% decline in the first quarter, it would trigger the oft-repeated rule of thumb that calls a recession after two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth.
The labor market has come a long way over the past year. Aggregate hours worked, which includes both the number of workers and the length of the work week, is now up 4.6% year-over-year. People who were unemployed a year ago have gotten jobs. People who weren’t even in the labor force a year ago, perhaps because they feared Covid-19 or because of weak economic conditions, have re-entered the labor force and secured jobs. In May, total hours worked finally surpassed its pre-pandemic high, and it’s likely that we’ll see another new record in June.
Growth in hours worked signals that employers are still confident in future demand and workers have more income to help them cope with elevated inflation. In every recession going back 50 years we’ve seen hours worked shrink by at least 2%. We’re a long way from that at a time when Americans are still re-entering the labor force and employers continue to hire at a robust rate.
Housing Stands in the Way of September Fed Pivot: Jonathan Levin
A ‘Reverse Ferret’ Gets Up Markets’ Trousers: John Authers
Believe It or Not, Market Has 3 Silver Linings: Mohamed El-Erian | 2022-07-07T11:17:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US Labor Market Shows No Signs of an Imminent Recession - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-labor-market-shows-no-signs-of-an-imminent-recession/2022/07/07/c272741c-fde4-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-labor-market-shows-no-signs-of-an-imminent-recession/2022/07/07/c272741c-fde4-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
The Opioid Files
By Scott Higham
Joe Rannazzisi, seen in 2017, was the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s division for policing the drug industry until his team was disbanded. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
This story is adapted from “American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry.”
Late on his last day as a DEA agent, Joe Rannazzisi grabbed a mailroom cart to wheel a few boxes of personal belongings to his Ford Excursion. He had turned in his badge earlier that day — one without a formal goodbye lunch that was now an evening without farewell drinks. Almost everyone had already cleared out of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s sleek office complex in Arlington, and the silent corridor was a numbing coda to a career that for all its accolades seemed to have ended in defeat.
It was an unusual feeling for the muscled, tough-talking New Yorker who’d spent 30 years bringing down bad guys.
As head of the DEA’s division for policing the drug industry, Rannazzisi and his agents had pursued corrupt doctors and the nation’s largest drug manufacturers, distribution companies, and pharmacy chains that were pouring powerful and highly addictive opioids into communities across the country.
His agents had successfully raided the warehouses of Fortune 500 companies. The DEA fined them tens of millions of dollars. Some of the companies were household names, such as Walgreens and CVS. Others had escaped public scrutiny, but he saw them as equally or even more culpable, companies such as Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, Cardinal Health, Teva Pharmaceuticals, McKesson Corporation, and AmerisourceBergen Corp.
Righteous investigations, Rannazzisi believed. But he and his team had been crushed, their struggle to stop the destructive flow of pain pills snuffed out by a highly organized, well-financed pressure campaign.
Today, America’s opioid crisis is worse than ever. Last year, the nation logged a record-breaking 100,000 drug overdose deaths, most of them due to fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than heroin. There is no end in sight as Mexican drug cartels flood the country with shipments of the cheap and highly addictive synthetic opioid.
Follow The Post’s investigation of the opioid epidemic
Rannazzisi came under attack by a tightknit coalition of drug company executives and lobbyists with close ties to members of Congress, and high-ranking officials inside the Department of Justice. They were aided by a cadre of former federal officials lured away from the DEA and the Justice Department by the lucrative payrolls of the companies they once regulated and the downtown D.C. law firms that represented them.
One was D. Linden Barber, a top DEA lawyer who left the agency to represent the opioid industry. With his intimate knowledge of the DEA, Barber helped to write legislation for the drug industry that gutted the agency’s ability to aggressively pursue the companies. With a few words, the new law changed the definition of what kind of corporate behavior constituted an “imminent danger” to the public. It raised the evidentiary bar for the DEA, making it nearly impossible for the agency to meet the new standard in its efforts to shutter drug company warehouses. The legislation sailed through Congress in 2016 at the height of the prescription drug epidemic and was signed into law by President Barack Obama without a word from the Oval Office.
On Capitol Hill, the measure was sponsored by then-Republican Congressman Tom Marino of Pennsylvania and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, along with Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, a Republican from Utah, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island. The bill was heavily backed and financed by the opioid industry.
To fend off the DEA, the companies hired the smartest and most well-connected lawyers in Washington. One of them was Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration who became a partner at WilmerHale, a powerhouse law firm two blocks from the White House that had a thousand lawyers in cities around the globe. The firm represented Cardinal Health, which the DEA had been chasing since 2011 for distributing enormous amounts of pain pills.
Gorelick was able to get a memo outlining her client’s concerns into the hands of the deputy attorney general at the time, James M. Cole. Rannazzisi was summoned to the Justice Department to explain himself to Cole during an unprecedented meeting. Another former deputy attorney general, Craig S. Morford, had joined Cardinal as chief of legal affairs. He had sent a three-page memo to Rannazzisi’s boss at the DEA, detailing the company’s complaints about the agency’s aggressive enforcement efforts.
Rannazzisi had never seen anything like it. Lawyers for the drug gangs and trafficking organizations he’d investigated had never been able to lobby the highest-ranking officials of the Justice Department on behalf of their clients. Instead of facing criminal prosecution, Cardinal’s executives walked away from the case by paying a fine. “A traffic ticket,” Rannazzisi called it.
But it was the way of Washington, where there was a constant revolving door between the agency, the Justice Department, and the companies they were supposed to be holding accountable. The pattern was a win-win for the former employees and the drug companies. The employees could triple or quadruple their salaries by going to Fortune 500 corporations or their law firms on K Street. And they knew precisely how the agency and the department operated, and how they could be thwarted.
Rannazzisi’s friends had known for months that he was being targeted by the opioid industry and its allies in Washington and had been ostracized inside his own agency — no longer a welcome crusader. A new administrator, Chuck Rosenberg, who was more sympathetic to the plight of the drug industry, had been installed at the DEA. He wanted Rannazzisi out of his job, and his team disbanded.
Rannazzisi’s buddies called him at home, gently probing to see if he was safe. Could someone as obsessive and wounded as Rannazzisi transition to retirement?
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to off myself,” he told them.
Still, some wondered whether they should take his weapon, a Walther PPK .380, just to be sure.
Rannazzisi was just a little bemused by the concern. He may have lost his job, but he was no quitter. He had two daughters at home to take care of, and a new coonhound mutt from the pound named Banjo.
As he left DEA headquarters in October 2015, he hoped the fight would go on in some form. Addiction to opioids was an epidemic. People were dying from overdoses by the hundreds of thousands. The companies would eventually choke on their greed. Citizens would eventually demand that their government stop it all. There had to be a reckoning.
The shape of that reckoning, however, was not visible to failure Rannazzisi on the dreary Friday in October when he was finally cut loose from the DEA. He had no idea that one day he would return to the trenches of the opioid war, this time as a key witness against the same companies that were responsible for his demise.
A year later, on a Sunday morning in 2016, Paul T. Farrell Jr. sat at the kitchen table in his parents’ home as his father prepared breakfast. A local news story in the Charleston Gazette-Mail was the talk of the town. It reported that several drug companies, including some of the largest in the nation, had sent 780 million prescription pain pills to West Virginia within six years, while 1,728 people in the state overdosed. The shipments were enough to supply 433 pain pills to every man, woman, and child in the state.
Farrell’s family had lived in Huntington, W.Va., for generations. They were Irish Catholic immigrants who arrived in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen during the 19th century and made their way to West Virginia. Huntington once prospered from the coal mines. But those boom years were long gone, and Farrell’s town had descended into something resembling a zombie movie — shells of human beings wandering downtown, empty syringes and needles in public parks, parentless children, an entire generation raised in foster homes or by grandparents.
One of his closest friends, Mark Zban, a star athlete, was prescribed opioids following a series of injuries. Farrell watched in horror as his friend descended into oxycodone oblivion. At 6-foot-5 and 220 pounds, Zban was built for the NFL. But hobbled by serious knee injuries and a blown disk, his dreams of turning pro faded. By 2006, with six children and a high-stress job selling medical supplies, Zban’s pain from his sports injuries had become unbearable. Doctors prescribed low doses of hydrocodone, then higher doses of oxycodone. When he couldn’t convince doctors to write him more prescriptions, he bought pills on the streets of Huntington.
Getting high became his daily routine. Nothing else mattered.
“I was so embarrassed and ashamed of what I was doing. I really isolated myself,” Zban said. “It got so bad that it became more important than my kids. I’m embarrassed to say that.”
As the newspaper story made the rounds at the Farrells’ breakfast table that morning, Farrell realized that the blame didn’t lie with Mexican drug cartels or any of the usual suspects, but instead with American companies, all of them profiting from the misery on the streets outside.
These corporations were earning unprecedented profits while, to Farrell’s mind, his neighbors were being exterminated by opioids such as OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin, and the ubiquitous blue oxycodone 30mg tablets manufactured by a St. Louis company he’d never heard of — Mallinckrodt, a drug industry giant that had managed to avoid the spotlight. In 2006, Purdue Pharma manufactured 130 million pain pills. That same year, Mallinckrodt manufactured 3.6 billion pills, nearly 30 times more than Purdue. Mallinckrodt’s pills became so popular on the black market that users and drug dealers called them “blues” or “30s.”
Farrell’s mother, Charlene, had seen too many deaths, gone to too many funerals.
“Someone should do something,” she said as her husband stood over the stove, frying up bacon.
Farrell’s younger brother, Patrick, a fighter pilot during the Iraq War, chimed in.
“Isn’t that what you do for a living?” he asked Farrell.
Farrell felt it was a fair question. He embarked on a journey into the corrupt labyrinth of America’s opioid industry. Soon he would collaborate with some of the most colorful, high-profile plaintiff’s lawyers in the nation, including Mark Lanier, a 58-year-old Texas lawyer who was one of the wealthiest and most successful trial attorneys in America.
Lanier lived large on a 35-acre estate about 25 miles north of Houston. When he wasn’t suing big corporations, he raised chickens, sheep, goats, monkeys, geese, potbellied pigs, and llamas on the manicured grounds of his estate, framed by orchards of apples, plums, and peaches.
In front of jurors, Lanier played the role of a country lawyer, telling folksy stories, using props, and reciting verses from the Bible. His methods sounded gimmicky, but they persuaded those in the box who were the ultimate arbiters. Over the course of his 37-year career, Lanier tried more than 200 personal injury and product liability lawsuits. He won nearly $20 billion in verdicts against corporations in cases involving asbestos, prescription drugs, and metal hip implants.
But having seasoned litigators bankrolled by powerful plaintiff’s law firms was not enough. Farrell knew he needed people on the inside of the DEA to make his case. He enlisted Rannazzisi as his star witness. He also drafted other DEA agents and investigators whose cases against the opioid companies had been crushed. Most were eager to sign up. The money they would make as expert witnesses would help. But more importantly, they wanted payback.
By October 2019, on the eve of the first trial against the opioid industry in the nation, Farrell, Lanier, and hundreds of other lawyers had launched the largest and most complex civil litigation in American history on behalf of thousands of counties, cities, and Native American tribes. The coalition won access to a confidential pill-tracking database and millions of internal corporate emails and memos during courtroom combat with legions of omnipotent law firms defending the opioid industry.
For Farrell, the internal documents and emails revealed a horrifying panorama on corporate greed and political cowardice. The records included once-confidential communications inside corporate boardrooms, DEA headquarters, and the marbled corridors of Capitol Hill. The documents found their way into thousands of lawsuits filed in federal courthouses across the country and form the basis of a legal battle without precedent in American jurisprudence — a bruising, complex, and unfinished quest for justice.
Farrell and Rannazzisi realized that the companies had manufactured, distributed, and dispensed 100 billion pain pills across the country over nine years, from 2006 through 2016. One breathtaking disclosure after another — from emails that mocked addicts to sales reports chronicling the rise of pill mills — showed the indifference of big business to the epidemic’s toll. Farrell and Rannazzisi, already hardened by their experiences with the companies, were appalled by how corporate executives dehumanized the people who were overdosing and dying from their products.
One company, Cephalon, tried to motivate its sales force with a video of a dubbed version of Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. In the video, Dr. Evil threatened to kill any sales rep who failed to sell enough of its fentanyl product.
Victor Borelli, a national sales representative from Mallinckrodt, compared the highly addictive pain pills he was selling to tortilla chips.
“Keep ’em coming!” one sales rep wrote to Borelli. “Flyin’ out of here. It’s like people are addicted to these things or something. Oh, wait, people are ...”
“Just like Doritos,” Borelli wrote back. “Keep eating, we’ll make more.”
At the height of the opioid epidemic in 2011, executives at AmerisourceBergen, the third-largest drug distributor in America, circulated an email chain containing a parody of the theme song from the 1960s CBS sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies.” The parody compared those addicted to opioids to “Pillbillies,” poor and uneducated Appalachian hillbillies.
“Well the first thing you know ol’ Jed’s a drivin South,” the parody went. “Kinfolk said Jed don’t put too many in your mouth, / Said Sunny Florida is the place you ought to be / So they loaded up the truck and drove speedily. / South, that is. / Pain Clinics, cash ’n carry. / A Bevy of Pillbillies!”
When lawyers first discovered the parody in piles of documents the companies had disclosed to the plaintiff’s lawyers, Farrell thought it was a prank.
“This can’t be real,” he wrote to one of his colleagues.
It was real. For 10 years, the “Pillbillies” email was an inside joke at AmerisourceBergen. During a 2021 trial in Charleston, W.Va., involving AmerisourceBergen and two other drug distributors — McKesson and Cardinal Health — Farrell questioned one of the AmerisourceBergen executives who had shared the parody with his colleagues. It was the first case to finally go to trial. Dozens more were waiting in line.
News of the parody blew up on Twitter. The reaction was so hostile and threatening, the AmerisourceBergen executive who was testifying became the target of death threats. The judge overseeing the trial summoned the lawyers to his chambers and cautioned Farrell and his legal team against introducing any more incendiary company emails.
The DEA’s crackdown on the opioid industry and the barrage of lawsuits may have decimated the black market for pain pills, but it left untold millions addicted. Opioid users searched for other options, setting off two more cataclysmic waves of death. In 2015, heroin overdoses surpassed the number of deaths from pills. Two years later, the third wave of the epidemic, fueled by fentanyl, overcame heroin as the number one driver of overdose deaths, devastating even more communities across the country.
Since Farrell filed his first lawsuit against the opioid industry in 2017, hundreds of law firms have joined the case and they have signed up more than 4,000 towns, cities, counties, and Indian tribes as their clients. Courtroom discovery battles continue to produce internal corporate documents and emails. One of the documents was a playbook detailing how the industry could divert attention away from itself and place the blame for the opioid epidemic on the DEA itself.
As of today, the legal counterattack has resulted in nearly $40 billion in settlements by companies such as Johnson & Johnson, and the nation’s top three distributors, McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen. Mallinckrodt and Purdue have also settled and are now in bankruptcy court.
But it doesn’t feel like a victory to the people who have waged the fight, like Rannazzisi. On Monday, a federal judge ruled in favor of those distributors, dismissing claims filed by Farrell and other attorneys that the companies were responsible for the opioid epidemic in West Virginia.
More people are dying of opioid overdoses than ever before, Rannazzisi says, but not one executive of a Fortune 500 company went to jail — or was even criminally prosecuted.
“A kid slinging crack on a corner goes to jail, because he has a gun, for five or ten years or whatever. But a corporation that’s involved with the distribution of drugs that are killing people all over the country — the illegal distribution of these drugs — why did they not get prosecuted?” Rannazzisi said.
“The answer is power and influence.” | 2022-07-07T11:18:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘American Cartel’ book: How the DEA lost to the opioid industry - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/07/american-cartel-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/07/07/american-cartel-book/ |
What Aiden McCarthy’s GoFundMe can’t pay for
The powerful yet futile impulse to make things better for the boy at the parade
Victims' names, including Irina and Kevin McCarthy, are written on a sign at a memorial site after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., on July 6. (Cheney Orr/Reuters)
The GoFundMe for Aiden McCarthy was at $2.21 million as I started this sentence, and $5,000 higher by the time I reached this middle part of it and $18,000 higher by the time I ended it. Astronomical sums, until you think about what it’s trying to pay for.
In the frantic first hours after the Highland Park, Ill., massacre on Monday, a photograph began appearing on social media: a toddler with big eyes and loopy curls who had become separated from his parents at the parade. The stranger who found him was hoping to learn the boy’s identity and reunite him with his family. The post went viral first in the Chicago area and then well beyond; I saw it online posted by friends in Bangor and Albuquerque.
Did someone in New Mexico really think their personal friend circle would be the key to solving the mystery? Maybe not, but sharing the photo provided a sense of hopeful purpose: a way to wring a little happy ending out of something so godawful you could barely stand it.
The next day it turned out this was a failed mission from the start. The boy’s name was Aiden and his parents, Irina and Kevin, had both been killed at the Fourth of July parade. They had been slaughtered (did you know journalists don’t use “murdered” unless a conviction is reached?) in the street along with five other people; dozens more were injured. In the bloody United States of 2022, mass shootings barely rate as newsworthy if they’re in the single digits, which made the McCarthys’ deaths seemed extra unfathomable: seven people dead but two of them were this boy’s parents? What are the hideous odds?
And so began a new shared mission on Aiden’s behalf: A woman who said she was a family friend launched a GoFundMe with a target goal of $500,000. Aiden “will have a long road ahead to heal, find stability, and ultimately navigate life as an orphan,” the campaign read. The money would go toward his care and rehabilitation. The GoFundMe hit its target goal within hours and just kept climbing: to $1.4 million by late Tuesday, to $2 million by Wednesday morning, to whatever it is by now. Enough for Aiden to go to college five or six times over. Enough for all the therapy in the world.
The people who donated — of which I was one — obviously did so because it was both the least and the most they could do, to help the boy whom it turned out they had not helped as originally intended, back when people around the country shared his picture online. But it’s hard to look at this sum as anything other than blood money, the restitution of a guilty nation paid to a small boy because we cannot bring back his family and we will not take away the kind of guns that killed them.
I haven’t been able to stop refreshing the GoFundMe page for Aiden McCarthy. It represents what sum we find a reasonable amount to make up for the fact that a child no longer has parents. It represents what we are willing to pay for a particular reading of the Second Amendment, the reading that allows a young man with a troubled history to buy a semiautomatic weapon, which he will use to climb on a roof and spray bullets into a parade celebrating America’s independence.
The GoFundMe is at $2.38 million as of the writing of this sentence, by the way, and also Aiden’s grandfather told the Chicago Sun-Times that Aiden survived because Kevin McCarthy used his own body to shield his son from bullets, that Aiden was under Kevin’s body when Kevin was shot. Aiden’s grandfather told the Sun-Times that when he went to collect Aiden from the police station, Aiden told him that “Mommy and Daddy are coming soon.”
$2.4 million now.
The shootings of 2022 are the first ones that I’ve experienced as a mother. I can’t say that parenthood made has made me view America’s gun violence in a different way than before. But I can say that as I watched Aiden McCarthy’s GoFundMe these past 24 hours, I spent a lot of time thinking about his mother, Irina, and about what would pass for mercy in this situation.
Here is what I came up with:
I hope that Irina and Kevin McCarthy died alone. I hope that by the time the two of them were shot and killed on the Fourth of July, they were already separated from each other in the panic and horror and gunfire raining down on the Highland Park parade. If they were separated, it means that as Irina McCarthy drew her final breath, she could take the smallest comfort in believing that her 2-year-old son would be raised lovingly by his father.
If they were together, then it means both died knowing that in a matter of minutes their son had been made an orphan.
They died knowing there was no parent to scoop him up as he wandered alone down a bloody street. They died knowing he would be lost and terrified and nobody would be calling out his name. There would be no familiar neck for him to cling to.
There would be only a police station, followed by concerned neighbors and a GoFundMe.
On the top of the GoFundMe page, there is a pixelated photo of Aiden’s parents on what might have been their wedding day: Kevin in a black bow tie, Irina in white lace and an updo.
In this photo, they smiled in the prime of their lives, in what later turned out to be the end of their lives. Over to the side of this picture the donations rolled in — $2.52 million now, as I continue to type. Higher and higher and still never enough. | 2022-07-07T11:18:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Aiden McCarthy’s GoFundMe can’t pay for - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/07/aiden-mccarthy-go-fund-me-story/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/07/aiden-mccarthy-go-fund-me-story/ |
The 1950s congressman whose career explains the Texas GOP’s extremism
Bruce Alger helped seed the politics driving the GOP in America’s second-largest state
Perspective by Kyle Longley
Kyle Longley is the director of the War and Society Program at Chapman University and author of "LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval."
A Donald Trump cutout stands at the Republican Party of Texas convention on June 16 in Houston. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle/AP)
In June, the Texas Republican Party made national headlines by adopting several extreme positions at its convention. It called for students to learn about “the humanity of the preborn child,” characterized homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and reaffirmed punishing those helping with gender transition.
Delegates also pushed for repealing the 16th Amendment (the federal income tax), attacked clean energy plans, promoted ending the legislature’s right to regulate guns, and endorsed ending the Federal Reserve and guaranteeing access to cryptocurrencies.
The platform highlighted the feelings of the 5,100 delegates, some of whom supported far-right activists attacking conservative Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) as “eye-patch McCain” for opposing Russian aggression.
This platform should surprise no one. It has roots in the tea party uprising that followed the election of President Barack Obama and flourished in Texas. However, the roots go much deeper — back to the 1950s when Texas began transitioning from a state influenced by the populism of people like Lyndon B. Johnson and Ralph Yarborough toward one dominated by reactionary right-wing politics steeped in baseless falsehoods, evangelical religion and fierce loathing for the left. One man embodies these roots: Bruce Alger.
Texas frequently elected conservative segregationist Democrats in the first half of the 20th century. But before the 1950s, the Republican Party was moribund, still considered by some Texans to be the party of northern aggression in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Only two Republicans served in the Texas congressional delegation between 1913 and 1953.
But in 1952, Alger rode a wave of right-wing energy to an upset victory in the district encompassing much of Dallas. The pugnacious, arch-conservative Missouri native hated the federal government. He proudly bragged that he was the only member of Congress to vote against a school milk program. Intransigent and partisan, Alger’s colleagues in both parties detested him — although many affluent Dallas socialites adored the Republican for his vitriolic rhetoric denunciation of socialists and communists and anyone they perceived as anti-American — including civil rights activists.
During his four terms in Congress, Alger never sponsored one piece of memorable legislation and only voted with Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower 9 percent of the time.
The Washington press corps ranked Alger the second least effective member of Congress, trailing only Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.). This didn’t bother Alger: He would crow, “My ignorance of politics couldn’t be matched by anybody in politics.” His supposed ignorance was a badge of honor reflecting his anti-government and anti-establishment credentials.
In many ways, Alger reflected the local political culture, especially in the affluent areas of Dallas. Each day, people received a steady diet of hard-right propaganda rooted in Cold War rhetoric and baseless falsehoods.
The Dallas Morning News headed by the reactionary E. M. “Ted” Daley often led the charge. It attacked the “Judicial Kremlin,” a slap at the Warren Court, and even called President John F. Kennedy “fifty times a fool.” At one point, Daley personally told Kennedy: “We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think you are riding on Caroline’s [Kennedy’s young daughter] tricycle.” A steady barrage of incendiary pieces flowed from the newspaper about liberals, socialists and communists — with little differentiation between them.
This rhetoric heightened fears among affluent Dallas residents who flocked to right-wing groups such as the John Birch Society and often provided strong financial support to them. The group’s virulent anti-communism, its opposition to international organizations and “one world government” and strong support of states’ rights and disdain for federal institutions — including the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Service — brought in many supporters from Dallas and its suburbs.
Race and religion were at the center of this politics. Even in the church pews, Dallas socialites received a steady diet of incendiary — and false — claims regarding desegregation and Catholicism. In 1960, the senior pastor of the 18,500 members of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, W.A. Criswell, gave a sermon stressing that “the election of a Catholic as president would mean the end of religious freedom in America.” Later, he told reporters that Catholics should never hold higher office in the country.
Often, Alger sought to amplify and capitalize on the pronouncements of those like Daley and Criswell — including an infamous episode during the 1960 campaign. On Nov. 4, trying to distract from his own ugly divorce then making headlines, Alger prepared an ambush for Johnson, then the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
Alger and his supporters set up shop outside the Baker Hotel, across from where the senator from Texas planned to deliver a speech. When Johnson approached the hotel, Alger whipped a crowd of primarily well-dressed women (who became known as the Mink Coat Mob) — whose husbands worked in nearby office buildings — into a frenzy with chants of “If Khrushchev could vote, he’d choose Kennedy-Johnson!” Standing taller than most of the women surrounding him, Alger raised and lowered a huge sign, “LBJ SOLD OUT TO YANKEE SOCIALISTS.”
Other signs from Alger’s mob included: “TEXAS TRAITOR,” “JUDAS JOHNSON: TURNCOAT TEXAN” and “LET’S BEAT JUDAS.”
Some of the women rushed Johnson’s limousine, screaming “Traitor” and “Judas.” One of them seized Lady Bird Johnson’s white gloves and threw them forcefully into the gutter, prompting a loud cheer. The congestion forced Johnson’s entourage to regroup in the hotel.
Johnson wily decided to walk across the street to deliver his speech, offering up the perfect political theater. The Mink Coat Mob once more surrounded the Johnsons as they exited the elevator, shouting profanities and insults. They poked Johnson supporters with pins and pounded them with signs. They even broke the nose of a young Johnson supporter. The mob turned a five-minute walk into 30.
At one point, Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.) fumed to Alger: “It’s out of line for a U.S. Congressman to take part in this. Put a stop to this,” he ordered. Alger responded gleefully, “We’re gonna show Johnson he’s not wanted in Dallas,” prompting cheers from the well-dressed women.
After his speech, Johnson played up the affair, telling reporters, “No man is afraid of facing up to such people.” Pushing the advantage, he observed, “But it is outrageous that in a large civilized city a man’s wife can be subjected to such treatment. Republicans are attacking the women, and the children will probably be next.”
Johnson’s masterfully manipulated the political theater to his advantage. When he walked slowly through the crowd, he knew the cameras captured a deranged mob of Republicans better dressed than those attacking civil rights activists but the same nonetheless. He chose his words carefully to appeal to Southern ideals of hospitality and proper decorum, scoring a victory over Alger.
The incident outraged “thousands of Texans and many more thousands of Southerners,” according to columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Even the normally conservative Dallas Morning News stressed the “damage was done.” It added that even Alger partisans “deemed the incident unwise.”
One supporter of 1960 GOP presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon bemoaned that the whole affair had “set the Republican Party in Texas back twenty years.” After Nixon lost Texas by the narrow margin of 46,333, he himself complained, “We lost Texas in 1960 because of that … congressman in Dallas.”
Two years later, Alger’s antics finally cost him his seat.
However, rather than being an anomaly, Alger reflected — and savvily capitalized upon — the local culture, allowing him to win reelection four times despite his lack of legislative record and animosity from both parties. He stood at the forefront of reactionary politics, often aligned on race with Southern Democrats such as Strom Thurmond and Harry Byrd, fanning the flames of division over integration and red-baiting liberals. While the social conservative issues of school prayer, abortion, immigration and pornography became prominent after he left office, Alger’s style and reactionary ethos infused these debates.
Since the 1960s, the political culture that created Bruce Alger and allowed him to hold power has simply extended from the suburbs of Dallas throughout all of Texas. Cultural and racial issues ensured its spread as Texas largely rejected Democrats for Goldwater- and Reagan-style Republicanism. As in Dallas in the 50s, conservative evangelical churches and right-wing media have helped spread this politics across the state.
The recent meeting of the GOP faithful just reinforced this reality; Alger’s progeny dominate the Texas GOP. People such as Reps. Louie Gohmert and Chip Roy, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Attorney General Ken Paxton boast of political positions and rhetoric that recall Alger. The conservatives of the George W. Bush years — who favored more inclusivity and less incendiary rhetoric — have found themselves increasingly isolated.
It’s too early to tell if this will eventually cost Republicans the state, which is increasingly becoming more diverse and urban, but the Texas GOP seems unlikely to change anytime soon. | 2022-07-07T11:18:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 1950s congressman whose career explains the Texas GOP’s extremism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/07/1950s-congressman-whose-career-explains-texas-gops-extremism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/07/1950s-congressman-whose-career-explains-texas-gops-extremism/ |
Schools can serve authoritarian aims — or thwart them
Lessons from one teacher in Nazi Germany for schools caught in Putin’s war today
Perspective by Deborah Cadbury
Deborah Cadbury is the author of "THE SCHOOL THAT ESCAPED THE NAZIS" and eight other acclaimed novels.
A school hall is in ruins after missiles struck the yard of the school in a residential area of Kharkiv on June 27 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty Images)
In Russian schools today children can have “world peace” lessons in which they learn how President Vladimir Putin’s “special operation” is protecting Russia from neo-Nazis. Any student or teacher who might wish to make a public stand, pointing out that Russia invaded Ukraine and that Russia has waged war, rather than engaged in a special military operation, runs the risk of imprisonment. Such repressive measures highlight the Kremlin’s increasing attempts to control young minds in the Russian Federation and the insidious way this can perpetuate fear and enmity.
This is not new. Authoritarian rulers have long tried to assert control over the classroom as part of their totalitarian governments.
In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler’s regime worked diligently to subvert German education with Nazi ideology. History was reinterpreted as a struggle between races with Germany’s enemies identified as the Jews. Geography became infused with Nazi ideas of “living space” for the German people. Arithmetic, too, could have a racial bias with pupils asked to do calculations on how many blonde people there were in Germany. Art, literature and even religion became about patriotism and loyalty to Hitler. Any schoolteacher who dared reveal their disagreement risked arrest if they were reported to the Gestapo. Outside school, millions of boys and girls were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology through the Hitler Youth and its affiliated organizations.
But there are lessons to learn from the little-known story of the one school that escaped Nazi Germany. The principal, Anna Essinger, or “Tante Anna” as she was known to her pupils, outmaneuvered Hitler’s regime and smuggled her entire school to the safety of Britain. Her success rested in part on her shrewd judgment, prompt action and firm commitment to freedom of thought inspired by the American educational system.
As a young woman, Essinger had funded herself through several years of study at the University of Wisconsin and believed that through education, humanity could progress. All this was in jeopardy when Hitler came into power in 1933. After reading Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” in the 1920s, Essinger believed Germany would plunge into an abyss under him. Well before the first racial laws were introduced in April 1933, she could see that the hatred and violence openly promoted by the Nazi Party stood in opposition to everything she was trying to show her pupils about tolerance, respect, justice and compassion.
As Germany’s fledgling democracy was being dismantled around her, she saw at once what this could mean for education. For her, it came down to one core issue: freedom. Freedom to question, to challenge, to live without fear and freedom of spirit. This was the reason for her life’s work.
While other German school principals tried to accommodate Nazism, Essinger would not compromise. But the husband of a staff member reported her resistance to the authorities, recommending that a Nazi inspector be appointed immediately. His letter of denouncement not only threatened Essinger’s school — which could be forced to close — but also put all those involved in danger. And so, Essinger began to plot how to save her school from Nazi ideology.
In October 1933, Essinger led her first 70 pupils in an escape to England. Over the next few years, she accepted waves of increasingly traumatized children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and then Poland as the crisis spread. Following the violent pogrom against Jews known as Kristallnacht in 1938, confused and bewildered children started to arrive in Britain on kindertransports. Many of these children had been violated by five years of escalating deprivations that had seen their families impoverished and abused, and their parents imprisoned or even killed.
With the German Blitzkrieg on Poland and the outbreak of World War II, Essinger’s pupils were cut off from their parents in a wholly unpredictable way. Later Tante Anna would take in children who had survived the war in Nazi-occupied territories in concentration camps, labor camps or living underground. These orphans had given up all hope; they were survivors of unimaginable horrors.
In her new school, Bunce Court, in Kent, Tante Anna sought to create a home where children, traumatized by persecution and war, could not only recover but be inspired. She emphasized the importance of assimilation into their host country. Children learned English, sat for British exams and were increasingly taught by British teachers.
All this gave pupils broader options when it was not safe to return to their home countries. Yet the children were not cut off from their cultural roots. The refugee pupils — most of whom became orphans — had endured similar traumas, and many described how classmates became like brothers and sisters and the staff felt like parents. Soon, the school became self-sufficient, and the children also cooked, cleaned and helped carry out repairs. Many children found the practical tasks helpful, reducing stress and rebuilding their confidence.
But, above all, Essinger created a safe environment in which children could be inspired about the very best of human achievements. She aimed to show her pupils a path that would lead them away from pain and hatred toward healing and love. Whatever the background, race or religion of her pupils, they were expected to help each other. “Children you must love one another, and if that is not possible, at least respect each other,” she would say to them.
It worked. Years later, pupils would refer to the “Bunce Court spirit” that spurred all their efforts and pervaded the atmosphere. For them the school seemed to stand apart, an oasis in a world that was overwhelmed by the forces of Nazi evil. For former German pupil Leslie, “all the violence I had experienced before felt like a bad dream. It was paradise. I think most of the children felt it was paradise.” Essinger’s school helped to transform the lives of the over 900 children who passed through it, many of whom went on to have distinguished careers.
Today Putin’s war has damaged or destroyed more than 1,000 Ukrainian schools and inflicted severe trauma on yet another generation of children. Five million Ukrainian children have been driven from their homes to an uncertain future, and millions in Russia face a future of repression and indoctrination. With rising numbers of refugees worldwide, Essinger’s school is an intriguing model for our times and reminds us why freedom of thought matters. Without it, we succumb to oppression and fear. | 2022-07-07T11:18:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Schools can serve authoritarian aims — or thwart them - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/07/schools-can-serve-authoritarian-aims-or-thwart-them/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/07/schools-can-serve-authoritarian-aims-or-thwart-them/ |
Former director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, were selected for tax reviews the IRS says are random
The New York Times reported James Comey’s audit began in 2019, focused on his 2017 tax return, the year he signed a seven-figure book deal. Andrew McCabe’s audit began in 2021, focused on his tax return for 2019. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)
The IRS conducted audits in recent years of two of former president Donald Trump’s most frequent targets of criticism, former FBI director James B. Comey and his deputy, leading Comey to question whether the audits were motivated by political payback against the law enforcement leaders who investigated Trump and his campaign.
Trump fired Comey in 2017, intensifying an investigation into Trump associates that had begun a year earlier. After Comey’s firing, his deputy, Andrew McCabe, took over the FBI for several months, during which time the bureau opened an investigation into Trump for possible obstruction of justice.
Andrew MCabe wins back pension after being fired by Trump
“I don’t know whether anything improper happened, but after learning how unusual this audit was and how badly Trump wanted to hurt me during that time, it made sense to try to figure it out,” Mr. Comey said in a statement. “Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe somebody misused the I.R.S. to get at a political enemy. Given the role Trump wants to continue to play in our country, we should know the answer to that question.”
Since politically motivated abuses of the Nixon administration, the IRS has prided itself on systems designed to keep politics or personal motivations out of the agency’s tax review process.
“Audits are handled by career civil servants, and the IRS has strong safeguards in place to protect the exam process — and against politically motivated audits,” the statement said. “It’s ludicrous and untrue to suggest that senior IRS officials somehow targeted specific individuals for National Research Program audits.” | 2022-07-07T11:18:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FBI's James Comey, Andrew McCabe, audited by IRS after angering Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/07/irs-audit-comey-mccabe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/07/irs-audit-comey-mccabe/ |
The Capitol building on June 21. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg)
Build Back Better, President Biden’s plan for new federal spending and taxes, was big, bold and probably bound to run into the trouble securing a Senate majority that eventually doomed it. The deal Democrats are negotiating today, in contrast, is more modest. Perhaps as a consequence, it also has a better chance to succeed.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and centrist holdout Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) have for the past few months been holding talks to put together an economic package that can pass through the reconciliation process, which would require the support only of the Senate’s 50 Democratic-voting members. This week marks a major milestone: Legislative text of a proposal to lower prescription drug costs has made its way to the Senate’s parliamentarian, who will determine whether the measure qualifies to pass via reconciliation — and bypass a Republican filibuster. The rest of the hoped-for package, expected to include health-care, climate and tax reform measures, remains in limbo.
The decision to move forward with what’s already agreed on is sensible: Instead of introducing myriad ambitious ideas all at once and then searching for the votes, Democrats are finding the votes first — and introducing afterward the ideas they know can pass. The drug pricing bill looks similar to a variation last year that received the approval of another key Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), which bodes well for its advancement. The government would be empowered to negotiate the price of select high-cost drugs on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries; the biggest change is that future administrations would be bound by the obligation to haggle aggressively. The plan would cappatients' drug costs at $2,000 each year, penalize companies whose prices outpace inflation and expand aid toward premiums and co-pays for low-income customers.
What could come next is even more encouraging. Reportedly, an overarching reconciliation agreement between Mr. Schumer and Mr. Manchin would raise approximately $1 trillion in revenue, with $500 billion or so put toward spending and $500 billion toward bringing down the federal budget deficit. The promised provisions are both appropriately ambitious and responsible: Incentives to reduce carbon emissions are essential; the continuation of the pandemic relief program lowering health insurance premiums for Affordable Care Act plans is called for; and new minimum taxes on corporate book income and foreign earnings by multinational corporations, as well as increases on the very high personal income, are a wise way to pay.
The window for action is closing as Congress prepares to take its long summer break, and Democrats finally may have the momentum they need to push this deal through. They can’t afford to stop moving now. The pared-back package isn’t Build Back Better, but it would help the country do just that. | 2022-07-07T11:18:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democrats can’t waste this chance to pass an economic package - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/democrats-prescription-drug-cost-legislation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/democrats-prescription-drug-cost-legislation/ |
Medicare could have saved $3 billion buying drugs the Mark Cuban way
By Hussain S. Lalani
Benjamin N. Rome
Aaron S. Kesselheim
Stock photo: Pill box (iStock)
Hussain S. Lalani is a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a fellow at the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law (PORTAL). Benjamin N. Rome, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, is on the PORTAL faculty. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a professor at Harvard Medical School, is the PORTAL director.
Many of our patients struggle to afford their medicines, and it’s agonizing to have a front-row seat to this injustice. Despite politicians’ frequent promises to lower drug prices, Congress has failed to pass any meaningful reforms in decades. As different states experiment with their own solutions, one approach spearheaded by Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has attracted growing attention.
The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company, which launched online in January, promises lower prices and complete transparency about how those prices are set. This venture offers a welcome reprieve to some patients, but it does not address the root causes of high drug prices. For that, we need congressional action.
Cuban’s new company purchases hundreds of generic drugs from manufacturers and sells them online directly to consumers. Each generic drug is priced at a cost negotiated with the manufacturer plus a 15 percent markup, a $3 pharmacy dispensing fee and $5 for shipping. Remarkably, this sometimes adds up to substantially lower prices for many patients.
In a recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, we analyzed 89 generic drugs sold by Cost Plus Drugs and found that Medicare could have saved more than $3 billion in 2020 by purchasing 77 of them at Cost Plus Drugs prices. For example, Medicare paid more than $2 per pill for aripiprazole, a commonly used psychiatric medication, while Cuban’s company sells the same formulation of the drug for $0.24 per pill. At those prices, the government could have saved $233 million in 2020 on just this one drug.
So where do these savings come from?
By directly purchasing and selling drugs, the company eliminates insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers, wholesalers and in-store pharmacies. These multiple middlemen play important roles in the supply chain but in some cases can introduce inefficiencies that lead to higher prices for patients. This is particularly problematic for uninsured patients or those with high-deductible health plans.
To be clear, Cuban’s company is not the first direct-to-consumer firm to sell generics. Walmart, Costco and several other retailers also sell low-cost generic medicines. Additionally, GoodRx offers free coupons for hundreds of generic drugs that can be used at pharmacies across the country.
Beyond offering savings for some patients, Cost Plus Drugs’s transparent pricing begins to lift the veil on drug prices, which have been shrouded in secrecy. Understanding the true cost of production and distribution can help us to understand when and why Medicare is overpaying for generics.
But Cuban’s approach has limitations. Patients must pay the full cost out of pocket, and those dollars do not count toward their insurance deductibles. Shopping around to find the lowest price for each generic is cumbersome and might be particularly challenging for patients taking multiple medications or those with limited health-care experience or digital literacy. This process is also time-consuming for patients and clinicians, who may need to send prescriptions to multiple pharmacies for a single patient.
Most importantly, Cuban’s company does not provide relief for patients who need expensive brand-name drugs, including biologics and specialty drugs — which often cost individual patients tens of thousands of dollars per year. This is because, unlike most other countries, the United States allows patent-holding brand-name manufacturers the freedom to set prices as they wish. Insurers and pharmacy benefit managers can seek to negotiate better prices, but they often lack the leverage to achieve a meaningful discount. This is particularly true of Medicare, which is required by law to cover certain drugs, including those treating cancer.
Even with insurers footing most of the bill, high prices for brand-name drugs are passed on to patients. In Medicare, for example, the broken Part D prescription drug benefit forces patients to pay more than $10,000 a year out of pocket for certain expensive medications.
Cuban has said that his company will be adding brand name drugs to its offerings. However, even if Cost Plus Drugs negotiates steep discounts with manufacturers, the price without insurance would still be out of reach for most patients.
Thus, to meaningfully lower drug prices for all Americans, Congress must act. The House was on the right track last fall, proposing to allow Medicare to negotiate prices for a limited number of brand-name drugs, disincentivize annual price increases over inflation, cap out-of-pocket spending at $2,000 per year and limit insulin copayments to $35 per month. But those changes were part of the ill-fated $1.7 trillion Build Back Better Plan. The Senate is actively attempting to salvage a similar set of drug pricing reforms, although passage is far from certain. The scope of these changes is limited, but the reforms could reduce excess spending and help millions of Americans afford their medicines.
Cuban’s company can provide relief for some patients and chip away at the secrecy surrounding generic drug prices. But with brand-name drug prices skyrocketing and 1 in 4 patients struggling to afford their medicines, congressional action is desperately needed. | 2022-07-07T11:18:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Medicare could save $3 billion by buying drugs like Mark Cuban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/medicare-save-three-billion-drugs-mark-cuban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/medicare-save-three-billion-drugs-mark-cuban/ |
Being trolled online? Here’s the best solution: Walk away.
In this photo taken on Jan. 21, 2021 a teenager presents a smartphone with the logo of TikTok in Nantes, France. (Loic Venance/AFP)
“I don’t think anyone really understands how cruel the internet is until you’re on the other side of it,” said TikTok influencer Dutch de Carvalho in a recent video. Wrapped in a blanket, sounding perilously close to tears, he continued, “Nothing prepares you for scrolling past thousands and thousands of people saying some of the cruelest things that you’ve ever seen in your life … and I know I could just stop posting, but I feel like it’s important.”
So much to unpack in that 30 seconds of video!
There is, of course, the dramatic backstory, so annoyingly emblematic of our era. (I don’t even have to tell you, do I? Yup, one of their videos went viral a few days ago and got another TikToker fired … whereupon the internet retaliated by putting de Carvalho through his own taste of viral hell.) Then there’s the wounded shock at the cruelty of viral mobs — expressed by someone who just helped create one. And finally, there’s the inability to walk away from the screen.
That is, of course, a common malady — even among those who aren’t being hit by a troll brigade. But it’s particularly pernicious when dealing with trolls, because it just encourages further abuse. Perversely, almost all the things that people do to try to shut down these kinds of attacks actually ensure that more of them will happen.
I’ve now been surviving troll brigades for 20 years — since before social media, even. After two decades of death threats, slander and profanity-laced suggestions that I engage in improbable sexual acts, I’ve learned there is only one effective way to respond to any of it: don’t. It’s a rigged game, and the only way to win is to ignore the invitation to participate.
Unfortunately, we’re now discouraged from telling people to do the only thing that works. Saying “ignore it” supposedly downplays the serious harm these attacks can do, especially to marginalized groups. It normalizes abuse. Instead, we’re all supposed to expose the harm, call out the attackers and press online platforms for better moderating tools.
This is well-meant, but far too optimistic. No technology filter will ever keep people from saying horrible things on the internet; at best, it can filter out a few of the ugliest words. Nor does it help to point out that trolling is mean.
Trolls are not misguided people who accidentally hurt your feelings. They are rage-filled narcissists who want two things: your attention and your pain. Any response you can think of just gives them what they want.
When you argue, they rejoice that you care about their opinion. When you complain that it hurts, they revel in your agony. When others leap in to explain how traumatizing this all is, they’re even more satisfied — now they have everyone’s attention! The only way to punish trolls is to refuse to acknowledge that they exist. Better yet, don’t care.
Of course, I understand that it takes an unusually thick skin, or long experience, to shrug off so many people saying such amazingly awful things. But for the inexperienced, there is a technology hack that lets you simulate not caring: Turn off social media, and if necessary, email and your phone, until the trolls run out of steam.
If you are subjected to mass attack, you should use this trick. If you see someone else in this position, you should encourage them to take a break rather than make things worse.
Trolls have the attention span of a gnat. If you engage, you’ll renew their interest. If you go away, then within a few days, they’ll get bored, and you can resume your online life as if nothing happened.
Because in fact, nothing of any consequence did happen. (Obviously, we are talking about simple trolling, not a cancellation mob where jobs or friendships are at stake.) IKillFascistsForBreakfast451 will not be sitting across the table from you at Thanksgiving dinner. You will not be sharing a lifeboat with MAGAChoad3000.
The only way these people matter at all is if you decide to let them. As long as you don’t react, they are just shouting pointlessly into the abyss.
It would, of course, be better if they stopped; it is lovely to dream of a world in which no one is ever gratuitously cruel to strangers, or where some sort of super-filter stops such nastiness before anyone can see it. But we don’t have any reliable way to make nasty jerks into better people — if they cared enough about others to make social pressure effective, they wouldn’t be spewing bile at strangers.
In the here-and-now, the best we can do is a collective etiquette of cheerful obliviousness.
It may be unsatisfying, and it’s certainly less than ideal. But it’s still better than making ourselves accomplices in their vicious work. | 2022-07-07T11:19:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Online trolls are best ignored, hard as that is to do - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/trolls-internet-tiktok-social-media/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/trolls-internet-tiktok-social-media/ |
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President Biden arrives in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday for a Medal of Honor ceremony for U.S. Army soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. (Sarah Silbiger/For The Washington Post)
Today, President Biden is scheduled to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to 17 icons of politics, sports, entertainment, business, civil rights and the military. The array of recipients to be recognized in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House include athletes Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe, actor Denzel Washington, former congresswoman and gun-control advocate Gabrielle Giffords, the late senator John McCain and the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee has summoned the chief executive officers of three major gun manufacturers to appear at a hearing later this month as it ramps up an investigation into the industry amid a string of mass shootings involving assault-style rifles.
2 p.m. Eastern: Biden awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 recipients. Watch live here.
The IRS conducted audits in recent years of two of former president Donald Trump’s most frequent targets of criticism, former FBI director James B. Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe.
The Post’s Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett report that Comey is questioning whether the audits were motivated by political payback against the law enforcement leaders who investigated Trump and his campaign.
More from Josh and Devlin:
Trump fired Comey in 2017, intensifying an investigation into Trump associates that had begun a year earlier. After Comey’s firing, his deputy Andrew McCabe took over the FBI for several months, during which time the bureau opened an investigation into Trump for possible obstruction of justice.
Here’s the full list of those who will receive Medals of Freedom on Thursday from President Biden:
Simone Biles, the decorated gymnast and mental health advocate;
Sister Simone Campbell, a Catholic social justice advocate who advocated for the Affordable Care Act;
Julieta García, the former president of the University of Texas at Brownsville and the first Mexican American woman to serve as a college president in the United States;
Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman and gun-control advocate;
Fred Gray, one of the first Black members of the Alabama state legislature since Reconstruction;
Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple;
Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father advocate for the rule of law and religious freedom;
John McCain, the late Republican senator from Arizona;
Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee;
Megan Rapinoe, a decorated soccer player and prominent advocate for gender pay equality;
Alan Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming;
Richard Trumka, the late president of the AFL-CIO;
Wilma Vaught, one of the most decorated women in the history of the U.S. military;
Denzel Washington, an actor, director and producer; and
Raúl Yzaguirre, a civil rights advocate who served as chief executive and president of National Council of La Raza for 30 years.
These Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients embody the soul of this nation – hard work, perseverance, and faith. They’ve dedicated their lives to advocating for the vulnerable and driving change.
I’m proud to welcome them and their families to the People’s House tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/CGm8443ZmW
On the night before he was scheduled to award Presidential Medals of Freedom to 17 people for a wide variety of endeavors, President Biden tweeted a video that included phone calls with several of them, including soccer star Megan Rapinoe and former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, relaying the news of his decision.
The Post’s Jacqueline Alemany reports that Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the committee’s chairwoman, on Wednesday sent letters to Marty Daniel, the CEO of Daniel Defense, Mark Smith, the president and CEO of Smith & Wesson Brands, and Christopher Killoy, the president and CEO of Sturm, Ruger & Co., requesting testimony as a part of a second hearing hosted by the committee examining the firearms industry.
Here’s more from our colleague:
The Post’s Tyler Pager and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. report that after facing opposition from Democrats in Kentucky, the White House has not put former state solicitor general Chad Meredith’s name forward as a nominee. Our colleagues write:
A round of federal judicial nominations released last week did not include Meredith. It was unclear Wednesday whether the White House would ever move forward with nominating him.
President Biden came to a high school in Cleveland on Wednesday to announce new protections that could help some 3 million Americans whose retirement benefit plans have faced potential insolvency amid the financial fallout of the pandemic.
The event was part of his official government schedule. But as The Post’s Matt Viser and Joanna Connors note, at times it felt like a campaign event that provided a preview for how Biden will cast the upcoming election. Per Matt and Joanna:
He ridiculed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for threatening to scuttle legislation designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing. He called a plan from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) “shameful.” And he triggered boos from the crowd at the mention of the name of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
The Post’s Lori Aratani and Michael Laris report that Washington, 64, who headed Biden’s transition team for transportation after the 2020 election, was named chief executive of Denver International Airport last summer, adding aviation to a career marked by experience in transit. He served as chief executive of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 2015 to 2021, holding the same role at the Denver Regional Transportation District before that.
More from Lori and Mike:
His nomination comes as the FAA is under pressure from airlines and passengers to accommodate a growing number of air travelers amid rising numbers of flight delays and cancellations. The FAA has also been working to rebuild its image in the wake of two fatal Boeing Max jet crashes after investigations questioned whether the agency was too deferential to the aerospace giant in certifying the jet was safe to operate. | 2022-07-07T11:19:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden to present Medal of Freedom to Simone Biles, Denzel Washington, 15 others - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/biden-presidential-medal-freedom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/biden-presidential-medal-freedom/ |
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) speaks during a hearing on gun violence on Capitol Hill on June 8. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
House Oversight Committee initiates gun manufacturer investigation
“The information you provided has heightened the Committee’s concern that your company is continuing to profit from the sale and marketing of weapons of war to civilians despite the harm these weapons cause, is failing to track instances or patterns where your products are used in crimes, and is failing to take other reasonable precautions to limit injuries and deaths caused by your firearms,” Maloney wrote in a letter to Killoy, provided to The Washington Post.
The first hearing hosted by the committee featured gripping testimony from survivors of mass shootings caused by assault rifles, including 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo who spoke about her horrifying experience inside a classroom at Robb Elementary School and a pediatrician who treated victims of the Uvalde shooting. Roy Guerrero said during the hearing that the bullets from the AR-15-style assault rifle “pulverized” and “decapitated” the bodies of children during the shooting. | 2022-07-07T11:19:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House committee calls CEOs of gun manufacturer to testify - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/house-committee-calls-ceos-gun-manufacturer-testify/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/house-committee-calls-ceos-gun-manufacturer-testify/ |
This Supreme Court is crusading against religious discrimination
Forget ‘separation of church and state.’ Conservative justices are lining up with conservative culture warriors in favor of religious liberty.
Analysis by Andrew R. Lewis
Former Bremerton High School assistant football coach Joe Kennedy takes a knee in front of the Supreme Court after his legal case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, was argued before the court on April 25 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
In its last two weeks of a blockbuster term, the U.S. Supreme Court released two major First Amendment decisions dealing with religious liberty: Carson v. Makin, about whether Maine could refuse to fund religious schools, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, about whether a football coach could pray on the field after games. As expected, the court decided in favor of the religious claim in both cases. Together, these decisions’ legal analyses expanded religious liberty and free speech protections, while weakening the First Amendment’s establishment clause limitations which separate church and state.
Some have described the invigorated conservative majority as decidedly pro-religion. More specifically, the majority can be described as being hypervigilant against religious discrimination. Not surprisingly, this dovetails with the way religious liberty has been mobilized in the culture wars.
Religious liberty or religious discrimination?
On June 21, the court released its decision in Carson v. Makin, a case dealing with Maine’s funding of free public education. In rural areas where families had no public school options, the state provided government funds for students to attend different public schools or nonsectarian private schools. The challengers argued that excluding religious private schools violated the First Amendment’s clause protecting the free exercise of religion. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the 6-to-3 majority, split along ideological lines, in favor of the religious schools, citing a string of recent decisions, including a 2020 case arising out of Montana.
In his ruling, Roberts emphasized that Maine’s exclusion “is discrimination against religion,” which the court had ruled a clear violation of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. He added that the First Amendment ban on the government “establishing” any religion — the other religion clause in the constitution — “do not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise.”
The conservative majority’s emphasis was clear. Concerns over establishing religion must not result in discrimination against religious adherents.
In Kennedy v. Bremerton, a high school football coach, Joseph Kennedy, argued that he was discriminated against when the school fired him for offering on-field, postgame prayers. The Supreme Court’s decision solidified this view. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote the opinion, again split on 6-to-3 ideological lines, arguing that the school was mistaken that it needed to “ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.” Gorsuch emphasized that the “Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of [anti-religious] discrimination.”
Perhaps more important, to protect against anti-religious discrimination, Gorsuch officially declared the end of the “Lemon test,” a three-part test to protect against the government establishment of religion that was solidified in the Warren Burger court’s 1971 decision, Lemon v. Kurtzman. The Lemon test had been on shaky ground for decades. In May, in a unanimous decision requiring Boston city hall to allow a Christian flag to be flown on its public flagpole, the conservatives’ opinions suggested they would soon overrule Lemon. In Lemon’s place, Gorsuch explained that the court would interpret the Establishment Clause by “reference to historical practices and understandings,” which downplays the separation of church and state.
My research shows that as they sought to expand religious liberty protections, conservative Christian groups have long argued that Lemon was bad law and hostile to religion. In 1992, prominent evangelical organizations urged the court to overturn Lemon. The late Justice Antonin Scalia once compared Lemon to a ghoul in a late-night horror movie, which haunts First Amendment jurisprudence and cannot be killed. Over the past decade, however, the court has come around to the conservative Christian position, minimizing Lemon and emphasizing free exercise concerns over and above establishment ones.
Treating religious liberty as protection against discrimination fits broader culture war narratives
As scholarship shows, the language of discrimination fits a broader political narrative some have promoted, arguing that religion is threatened in public life. Over the past decade, many surveys have documented a partisan gap regarding groups that face discrimination. Pew Research finds that Republicans believe American evangelical Christians face as much or more discrimination as Muslims and Jews, while Democrats do not. Large proportions of White evangelical Protestants in particular believe that Christians regularly suffer discrimination.
During the 2020 election, political scientists Paul A. Djupe and Ryan P. Burge fielded two surveys that asked whether people had heard claims circulating among some on the right that if Democrats won the election, they would threaten religious liberty in several ways, including banning the Bible and otherwise taking away Christians’ religious freedom. A substantial majority responded that they’d heard such claims, even if they didn’t believe them.
Are gun laws constitutional? Courts must now look at history to decide.
Republican elites have perpetuated the idea that Christians are discriminated against
Republican candidates have mobilized these fears of Christian discrimination. President Donald Trump’s faith outreach team often portrayed Democrats as threatening to Christians, arguing that they wanted to “take down the church.” First Liberty, the conservative Christian legal advocacy group that litigated the football coach and the Maine school cases, described pandemic restrictions as an “all-out war on faith” in 2020 news releases, arguing that they exposed the “real agenda of our opponents: to keep our churches shut down indefinitely and attack religious freedom.”
When the Supreme Court emphasizes protecting against religious discrimination, it is not only crafting legal doctrine. The court’s rulings intersect with the political culture wars, and some members have clearly promoted one side in their public commentary. Nine days after the 2020 election, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. delivered a speech to the Federalist Society in which he argued that the free exercise of religion was “fast becoming a disfavored right.”
In 1991, law professor Ira Lupu declared that the constitutional era in which separation of church and state “is the dominant theme appears to be over.” Thirty years later, the Supreme Court has made clear that defending the free exercise of religion is dominant, with a particular focus on protecting against discrimination toward religion. This comes at a time when some Americans perceive religion as being under threat, merging constitutional doctrine with the culture wars.
Andrew R. Lewis (@AndrewRLewis) is an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Cincinnati, author of “The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars” (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and co-editor in chief of the political science journal Politics & Religion. | 2022-07-07T11:19:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Supreme Court is changing its doctrine on freedom of religion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/scotus-carson-makin-maine-schools-bremerton-football-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/scotus-carson-makin-maine-schools-bremerton-football-coach/ |
Rolls-Royce North America CEO Tom Bell says the aerospace and defense supplier has adopted more flexible policies and it’s paying off.
(The Washington Post illustration; iStock; Rolls Royce North America)
Rolls-Royce North America CEO and president of defense Tom Bell says the pandemic transformed the way he thinks about work. It’s no longer a place, but an activity.
As such, leaders must turn to their workers to navigate this new era, he says.
“Suspend your disbelief just a little bit, and ask your people how they could be best productive,” Bell said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Our people will have great answers for us if we just trust them.”
The Reston, Virginia-based unit of the British multinational aerospace and defense supplier Rolls-Royce PLC operates under a hybrid work policy, which became official for most workers in early 2022. Every day, employees can choose where they work and aren’t mandated to the office on any specific days. Bell said the company has “resisted the urge to micromanage” and made remote work widely acceptable versus an exception — a massive departure from his pre-pandemic philosophy.
Bell relied on his people to help his team with an $8 million redesign of the company’s Indianapolis office, which opened in May. He also learned that his team of skilled workers could digitally show how the Rolls-Royce engine would integrate in to the U.S. Air Force B-52 aircraft — all while working remotely. The model ultimately landed the company a $2.6 billion contract.
Bell shared his vision of how work is evolving at Rolls-Royce North America, which employs about 6,000 workers. His answers have been edited for clarity.
Work policies
Q: How have your views evolved on remote work?
A: In 2019, if you had told me you were working from home, I would have had a mental picture of [you on] the back nine or the tennis courts. In 2020 and 2021, most of us were working from home, and all of us were incredibly productive. Even I said, ‘Well, why should I wake up and just automatically drive to work?’ It’s been a change for me from skeptic in 2019 to somebody who’s really excited about hybrid working. Who doesn’t like being able to take their lunch break and walk their dog, see their kids or get some sunshine? It’s been a productivity enhancement.
Q: How are you thinking about flexibility for workers whose jobs require them to be in person?
A: If you’re a manufacturing engineer, much of your job is out on the factory floor talking to mechanics and helping us build products. But that doesn’t mean every day you necessarily have to be there. You have a cadre of people who can rotate in and out. You have people who can be on remote calls. We’ve all learned to trust video. So our mechanical and manufacturing engineers can look at problems even if they’re home. We’re trying to think liberally about how we spread the wealth of hybrid work.
Q: How did digital modeling a B-52 aircraft change how you typically vie for a contract?
A: We digitally modeled that whole [B-52] ecosystem. We knew that the biggest problem for the U.S. Air Force was how much risk they [might] be adopting with a commercial engine in a B-52. We spent a lot of time digitally modeling and showing it with virtual and augmented reality. A [maintenance person] could put on an augmented reality headset and see how to physically maintain that engine, how to access the panels, etc. For such an old airplane and unique application, it was groundbreaking.
We had been using virtual and augmented reality mainly for servicing engines. This was the first time we moved it into the new business side. All our employees and systems now embrace digital as the way we’re going to work into the future.
Q: Will there ever be a fully automated factory?
A: Do machines become more automated? Probably. There’s still a need for our workforce to come together to put that engine together and test it to understand what’s happening and anticipate what’s going to happen. Machines still don’t work perfectly all the time. That human is there to see something going off the rails — I don’t see that being replaced any time soon.
The office of the future
Q: Why did Rolls-Royce invest in a new office given its flexible work policies?
A: If you’re tired of seeing people in 2D, you can come have a cup of coffee with somebody [at the workplace]. We’ve stopped assuming everybody’s at work every day. We no longer have a desk for every person, and we certainly don’t have a parking spot for every employee. We’re no longer thinking you come to the workplace to work by yourself. You only come to meet a customer, collaborate, innovate with team members or suppliers, solve a vexing problem that only a whiteboard will help do.
Our workplace has two floors of space where a person can come between meetings, conferences and phone calls and do some work. It has two floors of collaboration space — it’s flexible to be reconfigured for whatever size team. Then two floors for customers and social interaction.
Q: What were the priorities for redesigning the office?
A: We jettisoned all the old infrastructure we had invested in the 2010s. It was about rethinking our application of technology. We brought employee focus groups in virtually and said, ‘What is it that you need for your team to be productive?’ Our employees have had a heavy hand in determining what that space looks like. We’re going to take stock of this in six to eight months. Because it’s flexible, if we need more collaboration space and less touch down space, easy.
Q: What trends are you seeing from how employees work?
A: So far, more employees are still virtual than we anticipated. Utilization is probably about a third. But as people get used to what in-person work is all about again, we anticipate that the space is going to be fully utilized.
Q: Do you expect the new office to be the blueprint for future offices?
A: Yes. I had my peers from across the corporation, Germany, the U.K. and other nations into Indianapolis for an executive meeting. Now the conversation is, how do we make this the new standard?
Q: How has leadership training changed since the pandemic?
A: We now have mandatory training, which can be taken virtually. It is quintessentially the difference between management and leading. You can manage tactically easier when everybody’s physically present. What’s required in 2022 and beyond is real leadership. You may not see for some weeks, and that’s okay. You need to embrace that and lead even more effectively rather than worrying about managing.
Q: What specifically are managers being told to do differently?
A: The first thing is not believing that work is a series of tasks or deliverables on a finite schedule. Work is now a conversation about the team’s deliverables over a period of time and how teams work together and divide that work up to reach objectives.
Q: How is the company dealing with bias that may arise with workers who visit the office more often?
A: We’re learning that embracing virtual work is helping break down proximity bias. I see most of my team in a virtual space more often than I see anybody physically. And usually when I see people physically, everybody’s together. There’s truly a meritocracy of ideas, and everybody is equal in that form.
Q: How is Rolls-Royce responding to the current labor shortage?
A: We’re expanding with our approach to virtual work. We think that’s a key enabler to fighting the talent war. | 2022-07-07T11:20:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rolls-Royce exec says key to new era of work is to trust your people - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/07/rolls-royce-hybrid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/07/rolls-royce-hybrid/ |
An airplane approaches Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The airport is one of several to receive money from the infrastructure funding. (Tony Gutierrez/AP)
The Biden administration on Thursday announced nearly $1 billion in spending to improve 85 airports across the country. The allocation taps funding authorized last year in the bipartisan infrastructure law in what administration officials say is a sorely needed infusion to upgrade terminals, baggage screening and air traffic control towers.
“America is a country that brought the modern aviation age to the world — and yet around the world, in most rankings of airport quality, not one of our airports ranks among the top 25,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “That’s something that we have to change.”
White House pushes for accountability on infrastructure spending
“Airport terminals is not something the federal government has historically invested in. It's typically been to local airport owners and airlines that have done that,” said Mitch Landrieu, a former New Orleans mayor who Biden has charged with overseeing the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package. “But the need is evident.”
“I don't think anybody could look at airports across America today and say that the existing system or the existing levels of funding have been adequate,” he said. “It is very natural for public funds to go to publicly important resources and pieces of infrastructure. And we think that includes airport terminals.” | 2022-07-07T11:20:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Infrastructure law spending to boost 85 airports, administration says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/07/airports-infrastructure-buttigieg/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/07/airports-infrastructure-buttigieg/ |
Why we’re still arguing about abortion and regret
Years of research has shown that having a wanted abortion does not increase the risk of mental health problems but that restricting access to safe, legal abortions can cause harm, according to the American Psychological Association. (Chelsea Conrad/Washington Post Illustration)
Katie Watson spotted the words on the billboard while driving along a stretch of Interstate 65 in her home state of Indiana: “Many women regret their abortion.”
Watson, a medical ethicist, reproductive health expert and author of a book about abortion, was stunned. “My first reaction was: That’s not true. Research tells us it’s just factually false.”
“Do you mean ‘many’ like over 50 years nationally?” she said, recalling her thoughts as she drove past the sign in 2013. “Maybe they could all fit in a ballroom, and that would be many people. But the implication is the majority of women, and so it felt abusive because it was a false statement intended to make women feel insecure about their own decision-making capacity.”
But for Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, one of the country’s largest antiabortion groups, the billboard’s sentiment reflects her experiences. “I meet people all the time who come up to me, unprompted, and express their abortion regret and tell me their abortion story.”
The five words on that billboard get at the heart of a question that has been long debated and researched: Do women and other abortion patients commonly regret their abortions?
Experts say the idea that people regularly experience regret, negative emotions or mental health effects post-abortion can largely be traced back decades to crisis pregnancy centers. This belief has persisted and continued to wield influence — in Congress and even among Supreme Court justices — despite years of research showing that having a wanted abortion does not increase the risk of mental health problems but that restricting access to safe, legal abortions can cause harm, according to the American Psychological Association. In fact, analysis of data from the Turnaway Study — a landmark body of research studying the mental health, physical health and socioeconomic consequences of having an abortion compared with carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term — found that even though many women reported initially having difficulty with their decision, most continued to believe they made the right decision years later, and that feelings about their abortions, positive or negative, faded over time.
But, experts say, much of the public discourse about post-abortion feelings tends to overlook a key point: “The reactions to abortion are as complex and as varied as women are,” said Kimberly Kelly, an associate professor of sociology at Mississippi State University who researches abortion activism in the United States.
With hundreds of thousands of abortions reported yearly in the United States, “it would be very weird if everybody had the same emotional experience,” said Katrina Kimport, a professor in the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California at San Francisco. “We certainly don’t expect that for really anything else. If we think about a live birth, people have a whole range of emotional responses to it.”
Origins of ‘abortion regret’
In the early 1970s, crisis pregnancy centers began developing and promoting “biblically based counseling programs” for women who have had abortions, according to a peer-reviewed paper titled “The spread of ‘Post Abortion Syndrome’ as social diagnosis.” The idea that people needed help coping with the purported psychological effects of abortions came to be known among antiabortion activists as “post abortion syndrome,” or PAS. These centers have become the “dominant force in spreading PAS claims at the grass roots level and have increasing success translating these claims into federal and state policy despite staunch resistance from pro-choice advocates,” the article noted. (There are now about 2,500 centers nationwide, according to a map created by researchers at the University of Georgia.)
According to activists, the symptoms of PAS, also known as “post abortion stress,” “post abortion grief” and “post abortion trauma,” include “depression; an inability to connect with one’s emotions; excessive use of drugs or alcohol; low self-esteem; isolation; nightmares; regret, grief; anxiety; flashbacks; denial that any negative event occurred; repression of one’s true feelings; and/or suicidal thoughts,” the paper said.
“Post abortion syndrome is not real,” said Kelly, the paper’s author. “These advocates are arguing that PAS is a universal reaction to abortion and that justifies restricting it to prevent women from harming themselves and others.”
While it is possible to feel regret after an abortion, it is “not common, and even when women do experience regret, that’s not a sign of mental illness,” she said. “You can have decision regret about abortion, about pregnancy, about motherhood, about many things without it actually triggering a serious mental health condition.”
Normalizing claims about “abortion regret” can serve additional purposes for the antiabortion movement, Kimport said. For one, she said, it was a way to address the movement’s challenge to present themselves as not only caring about the fetus, but also caring about the pregnant person.
And, Kelly said, telling women and others seeking abortions that “they would suffer terribly” after having one could be an effective strategy for dissuading people.
“The regret narrative is a weapon, not a reality,” said Krystale Littlejohn, a sociologist and assistant professor at the University of Oregon who studies race, gender and reproduction. “It’s used to communicate the false idea that people should feel ashamed for getting an abortion and that regret is a necessary part of that experience.”
Understanding regret
There is a difference, experts say, between feeling the emotion of regret — for instance, regretting the circumstances around an unwanted pregnancy — and actually feeling that abortion was not the right decision. “When people express sad or complicated or negative emotions, we’re quick to call that regret, but that usually isn’t accurate,” said Watson, the author of “Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion” and an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
“This is the key question: If you had a time machine and you could go back to that moment of unwanted pregnancy, but you can’t change anything else … knowing what you know now, would you make a different decision?” she said. “That’s actually true decisional regret.”
Research efforts have been made to more closely examine regret and claims about the emotional harm of abortion. A recent paper published in 2020 that used data from the oft-cited Turnaway Study examined “decision rightness,” said Corinne Rocca, an epidemiologist at the University of California at San Francisco and the paper’s lead author. Researchers found that more than 95 percent of the 667 women studied said having an abortion was the right decision for them, even five years after. Over those five years, relief was the most commonly felt emotion at all times, according to the paper.
“We found no evidence of emerging negative emotions or abortion decision regret,” the study’s authors wrote.
Five years after an abortion, most women say they made the right decision
But those findings and other conclusions drawn from previous research on beliefs about the emotional and psychological effects of abortion appear to have had little effect on many people who oppose abortion.
In a 2018 paper in Linacre Quarterly, the ethics journal of the Catholic Medical Association, antiabortion activist David C. Reardon criticized the Turnaway Study, which has produced dozens of peer-reviewed research papers. The study sample, Reardon wrote, “is clearly biased toward a subset of women who expected the least negative reactions to their abortion, experienced the least stress relative to discussing their abortions, and perhaps may even have experienced therapeutic benefits from talking about their abortions with researchers who affirmed the ‘rightness’ of their abortion decisions.”
Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, is also critical of the Turnaway Study and highlighted the existence of published studies suggesting that abortion does have negative mental health effects. (The findings of many of these studies also have been called into question by outside researchers who expressed concerns that the work was “methodologically unsound” or failed to account for potential confounding factors.)
She added that her views on abortion and regret are also informed by her interactions with people who have gotten abortions, including those she encountered while volunteering at a center that offered post-abortion counseling.
“These women could speak very openly about their past abortions, the relief that they might have felt,” Hawkins said. But then they would talk about “that long-term regret, that sadness, knowing or remembering the birthday of the child that they would have had, the recurrent thoughts that they had about their child.”
Rocca, one of the members of the Turnaway Study team, said researchers “were really open to all possibilities in these data.” She remembered Diana Greene Foster, the study’s principal investigator, “saying early on, ‘If abortion harms women, we really need to know that. That’s an important piece of information and we need to figure out who it’s harming and why it’s harming them.’ ”
“But we didn’t find any evidence whatsoever that having an abortion causes any mental health harms,” Rocca said.
Different analyses of the data found that people who had abortions weren’t at greater risk of experiencing mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, than those who carried unwanted pregnancies to term. Leading medical and health organizations such as the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Public Health Association have also rebutted claims that it is common to experience long-lasting detrimental emotional and psychological effects after having an abortion.
But the complex emotions that often surround having an abortion can contribute to the spread of beliefs that aren’t supported by the bulk of scientific evidence, Rocca said. “It’s easier to perpetuate a false claim when the truth can be complicated.”
“For many people, having an abortion is very straightforward and clear, and people experience primarily positive or no strong emotions,” she continued. For others, “they can experience complex and mixes of negative and positive emotions. But experiencing negative emotions after an abortion is not the same thing as believing it was the wrong decision.”
When Elaine Sung found out she was pregnant during her first year of college, she made up her mind instantly. “I knew right away I was going to have an abortion.”
“It’s one of those things you remember for the rest of your life,” said Sung, now 54, who was 21 weeks along at the time of her abortion. Still, even decades later, she doesn’t see her decision as a mistake. “I’m sad that it came to that point, but I do not regret it at all.”
But being certain that the right decision was made doesn’t always prevent grief.
“I spent a lot of time grieving my child and the future we thought we had,” said Megan Gaffey, 44, who, along with her husband, decided to terminate a pregnancy in 2011. Gaffey was pregnant with the couple’s third child when she learned at around 20 weeks that her “very wanted baby had spina bifida and clubbed feet,” serious birth defects that she knew could significantly impact quality of life. This was a situation, doctors told her, in which most people chose to terminate.
“I spent probably two or three years feeling really sad,” she said. On top of terminating a wanted pregnancy, Gaffey also felt “shamed” by people in her life who couldn’t accept her decision. “But the sadness was the grief. It was never regret, never. The only regret was that I had that choice in the first place to make. It wasn’t that I made the choice.”
In Gaffey’s mind, her reaction was to be expected. “When you want a child, if you don’t end up with a child, that is inevitably a formula for grief,” she said. “That said, I think as a mother, it is my duty to make the best choices for my kids when they are unable to do it themselves.”
Ingrained beliefs
To Hawkins, regretting an abortion is “instinctual.”
“We as women understand that there’s something happening when we are pregnant, that we have this deep honor to grow and gestate another human being within us and it’s this awe-inspiring power that we have,” she said. “Naturally, as mothers, as women, we know that there is something wholly unique and special about this ability we have.”
That viewpoint, experts said, plays a major role in why ideas about abortion and regret persist.
Not only has Congress held hearings on “post abortion syndrome” and debated related legislation, but the claims appeared in the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which approved the prohibition of a specific abortion procedure. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote: “Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision. … While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. … Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.”
“It just shows how committed we are to this particular vision of what it means to be a woman,” Kelly said. “Apparently, we think what it means to be a woman is to be a mother or to want to be a mother, and suffer if one cannot or will not be a mother.”
Gender norms suggest that “motherhood is the epitome of what it means to live a fulfilling life,” and consequently, abortion is always a difficult decision, Littlejohn said. When the message to women is that wanting children should be a central goal, abortion can be framed as “foregoing that opportunity to experience this ultimately life-changing event, and I think people then assume it has to be accompanied by regret.”
The notion that difficult decisions about abortion are “somehow just so different than the other kinds of decisions that people have to make and that they have a hard time with,” is an example of “abortion exceptionalism,” Littlejohn added. “There is this belief that abortion must be this different kind of experience versus abortion is medical care.”
Additionally, claiming that regret is a common experience feeds into stereotypical perceptions that women can’t be trusted to make decisions, Kimport said. “It’s consistent with an overarching story we tell as a society about women as vulnerable, as not reliable decision-makers, and this idea that women need to be protected from, in some cases, their own bad decisions.”
A need for transparency and nuance
Myths and stereotypes about abortion can take hold, in part, “because people don’t talk about the real feelings,” said Parker Dockray, executive director of All-Options, a national organization that provides services and support around pregnancy, parenting, abortion and adoption.
“People feel nervous about talking about the hard feelings they’re having about an abortion,” she said. “But certainly people also feel very stigmatized about being like, ‘I had an abortion and I didn’t feel bad about it.’ That’s not an easy thing to say.
“There’s just not a lot of space for stories.”
Instead, it can seem as though “there’s these two polar competing narratives” that leave little room for complicated feelings, Dockray said. People, she noted, generally “like binaries.”
“We’re not good at the nuance of the mushy middle,” she said. “We’re not good holding that space or knowing what to do with it. We like things that are either or in this country.” | 2022-07-07T11:20:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why we’re still arguing about abortion and regret - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/07/07/regret-relief-making-space-complex-post-abortion-feelings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/07/07/regret-relief-making-space-complex-post-abortion-feelings/ |
Rapinoe, Giffords, Denzel Washington to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom
This combination of file pictures created on July 1, 2022 shows: gymnast Simone Biles, actor Denzel Washington, former Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords, soccer player Megan Rapinoe, Gold Star father Khizr Khan, the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the late senator John McCain and the late AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images)
President Biden on Thursday will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to 17 people in a wide variety of endeavors, including gymnast Simone Biles, Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington and, posthumously, inventor Steve Jobs and former senator John McCain.
Biden’s list of recipients, his first as president, include stalwarts of politics, sports, entertainment, religion, civil rights, labor and the military.
“President Biden has long said that America can be defined by one word: possibilities. These seventeen Americans demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation — hard work, perseverance, and faith,” the White House said in a statement last week.
The honorees range from Biles, 25, the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history who has advocated for sexual assault victims, to former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), 90, the sharp-tongued politician and governor’s son who served 18 years in the Senate and was outspoken on the issue of fiscal responsibility.
The president also is recognizing Washington, an actor, director and producer who has served as the national spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for more than 25 years; and Megan Rapinoe, a member of the U.S. women’s national soccer team since 2006 who has won one Olympic gold medal and two World Cup championships. She is also captain of OL Reign, a Seattle-based pro team in the National Women’s Soccer League.
During his four years in office, President Donald Trump honored 24 people, a list populated by practitioners of his favorite sport of golf — Tiger Woods, Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam — and some of his fiercest political allies, such as radio host Rush Limbaugh and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Biden’s list of political honorees includes Republicans and Democrats. Former representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), co-founded Giffords, a nonprofit focused on preventing gun violence, after she was shot in the head at a constituent event in Tucson in January 2011 and gravely wounded. She is married to former astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who is up for reelection this year.
Biden served in the Senate with McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and decorated Vietnam War veteran who died in 2018 of brain cancer. McCain’s widow, Cindy, endorsed Biden in 2020 as the Democrat reversed the party’s fortunes in Arizona, winning the state. Cindy McCain is now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture.
The list also includes Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father who has been an advocate for the rule of law and religious freedom while serving on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; and Wilma Vaught, one of the most decorated women in the history of the U.S. military.
Biden will honor Fred Gray, one of the first Black members of the Alabama legislature since Reconstruction and an attorney who represented civil rights activists such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, along with the NAACP. Other honorees include Raúl Yzaguirre, a civil rights advocate who served as chief executive and president of National Council of La Raza for 30 years, and Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Julieta García, the former president of the University of Texas at Brownsville and the first Mexican American woman to serve as a college president.
Sandra Lindsay, a New York critical-care nurse who served on the front lines of the pandemic response.
Richard Trumka, the late president of the AFL-CIO.
Steven Goff contributed to this report. | 2022-07-07T12:31:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | President Biden to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Megan Rapinoe, Denzel Washington, and 15 others - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/biden-freedom-medals-rapinoe-denzel-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/biden-freedom-medals-rapinoe-denzel-washington/ |
Less is more for Donovan Casey in quest to make it back to the Nationals
Donovan Casey is working his way from Rochester back to the Nationals. (Rochester Red Wings/Stephen Lasnick)
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Each one of Donovan Casey’s at-bats begins on the top step of the dugout. He times the opposing pitcher in his head. He chooses when to start his swing and drop his front foot. But in May, after he was promoted and demoted by the Washington Nationals without making his debut, those moments were filled with noise instead of planning.
Before walking to the on-deck circle for the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings, Casey often told himself he had to get a hit. He then carried that internal pressure into the box. For six days in April, he put on a Nationals uniform, sat on the bench and waited for a chance, his family and friends all watching from the stands. So when it never came, he felt the need to rush back to the majors. The whiplash ate him up.
“It’s one of the main reasons I went into a funk,” Casey, a 26-year-old outfielder, said last week at Frontier Field in Rochester. “I was trying to do more, trying to make something happen, and not focusing on having a quality at-bat. It wasn’t good.”
The numbers show a sharp contrast. With Rochester in April, Casey had a .255 average, a .328 on-base percentage and a .546 slugging percentage (good for an on-base-plus-slugging percentage of .892). In May, his slash line plummeted to .172/.229/.266, his OPS of .495 cut nearly in half. His strikeouts spiked, resurfacing a concern from when the Nationals acquired him last summer in the four-prospect package for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner.
Then Casey injured his right shoulder last month on a diving attempt in St. Paul, Minn. He now considers this a lucky break.
“That little shoulder issue ended up being a blessing in disguise for Donovan,” said Matthew LeCroy, Rochester’s manager. “He couldn’t throw or anything, so we had to sit him down for about two weeks. But he was able to work in the cage and take a look at some things. He really needed the reset.”
Along with hitting coach Brian Daubach, Casey tweaked his approach and routine. He started using a heavier bat in the cage — 34 inches, 38 ounces — to remind himself to use his legs and not only rely on his hands. He moved up on the plate a bit to cover the outer half and better recognize inside pitches. He also began loading up earlier, figuring it was better to be ahead of schedule than late.
At first, though, the early load made him feel off-balance, especially since he would wait longer before planting his front foot. Only more game reps will smooth out the changes. Once he returned, Casey even opted for a lighter bat than usual — 33 and a half inches, 31 ounces — to quicken his swing to inside pitches. He logged four singles and a double in his final three games in June. But so far in July, he is hitless with seven strikeouts in 13 plate appearances.
“I’m happy that tough part happened early in the season and not later on, making me stew about it all winter or something,” Casey said. “Now I feel like I’m in a much better head space, figuring out what I need to do and realizing it’s nothing with mechanics. It’s all timing. The questions I have to keep asking myself is: ‘Are you on time? Are you in a good position to drive the baseball?’
“Like the other day, I struck out but I stuck to my plan of hunting a heater to do damage with. He landed two good sliders for strikes, which is hard to do, and I felt good knowing I had the right approach.”
Casey admits he couldn’t view a result like that in April or May. When he was promoted after Dee Strange-Gordon tested positive for the coronavirus, his family and friends rushed to Pittsburgh from southern New Jersey. When three games passed and Casey didn’t play, many of them followed him to Washington, hoping to see him realize a lifelong dream. But that will have wait for the coming months or years.
The Nationals are invested in Casey after acquiring him in a blockbuster trade. Last November, they added him to their 40-man roster to protect him from being selected in the Rule 5 Draft. They tapped him in a pinch after Strange-Gordon’s positive test. But if they need an outfielder after the deadline in early August, Casey will compete with Josh Palacios and Andrew Stevenson for the spot. Palacios, 26, is on the 40-man and has been more consistent than Casey in AAA. Stevenson, 28, is not on the 40-man but has appeared for Washington in each of the past five seasons.
Just one of them, however, was with the team this spring before leaving in less than a week. And Casey wants much more than a brush with the majors.
“This year has taught me about patience in a lot of ways,” he said. “I can’t get back up there with just one swing, right? It’s a whole big process.” | 2022-07-07T12:31:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Less is more for Donovan Casey on path back to the Nationals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/donovan-casey-nationals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/donovan-casey-nationals/ |
A street light illuminates the door of Number 10 Downing Street in central London on July 6, 2022. (Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images)
Speculation is already swirling about who could replace Boris Johnson as Britain’s next prime minister.
Here are some key contenders:
The current foreign secretary, who has not resigned her post, has reportedly cut short a Group of 20 working trip to Indonesia on Thursday to fly back to Britain amid the political turmoil. She has won applause for her handling of the Ukraine war and would be the Conservative Party’s third female prime minister if she got the job, following in the footsteps of Theresa May, who took office in 2016, and Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
Like both women, Truss, 46, studied at Oxford University, where she received a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. In an interview with the BBC, she recalled being taken as a child to anti-nuclear marches by her “left-wing” parents and chanting for Thatcher to leave office. However, she eventually joined the right-leaning Conservative Party, entering parliament in 2010. She worked in the ministries for education, environment and justice. She was appointed minister for women and equalities in 2019 and succeeded Dominic Raab as foreign secretary in 2021.
Truss supported staying in the European Union during the Brexit referendum in 2016 but soon got on board with the project after the decision to leave was made. Before politics she previously worked in the energy and telecommunications industries and is a qualified management accountant. She is married with two children.
The former chancellor of the exchequer — the U.K.'s top finance minister — was a front-runner to replace Johnson until a scandal over his billionaire heiress wife’s tax affairs earlier this year. His handling of the runaway inflation that sparked a cost-of-living crisis has also seen Sunak’s popularity plummet. Along with his mentor, former health secretary Sajid Javid, he sparked the start of cabinet minster resignations when he stepped down Tuesday.
Sunak, 42, became chancellor in 2020 just as the coronavirus pandemic began, moving in next door to Johnson, at No. 11 Downing Street. He was first elected to parliament in 2015 and had been dubbed “Dishy Rishi” by some British tabloids because of his charismatic presentations and slick use of social media.
“My parents sacrificed a great deal so I could attend good schools,” Sunak, whose parents are immigrants with Indian roots, wrote on his official website. He attended the prestigious boarding school Winchester College, then Oxford and Stanford universities. He worked in finance at Goldman Sachs and other companies before co-founding an investment firm, and has said he believes in “free enterprise and innovation” to ensure future prosperity.
But his star faded substantially after a series of scandals, including a dispute over his billionaire wife’s tax filing status and criticism for his handling of the economy including from loyal Conservative Party voters feeling the pinch.
A former foreign and health minister, Hunt has managed big portfolios but was relegated to the backbenches of Parliament after he lost out to Johnson in a 2019 bid to lead the Conservative Party. He has been an outspoken critic of Johnson and pushed for a vote of no-confidence to oust him in June. Hunt chairs an influential committee that scrutinizes the government’s management of health care and has been praised by some British media outlets as a steady hand.
An elected member of Parliament since 2005, Hunt, 55, has in-depth institutional knowledge of the party and climbed the political ranks under former prime minister David Cameron. But his career has not been without bumps - as health minister before the coronavirus pandemic hit, he was known for a protracted dispute with junior doctors and medical staff over their contracts in a confrontation that led to several strikes over pay and working conditions.
He went on to become foreign secretary in 2018 and handled political clashes with Iran and China. The Oxford-educated Hunt was a “Remainer” in the Brexit debate. Before politics, Hunt worked briefly in Japan and later ran an educational publishing business and set up a charity to help AIDS orphans in Kenya. He is married with three children.
The defense secretary tweeted on Thursday urging Johnson to go. But Wallace has not stepped down, citing an “obligation to keep this country safe, no matter who is PM.” When asked during a Washington Post Live event in May about polling that showed him as the “people’s favorite” to replace Johnson, Wallace said: “I’m so uninterested in a pitch for leadership … I doubt I’d want to be prime minister, but I am a politician, so you can read that answer as you’d like.”
Wallace, 52, has been defense secretary for three years, overseeing strategic operations and defense planning, and is a member of the National Security Council. He has been a member of Parliament since 2005. He attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned as an officer to the Scots Guards in his 20s, which brought him to Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus and Central America.
Tom Tugendhat, 49, is largely known as an outspoken backbench lawmaker and critic of Johnson. He has been a member of Parliament since 2015, serving as chair of the influential Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
Before joining politics, he worked as a journalist in Lebanon and served in the British army. During a decade-long military career, he worked in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Tugendhat is known for his tough foreign policy positions, having co-founded the China Research Group in Parliament, which calls for a more critical government policy toward Beijing. He was placed under personal sanctions, along with other members of Parliament, by China in 2021.
Tugendhat comes from a prominent political family in Britain — his father is a high-court judge, and his uncle is a member of the House of Lords. His mother’s side of the family is French, as is Tugendhat’s wife, and his father-in-law is a French diplomat. Tugendhat is Catholic, though he has Jewish ancestry and has complained of antisemitic attacks during his 2019 reelection campaign. Tugendhat backed Johnson rival Michael Gove in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election.
Other names being touted for the premiership include the current chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, recently-fired minister and longtime Johnson frenemy Michael Gove and trade minister Penny Mordaunt. Attorney General Suella Braverman also said late Thursday that she would mount a leadership bid, though she remains in Johnson’s government.
Adam Taylor and Sofia Diogo Mateus contributed to this report. | 2022-07-07T12:39:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here are the people who could replace Boris Johnson - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-replacement-prime-minister/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-replacement-prime-minister/ |
In Great Falls, a family estate rises with a team effort
A design-bid-build approach aligned the best elements
Tony and Melissa Colangelo built a one-level home on two lots in Great Falls, Va. Landscaping elements and terraces help frame the house on the site. (Stacy Zarin Goldberg)
Tony and Melissa Colangelo were happily living in a home Tony bought in Great Falls, Va., when he was single. Then came the birth of their twins, the need for more space and a legacy to leave for the children one day. So Tony, 58, and Melissa, 52, launched a search for a new home.
“That was the beginning of the whole effort — a long-term multigeneration project,” says Tony, who runs his own government contracting firm.
At first, all options were on the table. Renovate the bachelor pad. Find a new house. Build the custom home of their dreams. No matter what, no stairs.
Their home sat on a lot that would have cramped a new single-story house. So a teardown was crossed off the list. They toured other places, but either didn’t love the style or the multilevel living.
“We were trying to avoid the stairs — single-floor living is where it’s at,” says Melissa, an OB/GYN. “The more we talked about that, our options were zero.”
So the pair tapped into the local real estate agent knowledge bank and got a lead on two adjacent five-acre lots a few miles away. They bought both in 2018 for $2.5 million. A house was already on the land, but a fire damaged it years earlier. The home was never repaired and ended up being demolished.
Ideas take shape
More questions posed to the referral network led the family to architect James McDonald, a principal at James McDonald Associate Architects, based in Great Falls.
McDonald had worked with Tony on a small bathroom remodel at his previous home, but this was a more ambitious project. The pair showed McDonald images of homes they liked, including Florida villas.
“They were looking for one-level living, a lot of interaction between the indoors and the outdoors, and a place for his office facilities,” McDonald says.
Custom-built ranch provides tranquility, togetherness for family of 9
During a two-hour design charrette (a period of design or planning activity), McDonald sketched out the basics of what would become a home with a 6,000-square-foot main-floor living area not counting a full basement, two three-car garages and an indoor swimming pool.
The design process took a year. The construction lasted 16 months. Several lessons were learned along the way.
“I wish we had engaged an interior designer earlier in the process,” says Melissa. “Certain things became custom by two inches or two feet, when we could have used standard sizes, had we known.”
Martha Vicas, a principal at D.C.-based M.S. Vicas Interiors, was selected to help shepherd the project toward completion. Although the Colangelos admit to having slightly different tastes, Vicas wasn’t vexed.
“It is rare to find a couple that is completely aligned on style,” Vicas says. “I try to give each person a bit of what they want while doing what is right for the space.”
A referral from Vicas led the family to the next member of the design team, Jordan Clough, a senior associate at Joseph Richardson Landscape Architecture, also based in Washington. Part of Clough’s job was graciously framing the expansive house onto the site.
“The house is a one-story but has some good size to it,” Clough says. “We wanted to bring the house back down to scale in the landscape and soften the transition from the Great Falls vernacular of horse paddocks.”
Terraced walls and a stepped-up entrance are bordered by tough native plantings including river birch and Southern Magnolia trees, along with catmint and creeping juniper. Future plans include a trail system for the children.
The family decided to go with a design-bid-build scenario to put the house together. The arrangement separates the contracts for design services and the builder, who in this case was Artisan Builders, based in McLean, Va.
Custom touches inside
A circular motor court provides access to the still-evolving estate with custom touches starting at the 11-foot, pivoting front door. Tony ties the unique gateway back to a post seen on Pinterest. A barrel ceiling hallway illuminated by hidden cove lighting beckons toward the main living area. Melissa’s office is to the left and features a tray ceiling and an accent wall covered in an abstract-patterned wallpaper. There’s a combination of built-in drawers and open shelving for storage. Farther down the hall, there’s a powder room, an elevator to the basement and a coat closet.
All the floors on the main level are prefinished, engineered European oak. The hallway opens into the great room, which shares an open plan with the dining room and the kitchen. The great room has 15-foot ceilings with a window wall looking out onto the backyard. Recessed sliding doors open onto a framed-in loggia equipped with electronically controlled screens that can be dropped during bug season.
The screens turned out to be especially challenging, because the family room leads to an arched loggia, says Steve Yeonas Jr., a partner at Artisan Builders.
A home renovation that started in the laundry room
“We had to search the country to find the screen that goes up in the middle of the arch,” Yeonas says. “It’s about 20 feet tall and 20 feet wide, and there was only one guy in the country that would even do it.”
The great room accent wall includes banquette seating on both sides of a stone fireplace and chimney combination designed by Vicas.
“We wanted to create something that we had never seen before,” Vicas says. “We settled on a wall of oak slate, limestone and different types of custom leather and suede panels. The result is tons of subtle texture that drove the design of the entire room.”
The living room has two seating areas with the dining room separating the space from the kitchen. Once again, the family tapped their network and hired the company Lobkovich, based in Tysons, Va., to handle kitchen design duties.
The refrigerator is Sub-Zero and there are two cooktops both by Wolf, a combination of an induction unit and a 15-inch gas unit. The double wall ovens are also Wolf, and there is a steam oven by Miele. The dishwashers are Bosch. The kitchen countertops are quartzite.
J. Paul Lobkovich, president of the kitchen design company, was tasked with coming up with an oven hood that could match the chimney in the living room.
The hood is considered the “face of the kitchen,” because it is a prominent feature in many kitchen designs, Lobkovich says. The kitchen is directly opposite from the living room fireplace, and “we wanted to mirror the design of the fireplace without being literal,” he says. So, we interpreted the design and created a unique metal hood that references the fireplace design to give the space some balance.”
A ‘20-year life cycle’
The right wing of the house includes two bedrooms for the kids, a guest suite and the main suite with an exterior door to the loggia. The main bathroom features a rain shower in a curbless enclosure with side jets and a stand-alone soaking tub. There are two matching painted wood vanities with nickel inlay trim and quartzite tops. Window coverings in the main bath were nixed in exchange for electrochromic windows that turn frosted at the push of a button.
The left wing of the house includes the dual garages, each with office space above. The year-round indoor pool measures 18 by 65 feet and is tucked behind the garages. A Victorian-style greenhouse imported from England stands on the property. There’s also a time-telling, custom armillary (a sphere of objects) with markings of the children’s birthdays. The basement includes a wine room, play space and home theater. The Colangelos wish to keep the construction costs private, but flipping the totally custom estate doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
“When we were making decisions about what to do on the house, whether it was structural or a design element, we were thinking about a 20-year life cycle,” says Tony. “We weren’t constrained by the need to flip the house — we’re thinking strategically, not tactically.” | 2022-07-07T12:48:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Great Falls, a family estate rises with a team effort - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/07/great-falls-family-estate-rises-with-team-effort/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/07/great-falls-family-estate-rises-with-team-effort/ |
America’s Gun Laws Are as Old as Its Gun Politics
Security fencing in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., US, on Tuesday, June 28, 2022. Back-to-back rulings on guns and abortion eliminated any doubt the US Supreme Court will be the transformational force Republicans envisioned when they filled three vacancies during Donald Trump’s presidency. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
The US Supreme Court’s decision last month to strike down an 111-year-old New York law mostly prohibiting the concealed carry of firearms has not won a lot of admirers in legal academia. Saul Cornell of Fordham called it “one of the most intellectually dishonest and poorly argued decisions in American judicial history.” Adam Winkler of UCLA mocked it.
The court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, takes away the discretion of authorities in issuing permits to carry a gun. The decision relies heavily on a convoluted reading of the history of regulation, saying that New York’s law was outside the bounds of traditional gun laws at the time of both the founding and the “second founding” during Reconstruction.
Rather than discuss the ruling with another disgusted law professor, I decided to talk to Kristin Goss, a political scientist at Duke University, to try to understand what’s going on. Goss, who has studied gun politics and culture for a quarter century, has written or edited three books on gun politics and policy, including “The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know,” which she wrote with Philip J. Cook. What follows is an edited transcript of my telephone interview.
Francis Wilkinson: In 1991, former Chief Justice Warren Burger called the gun lobby’s expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment, presuming an individual right to firearm possession, a “fraud.” Yet that interpretation has been the law of the land since the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008. It was just extended from the home to the streets with Bruen. How did we get from there to here?
Kristin Goss: There was a very concerted, intentional and strategic effort to dig into the received wisdom about what the Second Amendment was and what it meant and how it should structure gun laws and gun culture. It was a multi-decade project, well-funded by gun interests and others. I don’t think that’s super unusual. The construction of public ideas is a political project, one undertaken by the right and the left.
Wilkinson: In his majority opinion, Justice Thomas writes, “When it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not all history is created equal.” I thought that sentence was more telling than he intended (and perhaps so did Justice Stephen Breyer, who derided what he called “law office history” in his dissent). There’s been a great deal of gun regulation throughout American history. How does that history, which has been increasingly well documented since Heller, end up irrelevant?Goss: I think this conversation is going to be 99% about the uses of history and its interpretations. That could be the title of the court’s decision. So it’s probably worth thinking about what’s new and what’s not new in the realm of guns and history in the current decision. The gun debate, going back 50 years, has really been about tradition versus modernity. There was a Wall Street Journal editorial 50 years ago that said that gun politics was a war between bedrock America and cosmopolitan America. I don’t think anything has fundamentally changed in that assessment except that bedrock America is losing on some key issues in the court of public opinion, but has been winning big lately at the Supreme Court.
Wilkinson: But Thomas wasn’t recounting the history of the culture war. He was establishing the history — or a history — of gun laws in the early republic.
Goss: That’s what’s new — the emphasis on history at the founding, say 1791, and at the “second founding” around 1868, and how much that history should matter today. Here is what I think is actually pretty radical about the decision. Justice Thomas and his colleagues are essentially saying that if we had a societal problem in 1791, but gun laws weren’t addressing that societal problem, then gun laws that are trying to address that societal problem in 2022 might be suspect.
Conversely, if we’re not burdening people with a law today more than we were then, maybe that law would be constitutional. So it all turns on how we do this historical analogizing.
Wilkinson: The societal problem of gun violence doesn’t really exist in Thomas’s opinion. Breyer’s dissent talks a lot about gun violence. But in the majority opinion there’s no notion of public safety as a countervailing interest. What do you make of that?
Goss: I think the Breyer dissent makes a good point that judges and lawyers are not historians. We’ve only recently uncovered the extent of the strict gun laws of the 18th and 19th centuries. So that’s one problem. But I think another problem, as I started thinking about analogizing, is that the world was really different in 1791 compared to 1868. And one way it was different has to do with women.
Wilkinson: So let’s talk about women.
Goss: Let’s talk about modern federal and state gun laws that prohibit firearm possession by people who have been convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or who are under a permanent restraining order for domestic violence. Where do these laws stand in this historical analogy that the courts are now supposed to use? Married women in 1791 were under coverture — women were not legal persons. Black women were overwhelmingly enslaved. Women did not have civic lives to speak of, they did not vote. Men, I’m sure, were beating their wives in 1791 and slave owners were raping their female slaves throughout this period. There were no laws saying domestic abusers who beat their wives couldn’t have a firearm. So how are we supposed to think about modern laws that treat domestic violence as a problem that affects women when that was not considered a problem in 1791 or 1868, these two founding eras that Justice Thomas points to?
Wilkinson: Isn’t what you’re describing a political accommodation to a cultural and political reality that the court wanted to duck? It’s just Calvinball, isn’t it?
Goss: I am always hesitant to get into people’s motives or how people are thinking. I’m just trying to make the kind of obvious point that women are half the population and had a very different civic place in 1791 and 1868. As a result, the laws that are intended to protect women are going to look really different when women are full and equal citizens.
I bring up domestic violence and guns because, interestingly, that’s one of the few policy areas in the modern war over guns where there is some degree of consensus. Recently, some red states have tightened their laws around domestic violence and firearm access. The boyfriend loophole just got closed through a shockingly bipartisan vote in the Congress. Societal problems are not problems until we decide collectively that they are, and that we are going to do something about them. Domestic violence is a great example of this.
Wilkinson: But it’s not the only area of conflict between present and past.
Goss: There is a similar issue regarding the prohibition on felons. It’s pretty well settled that people who are convicted of violent crimes can’t have guns. Well, those laws were not in place in the late 18th century or the late 19th century. Laws around felons and gun possession started coming into place basically in the 1920s and 30s, which is, by the way, after this New York law that the court just invalidated.
Wilkinson: New York’s law was more than a century old, with antecedents rooted centuries before that. What does that tell us?
Goss: I think it’s a significant ruling on the substance for New York and the other five states (and Washington, D.C.) that have some sort of “may issue” law. I don’t want to downplay that. But I don’t think, from my reading, that’s it’s a huge stretch from Heller and some other recent rulings. It’s somewhat in keeping with the way that states have been going; half the states don’t even require any licensing to carry a firearm anymore. So there’s been a huge deregulation of concealed carry over the last 10 or 20 years. The court is sort of following that.
The more significant part of the decision is this whole new history-centered approach to evaluating the laws. It’s opening up a whole new way of making the Second Amendment a super amendment. Does that then open the door to revisiting all those outstanding laws that Scalia said were undisturbed by Heller?
Wilkinson: I’m sorry to constantly be the voice of cynicism, but it opens the door to whatever five justices want to open the door to, doesn’t it?
Goss: When I was in school for political science, what we learned was that courts never get too far out ahead of public opinion because they have neither the “sword or the purse,” in Alexander Hamilton’s felicitous phrase, and they rely on their public legitimacy. They tend to be lagging indicators of change rather than leading indicators of change. I think the substance of the Bruen decision fits that model. It doesn’t seem wildly at odds with the way we learn about the courts as a political institution. I think the idea that we’re only looking to history, and to the meaning of the Second Amendment at these two critical foundings, and we aren’t taking into account any other interests, that, for me, seems profoundly radical.
Wilkinson: But even that history is conflicted. There were gun regulations in place throughout the two foundings under discussion.
Goss: There were a bunch of states that outlawed concealed carry or public carry in the first half of the 19th century. And those laws were generally upheld. Those laws were written to prohibit carrying if it had the effect of causing terror — public terror. So those 19th century laws were taking into account other interests, the interests of the non-carrying public that has to be around people with guns and other dangerous weapons. The public had an interest in not being terrorized, right? But it’s a little ambiguous whether those laws prohibited people from carrying based on the intent to terrorize, or merely because that was the effect of carrying.
Justice Thomas’s opinion does have a way of just writing out of consideration the interests of people feeling threatened by those carrying guns, or the broader social interest in preventing the public spread of firearms, which the vast majority of studies indicate does influence gun violence.
Wilkinson: I associate you with a group of scholars who’ve tried to be very evidence-based in approaching a highly polarized issue. That kind of factual evidence has little or no role in this ruling, however.
Goss: Certainly there are individual circumstances where having a gun will protect you. But there’s not a huge amount of evidence that having a firearm is going to provide more benefits than costs.
Wilkinson: Which brings us to the question of why so many Americans, on and off the Supreme Court, don’t act on that evidence, or even care about it.
Goss: It’s very tempting to attribute it to fear of change, the recurring tension between tradition and modernity in a very big, diverse nation. You’ve got this well-orchestrated intellectual campaign by individual scholars and gun activists to reinterpret the Second Amendment. But you’ve also got a populace that turn to guns as a solution to problems.
In anticipation of this interview, I was looking back at one of the early books about the gun issue. It’s “The Gun in America,” by Lee Kennett and James LaVerne Anderson, which came out in 1975. In discussing the drive to acquire firearms, they write: “The ultimate fear is not that government will tyrannize, but that it will fail to protect. That fear persists; it causes lines to form in front of gun stores after every major riot or atrocity.”
Wilkinson: We saw lines outside gun shops when the pandemic hit. That’s really been the NRA’s message for years — even more than “jack-booted thugs” rhetoric. Government is corrupt and failing. No one is looking out for you. You’re on your own. You’d better buy an arsenal.
Goss: It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because the more guns we have, the less secure we are as a society, but the more secure a given individual might feel.
• The Supreme Court Just Made New York’s Streets Meaner: Noah Feldman
• A Reckless Ruling, a New Gun-Safety Challenge: The Editors
• Why America Doesn’t Know How to Stop School Shootings: Julianna Goldman
• How to Start Solving America’s Gun Culture Problem: Sarah Green Carmichael | 2022-07-07T12:48:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | America’s Gun Laws Are as Old as Its Gun Politics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/americas-gun-laws-are-as-old-as-itsgun-politics/2022/07/07/5f1c32d8-fdf1-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/americas-gun-laws-are-as-old-as-itsgun-politics/2022/07/07/5f1c32d8-fdf1-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
Drivers Are Angry With Biden. What About Powell?
I normally visit the gas station in something of a fugue state, blocking out all sensory information. But even I have noticed two things of late. One is round-number readouts on the pump display, indicating that the previous customer targeted a dollar amount rather than filling up (hat-tip to Dan Pickering of Pickering Energy Partners for that one). The second is a proliferation of droll little stickers on pumps depicting President Joe saying “I did that!” and pointing his finger at the price window.
Both speak to the pain caused by $5-ish gasoline and to the blame heaped on US presidents for any price increase. But drivers might also be feeling not too warm and fuzzy toward another official nearby the White House: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
In June, average pump prices topped $5 a gallon for the first time ever. For a typical Ford F-150 truck — the best-selling vehicle in the US — that means paying about $130 every time you fill up (more like $150 in California). Spending on motor fuel as a share of disposable income, at roughly 2.5%, is back up to where it was in late 2014. Still, that share remains smaller than in prior energy crises. And the recent tumble in oil prices, if it lasts, should offer some relief. Already, the American Automobile Association’s daily average price has dropped from over $5 to under $4.80.
Gasoline is the most visible but not the biggest cost of driving. The price of vehicles has jumped, largely because of pandemic-related hits to supply chains. Sticking with the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ income and expenditure data, the all-in cost of buying vehicles and parts and the fuel to run them has risen to about 6.5% of disposable income, a level last seen in late 2013.
This is where Powell comes in — because another important, if less prominent, cost just breached the “five” level, too.
These are two sides of the same coin, of course, as the inflationary impulse coursing through gas pumps and dealer lots (and more) engenders a response from the Fed and bond markets. For drivers, a combination of rising vehicle prices and the cost of borrowing to pay them means a bigger monthly hit. Since January 2021, when Biden took office, the implied average payment on a 72-month loan for a new vehicle has risen from about $520 to almost $600, based on my calculations.(1)Now add in the cost of gasoline for a driver averaging about 1,000 miles a month, and the all-in cost of owning and fueling a new vehicle has jumped from about $600 a month to almost $800.(2)Of that increase, 40% relates to the loan payment rather than the pump price.
At the higher end, combined monthly loan and fuel payments have gone into four figures. At the beginning of 2021, a typical Ford F-150, for example, might have set you back about $800 a month; today, you would be looking at $1,050.(3)
Strangely enough, despite those anecdotal signs around the gas pump, we have yet to see drivers retreat en masse or switch to smaller models. Trucks and SUVs were 78% of new vehicle sales in June, in line with May and a bit higher than June of last year. Vehicle sales overall are down but high prices — including dealer gouging — scarce inventory and strong back orders suggest that constrained supply is a bigger issue than collapsing demand. Higher rates are also a problem for electric vehicles; while they are cheaper to fuel, they cost more upfront to buy.(4)
And yet, considering those figures for share of disposable income, maybe this isn’t so strange. We’re in a weird moment, rebounding from a once-in-a-century pandemic while absorbing a generational shift in the direction of inflation and interest rates, combined with an old-fashioned geopolitical energy shock courtesy of the Kremlin. Unemployment is less than 4%, but our attention is consumed by $5 gasoline.
The simultaneous increase in the costs of gasoline and car ownership, however, looks unsustainable. The Fed’s ultimate objective is for higher interest rates to take down those vehicle prices, or at least slow their ascent, as well as curb our seemingly innate enthusiasm for gasoline.
The recent decline in pump prices, bloated inventories at retailers and easing inflation bets in the bond market offer some hope that the Fed’s offensive will be brief. On the other hand, the economic swings of the past 18 months have wrong-footed many experts, and Russia’s war, affecting everything from gasoline to grain, is ongoing. Automakers might yet see their supply crunch flip to a demand gap — manifesting itself less in a further drop in the number of vehicles sold and more in a revival of big discounts to move them. The cure for the high cost of driving isn’t likely to win drivers’ gratitude either.
(1) This assumes a 72-month loan with a 20% down payment, using the monthly average typically-equipped retail price as per Edmunds.com. Average loan rates as per Bankrate.com.
(2) This assumes average vehicle miles traveled calculated on a per vehicle basis using Federal Highway Administration data. Vehicle-miles-traveled data, seasonally adjusted, run through April 2022; data for May and June are calculated as per prior year data for those months plus 2%, in line with growth observed in March and April. Vehicle fleet numbers as per 2020 data (latest year available). Annual average fuel economy data supplied by the Environmental Protection Agency through 2021, which I extend through the first half of 2022.
(3) This assumes a 72-month loan with a 20% down payment at average Bankrate.com rates of 4.21% and 5.25% in January 2021 and June 2022, respectively. Typically-equipped retail price for a Ford F-150 truck in January 2021 of $55,726 and in May 2022 (latest month available) of $64,025, as per Edmunds.com data. Gasoline price of $2.42 per gallon in January 2021 and $4.80 currently. Assumes an average 22 miles per gallon and 1,000 miles driven per month.
(4) A Ford F-150 Lightning getting a nominal 1.7 miles per kilowatt-hour costs about $62 to charge at average residential electricity tariffs for a someone driving 1,000 miles a month. That is less than a third of the monthly gasoline cost for a regular F-150 getting 22 miles per gallon at current prices. On the other hand, a reasonably well-equipped Lariat version of the Lightning will cost you upward of $70,000, assuming you can find one. | 2022-07-07T12:49:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Drivers Are Angry With Biden. What About Powell? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/drivers-are-angry-with-biden-what-about-powell/2022/07/07/000191a6-fde9-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/drivers-are-angry-with-biden-what-about-powell/2022/07/07/000191a6-fde9-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
The UK’s Conservative Party is being thrust into a leadership contest following the disintegration of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government. Pressure has been building on Johnson for months after a series of scandals, including the so-called “Partygate” events during the pandemic, for which the 58-year-old leader became the first premier found to have broken the law while in the top job. Whoever replaces him will enjoy a commanding majority in Parliament and two years to govern the country before their new policies are tested with voters in a general election.
1. How does the leader get elected?
Conservative members of Parliament put themselves forward as candidates and form campaign teams to seek the backing of parliamentary colleagues. If there are multiple candidates, the field is then whittled down in a series of ballots until only two remain, at which point their names are sent to grassroots Tory members across the country for a vote on the final choice. If, however, only one candidate is nominated by MPs, then they become uncontested leader but may be subject to a vote of party members to ratify the result.
It could take around six weeks or more, depending on how many candidates there are for the post. At the last such vote in 2019, there were 10 candidates and six rounds of balloting were needed before the final two candidates emerged.
Johnson said in his resignation statement on July 7 that he intended to stay on as caretaker premier until a new leader is in place, as his predecessor Theresa May did. It’s not clear if his party will allow him to remain for that long, and if there is sufficient pressure for him to leave, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab could step in as acting prime minister. Opposition leader Keir Starmer said before Johnson’s statement that if he were to stay on, the Labour party would bring a vote of confidence in Parliament.
4. Who’s in the running?
Leading potential contenders include Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, viewed in the party as having strong pro-Brexit credentials, charisma and good leadership qualities. Others are Rishi Sunak, whose decision to quit as Chancellor prompted a slew of other government ministers to resign, and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, a free-market Conservative who has been popular with the party’s grassroots, may also attract support, as could former Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Nadhim Zahawi, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer.
5. What are the prospects for the new Tory leader?
Whoever replaces Johnson will inherit an economy buffeted by a cost-of-living crisis as inflation accelerates at the fastest pace in four decades. Unrest among workers is already fomenting as rail staff, postal workers, teachers and trial lawyers all declare walkouts or debate doing so, prompting parallels with the 1970s. The new leader will also have to repair a fractured party that’s looking tired after 12 years in power and suffered as Johnson’s administration has lurched from one crisis to another. And they’ll have to mend relations with the European Union that have been strained by Johnson’s threats to renege on the Brexit agreement he negotiated.
• A House of Commons Library briefing paper on the Tory party leadership election process.
• A Bloomberg article on betting odds on the leadership vote. | 2022-07-07T12:49:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How UK’s Tories Will Elect Leader to Replace Johnson - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/howuks-tories-will-electleader-to-replace-johnson/2022/07/07/355ce728-fdef-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/howuks-tories-will-electleader-to-replace-johnson/2022/07/07/355ce728-fdef-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
He had cinched cuffs around hundreds of wrists as a D.C. police officer, but now Brett Parson’s own hands were being placed behind his back.
“So I’ll let you know guys, right now, that until I talk to an attorney, I won’t talk to anybody,” Parson said.
The police in Boca Raton, Fla., guided him toward their cruiser as their body cameras recorded the encounter.
“I think I know exactly what it’s about. It’s a brand-new warrant, right?” Parson guessed. “Brand-new? Issued probably this morning?”
“Yep,” answered one officer. They were outside the condo where Parson’s parents lived. He’d been staying with them to help his father recover from a surgery.
On this February morning, he’d taken the trash out, not knowing detectives were waiting for him outside. They asked for the keys to his father’s red convertible. They asked him to turn over his phone.
Parson, 53, instructed them not to search anything without a warrant.
“I know what it is you’re looking for,” he said.
Around 12:30 a.m. the night before, Parson had been pulled over by officers from Coconut Creek, who’d seen him driving the red convertible near a quiet office park 20 minutes away. Police reported they watched as the convertible followed a gray sedan into a parking lot. Both cars made a U-turn and returned to the road. The gray sedan then pulled into a fenced-off area with an empty field and a Comcast tower. The gate, which should have been locked, was open. What were these drivers doing there in the middle of the night? The officers stopped both cars.
Parson told them they were mistaken. He wasn’t following the gray sedan. He was just lost and looking for Interstate 95.
“I’m a cop from D.C.,” he said. In reality, he had been retired and only a reserve officer for two years.
D.C. Police Lt. Brett Parson speaks during a meeting of D.C.'s Hate Bias Task Force in 2019. (Michael E. Miller/TWP)
Parson, shown here in 2005, was known nationally and internationally as a pioneer of gay rights in policing. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
LEFT: D.C. Police Lt. Brett Parson speaks during a meeting of D.C.'s Hate Bias Task Force in 2019. (Michael E. Miller/TWP) RIGHT: Parson, shown here in 2005, was known nationally and internationally as a pioneer of gay rights in policing. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
They let him drive away. Then they went to talk to the driver of the gray sedan.
The window rolled down to reveal a thin White boy. He said he had pulled over to text a friend. The officer told the boy he didn’t believe him. In his report, he described what the teenager — who turned out to be 16 – did next.
“He dropped his head, took a deep breath, and stated he met the guy who was following behind him online and they were meeting to ‘hook up.’ ”
The teenager began to tell the officers the story he would repeat at least three times that night, including at the sexual assault treatment center where he was taken after his parents were called.
He’d met Parson on Growlr, a dating app for gay men that requires users to be 18. He’d lied about his birthday to use the app, claiming he was 18. He said he and Parson exchanged oral sex in the parking lot of a day care.
He said he knew Parson used to be a police officer.
What he didn’t know was that Parson was not just any police officer. The man who had just driven away was known nationally and internationally as a pioneer of gay rights in policing.
In the nation’s capital, Parson built an award-winning liaison unit that investigated hate crimes, befriended advocates and marched in Pride parades, slowly revolutionizing the relationship between the police and the city’s LGBTQ community. People saw him everywhere: dance clubs and book clubs, hospital bedsides and funeral homes, early-morning court hearings and late-night domestic disputes.
The city’s 2019 guide to Pride called Parson a “living legend.” The Department of Justice, the State Department, Amnesty International, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other police departments relied on his expertise.
Now, he was going to jail. The warrant for his arrest listed two counts of unlawful sexual activity. If convicted, he could face a prison sentence and a lifetime as a registered sex offender. Under Florida law, claiming to be misled about the age of a victim cannot be used as a legal defense.
Parson’s arrest stunned the legions of people who admired him, leaving them with questions about what exactly happened in Florida and whether it represented some sort of mistake or a serious betrayal.
Months later, they are still without answers. The case, which depends largely on the involvement of a 16-year-old identified only by his initials, is moving slowly. It will be months, and possibly years, before a judge or jury determines Parson’s fate.
While the former lieutenant waits for his future to be decided, those who put their trust in him for so long are revisiting his past. This story is based on public records and interviews with more than three dozen people whose lives and work Parson influenced during his 26-year career. They are grappling with the person they thought they knew — and the power he wielded for so long.
Parson, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, did not respond to repeated interview requests.
On the morning of his Feb. 12 arrest, Parson frequently reminded the officers taking him into custody that he, too, was a cop. He commented on their equipment, mentioned he was scheduled to teach at the FBI National Academy, mused about what his approach to this kind of warrant would be and joked about his own history of stuffing large men into cramped back seats.
“With all due — we know who you are, sir,” an officer informed him. “Your credentials don’t matter. … It’s nothing to do with how this is being handled.”
“I understand,” Parson said. He thanked them for being caring.
They confiscated his loaded Glock 26, explained to his parents what was happening and slammed the cruiser door.
“F---,” Parson said, “It’s weird being on this side.”
Ending ‘fairy shaking’
Parson’s reputation as a gay hero began with a scandal. In the late 1990s, while Parson was building a career in narcotics investigations, another D.C. officer was stationing himself outside a gay club in Southeast Washington. He was watching for men leaving the club who were wearing wedding rings or getting into cars with baby seats. He wrote down their license plates, found their contact information and called them. Pay $10,000, he said, or he’d expose them to their wives and employers.
The scheme was known as “fairy shaking.”
It eventually led to an FBI investigation, a nearly two-year prison sentence for the officer and the resignation of the chief of police.
To those in the LGBTQ community, the extortion was just the latest example of mistreatment by a police force with a decades-long history of targeting vulnerable queer people.
“There was an overall mistrust,” remembers Peter Newsham, who later became police chief. “There was a feeling that they couldn’t call the police and ensure that the police officer who came to the door was going to treat them with dignity.”
The chief installed after the scandal, Charles Ramsey, saw a solution to that problem: bolstering and broadening a newly formed Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit.
Parson, then in his early 30s, had been openly gay since he joined the force. He’d grown up in the area and, after working as a National Hockey League referee, became a police officer in 1994.
He didn’t want the job as head of the unit. But Ramsey, as Parson told the story, didn’t give him a choice.
[The victims of D.C.’s record year of hatred ]
“I was wearing plain clothes, driving an undercover car, growing my hair out, wearing my gun on my ankle, jumping out on felony drug dealers, and flipping them for homicide cases. It was the assignment of a lifetime,” Parson later told the Community Policing Dispatch newsletter. “I was really, really afraid that my reputation was going to change from being a good cop who happened to be gay, to being a gay cop that used to be a good cop.”
Instead, he became renowned for professionalizing the unit, balancing a law-and-order approach with what was then a relatively new idea: true community policing. Rather than raid gay clubs, Parson and the five to 15 members of his unit would announce themselves over the loudspeaker, then walk around, introduce themselves and pass out refrigerator magnets with their phone number on it. The number was the workaround for those in the community who needed help, but worried about the repercussions of calling 911: a gay man experiencing domestic abuse from his partner or a transgender woman wanting to report a hate crime.
“Nowadays, it’s not appreciated how ground-breaking and innovative it was,” said Kurt Vorndran, who served on the D.C. Police Complaints Board for 15 years. “Those of us who were advocates at the time, we were blown away. And Brett, his personality, his skill and his professionalism was a major factor in all of this.”
Top left: Parson regularly trained other officers on the force about LGBTQ issues. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
Top right: Parson, right, walks into a funeral beside then-Chief Charles Ramsey in 2005. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
Bottom left: Parson joins Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom in Washington for a prayer service in 2018. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Bottom right: Parson provides comfort at a memorial service for LGBTQ activist Wanda Alston in 2005. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
Top left: Parson regularly trained other officers on the force about LGBTQ issues. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post) Top right: Parson, right, walks into a funeral beside then-Chief Charles Ramsey in 2005. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post) Bottom left: Parson joins Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom in Washington for a prayer service in 2018. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) Bottom right: Parson provides comfort at a memorial service for LGBTQ activist Wanda Alston in 2005. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
Within three years of Parson’s being put in charge, the unit won a distinguished service award from the city’s Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, an organization formed in part to protest discrimination by law enforcement. LGBTQ rights pioneer Frank Kameny, who became a national icon after he was fired from his job for his sexuality, handed the award to Parson.
“No longer are the police our enemy,” Kameny declared.
In time, the unit and the LGBTQ community worked in tandem to aid the department in solving crimes, including the murders of several transgender women in the city.
“[Brett] would call me, you know, I don’t care what time of morning it was,” remembers Earline Budd, a longtime advocate for the city’s transgender and sex worker communities. “He would wake me up and he would say, Ms. Budd, we are on the scene of a double homicide.”
Budd would help identify the victims, then see Parson at every memorial and funeral that followed, and every community meeting about stopping the next act of violence. Though Parson did stints elsewhere in the department, he returned again and again to what was renamed the LGBTQ Liaison Unit, eventually overseeing the department’s entire Special Liaison Branch. He trained recruits, retrained old-timers and consulted with departments across the country trying to replicate what he had built.
“He made me feel safe,” said Kisha Allure, who works in victims services at Casa Ruby, an LGBTQ support center.
But she knew that wasn’t true for everyone.
When Parson walked into a support group unannounced, she saw the uneasiness in the eyes of transgender women, especially women of color, meeting him for the first time.
He looked to many like a TV version of a cop: White and male, big and burly, always armed and always in uniform. Parson boasted that, on a police force with few openly gay cops, his imposing figure earned him respect.
“I’m 6 foot, I weigh about 295 pounds, I have experience in professional athletics and ice hockey — there aren’t a lot of people lining up to f--- with me” he told a podcast interviewer in 2021.
What some took as Parson being direct and authoritative, others saw as arrogant and aggressive.
“He exerted his power. In some cases, he used it to stop hate, harm and death in our community, even when it wasn’t popular to do so,” said June Crenshaw, director of the Wanda Alston Foundation. “But it’s hard to turn that power off.”
Parson was furious in 2017 when, following protests of police participation in the city’s annual Pride parade, the LGBTQ Liaison Unit was asked not to march. He became so heated during a meeting with organizers that Sheila Alexander-Reid, the mayor’s director of LGBTQ affairs, had to calm him down.
“He was hurt that his own community would have the nerve to ask him not to be a part of the parade after all he had done,” Alexander-Reid remembered.
Parson reluctantly agreed to a compromise: He and his officers would wear D.C. police polos instead of full uniforms. But by 2019, he was ignoring the new policy, marching again in uniform down the parade route. That same week, when other members of his unit were asked to leave a Latinx Pride event, Parson returned with them 30 minutes later. He took the microphone and made a speech.
“He just walked up the church aisle, armed, this [cisgender] White man, all upset because somebody told his people not to be there,” remembered Nancy Cañas, who organized the event.
Parson walks with other officers on the Pride parade route in 2019. He ignored requests from organizers that he not wear his uniform in the parade. (Michael Key/Washington Blade )
Some of Parson’s fellow officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said they were aware of concerns about his behavior.
An investigative report from the Office of Police Complaints describes a night in 2006 when Parson was monitoring 18th Street NW. A cabdriver did not properly pull over to the curb. Parson’s solution: open the door, grab the driver by his shirt and rip him out of the vehicle. Parson took the taxi and drove it down the street.
“You can’t do that,” the cab’s stranded passengers told him. According to the complaint, Parson replied, “Shut the f--- up, b----, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Parson denied using foul language. But when asked by investigators about removing the driver from his cab, Parson replied that he had done this on “hundreds of occasions.”
The investigator found that Parson had engaged in harassment and use of excessive or unnecessary force. His punishment, a D.C. police spokesman said, was a letter in his personnel file.
On another night two years later, Parson stopped by the nightclub Town Danceboutique, where dozens of people were in line to get into what was advertised as “D.C.’s biggest Pride party.” According to a deposition he gave after he was sued for his behavior that night, he was planning to pass out magnets. Instead, he chased down a woman who appeared to be putting something in her mouth. Once he stopped her and her friends, he saw a young White man walking away from the same area.
“Hey partner, come with me for a second,” Parson said, according to his 2009 deposition.
“What did I do?” the man replied as he kept walking.
Parson grabbed his arm. The man yanked it away. Parson grabbed him harder, turned and threw him through a plate-glass window.
Parson’s explanation was that he was trying to pin the man up against a brick wall, and missed. The man, who declined to comment because he did not want to revisit that night, was crouched in the fetal position. He was covered in shattered glass and bleeding from his head. Parson was still trying to put him in handcuffs.
“I’m yelling over and over again, ‘Stop resisting, put your arms behind your back,’ ” Parson stated in the deposition. “The crowd is screaming at me. I can’t hear him, but he’s yelling and I, eventually, use my weight to, kind of, push my body weight down on top of him.”
Parson charged the man with assaulting a police officer.
Parson, photographed in 2005, when he was responsible for leading what is now called the LGBTQ Liaison Unit. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
After a trip to the hospital and a night in jail, the charges were dropped. Records show the city settled the case for $17,500.
But whether Parson was disciplined for this incident — and whether there are other use-of-force incidents are on his record — remains unclear.
Police officials declined to release Parson’s disciplinary record or answer questions about it, citing the former lieutenant’s right to privacy. The department terminated Parson from its reserve force after his arrest in Florida. A spokesman said Parson is not under investigation in D.C., and there is nothing in his record to suggest he had inappropriate contact with anyone in the District.
As Parson’s use-of-force cases were handled by police internally, his profile outside the city grew. He hosted and attended international conferences for LGBTQ law enforcement. He starred in a Justice Department training video on how police should treat the transgender community. He traveled to Vietnam and the Philippines for the State Department.
Eventually, those familiar with his decision said, he realized he could make far more money outside the department than the $121,000 records show he was making annually as a lieutenant. Parson retired in February 2020 to start his own consulting firm.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, he began traveling around the country to train police on how to intervene when a fellow officer uses excessive force.
“We’re not just policing others,” Parson told NBC4. “We have to police ourselves.”
Parson, shown here in 2005, retired and became a D.C. police reserve officer in 2020. (Carol Guzy/The Washington Post)
‘I like younger’
The teen messaged Parson first.
“Hey,” he wrote at 10:21 p.m., “how are you.”
Parson’s Growlr profile identified him as a 53-year-old in an open relationship. His job was listed as LEO, an acronym for law enforcement officer.
“I like younger,” Parson’s profile stated. “Just a regular guy looking for the same. Staying in Fort Lauderdale for the week.”
According to screenshots of Parson’s messages with the teenager obtained through public records requests, Parson replied that night: “Good. U?”
The 16-year-old’s profile listed his age as 18. It described him as 5-foot-7 and 140 pounds. From a list of words to describe himself, one he chose was “boy.” The term is sometimes used by adults in the gay community who identify or present as youthful.
Parson and the teenager unlocked the app’s “private media” feature, allowing them to see revealing pictures of each other. Though the boy’s photos are not part of public records, he later told officers that they included pictures of his body and his face. In one explicit text message, Parson commented on how skinny he was.
“You know a place where we can meet that’s not too far from you?” the 16-year-old asked Parson the next day.
We could definitely meet up after work. if you wanted to
The teenager
Where would we do it
I just brought dinner home to my parents. Let me get them fed, then we can chat
Any updates?
Why don’t we meet someplace after your work. We can chat. See if we click. Then, figure out a plan from there. No pressure and no strings.
After a phone call between them, records show that the teen sent Parson the address of a Shell gas station. Around midnight, Parson pulled in driving his father’s red convertible. Its front license plate said “LIFE’S A BEACH.”
Looking for a more secluded place, the pair moved across the street to the parking lot of a day care.
Three hours later, at the county’s sexual assault treatment center, the 16-year-old sat in a room intentionally painted in calming blues. He was handed a brochure that said, “A person 24 years of age or older … cannot receive consent from 16- and 17-year-old minors.”
“Being the victim of a crime can be overwhelming,” it read. “Your reactions are normal.”
On his phone, there was a new text from Parson: “You ok?”
“Yeah I’m good,” the teenager replied. “I’m home.”
Then he started talking to a detective.
“It just kinda happened,” the teenager said, according to a police transcript of the interview. “I don’t really know how to explain it.”
The officer asked if he kissed back.
“I consented,” the boy said.
An evidence photo shows the license plate of the vehicle Brett Parson drove to the gas station where he met the teenager. (Coconut Creek Police Department)
Police say Parson and the teenager then moved to the parking lot of this day-care center in Coconut Creek, Fla. (Scott McIntyre For The Washington Post)
LEFT: An evidence photo shows the license plate of the vehicle Brett Parson drove to the gas station where he met the teenager. (Coconut Creek Police Department) RIGHT: Police say Parson and the teenager then moved to the parking lot of this day-care center in Coconut Creek, Fla. (Scott McIntyre For The Washington Post)
According to the transcript, the officer did not ask the teenager if Parson knew his real age.
Advocates who work with gay youth say it’s common for teenagers to explore on dating apps that allow them to meet strangers, especially if they don’t feel safe expressing themselves at home or in school.
Some vulnerable kids also use dating apps to seek out adults who will pay them, though minors cannot legally consent to being purchased for sex. The officer questioning this teenager did not ask whether money was exchanged.
The boy described how he and Parson gave each other oral sex, then decided to move to another location because they’d seen someone walking in the distance.
“Did you feel like you wanted to continue what you guys are doing?” the detective asked.
“No,” the teen said. “I also didn’t really feel like saying no either, but I didn’t want to keep going.”
“Okay,” the detective said. “And then …”
“But I didn’t show any signs either of like wanting to stop, so.”
“Okay. Did, um, did you feel scared?”
“I felt uncomfortable,” the boy said. “But I kinda went with it because I was already there.”
He told the detective Parson did not threaten him. And though he never showed him his badge or his weapon, he knew that Parson used to be a cop.
“I just didn’t stop for some reason,” he said. “But I don’t know why.”
After 20 minutes, the interview ended. It was 3:50 a.m. The boy, with his father’s permission, consented to give DNA to investigators. They had everything they needed to ask a judge for an arrest warrant.
‘No, not Brett’
Parson sat in a jail cell for nearly a week. He paid $5,000 to A Signature Only Bail Bonds, which insured the rest of his $50,000 bond. A judge ordered him to remain in Florida, stay away from all minors and live at his parents’ Boca Raton condo while he awaited trial.
Meanwhile, his mug shot had hit the news.
“I kept saying no, no, no, not Brett,” recalled Budd, who had helped Parson identify crime victims. “An underage young man? No.”
Earline Budd, a longtime advocate for D.C.'s transgender and sex worker communities, feels Parson still deserves her respect because of all he's done for the city. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
On Twitter and in text messages, members of D.C.’s LGBTQ community quickly began taking sides. Many pointed out that while the age of consent in Florida is 18, in D.C. it’s 16. Parson could not have been arrested for the same set of circumstances here.
“I don’t think a life should be destroyed over one foolish event late one night, especially when the contact was made on a site where everyone is supposed to be a minimum of 18,” said Rick Rosendall, former president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance.
Nothing about the police reports, some argued, indicated that Parson had intentionally sought out a minor.
“To me, there’s no victim, there’s no predator in this story,” said transgender activist Taylor Lianne Chandler, who took to Twitter to defend Parson. “I can’t fathom Brett risking his career for 20 minutes of fun.”
Others were disgusted, saying it was not acceptable even if Parson thought the person he was meeting was 18.
“You’re a police officer, you should know better,” said Tamika Spellman, a transgender advocate who has conducted training sessions alongside Parson. “You should know the differences between a grown-up and a child.”
Impossible to ignore was where the encounter happened: a state then on the verge of passing a bill to ban teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity. Dubbed the “don’t say gay” law by opponents, its supporters bandied about terms like “grooming” to create false links between homosexuality and child abuse, which is committed by people of all sexual orientations.
“Something like this just plays right into their narrative,” said John Guggenmos, owner of several gay nightclubs in D.C., including Town Danceboutique, which closed in 2018. “To me, it makes all our community look bad.”
John Guggenmos, owner of several gay nightclubs in D.C., said he worries about the anti-LGBTQ forces who will use Parson's actions to justify discrimination. (Oliver Contreras For The Washington Post)
Many who had crossed paths with Parson or invited him to speak at events said they feared that bringing any additional attention to his arrest could hurt LGBTQ progress.
But to those who put their trust in him again and again, the hurt was already done.
“For him to use his power to leave the scene, leaving this vulnerable youth to fend for himself, it’s devastating,” said Crenshaw, of the Wanda Alston Foundation.
Allure, at Casa Ruby, who’d said Parson made her feel safe, couldn’t help thinking of how vulnerable she had been as a teenager.
“You’re a leader. People look at you as a public figure. You have the nerve? The audacity? I can’t. That’s where I’m at,” she said.
Alexander-Reid, who was Parson’s counterpart in the mayor’s office, said she’s still waiting for some kind of explanation, maybe from Parson himself.
“If he’s willing to be vulnerable and open as to what happened, I’m definitely open to listen,” she said. “He’s earned my respect. And if he’s made mistakes? You know what, he’s not the first one.”
And then there were Parson’s colleagues, officers who by training are inclined to believe that police in Florida are justified in the charges they filed.
Newsham, the former D.C. police chief, compared the situation to how he felt as a Catholic to learn of abuse in the church. To those who believed in community policing, he said, Parson was as revered as a priest.
“The trust, I’ve got to tell you, it’s definitely fractured,” he said. “If it’s completely broken remains to be seen.”
A D.C. police officer sports a rainbow logo on his back to show support for the LGBTQ community at the Pride parade in June. (Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post)
Pride’s missing fixture
On an overcast Saturday in June, D.C. staged its first full-fledged Pride parade since the pandemic began. The city and its people were draped in rainbows, jubilant to see the streets packed again.
On nearly every corner sat a D.C. police cruiser and a few officers, assigned to monitor the event for safety.
“Capital Pride, are you ready?” an announcer called, and onto the parade route walked another group of officers.
They too, were in uniform, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying guns. But the words “METROPOLITAN POLICE” across some of their backs were written in rainbow.
Members of the LGBTQ Liaison Unit walked alongside employees of the mayor’s office, shaking hands and posing for pictures. The officers were scheduled to stop by bars on U Street that night and run a tent at the Pride festival the next day — the kind of events where Parson was always a fixture.
Broward County Judge Tim Bailey speaks at an arraignment where Brett Parson submitted a written not guilty plea in April. In June, Bailey agreed to allow Parson to leave Florida. (Scott McIntyre For The Washington Post)
He hadn’t been seen in months. But two days before the parade, a judge granted Parson’s request to leave Florida. As long as he reports to his probation officer by phone twice a week and Zooms into his court hearings, he has permission to spend the summer at his home in Provincetown, Mass. Come September, he told the court, he is planning to move back to the District.
He will return to a city where he is no longer a member of the police reserve force. His many speaking engagements have been canceled. The program that teaches police to stop unnecessary force terminated his contract.
The officers he once led kept moving down the parade route. They handed out rainbow bracelets stamped with a phone number, the direct line to the unit. Anyone who needed their help could call.
Some people slipped the bracelets onto their wrists. Some left them behind on the pavement.
A crowd cheers on those participating in the D.C. Pride parade in June. Parson has been a fixture at the event for decades. (Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post)
Razzan Nakhlawi and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.
Story editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Miller, copy editing by Thomas Heleba, video editing by Amber Ferguson, design and development by Alexis Arnold.
Jessica Contrera is a reporter on The Washington Post's local enterprise team. She writes about people whose lives are being transformed by the major events and issues in the news. Twitter Twitter | 2022-07-07T12:49:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brett Parson, gay D.C. cop arrested in Florida, divides LGBTQ community - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2022/gay-dc-cop-parson-teen-florida-arrest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2022/gay-dc-cop-parson-teen-florida-arrest/ |
College football is more and more about the money
Two California universities move to the Big Ten Conference to get a bigger share of TV profits.
Ralen Goforth of the University of Southern California tries to catch Dorian Thompson-Robinson of the University of California Los Angels in a game last fall. The two West Coast colleges recently announced that they would leave the Pacific-12 Conference for the Big Ten, a conference that offers more money from TV contracts. (Louis Lopez/AP)
When I started writing my column for KidsPost, I promised myself I would not talk about money in sports. I thought kids were more interested in great athletes such as Lionel Messi, LeBron James and Serena Williams than in how much money they made.
A recent sports story, however, is making me break that promise.
Last week, the University of Southern California and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), two West Coast, sunshine colleges, joined the Big Ten, the ultimate Midwest, cold-weather football conference.
That means in 2024, the Big Ten will have 16 schools stretching from Rutgers and the University of Maryland in the East to UCLA and Southern California in the West. In other words, the Big Ten could be called the Really Big Ten.
Why did Southern California and UCLA join the Big Ten after being members of the Pacific-12 (Pac-12) conference for more than 60 years? Simple: money. The Big Ten has a bigger television contract (meaning more money) for showing its football games than the Pac-12.
College athletic conferences used to be groups of similar schools in the same geographic area that competed against one another in a variety of sports. But now college football and men’s college basketball are big businesses that bring in lots of money because almost all the games are on television.
In 2025, the Southeastern Conference will also have 16 teams when Texas and Oklahoma join football powerhouses such as Alabama and Georgia.
This story about schools changing conferences is not finished. Don’t be surprised if in the next few years college football looks very different. There may be four super conferences of 16 teams each that dominate the sport.
Some people think these schools may break away from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its rules that govern college sports and begin to pay their players.
Or the schools may set up separate businesses, maybe called the Michigan Wolverines or Alabama Crimson Tide, to make money and have nothing to do with the school’s mission to educate young people.
If that happens, college football (and maybe men’s college basketball) will become another professional sports league complete with expanded playoffs. The only difference is that this pro league will have younger players.
Sports, and especially professional sports, have always been about money. Pro athletes try to be paid as much as they can. For example, Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards just signed a five-year contract that will pay him more than $50 million a year. That’s more than 700 times (!) what the average public elementary school teacher made in 2021.
I may not want to talk about money, but sometimes it is the only way to explain what is happening in sports.
Especially college football.
Bowen writes the sports opinion column for KidsPost. He is the author of 27 books on baseball, basketball, football and soccer for kids ages 7 to 12. | 2022-07-07T12:49:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football is more and more about the money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/07/college-football-is-more-more-about-money/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/07/college-football-is-more-more-about-money/ |
In this photo provided by the State Emergency Service, surf lifesaver Lee Archer carries a baby as the child and the mother are rescued from flood waters in Bulga, Australia, Wednesday, July, 6, 2022. Floodwaters were receding in Sydney and its surrounds on Thursday, July 7, 2022, as heavy rain continued to threaten to inundate towns north of Australia’s largest city. (State Emergency Service via AP) (Uncredited/State Emergency Service) | 2022-07-07T12:51:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Flood threat moves north as Sydney area emergency eases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/flood-threat-moves-north-as-sydney-area-emergency-eases/2022/07/07/04f1f25c-fdf1-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/flood-threat-moves-north-as-sydney-area-emergency-eases/2022/07/07/04f1f25c-fdf1-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
The city has struggled for years to bring large grocery stores to wards 7 and 8
Amanda Stephenson organizes shelves at the Fresh Food Factory, a grocery store that focuses on fresh food and locally produced products in Anacostia. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
When Mary Blackford became a vegetarian seven years ago, she spent hundreds of dollars in cab fares traveling out of the Benning Ridge neighborhood in Ward 7 to find fresh fruits and vegetables.
Amanda Stephenson had a similar story — when the D.C. Ward 8 resident wanted groceries, not fast-food, she too had to look far from home.
“I felt like an immigrant going to other places for access to healthy food,” said Stephenson.
Blackford and Stephenson live east of the Anacostia River, which has the city’s highest concentration of “food deserts” — areas of poverty where many people live more than a ¼-mile from the closest grocery store and can have limited access to vehicles.
For years, the D.C. government has tried initiatives, including tax breaks, to attract chain supermarkets to wards 7 and 8, with some success. Now a network of Black entrepreneurs, business owners and restaurateurs — funded through city grants — is leading the fight to end food deserts east of the Anacostia with small community food ventures.
“In the absence of big box [stores] that are not investing in traditional communities that have been underserved and disenfranchised, this is where there is a unique opportunity for smart markets to step up,” said Blackford, who is about to start her own marketplace.
A lack of options
Full-service grocery stores proliferate across the city, but in majority-Black wards 7 and 8, that number can be counted on one hand. A D.C. Hunger Solutions report from November found that just three out of 75 such stores were located in those wards. A fourth, Good Food Markets, opened in Ward 8 in November.
Wards 7 and 8 lost four of their seven full-service grocery stores between 2010 and 2020, while the city’s other six wards gained 37 grocery stores during that decade, according to an earlier D.C. Hunger Solutions study. Over 75 percent of the city’s food deserts were in wards 7 and 8 alone, D.C. Policy Center reported in 2017, and 85 percent of the around 160,000 residents of the two wards lived more than a mile from a grocery store.
There is a correlation between good health and access to healthy food. When these are not available, people may turn to fast-food and other foods that are higher in calories and lower in nutritional value, putting people at risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A 2019 Washington Post D.C. poll asked residents to rate their neighborhood for access to fresh fruits and vegetables: 74 percent rated their access as excellent or good, but only 49 percent felt the same east of the Anacostia River.
1 out of 3 people in D.C. region face food insecurity, survey finds
Beverley Wheeler, director of D.C. Hunger Solutions, said when the organization started to conduct studies about grocery store accessibility 10 years ago, developers were only interested in investing in higher-income areas.
“They say it was not profitable,” Wheeler said. But, she pointed out, lower-income families can make a business profitable. SNAP holders, for instance, will spend more in big box stores — using their benefits to get groceries, but also usually buying more than just food.
Still, the city is attracting some grocery stores to the area. A 55,000-square-foot grocery store will offer fresh food options to the community at the Capitol Gateway Marketplace in Ward 7, which the city is in the process of acquiring. The city has a letter of intent with Giant, and city officials hope they can reach an agreement with the supermarket chain by the fall, said John Falcicchio, deputy mayor for planning and economic development. Meanwhile, a Lidl grocery store at the Skyland Town Center in Ward 7 is under construction.
In recent years, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration has invested in funding, including $22 million in the city’s fiscal 2023 budget, to support local initiatives to reduce food deserts through the city’s Food Access Fund. The city will have spent about $70 million on the fund by 2024, according to Falcicchio’s office. Now, 42,000 people live beyond a mile from a fresh-food option, and the fund will cut the number by half in the next few years, Falcicchio said.
D.C.’s food deserts are
concentrated in majority-Black
Wards 7 and 8
Low-income census tracts where the closest
grocery store is more than a:
half-mile
Data as of 2019
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic
Research Service
D.C.’s food deserts are concentrated
in majority-Black Wards 7 and 8
Low-income census tracts where the closest grocery store
is more than a:
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
concentrated in majority-
Black Wards 7 and 8
Low-income census tracts where
the closest grocery store is more than a:
Economic Research Service
In D.C., seniors often struggle to find food
Full-service grocery stores are needed because they give residents the ability to use federal benefits money, which not all small stores do, Wheeler said, but initiatives that inject capital in small, local businesses are critical. The Food Access Fund grants require that the local stores that receive them also accept SNAP and WIC.
“They tend to hire more community members and they tend to have a community connection,” she said. “People believe that a large chain grocery store is the only answer, and it’s not.”
In 2019, Stephenson opened Fresh Food Factory (FFF), a community-based grocery store in the Anacostia Arts Center, and received a grant through the Food Access Fund to open a second FFF in Kenilworth in Ward 7.
The store sells fresh salads, fruit and other produce, allows customers to pay with SNAP, and, with the help of Elaine Meredith, a Howard University public-health graduate student who is certified in nutrition and dietetics, is training local entrepreneurs who are interested in opening their own businesses.
Single mom Sherron Feggins has put half-of-a-year of work into what will be called Sha’s Creation, a start-up of healthy salads and lunchboxes that she hopes to sell to the schools in the area.
A medical assistant for three decades, Feggins decided to resign and start her own entrepreneurship. “That was not my passion, and I wanted to heal through food,” she said.
Millée Spears, 71, a longtime resident who lives a couple of blocks from the center, said she buys spinach and other fresh greens more often because she can use her benefits card at FFF.
“I remember when I first moved" to the area, Spears said. “One evening I decided to go to the little bodega because every neighborhood I thought had a bodega to get something I needed. I walked, and I walked, and there was nothing.”
Stephenson said “food deserts” are more like “food apartheids,” a term used by sustainable-food advocates to highlight racially discriminatory political structures that have created inequitable food systems.
“Food apartheid really speaks to a long history and legacy in this country of discrimination in communities of color that really make it difficult to attract retail in spaces and communities that are predominantly minority communities,” said Blackford, who founded Market 7, a food hall in Ward 7 that will open this year.
Blackford has been working for four years in a plan to open a decentralized market that will showcase eight Black-owned businesses and a hydroponic farm at the Benning corridor. When it launches sometime this year, Market 7 will be a “nucleus of health and community,” Blackford said.
Blackford said she will be applying for a Food Access Fund grant this year, and Stephenson will soon open a 3,000-square-foot second grocery store in Kenilworth in Ward 7.
Blackford said that opening sustainable pathways for Black-owned businesses that are often left out of the food ecosystem is critical.
“This is the beginning of a very long journey, in terms of making sure that we have equitable communities, because at the end of the day, this is a health equity issue,” said Blackford. | 2022-07-07T13:19:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Black-owned stores work to end D.C.'s food deserts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/dc-food-deserts-anacostia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/dc-food-deserts-anacostia/ |
Sahaj Kaur Kohli, creator of Brown Girl Therapy and an MA.Ed, will be answering questions about identity, relationships, mental health, work-life balance, family dynamics and more. If you have a question for her, please submit it here.
Dear Sahaj: I am the first-generation daughter of immigrants (I was born in the United States) and in my early 30s. My family and I had a deeply personal, sad conversation following the recent Supreme Court ruling on abortion — about how scared they are for me regarding political changes to come, how this uncertainty will ultimately affect my decisions about children and my safety, and if things might have been different if they had taken different jobs and not immigrated or moved elsewhere.
I am also in a job that is the equivalent of a start-up. While I have a lot of support, I also face professional uncertainty day-to-day. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out plans about whether or not I want children, plans about how best to care for my family as they get older, plans for maintaining longer-term financial stability. Spending too long dwelling in the uncertainty just leads to paralyzing indecision and anxiety, but not spending any time trying to navigate these huge life choices also seems like a recipe for unhappiness.
How do I build resilience or navigate the ongoing uncertainty? And does it get easier?
— Everything’s uncertain
Everything’s uncertain: All the things contributing to this sense of being overwhelmed are valid. As a fellow daughter of immigrants, I share in your experience of having tough conversations that shatter the ideals we, and our parents, may have internalized.
Uncertainty is especially difficult because we don’t know what’s going to happen — and yet we try really hard to prepare for all the outcomes. In this case, a lot of what you are experiencing is shifting an imagined future for yourself. You are navigating an anticipatory grief regarding what has been taken from you and what may potentially continue to be taken from you.
It’s important to find ways to take care of yourself through the uncertainty, especially because it can increase feelings of anxiety. When that happens, it’s imperative to find ways to return your body to baseline, even momentarily. This can include self-soothing exercises and self-care, like practicing micro-strategies of resting, breathing, journaling, moving and nourishing yourself every day. Also consider how social media or your consumption of news might be derailing your wellness: We’re not meant to be absorbing negative things 24/7, and your self-care is tied directly to your capacity to continue.
And remember: It’s okay to take some time to sit in your grief before deciding to get up and carry on.
Going forward, it will be important to shift your goals to plan for the reality that is rather than the reality that was. Can you break down your long-term goals into smaller, short-term goals and then break those down even further into realistic goals for the present?
It’s true that you can control only so much, but rather than letting that lead to hopelessness, try to engage how those parts of your agency can be meaningful or purposeful. I am reminded of Viktor Frankl’s term “tragic optimism,” or optimism in the face of tragedy. This involves finding meaning and purpose, and rooting deeper into your values.
Cultivating hope is also a building block for being resilient. It can be difficult to have hope when things feel so bleak. Consider what you can control and the influence you do have in your own life. You worry for your safety and your security. These are valid. But paralysis is inaction and will only deepen your sense of hopelessness.
Hope, meanwhile, looks different for everyone. Consider asking loved ones what they are hopeful for and where they seek hope. This might encourage you to find additional/alternative spaces to discover it. Turning to general history, or specifically your family’s history, can also help you root yourself in intergenerational strength and resilience.
It’s important to recognize that while resilience is an important psychological tool, it can also be a double-edged sword. In some cases, people shouldn’t have to be resilient, and it’s okay to be angry at the institutional systems that are causing the issues we face today.
Make room for both/and. This looks like allowing yourself to feel and explore the gratitude for the resources, opportunities and access you have because your parents immigrated here and allowing yourself to feel betrayed, angry and lacking of pride for living here. It’s okay to embrace the mixed emotions coming up for you. In fact, you should name them and explore them.
Does it get easier? I am not so sure. But instead of focusing on how hard navigating the uncertainty right now is, focus on building a sense of trust and belief in yourself to figure things out.
Take responsibility for what you can plan and control, and take care in the face of adversity. | 2022-07-07T13:23:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Sahaj: The future of the country feels bleak. How can I cope? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/07/ask-sahaj-future-uncertain-bleak/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/07/ask-sahaj-future-uncertain-bleak/ |
White House reporters object to exclusion from Biden events
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden at a Medal of Honor ceremony for Army soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War on July 5. (Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post)
Access to the East Room has become a point of contention between some reporters and White House officials. Last week Karem sent a letter to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre regarding the ability of reporters on the White House campus to attend certain events the president headlines. “The current method of allowing a limited number of reporters into these events is not only restrictive and antithetical to the concept of a free press, but it has been done without any transparent process into how reporters are selected to cover these events,” reads the letter, which was written by Karem and signed by more than 70 journalists, including former ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson.
The restrictions at issue in this case — which originated in the Biden White House, according to three correspondents — aren’t a headline-making monstrosity. They’re a quiet, bureaucratic piece of statecraft that affects an indeterminate number of media outlets. But who is blocked today may be different from who is blocked tomorrow — and since access curbs tend to stick around, it’s a worthwhile fight.
White House access for journalists is a tiered and complicated affair: The Secret Service and White House officials issue security credentials — known as “hard passes” — for press-corps regulars to enter the grounds (“day passes” are available for reporters who only occasionally go to the White House). Those passes, however, don’t guarantee holders entry into every presidential event. The nonprofit White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), whose mission includes ensuring “robust coverage of the … presidency,” coordinates “pool” coverage — that is, reporting by a small squadron of journalists — for presidential appearances in spaces where the entire White House press corps can’t fit. Frequent locations of pool coverage include the Oval Office and the Roosevelt Room.
Karem is focused on White House events in spaces where all journalists with passes have traditionally been allowed to pile in. Those include the East Room, the State Dining Room, the Cross Room Hall and the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (which has been reconfigured for virtual events and now holds fewer people than in years past). These days, according to White House reporters, Biden officials routinely ask journalists to register to attend presidential appearances in such spaces. White House staff review the requests and deny some. A White House official notes that it has sought to “accommodate as many journalists as possible in a number of different spaces under constantly changing COVID conditions — challenges unlike any other Administration has faced.”
When the events feature a large number of invited guests, says the official, there isn’t room to accommodate every journalist who wishes to attend.
Steven Nelson, a White House correspondent for the New York Post, says he was denied access to registration-required events from November until Friday, when his attendance at an abortion-policy event with the president got the green light — one day after Karem’s letter was sent. One caveat: The New York Post participates in a rotating pool with about 30 other outlets and occasionally gets into events through that mechanism.
“Frankly, that seems pretty inexcusable to me,” says Nelson, who recruited other journalists to sign the letter. “I was surprised at the number of reporters who thanked me and expressed indignation at what’s going on. It seems a lot of people are affected.”
Affected, that is, by a policy they don’t know much about. Both Karem and Nelson say there’s no transparency into decisions on who’s welcome and who’s not. Karem says he’s been denied entry to all but a “mere handful” of the large presidential events on the White House campus since Biden’s inauguration. Like Nelson, Karem has gotten more favorable responses from the White House since sending the letter.
Contesting access at the White House has become something of a side gig for Karem, who’s been on the presidential beat since the Reagan administration and roared into the national spotlight in recent years by shouting down Donald Trump’s press secretaries. After a boisterous encounter with Trumpite Sebastian Gorka at a Rose Garden event in 2019, the White House suspended Karem’s hard pass; he went to court and secured its restoration. In September 2020, he asked Trump if he’d commit to a peaceful transfer of power. “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” the then-president responded.
In any administration, journalists have to double as access lobbyists at the White House. The Obama administration, for instance, routinely barred news photographers from events, only to later release photographs by the official White House photographer. Trump provided White House press with endless opportunities to quiz him on the day’s issues, though his underlings targeted certain reporters for exclusion, including Karem and CNN’s Jim Acosta and Kaitlan Collins.
“You had Donald Trump, who had nothing to say and said it all the time. And you have Biden, who has something to say and he rarely says it,” says Karem, who stresses that access issues affect the entire White House press corps.
Asked about the letter at Tuesday’s briefing, Jean-Pierre said, “We’re coming into a different place of covid — things are starting to open up, we’re even doing tours here. ...We understand, we want to be accessible, we want the president, at his events, to be accessible and we are working to that.” She called the matter “a priority of ours.”
The letter to Jean-Pierre acknowledges that social-distancing imperatives “played a role at first,” but the attendance restrictions have outlived the public-health rules. Nelson says that attendance-denial notices from the White House formerly cited covid restrictions but no longer do so. Nowadays, he says, they merely cite space considerations. The White House official says that “there are a lot of considerations — space considerations, covid considerations, sometimes people don’t meet deadlines.”
Although the WHCA commonly presses officials on access problems, the letter doesn’t bear the organization’s imprimatur. WHCA President Steven Portnoy, however, signed it. “We have pressed the point repeatedly privately, and I was happy to co-sign Brian’s letter,” says Portnoy.
Don’t be surprised if the attendance-request system has a long lifespan, considering that wisdom on limiting press access gets handed down from one administration to the next. “We’re worried about the precedent for the future,” says Nelson. “In the next administration, it could be The Washington Post that finds itself essentially blacklisted from presidential events.” | 2022-07-07T13:23:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | White House reporters seek fuller access to Biden - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/white-house-reporters-access-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/white-house-reporters-access-biden/ |
The Library of Congress’s annual Summer Movies on the Lawn outdoor film series features films that have been added to the National Film Registry — movies experts have designated “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” This year’s series opens Thursday with “Top Gun.” (Shawn Miller)
Summer Movies on the Lawn: ‘Top Gun’ at the Library of Congress: Some outdoor film series draw crowds with last year’s box office hits. Not the Library of Congress’s Summer Movies on the Lawn. Only films that have been selected for the National Film Registry — a collection of movies designated “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” — are good enough to make the library’s annual festival. This year’s series has been moved from its traditional spot on the North Lawn, across from the Supreme Court, to the other side of the building at Second Street and Independence Avenue SE. It blasts off Thursday at sundown with “Top Gun,” which was added to the National Film Registry in 2015. No reservations are required, but in previous years, the grass has quickly filled with picnic blankets. After cheering for Maverick, Goose and Iceman, the weekly series moves on to the 1971 version of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (July 14), “Rocky” (July 21) and a singalong screening of “Mary Poppins” (July 28). Film begins around 8:15 p.m. Free.
Paris on the Potomac at the Ven Embassy Row hotel: Some might dismiss comparisons between D.C. and Paris — it’s unlikely that D.C. will ever show up near the top of those “most romantic cities in the world” surveys — but there are similarities between the two world capitals. The Alliance Française, which spreads French culture in D.C., ran a “Paris on the Potomac” photo competition seeking a picture that “perfectly represents the connection between Washington and Paris.” The group unveils 20 finalists, and the winner, during a champagne celebration at the Ven Embassy Row hotel. Admire the entries, start dreaming about your next trip to the City of Light, then head up to the rooftop for a free screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s classic “Breathless,” in French with subtitles. 7 p.m. Free; registration required.
Baila Thursdays Salsa Social at La Cosecha: Union Market’s La Cosecha is a destination for tacos, cocktails or coffee. Starting this week, it’s a place for dancing, too. The new Baila Thursdays offer drop-in, no-partner-necessary beginner salsa lessons for the first hour, before turning the floor over to dancers, who can practice or socialize for the rest of the night while enjoying drinks from Serenata. Going forward, the event is held on the first and third Thursdays of the month. 7 to 11 p.m. $15 for lesson and dancing; $7 for dancing from 8 to 11.
Messthetics at Franklin Park: You may have heard the Messthetics’ jagged, propulsive post-punk at Fort Reno or Black Cat. This week, you can hear the trio on your lunch break. Guitarist Anthony Pirog, bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty — yes, that’s the rhythm section from Fugazi — perform during the Live! at Franklin Park concert series. Bring your lunch to the freshly renovated park, or pick something up at one of the carryouts around the square, such as the well-reviewed Immigrant Food Plus, or the aptly named Best Sandwich Place. 12:30 p.m. Free.
Summer Festival at the National Museum of Asian Art: The second in a series of after-hours parties at the National Museum of Asian Art brings extended hours in the galleries, a curator discussion of “Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain,” live music from Indonesia’s Tim Muhibah Angklung Youth Orchestra and tunes by Les the DJ, and an outdoor screening of Bruce Lee’s “The Way of the Dragon.” Local businesses, including Rice Culture, Ruby Scoops and Please Bring Chips, sell food and cocktails. 5 to 9 p.m. Free. Registration suggested, but not required.
Blerdcon at Hyatt Regency Crystal City: Blerdcon — a Comic-Con-style festival that celebrates Black nerd culture — fills the Hyatt Regency Crystal City’s event space with tabletop games, panel discussions, cosplay meetups, anime screenings, comedy shows and more geeky fun. The weekend-long event expects to draw up to 4,000 fans, and “Drumline” star Orlando Jones is the celebrity guest (which fits with this year’s “Homecomin’ ” theme). Friday through Sunday. $65 weekend passes, $200 VIP. Ages 12 and younger free.
‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ at the Union Market Drive-In: Before Ferris Bueller begins his memorable day out in Chicago, he laments his lack of wheels more than once. “I asked for a car, I got a computer,” he says. “How’s that for being born under a bad sign?” But at Union Market’s drive-in screening of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” carless people are the winners. All tickets for automobiles are sold out, and no more vehicles — even 1961 Ferrari GTs — can fit in the parking lot. But anyone who arrives on foot can watch the movie from Neal Place, the pedestrianized street in front of Union Market, with no tickets required. Grab food from inside the market and a frozen cocktail from the Suburbia beer garden before the film begins at 9 p.m. Arrive early to stake out the best spots. 8 p.m. Free.
Breezy Supreme at Songbyrd: Is pop-punk back, or did it never really go away? Whatever the case, the oft-maligned soundtrack of youths in revolt is enjoying another moment in the sun, largely driven by artists and audiences that are more diverse than the last mostly White, mostly male go-round. Breezy Supreme is a Black alternative artist from the D.C.-Maryland area who has dabbled in noisy, nihilistic trap-rap but seems more comfortable with the scream-till-you-cry sounds of emo, punk and post-hardcore. His latest album, “Bad Decisions” (which features production by Good Charlotte’s Billy Martin), is a half-hour of raucous rockers perfect for — as he sings on “Palm Pilot” — “sitting in the background, chilling in the back seat.” And watch out live, where he’s been known to add metalcore and go-go to the pop-punk mix. 7 p.m. $18-$22.
Lotus and Water Lily Festival at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens: Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens can be a destination year-round, but the only national park dedicated to aquatic plants has its spotlight moment in July. This is peak season for brightly colored lotuses and water lilies, which are celebrated at the multiweek Lotus and Water Lily Festival throughout the park. Visitors wander dirt paths to look at gorgeous flowers in more than 40 human-made ponds, as well as turtles, dragonflies and butterflies. (Pro tip: Lotus petals open in the morning and close in the afternoon, so stop by before work or get up early on a weekend to enjoy the blossoms in their full glory.) Through the end of the month, the gardens stay open until 8 p.m. on Saturdays, instead of the usual 4 p.m. closing, and Wednesdays are also dedicated to children’s programs. Activities include live music and dance performances, tours led by park rangers, yoga, smartphone photography classes, and arts and crafts. A full calendar of events is available on the park’s website. Saturdays and Sundays through July 31. Free.
City of Alexandria Birthday Celebration at Oronoco Bay Park: On Monday, the United States celebrated its 246th birthday with music and fireworks. On Saturday, Alexandria celebrates its 273rd birthday with music, fireworks and free cupcakes. (Checkmate, U.S.A.) The return of Alexandria’s “big birthday experience” at Oronoco Bay Park includes the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra performing “film scores and patriotic favorites,” a reading by Alexandria poet laureate Zeina Azzam, and City Council members handing out cupcakes before the explosive finale over the Potomac River at 9:30 p.m. Food trucks will be parked on-site, and picnics are encouraged. To ease crowding, the city’s website notes that the display can be seen from multiple locations, including Waterfront Park and the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. 6 p.m. Free.
Port City Pub Crawl in Old Town Alexandria: Before Alexandria starts shooting off fireworks, the city’s oldest brewery encourages fans to explore bars in Old Town. Port City’s annual Pub Crawl, now in its ninth year, is “reverting to the original formula,” per the brewery. Participants carry a passport to eight bars, including Union Street Public House, Fish Market and Blackwall Hitch, collecting stamps at each location. (A purchase is not required at each bar — just find a Port City staffer to get a stamp.) Visit every bar before 6 p.m., possibly pausing to enjoy an Optimal Wit or Essential Pale Ale along the way, and collect a limited edition Pub Crawl pint glass. 1:30 to 6 p.m. Free.
Capital Fringe Festival Preview at Sandlot Georgetown: The Capital Fringe Festival is D.C.’s showcase for cutting-edge and underground theater. Sometimes that’s one-person shows, cabaret, interactive drama or site-specific performances — or none of the above. This year’s festival takes place in Georgetown, with 31 productions over two weekends. Get a preview of the festival at the Sandlot Georgetown beer garden with “rapid-fire teasers” of a majority of Fringe shows. If one of the snippets catches your eye, tickets to the full version of every production are $15. 7 p.m. Free.
Scythian at Arrowbrook Park: Arrowbrook Park hosted just two concerts during its first summer series in 2012. A decade later, the series has grown to host 90-minute sets by artists such as local Celtic/Americana mash-up Scythian — bands that are more likely to headline 9:30 Club or a major festival than perform at a free show in a Fairfax County park. Lawn chairs are welcome. The Winery at Bull Run and Paradise Springs Winery offer wine tastings and sales during events. 7:30 to 9 p.m. Free.
‘The Princess Bride’ with the NSO at the Anthem: If you watched “The Princess Bride” on repeat as a kid (or are doing so with your own kids now), this screening of the classic ’80s film at the Anthem needs to be on your radar. The National Symphony Orchestra performs Mark Knopfler’s score as the fairy tale plays on the big screen. Presumably, die-hard fans at the Anthem will shout along with the film’s most famous lines. (“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”) 8 p.m. $40-$70.
Night of 1,000 Kylies at 9:30 Club: If there’s one night of guaranteed bangers this weekend, it’s the Night of 1,000 Kylies from DJs Ed Bailey and Lemz. (Admit it: You’ve got “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” running through your brain already.) Pussy Noir, Bumper and Scout are also set to perform at this event, presented by Trade and Bent. 10 p.m. $20.
MIA: Drake vs Bad Bunny at Songbyrd: We’ve featured DJ nights dedicated to Taylor vs. Olivia and Miley vs. Gaga vs. Madonna, but Drake vs. Bad Bunny is a new one. It’s an interesting concept using two superstars who seem to get along — after all, they collaborated on “Mia” in 2018. Then again, Bad Bunny did break Drake’s record for most Spotify streams in a single day, thanks to his most recent album, “Un Verano Sin Ti,” so maybe Drizzy is a little salty about that? In any case, DJs Mathias and Whitney AbstraKt play back-to-back hits to keep the dance floor moving all night. 10 p.m. $19.20.
Let’s Skate D.C. at the Wharf: Ice skating is a go-to activity in winter at the Wharf, but now it’s time to lace up your roller skates. During select weekends this summer, check out the new Wharf Roller Rink on the Transit Pier for alfresco skating with river views. Admission is free; just show up with skates and enjoy the soundtrack, with performances from pro skaters too. Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m., Sunday from 3 to 7 p.m. Free. Adults must bring their own skates; $10 skate rentals available for children.
The Chicks at Jiffy Lube Live: The Chicks have always spoken their truth on their terms, whether singing a domestic-violence revenge fantasy (“Goodbye Earl”), kissing off small-minded small towns (“Lubbock or Leave It”) or — perhaps most famously — calling out George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq, a move that derailed the trio’s careers. So it should have come as no surprise when the band dropped “Dixie” from their moniker, as protests against racist violence erupted in the summer of 2020, and returned soon after for their first album of new music in 14 years. “Gaslighter” is informed by the betrayal, heartbreak and eventual freedom of singer Natalie Maines’s divorce, and the poppy, decidedly contemporary country album finds the band unraveled and more traveled but still ready for a fight. That’s especially true on “March March,” a slow-boiling protest song that feels particularly potent during this moment in American history. 7:30 p.m. $35-$211.
Prince George’s Shakespeare in the Parks at Fairwood Community Park Amphitheater: The Prince George’s Shakespeare in the Parks series returns this summer with outdoor, in-person performances of “Macbeth.” The rollicking, 90-minute adaptation riffs on Martin Scorsese’s film “Gangs of New York,” with stage combat scenes to keep little ones intrigued. Watch Lord and Lady Macbeth from your picnic blanket as the Scottish play bounces around parks in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties throughout July. The first performance is Sunday at 3 p.m. in Bowie; the second is Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton. Various times and locations through July 24. Free.
Romanian Weekend at the Wharf: The Embassy of Romania and New York’s Romanian Cultural Institute team up for a two-day celebration of Romanian arts, food and drink at the Wharf, with a particular focus on Maramures County, which borders Ukraine. The packed agenda features concerts by the rap group Tehno-Vrajitoarele (“Techno-Witches”) and more traditional artists, folk dances performed by Romania’s Transylvania ensemble and the local Carpathia Folk Dance Ensemble, spoken word performances, free dance lessons, pottery and craft demonstrations, Romanian wine tastings, food stalls, and displays of traditional folk costumes. Saturday from noon to 9 p.m., Sunday from 2 to 8 p.m. Free.
Txakfest at Maxwell Park Navy Yard: Maxwell Park’s Basque-inspired party features pours of the dry, semi-sparkling wine known as Txakolina; wines served in the glass pitchers called gas; Spanish ciders; and pinchos, the bite-size drinking snacks. Tickets include food and drink for three hours, as well as discounts on wine to take home. Pro tip: If you’re going to drink out of the porron, wear a dark-colored shirt. This event is at the Navy Yard location only; the Maxwell Park in Shaw has its own Txakfest on July 24. Noon to 3 p.m. $60.
Nicole Atkins at the Hamilton Live: Unable to tour in support of 2020’s “Italian Ice,” Nicole Atkins did what many performers tried to stave off boredom and stagnation: live-streaming her performances on the internet, first from her attic and then from the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, N.J. The shows inspired her to strip down the album’s songs, which she reworked and recorded as “Memphis Ice.” No matter the version, the New Jersey-bred, Nashville-based talent’s songwriting evokes both the warm nostalgia of the Brill Building era and the youthful adventures on Jersey Shore boardwalks that continue to inspire her. As she pondered about the new album’s creation, “Why can’t there be new songs that feel like the old standards?” 7:30 p.m. $20-$40.
War of the Rosés: Through the end of July, 20 restaurants and bars are turning pink summer wines into a force for good. During the War of the Rosés, businesses pledge to donate 5 percent of their rosé sales to a specific charity and earmark another 5 percent to be donated to the designated charity of the restaurant that sold the most rosé throughout the month. Some have fun with the idea: Defending champion La Jambe crafted a special rosé shot that includes rum and strawberries as part of its fundraiser for Mamatoto Village, while Etto pours a Negroni Rosato cocktail in support of SMYAL. All Purpose Shaw offers a rosé on draft for the National Organization for Women. Check out the full list of participants on the War of the Rosés website, pick a cause or favorite restaurant to support, and get your friends together for a glass of light, refreshing wine. It’s really that simple. Through July 31.
D.C. Punk Archive Library Rooftop Shows at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library: “What’s more punk than the public library?” is more than a clever T-shirt slogan — it’s a way of life at the D.C. Public Library. The D.C. Punk Archive, established in 2014, is a public collection of records, fliers, zines, set lists and artifacts dating back to 1976 that tell the story of the city’s dynamic punk and indie music scene. But the library also works to make sure punk isn’t relegated to the dusty shelf of history: This summer, it’s hosting monthly concerts on the rooftop of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown, with artists including Cinema Hearts (July 13) and Prude (Aug. 10). Shows are free, all-ages and open to anyone who shows up. What’s more punk than that? 6:30 to 8 p.m. Free. | 2022-07-07T13:54:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Outdoor movies, festivals, concerts, fireworks and other things to do in the Washington, D.C., area - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/best-things-do-dc-area-week-july-7-13/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/best-things-do-dc-area-week-july-7-13/ |
An abortion rights protester in Houston in May (Callaghan O'hare/Reuters)
The Texas law making abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy (before many women know they are pregnant) is now fully in effect. There are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, though there is one for women at risk of “substantial impairment of major bodily function.” Goodness knows what that means and how doctors will calculate the odds that a medically advisable abortion will land them in prison.
The dreadful consequences that will follow the law’s implementation underscore the state’s blatant lack of respect for women’s lives and decisions. They might also be an indication that the forced-birth crowd has overplayed its hand.
Abortions are all but impossible to obtain in Texas now. Whole Woman’s Health, one of the largest abortion providers in the state, announced it is closing its four clinics in McAllen, Fort Worth, McKinney and Austin and decamping to New Mexico, where abortion is legal.
In New Mexico, existing clinics have experienced bedlam as women not only from Texas but Oklahoma and other Southwest states with abortion bans flock to get care, resulting in a backlog of four weeks for an appointment. So women will be having abortions later in pregnancies thanks to the forced-birth law.
The Texas Tribune reports that “those four weeks could mean they would become ineligible for abortion medication in lieu of a procedure, or they could have to spend two days at the Albuquerque clinic instead of one.” If one lives in, say, Houston, the drive may take more than 10 hours, and with the cost of gas spiking, it could be prohibitively expensive.
The Tribune captures the lived experience of women in Texas with snippets from the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health in Albuquerque:
Another employee walked in to tell the receptionists not to count one woman who was supposed to be in the clinic about an hour earlier as a no-show. She was on the way, the staffer said, still driving in from Oklahoma. . . .
Considering that at least some patients have been victims of rape or incest or are otherwise suffering from medical complications, the ordeal seems even more barbaric.
The implications are profound for the most vulnerable women. If doctors and nurses are unsure about the legality of a medically advisable abortion, a woman carrying a nonviable fetus may have to go through the agony and emotional torment of giving birth. And given the statistics on maternal mortality and complications, Black and Hispanic women forced to continue their pregnancies will die in disproportionate numbers.
If forced-birth activists thought this situation would be popular, they have greatly miscalculated. A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds only 37 percent of the state’s residents support the new law; 54 percent oppose it. Contrary to the new law, the poll reports, only 8 percent and 13 percent of Texas voters would ban access to abortion in the cases of rape and incest, respectively.
Well over half favor access to abortion for women who are not married and do not want to marry, are poor and cannot afford more children, or are married and do not want more children. Texas provides no such exceptions to its ban.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a champion of forced birth, saw his lead in the gubernatorial race drop to six percentage points. Nearly 60 of residents percent say Texas is on the wrong track, up eight points since April and a new high since the poll began in 2009.
If one were to invent a regime in which pregnant women were economically, emotionally and physically abused in ways no man would ever tolerate, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a better example than Texas. It’s what happens when women are not treated as full citizens able to make decisions for themselves. | 2022-07-07T14:15:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Texans are seeing what a post-Roe world looks like. The GOP may regret it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/texas-abortion-ban-republicans-may-regret-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/texas-abortion-ban-republicans-may-regret-it/ |
New movies to stream this week: ‘This Much I Know to Be True’ and more
New movies to watch from home
Nick Cave, left, and Warren Ellis at work in the Battersea Arts Centre in London in a scene from “This Much I Know to Be True.” (Mubi)
The bulk of the music documentary “This Much I Know to Be True” features singer-songwriter Nick Cave and his frequent collaborator, musician Warren Ellis, performing songs from the studio albums “Ghosteen” (2019, by Cave and his band the Bad Seeds) and “Carnage” (2021, credited to Cave and Ellis). There’s no audience here; the footage was shot in the spring of 2021, in the middle of the pandemic. But the performances — lit theatrically, in old, empty spaces in London and Brighton — feature backup singers, a string quartet and an appearance by Marianne Faithfull, reciting the May Sarton poem “Prayer Before Work.” Supplementing these scenes — which have the feel of rehearsals or studio sessions, not quite finished but not entirely unpolished — are occasional interviews with Cave, talking about his long-standing creative partnership with Ellis or reading from his emotionally vulnerable, ask-me-anything-style online forum, the Red Hand Files. The film contains no explicit mention of the 2015 death of Cave’s 15-year-old son, Arthur, but “Ghosteen” was written in the aftermath of that tragedy, and an air of still-raw mourning hangs over the film. (In a terrible footnote, Cave’s eldest son, 31-year-old Jethro Lazenby, also died this spring, after the film was in the can.) There aren’t many talking-head interviews here. Mostly, “True” is a gift for fans of Cave’s musical storytelling and an opportunity for them to bathe in lushly gloomy atmospherics. It’s stirring, dirgelike and richly imagistic stuff. As a bonus, in a brief prologue, filmmaker Andrew Dominik (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”) takes a peek into Cave’s new ceramics studio, where he unveils an in-progress series of statuettes depicting the life of the devil on Earth. Unrated. Available on Mubi. Contains brief strong language. 105 minutes.
New York’s Chelsea Hotel — famous for providing living quarters to such members of the literary, art, music and counterculture worlds as Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Madonna and hangers-on from Andy Warhol’s Factory — is also infamous as the site of Nancy Spungen’s 1978 death, which was blamed on her boyfriend: former Sex Pistol Sid Vicious. (Their stormy, heroin-plagued relationship is related in the 1986 biopic “Sid and Nancy.” Vicious died of an overdose in 1979, while awaiting trail on a murder charge in Spungen’s death.) Some of the building’s storied past is touched upon in “Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel,” a documentary by Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt (executive-produced by Martin Scorsese), but so is its present. The building is being renovated, ruffling the feathers of some long-term tenants. The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as “a ghost story haunted by fame and celebrity, but ultimately much more grounded and universal than that.” Unrated. Available on demand. 80 minutes.
Based on Jennifer E. Smith’s 2015 young-adult novel “Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between,” the film of the same name follows Claire and Aidan (Talia Ryder and Jordan Fisher), high school sweethearts on the cusp of college who, over the course of 12 hours, revisit the milestones of their relationship in an effort to decide whether they should stay together or break up. TV-14. Available on Netflix. 84 minutes. | 2022-07-07T14:20:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New movies to stream from home this week. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/07/july-8-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/07/july-8-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ |
When the herd ‘moves,’ it is sometimes because everyone in it wants to move
Analysis by Henry Farrell
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson enters Downing Street after announcing his resignation on July 7. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)
When Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation Thursday morning, he used some striking language to explain why he was leaving. Johnson told the people gathered that he had tried to remain prime minister but had been defeated by “herd instinct,” and “when the herd moves, it moves.” This is an unusual way for a leader to explain defeat. So what was Johnson trying to say, and is there any truth to it?
Johnson isn’t just saying that his colleagues are cattle
Johnson’s choice of words was not particularly complimentary to his colleagues, but it was probably more intended to justify his own position than to insult them directly. On Wednesday, Johnson had to endure a seemingly unending succession of resignations as one government minister after another quit, to express their lack of confidence in his leadership. More than 50 members of the government (ministers, junior ministers and private secretaries) left in 48 hours, setting a record in modern political history. No leader likes to leave power, but this is a particularly humiliating way to be forced out.
Even Johnson’s enemies would grant that he is highly skilled in depicting objectively bad situations in ways that make him look good. Plausibly, he was trying to do this here. He argued that the government he led was objectively doing well. Even if it was a few points down in the polls, it was on the brink of further success. Accordingly, it was “eccentric” of his colleagues to force him to resign as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party. By his account, he tried to persuade his colleagues of this, and failed, because the herd instinct had set in. Once the herd starts moving, it is hard to get it to stop.
In Johnson’s self-flattering explanation, he is a good leader who was defeated by essentially irrational forces. Conservative ministers and members of parliament were immune to reasoned arguments, because they were all looking to each other to see what would happen next. Everyone either resigned or pushed him to leave because everyone believed that everyone was resigning or was going to resign. Nobody wanted to look like a fool, hence everyone engaged in the foolish behavior of pushing out a great leader who could have led the Conservative Party to another victory.
Herd mentality exists
Johnson is right on one thing. Herd mentality exists. Social scientists are very fond of pointing to phenomena in which human beings do things that are stupid in the long term because everyone around them is doing the same.
This could be because people may privately know what the right thing to do is but believe that it will be counterproductive to do it unless everyone else does it too. This explains, for example, why dictatorships can endure, even if everyone hates them. I know that I hate the dictatorship enough to overthrow it, but unless I know that everyone else hates the dictatorship, too, I may think that it is too risky to act on my own. As social scientists like Timur Kuran have argued, dictatorial regimes often put a lot of effort into preventing people from building up sufficient “common knowledge” about how hated the regime is. Stock market bubbles can persist, even when everyone knows they are bubbles, because no one knows exactly when they will pop, and they worry that the market can stay irrational longer than they can remain solvent betting against it.
Equally, herd phenomena can exist because people influence each other’s understanding of the world. I may not have a strong understanding myself of whether someone is a good leader, but I may be willing to trust the opinions of those around me. That probably explains why many people believe, in the face of strong contradictory evidence, that Joe Biden cheated Donald Trump out of his rightful victory in the 2020 election campaign.
In both of these situations, people can do collectively foolish things because the herd is moving. Either they see where the herd is going, and rationally decide that their best choice is to be part of it, or they irrationally believe that the herd is doing the right thing, even when it isn’t.
When the herd moves, it is sometimes right
The question is whether Johnson is right more broadly. Did his party move irrationally to get rid of an objectively good leader? The evidence suggests that it did not.
First, many of his MPs believed that he was a bad leader. Just a few weeks ago, he won a confidence vote within his party, by 211 votes for to 148 against. That is low, because many members of the government probably voted for Johnson, not because he was a good leader, but because their positions depended on his leadership. Because this vote was conducted by secret ballot, party members had every reason to do what was actually in their long term interests, regardless of what everyone else was doing. No one would punish them for voting the wrong way because no one would know.
Nor is there good evidence that Johnson would have led the party to victory. Instead, after a series of scandals about Johnson’s honesty, his party recently lost two by-elections by margins that suggested voter disgust, and a decisive swing against the Conservative Party. Wednesday’s push came after another scandal where his honesty had been called into question. When a political appointee was accused of drunken groping at a private club, Johnson’s spokesman denied that Johnson had known about previous allegations. This denial turned out to be untrue.
A more likely explanation is that Conservative ministers and MPs had concluded that Johnson was a terrible leader but that they worried about being punished for disloyalty and needed some external reason to believe that everyone else would move against him, too. The newest scandal provided the necessary common knowledge for them to take collective action. Under this explanation, herd mentality didn’t remove Johnson. Instead, it protected his leadership until, finally, it failed. | 2022-07-07T14:21:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boris Johnson blames herd instinct for pushing him out - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-says-herd-pushed-him-out-what-did-he-mean/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-says-herd-pushed-him-out-what-did-he-mean/ |
A Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 is a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), drone capable of remotely controlled or autonomous flight operations is seen at the Siauliai military air force base some 230 km (144 miles) east of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania, Friday, July 1, 2022. The Turkish company “Baykar”, which produces unmanned military aircraft, decided to donate the combat drone “Bayraktar TB2” to Lithuania. (Lithuanian Ministry of National Defense via AP) (Uncredited/Lithuanian Ministry of National Defense) | 2022-07-07T14:21:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lithuanian crowdfunding drive gets Ukraine an armed drone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lithuanian-crowdfunding-drive-gets-ukraine-an-armed-drone/2022/07/07/a20dc634-fdf5-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lithuanian-crowdfunding-drive-gets-ukraine-an-armed-drone/2022/07/07/a20dc634-fdf5-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
Rory McIlroy softens on LIV Golf, says cooperation ‘needs to happen’
Rory McIlroy now says cooperation between the PGA and European tours and LIV Golf “needs to happen.” (Seth Wenig/AP)
Rory McIlroy was speaking out against LIV Golf even before LIV Golf had a name.
Back in February, when everyone still was calling the breakaway golf circuit some sort of variation on “Saudi Golf League,” McIlroy took aim at Phil Mickelson for his willingness to overlook Saudi Arabia’s human rights record to play in the nascent league.
“I don’t want to kick someone while he’s down, obviously, but I thought they were naive, selfish, egotistical, ignorant,” McIlroy said of Mickelson’s remarks, which described the Saudis as “scary motherf------” who “killed [Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi] and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay.”
Mickelson was then in exile after his comments were unveiled, which McIlroy said was probably for the best.
“It was just very surprising and disappointing. Sad,” McIlroy said. “I’m sure he’s sitting at home sort of rethinking his position and where he goes from here.”
By now, however, it’s apparent that LIV Golf isn’t going anywhere. It’s held two events, with another set to start July 29. More big-name players — major champions Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed — have jumped ship, and others are expected to join them after next week’s British Open. The league’s Saudi backers have nearly limitless funds to throw at players — millions simply for signing up — and the PGA and European tours can only do so much tinkering with prize money and schedules and “strategic alliances.”
Svrluga: LIV Golf’s wealth is absurd. So is its product.
At some point, it seems, the opposing factions might need to see if they can work out some sort of peaceful coexistence, a point even McIlroy — LIV Golf’s harshest and most prominent critic — now appears to realize. On Wednesday, he told BBC Sport that cooperation between the rival leagues “needs to happen.” He even softened his stance on Saudi funding, of which he has been an ardent critic.
“Look, there’s so much chat about where the money’s coming from and Saudi and everything else, look — they sponsor so many other things and they’re all over sport,” he said.
“Aramco [the Saudi government’s oil company] are big sponsors of Formula One, the Aramco Ladies Series in golf, which has actually been really good for the ladies in terms of big prize funds and so on, so I understand people’s reservations with everything. But at the same time, if these people are serious about investing billions of dollars into golf, I think ultimately that’s a good thing.
“But it has to be done the right way and I think if they were to invest, having it be invested inside the existing structures.”
McIlroy once called players such as Koepka “duplicitous” after first pledging loyalty to the PGA Tour but then deciding to leave for LIV riches, and he still seems to think those players shouldn’t be allowed to come back to the PGA and European tours.
“It’s the younger guys to me that I find hard to understand because they’re losing years of their competitive career for monetary reasons. We all make decisions for different purpose. That’s fine. It’s different to what I’d do,” he said. “Is there resentment? I played in Ryder Cup teams with these guys. Is there a difference of opinion? Yes. There is a difference of opinion and I would have done things differently.
McIlroy will get a chance to hash things out with many of those players at the British Open, which has said it will not bar the LIV golfers from playing, so long as they qualify. | 2022-07-07T14:22:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Once-critical Rory McIlroy is softening his stance on LIV Golf - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/rory-mcilroy-softens-liv-golf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/rory-mcilroy-softens-liv-golf/ |
Bowie Mayor Tim Adams and state Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore City) are seeking the Democratic nomination for Maryland comptroller. (Photos courtesy of Adams and Lierman campaigns) (Adams Campaign/Lierman campaign)
The race for the Democratic nominee for Maryland comptroller pits a connected state delegate against a wealthy defense contractor — either of whom would make history if elected.
Bowie Mayor Tim Adams would be the first African American and first paraplegic to hold the statewide office, while Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore City) would be the first woman. The winner of the July 19 primary will face Harford County Executive Barry Glassman (R) in the general election.
In TV ads and interviews, Adams emphasizes his business background and executive experience, while Lierman highlights her legislative expertise and understanding of how government works. Both say they want to make changes to increase competition in large public contracts.
They are vying to replace Peter Franchot, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, who has been comptroller since 2006. The comptroller serves four-year terms and, unlike the governor, is not limited to two terms. The last time the office was open was 1998.
Lierman had the financial edge as of early June, according to the latest campaign finance reports, leaving her with $1.5 million to fund the critical final weeks of the campaign.
Adams, who is self-financing his campaign, has contributed more than $2 million and had about $965,800 of cash on hand, reports show.
Lierman also leads Adams by 28 percent to 14 percent in voter support, according to a recent Goucher College Poll, but more than half of voters — 52 percent — were undecided as of mid-June.
“It’s the most important office you’ve never heard of,” said Mileah Kromer, the director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College. “People don’t pay attention to the day-to-day of tax dollars and reimbursements of unclaimed property.”
With inflation on the rise and warnings of a recession, Lierman and Adams say accountability for the state’s finances is more important than ever.
The primary function of the state comptroller, known as the state’s chief financial officer or accountant, is to collect about $16 billion annually in taxes, including taxes on individual and business income, sales, gasoline and alcohol and tobacco. The office also handles information technology for the state, paying the state’s bills and employee paychecks. The agency has 1,100 employees and a budget of $110 million.
Lierman, 43, lives in Fells Point. She is a civil rights and disability lawyer at the Baltimore firm Brown Goldstein and Levy. Her father, Terry Lierman, is a former chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party.
Lierman supported successful bills in the latest session divesting the pension fund from Russia and requiring the board of trustees of the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System to consider the impact of climate change on investments.
She also led a coalition to create a program of community-based gun-violence prevention that, with legislation passed in Congress in late June, is poised to receive federal dollars, a development that she said gives Maryland a head start over other states.
“I’ve tried to be forward thinking to ensure that Maryland is set up in a way so that we can attract and use in a thoughtful way federal funds that are available and get them out to communities that need them,” she said.
The availability of federal infrastructure money that is available as the nation comes out of the pandemic gives the state a chance “over the next four years to change what Maryland will look like for the next 40 years, for the better,” she said.
Lierman said that if elected comptroller, she would work to minimize single-source contracts, prioritizing Maryland-based companies and investing in minority-owned businesses. She wants to modernize the office of comptroller, performing data analysis to ensure that corporations are paying their fair share in taxes and that families are taking advantage of benefits such as the earned income tax credit. She worked to create a legal division within the comptroller’s office that can write legally binding letters to advise businesses how certain tax laws apply to them.
She also wants to refocus on the comptroller’s 12 field offices to be present in the community, such as holding meetings with church groups and senior centers to talk about financial literacy and tax preparation services, ultimately building more financially resilient communities.
Lierman has touted the endorsements of high-profile Maryland Democrats including U.S. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, U.S. Rep. Jamie B. Raskin and Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks. She also has been endorsed by the Afro and The Washington Post (the paper’s editorial and news departments are separate).
While Lierman has connections among establishment Democrats, Adams enters the race from the private sector.
Adams said he has had to overcome significant barriers, including federal contracts being written to prevent new, small and minority-owned businesses from competing. As a result, Adams said, he can identify contracts that are narrowly tailored to reduce competition.
He was elected in 2018 as the first Black mayor of Bowie, a nonpartisan role. Adams, who sits on the board of Luminis Health, said he created a city public health officer to ferret out disparities affecting underserved communities and prioritize the care of senior citizens, a key role amid the coronavirus.
Adams said that an accident 15 years ago left him with a spinal cord injury but strengthened his faith and gave him a chance to help others. As mayor, he personally visited city facilities to make sure they were wheelchair accessible.
“I’m someone who not only came through those barriers because of my race and socioeconomic status, but I had an accident, I became a paraplegic. That didn’t stop me, that didn’t stop me from running my business,” he said.
Adams said 30 years in business, legislating as mayor and his philanthropic pursuits have prepared him to be comptroller because he knows “what it really means to make payroll” and understands that diversity creates more competition, resulting in “more innovation and lower prices.”
As comptroller, he said, he would initiate a top-down audit of all tax credits, determine which corporations are not paying their fair share and hold them accountable. He said the high number of undecided voters does not intimidate him.
“Voters are just starting to tune in,” Adams said. “When they read about my life, they’ll understand I’ve overcome long odds my entire life.”
Adams said he is largely self-funding his campaign to ensure that voters hear his qualifications and said he doesn’t come from the “political elite.” He touted the endorsements of Del. Darryl Barnes (D), the chair of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, and Melony G. Griffith, the president pro tempore of the Maryland Senate.
“I’ve led a large organization not only through the pandemic but through two recessions,” he said. “This is why you need an experienced executive leader. … I don’t have to learn on the job. I know how to navigate tough times. I’ve done it.” | 2022-07-07T15:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democratic primary for Maryland comptroller could be historic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/maryland-comptroller-primary-lierman-adams/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/maryland-comptroller-primary-lierman-adams/ |
Derek Chauvin faces federal sentence for Floyd’s killing
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin addresses the court at his state sentencing hearing on June 25, 2021, in Minneapolis. (AP)
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted last year of murdering George Floyd, faces sentencing Thursday on a separate federal charge that he violated Floyd’s civil rights when he pressed his knees into the man’s neck and back and ignored his cries for help.
The plea deal, which Chauvin signed, recommended a federal sentence of 20 to 25 years. Last month, prosecutors pressed U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson, who is overseeing the case, to sentence Chauvin to the full 25 years, arguing the former officer’s actions were “coldblooded” and that he had abused his power as a police officer by failing to recognize the “humanity” of the person beneath his knees.
In a separate motion, Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s attorney, requested a 20-year sentence, pointing to his client’s “acceptance of his wrongdoing” and that he is already serving a 22½-year state sentence for Floyd’s murder. He also spoke of Chauvin’s “remorse for the harm that has flowed from his actions” and suggested Chauvin would further address the court Thursday on that subject to make that remorse “apparent.”
“Mr. Chauvin is ready to face the court’s judgment and continue to atone for his wrongdoing,” Nelson wrote.
As part of the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to allow the former officer to serve his federal sentence concurrently with this state murder sentence. The deal would also allow Chauvin, who has been held in solitary confinement at a state prison east of St. Paul since his April 2021 conviction, to be transferred to a federal prison where Chauvin is likely to be safer — though in asking for a lesser sentence, Nelson argued that his client is likely to be a target no matter where he goes because of the notoriety surrounding the case.
But Chauvin’s sentence and the conditions of his confinement will ultimately be determined by Magnuson, who earlier this year oversaw the federal civil rights trial against the other three former officers who were at the scene of Floyd’s death. A jury convicted J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane and Tou Thao of violating Floyd’s civil rights by failing to render medical aid. Kueng and Thao were also found guilty of failing to intervene with Chauvin.
All three are still awaiting sentencing in that case. Kueng and Thao also face an Oct. 24 state trial on charges of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter. In May, Lane pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge in Floyd’s death as part of a plea deal to avoid another trial. He’s scheduled to be sentenced that in case Sept. 21.
What Magnuson ultimately decides on Chauvin’s sentencing will have a direct impact on the punishment of the other officers. Last week, prosecutors suggested Lane should face a sentence of up to 6½ years in prison for failing to render medical aid to Floyd. In a separate motion, they said Kueng and Thao should face a “substantially higher” sentence than Lane but less than what the judge decides Chauvin should serve.
Attorneys for Kueng, Lane and Thao have pressed the judge for leniency and suggested they are likely to appeal the jury’s decision. But observers are closely watching how the legal maneuvering could affect future legal proceedings, including whether Kueng and Thao reach plea deals to avoid state trial in Minneapolis, a city where many residents remain deeply traumatized by Floyd’s death.
Chauvin’s legal jeopardy is far from over. As part of the December plea deal, the former officer also pleaded guilty to a second federal charge alleging he violated the civil rights of a 14-year-old by hitting him with a flashlight and kneeling on him during a 2017 arrest. John Pope, who is now 18, lost consciousness at one point during the encounter.
Chauvin will be sentenced in that case later, though prosecutors have implied they may drop that charge depending on the outcome of Chauvin’s sentencing in the Floyd civil rights case. But in May, Pope filed a separate federal civil rights lawsuit against Chauvin and the city of Minneapolis, arguing that police leaders turned a blind eye to Chauvin’s bad behavior and use of inappropriate force.
Members of Floyd’s family are expected to attend Thursday’s hearing — though it’s unclear if they will be given an opportunity to speak. Meanwhile, Chauvin’s attorney filed what he described as numerous letters of support requesting leniency for the former officer; all were filed under seal.
One letter, quoted by Nelson in a motion for a lesser sentence, was written by a relative identified as “K.C.”, the initials of Chauvin’s ex-wife, Kellie, who filed for divorce from the former officer the day he was formally charged with murder in Floyd’s death but has continued to attend court hearings.
“A lengthy incarceration will not change the outcome of what happened on May 25th[,] 2020,” K.C. wrote. She asked the judge to consider “mercy for Derek” and to “allow him to come home to be with his family and rebuild his life.” | 2022-07-07T15:16:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Derek Chauvin faces federal sentence for Floyd’s killing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/derek-chauvin-federal-sentencing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/derek-chauvin-federal-sentencing/ |
Timothy Loehmann, officer who killed Tamir Rice, hired by Pa. town
Timothy Loehmann, the officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice in 2014, was sworn in as the lone officer in a small Pennsylvania town this week. (Screenshot via YouTube/WEWS)
The former Cleveland officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 was hired as the lone police officer in a small Pennsylvania town this week, nearly eight years after the boy’s killing helped spur nationwide protests over law enforcement’s use of deadly force against Black people.
Timothy Loehmann was sworn in on Tuesday in Tioga, Pa., Borough President Steve Hazlett wrote on social media. The vote by the borough’s council came after the Williamsport Sun-Gazette and local media were told the name of the officer. A photo and caption from Hazlett on Facebook clarified that the officer hired to represent the borough of about 700 people was Loehmann, who was fired from the Cleveland Police Department in 2017 for lying on his job application but faced no criminal charges connected to Rice’s death. Rice was carrying a pellet gun at a playground when he was shot and killed by Loehmann in November 2014.
“Timothy Loehmann is your new Tioga police officer,” Hazlett wrote.
The hiring has sparked protests and anger in recent days, including from Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, who told Cleveland.com that the decision was “a big mistake.”
Subodh Chandra, the attorney for Rice’s family and his estate, told The Washington Post on Thursday that he was “shocked and yet not surprised.”
“Timothy Loehmann has shown a level of shameless determination to rub his conduct into the faces of the family of Tamir Rice and the rest of the world,” Chandra said. “The level of bad judgment here by the Tioga Borough Council is really unfathomable, and I hope they will be held to account.”
Tioga Borough Mayor David Wilcox said he was not made aware of Loehmann’s background when the members of the borough council found the officer and agreed to hire him. Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer he was not given the chance to review Loehmann’s résumé, and that the Rice case never came up at any point during the process. The details surrounding the review process for Loehmann remain unclear.
“I was under the impression that there was a thorough background check into him, that he didn’t have any issues,” Wilcox told the outlet. “I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour. But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish.”
Wilcox posted a video to Facebook on Thursday of a recent borough council meeting that shows a member saying he was motioning “to hire a police officer by the name of Timothy — I still can’t pronounce that name.” He then spelled out “Lochmann,” saying the officer would be hired “under the condition that he passes all the physicals and everything accordingly,” according to video.
“Why were we NOT made aware of the last name change?” Wilcox wrote.
Neither Hazlett nor a representative with Tioga’s police department immediately responded to requests for comment early Thursday.
Loehmann’s hiring comes days after another fatal police shooting in Ohio has left the state reeling. Police in Akron released body-camera footage Sunday showing officers firing dozens of rounds at Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who left his car while fleeing a traffic stop last week. Akron Police Chief Stephen Mylett said he did not know the exact number of rounds fired at Walker but said that the medical examiner’s report indicates more than 60 wounds on Walker’s body. Eight officers involved in the shooting have been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of probes by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Akron Police Office of Professional Standards and Accountability.
More than 1,040 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year, according to data tracked by The Post. Although half of those people were White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of Whites. Hispanics are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.
Loehmann’s hiring in Tioga — more than 300 miles east of Cleveland and only a few miles from New York state — is the latest example of a police officer getting rehired after being fired elsewhere. A 2017 Post report found that although the nation’s largest police departments have fired at least 1,881 officers for misconduct that betrayed the public’s trust during a period of more than a decade, departments were forced to reinstate more than 450 officers after appeals required by union contracts.
On Nov. 22, 2014, two Cleveland police officers — Loehmann and Frank Garmback — came to a park in response to a 911 call about a man with a gun. Rice was playing with a pellet gun that officials have said was indistinguishable from a regular pistol. Although the caller told the dispatcher that this person was possibly a child playing with a toy, that was not relayed to the officers, who handled the call as an “active shooter” situation, authorities said.
After Ohio authorities investigated the case, a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Loehmann in December 2015. Loehmann was ultimately fired from the department for not disclosing on his job application that he had left his previous position in Independence, Ohio, due to “an inability to emotionally function” as an officer. Garmback was suspended. The city of Cleveland agreed to pay Rice’s relatives $6 million as part of a civil settlement.
The Justice Department announced in late 2020 that it had formally closed its federal investigation into the police shooting of Rice. In announcing the decision to close the case, the Justice Department said that it had conducted an “extensive examination of the facts in this tragic event,” but that career prosecutors in the department concluded “the evidence is insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Loehmann willfully violated Tamir Rice’s constitutional rights.” The federal investigation also examined whether the officer and his partner had obstructed justice, and it concluded that there was nothing to pursue.
Justice Dept. closes investigation of Tamir Rice killing
“Everything came back clear that he didn’t have any bad remarks on his record at all,” he told the TV station. “That’s the way it was presented to the rest of the council and myself.”
But when the news got out that the officer who fatally shot Rice in 2014 was hired in Tioga, dozens of residents protested the decision on Wednesday. One demonstrator told the Sun-Gazette that the circumstances in which Loehmann was hired were “just wrong.”
“I think there was a lot of wrong information given and a lot of people didn’t know what they were going,” the man told the newspaper.
Wilcox has vowed not to schedule any hours for Loehmann until there is a resolution, according to WEWS. Chandra told The Post that while he’s grateful that residents and leaders are upset with the hiring, Loehmann resurfacing hundreds of miles away in Pennsylvania has caused “great suffering to the Rice family all over again.”
“It’s difficult to imagine that the citizens of Tioga and surrounding communities will tolerate a law enforcement officer who represents such a grave risk to them,” Chandra said. “So my hope is that the officials will do what is right.”
Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report. | 2022-07-07T15:16:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Timothy Loehmann, officer who killed Tamir Rice, hired by tiny Pennsylvania town of Tioga - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/tamir-rice-timothy-loehmann-officer-hired/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/tamir-rice-timothy-loehmann-officer-hired/ |
Jerry Harris, seen here at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in February 2020, was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in prison. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Jerry Harris, former star of the Netflix docuseries “Cheer,” was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in prison for requesting explicit photos and soliciting sex from teenagers at cheerleading competitions, according to the Associated Press.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah directed Harris to view the sentence as “an expression of the seriousness of your crimes, tempered with some hope that all is not lost for you or for your victims, and that in the future some healing can occur,” the AP reported, noting that the prison time would be followed by eight years under court supervision.
Attorneys for Harris, 22, said in a statement that their client was “exceedingly grateful for Judge Shah’s recognition of his humanity, worthiness, and rehabilitative potential.” They added that Harris had “nothing but empathy and remorse for the people he has harmed and hopes that today’s proceeding provided them some peace.”
The statement also included remarks Harris made Wednesday in court, where he thanked his supporters and apologized to his victims for “all the trauma my abuse has caused you.”
“I pray that your suffering comes to an end and that these proceeding[s] provide you with needed closure,” he said. “I am ashamed as I know that I took advantage of your youth and weakness. I was wrong and selfish. I caused you harm and I do not blame anyone. I regret my decisions and I am deeply sorry.”
Harris rose to fame due to the immense popularity of the documentary series “Cheer,” which premiered in early 2020 and followed a nationally ranked college cheerleading team in Corsicana, Tex. He was arrested in September of that year on a federal child pornography charge. The FBI also searched his Naperville, Ill., residence.
Harris was arrested after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the 13-year-old and his twin brother. They both appeared earlier this year in the second season of “Cheer,” in which they detailed Harris’s behavior toward them.
In February, Harris pleaded guilty to two felony charges against him. His attorneys stated that Harris wanted “to take responsibility for his actions and publicly convey his remorse for the harm he has caused the victims in this case.” | 2022-07-07T15:42:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former ‘Cheer’ star Jerry Harris gets 12 years in child pornography case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/07/jerry-harris-cheer-sentencing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/07/jerry-harris-cheer-sentencing/ |
Mortgage rates dropped to 5.30 percent this week after reaching nearly 6 percent in recent weeks. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle/AP)
Mortgage rates headed downward for the second week in a row, giving home buyers a reprieve after a dramatic climb to nearly 6 percent that will probably continue.
According to Freddie Mac data released Thursday, the 30-year fixed rate dropped to an average of 5.30 percent from 5.70 percent last week with an average 0.8 point. The average was 2.90 percent a year ago.
The average for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 4.45 percent from 4.83 percent with an average 0.8 point. The average was 2.20 percent a year ago.
The average for the five-year adjustable-rate mortgage decreased to 4.19 percent from 4.50 percent with an average 0.4 point. The ARM was 2.52 percent a year ago. ARMs, which were 9.5 percent of applications last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), have become more popular with borrowers, doubling since late 2021, when rates were lower.
Still, Hale said, anyone looking to buy a house in the next year or so should expect mortgage rates to remain above 5 percent.
“Maybe rates will dip to 4 percent in two or three years, but a lot can happen between now and then, so it’s difficult to predict,” she said.
“Over the last two weeks, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped by half a percent, as concerns about a potential recession continue to rise,” Khater said. “While the drop provides minor relief to buyers, the housing market will continue to normalize if home price growth materially slows due to the combination of low housing affordability and an expected economic slowdown.”
The potential risk of recession influenced mortgage rates last week and could affect future Fed interest rate hikes, according to Paul Thomas, Zillow’s vice president for capital markets.
“Investors are pricing in more risk of economic slowdown and a potential recession, which may slow the pace of future interest rate hikes at the Federal Reserve,” Thomas said in a statement. “Economic indicators released last week pointed to slower growth in consumer spending and manufacturing in the first quarter and prior month, with results below market expectations. This furthered the recession risks being priced in markets. Equity markets declined and bond markets rallied, driving the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield below 3 percent for the first time since early June.”
“Purchase activity is slowing down as shoppers contend with both scant home inventory and affordability challenges from rising rates and home prices,” Thomas said. “Investors will be focused on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes and speakers for any further hints on Fed actions to tame inflation, along with jobs and employment data releases later in the week.”
Mortgage applications for home purchases declined 4 percent during the week ending July 1 compared to the previous week when seasonally adjusted and were down 17 percent compared to that same week in 2021. Refinancing applications were 78 percent lower than one year earlier. | 2022-07-07T15:51:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The decline in mortgage rates is only a reprieve, say experts who expect them to climb again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/07/mortgage-rates-this-week/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/07/mortgage-rates-this-week/ |
Copies of the Evening Standard newspaper, leading with the story that Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, in London on July 7. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)
It is still possible for a Western democratic leader to be held accountable for lying too much? That is the implication of Boris Johnson’s resignation as prime minister of Britain on Thursday, and it’s a hopeful one. Mr. Johnson, elected in a 2019 landslide, once seemed headed for a long career in Britain’s highest office. Yet he could not quite control a habit for shading the truth he first notoriously exhibited in the early 1990s as a Brussels-based journalist writing inaccurate European Union-bashing articles. Mr. Johnson survived a scandal over boozy parties at his official 10 Downing Street residence during Britain’s covid-19 lockdowns. This week, however, he could not withstand a wave of resignations by senior members of his Conservative party government. They were angered at revelations he had falsely denied knowing about sexual misconduct allegations against someone he appointed to a top position.
There is no obvious successor to Mr. Johnson, though there is an obvious governing agenda for him or her: It is to conduct the prime ministership in a manner becoming the office while correcting Mr. Johnson’s course on Brexit and revitalizing the British economy. The country’s annual productivity growth between 2009 and 2019 was the second slowest in the G-7, ahead only of Italy, according to the Economist. Equally clear is what must not change: Britain’s steadfast support of Ukraine, which was, to paraphrase Mr. Johnson’s hero, Winston Churchill, the ousted prime minister’s finest hour. Fortunately, that policy remains politically popular and strategically wise; there seems little chance that Britain’s next leader would abandon it. There is time for a new British leader to get the country back on track, but it would help if he or she acts as if there isn’t. | 2022-07-07T15:52:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Boris Johnson’s resignation gives Britain a chance for a fresh start - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-resignation-britain-fresh-start/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-resignation-britain-fresh-start/ |
Presidential honor guards salute in front of the coffin of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse during the funeral at his family home in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, on July 23, 2021. (Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters)
A year after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation is in an anarchic spiral fueled by political paralysis, economic meltdown and out-of-control gang violence that has exposed the U.S.-backed government as impotent. Despite widespread calls for a Haitian-led solution to the disintegration, no such way out seems imminent or realistic in the face of pervasive lawlessness. Without a more resolute policy by the United States, the United Nations and other international allies, the centrifugal forces tearing the country apart are likely to accelerate, along with its people’s suffering.
The immediate problem is a breakdown in security on the streets of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, and elsewhere. Massacres, rapes, shootouts and attacks — including a recent one on the nation’s largest courthouse by a notorious criminal gang — have terrorized Haitians, hastened the economy’s collapse and contributed to an outflow of refugees. Amid the chaos, the prospect of elections or any other means of establishing a legitimate government looks fanciful.
In the meantime, the country is stuck with a nominal leader who is a suspect in his predecessor’s killing on July 7,2021. Prime Minister Ariel Henry, the most prominent of a political class of unelected officials propped up by the Biden administration and other Western governments, fired key officials investigating Mr. Moïse’s murder, including a prosecutor who wanted him charged in connection with the crime. The fact that the assassination remains unsolved, despite ongoing investigations in Haiti and the United States, is a further symptom of the impunity that has been a toxic feature of Haitian justice — or rather the lack of it — for decades.
The byproduct of Haiti’s institutional and security pandemonium is the death rattle of an economy that was already supine following years of misrule compounded by the pandemic. Gross domestic product, the lowest in the region on a per capita basis, shrank by 3.3 percent in 2020 and a further 1.8 percent in 2021. And, according to the World Bank, whatever modest gains the county had made in lifting people from poverty have been wiped out in the past couple of years. Over half the country’s more than 11 million people live on less than $3.20 per day.
Those stark statistics should not obscure the underlying human misery. What passed for normal life a few years ago is now impossible for many Haitians. Schools have closed, businesses are shuttered and a trip to see relatives or get groceries is perilous given the ever-present risk of kidnappings for ransom. Haitians who have the means to leave the country are doing so in growing numbers. Some make it to the United States, generally without documents. Many of them are caught and deported by U.S. authorities — roughly 25,000 were sent home on more than 230 flights in the past nine months.
Deportation is a poor substitute for policy. Washington retains substantial influence in Haiti, and could exert it by mustering international support for steps to rein in rampant violence, jumpstart prosecutions in connection with the Moïse assasination, and promote a transition to a government with some semblance of legitimacy. Lacking that, Haiti’s torments will only grow. | 2022-07-07T15:52:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A year after Jovenel Moïse’s assassination, Haiti is in turmoil - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/jovenel-moise-haiti-assassination-anniversary-turmoil/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/jovenel-moise-haiti-assassination-anniversary-turmoil/ |
Why Britain’s brush with democratic collapse isn’t comparable to ours
Prime Minister Boris Johnson addresses the nation as he announces his resignation outside 10 Downing Street on July 7, 2022, in London. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
It could have been far worse.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement on Thursday morning that he would resign as leader of the Conservative Party concluded days of extraordinary resistance to the idea that he should sacrifice his position. Johnson’s decision was due to an accretion of countless scandals and questions, but was most immediately triggered by his office’s belated admission that he’d been informed about groping accusations against an ally before offering that person, Chris Pincher, a senior position in the party. And so, once the Conservatives have chosen a new leader, Johnson has pledged to step down as leader of the U.K. government.
A day or two ago, it wasn’t clear this succession would be so orderly.
“Theoretically, he can hang on almost indefinitely, until he loses half of his party,” former Conservative member of parliament Rory Stewart explained in an interview on CNN earlier this week. “It’s not like the American system. There isn’t an impeachment process that can be followed in this way.” Stewart worried that Johnson would “try to cling on like a cartoon banana republic dictator.”
When Stewart refers to “losing half of his party,” he’s referring to a process that Johnson narrowly survived a month ago. Then, members of the Conservative Party in Parliament held a vote of no confidence in his leadership, with Johnson surpassing the 180-vote margin to retain his position. Established rules hold that prime ministers couldn’t face two such votes in a year, meaning that even as the Pincher scandal emerged, Johnson would be immune from ouster. (A party committee had planned to consider whether to change that grace period next week, but ultimately decided against it, apparently in part because Johnson’s resignation was expected.) Even as top officials within his government began resigning by the dozens, there was no mechanism in place for anyone but Johnson to remove himself from his position. (Though Queen Elizabeth II technically retains the power to fire the prime minister, no British monarch in the modern era has removed one from power.)
To British observers, this was scandalous, a threat to the nation’s expectations and political norms. In a report for the BBC, editor Lewis Goodall marveled that Johnson and his team might hang on despite both “the ministerial code and the civil service code … have embedded within them that the prime minister and his spokespeople have to tell the truth.” Yet still he seemed poised to retain power!
For American observers, there was a familiar aspect to all of this. Boris Johnson has long been compared to Donald Trump, from his tonsorial eccentricity to his overheated opposition to past expectations. To see Johnson then press against the constraints of his power after it was obvious to nearly everyone else that he’d lost his legitimacy? Yeah, seemed about right.
The scenarios are obviously incommensurate in important ways. Johnson’s power is far more a function of handshake expectations than rigorous boundaries. It was not the case that he’d lost an election and was hanging on, as was the case with Trump. The reality is that Johnson had far more grounds to try to retain power than did Trump in the wake of the 2020 election.
What’s critical, though, is the difference in what happened as that pressure was applied.
Questions about Johnson have festered for months, leading to that no-confidence vote in early June. At that point, 148 Conservatives voted against Johnson — a remarkable rebuke from his own party and one that Trump never faced. Trump was impeached for having demonstrably tried to leverage governmental power to aid his reelection bid … and just one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), voted to impeach or convict. He was impeached a second time for his obvious contributions to the violence that unfolded during the Capitol riot, and fewer than 20 House and Senate Republicans joined that condemnation.
Only after the Capitol riot, when Trump’s imminent departure from the presidency was firmly cemented in the public understanding, did a number of officials from his administration announce their resignations. For some, the day’s violence was the obvious trigger. But everything that contributed to that violence — the dishonesty about election fraud, the amplification of calls to show up in D.C. — were clear for weeks prior, as was Trump’s broader effort to subvert the election results. Attorney General William P. Barr was one of only a few senior staffers to resign before all of this unfolded. When he did so, he offered up a public letter of sweeping praise for the president he’d served.
Trump enjoys something Johnson didn’t: a fervent cult of personality that’s intertwined with party. Johnson’s approval among Conservatives was about evenly split at the end of June, according to YouGov polling, with about half saying he was doing poorly as prime minister. Even as Trump endured far more crises and scandals, his Republican base stayed loyal to him, demanding at least implicitly that other Republican officials and politicians do the same.
It was that pattern that was so important to Trump’s effort to retain power. He’d spent five-plus years reinforcing a system in which millions of Americans were primarily loyal to him and saw him, not the party or the government, as the thing to be protected. Then, as his power was threatened, he mobilized that system to his benefit. In part because the assignation of prime minister doesn’t involve a similarly direct election of an individual, Johnson didn’t have that same system in place.
None of this should be seen as particularly comforting to our friends in Britain, however. The indignant response to Johnson’s stubbornness was littered with warning signs we might have observed in 2016 or 2017. A member of the media marveling at how often an elected leader makes dishonest claims (as that BBC commentator did) would earn belly laughs in post-Trump America; to the BBC, it’s still a novelty. That the response to that dishonesty was to point to honor-system rule books bounding behavior is similarly something that Americans have given up relying upon in the past five years. We thought we had effective norms in place, too.
Unless he changes his mind, Johnson will be prime minister for some time until a new party leader is named. His resignation feels at this point less like Trump’s ouster than former New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s announcement last year: scheduled — but also angry and petulant. Seen by both as a brief detour from power, however accurately. To that point, though, both Johnson’s and Cuomo’s resignations were also a function of former allies unworried about repercussions.
The U.K.'s crisis was less stark than our own. But it should take this moment as a point of warning. Honesty and honor are insufficient fences for power. | 2022-07-07T15:52:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Britain’s brush with democratic collapse isn’t comparable to ours - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/why-britains-brush-with-democratic-collapse-isnt-comparable-ours/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/why-britains-brush-with-democratic-collapse-isnt-comparable-ours/ |
Deputy Labor Secretary discusses the future of work and the role of technology
The increasing use of technology in the workplace has rapidly boosted productivity and fostered team building with new ways of communicating. From automation to artificial intelligence to machine learning, employers and employees are adapting as they navigate the future of work. On Thursday, July 14 at 12:00 p.m. ET, Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su joins Washington Post Live to discuss the impact of these new technologies on our workplace and our workforce.
Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su
Presenting Sponsor AARP | 2022-07-07T15:52:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Deputy Labor Secretary discusses the future of work and the role of technology - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/14/deputy-labor-secretary-discusses-future-work-role-technology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/14/deputy-labor-secretary-discusses-future-work-role-technology/ |
UNITED NATIONS — As the U.N. Security Council prepares to vote Thursday on humanitarian aid deliveries to rebel-held northwest Syria from Turkey, Russia agreed to continue such deliveries but only for six months — not a year, as many U.N. Security Council members, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and more than 30 non-governmental groups want. | 2022-07-07T15:53:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia proposes 6-month cross-border aid renewal for Syria - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-proposes-6-month-cross-border-aid-renewal-for-syria/2022/07/07/2ce6225c-fe04-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-proposes-6-month-cross-border-aid-renewal-for-syria/2022/07/07/2ce6225c-fe04-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
Berdette Thomas, 72, delivers food donations from Feed the Family Pantry to a man in Washington on July 3, 2022. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post/Amanda Voisard/for The Washington Post)
Life is calmer on this side of town for Stanley Tucker and his 10-year-old grandson.
Their new D.C. neighborhood has cafes and restaurants, a grocery store. They’re across the street from a gleaming new college campus building.
They moved to Northwest D.C. when swankier apartment buildings along Connecticut Avenue — for decades the avenue of apartment-dwelling young professionals, or the pieds-a-terre of retired federal workers — increasingly welcomed local and federal housing vouchers.
Tucker, a 67-year-old Air Force veteran who has endured the fire-hazard, broken-down places that long have been home to Section 8 subsidy holders, now lives in a $2,300-a-month apartment thanks to his voucher, which covers about 85 percent of the rent. “It’s real nice,” Tucker said.
The stated intent of the vouchers — an alternative to brick-and-mortar public housing — has long been choice and mobility, but it hasn’t always worked out that way.
Tucker’s problem, now, is that the neighborhood is still designed for the folks who can afford that $2,300-a-month rent. And the wine-and-cheese shop, the Giant with an extensive probiotic yogurt selection and the gourmet market serving squid ink paella aren’t in Tucker’s budget.
Seeing a need, some enterprising volunteers opened a food bank. And just a year in, it’s about to be shut down.
The change in the Ward 3 demographic has led to some epic and uncomfortable clashes as D.C.’s canvas bag-toting, blue-voting, beaujolais crowd is sharing Zip codes and even doormen with both the Stanley Tuckers of D.C. and folks with mental illness who came straight from a shelter or the streets. Some new residents of the Van Ness part of Connecticut Avenue have lobbed furniture off their balconies and bathed in the lobby fountains.
This continues to jangle the ward, from a recent community meeting where a retired social worker described seeing a child dangle from the balcony above to recent primary debates, where candidates pointed to the change in demographics as an explanation for increasing crime.
But for the folks like Tucker, finding safer housing and a gentler neighborhood solves just a part of his problem. He needs access to health care, food subsidies and social services.
This became clear to Judith Ingram and others who worked with Ward 3’s Mutual Aid program.
Ingram’s the type of person who figured she should do something productive with the extra time she gained in her day when her federal job went remote and she didn’t lose two hours to a commute.
With Mutual Aid, she helped deliver groceries to needy or immobile seniors in the Ward 3 neighborhood, a leafy enclave that’s also home to American University and the University of the District of Columbia.
And she quickly saw there was a greater need. By the time the pandemic reached its second year, Ingram and another volunteer, Barbara Ferris, hammered out a deal to use the back two rooms of a shuttered drugstore on Connecticut Avenue that belongs to the University of the District of Columbia as home base for a food pantry.
“We opened in May 2021 and served 62 households that first weekend,” Ingram said. “Our weekly numbers quickly hit 100 households, and by last week our 100 percent volunteer-run pantry had hit the 118 -household mark.”
The line last Sunday was all the way down Van Ness Avenue when they opened at 1 p.m.
“Just pick one, baby,” Cheryl Barnes, 57, told one of her three grandkids, as they debated which cereal to put in their cart.
“There’s nothing in the way of services around here,” said Barnes, who lives a block from the pantry. “So they’ve really helped me get by when I’m taking care of my grandbabies.”
An Audi passed by with the color and shine of a cherry sour.
“I lost my job during the pandemic,” said Eric Ferguson, 46, a studio engineer who found new employment but is still struggling to catch up on debt. The food pantry has helped him stay afloat. “A lot of people are struggling, and you don’t know it.”
There was a large family of Afghan refugees, a mother with nine children, and a guy who rode a giant tricycle and fashioned a pinstripe suit jacket into a short-sleeved overcoat.
“There is a need here, no doubt about it,” said Berdette Thomas, 72, one of the volunteers at the food pantry who is frustrated with the lack of resources available to struggling folks in this part of town.
“Housing first, yes. It starts with a roof over your head,” Thomas said. “But there have to be follow-up services. And they’re just not here.”
The food pantry was a start. But it may not be a solution for long.
“UDC has told us to vacate the space by the end of July and said they have no other space to offer,” Ingram said.
They’ve sent over another memorandum of understanding to the university, seeking to extend their time in the space. They sent letters to university President Ronald Mason Jr.
The university spokesman has not returned my requests for comment on this, but since I’ve been asking, Mason’s office set up a meeting with Ingram and Ferris.
Supporters set up a petition with Change.org.
Ingram is going to emphasize the importance of their location, that Ward 3 needs a service like theirs and that food insecurity may not be easy to see but is growing more dire every year.
“This highlights that as we recover from this pandemic, we have to be incredibly deliberate as a community to ensure a more equitable and inclusive recovery,” Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, said after their shocking report last month showed how many folks in the D.C. area struggled to access food in the past year.
Food insecurity is growing
“One in 3 residents of the greater Washington area needed support in the last year getting good food on their table,” Muthiah said. “There’s no way to get around how profound and staggering that is.”
It’s a problem that has to be solved one block at a time, in every city ward. | 2022-07-07T16:52:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A food pantry that popped up to meet D.C. needs is losing its home - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/food-bank-udc-closing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/food-bank-udc-closing/ |
How Brexit Winnows the Candidates to Succeed Boris Johnson
Liz Truss. Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Though the phrase “extraordinary” is overused in this age of 24-hour news, the past couple of days in British politics certainly lived up to the description. The Conservative Party imploded before our eyes — more than 50 ministers resigned within 48 hours. At one point, they were resigning so fast that you couldn’t boil a cup of tea without a couple more going. Entire government departments were left empty — and still the prime minister held onto office, his fingernails embedded in the Downing Street window frames.
Boris Johnson insisted that he had a personal mandate to stay in power despite the fact that, under the British system, voters vote for their local MPs not the prime minister. He desperately appointed new people in a vain attempt to fill the multiplying vacancies. He even added to the confusion by sacking one of his senior cabinet ministers, Michael Gove — with an unnamed No. 10 Downing Street source reportedly calling him a “snake” — giving Gove the unusual distinction of being the only person who was sacked when everyone else was busy resigning.
This tragedy-cum-farce is finally over. Johnson has announced that he is prepared to resign and make room for a new leader of the Conservative Party who automatically becomes prime minister. This still leaves politics in a mess. At the moment, Britain simply doesn’t have a working government because entire departments don’t have any ministers. Johnson says that he wants to remain in office as a caretaker prime minister until the party has found a replacement (Theresa May remained in office for three months after she resigned). But is he the right man to run an interim government given that so many ministers resigned on the grounds that they could no longer serve under a man with such terrible character flaws? And if he isn’t the right man, who is the right person? Britain’s famously unwritten constitution makes no provision for what to do in such bizarre circumstances.
The party establishment will have plenty to do sorting out these problems. But, for the general public, there is only one question that matters: who will replace Johnson? The list of candidates is likely to be unusually long. Two threw their hats into the ring even before Johnson bowed to the inevitable and declared that he’s resigning: Suella Braverman, the attorney general for England and Wales, and Steve Baker, one of the leaders of the so-called Spartan faction of hard-line Brexiteers.
Why the coming avalanche? Partly because of the old saw that every politician sees a future leader in the mirror when they wake up in the morning — a déformation professionelle that has been rendered even more rampant in the age of Twitter and Instagram. But the bigger reason is that the long shadow of Brexit.
Brexit scrambled the party’s internal promotion system by creating an ideological test for government jobs. A generation of competent people such as Rory Stewart was driven out of politics because they were on the “wrong” side of the Brexit debate. Gargoyles such as Jacob Rees-Mogg were absurdly over-promoted because they were on the “right” side. Brexit also created an ideological explosion that has left the party unsure what it stands for. Are the Conservatives the party of small government and low taxes? Or the party of the struggling working class that requires a helping hand from the state? Johnson infuriated his party not just by lying repeatedly but also by trying to be all things to all men — calling for tax cuts while increasing expenditure. Now the various ideological factions will have a chance to field their own candidates and lay out their vision of the future.
This process is complicated by the fact that candidates have to appeal to two constituencies: MPs and party members. MPs are responsible for producing a short-list of two names who then go to the party members. This creates lots of opportunities for tactical voting as MPs try to prevent potentially popular candidates from reaching the short-list. The party’s 200,000 or so members then vote on who they want to be party leader and hence prime minister. These members are richer, whiter, older and, by definition, much more conservative than the country at large.
Let’s start with the no-hopers who have already put their names forward. Baker is the closest thing Britain has to an American Christian conservative, an Evangelical Christian who supports the return to the Gold Standard. He’s also a serial rebel who helped to destroy Theresa May on the grounds that she was insufficiently hard-line on Brexit and then helped to destroy Johnson on the grounds that he didn’t stick to pure Brexit. But there’s no constituency for Bible Belt conservativism in Britain just as there is limited tolerance for publicity obsessed rebels in the Conservative hierarchy. Braverman is an over-promoted mediocrity who would have languished on the back-benches if Brexit hadn’t created a talent crisis in her party.
Now for the more serious candidates.
Rishi Sunak is the best of the lot. He’s seen his popularity in the party and the country fall in the wake of the scandal over his wife’s non-dom status (a tax-exempt status she has now abandoned). He’s also disliked by some right-wingers who want to combine tax cuts with higher spending.
But he possesses exactly the combination of skills and character that the Conservative Party needs at these difficult times. He’s in many ways the opposite of Johnson — well-organized (and well-groomed) where Johnson is chaotic (and messy-haired), technocratic where Johnson is populist, sober and sensible where Johnson is louche. Activists might wonder if he possesses the magic touch that can win elections — he’s a member of the global elite (educated at Winchester, Oxford and Stanford Business School, and married to one of the richest women in the world) and he can come across as a Perfect Peter to Johnson’s Horrid Henry. But the test of the candidates to be the next party leader should be whether they can guide the country through two very difficult years in which global markets may lose confidence in Britain’s ailing economy rather than their ability to slap backs during a six-week election campaign.
Liz Truss is Sunak’s leading rival when it comes to support among party activists. Her habit of striking Thatcherite poses excites the faithful. So does her ideological clarity over shrinking the state and driving Vladimir Putin out of Ukraine. But many MPs are critical of her political skills — she’s a flat public speaker who can sometimes seem bizarrely detached from the world around her. They are also nervous of her judgment, particularly her willingness to pander to blowhards. Having appointed a loose cannon to the premiership in the form of Johnson the last thing they need to do is repeat the mistake. We should expect a concerted attempt to prevent her from reaching the final two — and rightly so.
Nadhim Zahawi, the new chancellor, has risen quickly from relative obscurity, and, according to The Times, has a formidable operation behind him, coordinated by associates of the Australian election guru, Lynton Crosby. He earned a reputation for competence as under-secretary of state for vaccine deployment. He also smartly dealt with the idea that he is Johnson’s poodle by accepting the promotion to chancellor and then, 24 hours later, telling his former patron that he needed to resign. However, many Conservative MPs are concerned by the fact that he is working closely with Crosby and think that the Tories’ future should be decided by MPs rather than shadowy party functionaries.
Other cabinet (or recently defenestrated ex-cabinet) ministers who may well throw their hats in the ring are Sajid Javid, the former health secretary whose resignation arguably precipitated the current crisis, and Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, who currently tops the Sky bet list of potential replacements, and, perhaps, Gove, the former levelling up secretary, who stood against Johnson in 2016. None of them have what it takes. Javid is a competent cabinet minister but lacks panache, particularly as a public speaker. Wallace is reminiscent of Ian Duncan Smith, who led the party to its lowest point during the Tony Blair era. Gove is too eccentric for the top job — but also too talented to be left out of a future cabinet.
This leaves three names that keep popping up: Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mourdant and Tom Tugendhat. Hunt was a (distant) runner-up for the leadership last time round and has spent the Johnson era judiciously chairing the health select committee and carefully building friendships in the party. But there is a sense that his time is past — and that he lacks the killer instinct needed to beat the opposition.
Mourdant, minister of state for trade policy, repeatedly either tops or comes near the top of the Conservative Home website’s poll of potential leaders. She’s well-positioned to appeal to the party’s new working voters: She converted Portsmouth North from a Labour-leaning seat to a solidly Tory one. But it’s unlikely that she has a big enough phalanx of Tory MPs to carry her through the first round or to provide her with the braintrust that she needs to make a case for her leadership.
Tom Tugendhat also does well in repeated opinion polls, and showed real star power in a speech that he gave during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But he’s an outspoken critic of Brexit in a party that is still dominated by Brexiteers.
The Conservative Party is lucky enough to have a serious leadership candidate in the form of Rishi Sunak and serious potential Cabinet members such as Gove, Javid and, after his spell in the wilderness Hunt. It also has plenty of bright people lower down the party such as Jesse Norman and Bim Afomali. A rebirth is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
However, the party is also operating under severe time constraints. There is talk of producing a shortlist by the time parliament breaks up for the summer in a couple of weeks. The rules governing such a move are dubious and would give the final say to a tiny group of party activists.
Back in 2013, when he was asked whether he might run for the leadership one day, Johnson replied that “if the ball came loose from the back of the scrum it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at it.” Worryingly for the future of the country, the coming leadership election will be much more like a scrum than a rational quest for the best person to run a country confronted by such formidable and mounting problems.
Boris Johnson Is Focused on the Wrong Problem in Northern Ireland: Therese Raphael | 2022-07-07T17:23:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Brexit Winnows the Candidates to Succeed Boris Johnson - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-brexit-winnows-the-candidates-to-succeed-boris-johnson/2022/07/07/5c557094-fe16-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-brexit-winnows-the-candidates-to-succeed-boris-johnson/2022/07/07/5c557094-fe16-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
An image from footage released by the state television Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News on July 7, 2022 shows a man claimed by Iran's Revolutionary Guard to be Giles Whitaker, deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Tehran, seen in the Shahdad desert, in the southeastern province of Kerman. (-/AFP/Getty Images)
LONDON — Poland confirmed on Thursday that a Polish national has been detained in Iran after Iranian media reports claimed a number of foreigners had been taken into custody on suspicion of spying.
The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on its website that an unnamed “highly reputed scientist” had been taken into custody by Iranian authorities last September. The Iranian media reports identified one of those allegedly detained as Maciej Walczak, head of the microbiology department at Poland’s Nicolaus Copernicus University.
Citing a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian reports also claimed that Britain’s former deputy ambassador to Iran, Giles Whitaker, and the spouse of an Austrian diplomat been taken into custody on similar charges.
But Britain and Austria have denied that any of their citizens were recently detained.
A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office called the reports of Whitaker’s detention “completely false.”
Iran says former British diplomat among several foreigners detained
Whitaker had been harassed by Iranian authorities last year while visiting an Iranian tourist destination with his family, but he was not detained, a British diplomatic official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects. Whitaker completed his tour of duty in Iran as scheduled in December and has taken up a new position in Britain, the official said.
An Austrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told the French news agency AFP that no Austrian embassy employees or relatives in Tehran had been arrested.
Video broadcast on Wednesday by Iranian state TV showed a montage of images including apparent drone footage of the foreigners allegedly taking soil samples from prohibited sites and a photograph showing a foreign man apparently blindfolded in the back of a car. It also included a photograph of Whitaker and his family.
But the reports did not specify when the footage was taken or whether the foreigners were traveling together or separately when the alleged detentions occurred.
The British official denied that Whitaker had taken any soil samples during the vacation with his family.
The reports coincide with rising tensions between the West and Iran as hopes fade for a revival of the 2015 nuclear accord, which lapsed after President Donald Trump pulled America out of the deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear program in 2018. An effort to restart stalled talks hosted by Qatar last month broke down after just one day.
On Thursday, the British government revealed that earlier this year the Royal Navy warship HMS Montrose had intercepted and seized two shipments of Iranian weapons apparently destined for Yemen’s Houthi rebels in waters south of Iran.
The seizures, which took place on Jan. 28 and Feb. 25, occurred when Royal Marines boarded and searched speed boats operated by smugglers. They confiscated surface-to-air-missiles and engines for land attack cruise missiles, according to a statement from the Ministry of Defense.
It was the first time a British warship had intercepted vessels carrying such sophisticated weapons from Iran, the statement added. | 2022-07-07T17:25:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | British, Austrians deny arrest of their citizens in Iran while Poland says scientist taken - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/iran-detain-british-diplomat-poland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/iran-detain-british-diplomat-poland/ |
Al Pacino and James Caan in "The Godfather" (1972). (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
The son of a butcher who had fled Nazi Germany, Mr. Caan grew up in the 1940s and ’50s on the knockabout streets of New York’s outer boroughs. A wiry boy, he was dubbed “Killer Caan” for his use of his fists in self-defense, and he prided himself on never losing his street-wise edge or raspy Queens accent. He remained, he said, just a “punk from Sunnyside,” even as his enigmatic smile and aura of danger propelled a Hollywood career lasting six decades and spanning more than 130 credits.
Film critic Roger Ebert admiringly called him “the most wound-up guy in the movies,” a description Mr. Caan did not dispute. Shortly after the box-office success of “Misery” (1990), in which Mr. Caan played a novelist held captive by a hammer-wielding deranged fan, Mr. Caan joked that director Rob Reiner had indulged in a sadistic game by forcing him — “the most hyper guy in Hollywood” — to perform the role tied to a bed over 15 weeks of filming.
Mr. Caan had gone into acting on an impulse, desperate to avoid “humping sides of meat from trucks to restaurants” with his father in the bitter chill of dawn. He had a talent for making people laugh, a skill he honed one summer as a Catskills resort social director, and bluffed his way into a prestigious theater training program in Manhattan, the Neighborhood Playhouse.
With his brooding good looks and coiled unpredictability, Mr. Caan won a long string of guest parts on TV before entering movies. He was initially cast in action roles in the saddle, the racecar, the conning tower and the spaceship. But he showed, when given the chance, understated intelligence and sensitivity as a performer.
Reviewers praised him as a brain-damaged ex-jock in “The Rain People” (1969), directed by Francis Ford Coppola but little seen because studio executives lost faith in its commercial appeal. His breakout role was the terminally ill Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo in the TV film “Brian’s Song” (1971).
The ABC movie, which touched on interracial friendship, attracted 55 million viewers and earned Mr. Caan an Emmy nomination as best actor. The next year, Coppola tapped him to play Sonny Corleone, the eldest son of the mafia kingpin in “The Godfather.”
In a cast that included Marlon Brando as his aging father, Vito, and Al Pacino as his somber younger brother Michael, Mr. Caan more than held his own as the coarsely sexy and hot-tempered Sonny. To get into character, Mr. Caan said he found unlikely inspiration in comedian Don Rickles and his unnerving style of “busting everybody’s chops” in vicious takedowns.
The phrase “bada bing” was improvised by Mr. Caan and “became a mantra for mobsters and aspiring mobsters,” Vanity Fair reported in 2009, and served as the name of Tony Soprano’s strip club on the HBO TV show “The Sopranos.”
Sonny gets his comeuppance when he is bloodied in a battlefield’s worth of machine-gun fire while trapped in his car at a tollbooth. In a scene that took three days to film, Mr. Caan wore nearly 150 tiny explosive charges called squibs. “When they went off, it felt like I was being punched all over,” he told the London Observer. “If my hand had got in front of one, it would have blown a hole clean through.
“The Godfather” was a commercial juggernaut, won Academy Awards including best picture, helped reinvigorate the gangster genre and was ranked behind only “Citizen Kane” on the American Film Institute’s 2007 list of greatest films of all time. Mr. Caan, who was nominated for a best supporting actor trophy, was inundated for decades with exact-change and E-ZPass jokes.
After “The Godfather,” Mr. Caan said he was rarely given a script that did not feature a pile of corpses in the first 10 minutes. Determined to avoid typecasting, he ventured into offbeat comedy with “Slither” (1973); played a sailor who winds up looking after the interracial son of a prostitute in “Cinderella Liberty” (1973); was a college English professor in life-threatening debt to bookies in “The Gambler” (1974); and showed off a pleasant singing voice as theatrical showman Billy Rose in “Funny Lady” (1975), which starred Barbra Streisand as entertainer Fanny Brice.
He was an athlete in a nightmarish game of state-sponsored murder in “Rollerball” (1975), a heroic Army sergeant in the all-star World War II drama “A Bridge Too Far” (1977) and a master safecracker in “Thief” (1981). For the last, which he regarded as his finest performance, he learned proper technique from former crooks who had been hired as technical advisers.
In his quest for variety, he ended up with several misfires and mediocrities, including “Freebie and the Bean” (1974), which Mr. Caan later dismissed as “ ‘The Odd Couple’ in a squad car.” He turned down leading parts in era-defining dramas such as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Kramer vs. Kramer” (which he dismissed with an epithet as “middle-class bourgeois” bull) and Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”
“When Francis called me up about ‘Apocalypse Now,’ all I heard him say was ‘16 weeks in the Philippine jungle,’ ” Mr. Caan told The Washington Post, explaining his rejection.
In the same interview, he added that Brando was incredulous when Mr. Caan refused the title role of “Superman” (1978) despite being offered — like Brando, who played Jor-El — millions of dollars for what was literally a cartoonish role. “Yeah, Marlon,” he replied, “but you don’t have to wear the suit.” (The film launched a hit franchise, with Christopher Reeve in the title role.)
As his career teetered, Mr. Caan increasingly developed a reputation for wayward personal and professional behavior. In interviews, he seemed unable to control his badmouthing of movies by powerful directors, in particular the Hollywood infatuation with special effects over character-driven plot.
He starred in and directed a critically lauded, low-budget drama, “Hide in Plain Sight” (1980), based on the true story of a man’s battle to find his children when his ex-wife and her mob-informant husband go into the witness-protection program. But he said the studio buried it. “There were no sharks in it, so these two idiots over at MGM didn’t know what to do with it,” he told the London Independent.
Meanwhile, he pursued a decadent lifestyle as an habitue of the Playboy Mansion. He spiraled into cocaine addiction after the death of his younger sister and closest confidant Barbara, from leukemia in 1981. Around that time, he lost his life savings — and his home — after it was discovered that he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. He blamed incompetent business managers but also himself for being too addled by drugs at the time to notice.
Mr. Caan entered drug rehabilitation at least twice in the 1980s and 1990s, and he continued to be pulled into headlines during those years, once for allegedly slapping and choking a girlfriend and once for brandishing a gun during an argument over a parking space. He also publicly acknowledged his friendship with reputed mobsters (“I know he’s not a carpenter, OK?” he said of one close associate from his New York days).
He was all but unemployable when Coppola fought for him to star as an Army sergeant in the Vietnam-era military drama “Gardens of Stone” (1987). Critics lauded his subdued and affecting performance as a loner who loves the Army but hates the war, but the film faded quickly from attention.
Mr. Caan cursed the very mention of “Alien Nation” (1988), a science-fiction cop-buddy film about extraterrestrials living among Angelinos, and he suffered a massive bomb with “For the Boys” (1991), a Bette Midler musical about a U.S.O. troupe.
Grayer and weathered, but still with a menacing charisma, Mr. Caan began his return to prominence with a run of intimidating character roles. Channeling the spirit of Sonny Corleone, he appeared in the crime comedies “Honeymoon in Vegas” (1992), “Bottle Rocket” (1996) and “Mickey Blue Eyes” (1999). He also was an ex-CIA man working casino security for four seasons in the hit NBC series “Las Vegas” (2003).
From ‘tackling dummy’ to the movies
James Edmund Caan was born in the Bronx on March 26, 1940, and grew up in a section of Queens that he later called “a neighborhood not conducive to the arts.”
After being kicked out of several public schools for disruptive behavior, he managed at 16 to graduate from the Rhodes School, a now-defunct Manhattan prep academy, half-joking that teachers accelerated him just to be done with him.
He entered Michigan State University with the hope of playing on its vaunted football team, but he said he wound up as “tackling dummy.” At Hofstra College (now university) in Hempstead, N.Y., he dropped out after getting into a fistfight with an ROTC superior. He was a lifeguard and a bouncer, among other odd jobs, before entering the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan on a whim.
After brief theater experience as a spear carrier, he moved to California. In one of his earliest screen parts, he was a sadistic hood who torments Olivia de Havilland while she is trapped in her home elevator in “Lady in a Cage” (1964). Director Howard Hawks, known as a spotter of new talent, cast him in the lead role of the racecar drama “Red Line 7000” (1965) and then in a major supporting role as a rebellious knife-fighter opposite John Wayne in “El Dorado” (1966).
Mr. Caan’s next films, including “Countdown” (1967) and “Submarine X-1” (1968) and as well as an adaptation of John Updike’s novel “Rabbit, Run” (1970), tanked. Although still largely unknown, he said he refused “Brian’s Song” four times because of the “stigma” attached to TV once an actor had made the leap to cinema.
Mr. Caan’s marriages to dancer Dee Jay Mattis, Sheila Ryan (a Playboy model and one-time girlfriend of Elvis Presley), Ingrid Hajek and costume designer Linda Stokes ended in divorce. Survivors include five children, including actor Scott Caan from his second marriage.
Mr. Caan’s later roles included Arnold Schwarzenegger’s deceitful boss in “Eraser” (1996); a mobster in Lars von Trier’s disturbing avant-garde drama “Dogville” (2003); man-child Will Ferrell’s irritable father in “Elf” (2003); and a physically “ripped” priest with a temper in the Adam Sandler comedy “That’s My Boy” (2012).
“Look, you only pray when you start in this business that you get to the point where people recognize you,” he told Cigar Aficianado magazine. “I’ve got a lot of people who are, like, ‘Hey, your ankle OK?’ from ‘Misery.’ . . . Or they’ll say, ‘Hey, don’t go through that toll booth again’ or ‘Have the right change.’ ”
“It means that they remember the picture,” he added. “There’s nothing not to like about it. The only thing that I get a little upset about is when I’m in a restaurant and people . . . beckon me with their finger. I get a little sideways. I go, ‘No, you come here! What, am I a taxi or something?’ ” | 2022-07-07T17:57:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James Caan, actor who played hot-tempered Sonny Corleone in ‘The Godfather,’ dies at 82 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/07/james-caan-actor-godfather-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/07/james-caan-actor-godfather-dead/ |
A walking tour of Manhattan’s Audubon Mural Project
By James F. Lee
A mural at 575 W. 155th St. in Manhattan depicts a swallow-tailed kite clutching a garter snake. The artist, Lunar New Year, also worked 12 other birds into the montage. (Photos by James F. Lee for The Washington Post)
Two warblers peeped over the scaffolding. Our guide pointed out the vibrant orange coat and black crown of the Blackburnian warbler and the gold neck and white “eyebrows” of the yellow-throated warbler.
The warblers weren’t in trees, though. They were in murals.
Viewing bird murals in Manhattan is not entirely dissimilar from birding: You never know exactly what you’ll find. A mural could be hidden by scaffolding, or a new one may suddenly appear, or one you expect to see may be gone.
My wife, Carol, and I experienced all the joys, discoveries and challenges of birding on our walking tour of the Audubon Mural Project in Hamilton Heights and Washington Heights, vibrant neighborhoods of low-rise apartment buildings, corner produce markets, street vendors and people enjoying a sunny Sunday morning. On the streets, car horns and roaring engines mixed with the sounds of lively music.
This project, a joint initiative of the National Audubon Society and the Gitler & _____ gallery, pronounced “Gitler and,” funds artists to create murals of North American birds facing catastrophic habitat loss hastened by climate change.
“Birds are like the proverbial canaries in a coal mine,” said Jennifer Bogo, the National Audubon Society’s vice president of content. “While many animals and also people will suffer from the impacts of climate change, birds will be among the first to show it.”
At this writing, 102 murals depicting 140 species are on view: Some are massive and painted on the sides of buildings, some are spray-painted onto security screens and others pop up in unexpected corners. And all of them appear in the neighborhood where John James Audubon spent the last 10 years of his life.
Our group of 12, most of them in the city for the day, met at 10 a.m. at the Chipped Cup Coffee & Victuals in Hamilton Heights and were greeted by our guide, Leigh Hallingby, who offers tours of the mural project.
One of our first stops was at a pediatric clinic at 3612 Broadway, where Australian artist Jacinta Stewart’s mural celebrates baby birds. On the front wall, a pair of Bullock’s orioles feeds three chicks, and a red-breasted sapsucker feeds two. In a corner, an American three-toed woodpecker sits in a tree.
As the group admired this mural, Leigh looked over her shoulder and gave a shout: a new bird mural sighting across Broadway. “‘I literally have never seen it before,” she said with delight. “It’s always exciting to see a new mural go up.” But more on that later.
Ouizi’s mural was a favorite of tour member Abigail Rosen. “I love cherry trees and liked that it is so huge, and the cherry tree is extending all the way to the corner [of Amsterdam Avenue],” she said.
The muralists’ styles vary as much as the birds themselves. Heading back toward Broadway, we came upon a giant mural on the side of an apartment building featuring male and female hooded warblers perched on a bird’s-foot violet plant. The mural — by artist Gera Lozano, also known as Geraluz — is styled like a page from a volume of Audubon’s paintings, complete with title and identifying numbers.
Scotland’s Bass Rock belongs to the birds
Leigh told the group that, to some, the murals represent an unwelcome change in the neighborhood, whereas others applaud the attention they generate. “The urban dynamics of doing the project in a city of vast income inequality is complicated,” she said.
Nearby, another mural by Matarrita, this time painted on a security screen, celebrates an unpopular bird: the black vulture. The bird plays an essential role in the environment, as the artist notes in the mural, “Bird That is Often Misunderstood.”
As the walk progressed, I found that I could identify artists by their style. One is Snoeman, whose whimsical and vibrant murals appear throughout the neighborhood. A few doors down from the vulture, we came to a whiskered screech owl, a gray owl with large yellow eyes spray-painted on a black security screen. More yellow eyes surround the bird, and beneath it are the words, “Have a Nice Night.”
Across the street in the Trinity Church Cemetery, we paid our respects at Audubon’s grave. This tree-filled quiet respite offered a break from the noise of the city. His monument, a Celtic cross, is appropriately carved with the images of birds.
Walking northward toward Washington Heights, we came upon another Snoeman mural, of a bird that I was surprised to find faced loss of habitat: the seemingly ubiquitous Canada goose. The cool goose — he’s wearing bright yellow sneakers, a Yankees cap and a necklace reading “Too Fly” — stands out against a red-and-white background on a security gate in front of a former shoe store.
On West 163rd Street west of Broadway, Guatemalan artist Juan Carlos Pinto and Brooklyn artist John Sear have created a mosaic of trumpeter swans using recycled glass, mirrors, tiles, porcelain and other materials. The swirl of whites, yellows, reds and blues evoke movement and flight. Leigh pointed out details such as shards of willow ware and a snaking row of dominoes embedded in the sky. “There’s so much going on here,” Carol said.
After coming back from near extinction, trumpeter swans face drastic habitat loss from climate change. We saw a sign of hope painted on a security screen at 3898 Broadway, where a mural by James Alicea, a.k.a. BlusterOne, depicted a blue-headed vireo and two northern parulas. “Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright,” it reads, invoking the Bob Marley lyric from the song “Three Little Birds.”
“I don’t look at birds the same way I did before,” Gitler said.
Lee is a writer based in Virginia Beach. His website is jamesflee.com. Find him on Twitter: @writer1218.
Audubon Mural Project
audubon.org/amp
Audubon Mural Project tours are typically offered one Sunday a month, from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. The tour passes through an urban neighborhood over flat terrain. Expect to see about 30 murals. Limited to 20 people. Costs $30, or $20 for NYC Audubon members. Check nycaudubon.org for details and to register. | 2022-07-07T18:28:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In New York, the Audubon Mural Project showcases threatened birds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/07/audubon-mural-walk-new-york/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/07/audubon-mural-walk-new-york/ |
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, seen at a news conference in May. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
D.C. will offer free career coaching to thousands of residents, through a $3 million program Mayor Muriel E. Bowser announced Thursday.
Bowser (D) said the city will hire dozens of coaches for the next two years, with the goal of offering one-on-one career counseling to about 5,000 D.C. residents per year. The coaching will be free to any adult who does not have a bachelor’s degree, as well as those who do have college degrees and fall below a certain income threshold, which the mayor’s office did not immediately specify Thursday.
“It is my experience that no matter where you are in your career, how much money you make, how many degrees you have or don’t have — you could use a coach,” Bowser said.
Residents can make appointments online to meet with the counselors, who will offer both in-person and videoconference sessions.
Bowser said part of the coaches’ work will be to help inform residents of existing programs that the city government sponsors that provide job training and other services to help people advance their careers. | 2022-07-07T18:32:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. will offer free career coaching for residents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/dc-free-career-coaching/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/dc-free-career-coaching/ |
Spain's Rafael Nadal during practiced Thursday but withdrew from Wimbledon shortly after. (Matthew Childs/Reuters)
WIMBLEDON, England — Rafael Nadal withdrew from Wimbledon with his abdominal injury Thursday evening, on the eve of a widely anticipated semifinal against Nick Kyrgios. He announced the decision at an unexpected news conference in the Wimbledon evening. It ended the chances for Nadal, the reigning Australian Open and French Open champion, to become the first player since Steffi Graf in 1988 to win all four Grand Slam titles in one calendar year.
He had considered retiring from his quarterfinal match against the Californian Taylor Fritz on Wednesday, and said his father and sister had gestured to him from the audience during the second set that he ought to stop. When he won that epic 3-6, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (10-4), it added to his legend that has amassed over recent years: his capacity to play elite tennis through injury.
After that match, he said he would have tests on Thursday, and that he worried about being able to play against Kyrgios in the latter’s first Grand Slam semifinal, and that he saw little possibility in the way of treatment. He had left the court at one point Wednesday to receive anti-inflammatories and analgesics, he said. He still managed to elevate his form to where Fritz saw his mobility at pretty much its usual height — better than most any other player — and to where Fritz said, “I was absolutely ripping the ball in corners, and he was running and ripping them back for winners, so …”
Nadal won the French Open this year despite a foot injury that required considerable treatment and left him unconvinced at times that he might be able to finish the tournament.
A hint as to his thinking for such a situation might have turned up at the 2021 Australian Open, when he recollected an occasion from a long career that began in 2003.
“It depends on what kind of injury you have,” he said then. “You have something broken, I think you have a strain or your abdominal — for example, I did it in the past, and you do mistakes because it’s impossible to know exactly what’s going on when you are competing. For example, I remember in the U.S. Open 2009 that I started the U.S. Open with a strain, I think, here in the abdominal. I start with six millimeters or so of strain and I finished the tournament, I lost in the semifinals against (Juan Martin) del Potro and I finished the tournament with 26 millimeters. Of course it wasn’t a smart decision.” | 2022-07-07T18:54:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rafael Nadal withdraws from Wimbledon with abdominal injury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/rafael-nadal-withdraws-wimbledon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/rafael-nadal-withdraws-wimbledon/ |
Customers at the Sandwich Board in Alameda, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Industry associations and business owners say serial plaintiffs filing dozens or hundreds of cases are increasingly using the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act to extract tens of thousands of dollars in settlements — and not to promote access as the landmark civil-rights law intended. (Bloomberg) | 2022-07-07T18:54:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Half of US Small Businesses Had Job Openings in June, NFIB Says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/half-of-us-small-businesseshad-job-openingsin-june-nfib-says/2022/07/07/ab162dbc-fe1c-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/half-of-us-small-businesseshad-job-openingsin-june-nfib-says/2022/07/07/ab162dbc-fe1c-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
The Verdict on Boris Johnson’s Legacy Is Mixed
Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, makes a resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, UK, on Thursday, July 7, 2022. Johnson is bowing to the inevitable after his government hemorrhaged dozens of ministers and junior aides, and members of his cabinet -- including newly-appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi -- told him to his face that he should step down. (Bloomberg)
After three tumultuous years at No. 10 Downing Street, Boris Johnson finally resigned as UK prime minister — forced out by the nth scandal of his career. What does his departure mean for his party, his country and for the wider world?
Shortly after Johnson’s resignation speech, Bobby Ghosh spoke with columnists Clive Crook and Adrian Wooldridge in a Twitter Spaces discussion covering his legacy, the race to succeed him and the continuity of his policies.
This is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Bobby Ghosh: What did you make of the speech?
Adrian Wooldridge: What really stuck out was his refusal to apologize, to say that he’s done anything wrong. He still believes that he’s the tribune of the 14 million people who voted for him. It was more about what’s he achieved — how he broke the political mold and stood for an election which he wasn’t expected to win but won handsomely — than about what went wrong.
Perhaps that’s natural, but I think he might have irritated the Conservative Party a little bit, even more than he already has.
Clive Crook: Actually, I thought it was pretty good. The great paradox about Boris is that his very flawed character is part of why he was for a long time a successful politician, why he was so popular — and why he still is somewhat popular with quite a lot of voters. But that same character includes an inattention to detail, a certain recklessness, an appetite for impropriety. It’s part of the thing that makes him in many ways appealing.
I think you saw a little bit of what made him so popular in this speech. There’s something one is reluctantly admiring of in his refusal to back down, his refusal to apologize. It’s a contradictory bundle of traits.
AW: I once wrote a piece saying that he was an alpha-gamma politician: When he’s really good, he’s extremely good; when he’s bad, he’s terrible. It is a very peculiar mixture of qualities and lack of qualities.
BG: He will stay on until the party has picked his successor. What does that involve, and how soon might that happen?
AW: The Conservative Party has a two-part process for electing a successor. The first is that the Conservative MPs have to produce a shortlist of two people. That will take a certain amount of time — it might be done in a couple of weeks, but it’s not easy.
The second part is that the choice has to go to party members in good standing—160.000 to 180,000 people who will vote in their constituencies across the country. You have to send ballots out, to organize the whole thing.
We also have the issue that Parliament is about to go into recess until September. Lots of people are on holidays, this is the height of the summer. So it’s a formidable thing to deal with.
We don’t have a vice president who can take over, as in the US. There is a deputy prime minister, but it’s not a real office.
So there will be an interim in which Boris Johnson will be the acting prime minister, despite the fact that his party has so massively rejected him.
BG: Let’s look back on three tempestuous years of Boris and at No. 10. What is his legacy as prime minister?
CC: You’d have to say getting Brexit done is his main achievement. That’s a mixed legacy. The country is still divided over whether that was a smart move. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the costs of Brexit are considerable.
But it’s interesting to me that there isn’t any discussion, even among leading Remainers, about putting rejoining the European Union back on the agenda. So Boris’s big achievement can’t be reversed, even though the results aren’t good.
BG: The other big challenge he faced was the coronavirus pandemic. How do you rate his performance through that crisis?
AW: Well, he a almost died of Covid himself. He was slow to react to the pandemic: He thought it was something that could be ignored for a long time. But when he did respond, he did rather well.
Britain was a leader in terms of getting a vaccine made and out into the public. The vaccine rollout was Britain as its best. It made Britain, for a moment, feel very happy about leaving the EU, because the EU was in a mess.
So again, a mixed legacy.
Now everybody’s saying they’re glad to be rid of him, but he was a product of a conflict within the Conservative Party about where Britain should be heading in the future. That conflict has not gone away, and Britain’s failure to make decisions about various important things has not gone away.
He was trying to grapple with twin impulses — one is to go for a smaller state and a more deregulated economy, the other is to go for a bigger state and more emphasis on mitigating the effects of globalization — that will continue to divide the Conservative Party. Just getting rid of him is not going to get rid of the underlying problems, which created such a huge mess.
Hs successors will have to grapple with similar problems.
BG: Would it be too much to suggest that history might be kinder to him than his critics are right now?
AW: Yes, because he opted for Brexit for reasons of personal self-promotion — he thought it was the best chance he had of becoming prime minister — rather than of ideological conviction. History will be cruel to him about that. He was an opportunist Brexiteer who didn’t realize quite what forces Brexit was unleashing, and he was ultimately destroyed by those forces as well as by his own character flaws.
CC: I would add that history might be a little bit puzzled by the manner of his exit. There’s a gigantic disconnect between the gravity of the problems that the country is facing and the crises that brought about Boris’s downfall. These are small scandals when you set them against the scale of the problems the country faces. That’s an oddity historians will grapple with.
AW: The other oddity is that Boris has not changed his character. Everybody knew he had problems with the truth, with seriousness, that he’s always been a rogue. When they appointed him to the job, they knew exactly what they were getting. But it was a sheer repetition of having to go out on the airwaves, day after day, and lie for him that increasingly alienated people around him. They just got sick of having to say things which were obviously not true and being exposed as toadies. This exhaustion weighed very heavily at the end.
BG: I see now that the betting shops have Trade Secretary Penny Mordaunt, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Health Secretary Sajid Javid among the favorites to succeed Boris. When we spoke yesterday, both of you seemed to have the opinion that Rishi Sunak would be the ideal replacement.
AW: There will be more. We had two people announce they were running before breakfast this morning: Steve Baker and Suella Braverman. It’ll be a very, very large field. Many of the people running probably wouldn’t even be recognized by their second cousins.
CC: One thing I would emphasize is that the early betting on these races is very, very unreliable. If you look back at previous contests, the initial favorite almost never ended up winning. With such a wide field and no clear leader, it’s just very unpredictable. Anything can happen.
AW: The party is desperately trying to make sure that the two people who go forward to the vote by the membership are not complete lunatics or troublemakers. There will be an enormous push to make sure that Liz Truss is not one of the two people: A lot of people would be really frightened of having her because they think she’s a bit too Johnsonian, in that she could easily create many problems for the party.
The members who will vote are not in any way representative of the country. They tend to be very conservative, as you’d expect, but they’re on the right of the party. They’re very white. They tend to be retired, live in comfortable suburban and exurban parts — they are divorced from the real economic hardship that the country is going through. They’re very strong Brexiteers, almost all of them.CC: I think they will likely focus on choosing someone they think can win a general election. That’s where their calculations will be somewhat aligned with calculations of MPs, many of whom have very small majorities and care even more about choosing someone who will help them in the next election.
What will be interesting to see is whether, as the leadership race unfolds, the divisions within the party become more obvious than they were when everyone was preoccupied with the failings of Boris as leader. Now they will be looking at policy positions and trying to decide which policies should be prioritized. That will reveal splits in the party on Brexit, on Thatcherism, on social conservatism versus a libertarian style of conservatism.
All those splits will surface, and it will be interesting to see how far the party can avoid this process collapsing into a fight that ends up making all the candidates weaker in terms of the next election or whether they will be able to sum up a spirit of cooperation.
BG: Let’s talk a little bit about the continuity in policy. One country that will be looking most anxiously at what’s going on in Britain now is Ukraine. Boris Johnson put Britain very much behind Ukraine in the war with Russia. Is it fair to say that that’s not likely to change, whoever succeeds him?
AW: I think that’s absolutely baked in; the Ukrainians need not be worried. There will be a difference of tone and emphasis. If you had Liz Truss as prime minister, it would be a rah-rah support for Ukraine, but it would be quieter with Rishi Sunak. I think the overall strategy will remain to be in lockstep with Europe and the US.
CC: The pro-Ukraine position is baked in partly because it’s popular in the country. But Johnson’s departure might make a difference in the broader context of growing doubts in parts of the European Union about the wisdom of aspects of the policies we’ve been following with respect to Ukraine.
There is a bit of a division in Europe about whether it’s time to start nudging Ukraine to come to terms. There is a bitter quarrel between people who feel all that matters is that Ukraine wins and Russia loses, and those who feel some kind of compromise will have to be struck, not least in Ukraine’s own interest, to stop the killing and destruction — and also to rescue Europe from what looks like being a particularly severe recession.
Boris was strident on, “Ukraine has to win, Russia has to lose.” I think he’s quite likely to be followed by someone who doesn’t take such a strident line and might be more inclined to say, “Well, these measures we’ve taken against Russia, are we sure we are hurting Russia more than we are hurting ourselves?” I could see that discussion beginning.
BG: We began by looking back at Boris’ legacy. Let’s end with what you think he will do next.
AW: I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t write a book, then get onto the lecture circuit and make a lot of money. He’ll be in considerable demand in that capacity. And he’s actually quite a good writer, as we know.
He’s in the middle of a book on Shakespeare. Then, there will be his memoirs. David Cameron wrote his memoirs and they’re unreadable. Boris’s will be very readable and very entertaining.
People are very angry with him at the moment, but he did have a quality of being amusing and a bit different from the regular politicians. And he’ll come back into fashion to some extent. | 2022-07-07T18:54:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Verdict on Boris Johnson’s Legacy Is Mixed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-verdict-on-boris-johnsons-legacy-is-mixed/2022/07/07/9ffadec6-fe23-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-verdict-on-boris-johnsons-legacy-is-mixed/2022/07/07/9ffadec6-fe23-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
Americans’ new-found ability to work remotely may help explain why inflation-adjusted wage growth has been so disappointing in the past year, according to new research from a group of economists. The findings are cold comfort for workers struggling to keep up with consumer prices, but they may be good news for inflation — at least for now.
In the world of monetary policy, that would be welcome news for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who is trying to keep a lid on the worst inflation in 40 years. While wage growth is usually good, policy makers navigating the surge in consumer prices have grown wary of a situation in which workers demand much higher pay to offset more expensive goods.
To be sure, one interpretation of the slump in real wages — the one that’s most concerning to Powell — is that wages are adjusted with a lag and that another significant bump may be just around the corner. Olivier Blanchard, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, outlined this concern in an essay earlier this year:
• Big Data’s Past Is Messing With Our Future: Allison Schrager | 2022-07-07T18:54:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Working From Home Isn’t a Free Company Benefit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/working-from-home-isnt-a-free-company-benefit/2022/07/07/c0616ed2-fe1e-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/working-from-home-isnt-a-free-company-benefit/2022/07/07/c0616ed2-fe1e-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
Is Joe Biden the wrong president at the wrong time?
“Democrats frustrated with Biden” is the new “Dems in disarray.”
In the last few days, one news outlet after another has published articles on Democratic displeasure with President Biden and his White House. When that kind of dissatisfaction emerges, it can generate its own momentum.
The discontent is coming not just from the left, but from all parts of the party. The complaints call Biden too passive, too reactive, too slow, too wedded to outdated conceptions of how politics works, and unwilling to take the fight to Republicans. Many critiques are fair, some less so, but all are driven by the reality of a president with low approval ratings and a party headed for a difficult midterm election.
Much of what ails Biden is beyond his control, and presidents with more political talent than him faced similar struggles. But he also may be uniquely ill-suited to turn things around. Biden was the right candidate to defeat Donald Trump in 2020, but what if he’s the wrong president for the challenges of 2022?
If we look back over Biden’s career, we see someone with real but finite strengths, who was sometimes the right man at the right moment, and sometimes just the opposite.
He ran two abysmal presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2008, then Barack Obama picked an older White insider to balance his ticket, a wise choice. Biden turned out to be a very good vice president (not that anyone noticed), and in 2020, despite running another campaign that could generously be described as mediocre, much of the Democratic primary electorate decided that the older, reassuring, avuncular White guy was the best candidate to get rid of Trump.
That turned out to be a smart decision. And from the time he became the presumptive nominee, Biden did an excellent job of bringing the left into the fold, creating policy working groups with representatives of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and making his own proposals more progressive.
But today, he seems surprised by the new radicalism of the Republican Party and unable to craft a response to it, nor to the extraordinary aggressiveness of the Supreme Court. Since he is by nature an institutionalist, his first impulse when asked about the filibuster or reforming the court is to resist fundamental change, which to his supporters sounds like naivete and defeatism.
That’s before you even get to the things over which he has only the tiniest measure of control, including the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, gas prices and inflation.
Let’s grant that it’s likely that no president would be popular at a moment like this one. We tend to overestimate the president’s ability to turn any situation to his advantage with well-chosen words and a steely gaze.
In fact, other recent presidents’ approval ratings at this stage of their presidencies look very similar to Biden’s. In Gallup polling, Biden is at 41 percent. At the same point in Trump’s term, he was at a nearly identical 42 percent. Barack Obama did a bit better, at 47 percent. Bill Clinton was at 44 percent (George W. Bush was an outlier because of 9/11).
Obama and Clinton were far more charismatic and politically skilled than Biden, yet their approval at this point wasn’t that different from his. Obama had signed more significant pieces of legislation, but like Clinton, he had much larger Democratic majorities in Congress helping him.
Few people realize this: Biden took office with narrower congressional majorities than any Democratic president in the party’s history, dating back to Andrew Jackson. And both Obama and Clinton suffered crushing defeats in their first midterm elections.
We should also not be fooled into thinking Biden could say or do some particular thing that would instantly transform his political fortunes. As my colleague Dana Milbank points out, those demanding Biden be more pugnacious in confronting Republicans are overlooking the many times he has taken precisely the tone they want him to.
These moments are overlooked for a reason, though. Biden is great at offering empathy and reassurance, but at a time when we’re confronting so many problems, his party and the rest of the country would probably rather have a more dynamic president who inspires loyalty and communicates passion, rather than one who says, “Hey folks, it’s tough out there, not a joke, but we’ll get through it.”
And it’s not as though the 79-year-old Biden seems particularly adaptable; his long experience is valuable at times, but it can also be an anchor to the past that keeps him from reacting quickly to new types of crises.
If history is a guide, Democrats most likely lose badly in November, then inflation eases, eventually we get past the recession the Federal Reserve is pushing us toward, and Biden is reelected in 2024.
But nothing is certain. If things are going to get better for Biden — and if he’s really going to do everything he can to stop Republicans from taking over the federal government and plunging us all into a very dark place — he may have to change. Even if it’s not in his nature. | 2022-07-07T18:55:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Is Joe Biden the wrong president at the wrong time? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/biden-wrong-president-wrong-time/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/biden-wrong-president-wrong-time/ |
A new cage on a feral federal bureaucracy
The Mount Storm coal-fired power station in West Virginia. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. assigned himself the opinion in West Virginia v. EPA, he knew he would be writing one for the ages.
That’s because his opinion and the five other votes behind it will hem in the inexorable growth of the federal bureaucracy for at least a decade or two. Citizens and businesses can rest easy knowing that lightning bolts not telegraphed by congressional debate and action will no longer be headed their way. Landowners and small businesses will not live or die based on whims of bureaucrats empowered by presidents of left or right.
I wrote recently that the West Virginia decision defines a hugely significant Supreme Court term, and a week of scholarly conversation confirms that. Most eyes were on the cases involving abortion, guns and religion, which is understandable in these fiercely divided times. But Roberts kept for himself the opinion that would cabin the powers of the executive branch and force Congress to do its job instead of leaving the big decisions up to unnamed and unelected individuals in federal agencies.
The first administrative agency is believed by some to be the Department of Foreign Affairs, established in July 1789, which we now call the State Department. The first “independent” agency — the now-defunct Interstate Commerce Commission — was created almost a century later, in 1887. Whether under the control of the president or “independent” of the White House, the power and number of these agencies has grown. Their exact number is debatable: the Justice Department counts “78 independent executive agencies and 174 components of the executive departments as units that comply with the Freedom of Information Act requirements imposed on every federal agency.”
However it is measured, the federal bureaucracy is enormous. Now, imagine if each of these “units” of government authority tried to regulate on any subject within the most extreme reach of its most elaborately imagined jurisdiction. What if the Environmental Protection Agency decided, for example, that car emissions are a problem (and they are) so that rather than regulate tailpipe emissions (which it has, often), it would instead limit the size of, say, garages on all newly constructed home? Or placed limits on the number of cars any family unit could own? Is either notion a proper use of federal power?
The EPA has always regulated the pollutants in our air, ever since President Richard M. Nixon signed the Clean Air Act into law in 1970. But that agency’s authority morphed in recent years into a wholly new set of claimed powers. “Things changed in October 2015,” the chief justice wrote as he recounted the effort by President Barack Obama’s EPA to find some reed — no matter how thin — on which to hang its vast proposal to regulate emissions at coal-fired power plants in an effort to do something about climate change. The EPA was seeking, Roberts continued, to impose “a sector-wide shift in electricity production from coal to natural gas and renewables.”
“The point, after all,” continued Roberts “was to compel the transfer of power generating capacity from existing sources to wind and solar.” And that was where the federal agency had gone too far. (The chief justice’s opinion also recounts how, in the absence of congressional action, the EPA darted back and forth over the past decade: President Donald Trump’s EPA revoked Obama’s EPA’s plans. President Biden’s EPA changed direction again, requesting the federal courts to stop reviewing Trump-era revocations of Obama-era rules until Biden-era bureaucrats could amend and extend the rules once more.)
Yet, through all the years between 2009 to 2021, a deadlocked Congress did nothing to provide guidance on the much-debated question of what the EPA ought to do about climate change. Even the most ardent of climate alarmists should admit that the prospect of government agencies inventing missions for themselves and the enforcement powers to go along — and then imposing penalties on those who don’t agree or submit — is a very poor template for self-government. Environmentalists might wish for a carve-out for their crisis; they might not wish to see that practice replicate itself to solve other problems.
And one agency loosed of its legislative bindings means all agencies enjoy the same freedom to invent, to grow, to punish — and to pounce and destroy.
Roberts’s opinion brings all that to a halt. A free people must retain the right to insist that elected representatives, at some level, have signed off on the legal provisions that authorize a bureaucrat to award benefits or inflict penalties and for a president to have signed it.
A cage has finally been placed around the feral federal bureaucracy. Roberts’s opinion will be recognized as a milestone in constitutional history, one saying to every agency: You may only go where Congress and a president have sent you. | 2022-07-07T18:55:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The court places limits on an overgrown regulations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/court-limits-federal-agencies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/court-limits-federal-agencies/ |
By Eric Feigl-Ding
Kavita Patel
Yaneer Bar-Yam
Test tubes labeled "monkeypox virus positive and negative" are seen in this photo illustration taken on May 23. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
Eric Feigl-Ding is an epidemiologist and co-founder of the World Health Network. Kavita Patel is a physician and former director of policy for the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement. Yaneer Bar-Yam is president of NECSI and co-founder of the World Health Network.
It is time for the global public health community to recognize a growing reality: Monkeypox is now a pandemic. And unless we declare an emergency and act quickly to combat it, we risk repeating the same mistakes we made with our covid-19 battle.
No longer contained to a single continent or found only among travelers, the monkeypox virus is undergoing community transmission in dozens of countries worldwide and spreading unchecked at an alarming rate. This is especially dangerous for the immunocompromised, pregnant women and young children. They all have a hospitalization and death rate from the virus that is much higher than that of healthy adults.
Yet despite the growing number of cases, the World Health Organization has largely played down the outbreak. On June 24, the agency failed to declare a public health emergency — just as it repeatedly failed to issue emergency and pandemic declarations for the coronavirus, until finally declaring a pandemic in March in 2020.
Historically found in West and Central Africa, the monkeypox virus began to spread internationally in early May, when the United Kingdom announced its first confirmed positive case. The global reaction since then has been incredibly slow. Case counts seem low relative to covid-19, and the world appears to be lulled into complacency, like a frog in gradually heating water. Today, the virus has spread across more than 70 countries on six continents with no sign of abatement. According to the WHO itself, cases have tripled in Europe in the past two weeks. We need to wake up to the fact that we are already in a boiling pot.
The available European data show that most infections have occurred in men who have sex with men (MSM), who are generally young adults. However, there are reported cases among household members, heterosexual contacts and nonsexual contacts, as well as children. About 10 percent of patients have been hospitalized for treatment or for isolation, and there has been one ICU admission.
Given the early predominance of cases in the MSM community,many countries are not testing others with monkeypox symptoms, leading to a risk of distorted infection numbers and wider uncontrolled spread — which in turn leads to a risk of many more individuals becoming infected with severe cases.
A new study also suggests that the virus might be mutating 12 times faster than expected, and could lead to 60,000 new cases per day in the U.K. alone by the end of 2022. Other models suggest that we could conceivably see 100,000 cases worldwide by August and 500,000 to 1 million cases by the end of September.
The WHO was created with the vision of coordinating global efforts to promote health and keep the world safe, precisely what we currently need. Health-care workers and front line personnel are in critically short supply, and there is inadequate conversation regarding targeted prevention. By not preemptively raising the alarm, the WHO is putting countless lives at stake — just as the delay in classifying covid-19 played a critical role in the failure to control that virus’s global explosion effectively.
We must enlist the full spectrum of prevention and diagnostics to curb the spread, preclude the development of local disease reservoirs in rodents, and prevent suffering and possible death, especially in the immunocompromised, pregnant people and young children.
Governments and health authorities worldwide should alert the public regarding protection measures and provide support for mitigation, rapid case identification, early diagnostics, contact tracing, and isolation. While a reliable monkeypox vaccine exists due to prior research, it will take many months to ramp up production for the world.
Here in the United States, the federal government has already ordered 1.6 million doses for 800,000 Americans, but these will not be available until the end of 2022. By then, it will be too late unless we act now with other containment measures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs to lead by example and encourage science-based precautionary measures to protect Americans.
We at the World Health Network have taken action to issue an early warning. On June 22, we declared monkeypox a pandemic emergency and released public health guidance for steps to curb the spread. We invite the WHO to join us and are hopeful it will reconsider and act soon. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has recently acknowledged monkeypox’s growing threat.
We should all refuse to walk blindly, allowing the present to become prologue to greater catastrophe. Global health officials must advocate for and enact a unified, coherent approach to fighting the monkeypox pandemic before it reaches the proportions of covid-19. If we act, guided by the lessons of the past two years, we can avoid the mistakes that cost the world millions of lives. | 2022-07-07T18:55:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Monkeypox is spreading quickly and should be declared a pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/monkeypox-pandemic-who-emergency-covid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/monkeypox-pandemic-who-emergency-covid/ |
By The Way Concierge looks into expediting passports for a trip just around the corner
(Cynthia Kittler for The Washington Post)
I didn’t realize my passport had expired during the pandemic until a work trip to France came up. After sending for an expedited renewal four-and-a-half-weeks ago, it’s now within the two-week-until-travel zone where you can schedule an in-person appointment. When I called, they only had an appointment in New Hampshire that day, which I obviously cannot make.
Do I keep trying to call and see if I can get an in-person appointment closer to home? Or do I try to get my original passport back and apply for renewal via a third-party service? — Dave, D.C.
You’re one of many people dealing with passport woes on this side of the pandemic. For the past couple of years, Americans have been dealing with backlogs (from when passport agencies were shut down), scammers and conundrums like yours: finding out their passports were expired right before a trip.
So what can be done in your case? Not much.
“Unfortunately, once it has been submitted, the only option you have is to get an appointment to go in-person to get them to process the passport faster," said Peter Vlitas, executive vice president of partner relations at Internova Travel Group, which represents more than 70,000 travel advisers.
Passport delayed? 5 places you can go without one.
Rena Bitter, assistant secretary for consular affairs at the State Department, said that if your travel is within two weeks, you can contact the National Passport Information Center to check on your application status, which sounds like you did. (Applicants not within that two-week window can check their status online.) If it’s tough to get someone on the phone, keep trying, but know that they’re behind.
“As with many services, our passport operations are still recovering from the pandemic’s impact,” Bitter said, adding that the agency has taken steps to lower wait times.
If you didn’t get expedited services when you first applied, Bitter said that, depending on the status of your case, you may be able to add the expediting fee for faster service, or the 1-2 day delivery fee so that your passport arrives quicker.
Steven Loucks, spokesperson for the travel agency OvationNetwork, said that because your passport is already being processed, there’s nothing you can do except wait. He had a colleague who recently applied for an expedited passport renewal and got it back in three weeks, even though “every time she checked the website, it said it hadn’t started processing right up to the day she received it,” Loucks said.
Silvana Frappier, owner of the travel agency North Star Destinations, said to keep calling your preferred passport agencies for an in-person interview.
You mentioned not being able to make it to New Hampshire on the day they offered, but there may be later appointments you could make? It’s not unheard-of for travelers to go long distances for a chance at getting their passports sooner.
“I’ve actually just had clients fly to Chicago for theirs, and they live on the West Coast,” said Duncan Greenfield-Turk, managing director for Global Travel Moments. “Their only other option was Hawaii.”
His advice would be to take whatever appointment you can get (and can travel to), or look to push your trip.
Shayna Mizrahi, founder and CEO of Vive Voyage travel agency, said many clients are asking about expediting passports. With summer here, travelers are realizing their passports are expired “and frantically looking to alleviate the problem of renewing their passport as quickly as possible,” she said.
How to get a passport, Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or Real ID
Big travel agencies like the one she works with (GTC, an Internova travel company) may have inside connections to speed up the process, but if you weren’t working with them from the get-go, “it is just a waiting game at this point,” Mizrahi says.
Passport wait times are still slower than they were before the pandemic. Right now, the State Department says it should take 8 to 11 weeks to get a new passport or get one renewed. (That’s from when your application gets to the passport agency, not when you send it in.) For an extra $60, you can get it expedited for a 5-to-7-week arrival time.
If you have international travel coming up within 14 days, you can try calling to get an appointment for the Urgent Travel Service, like you are doing. Finally, there is the Life-or-Death Emergency Service that can get you a passport in three business days.
As far as third-party services go, Bitter said, you won’t receive your passport any faster at this point. These companies submit applications on behalf of customers for a fee, but you would still have to be the one to appear in-person at an agency.
“We recommend that anyone considering using a courier service do their due diligence by researching the company, since you will be sharing with them your most sensitive identification information and documents,” Bitter said. | 2022-07-07T18:57:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How do I rush my passport? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/rush-passport-renewal-appointment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/rush-passport-renewal-appointment/ |
WNBPA issues statement in support of Brittney Griner after guilty plea
American WNBA star Brittney Griner remains imprisoned in Russia while facing drug charges. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
The WNBA players association released a statement of support for Brittney Griner late Thursday morning, hours after the Phoenix Mercury star pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis oil on the second day of her trial in Moscow that has gained international attention.
Griner has been detained in Russia on drug charges for carrying vape cartridges containing the substance in her baggage at Sheremetyevo International Airport, and could face 10 years in prison if convicted.
“The WNBPA stands with Brittney Griner,” the statement read. “With a 99% conviction rate, Russia’s process is its own. You can’t navigate it or even understand it like our own legal system. What we do know is that the US State Department determined that Brittney Griner was wrongfully detained for a reason and will continue negotiating for her release regardless of the legal process. We’ll leave it at that.”
The WNBPA stands with Brittney Griner.#WeAreNotThe144WithoutBG pic.twitter.com/FPN9lYwnW4
Griner also received support from U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who was at the White House Thursday afternoon to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
An image posted to a story on Rapinoe’s Instagram account showed her wearing a white cream blazer with the initials “BG” and flowers embroidered on the right lapel. The image also contained the messages “the most important part of today” as well as “BG We Love You.”
While making her plea, Griner told the judge she did not intend to break the law and requested she be permitted to provide testimony at a later date, indicating she needed additional time to prepare. Court was adjourned until July 14.
Griner appeared in court in handcuffs, wearing eyeglasses, a red T-shirt and pants and carrying a small plastic bag, based on video from state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.
A letter signed by close to 1,200 prominent Black women was delivered Tuesday to President Biden and Vice President Harris urging the administration to expedite Griner’s release. The signatures included several by Black female leaders from a variety of fields, including sports, labor, business, politics and faith.
“The WNBPA stands with the 1100+ signatories on the Win With Black Women Network letter, the 40+ civil rights, human rights, LGBTQ+ organizations, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Congressman Greg Stanton, and we stand with the President and VP Harris,” the players association’s statement went on to read.
Griner, 31, had written a letter to Biden from her jail cell that was delivered to the White House on Monday, asking the president work for her release and that of other Americans detained abroad.
“I’m terrified I might be here forever,” Griner wrote, according to an excerpt from the letter released by her sports agency, Wasserman. “I realize you are dealing with so much, but please don’t forget about me and the other American Detainees. Please do all you can to bring us home.”
A White House statement Wednesday said Griner was being held under “intolerable circumstances” and came after Biden and Harris called Griner’s wife, Cherelle, with reassurances the administration was acting as swiftly and decisively as possible to secure the release of Griner and Whelan.
The 6-foot-9 Griner is an eight-time WNBA All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medal winner. She helped the Mercury win the 2014 WNBA title and has won three championships in Russia’s premier league with UMMC Ekaterinburg based in Yekaterinburg.
Griner was playing in Russia, as many women’s pro players do overseas, to supplement her income while maintaining her skill level. | 2022-07-07T19:42:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WNBPA issues statement supporting Brittney Griner after guilty plea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/wnbpa-issues-statement-support-brittney-griner-after-guilty-plea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/wnbpa-issues-statement-support-brittney-griner-after-guilty-plea/ |
Mexico announces corruption probe into ex-president Peña Nieto
Former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto wears the presidential sash after being sworn in at his inauguration ceremony before Congress in Mexico City on Dec. 1, 2012. (Alexandre Meneghini/AP)
MEXICO CITY — Mexican prosecutors are investigating former president Enrique Peña Nieto in a case involving suspicious movements of millions of dollars, authorities said Thursday — the first announcement of a corruption probe into the ex-leader.
Pablo Gómez, head of the Treasury Ministry’s financial crimes unit, told a news conference that officials had detected “a scheme through which a former president received economic benefits.” He said the findings had been handed over to the attorney general’s office, which had opened an investigation. Peña Nieto has not been charged with a crime, and responded Thursday that he was innocent.
Gómez said the ex-leader had received 26 million pesos — around $1.3 million — in transfers in 2019 and 2021 from a relative who was making large deposits and withdrawals of cash from a bank account.
Gómez didn’t mention the former president by name, but it was clear he was referring to Peña Nieto, who served as Mexico’s leader from 2012 to 2018. Gómez linked the transfers to two companies connected to the former president’s family that had signs of “fiscal and financial irregularities.” One of those firms maintained a “symbiotic” relationship with a foreign firm that had received around $500 million in government contracts in the years that Peña Nieto was in office, he said.
Ex-leader of Mexico's search for the disappeared convicted in DNA scandal
No Mexican president has ever been charged with stealing funds, despite a long history of corruption in the government. Peña Nieto’s party was trounced in 2018 in an election seen as a referendum on official graft. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a standard-bearer of the left, won an overwhelming victory by promising to fight such behavior.
Yet he has made limited progress in cleaning up politics. Analysts said it wasn’t clear whether this new investigation would be different — or if it amounted to a maneuver to strengthen López Obrador’s party before state elections next year, and the presidential balloting in 2024.
“This isn’t the first time that somebody in the government has come out to accuse Enrique Peña Nieto, and then later it’s all forgotten,” said Denise Dresser, a political scientist, speaking on the Aristegui Noticias radio program.
Peña Nieto said Thursday that he had “confidence” in the country’s justice system.
“I am certain that the authorities will permit me to clear up any questions about my patrimony, and demonstrate its legality,” he said on Twitter. The former president now lives in Spain.
Gómez provided few details of the alleged financial irregularities. He declined to name the companies or other individuals involved. He said that Peña Nieto and other family members were stockholders in one — “Business A” — and had created the second firm, “Business B,” before he became president.
Gómez denied any ulterior motives behind the investigation, saying the government wasn’t involved in “political persecution.”
Peña Nieto left office with one of the lowest popularity ratings of any Mexican leader in recent history, after his government was buffeted by a series of corruption scandals.
This is not the first time that Mexicans have fixated on the possible prosecution of a former president. In February 2020, authorities arrested Emilio Lozoya, who had served as Peña Nieto’s campaign finance chief, on charges linked to a corruption scheme carried out by the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. That company has admitted paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials around the world.
Lozoya subsequently testified that he had used Odebrecht bribes for Peña Nieto’s campaign and then for payoffs to lawmakers, acting on orders of the ex-president and his treasury secretary, Luis Videgaray. (Both men denied the charge).
But authorities say they haven’t found evidence to back up those claims. Responding to a freedom-of-information request filed by the newspaper El Universal, the attorney general’s office said in April that there was “no investigation of Peña Nieto.” | 2022-07-07T19:46:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexico announces corruption probe into ex-president Peña Nieto - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/mexico-pena-nieto-corruption/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/mexico-pena-nieto-corruption/ |
By Stryker McGuire
Britain's Prime Minister and Conservative party leader Boris Johnson during a general election campaign event on Dec. 10, 2019 in Staffordshire, Britain. (Ben Stansall/Getty Images)
Stryker McGuire, who lives in London, is a former editor at Newsweek and Bloomberg.
Over the past few days, commentators have endlessly hashed out the proximate causes for the downfall of soon-to-be ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The police fined him for attending parties at 10 Downing Street that violated his own pandemic rules. He lied about what he knew about an alleged sexual harasser he had promoted to an important job in Parliament. And those were just a few of his most recent breaches of long-accepted norms. During Johnson’s three years in office, his flagrant disregard for propriety prompted two of his own ethics advisers to quit.
In historical terms, however, those transgressions will end up being little more than footnotes. Viewed from afar, Johnson’s greatest failing is liable to be what he hoped would be his glorious legacy: Brexit. Johnson was for years Brexit’s biggest cheerleader. In December 2019, his Conservative Party won a landslide election under the battle cry of “Get Brexit Done.” And he did: Less than two months later, Britain left the European Union. The problem for Johnson is that Brexit is doing serious and lasting damage to the British economy.
With the effects of the pandemic fading, the scarring caused directly by Brexit is increasingly plain to see. At the Port of Dover, the busiest roll-on, roll-off ferry crossing in Europe, truck drivers subject to controls that haven’t existed for nearly 50 years sometimes wait half a day to continue their journeys. Modeling by the Centre for European Reform found that solely because of Brexit, British trade in goods was down during the first half of last year, ranging between 11 and 16 percent. “There is evidence that businesses face new and significant real-world challenges in trading with the EU that cannot be attributed to the pandemic,” the House of Lords European Affairs Committee reported in December.
By ending the free movement of labor between Britain and the continent, Brexit is hollowing out the workforce. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of job vacancies in the first half of this year rose to a record 1.3 million, up from about 504,000 before Brexit and covid-19 set in. The shortages afflict businesses large and small, from cafes and pubs to farms and manufacturing plants. Within the National Health Service, the shortfall early last year amounted to 6 percent of 1.5 million employees.
If there’s an economic silver lining to Brexit, researchers scouring the data have yet to find it. “A less-open UK will mean a poorer and less productive one by the end of the decade, with real wages expected to fall by 1.8 per cent, a loss of £470 [$564] per worker a year, and labour productivity by 1.3 per cent,” according to a June report by the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance and the Resolution Foundation.
Inflation hit 9.1 percent in May, a 40-year high, and is expected to reach 11 percent before the end of the year; some experts cite Brexit as a major contributing factor. The overall tax burden is rising to its highest level since the postwar era, as is government spending. Citing these factors, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last month predicted that British economic growth will grind to a halt next year, likely making it the worst-performing economy in the Group of 20 — aside from Russia.
The pound has been steadily weakening against the dollar since the Brexit referendum; the depreciation translates into a cost-of-living hike of £870, or $1,044, per year for the average household. Panmure Gordon & Co., a London-based investment bank, estimates that business investment is roughly £58 billion, or $69 billion, a year lower than it would have been if Britain had not left the European single market and customs union. While Britain has managed to negotiate a smattering of trade deals, most of them relatively insignificant, it has made zero progress on its chief goal, a U.S.-U.K. pact.
Only now, with the covid tide going out and a devastating cost-of-living crisis rushing in, is the topic of Brexit’s economic toll finding its way back into public discourse. Not coincidentally, support for Brexit has been slowly falling — from 46 percent two months after the Brexit referendum in 2016 to 37 percent in May, according to YouGov polling.
Ordinarily, an opposition party would be feasting on the governing party’s failings. But Johnson’s big 2019 victory changed the usual political dynamics. Both the Conservative and Labour parties have had pro- and anti-European wings since Britain joined the E.U. a half century ago. In accruing their 80-seat majority under Johnson’s leadership, the Tories won dozens of seats in the north of England that were traditionally Labour but voted for Brexit in the referendum.
Chastened, the Labour Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer has decided to reside firmly in the Brexit camp under a new slogan, “Make Brexit Work.” That’s not impossible, although large numbers of pro-Europe Britons surveying the fractured economic landscape say it’s a pipe dream. It will be tempting for whoever succeeds Johnson to blame him for Brexit’s breakdown — but that tactic can only work for so long.
Why Erdogan should green-light Sweden and Finland’s NATO bids | 2022-07-07T19:55:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Boris Johnson’s biggest failing? It’s the post-Brexit economy. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-resignation-brexit-economy-inflation-trade-growth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-resignation-brexit-economy-inflation-trade-growth/ |
The download page for ByteDance Ltd.'s TikTok app is arranged for a photograph on a smartphone in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on Sept. 14, 2020. (Brent Lewin/Bloomberg)
New revelations are intensifying concerns about TikTok, the world’s fastest growing social media app. Critics have long worried that its proliferation exposes millions of Americans to the abuse of their data by the government of China, where its parent company, ByteDance, is based. But because TikTok refuses to fully acknowledge — much less properly address — these concerns, Congress and the U.S. government must take steps to mitigate the risks.
Recent bombshell reporting by Buzzfeed News, based in part on leaked documents about 80 internal corporate meetings, shows that critics’ concerns about the vulnerability of TikTok user data are shared inside TikTok itself. “Everything is seen in China,” said a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department in a September 2021 meeting, Buzzfeed reported. This seems to contradict TikTok executives’ previous testimony claiming that Chinese employees’ access to U.S. user data is strictly controlled.
Still, TikTok executives continue to call for Americans to trust them. The company simultaneously insists that the concerns are baseless and that it is already addressing them.
“We are trying to be one of the most trusted apps,” TikTok Vice President Michael Beckerman said this week on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” “We have never shared information with the Chinese government, nor would we.”
Beckerman sidestepped the obvious point that the authorities in Beijing do not need to ask permission. (China’s own national security laws allow the government to take any data it pleases from any Chinese tech company.) Beckerman said the data collected on TikTok “is not of national security importance,” and the app is “just for entertainment,” not politics.
To be sure, the vast majority of content on TikTok is benign, but that misses the point. The Chinese government collects data on people all over the world, often using its various tech companies as proxies. That data feeds China’s efforts to outpace the United States in critical fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, while helping Beijing to perfect the tools it uses to exert social control domestically and around the world.
In a June 30 letter to U.S. lawmakers, TikTok admitted that Chinese engineers and executives are integral to the development and functioning of the app, but insisted that U.S. user data is safe — or at least soon will be. TikTok now stores all U.S. data on Oracle cloud servers inside the United States and is working with Oracle on “new, advanced data security controls that we hope to finalize in the near future,” the letter states.
These steps are meant to assuage the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States , the company said, which has been examining the security concerns around TikTok. The Trump administration tried to ban TikTok in 2020, but that was blocked by U.S. courts. U.S. national security agencies and military services have banned TikTok from government-owned devices, citing it as a security threat.
In June 2021, the Biden administration revoked President Donald Trump’s executive order banning TikTok but directed the Commerce Department to evaluate the risk of apps tied to foreign adversaries. A year later, there’s still no clarity on how the administration will address the risks built into TikTok and other Chinese apps such as WeChat.
Lawmakers are running out of patience. On Tuesday, Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the chair and vice chair of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, requested that the Federal Trade Commission open an investigation into TikTok, alleging the company has “misrepresented its corporate governance practices” by obfuscating its ties to another ByteDance subsidiary in China, which is part-owned by a Chinese state-owned enterprise. They also don’t buy TikTok’s claim that moving the data to U.S.-based cloud servers ensures its safety.
“Since TikTok will ultimately control all access to the cloud-hosted systems, the risk of access to that data by PRC-based engineers (or [Chinese Communist Party] security services) remains significant in light of the corporate governance irregularities revealed by Buzzfeed news,” they wrote.
Data security is only one part of the TikTok problem. Several reports have alleged that TikTok has become a haven for pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda and that the secret algorithm that drives it still suppresses content that runs afoul of the CCP’s political sensitives on topics ranging from China’s abuse of Uyghur Muslims to the Tiananmen Square massacre.
“These invasive and pervasive technologies are increasingly central to the future of freedom globally — and free societies therefore need to raise their game in the setting of stronger norms and rules,” Christopher Walker, vice president at the National Endowment for Democracy, told me.
Congress is also dropping the ball by failing to pass legislation that would protect Americans’ privacy and data from all tech companies, including U.S. platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. But TikTok and other Chinese apps present a unique challenge.
Unlike American tech firms, they ultimately answer to a government that has no checks on its power and no privacy or surveillance standards at all. TikTok is not going anywhere and neither is the threat. One thing is clear: it can’t be trusted to oversee itself. | 2022-07-07T19:55:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | TikTok is running into fresh trouble on Capitol Hill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/china-tiktok-buzzfeed-relevations-data-security-concerns-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/china-tiktok-buzzfeed-relevations-data-security-concerns-congress/ |
Secret Service chief James Murray leaving agency
Secret Service Director James Murray on Capitol Hill in 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Secret Service Director James Murray is stepping down from his post as head of the storied protective service, according to a statement issued by the agency Thursday.
“I have benefited tremendously from the opportunity to rely on Director Murray as a trusted advisor and highly regarded leader in the Department of Homeland Security,” Mayorkas said in a statement.
Jan. 6 showed dueling identities of Secret Service agents: Gutsy heroes vs. Trump yes-men
A statement from the Secret Service said Murray “helped the agency navigate the unique challenges presented by the historic COVID-19 pandemic,” while continuing to perform “its integrated mission of providing protection to senior elected leaders and investigating crimes targeting our financial infrastructure.”
The Secret Service, best known for protecting current and former presidents and their families, has endured multiple controversies over the past decade, including a prostitution scandal, White House security missteps during the Obama administration and allegations of politicization under President Donald Trump.
In recent weeks, its agents have become central characters in the House Jan. 6 legislative committee investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified last month that Trump lashed out at his protective detail on Jan. 6, 2021, when told he would not be allowed to join his supporters’ march toward the Capitol, at one point lunging for the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle. | 2022-07-07T19:59:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Secret Service chief James Murray leaving agency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/07/secret-service-murray-resign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/07/secret-service-murray-resign/ |
Boris Johnson faced revolt in his party. Trump never had that problem.
Johnson was brought down by members of his party and government. Trump has stared down those in his party, even after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces his resignation outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday in London. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
The resignation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is testament to the power of elected politicians to hold their leaders accountable. It is a lesson that has been lost on Republican Party officials as they have weighed repeatedly how to deal with former president Donald Trump.
The crumbling of support this week began when two prominent Cabinet members, Rishi Sunak, the government’s treasury minister, and Sajid Javid, the health secretary, announced their resignations. By the time Johnson resigned, more than 50 ministers and junior ministers had announced their resignations from their government positions.
On the day before Johnson announced his resignation as leader of his party (he said he would remain as prime minister until a new party leader is chosen), the public chorus of calls for him to step down continued to grow louder. Adding to those public voices, members of his cabinet — even some seeming loyalists — met him at Number 10 Downing Street to privately tell him his time was up.
Those warnings were reminiscent of what happened to then-President Richard M. Nixon in August 1974, when senior Republicans from Congress, led by Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, went to the White House and told Nixon that his support in the Senate had collapsed, a sign that he would likely have been convicted in an impeachment trial. Rather than going down in history as the first president to be impeached and convicted, Nixon chose the less unsavory course and resigned the office.
Trump has never experienced what Johnson has just gone through. At no time have Republican leaders — senators, House members, governors, national or state party officials — collectively tried to confront him. After Jan. 6, 2021, there was talk among Trump’s Cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment and declaring him unfit for the office, but it came to nothing. Lawmakers condemned him for the attack on the Capitol and then over time began to compliantly fall back in line.
Johnson was elected as the Tory leader in 2019 after the resignation of former prime minister Theresa May in part because he was seen by others in the party as someone with the appeal to win a general election, and someone who could hold together a party divided over resolving the 2016 national referendum to leave the European Union, the Brexit decision. In a general election late that year, he proved them right, delivering an 80-seat parliamentary majority against a weakened Labour Party with a compromised leader.
Recently, however, the party’s fortunes were beginning to flag and Johnson was becoming a political liability. Conservatives did just enough in local elections in May to sustain him in power, suffering losses but not as big as some feared. Late last month, Conservatives lost two special elections. Earlier in the month, he survived a no-confidence vote within his own party, but even then, the prospects of the Tories winning a general election began to dim.
Johnson seemed to have an unlimited number of political lives, but his fellow Conservatives found defending him too difficult. With the latest scandal, the revelation that he had been warned about the sexual misconduct of Chris Pincher, a Tory politician appointed as chief deputy whip, did nothing about it and claimed that he had not been warned, the stench of his leadership became too much.
Republicans have not reached that point with Trump. They have weighed the consequences of challenging someone who remains the dominant force in their party and decided either to vigorously defend him or simply to remain silent. They say they are on the cusp of taking back the majority in the House and possibly the Senate. They are willing to ride it out against the evidence that has piled up during the hearings by the House select committee investigation the Jan. 6 attack.
There are similarities in the characters of Johnson and Trump, which may be why they were instinctively drawn to one another. Even as Johnson was maneuvering against May, Trump was praising him and hectoring her, including one celebrated interview in which he criticized May and spoke highly of Johnson as he was arriving for a visit to the United Kingdom with May as his host.
Neither Johnson nor Trump truly took seriously the responsibilities of their office. Both preferred bluster to serious study. They are showmen not statesmen, given to rhetorical excess and flashy displays, reveling in the roar of the crowd. Both have a propensity to spread false claims, even when it’s obvious.
Johnson may have been willing to offer apologies when caught and cornered, but that was more an instinct for survival rather than sincerity. His resignation speech was anything but contrite. Trump seems even more incapable of acknowledging mistakes.
But it is the differences in the political systems of the two countries that help to explain why what happened to Johnson this week has never happened to Trump.
Britain’s elected officials have much more power to determine who leads their parties and therefore who will become prime minister through a general election. The successor to Johnson ultimately will be determined by a vote of the full Conservative Party membership, the rank-and-file loyalists throughout the United Kingdom. But to get to the final vote, those seeking to lead the party must first survive votes among the parliamentary membership, who winnow the field to the final two candidates.
Trump has never been beholden to the elected officials of the Republican Party, most of whom initially opposed his candidacy for president. Beyond their ability to endorse someone, they have no significant role in selecting the party’s presidential nominee. Trump hijacked the GOP on his way to becoming the 2016 nominee, bent it in his direction and defied the party establishment to challenge him. He continues to do so.
No one expects Republicans who hold office to turn on Trump at this point. They have too much invested in avoiding an internal war with Trump’s most loyal supporters ahead of the 2022 election, where the odds are in their favor. How well Trump-endorsed candidates do in November could change the calculus of some GOP leaders as they look to 2024 and the question of who should be the party’s presidential nominee.
Still, the role that elected officials played in forcing Johnson to give up his post is a reminder of the degree to which Republican leaders in this country — elected lawmakers, former White House officials and members of the Trump Cabinet — have chosen a different path.
It’s true that political calculations entered significantly into what happened in Britain this week and political calculations will affect how Republicans respond to Trump in the future. But when confronted with what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, only a few Republicans stood up, spoke out loudly and sustained that criticism, whatever the political consequences. | 2022-07-07T19:59:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boris Johnson faced revolt in his party. Trump never had that problem. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-faced-revolt-his-party-trump-never-had-that-problem/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-faced-revolt-his-party-trump-never-had-that-problem/ |
Boris Johnson’s fall shows the limits of shamelessness as a superpower
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson makes a resignation speech on Thursday in London. (Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)
BoJo has finally lost his mojo. The United Kingdom’s mendacious, buffoonish prime minister is gone, or at least going. The question historians will ask is how he ascended so high in the first place.
I remember Johnson from the early 1990s when I was London bureau chief for The Post and he was a journalist, and I use the term loosely, working as Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, the favorite newspaper of Britain’s conservative establishment. He had landed there after being fired from the Times of London for making up a quote, and not just any quote, but a bit of historical nonsense Johnson attributed to his own godfather. Reporting from European Union headquarters, he was a talented, ambitious, entertaining fraud.
In Brussels, he dishonestly played to his readers’ “little England” nationalist skepticism about Britain being part of the E.U. His specialty was finding some nugget of information in an irrelevant and forgotten document gathering dust in the E.U. archives and spinning it into front-page fake news — reports that dastardly “Eurocrats” would shrink standardized condom sizes because Italians needed smaller ones, or that they had set official parameters for the extent to which bananas could curve.
None of it was really true. But Johnson’s funny and sensationalist “scoops” made him a star.
Johnson’s major accomplishment as mayor of London and as a member of Parliament was drawing attention to himself. When Theresa May was prime minister, she made him foreign secretary as a way of getting him out of her hair by thrusting him into everyone else’s. But he saw May’s difficulty in negotiating a Brexit agreement for Britain to leave the E.U. as his big opportunity, and he helped engineer her downfall — and his own rise to leadership of the Conservative Party.
He announced his resignation as Conservative Party leader Thursday after more than 50 of his ministers quit, many writing self-righteous exit letters expressing shock and outrage at Johnson’s myriad lies and scandals — among them “Partygate,” his alcohol-fueled social gatherings while the rest of the country was in mandatory lockdown because of covid. But those ministers knew all along who he was. They abandoned him when they saw that he was taking their party, and their careers, down with him.
“Them’s the breaks,” Johnson said in his not-terribly-gracious resignation speech, insisting he will stay ensconced at 10 Downing Street until the party picks his replacement.
I dearly hope that those are the breaks. I hope Republicans in this country, and politicians elsewhere who are surfing the global populist wave, learn a lesson from Johnson’s demise. Truth eventually caught up with him. Facts ultimately mattered. Performance routines finally wore thin.
And Britons remembered the unrealistic promises Johnson made that were never kept. Most importantly, after telling voters that practically everything would be better after Brexit, he has not even been able to iron out the final details of a separation agreement. Many economists predict that because of Brexit, the current worldwide surge of inflation will be worse and longer-lasting in Britain than in the rest of Europe or the United States. Johnson’s nation — and his party — will be stuck with his legacy for a long time.
Johnson was steadfast and resolute in providing British support for Ukraine against Russia’s brutal aggression, so that merits praise. And since he imagines himself a latter-day Winston Churchill, don’t rule out an attempted comeback. Like a certain resident of Mar-a-Lago, Johnson will always be a legend in his own mind. | 2022-07-07T20:04:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Boris Johnson's resignation and the limits of shamelessness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnsons-resignation-shows-the-limits-of-shamelessness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnsons-resignation-shows-the-limits-of-shamelessness/ |
Would the new gun bill have prevented Highland Park? It’s complicated.
The suspected gunman’s background appears to be exactly what lawmakers were targeting in the new law
People leave items at a memorial on July 6 near the crime scene of the July Fourth shooting in Highland Park, Ill. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The congressional architects of the new gun violence law signed by President Biden last month focused their efforts at stopping one particular type of perpetrator: young, angry and isolated men who harbor violent fantasies and exhibit worrisome behavior before purchasing weapons and tragically acting on their impulses in places such as supermarkets in Buffalo and Boulder, Colo., high schools in Santa Fe, Tex., and Parkland, Fla., or elementary schools in Newtown, Conn., and Uvalde, Tex.
Or now a community parade in Highland Park, Ill.
The arrest of 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III in the deaths of seven Fourth of July paradegoers just nine days after Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act has refocused attention on the all-too-predictable circumstances behind many U.S. mass shootings — and also provided a tragic new lens through which to judge whether the new law will, in fact, be effective.
Crimo’s background — as a reputed loner who made threats of violence and collected weapons, resulting in encounters with law enforcement — appears to be exactly what lawmakers were targeting in the new law.
“The mental health challenges of young, disaffected and alienated boys is a profile that’s all too familiar,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), co-author of the new law, said in a June 8 speech two weeks after an 18-year-old killed 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde. “In terms of their alienation and their developing mental illness and their willingness to not only take their own life, but other people’s lives, unfortunately, it paints an eerily similar picture.”
But the facts thus far known about Crimo’s background, his interactions with law enforcement and his weapons purchases illustrate that the new law — which was a bipartisan compromise measure that did not include more restrictive measures sought by Biden and many Democrats such as an assault weapons ban or higher minimum age for rifle purchases — will probably prove to be far short of a panacea.
Furthermore, the Highland Park case illustrates how the bill’s effectiveness will depend on the decisions of legislators and law enforcement officials at the state and local levels, meaning the nation could continue to see a patchwork approach to combating mass shootings for decades to come.
No aspect of the Highland Park shooting better illustrates that reality than Crimo’s ability to receive a state firearm license and purchase multiple weapons less than a year after police were made aware of violent threats he had allegedly made, prompting officers to seize knives from his home and report him to state authorities as a “clear and present danger.”
“The details are still coming to light,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a group that advocates for tougher gun restrictions. “But I think it’s fair to say that if the police come to your house and confiscate a knife collection after you’ve threatened to kill everyone, you should not be able to legally purchase firearms months later.”
Illinois has had a red-flag law on the books since 2019, allowing family members or law enforcement to petition a judge for a firearms restraining order to keep weapons away from individuals judged to represent a threat to themselves or others. But it also has a rigorous licensing law, requiring all gun owners to secure a firearm owner identification card, or FOID, from the Illinois State Police before purchasing a weapon.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act includes $750 million in new federal funding that states can use to implement red-flag laws, but it is silent on licensing regimes such the one in Illinois. In any case, neither law prevented Crimo from purchasing weapons on four occasions from June 2020 through September 2021 — well after Highland Park police had filed the report in September 2019 flagging him as a potential threat.
That’s because the report itself was not enough to disqualify Crimo as a potential gun owner, the Illinois State Police said in a statement Wednesday. State investigators determined that the circumstances of his 2019 encounter with police — in which he denied making threats of violence and said he had no intentions of harming himself of others — did not reach the evidentiary threshold for him to be deemed a clear and present danger.
So when Crimo sought a FOID just three months later with his father’s sponsorship, the state police said in the statement that “there was no new information to establish a clear and present danger, no arrests, no prohibiting criminal records, no mental health prohibiters, no orders of protection, no other disqualifying prohibiters and no Firearms Restraining Order” that would justify rejecting his application.
“The available evidence would have been insufficient for law enforcement to seek a Firearms Restraining Order from a court,” the agency added — claiming that the September 2019 encounter alone could not have triggered the state’s red-flag law.
The Illinois State Police’s word on what was and wasn’t possible in Crimo’s case is not definitive, however, and advocates for tighter gun restrictions point out that Illinois has made scant use of its red-flag law since it was implemented three years ago.
Speak for Safety Illinois, a group that promotes use of the law, said 53 firearm restraining orders were sought in 2019 and 2020, of which only 22 were ultimately granted. By contrast, judges in Florida have granted roughly 9,000 orders since that state’s red-flag law went into effect in 2018.
That is where advocates say the new federal law could make a difference, by giving states that have already enacted red-flag laws more resources to ensure police, judges and the public know what options they have to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.
“It’s a tool, and it has to be taken out of the toolbox — and when it’s not, tragedy ensues,” Watts said. “It is one thing to agree that red-flag laws work. It is another thing to actually use them. And when we look at what happened in Illinois, it is fair to say that red-flag laws [are] underutilized. … For them to work, people have to know what they are, that they are available and then how to use them.”
That educational effort could also help prompt members of the public to report more threats and troubling incidents to police, which could result in more red-flag filings and more robust cases for judges to review — a point law enforcement officials emphasized this week after the Highland Park tragedy. “Law enforcement is going to do everything they possibly can to ensure the community is kept safe, but if we don’t know about it, it’s hard for us to investigate,” Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County, Ill., sheriff’s office said at a news conference Wednesday.
Republicans question red-flag laws as Senate tries to clinch gun deal
But beyond red-flag laws, other provisions of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act could prevent another would-be shooter with a profile resembling Crimo’s from committing a future horrific act. Those effects, however, are for the most part speculative, given the known circumstances of the Highland Park case and the lack of detailed information about what treatments and interventions the alleged gunman may have had.
The broadest of those provisions, and the element with the most federal funding associated with it, deals with mental health. The bill provides for the establishment of a national network of community behavioral health clinics and puts $1 billion in grant funds toward the expansion of school-based mental health programs, plus another roughly $1 billion in funding for mental health and suicide prevention programs aimed at youth.
Cornyn was among the senators who argued last month that the mental health funding was the key element in stopping someone like 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, who killed 19 students and two teachers on May 24 in Uvalde. A Cornyn spokesman declined to comment this week on the new law’s potential to have prevented Monday’s shooting.
“Our goal with this legislation is to try to help people in crisis get treatment before they reach a point like Salvador Ramos,” Cornyn said last month. “I want to be clear, not everybody who’s suffering a mental health crisis is a threat to themselves and others. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true — many people suffer in silence with their parents, their families, their siblings trying to help them to no avail, but there is a small subset of people like [Ramos] who are a danger to themselves and others if they don’t get the kind of help they need.”
The other element of the bill that could have come into play with Crimo was a new enhanced background check for gun buyers under 21, which gives the federal background check system up to 10 days to determine if those young buyers have a disqualifying incident in juvenile criminal justice or mental health records. That would involve contacting the state agency that maintains those records as well as the local police department where the prospective gun buyer resides.
Even if there are no disqualifying juvenile records — and Illinois State Police statements suggest Crimo had none, citing only an underage tobacco offense — the new law’s supporters have argued that the involvement of local police could well be enough to intervene in a potential violent incident. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), in an interview conducted before the Highland Park shooting, said he was confident the provision would have stopped Ramos even though authorities have not released any information to suggest he had a disqualifying juvenile record.
“No doubt this kid had been involved with the local police department,” he said. A call to the Uvalde cops, he added, “would have been an opportunity for the police department to say: ‘Oh, there’s this kid who we know on his 18th birthday went to buy two assault weapons. Maybe we need to go to his house and check in on him.’ You cannot say for certain, but I think there’s a chance that had our under-21 provision been in effect before Uvalde, it could have stopped that shooting.”
Biden’s long quest on the assault weapons ban
The Highland Park tragedy has made one thing clear, however: The push for further federal gun restrictions is not over. Among those raising a need for new measures this week is Eric Rinehart, the Lake County state’s attorney who called on Wednesday for more awareness and better implementation of his state’s red-flag law — but also made clear that tougher federal gun restrictions would have made an even more clear-cut difference.
“The state of Illinois and the United States should ban these types of assault weapons,” he said, referring to the Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifle that Crimo allegedly used in his attack Monday — a model that is part of the AR-15 family of semiautomatic rifles frequently used by mass shooters. “We had [a national] ban from 1994 to 2004 with bipartisan support. … My position as a public safety professional, as one of the many individuals responsible for the safety of the people in Lake County, is we should have a statewide and national ban on assault weapons.”
That, however, is not on the agenda for this Congress — or likely for many congresses to come. Republicans who supported the new federal law made clear that they did not see it as a first step toward any further gun restrictions. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others have said they view the bill as the final word on the problem of mass shootings.
“The problem is mental health and these young men who seem to be inspired to commit these atrocities,” McConnell said at a Tuesday event in Paducah, Ky. “So I think the bill that we passed targeted the problem. We did open up juvenile records to background checks, and hopefully that will help us do a better job of identifying people who have these mental problems before they carry out these awful atrocities.”
But Watts said the fight will go on — if not on Capitol Hill, then in statehouses and city halls across the country. “We knew that this legislation was a first step on a longer path,” she said. “Our goal was to break the logjam in Congress that had prevented any gun safety legislation from passing for over 25 years. … That was a watershed moment in American politics, but more needs to be done.” | 2022-07-07T20:13:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Would the new gun bill have prevented Highland Park? It’s complicated. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/new-gun-legislation-highland-park/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/new-gun-legislation-highland-park/ |
Takahashi’s fans are mourning the loss of the legendary figure of the manga industry whose creation grew into a multibillion-dollar global enterprise
Manga star and inventor of “Yu-Gi-Oh!” cards Kazuki Takahashi at the Leipzig Book Fair on March 19, 2005 (Peter Endig/EPA/Shutterstock)
Fans of the “Yu-Gi-Oh!” manga, anime and trading card phenomenon are mourning the death of its legendary creator, Kazuki Takahashi.
The body of Takahashi, 60, was found Wednesday floating off the southern Japanese coast of Nago in snorkeling gear, according to the nation’s coast guard and reported by local broadcaster NHK.
The creator, also known as Kazuo Takahashi, began working in the manga industry in the ‘80s and hit it big the following decade with “Yu-Gi-Oh!” The influential underdog-fantasy manga series written and illustrated by Takahashi features a spiky-haired high school outsider named Yugi who, once he solves an ancient puzzle, becomes a mystically empowered version of himself: Yu-Gi-Oh, the King of Games and champion battler of evildoers.
“Yu-Gi-Oh!” was serialized in Japan’s highly read boys’ magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump, from 1996 to 2004. Takahashi’s creation grew into a multibillion-dollar global enterprise, spawning an anime franchise and video games. In 2011, Guinness World Records recognized “Yu-Gi-Oh!” as the biggest trading-card game ever, with more than 25 billion cards sold, according to the game maker Konami. Takahashi received the Inkpot Award from San Diego’s Comic-Con International in 2015.
Takahashi’s creation was appreciated for its expansive appeal, including the anime, which was introduced in the United States as “Pokémon’s heir apparent,” Daniel Dockery, senior writer for Crunchyroll, told The Washington Post.
“The common theme that connected it to fans was Takahashi’s fascination with how people play, and how we fall in love with our favorite monsters,” said Dockery, author of the forthcoming “Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All.” “The spirit of interactivity, and the way people grow through that, ensures his work’s legacy.”
Takahashi’s creatures range from horror to fantasy, yet “there’s a common craftsmanship among them — the kind of thing that reveals hidden details over time, as well as the visceral ‘Oh my god, that looks so rad,’ ” Dockery said. “The fact that they would be summoned in a world not too unlike our own makes them even more appealing to the eye. They are truly yours to adore and play with, making you feel powerful and inspired in equal measure.”
Takahashi had recently worked on this year’s Marvel’s “Secret Reverse,” a manga graphic novel team-up featuring Spider-Man and Iron Man/Tony Stark, who travels to a Japanese gaming convention.
On social media, fans shared favorite memories about “Yu-Gi-Oh!” and Takahashi. “Yu-gi-oh! defined my taste in anime when I was a kid, and the game got me out of the house and my own head when I needed it most as an adult,” one fan said on Twitter. Another added that the fantasy series had “made a massive impact on global culture. It’s an important story about facing evil head on with hope and frienship, and always fighting for a brighter tomorrow.”
Yu-gi-oh! defined my taste in anime when I was a kid, and the game got me out of the house and my own head when I needed it most as an adult.
Kazuki Takahashi’s dark and brilliant imagination did a lot to shape the course of my life, and I’m far from the only one. RIP, Legend. https://t.co/xBze1vRgDW
Yu-Gi-Oh! has touched so many lives and made a massive impact on global culture. It’s an important story about facing evil head on with hope and frienship, and always fighting for a brighter tomorrow.
Thank you, Kazuki Takahashi. You were gone too soon, but rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/b3zQT5Zciu
— The Millennium Microphone (@millenniummic) July 7, 2022 | 2022-07-07T20:26:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ creator Kazuki Takahashi dies at 60 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/07/07/yu-gi-oh-creator-kazuki-takahashi-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/07/07/yu-gi-oh-creator-kazuki-takahashi-dead/ |
The longtime editor at Bloomberg will succeed the late Fred Hiatt as the first leader of the section hired from outside of The Post.
David Shipley has been named editorial page editor of The Washington Post. (Lori Hoffman/Bloomberg)
David Shipley, the top editor of Bloomberg’s opinion section, was named editor of The Washington Post’s editorial page on Thursday, filling one of the most senior jobs at the newspaper and one of the most influential in American journalism.
Shipley succeeds longtime opinions editor Fred Hiatt, who died in December at 66 after suffering sudden cardiac arrest.
Shipley, 59, is a well-respected but somewhat surprising choice to oversee The Post’s more than 80-member opinion staff, which operates independently from its news department and has been led by editors elevated from internal ranks for more than 60 years. He is the second top editor to be appointed by publisher Fred Ryan from outside the newspaper; last year he named Sally Buzbee, a former top editor of the Associated Press, as the executive editor of The Post’s news staff.
In a memo to staff, Ryan wrote that Shipley “emerged as a standout in an exhaustive search that involved more than 150 candidates” and began after Hiatt’s death.
Deputy editorial page editors Ruth Marcus and Karen Tumulty have run the department on an interim basis for several months.
A Post spokeswoman said Shipley was unavailable for an interview because he is continuing to work at Bloomberg for the next few weeks. In a statement, Shipley said he was “thrilled to have the opportunity to work alongside the remarkable team that Fred Hiatt built.”
“The Post is a guiding force in journalism for all the right reasons, balancing tradition and the highest standards with relentless innovation and invention,” Shipley said. “Post Opinions reflects all that, consistently offering insights to help readers make sense of the world.”
Shipley’s appointment comes at a tumultuous time for opinion journalism at American newspapers. The New York Times, which introduced the first “op-ed” section consisting of guest editorials in 1970, has recently reduced the number of opinion pieces it publishes by about 25 percent while expanding into other forms, such as audio, video and graphics. Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, has been radically shrinking its editorial sections, prompted by both cost-cutting pressures and research indicating that many readers are repelled by overt opinion or confused by how it’s supposed to differ from the news coverage. Many of its papers have abandoned the traditional practice of endorsing candidates in local or national political races.
Yet opinion pieces have regularly ranked among the most-read pieces on The Post’s website. And The Post’s editorial pages have historically carried an outsize influence among the political and diplomatic class. It has also published guest commentaries from leading dissidents, such as writer and filmmaker Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is now imprisoned in Russia, and Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian journalist who was murdered in 2018.
Ryan, The Post’s publisher, said in an interview that the newspaper considered candidates from journalism, academia, think tanks and publishing before selecting Shipley.
“We wanted someone who can focus on big ideas, manage a cross-section of editors and contributors and can help us offer a wider range of more thoughtful views,” he said. Shipley, he said, “checked every box.”
Personal views and ideology played little role in the selection, Ryan said. “The Post has been noted for its longtime independence in its [editorial] voice, and we will remain an independent voice,” he said. “David has been very good at surfacing a range of views at the places he’s worked and that’s what makes him so good for The Washington Post.”
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos met with Shipley and endorsed the selection, Ryan said.
Shipley spent more than a decade at Bloomberg, where he helped create its opinion section. He previously worked at the New York Times as a deputy editorial page editor and op-ed editor, and once served as executive editor of the left-leaning New Republic magazine.
His resume is dotted with center-left credentials, having worked both for President Bill Clinton, as a speechwriter and special assistant in the 1990s, and for former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who founded the news service that bears his name. After co-founding Bloomberg Opinion in 2010, Shipley briefly stepped down in 2019 to work for Bloomberg’s short-lived campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. (Bloomberg had previously been a Republican and an independent.)
Shipley will join The Post after Labor Day, according to Ryan. He will be only the fourth editor to guide The Post’s opinion sections since the late 1960s. Meg Greenfield, the storied columnist and editor, succeeded Philip L. Geyelin in 1979 and held the position for 20 years. Stephen S. Rosenfeld briefly was interim editor after Greenfield’s death in 1999 until his retirement in 2000, when Hiatt took over.
A foreign correspondent for The Post before he became an editorial writer, Hiatt oversaw the transformation of the department as it adapted to the digital era, including the expansion of a global cadre of writers who contributed opinion pieces to the section.
Hiatt and his fellow editorial board members would debate issues of the day and write the unsigned editorials that represented the institutional voice of The Post. They tackled topics such as campaign finance reform, abortion rights and international relations. In 2003, they expressed support for the invasion of Iraq, a position mirrored by much of mainstream media and politicians at the time.
During Hiatt’s tenure, three columnists won Pulitzer Prizes, and staff members were finalists multiple times, as was Hiatt himself. The Post won the gold medal for Public Service this year for its Capitol attack coverage, which included an editorial written on the night of Jan. 6, 2021 calling for then-president Donald Trump to be removed from office.
Hiatt also helped lead an editorial campaign demanding accountability for the brutal killing of Khashoggi. A U.S. intelligence report eventually concluded Khashoggi’s murder inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul had been approved by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In one editorial directed at the crown prince and signed under his own name, Hiatt wrote, “Why bring a bonesaw to a kidnapping, Your Highness?” | 2022-07-07T20:26:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David Shipley named editor of Washington Post editorial page - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/07/david-shipley-washington-post-editorial-page-editor-hiatt-successor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/07/david-shipley-washington-post-editorial-page-editor-hiatt-successor/ |
From Metro station to concert hall, Dupont Brass brings soul anywhere
The nine-piece, horns-forward band creates a casual but intimate party atmosphere that will have you out of your seat and dancing -- no matter the setting.
Review by Michael J. West
Dupont Brass performed Wednesday at Strathmore. (Erica Blake)
Wednesday night’s rain forecast forced DuPont Brass, the nine-piece, horns-forward band scheduled to open Strathmore’s “Live from the Lawn” series, into the indoor Music Center instead. Surely their upbeat music (which fuses jazz, funk, R&B and hip-hop) couldn’t generate the same casual but intimate party vibe in a cavernous concert hall, right?
Oh, yes, it could. If the band’s formative years as Metro buskers taught them anything, it’s how to get people involved in their music — never mind the setting. “We call that a warm-up,” vocalist Isaac “Deacon Izzy” Bell explained after the jazzy opener, “Come Close.” “Now we’re gonna try to set this stage on fire a little bit.” When they launched into a go-go-charged version of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” my 12-year-old looked at me with undisguised delight. That’s when I knew DuPont Brass had this crowd in the palm of its hand.
DuPont Brass takes a big step with its first tour
Even that turned out to be a warm-up. It was with the next tune, the driving “Get You,” that things really got going. Bell urged the audience to stand up; most of them did, and few sat down again — there wasn’t any reason to. The band kept us on our toes, burning through the Isley Brothers’ “Footsteps In the Dark”; a gorgeous “Pure Imagination” (from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”), featuring trumpeter Anthony “Ant” Daniel; and their smooth, joyful original “’Til the End,” with trumpeter Jared “MK Zulu” Bailey taking over the lead vocal.
The house wasn’t anything close to full, but the crowd made up in energy what it lacked in numbers. It moved to the beat in waves. At one point, three women were line dancing in the aisle. And it wasn’t just them: whenever the horn players (Daniel, Bailey, trumpeter Chris Allison and trombonist Matt “Fuzzy Da Plug” Thompson) weren’t playing, they were dancing, too.
Driven mostly by Howard U. musicians, DuPont Brass hit its stride on D.C. streets
The indoor environment wasn’t a perfect substitute for the Lawn. The sound system had clearly been set up in haste: Brent “Bass Heavy Slim” Gossett’s sousaphone, massive as it was, was usually lost in the mix, and Bell’s vocals were often muddy. The price of staying dry, perhaps — but none of it was enough to tamp down DuPont Brass’s unfiltered soul. | 2022-07-07T20:26:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Strathmore, Dupont Brass brings unfiltered soul - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/07/dupont-brass-strathmore-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/07/dupont-brass-strathmore-review/ |
The jury found him guilty of more counts than the four Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of in January
Sunny Balwani, former president of Theranos Inc., arrives at federal court in San Jose, Calif. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
Former Theranos executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who long served as the second-in-command to founder Elizabeth Holmes, was convicted of all 12 counts in federal court in San Jose for defrauding investors and patients connected to the biotech company, according to the Associated Press.
Balwani faced 10 counts of wire fraud, and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, after initially being charged with his former business partner, Holmes. Balwani ended up with the tougher judgement — Holmes was convicted in January of four counts of fraud for misleading investors who poured funds into the blood-testing startup, which once promised to transform the medical diagnostics industry.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes found guilty in landmark Silicon Valley fraud case
Theranos was a shining star in Silicon Valley for a more than a decade, attracting investments from seasoned techies such as Oracle’s Larry Ellison and venture capitalist Tim Draper. It boasted a star-studded board of directors that included former secretary of defense Jim Mattis and former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. Holmes had started the company when she was still a student at Stanford, and she captivated potential business partners, investors and media with her vision of making blood testing cheaper and less painful.
But the house of cards came tumbling down after a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Theranos’s technology was not working as well as the company boasted. Its small, tabletop device, sometimes called the Edison or the MiniLab, could only run about a dozen blood tests, former employees revealed in testimony during the trials — a far cry from the hundreds of tests Theranos suggested it could complete.
The company’s collapse destroyed Holmes’s image as a groundbreaking innovator in Silicon Valley and has become the subject of a bestselling book, multiple podcasts, an HBO documentary and, most recently, a Hulu series starring Amanda Seyfried.
Thearanos’s downfall shook confidence in some corners of the biotech industry and served, for some, as another example of Silicon Valley greed that overran its purpose.
Elizabeth Holmes learned all the wrong lessons from Silicon Valley
“What he tells Erika Cheung is that he questions her experience, and he’s sick of people who don’t have enough experience questioning Theranos’s blood testing,” prosecutor Jeff Schenk said in his closing statement. “And he tells her that she has one job at Theranos, and that is to process patient samples and not ask any questions.”
The Elizabeth Holmes trial is the hottest ticket in Silicon Valley
In a statement, Balwani’s lawyer said he was “disappointed” in the verdicts.
"We plan to study and consider all of Mr. Balwani’s options including an appeal,” Coopersmith said.
Holmes is expected to be sentenced in September, and Balwani in November.
“Mr. Balwani had a choice to make,” Schenk, the prosecutor, said in his closing statement. “He could watch Theranos fail, he could watch his girlfriend’s business collapse, or he could pursue a different path.” | 2022-07-07T20:28:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Theranos executive Sunny Balwani convicted - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/07/theranos-trial-verdict/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/07/theranos-trial-verdict/ |
Transcript: “Jerry & Marge Go Large” A Conversation with Annette Bening & Bryan Cranston
MS. HORNADAY: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Ann Hornaday, chief film critic for The Washington Post, and today I’m joined by Annette Bening and Bryan Cranston here to discuss their delightful new film, “Jerry and Marge Go Large,” as well as their storied careers. Annette, Bryan, welcome.
Thank you. Thanks so much for having us.
MS. BENING: Thank you.
MR. CRANSTON: Thank you.
MS. BENING: Thanks so much for having us.
MS. HORNADAY: It's great to see you both. And remember, we always want to hear from you, our audience, so you can share your thoughts and questions for our guests on Washington Post Live by tweeting @PostLive. As that introduction suggests, this film is inspired by an amazing true story of Jerry and Marge Selbee, who found a loophole in a state lottery game and then invested those winnings back into their small town. Bryan, I'd like to start with you. How did you come to find this project, or how did it come to find you?
MR. CRANSTON: There's a producer named Amy Baer who is looking for a product that appeals to more mature audiences, and her company is called Landline productions, which kind of says it all there. If you still have a landline, this is--this would be right up your alley. Yeah. So, she gave the script to me and I read it, and it was one of those things where this was during the pandemic in the lockdown and I was feeling constricted, and a loss of community and a sense of being social with other people like everyone else in the country. And I read this, and I thought this is like a breath of fresh air. This is not only a true story, but it's a story of hope and encouragement. It uplifts the audience. It uplifted me just reading it. And so I thought this feels like the right thing to do. And I wanted to feel better, and it's like a palate cleanser to me. And I was very, very happy with the outcome and exceedingly delighted when I heard that Annette Bening was interested in coming on board.
MS. HORNADAY: And Annette, you know, it's so interesting because obviously Jerry's the one with the math head and he's instigated the scheme, but Marge is such a crucial--she plays such a crucial role in this narrative. Tell us a little bit about Marge and how you found her. I'm assuming that both of you met your real-life analogues at some point?
MS. BENING: We did. We got to go and meet Jerry and Marge, which was a delightful trip on many levels. My parents are from the Midwest. I'm just about to go visit them again. I was born in Kansas. So, when I read this script, it was delightful. It's an amazing story about these two people who've been married a long, long time, raised six kids and in their retirement ended up having this incredible adventure. But the women that I know--my mother, my aunts, my grandmothers--they were all from this area. And so I felt like I knew Marge when I read the story.
Meeting the real Jerry and Marge was a complete delight. We also got to meet some members of their family. We went to their town. He hung out for a few days. We got to sit on the back porch. And they're wonderful people. Marge is a very straightforward woman. She's an incredible homemaker and mom. Literally, one of the things I was most impressed with was she actually made their coats when they were kids. Do you know how hard it is? I mean, I sew, but making especially a thick winter coat, she's a really capable, loving woman. She loves Jerry. It's so obvious, their love for each other. The personalities in the movie are a little bit different than their personalities in life.
One of the things I most respect about Marge is how completely unimpressed she is with the fact that we made a movie about them. I love that about her. I just really admire that. She was polite, but she wasn't at all bowled over. And the fact that they ended up making all this money that they shared with their kids and their grandkids and their town didn't really change them. And that's kind of the coolest thing. I guess cool isn't quite the right word. The most central thing to the story is that in this case, instead of what happens a lot of times when people come into a lot of money, they--their lives didn't change that much. They didn't move. I think they bought a new truck. Right, Bryan? Was that it.
MR. CRANSTON: Yeah. Yeah, picked up a new Ford truck, and that was about it.
MS. BENING: So I mean, it's just an extraordinary story, to me, and I love that about it. And like Bryan, I read it during the pandemic in a very isolated state. And I thought, wow, this is--this is great. This is something my parents would enjoy watching. Quite frankly, I really thought about that. My mom and dad are 96 and 93, and they--I’ve made a lot of movies that my--particularly my father won’t watch. So anyway, yeah.
MR. CRANSTON: I made a lot of movies that nobody would watch.
MS. BENING: [Laughs] I’ve made those, too.
MS. HORNADAY: Well, you know, Annette, I know you’re from the Midwest. Full disclosure, your Uncle Clark [phonetic] was a very good friend of my parents. I’m from Des Moines, Iowa.
MS. BENING: Get out!
MS. HORNADAY: True story. And I know just what you mean about--I know just what you mean about people being--you know, it’s just there’s a certain Midwestern reserve--warmth but reserve that you absolutely capture. And I was wondering as you were playing Marge if it didn’t feel like something of a parallel life. Like if you had stayed in Topeka, if you had grown up there and married, you know, the cereal guy, is this a path my life might have taken. I don’t know if that ever crossed your mind.
MS. BENING: That’s really interesting. I--we moved to San Diego when I was seven, and so I kind of became a California kid by the beach and all of that. But yeah, there’s that woman in me for sure, with all that comes with that. Because as I said, the women in my life, the moms, the aunts, the grandmothers, their friends, all of those folks, including my Uncle Clark [phonetic] and his wife, Kris [phonetic]. Kris is still alive. Uncle Clark passed away. But we actually went to his funeral in Des Moines. I took my parents to that. That was beautiful. But--and he was so charismatic, my Uncle Clark. I really adored him.
But yeah, there is something to all that. I was very inspired by my mom, and I still am just as a woman. I really respect my mother. And she was a homemaker, and she did devote her entire energy pretty much to the family, except that she's also a great singer. So she was always in choral groups. She always sang in the church choir. I was in the church choir. My mom also was a professional church singer, because there are some churches that actually hire singers to come in. So, but I was always inspired by my mom. And since I did have a profession in some ways that it’s kind of a duality inside of me, and I think for my sister too, who's a doctor, because we kind of have that old fashioned notion of what it is to be a woman and a wife and how you function in a family as a woman. But then there's also this--you know, this other part of us that takes care of ourselves and has our own ambitions and our own creativity and our own sense of self that we need to cultivate.
MS. HORNADAY: Exactly. You know, what occurred to me in watching this is that you're both--you're playing tips of iceberg. You know, you're playing the tip of the iceberg of your individual characters in terms of their histories and their personal histories and you're playing the tip of an iceberg in their own marriage. This is a 46-year marriage, and we're sort of seeing it--we're--there's so much history that you are suggesting, just by the look of an eye or a gesture, and I'd like to go to a clip that kind of gets to Jerry and Marge's wonderful relationship. Let's go to the clip and come back after.
MS. HORNADAY: Bryan, what are the--you know, Jerry is a pretty buttoned up guy. I think we can stipulate that. So, tell us a little bit about the challenges of playing him.
MR. CRANSTON: Well, the real Jerry is actually not. What Annette alluded to is really true. Jerry is gregarious and outgoing and friendly, and Marge is more of the observing kind of reserved type of person. So, we kind of flipped it. We just felt that it might be more interesting for the audience if Jerry has a place to go. So I thought if he was more reserved, and more of the--what we would assume a mathematician would be like, you know. And so I felt it was the right thing to do, that especially in the text it talks about how he was always good at numbers and could do sudoku and figure geometry out easily in his head. But he wasn't so good at figuring out people, and that's where we took the theatrical license to say that he Jerry's--my Jerry Selbee still has a journey to make. And this experience helped him to realize and understand people better and therefore assimilate into his town and his friends and open up a bit. And that was that was fun to do. That was really a lot of fun to do. And it is a sense of community and togetherness that--and I will also add that one of--the most important thing that Jerry and Marge did with their winnings was created a college fund for all their grandchildren, which was, you know, a lovely thing to do. So, they just--that's what was important to them. And so they set that up.
And everybody in the town was able to improve their lives, even if it was incrementally. And so you saw gardens being created and people painting their houses or putting up a nice fence or doing little things that just lifted up the entire town of Evart, Michigan, which to this day has one traffic light and 1,900 people in the town.
MS. HORNADAY: You know, as I was watching it, I suddenly had a revelation, which is that Jerry is almost the better angel of Walter White. You know, they're both men who are using this deep knowledge, deep expertise for their families, granted, you know? And tell us, did you--did you pick up on that? Was that ever part of your calculation here?
MR. CRANSTON: I if I ever made an association between Jerry Selbee and Walter White, I think they would--they would have to take me away. It doesn't. Although probably subliminally I think of opportunities and ways to divert away from that character for obvious reasons. To me as an actor, I want to be able to explore other avenues. And of course, similarities will always be drawn because I'm the same actor playing that role, Jerry Selbee or Walter White or all this craziness that's going on with my face. So I'm able to jump in and look different and feel different, and that's really my goal when I look for projects.
MS. HORNADAY: Well, you know, and not to beat the Walter White horse to death, but both are also sort of avatars of a time of real economic sort of dislocation. I mean, Jerry and Marge aren't desperate. You know, they're okay. You know, as that scene with your accountant suggests you're getting along. But there's this sort of underlying--there is an underlying anxiety to this that I think really does speak to our times right now.
MR. CRANSTON: Well, I think it does. I mean, and I think that's what Annette and I responded to. It's not just the material itself or the characters, or that the fact that it's a true story, but it was--we're feeling that contraction, that restrictive behavior in our ability to move, to socialize. And coming right out of the pandemic lockdown, I think we both felt this is--this is a breath mint. This film, "Jerry and March Go Large," will not change your life, but it can change your day. And I really started to embrace the value of that simple equation, that it does bring an improvement to people's lives, even if it's just a 90-minute distraction from their troubles or the issues of their lives.
MS. HORNADAY: It's so true. And I also think the tone of it, you know, the humor is so--it's very gentle. It's unforced. It's not a gag, gag, gag, you know, setup, setup, punch line. It's just very low key in that best sense of the word.
And looping back to you, Annette, when you wanted to make something for your parents--which I totally relate to, because as a reviewer, sometimes when I would visit my dad in Des Moines, I would want to show him what I was watching, but I couldn't. I mean, there was very little that we would be able to enjoy together. So just tell us a little bit about kind of where you think the movie business is now in terms of, say older audiences, but an underserved audience that I think is being served by this film.
MS. BENING: Well, I don't know that I'm an expert on that. But I know that, you know, the culture is one we make what we think sells, I guess, a lot of the time, although there are quite a few projects that are done all the time that do have a bigger objective than just getting as many audience members to tune in as possible. So, I think that there's just a tremendous amount going on. Because of all the streaming services, there's lots and lots of places looking for material.
The Independent Film business, which I'm part of very, very often--I just finished one literally yesterday--that's a tricky part of what we do, because trying to find ways to make personal movies--often they're very personal--maybe they have--they have to work with a smaller budget. But they want to shoot film, which we did. That's very tricky, how you get the money together to make those movies. And then after they're made, how do they get sold? Film Festivals, I think are playing an even bigger part than ever, in terms of how to launch movies. And then often what we do is we go to film festivals, we show our movies, and then people buy them. Often, they're put on streaming services now because that's obviously the only way to get seen, for something to get seen or sold.
So, I mean, the--from my point of view, the reality is we're becoming one screen. Yes, there are movie theaters that we can go to. They're more and more rare. and people go less and less. People watch things on their phones. People watch things on their iPads, their television sets. So, in a way, it's a blessing, because I think a lot of things are getting made that wouldn't have been made before. Sometimes things--I love when something should be, for instance, three episodes long and it's only three episodes long, or it's supposed to be nine episodes and then it's made in that length, kind of like a book. Is it a short story that's appropriate to be that length? Or is it a huge novel that needs to be this long in order to fulfill the artist’s, the writer’s vision? So, in a way our storytelling on screen is mirroring that a little bit more. The economics of it I can't really speak to. I think it's kind of a free for all right now.
MS. HORNADAY: It is a free for all. And a question I have, this obviously is a streaming piece. It almost--tell me, Bryan, how does it--does feel different when you're sending a piece of work out into that--to that space as opposed to a theater? I mean, do you get a sense of how audiences are responding or does it sort of feel like goodbye and you never like--tell me, does it sort of change your relationship to the work once it's out?
MR. CRANSTON: I don't--I don't think it does. I mean, it certainly doesn't change the approach to the work. I don't approach the character development any differently if it's--if it's going to a platform television or widescreen or massive release or--you approach it differently. I would--I would say that Annette probably feels the same way about that. You approach your work the same way. You don't say, well, it's only going here, so we'll just do this much work. So, it's still the same amount of energy and creativity and thought goes into creating them.
Afterward, I don't know. I think--I think Annette and I understand that people need to figure out where they want to see their product. And we're just grateful that there's a place that, like Paramount+ that people can go to and see this movie. It is--it is something that would be considered lighter. And sometimes you're in the mood for that. You really are. Like you had a busy day or a hectic day or there might be news that is upsetting and you want a distraction. You want something that just makes you feel better. And there's true value in that. And I'm happy to be a part of something that embraced that.
MS. HORNADAY: Lovely. We do have a question from Anonymous Anonymous. Thanks, Anonymous Anonymous, on Twitter. I was at the premiere in Tribeca two weeks ago. Rainn Wilson seemed to be off--seemed to be off script a lot. Was he as funny off camera as he was on? Take it away?
MR. CRANSTON: Yeah, he was. He's a funny guy. He's--you know, but he's also very dedicated to his work. So, while he was throwing out ad libs--and there were several ad libs that he did that ended up in the movie, and many that didn't, but you don't know what's going to work, so you just keep creating and keep throwing it out there. And his character was primed for that. It was--it was just perfect for that kind of loose cannon type of character. So yeah, he was fun to work with. In fact, him and Larry Wilmore and Michael McKean and Ann Harada, I mean, there's Jake McDorman, we had a really great group and a lot of fun. And I think--I think that was the experience that we wanted to have. We wanted the result to be fun and entertaining, and that was also our experience in making it.
MS. HORNADAY: It's--thank you for name checking Larry Wilmore and Michael McKean, and they are--it’s a whole--it’s a wonderful ensemble piece as well as a great showcase for both of you.
So, Bryan, now you've played Lyndon Johnson, Dalton Trumbo, Jerry Selbee. Is there an historical figure who's next for you? Who have you got your eye on? I hope for George H.W. Bush. I kept getting a vibe during this meeting during this [audio distortion].
MR. CRANSTON: You know, it's funny that you mentioned that because I've had several people say that I resemble H.W., and it was interesting. I even then went and read a biography on him. But thus far, nothing has come. And you know, it is--it is delicate territory when you're playing a character, a non-fictional character, someone who left their mark enough to tell a story about. There's more responsibility from an actor standpoint, because in many of those cases, like Dalton Trumbo, or LBJ, his family members, his close associates, friends and business partner, they're still alive. And I wanted to--I went to them and--to gain a lot of information and to be able to get the sensibility of the character. As I told Lyndon Johnson's two daughters, I have no intention of doing impersonation of your father. I just want to get his essence. If I can feel like his essence is within me, then that's my goal. And they were very, very helpful in helping to guide me as far as their own personal experience. And there is more responsibility, but it's a big challenge. And I know Annette is doing the same thing.
MS. HORNADAY: So quickly, tell--do fill us in what is next for both--each of you.
MS. BENING: Well, I--after I made "Jerry and Marge," I went and made a movie about a marathon swimmer named Diana Nyad. So, there's that. And then I finished--just like, I said--just mentioned this movie, Chris Pine, the actor, is now a writer, director and with his partner, Ian Gotler, they wrote a script called "Poolman" that Chris Pine directed and acted in. And I just finished that. So, from a work point of view that--those are my--those are my credits.
MS. HORNADAY: You have a lot of water in your future, or we have a lot of water--Annette in the water in your future.
How about you, Bryan? What--is the beard a clue to something?
MR. CRANSTON: Yeah, it's for a movie project that I'm--that I'm doing now that I'm not really supposed to be talking about. But after "Jerry and Marge," I had a great experience in Spain working with Wes Anderson on a movie called "Asteroid City" with a lot of other actors, and it was a very communal experience where we would work a 10-hour day only, and then we'd go back to this hotel in Spain, where we controlled the whole thing. And we'd have these dinners with 40 people, of actors and writers and it was like a really wonderful creative environment. And I really enjoyed that. And then I went to London and shot a movie called "Argylle" with Dallas--Bryce Howard and Sam Rockwell about a--like she’s like a female Jason Bourne, but it's a comedy. And it's terrific. And so that'll be--that's the other thing I did. And then I rested. I took a lot of naps.
MS. HORNADAY: Well, as well you should. And I think I have time for one lightning round. It has to be a lightning round. But if there's--is there one writer/director out there that you're dying to work with? Top of mind, first thought, best thought.
MS. BENING: Lisa Cholodenko.
MS. HORNADAY: To both of you.
MR. CRANSTON: That’s a good one. Can we do it together? Guillermo del Toro comes to mind. There's so many, you know?
MS. HORNADAY: That’s a good one. I’ll accept it. I’ll allow it. That's a good one.
Annette, anything pop into your –
MR. CRANSTON: Lisa.
MS. HORNADAY: Ah, excellent answers. Wonderful. Well, I hope that we just sent messages out into the universe, and I hope it shall be so. We are bringing this conversation to an end. It has been wonderful having both of you with us. Thank you so much for joining us today, Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening.
MR. CRANSTON: Thank you, Ann.
MS. BENING: Thank you, Ann.
MS. HORNADAY: And thanks to all of you for joining us here today. I’m Ann Hornaday. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please read WashingtonPostLive.com to register and find out more information about all of our upcoming programs. Thanks again for joining us. See you soon. | 2022-07-07T20:28:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: “Jerry & Marge Go Large” A Conversation with Annette Bening & Bryan Cranston - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/07/transcript-jerry-marge-go-large-conversation-with-annette-bening-bryan-cranston/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/07/transcript-jerry-marge-go-large-conversation-with-annette-bening-bryan-cranston/ |
Park Service launches massive plan to restore D.C.’s tidal basin
Ringed by cherry blossoms, the historical basin’s crumbling sea wall will be repaired and the shoreline re-landscaped
Regina Eddy of Falls Church navigates the flooded sidewalks around the Tidal Basin. (Jonathan Newton)
The National Park Service says it is planning a massive restoration of the crumbling sea wall around Washington’s scenic Tidal Basin and a re-landscaping of the shoreline there and in adjacent West Potomac Park.
The historical Tidal Basin, which dates back more than a century, is an annual focus of the National Cherry Blossom Festival and is crowded with visitors who gather there to view and photograph the cherry trees that ring the basin.
And the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial are on the basin and serve as striking backdrops.
But parts of the basin’s sea wall have been sinking for years, and the structure and its walkway are often submerged by tidal inundations that leave behind debris, trash and dead fish when the water recedes.
One section near the Jefferson Memorial is “underwater twice a day every day,” Mike Litterst, spokesman for the Park Service’s National Mall and Memorial Parks, said Thursday.
“We rerouted the trail in that area to get it further back from the edge,” he said. “We did that 20 years or so ago, and it’s underwater, not every day but a couple times a month,” he said.
In some spots, the sea wall “has settled between three and four feet” since it was rebuilt in the 1930s and ’40s, he said.
“And at that same time, the sea level rise has caused the Tidal Basin to rise by a foot,” he said. “So we have water four feet higher than it was intended to be when they built that.”
In some sections, vegetation is growing out of the wall.
A dozen years ago, the Park Service spent more than $12 million to repair the section of the sea wall in front of the Jefferson Memorial, where it was slipping away and sinking into the mud at the bottom of the basin.
Now, the Park Service says a two-part, $5.7 million contract has been awarded to begin the planning and compliance process for the proposed restoration project.
The contract has been awarded to HDR, an architecture, engineering and planning firm based in Omaha, and Moffatt & Nichol, a Long Beach, Calif., engineering firm with waterfront expertise.
The Lincoln Memorial rose from the mud of the Potomac 100 years ago
The Park Service said it is opening Friday a two-month period for the public to comment on the project.
The sea wall was originally built between 1893 and 1897, the Park Service said in a recent historical report. It is more than a mile and a half around, the report said.
“Despite various repairs over the decades since their original construction, the seawall systems are no longer structurally sound, and threaten the historic setting and visitor safety,” the Park Service said in a statement.
“Without improvements, the walls will continue to deteriorate and fail which will lead to walkways buckling and soil eroding,” the statement said.
Parts of the sea wall will be rebuilt on top of new, stronger foundations, and the walkways will be replaced.
The sinking section at the Jefferson Memorial was believed to have failed because it was built on a foundation of wooden pillars that were not long enough to reach bedrock. The old foundation was replaced with concrete pilings and caissons resting on bedrock.
Litterst said he thinks the same process would be used this time.
The Park Service said the sea wall repairs should also protect cherry trees from being killed by tidal saturation.
A contract to design and execute the project will be awarded next year or early 2024, the Park Service said. | 2022-07-07T20:47:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Historic D.C. tidal basin is being restored. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/tidal-basin-cherry-blossoms-restored/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/tidal-basin-cherry-blossoms-restored/ |
1. Tom Perez (D)
In what was widely considered a thankless job, Perez drew criticism for diminishing power of the party’s superdelegates in the presidential nominating process, resulting in a vote of no-confidence in him from the Congressional Black Caucus. He wrangled the largest presidential primary field in history in 2020, setting debate rules that kept some candidates with little support or funding off the stage, prompting criticism. He also was tweaked by state party chairs over how the DNC handled Iowa Democratic Party’s inability to count the results in 2020 caucuses.
Perez has taken up local officials’ offers to tour legislative districts, winning over some legislators he just met, such as Del. Robbyn T. Lewis (D-Baltimore City).
2. Peter Franchot (D)
He’s not afraid to make enemies within his own party, as he did with Thomas V. Mike Miller (D) when Miller was president of the Senate. Or friends within the opposing party, as he did with Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
Franchot then went to law school at Northeastern University in Boston, where he met his wife, Anne Maher, now a partner at a D.C. law firm. They have two children and three grandchildren. During the 1980s, Franchot spent six years working as an aide to Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.).
As 2014 approached, with Democrat Martin O’Malley term-limited from being governor again, Franchot was among several high-profile state Democrats who considered running. But he wasn’t considered a front-runner, and he ultimately decided against it. Instead he coasted through reelection for comptroller.
After Hogan, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, managed an upset win that year, he was quickly befriended by Franchot, with whom he shared many voters. They bonded over strolls along the Ocean City boardwalk and a mutual desire to curb state spending. Franchot dined at the governor’s mansion, something he’d never done with O’Malley.
3. Wes Moore (D)
Fresh polls show the political newcomer toe to toe with established candidates such as Peter Franchot, a state comptroller who has held elected office almost as long as Moore has been alive, and Tom Perez, a former U.S. labor secretary who is entrenched in national party politics. Moore has consolidated support from the state’s heavy hitters, including U.S. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, state Senate President Bill Ferguson, House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones and Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks. He’s also banked more than $7 million over the last cycle, more than any other candidate in the race, and won one of the biggest and most coveted labor endorsements, from the 76,000-strong state teachers union.
Winfrey, whose advice he sought about running and who recently appeared at a virtual fundraiser to boost his campaign, asked Moore during the event about a widely circulated myth that he was born in Baltimore. (He was born in Takoma Park.) A decade ago, even Oprah introduced him incorrectly. And later, so did Stephen Colbert, Princeton University and a curriculum teaching his book to K-12 students, among others.
I “didn’t see the need … to call every reporter or every producer out. … It wasn’t some thread where I was like, ‘Let me ride this out,’” Moore said in a recent interview, maintaining that the city helped shape him and that he has what it takes to succeed term-limited Gov. Larry Hogan (R).
Moore was 3 years old when his father died in front of him because he didn’t get the health care he needed for acute epiglottitis, Moore said in an interview. His widowed mother, an immigrant from Jamaica, moved him and his two sisters to the Bronx, where they lived with his grandparents, a minister and a longtime educator.
By 11 years old, Moore said he “felt handcuffs on his wrist,” after police detained him for spray-painting, and after years of being told to straighten up, he was sent off to military school by age 13. His mother had moved back to Maryland by then, and Moore was spending time in Baltimore, where he now lives with his wife, Dawn, and their two children. After graduating from Valley Forge Military College, he would go on to become the first Black Rhodes scholar from Johns Hopkins University, a White House fellow, an investment banker, a veteran and a chief executive of a large nonprofit.
He had flirted with the idea of running for office before, when several power players, including local elected officials, approached him about running for mayor of Baltimore. He opted against it, he said, because his children were too young. He jumped into the governor’s race with his wife, whom he has called his “secret weapon,” by his side. Dawn Moore has a long history in Maryland politics, having worked on gubernatorial campaigns for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Martin O’Malley and in the administration of then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening.
Moore said he plans to bring all sectors together to address issues such as the environment, which has forced students to leave hot school buildings when temperatures soar, resulted in higher asthma rates in cities such as Baltimore and caused “once in a century” flooding every few years.
4. John B. King Jr. (D)
“We need to stop acting like the party of Hogan Democrats and Joe Manchin III Democrats who think that people who are struggling should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and start acting like the party of FDR Democrats … the party of Obama Democrats … and the party of Raskin Democrats,” he said, making a final reference to last year’s lead House impeachment manager, U.S. Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), who was a strong proponent of liberal issues when he served in the state General Assembly.
5. Doug Gansler (D)
6. Kelly M. Schulz (R)
While Hogan has been an outspoken Trump critic, Schulz cannot afford at this point to sideline supporters of the former president, Laird said. In the primary, where turnout tends to be higher among more ideological voters, she faces three opponents, including Maryland Del. Daniel L. Cox (R), a Trump-endorsed, staunchly conservative lawmaker also from Frederick. But drawing herself too close to the former president also has its hitches: In the 2020 general election, Marylanders voted 2-to-1 against Trump.
Del. Kathy Szeliga (R-Baltimore County), the outgoing minority whip in the House, said she’s been glad to see Schulz rise in rank over the last decade even though she has never found Schulz to be “politically ambitious.”
7. Daniel L. Cox (R)
Now, as Cox seeks the Republican nomination for Maryland governor, he is locked in a tight battle with Hogan-endorsed Kelly M. Schulz, the former state commerce secretary, in a race shaped by deep divisions across the country between members of the GOP establishment and supporters of former president Trump.
A recent Goucher College poll, conducted in partnership with the Baltimore Banner and WYPR-88.1, found Cox and Schulz in a statistical dead heat, with Cox capturing 25 percent of the vote and Schulz 22 percent. A majority of likely Republican voters were undecided.
Cox, 47, campaigns on hard-right stances he hopes will lift him to a win as they did Doug Mastriano in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary: dramatically restricting abortions, banning mask and vaccine mandates for the coronavirus, fighting against transgender rights and demanding a federal audit of the 2020 elections.
Cox, who did not respond to calls seeking comment, told the hundreds — including Mastriano and former U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes — gathered at a Carroll County farm in sweltering summer heat recently that his campaign, run by one of his daughters, was outpacing the deep-pocketed Schulz campaign.
8. Other candidates | 2022-07-07T20:47:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meet the candidates who want to be Maryland’s next governor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/2022/06/30/eed08cf9-5ccb-4534-9a3a-6a0f4775462b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/2022/06/30/eed08cf9-5ccb-4534-9a3a-6a0f4775462b_story.html |
FILE - In this June 8, 2017, file photo, fresh nuts, bolts and fittings are ready to be added to the east leg of the pipeline near St. Ignace, Mich., as Enbridge Inc., prepares to test the east and west sides of the Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac in Mackinaw City, Mich. A Michigan regulatory panel said Thursday, July 7, 2022, that it needs more information about safety risks before it can rule on Enbridge’s plan to extend an oil pipeline through a tunnel beneath a waterway linking two of the Great Lakes. (Dale G Young/Detroit News via AP, File) (Dale G. Young/Detroit News) | 2022-07-07T21:57:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michigan panel wants details on Great Lakes oil tunnel plan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/michigan-panel-wants-details-on-great-lakes-oil-tunnel-plan/2022/07/07/cc673b8a-fe32-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/michigan-panel-wants-details-on-great-lakes-oil-tunnel-plan/2022/07/07/cc673b8a-fe32-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
FILE - In this March 4, 2018, file photo, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. On Thursday, July 7, 2022, Cohen defeated a $95 million defamation lawsuit by former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who said he was tricked into a humiliating television appearance that lampooned sexual misconduct accusations against him. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-07-07T21:58:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roy Moore’s defamation suit against Baron Cohen rejected - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/roy-moores-defamation-suit-against-baron-cohen-rejected/2022/07/07/e47222d8-fe39-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/roy-moores-defamation-suit-against-baron-cohen-rejected/2022/07/07/e47222d8-fe39-11ec-b39d-71309168014b_story.html |
Abiy admits military losses in insurgencies
In a parliamentary address, Abiy repeated a vow to destroy the Oromo Liberation Army, a rebel group his government blames for two recent massacres targeting members of the Amhara ethnic group.
In a rare admission of government losses, Abiy also said that “hundreds” of district officials have been killed.
The increase in violence in Oromia comes as the 20-month-old conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front appears to be waning.
Probe of economist's death called flawed
Two leading human rights groups accused Egyptian authorities Thursday of failing to conduct an impartial and transparent investigation into the suspicious death of an economic researcher in custody.
In a joint statement, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused Egyptian prosecutors of having turned a blind eye to “mounting evidence” that 48-year-old Ayman Hadhoud disappeared, was tortured and was denied access to timely health care.
Hadhoud’s whereabouts were unknown for two months before he was declared dead in April. The Interior Ministry said he died in the government-run Abbasiya Mental Health Hospital in Cairo, where he had been taken for allegedly trying to break into a home and exhibiting “irresponsible behavior.”
“The severely flawed investigation ... is another stark reminder of the impunity crisis in Egypt,” said Philip Luther of Amnesty International. “Failure to adequately investigate ... only emboldens security forces to continue violating detainees’ right to life.”
Last month, a court rejected an appeal by Hadhoud’s family to reinvestigate his death.
Earlier, prosecutors had refused to let independent observers attend the autopsy of Hadhoud’s body, and ultimately concluded that he died of chronic heart disease that led to a cardiac and respiratory arrest.
Israeli gets life term on drug charges
The court had initially sentenced her to death but canceled it last week. Israel says it has closely followed the case in the UAE, which normalized relations with Israel in 2020 in the first of the Abraham Accords brokered by the Trump administration.
Fida Kiwan, 43, a resident of the Israeli city of Haifa, was arrested in March 2021. Officials say they found marijuana, cocaine and MDMA in the apartment where she was staying, and she was convicted
of intending to sell drugs. She denied the allegations.
UAE set to run Kabul airport in deal with Taliban: The Taliban and the United Arab Emirates are poised to strike a deal for the Persian Gulf nation to run Kabul airport and several others in Afghanistan that could be announced within weeks, according to sources familiar with the talks. The Taliban, whose government remains an international pariah, had courted regional powers, including Qatar and Turkey, to operate Kabul airport and others. But after months of talks, and at one point raising the possibility of a joint UAE-Turkey-Qatar deal, the Taliban is set to hand the operations in their entirety to the UAE, which had previously run Afghan airports, the sources said.
10th body recovered after Italy avalanche: Rescue crews in northern Italy have recovered a tenth body and said they are looking for one more hiker after a deadly avalanche triggered by the collapse of a chunk of melting glacier. Alpine rescue crews used dogs and drones to recover the remains in the debris of Sunday's avalanche on the Marmolada glacier, east of Bolzano, said Maurizio Fugatti, the head of Trento province. To date, only six of the 10 bodies have been positively identified, including those of two Czech citizens. Crews have found body parts at the site, evidence of the fierce force of the avalanche. | 2022-07-07T21:58:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 7, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-7-2022/2022/07/07/0a7ae56a-fe02-11ec-a07f-799ab6d06557_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-7-2022/2022/07/07/0a7ae56a-fe02-11ec-a07f-799ab6d06557_story.html |
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation on July 7. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
In the end, Britain’s ruling Conservative Party has done what U.S. Republicans have by and large failed to do: break with a charismatic and toxic leader. Boris Johnson, the disgraced prime minister, is guilty of nothing as egregious as the Jan. 6 insurrection. But in his cult of personality and dishonesty, he was Trump-lite: blond instead of orange, comic instead of caustic, cultured instead of crude; yet also deceitful, narcissistic, inconsistent, undisciplined, unethical, unserious, and indifferent to the institutions and norms that sustain democracy.
Sajid Javid, one of the Conservative cabinet ministers whose resignation precipitated his party’s revolt against Johnson this week, told Parliament on Wednesday that “treading the tightrope between loyalty and integrity has become impossible.” To remain loyal to a lying leader is to tarnish one’s own character, Javid was saying; there is only so much feigning and dissembling that a decent person can stomach. The fact that around 50 Conservatives resigned from Johnson’s government over the next 24 hours says something reassuring about Britain’s political culture.
The Post's View: Boris Johnson's downfall gives Britain a chance for a fresh start
For Americans, the question is why their system — explicitly designed to check and balance power — cannot match this catharsis. For Britain, the challenge is different. Johnson was brought down by a series of scandals, including partying during the covid lockdown that broke his own pandemic rules and lying about what he knew of the sexual misconduct of one of his appointees. But his true offense was more profound. He eroded the presumption that British leaders should deal seriously with the nation’s business. He promised an alternative reality in which hard choices could be evaded.
Analysis: Why Britain's brush with democratic collapse isn't comparable to ours
Over lunch at the House of Lords this week, an insider reminisced with me about the probity and talent of past U.K. political leaders. Gordon Brown, the last Labour prime minister, could survey the world economy off the cuff and without notes; he was in politics because he genuinely wanted to help poor people. George Osborne, a recent and gifted Conservative finance minister, invited the best and brightest on his staff to debate questions in front of him so that he grasped all sides of big issues. But under Johnson, this culture has changed. Talented, fact-oriented and independent thinkers have been chased away. Only loyalists have been tolerated.
Global Opinion: Boris Johnson's biggest failing is Britain's post-Brexit economy
The transformation began in 2016 with the Brexit referendum. Johnson had no principled view on Britain’s place in Europe. Famously, he drafted two newspaper columns, one arguing for Britain to remain in the European Union, the other in favor of leaving. He went with the pro-leave version not because of the merits of the case but because it gave him a better shot at becoming prime minister. To topple the sitting prime minister, David Cameron, Johnson had to oppose him on the question of Europe and defeat him.
Having come out for the leave side, Johnson campaigned for his confected conviction with even less integrity. He claimed, among other things, that Britain was paying 350 million pounds per week to the E.U. bureaucracy, starving the National Health Service of money. When fact-checkers (including an organization I was part of) pointed out that this was wildly wrong, Johnson toured the country in a bus with the false claim emblazoned on its side. He campaigned against not just Europe but honesty.
When the referendum went in Johnson’s favor, he became Cameron’s presumptive successor. But in a fit of startling candor, Johnson’s friend and campaign manager, Michael Gove, denounced him as incapable of leadership, killing off his candidacy. By way of consolation, Johnson took the job of foreign minister, notwithstanding the fact that he had once likened Hillary Clinton to a “sadistic nurse” and had written verse about Turkey’s leader engaging in bestiality. He used his new position to travel the world. Visiting a Buddhist shrine in Myanmar, he recited a disrespectful colonial poem until a mortified ambassador stopped him.
Johnson’s appetite for schoolboy japes signaled no dimming of ambition. Over the next three years, as Prime Minister Theresa May did her best to negotiate a sensible Brexit, Johnson and his allies sniped from the sidelines, claiming that Britain had the leverage to secure whatever deal it wanted from the 27 other countries of the union. This claim was another Johnsonian falsehood, but his populism blocked May’s pragmatic deals from getting through Parliament. In 2019, May was forced out, and Johnson got the job he coveted.
What has he done with it? Britain has left Europe. But, determined as ever to deny the existence of trade-offs, Johnson has threatened to undo bits of the agreement regarding the status of Northern Ireland. The government has also talked a good game about “leveling up” Britain’s poorer regions. But progress has been negligible. Meanwhile the British economy is reeling. Inflation is 9.1 percent and rising — higher even than in the United States and Europe. The trade deficit is large, the government budget bleeds red ink and productivity growth is in the doldrums.
Post-Brexit and post-Boris, Britain needs a serious leader. With luck, the party that turned on its unserious chief has at last understood that. | 2022-07-07T21:58:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Post-Boris and post-Brexit, Britain’s Conservatives need a serious leader - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-resignation-whats-next-britain-conservatives/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-resignation-whats-next-britain-conservatives/ |
A train passes over the C & O Canal towpath on June 23, 2020, in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Katrina vanden Heuvel, in her June 29 op-ed, “Can’t stand the political heat? Escape to the park.,” emphasized the importance of public parks to our health and well-being, and why it is important that we invest in the maintenance and sustainment of these public spaces. For those of us involved in the stewardship of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, her points resonated soundly and have been displayed firsthand in our park as the nation has grappled with the coronavirus pandemic.
The C&O Canal, which had more than $259 million in maintenance backlog before the pandemic, has experienced a substantial increase in use, as people all along its 184.5-mile length have sought a safe and enjoyable place to recreate and experience nature, as well as distance themselves from the stresses of the pandemic. The canal is a sanctuary and a place of peace and restoration for more than 5 million people annually. The increase in visitation during the pandemic has brought significant challenges to the already-understaffed National Park Service employees who support this park.
The investment that Ms. vanden Heuvel called for is essential if we are to have these public spaces available in a safe and welcoming way for today and for the future. Support for long-term NPS funding to address staff shortages and maintenance backlogs — and the important work of organizations such as the C&O Canal Trust, the canal’s official nonprofit partner — are essential in ensuring this legacy remains preserved for future generations. Otherwise, this magnificent national treasure will remain overwhelmed and underfunded.
John Guttmann, Washington
The writer is chairman of the board of directors of the C&O Canal Trust. | 2022-07-07T21:58:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Help preserve the C&O Canal Park - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/help-preserve-co-canal-park/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/help-preserve-co-canal-park/ |
The moral responsibility of the man
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other abortion rights activists demonstrate near the Supreme Court on June 30. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
After the release of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, I’ve scoured the editorials and thought-pieces to see any mention of the man’s responsibility in supporting the fetus (or cells) now deemed more important than the woman required to carry it to term. In their June 30 op-ed, “The pro-life movement’s work is just beginning,” O. Carter Snead and Mary Ann Glendon made a passing reference to the enforcement of penalties on men who “walk away from their responsibilities,” but that’s it.
Where is any discussion of the role of a man, who can deny, refute or ignore the responsibility for contraception if he doesn’t want to meet his economic responsibilities — much less the “moral duty” of fatherhood?
I pose this not only to opinion writers but also to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who called his decision in Dobbs a moral answer to a moral question. And while we are legislating morality, do any of these justices want to talk about the death penalty?
Mary Melley Blissard, Leesburg | 2022-07-07T21:59:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The moral responsibility of the man - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/moral-responsibility-man/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/moral-responsibility-man/ |
Men try to clear the debris at the site of a missile strike attack hit an outdoor market and shops in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on July 3. Six people were reported killed and 15 injured in numerous attacks. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post). (Heidi Levine/FTWP)
Again, Russia has viciously attacked a nonmilitary target in Ukraine, this time, a high-rise apartment building and a recreation center. After reading the July 3 front-page article “U.S.-supplied weapons system changes the calculus on front lines,” I don’t know whether the terms of the transfer of the huge amount of military equipment provided by Western allies restrict its usage to internal protection only, or whether Ukraine can retaliate against the attacks in an appropriate way.
The location of missile attacks can be accurately computed using a back azimuth calculation. This point of origin could be a military equipment stockpile, a fuel dump, or an ammunition storage facility within Russia or Belarus. If this would be crossing a proverbial line that might incite the use of more serious weapons, it is time to push back. The Russians crossed whatever imaginary line there was on Feb. 24 when they attacked Ukraine for no reason.
Are the Western allies waiting for thousands more to die or for cities to be completely annihilated?
Marc Collard, Lewes, Del. | 2022-07-07T21:59:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What is the West waiting for in Ukraine? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/what-is-west-waiting-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/what-is-west-waiting-ukraine/ |
More Republicans now call Jan. 6 a ‘legitimate protest’ than a ‘riot'
Rioters clash with police trying to enter the Capitol building through the front doors on Jan. 6, 2021. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images)
When the dust settled on Jan. 6, 2021, we were unable to agree on whether Donald Trump had incited the insurrection. But at least one conclusion crossed partisan lines: This had been a very bad and violent thing.
Apparently, we can’t even agree upon that anymore. The passage of time has prompted many Republicans to develop an increasingly fantastical view of what transpired that day.
A new Monmouth University poll carries some stark lessons for the work that lies ahead for the House Jan. 6 committee, to the extent that the panel seeks to convince conservative Americans that Trump committed a crime that day. That’s because they increasingly don’t even believe what happened that day — and what they formerly accepted as reality — actually happened.
The poll shows significant reductions in the percentages of Republicans who characterize Jan. 6 not just as an “insurrection,” but simply a “riot.” And it’s not the first to point in that direction.
In addition, the poll shows more Republicans regard Jan. 6 as a “legitimate protest” than a “riot.”
While 33 percent of Republicans said in June 2021 that Jan. 6 was an insurrection, that number is now just 13 percent.
While 62 percent of Republicans called it a “riot” back then, that’s down to 45 percent.
While 47 percent said it was a “legitimate protest,” that’s now up to 61 percent.
So whereas more Republicans once said it was a “riot” than that it was a “legitimate protest,” by a 15-point margin, that has been flipped, with Republicans favoring the “legitimate protest” label by 16 points. A majority of Republicans no longer even regard Jan. 6 as a “riot.”
And that’s to say nothing of the fact that, yes, it was an insurrection. But at least in that case, the doubters might not truly understand what that word means or might have been fed dubious and incorrect definitions by their favorite cable-news hosts and pundits. (By contrast, people know what a riot is.)
Indeed, what’s particularly striking about these numbers is that this isn’t comparing GOP views of Jan. 6 to the immediate aftermath; it’s comparing them to views in June 2021. By that point, the insurrection-doubter movement and its cohorts had already picked up steam. Yet one-third of Republicans still saw it as an insurrection, and 6 in 10 saw it as a riot. The intervening months have apparently persuaded many to join the doubter movement.
Other polling suggests this has indeed been a slow burn.
The CBS News/YouGov poll is the other big one to repeatedly ask such questions — both immediately after Jan. 6, 2021, and again in December. While 32 percent of Republicans in January 2021 said it was an insurrection, that dropped to 21 percent by December. Belief that it was an attempt to overthrow the government dropped from 27 percent to 18 percent.
But by far the biggest shift came on an interesting — and telling — question. While in January 2021, 56 percent of Republicans understood Jan. 6 as an attempt “to overturn the election and keep Donald Trump in power,” that number dropped to just 33 percent by December. That’s a remarkable number of people who accepted a pretty vanilla statement about reality and then, nearly a year later, abandoned it.
Was any evidence presented in the intervening months that the insurrectionists weren’t, in fact, trying to overturn the election for Trump? Of course not. Claims about provocateurs had routinely fallen apart, even by that point. But lots and lots of people still talked themselves out of the idea that the express purpose of the Jan. 6 events was actually the purpose. Other terms could be viewed as more subjective, but this one is pretty black and white.
And perhaps better than anything, that shows what’s at work here. | 2022-07-07T21:59:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | More Republicans now call Jan. 6 a ‘legitimate protest’ than a ‘riot’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/many-republicans-no-longer-call-jan-6-an-insurrection-or-even-riot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/07/many-republicans-no-longer-call-jan-6-an-insurrection-or-even-riot/ |
Ons Jabeur of Tunisia embraces Tatjana Maria of German following their Wimbledon semifinal. (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Ons Jabeur, 27, had gone from remarkable to more remarkable in becoming the first Arab woman and first African woman in any Grand Slam final when she bested dear friend Tatjana Maria of Germany, 6-2, 3-6, 6-1. She and Maria, 34, had hugged protractedly at the net after which Jabeur, forgoing the usual winner’s curtain call alone on the court, led Maria out there with her by hand so that the crowd could applaud both. Then Jabeur had extolled Maria in an on-court interview for, among other things, reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal after twice giving birth.
It lit up new worlds within the world, if Jabeur had not done so already by winning a second-tier big one in Madrid this year and reaching No. 2 in the world. It helped set up a final of nationalities that would have seemed fantastical a generation ago: Tunisia vs. Kazakhstan. That’s because Jabeur will play the final Saturday against Elena Rybakina, the 23-year-old Russian who took Kazakh nationality in 2018 and who dominated 2019 champion Simona Halep, 6-3, 6-3, in the other semifinal.
This is tennis frontier.
“I want to go bigger, inspire many more generations,” Jabeur would say in her news conference. “Tunisia is connected to the Arab world, is connected to the African continent. The area, we want to see more players. It’s not like Europe or any other countries. I want to see more players from my country, from the Middle East, from Africa. I think we didn’t believe enough at certain point that we can do it. Now I’m just trying to show that. Hopefully people are getting inspired.”
Tunisia, the smallish North African country of 12 million with a good history in soccer and Olympics, remained an unlit spot on the tennis globe when Jabeur picked up a racket at age 3 with the encouragement of her mother, Samira, in her birthplace Ksar Hellal near the Mediterranean coast. By age 9, Jabeur and family had moved an hour away to Sousse, also on the coast, and the girl was telling people she aimed to win the French Open someday.
“Everybody laughed at me,” she said Thursday.
By age 13, she had gone to the capital, Tunis, to train at a national sport academy, and by age 16, she had won the French Open junior singles title. By the end of 2017, she had reached the top 100, and by the end of 2020, the top 50, and by the end of 2021, the top 10, up there in her country’s history with sports stars such as four-time Olympic medalist Mohammed Gammoudi (men’s track and field), London 2012 gold medalist Habiba Ghribi (women’s steeplechase) and Rio de Janeiro 2016 bronze medalist Marwa Amri (women’s wrestling), not to mention the Tunisian men’s soccer team about to head to the World Cup for a sixth time. Jabeur joined that pantheon with a clever game that boasts the full toolbox of shots (all on display Thursday) and with an essence that made her something else: beloved.
Maria referred to her at different times as “such a great person” and “an amazing person” and “a really open person,” and as the quarterfinal here ended on Tuesday, Marie Bouzkova of the Czech Republic with arms opened wide for Jabeur several steps before the hug. “She’s number two in the world,” Maria said, “and she’s till the same person that she was many years ago.”
In her country, she has a nickname: “Minister of Happiness.”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s nice of them to call me that,” she said Thursday. “It’s really unbelievable. Maybe they’re thinking about having a minister of happiness. It’s funny because (an) actual minister calls me, ‘Hello, Minister.’ It’s funny. It’s tough times in Tunisia sometimes. When they see my matches, always say sports unites people. I’m happy they follow me. They’re pushing me to do better. Hopefully I can keep the (minister) title forever.”
It seemed almost harsh, then, that her first Grand Slam semifinal after two previous quarterfinals found her opposite Maria, a player ranked No. 103 who considers Jabeur “part of the family.” So when they finished, after Jabeur had played the kind of masterful third set a strong mind can summon — 10 winners, three unforced errors — they hugged and Maria said, “I am so happy for you.” They had their moment together, not separately, and Maria went off waving amid appreciative cheers.
“She has to make me a barbecue now,” Jabeur soon told the crowd, “to make up for all the running.” And: “I love to see Tatjana like this on the court, and let’s not play again.” And, to a booming cheer: “I’m a proud Tunisian standing here today. I know in Tunisia they’re going crazy right now.”
Then the friendship and sportswomanship carried on, because Jabeur got going about Maria: “If I didn’t see her two kids, I would say she never had the kids. It’s amazing how she moves on the court. It’s really inspiring for a lot of women.”
“Yeah, I hope that I can send this message out,” Maria said, “that I have two kids and I’m on this stage. I think everything is possible. I’m 34 years old with two kids and playing my first time semifinal in Wimbledon … Even with family, you can have a career and you can keep going.”
Then, back to the subject of the winner: “I mean, she is also such an inspiration, yeah, for a lot of women on this planet.”
She, Jabeur, has topped her original ascent with further ascent. She has spoken here of her mental coach, of meditation, of doing a better job of breathing. “I talk a lot about it’s nice to get out the feelings, all the stress,” she said. “It’s very important.” She spoke Thursday of childhood heroes Kim Clijsters, Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Andy Roddick, and of recent adviser Billie Jean King.
“Always she tells me ‘one ball at a time’ and focus on that,” Jabeur said, soon adding, “I always remember her during the match actually when the score is like I’m behind or something like that.”
Yet until last Wimbledon, when she reached the quarterfinals beating Venus Williams, Garbine Muguruza and Iga Swiatek, she hadn’t harbored the Wimbledon dream. (The French Open, you know.) Then Thursday she got to a decisive set in a semifinal and roared to 5-0 with only one game going to deuce. Then she sat and toweled her face and adjusted her headband as the chair umpire said, per custom after changeovers, “Time.”
Out she walked, and two games later, he might as well have meant time for fresh realms in the world — or time for, like King, another pioneer. | 2022-07-07T21:59:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tunisia's Ons Jabeur makes history at Wimbledon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/ons-jabeur-wimbledon-final/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/ons-jabeur-wimbledon-final/ |
Plan for 14-gate Dulles concourse gets boost from infrastructure law
The airport secured $49.6 million from the bipartisan infrastructure law that will help pay for construction of a new concourse
An artist's rendering of the 14-gate concourse planned for Washington Dulles International Airport. (Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority)
Dulles International Airport secured $49.6 million to help pay for construction of a new 14-gate commuter concourse, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday.
The funding is part of the Airport Terminal Program, one of three aviation programs created by the bipartisan infrastructure law. The program provides $1 billion in grants annually over five years to be used for airport terminals.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), which operates Dulles, said in a statement the grant is critical for the airport’s growth.
“This project will be the first step in upgrading aging facilities at the airport to enhance customer service and meet evolving infrastructure needs,” the authority said.
The $49.6 million is a fraction of the $230 million MWAA sought to help pay for the project, but officials noted there was significant competition for that money. Dulles can apply for additional funding in the future.
MWAA announced plans in late March to build the new concourse and said it would seek funding through the infrastructure law to offset the project’s estimated $500 million to $800 million cost.
Dulles International unveils plans for new commuter concourse
“This transformative federal funding will upgrade the passenger experience for those traveling around our region and support the continued success and growth of Dulles Airport, which is integral to Northern Virginia’s local economy,” Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), whose district includes the airport, said in a statement.
According to Airports Council International — North America (ACI-NA), the FAA received more than 650 applications from 532 airports for projects totaling more than $14 billion. Ultimately, 85 airports received grants.
Kevin M. Burke, ACI-NA’s chief executive, said the number of applications illustrates that terminal projects are airports’ most significant infrastructure need.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a tweet the government’s investment will help to make flying easier.
Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), chair of the House Aviation subcommittee, said the money for airport terminals is significant because FAA funding has historically gone to runways, traffic-control towers and other infrastructure needs.
For Dulles, the new concourse and other planned improvements would be the most significant upgrades in more than a decade. The last major expansion at Dulles was a $3.4 billion package of projects that expanded the main terminal, added the automated AeroTrain system, a fourth runway, a new control tower and other elements.
The proposed concourse would be built above an existing AeroTrain stop and eliminate the need for passengers to walk long distances or take a shuttle to their gates.
Passengers who fly out of Concourse A use outdoor, ground-level, covered walkways to board flights. In the new concourse, those gates would be replaced with jet bridges in a 400,000-square-foot building with other amenities, including a pet-relief area, new restrooms, concessions and larger seating areas.
Airport officials already have completed federally required environmental studies. The evaluations required by the National Environmental Policy Act are designed to ensure that agencies have evaluated the environmental, social and economic effects of a project.
In a joint statement, Virginia Sens. Mark R. Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D) stressed the importance of investing in airport infrastructure.
“We are glad to see continued, meaningful investment in the Commonwealth’s infrastructure thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure law that will make travel through our airports easier and more accessible,” the lawmakers said.
The airports authority completed a $1 billion package of upgrades at Reagan National Airport last year, which included a 14-gate concourse to replace the infamous Gate 35X that required travelers to be bussed to their aircraft. | 2022-07-07T22:00:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dulles Airport concourse plan gets infrastructure law boost - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/07/dulles-airport-new-concourse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/07/dulles-airport-new-concourse/ |
Unemployment benefit claims rise amid increased layoffs
Unemployment claims rise as layoffs increase
But the weekly jobless claims data from the Labor Department on Thursday was likely to have been distorted by Monday’s Independence Day holiday, which resulted in several states, including California, submitting estimates. Nevertheless, the labor market is losing momentum.
U.S. to end tariffs on Canadian solar items
The United States has agreed to lift tariffs on Canadian solar products after a trade dispute settlement panel sided with Ottawa earlier this year, Canadian Trade Minister Mary Ng and the office of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said.
In February, Canada said the panel had confirmed that the tariffs were “unjustified and in violation” of the trade pact. The United States, too, said it had prevailed on some aspects of the panel’s decision.
Ng said the United States and Canada “shared goals and commitments to fight climate change” and that the removal of tariffs would “bring stability and predictability to our renewable energy sector and strengthen North American competitiveness.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has made tackling climate change one of its top priorities and has pledged net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Former president Donald Trump first imposed the “Section 201” safeguard tariffs on imported solar panels and cells in January 2018, but did not exempt Canada and Mexico from the duties. The terms of the USMCA eliminate most tariffs among the North American partners.
President Biden extended the tariffs for another four years in February, but in a major concession to installers he eased the terms to exclude a panel technology dominant among big U.S. projects.
Bank of America said customer spending continues to show signs of resilience despite surging inflation, with pent-up demand for travel and leisure countering rising gas prices and other increased costs. Spending on credit and debit cards was up 11 percent from a year earlier in June, compared with a 13 percent increase in April and 9 percent gain in May, the bank said Thursday. The higher spending comes amid rising prices and fears that the United States is poised to slide into recession. Financial giants have been reporting signs of consumer strength even amid soaring inflation.
Weber-Stephen Products, the maker of Weber grills, has agreed to scrap some warranty rules as part of a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over consumers' right to repair products that they purchase, the agency said on Thursday. Under the settlement, Weber will no longer require consumers to use Weber parts as a condition of remaining under warranty and will add language to its warranty to that effect, the FTC said.
8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases employment data for June. | 2022-07-07T22:10:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Unemployment benefit claims rise amid increased layoffs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/unemployment-benefit-claims-rise-amid-increased-layoffs/2022/07/07/8fd8eaa2-fde1-11ec-a7eb-d66bb98bbf0f_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/unemployment-benefit-claims-rise-amid-increased-layoffs/2022/07/07/8fd8eaa2-fde1-11ec-a7eb-d66bb98bbf0f_story.html |
Eight-year-old Highland Park victim hospitalized with a severed spine
Keely Roberts and her 8-year-old twin sons, Cooper (in a red coat) and Luke, were among the victims who were shot during the Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Ill. (Courtesy of the Roberts Family)
An 8-year-old boy shot during the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., remains hospitalized in critical condition, his spinal cord severed.
Cooper Roberts is sedated and on a ventilator at a Chicago children’s hospital, family spokesman Anthony Loizzi said during a Thursday news conference. The elementary school student is among the youngest victims of the mass shooting that left seven dead and dozens of others injured.
“It’s going to be a new normal for him going forward,” Loizzi said, at times growing emotional. “They’re not sure, due to the severed spinal cord, whether or not he’ll be able to walk again in the future.”
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Also injured were Cooper’s mother, Keely, and his twin brother, Luke. Luke Roberts suffered shrapnel injuries, Loizzi said, and is recovering at home after being released from the hospital. Keely Roberts, who serves as superintendent of Zion Elementary School District 6, was shot twice in the leg and foot.
She was discharged from a hospital Wednesday after undergoing surgery. She had insisted on being released, Loizzi said, and has been focused on her son’s injuries.
“After she had her second surgery and then she received news that Cooper’s spinal cord had been severed, she told her doctors and nurses that they should either discharge her or she’d walk out on her own, because she needed to be with her son,” he said.
The twin boys are the youngest of Keely and Jason Roberts’ six children. The two “loved the parade,” Loizzi said. He did not know the details of how the family was injured or where they were standing along the parade route.
Cooper, a sports lover and the smaller of the twins, was shot in the chest and taken to a hospital by Life Flight, according to an update Zion Elementary School District 6 shared with community members. He has gone through several surgeries, Loizzi said, “including one last night in which doctors were finally able to close up his body.”
As of Thursday, an online fundraiser had received more than $235,000 in donations for the family. Loizzi said the Roberts, who are expected to face significant medical expenses, appreciate the support they’ve received and are leaning on each other.
“They’re devastated, but they’re focusing all of their energy right now on Cooper,” he said. “It’s been a very emotional time for everybody in their circle, and if you know Keely, she’s just a fighter. And it sounds like Cooper got that part of her in him, because he’s fighting as hard as he can.” | 2022-07-07T22:27:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Eight-year-old Highland Park victim hospitalized with a severed spine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/parade-shooting-boy-victim/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/parade-shooting-boy-victim/ |
He helped popularize tools including the Afro pick and looks including the one that became known as the Jheri curl
An undated photo of Willie Lee Morrow, a pioneer in hair care for African Americans. (Family photo)
Willie Lee Morrow, a barber-turned-entrepreneur who helped popularize tools such as the Afro pick and styles including the one dubbed the Jheri curl over more than half-a-century as an innovator in Black hair care, died June 22 at his home in San Diego. He was 82.
The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter, Cheryl Morrow.
Mr. Morrow started his career at age 12 or 13 as what he described as a “stump barber,” with a tree stump as his barber chair, in the tiny Alabama locality where his parents worked as sharecroppers.
In pursuit of greater economic opportunity, he moved in 1959 to San Diego, where he established himself as a go-to stylist in the African American community and, eventually, one of the city’s most prominent Black business leaders as the founder of a hair-care-supply empire.
The tools and products he developed, including combs used to create the Afro hairstyle popular in the 1960s and 1970s and a line of creams formulated to produce the looser curls that later came into fashion, made him one of the most influential figures in the history of how Black hair is cared for and viewed in society.
“Ever since there was racism, ever since there was discrimination against Black bodies, there was discrimination against Black hair as well,” Tameka Ellington, the co-curator of the exhibit “Textures: The History and Art of Black Hair” on view at Kent State University in Ohio, said in an interview. “His work was a means of being able to uplift the Black community.”
Ellington and other scholars placed Mr. Morrow in a historical line of African American hair-care entrepreneurs including Madam C.J. Walker, the first Black female millionaire in the United States, whose life at the turn-of-the-20th-century was dramatized in the 2020 Netflix series “Self Made.” Mr. Morrow regarded his work not merely as a job, he told the Nashville Tennessean in 1985, but rather as a “calling.”
“With hair, the individual demonstrates his or her social significance, philosophical and cultural legacy,” he wrote in “400 Years Without a Comb,” a 1973 book that was one of multiple volumes he published about the history and practice of Black hair styling. “Hair is the basic, natural symbol of things people are or want to be everywhere and the social-cultural significance of hairstyle should not be underestimated.”
For generations, many Black people seeking acceptance in White society felt pressure to straighten their hair to conform to White notions of beauty, a time-consuming, expensive process that often damaged the hair and scalp. The early years of Mr. Morrow’s career coincided with the rise in popularity of the Afro, a hairstyle that showcased natural texture and became a symbol of Black pride.
At the time, there were few suitable styling tools for the Afro. “You know what people would use?” Mr. Morrow once told the San Diego Reader. “Angel food cake cutters.” After an acquaintance traveled to Africa in 1962 and brought back a hand-carved African hair comb, Mr. Morrow began crafting similar models that in time were selling 12,000 units a week. Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps, writing in the book “Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America,” described Mr. Morrow as “the man who first mass-produced the plastic Afro pick” in the United States.
In 1966, Mr. Morrow published the manual “The Principles of Cutting and Styling Negro Hair.” He was later engaged by the U.S. military for a program to train 6,000 barbers and 1,100 beauticians in the care of Black hair. By 1971, the New York Times reported that he had traveled 60,000 miles across the United States, Europe and Asia for the project.
“The entire program is a godsend to the approximately one million black military personnel and their dependents,” journalist Lacy Banks wrote in Ebony magazine in 1970. “Everywhere Morrow went, blacks flocked begging for haircuts, Afro combs, hair sprays, permanents and conditions. They all had problems and they were desperate for help.”
Mr. Morrow described the “Afro natural” look as a “a cultural badge.” But he also sought to give Black people choices in hair styles, and as early as 1966 began experimenting with what the authors of “Hair Story” described as “a chemical process to turn kinky hair curly.” He originally called his line of products the Tomorrow Curl but found greater success when he rebranded it in 1977 as the California Curl, according to the book.
His products were at first marketed only to stylists — not to the public — but caught the attention of other hair-care manufacturers when they took off in popularity. Jheri Redding, a White entrepreneur and founder of Redken, Jhirmack and Nexxus, produced a modified product that gave rise to the term “Jheri curl” — “the popular or layman’s term to refer to all curly perms, much as Xerox is to copy machines,” the authors of “Hair Story” wrote.
“I feel no animosity because my idea was copied and exploited by the very same companies which had declined to do the research and development of a much needed product,” they quoted Mr. Morrow as writing. “Instead, I am gratified that I was able to introduce a process that has been accepted universally.”
In an interview, Tharps described Mr. Morrow as an “an underappreciated hero.”
Willie Lee Morrow was born in Eutaw, Ala., on Oct. 9, 1939. By his account he did not do well in school but recognized from an early age that academic achievement was not the only avenue to success.
“Where I came from, you were a misfit if you didn’t do well in school or go to college to become a teacher or a preacher,” he told Ebony in 1970. “So I felt I always had to work that much harder at other things to get a little recognition.”
The San Diego Reader reported that Mr. Morrow’s father saved enough as a sharecropper, with a side operation in bootleg whiskey, to pay for his son to attend barber school in San Diego. After opening his own shops, Mr. Morrow cultivated a devoted clientele while developing his hair-care supply business.
In addition to the California Curl product line, Mr. Morrow was credited with creating combs and hair dryer attachments designed for the care of Black hair. For years he operated a radio station and newspaper, the San Diego Monitor, that catered to African American audiences. He was credited with using some of the profits from his businesses to help fund the civil rights movement.
Mr. Morrow was divorced from his first wife, Helen. Their son, Todd Morrow, predeceased him.
Survivors include his wife of more than five decades, the former Gloria Lacy of San Diego; two daughters from his second marriage, Cheryl Morrow and Angela Morrow, both of San Diego; and several sisters and brothers.
Over the years, Mr. Morrow amassed an extensive collection of artifacts related to the history of Black hair care, including barber chairs, combs, clippers, other styling tools and product containers.
“He was one of the first people to publicly proclaim that Black hair is a cultural contribution to American history,” Byrd, the co-author of “Hair Story” observed, as well as “a way that Black people came together and formed traditions and rituals and language and all of these things that really define what is a culture. He was one of the first people to publicly proclaim that.” | 2022-07-07T22:54:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Willie Lee Morrow, Black hair care pioneer, dies at 82 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/07/willie-lee-morrow-afro-jheri-curl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/07/willie-lee-morrow-afro-jheri-curl/ |
Court will pick up tab for Mosby’s witnesses
Maryland State Attorney Marilyn Mosby arrives prior to Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott's State of the City address, Tuesday, April 5, 2022, in Baltimore. The trial for Baltimore's top prosecutor has been postponed until September. She is on trial on charges that she made false statements on financial documents to withdraw money from her retirement savings and purchase two Florida vacation homes. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
BALTIMORE — The court will help pay the cost of the expert witnesses that Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby plans to call in her defense against federal perjury and mortgage fraud charges, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Expert testimony can be costly, and Mosby asked the court to foot the bill under the Criminal Justice Act, which requires federal court districts to carve out resources to support those accused of crimes who cannot afford an attorney or other elements of legal representation. If a person is eligible, more often than not they’re represented by the federal Office of the Public Defender. It’s up to a judge to decide when a defendant asks.
Defense attorney Andrew I. Alperstein, a former prosecutor who is not involved in Mosby’s case, said it’s common to incur expert fees of $10,000 or more, with some offering their services for a flat rate and others charging by the hour.
To get a judge to approve the money, a person has to make a case for what they need and must show they may not be able to afford it, Alperstein said.
Prosecutors say she falsely claimed to have suffered financial hardship from the coronavirus to withdraw $90,000 from her city retirement savings under the Cares Act, Congress’s first pandemic relief package, and then used that money to buy the properties in Florida. She also allegedly lied about using the house as a second home to secure a lower interest rate and neglected to disclose a federal tax lien, according to the indictment.
The latest filing for dismissal bore the names of attorneys Gary Proctor and Lucius Outlaw, who joined Mosby’s defense team for free. Attorney A. Scott Bolden leads Mosby’s defense.
The Mosbys have used campaign finance money to help cover their legal expenses over the years. In her January filing, Marilyn reported spending nearly $48,000 on lawyers, including $37,500 with Reed Smith LLP, where Bolden is a partner.
The Maryland State Board of Elections found Mosby’s campaign spending did not violate election law. Even though officials approved that spending, future spending could result in a violation. | 2022-07-07T23:24:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Court will pick up tab for Mosby’s witnesses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/court-will-pick-up-tab-for-mosbys-witnesses/2022/07/07/53b1944c-fda6-11ec-a07f-799ab6d06557_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/court-will-pick-up-tab-for-mosbys-witnesses/2022/07/07/53b1944c-fda6-11ec-a07f-799ab6d06557_story.html |
Commanders owner Daniel Snyder did not appear at a June 22 hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder proposed two dates later this month when he would be available to appear remotely before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, his attorney said Thursday in a letter to the committee’s chairwoman.
Karen Patton Seymour wrote to Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) that she’d informed the committee that Snyder “could make himself available for a voluntary appearance by Zoom on July 28 or 29” provided “our due process concerns could be resolved,” but the letter did not specify what those concerns were.
The two sides have remained unable to agree to conditions by which Snyder would testify to the committee as part of the panel’s inquiry into the team’s workplace culture.
“We remain committed to securing Mr. Snyder’s testimony on the toxic work environment at the Washington Commanders following his failure to appear voluntarily at the Committee’s hearing and his continued refusal to allow his attorney to accept service of a subpoena,” a committee spokesperson said in a statement. “We are continuing to negotiate with his counsel to ensure the Committee can obtain the full and complete testimony we need, and we are reviewing her latest correspondence.”
Snyder did not appear before the committee, as requested, at a Capitol Hill hearing June 22, citing a previously scheduled business commitment in France. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell testified remotely at that hearing. Maloney announced that day that she would issue a subpoena to compel Snyder’s testimony via a deposition the following week.
Snyder and his legal team have not accepted receipt of the subpoena. Snyder would testify under oath if he were to accept service of the subpoena. He would not be placed under oath if he were to make the voluntary appearance proposed by Seymour in Thursday’s letter.
Seymour wrote in Thursday’s letter that she had informed the committee’s staff that Snyder “would soon be traveling to Israel to spend much of July engaged in long-planned events to mark the first Yahrzeit, or anniversary, of the passing of his mother, Arlette Snyder. … Mr. Snyder and his family will remain in Israel through the end of July and into August in connection with these religious observances. ...
“In an effort to accommodate the Committee’s interest in speaking to him promptly, however, I informed the Committee’s staff that, on the assumption that our due process concerns could be resolved, Mr. Snyder could make himself available for a voluntary appearance by Zoom on July 28 or 29 — notwithstanding that he would still be in Israel with his family at that time — and that I would travel to Israel to represent him,” Seymour wrote.
David Rapallo, a Georgetown University professor of law and former staff director of the House Oversight Committee, noted certain specifics in Thursday’s letter to the committee.
“The lawyer makes it sound like Snyder is being cooperative by offering to appear voluntarily, but that means he’s going to answer only the questions he wants to answer,” said Rapallo, who added that Seymour’s reference to due process concerns “suggests that Snyder doesn’t want to answer questions about certain topics, such as anything covered by [nondisclosure agreements] or other issues.”
Seymour previously has cited issues of fairness and due process as impediments to Snyder agreeing to testify.
“Unfortunately, despite Mr. Snyder’s good faith efforts to cooperate with the Committee by proposing two dates for a voluntary appearance, the discussions thus far with the Committee’s staff have not been fruitful, and I remain concerned that the Committee is not proceeding in a manner that sufficiently respects Mr. Snyder’s right to fundamentally fair treatment,” Seymour wrote in Thursday’s letter. | 2022-07-07T23:28:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daniel Snyder’s lawyer responds to House oversight committee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/daniel-snyder-house-oversight-committee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/daniel-snyder-house-oversight-committee/ |
Raiders owner Mark Davis introduced Sandra Douglass Morgan as the Raiders' president Thursday. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The Raiders hired Sandra Douglass Morgan as their team president Thursday, making the Las Vegas native the first Black woman to hold that position in league history.
Morgan also was the first Black chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, a role she held from 2019 to 2021. Before that, she was a city attorney and had stops at MGM and AT&T. Most recently, she was vice chair of the Las Vegas Super Bowl host committee.
Morgan is the franchise’s third president in just over a year, and she takes over at a tumultuous time. Outside of the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020, there have been widespread personnel changes.
Longtime front-office figure Marc Badain suddenly resigned as president in July 2021. Interim president Dan Ventrelle was let go in May. Ventrelle told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he believed the move was in retaliation for alerting the NFL about a hostile work environment.
Those allegations came after a 2021 season in which coach Jon Gruden resigned in October after the release of emails in which he made misogynistic and homophobic comments.
“Let me be clear — I am not here to avoid or sidestep problems or concerns that need to be addressed,” Morgan said in a letter to employees that was obtained by the Review-Journal. “I’ve given long and thoughtful consideration to joining you, and I’ve done so because I believe in the promise of the Raiders. Most importantly, I believe in your core values of integrity, community, and commitment to excellence. I will expect you to embody those and to hold me accountable to doing the same.”
The Washington Commanders were the first NFL team to hire a Black president when they chose Jason Wright for the role in 2020. Morgan is the third female president, joining Buffalo’s Kim Pegula and Carolina’s Kristi Coleman. | 2022-07-07T23:29:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Raiders hire Sandra Douglass Morgan as NFL’s first Black female president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/raiders-sandra-douglass-morgan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/raiders-sandra-douglass-morgan/ |
Early voting in Maryland primary gets off to a quiet start
Campaign signs compete for space during the first day of early voting outside the Silver Spring Civic Building in Silver Spring, Md., on Thursday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The onset of in-person voting Thursday marks the final stretch of a frenzied political season in Maryland, which saw primary Election Day pushed from June 28 to July 19 as the parties battled over congressional maps.
And because a number of the statewide races are so close it sets the stage for an outcome in which winners and losers may not be determined until days after the election, when mail-in ballots are tabulated.
Voters trickled into polling places across the state to weigh in on tightly contested statewide races from both parties for governor, attorney general and comptroller. A U.S. Senate seat, eight congressional districts and a slew of local races are also being decided.
In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose between former state commerce secretary Kelly M. Schulz, who has the backing of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), and Del. Daniel L. Cox, a far-right conservative endorsed by former president Donald Trump.
Democratic voters for the state’s top spot had a larger field from which to choose, including former U.S. labor secretary Tom Perez, best-selling author and former nonprofit chief Wes Moore, state Comptroller Peter Franchot, former attorney general Doug Gansler and former U.S. education secretary John B. King Jr.
With a lot on the line, turnout among Maryland’s roughly 4.1 million registered voters was quiet at a number of early voting centers Thursday morning.
By 9 a.m. just 14 voters had turned up at Crofton High School in Anne Arundel County. At 11 a.m. the count at VFW POST 8950 Hansen Hall in Prince George’s County was 47. It was also 47 at the Urbana library in Frederick. By noon, 85 people had submitted ballots at the Activity Center at Bohrer Park in Montgomery County.
Election officials expect turnout in the primaries to be low. In the 2018 primary, which like 2022 had no presidential race, approximately 600,000 Marylanders voted, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections.
Barbara Bush, 83, of Bowie, came to the VFW Post 8950 with her husband just before 11 a.m. She had considered voting for Perez because she liked his experience but opted for Moore at the last minute.
“I decided I would give the young guy a chance,” Bush said. “He seems to be very energetic and ready to help seniors.”
Bush said she has not been very active in Maryland politics over the years but “as we get older and need more help, we may get into politics a little more.”
Jim Bronder, 73, was at Urbana Library early on the cloudy morning to campaign for county executive candidate Jessica Fitzwater but, unlike in previous election years, found few people to talk to. He chalked it up to the delayed election dates in the middle of the holiday season.
“I’ve been here before,” Bronder said of the library, one of Frederick County’s four early-voting centers. “There were streams of people coming in.”
Bronder, from New Market, voted by mail in the Democratic primary. He voted for Hogan in the last election but hopes to support his pick for the Democratic candidate this year, Perez, in November.
Bronder is particularly concerned about gun control after recent mass shootings. It even made him nervous to visit the polls. “Is somebody going to come down here with a rifle?” Bronder asked. “I never would have thought that my entire life, but this morning, I did.”
William and Sylvia Steelman, of Urbana, shared wide-ranging complaints about the Biden administration, such as high gas prices, but approved of Hogan’s tenure as governor in Maryland. They cast their votes in the Republican primary for Schulz.
“She’s against gun control,” said William Steelman, 80. “She’s for the average person. She’s got a good perspective.”
The Steelmans hope to support Schulz in November but would “probably” vote for Cox instead if he wins the primary — “they both have good ideas.” They settled on Schulz early, but the decision between the two candidates was close. “The world is such a mess right now,” Sylvia said. “Who do you vote for?
Bobby and Pat Sikora, a retired couple who recently moved from Virginia to Maryland to be closer to family, declined to say who they voted for as they left the Crofton High School voting location but said they were happy with the options available to them as Democratic voters.
“I just felt like we had some really good choices,” Pat Sikora said. The couple said they had no real objections to Hogan’s term as governor but would not vote for a Republican in the fall.
With tight races expected in a number of the contests, results may not be determined for several days after the election. Statistics provided by the Maryland Board of Elections show that about 500,000 voters have requested mail-in ballots. If a large number of voters choose to vote by mail it could delay election results. By law, mail-in ballots cannot be counted until the Thursday after the election.
If voters were hard to find at polling places Thursday, candidates were not.
U.S. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D), who represents Maryland’s 5th District in Congress, stopped by the Crofton High School voting center Thursday morning where he restated his enthusiastic support for Moore’s candidacy.
“We need lifting up. We need inspiration. We need somebody who can give us a positive sense of government in a positive way, and I think Wes Moore can do that,” he said.
On Thursday, Moore launched a new 30-second ad airing digitally and on broadcast cable with his longtime friend Oprah Winfrey narrating. “This moment that we’re in demands a different type of leader, for governor in Maryland you have one in my friend, Wes Moore,” Winfrey says.
Hoyer said he was disappointed in the low turnout on the first day of in-person voting and hoped it would pick up. “People probably don’t know about it, but they’ll get word about it,” he said.
Shannon Leadbetter, a first-time Republican candidate running for Anne Arundel County Council was also at Crofton High School. She too was hoping to see more voters but remained enthusiastic.
“I’ve had some thumbs up,” she said, smiling.
Schulz visited polling stations in Frederick and Montgomery counties to make a final pitch to voters. Noting the low turnout, she said her team was working hard to remind voters to show up on Election Day.
“It’s going to pick up,” Schulz said. “We’ll be busy reminding people to show up on July 19.”
Outside the voting center at Bohrer Park, Schulz cast herself as the only electable candidate in a primary race that drew added attention when Democrats channeled support to Schulz’s opponent, Cox.
“If it’s not me that gets elected in this primary, then Republicans will definitely lose by a lot in November,” she said.
Former congresswoman Donna F. Edwards, who is vying to return to Congress in Maryland’s 4th district, used the first day of early voting to announce growing support for her campaign. Edwards was joined by State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy at a polling station in Fort Washington to announce the endorsement. Edwards is locked in a tight battle against former state’s attorney Glenn Ivey for the seat.
At Hansen Hall in Prince George’s, Del. Nicole A. Williams (D) was one of several candidates waiting to make their pitch to voters.
“It’s pretty slow,” Williams said, “but I’m happy to be here.”
The quiet day was a bit of a reprieve for Williams, who had been chased by a pit bull while door-knocking in Bowie earlier in the week. She escaped unharmed.
“Luckily the owner called the dog back,” she said, laughing. “That’s the only thing that saved me.”
Early voting continues from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. through July 14. A full list of early-voting centers is available at elections.maryland.gov. The standard primary election is Tuesday, July 19, and polls will be open until 8 p.m. | 2022-07-07T23:29:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland voters began casting primary ballots in person on Thursday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/maryland-primary-early-voting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/07/maryland-primary-early-voting/ |
A man in favor of restricting abortion rights holds a sign in front of protesters demanding expanded reproductive liberties outside the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia on July 7, 2022. (Meg Kinnard/AP)
South Carolina lawmakers on Thursday opened the first hearing on legislative proposals that will determine how far the state’s abortion restrictions will go with a prayer for God to “give wisdom to every single one on this committee that we will do your will.”
That religious sentiment kicked off hours of public testimony in a room packed with church leaders, devout followers and antiabortion activists who cited their Christian faith and urged state legislators to take the state’s six-week abortion ban one step further by outlawing the procedure altogether at a special session later this year.
“The Bible teaches that life starts at conception,” said Charles Swann, pastor at the Covenant Baptist Church in West Columbia, S.C. Several members of his church spoke in favor of a total abortion ban without any exceptions. Many read passages of scripture to the onlooking lawmakers and urged them to model the state law after the Bible’s teachings.
South Carolina already has a “heartbeat law,” which outlaws terminating a pregnancy after fetal cardiac activity is detected and took effect shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month. The only exceptions to the existing law are for instances of rape or incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.
For abortion-access advocates and legal experts, the religious opening and tone of the session was another sign of how entangled faith has become in legislation in South Carolina. They warn that basing any future abortion restrictions on religion raises thorny constitutional questions.
“The First Amendment has the free exercise clause and the establishment clause,” said Josh Malkin, a legal fellow and legislative advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina. “Folks are absolutely entitled to opinion and beliefs, but those opinions and beliefs shouldn’t be the basis of laws.”
Officials and advocates across the country are still trying to sort through the confusing tangle of new abortion restrictions taking hold after the Supreme Court’s decision. Here are some of the latest updates:
North Dakota’s only remaining abortion clinic, Red River Women’s Clinic, filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the state’s trigger ban that is set to begin on July 28. That law will bar all abortions, except in the case of incest, rape or to preserve the life of the mother. The abortion clinic argues that the trigger law violates the state’s constitution.
The Women’s March plans to hold a sit-in protest at the White House on Saturday to advocate for abortion access. The group says that participants are willing to risk arrest to urge President Biden to take action to protect access to abortion and reproductive health care.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) on Wednesday signed an executive order to affirm abortion access in the state and forbid public agencies from cooperating with investigations underway in other states related to providing abortion services. North Carolina is one of the only states in its region without a significant abortion ban and Cooper’s order would protect patients from nearby states such as South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama that have total or near-total bans.
During a special session that will conclude before the midterm election in November, South Carolina lawmakers will consider several legislative proposals, including a total abortion ban from the moment of fertilization, possibly with more narrow exceptions than exist now.
More than 150 people signed up to share their input with South Carolina legislators on Thursday, and the meeting stretched into the evening. For hours during the listening session, dozens of speakers turned to their faith to argue for banning all abortions, with some even opposing exceptions for incest, rape or life endangerment. Several pastors and church leaders from around the state spoke in favor of instituting more restrictions on abortion. Many speakers cited Bible verses and likened abortion to murder.
“All of us are ultimately accountable to God, but you have been given a privilege and an opportunity in a position that God has granted you as a lawmaker in this state,” Swann, the pastor from West Columbia, said. “I would call on you to make sure that you do what is righteous and just.”
Members of the public also shared deeply personal experiences, including women who said they chose to have abortions but later regretted the decision as well as women who said they never once had second thoughts about ending an unwanted pregnancy.
Seventy-eight percent of adults in South Carolina identify as Christian, according to the Pew Research Center — higher than the national average.
Dozens of people gathered outside the statehouse as the hearing took place, arguing for and against expanded reproductive rights. What happens in South Carolina could impact women in other parts of the South — a region where abortion is now outlawed entirely in several states. Though North Carolina’s governor has moved to solidify abortion rights, the trek out of state is still a hurdle for many.
At the hearing, abortion rights advocates raised concerns that tightening abortion restrictions in South Carolina would lead to higher maternal mortality rates and make problems like childhood poverty and strains on the foster-care system worse.
A handful of others used religion to argue against abortion restrictions, saying they objected to being forced to comply with Christian beliefs that do not comport with their non-Christian faiths.
“I speak for myself and the other Jewish citizens of South Carolina who do not subscribe to the tenets of Christianity, nor the evangelical beliefs upon which this legislation is based,” one Charleston resident told the legislators. “Those people arguing that life begins at conception are imposing a fundamental Christian religious belief on all of the citizens of South Carolina, while ignoring scientific facts that a fetus isn’t viable until it can take its first breath.” | 2022-07-07T23:41:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Christian activists push for total abortion ban in South Carolina - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/south-carolina-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/south-carolina-abortion/ |
The Pascagoula River Delta in southeastern Mississippi. (iStock)
Sixteen-year-old Corion Evans watched from his car as three teenage girls drove down a boat ramp into the Pascagoula River in southern Mississippi.
The girl who was driving later told authorities that the GPS had malfunctioned and that she did not realize it was leading her and the other girls into the water in the early morning on Sunday. As the car started to sink, the three escaped and climbed on top of it, according to a statement from the Moss Point Police Department.
“I thought, ‘There is no way that they drove into that water,’ ” Evans said.
Evans said he took off running toward the river, and when he got there, he saw them in the water, shouting, “Help me!”
“I took my shirt off and I took my shoes off and I threw my phone down, and I just jumped in the water,” he said Thursday afternoon in a phone interview with The Washington Post.
Evans helped get all three girls to shore, as well as a Moss Point police officer who had responded to the scene but got pulled underwater during the rescue effort. The teen and Officer Garry Mercer have since been recognized by Mayor Billy Knight (D) with certificates of commendation.
Knight said the board of aldermen wanted Evans to know “how much we appreciate his courage and his heroism.”
“We’re always proud when our young men do the right thing because so many times our young people are not doing the right thing. This young man was very selfless when he decided to jump into the water without even thinking about it to rescue these young people,” Knight told The Post.
Evans, a rising senior at Pascagoula High School, said he and some other teens had been hanging out late Saturday night and into Sunday morning. He was preparing to go home and got into his car, which was in a parking area beneath Interstate 10, not far from the river. He said the teenage girls, who have not been publicly identified, got into their car and plugged in a home address into GPS, but the GPS seemed to predict the girls were on the highway — not under it.
Evans said the driver forgot to turn on her headlights and blindly followed the directions, which led them straight down a boat ramp into the water.
Once Evans reached them, he said he grabbed the girl who was closest to him and helped her back to shore. Then he went back to get the others, helping them climb on top of the vehicle.
During Evans’s rescue efforts, Mercer arrived on the scene. He said he quickly removed his vest, his body cam and his gun belt and started swimming toward the girls, whom he said were scared to swim.
Mercer said he was trying to help one of the girls but about halfway back to shore, she went underwater and started panicking, pulling the police officer down with her. That’s when Evans appeared to rescue them, he said.
“If he hadn’t been there helping out, who knows?” the police officer said about Evans. “Anything could have happened. I was already swallowing water.”
“I couldn’t have done it alone,” he added.
In the end, Evans helped get all three of the girls to safety, according to the authorities.
The girls are “doing well,” Moss Point Police Chief Brandon Ashley said in the statement.
Watch female elephants stage a dramatic rescue of a drowning baby elephant
Evans said he had planned to leave earlier but sat in his car for a while. In fact, his mother, Marquita Evans, said he missed his curfew. She later learned why.
“He had a good reason so I couldn’t be mad,” she told The Post.
Evans, who is a wide receiver on his high school football team, said he has been swimming since he was a preschooler. He said he wants to attend college and become a physical therapist or go into sports medicine.
Evans said he spoke to the girls after the incident and they told him how appreciative they were for his saving them.
“I’m happy everybody was safe, that everybody made it out,” he said. “I’m just glad nobody lost their life that night.” | 2022-07-08T00:08:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mississippi teen Corion Evans helps save 3 girls, police officer in Pascagoula River - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/mississippi-teen-water-rescue/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/07/mississippi-teen-water-rescue/ |
Alleged white supremacist is accused of killing 10 Black people at a grocery store in May.
The scene after a shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo that left 10 dead on May 15. (Libby March for The Washington Post)
What we know about the victims of the Buffalo grocery store shooting
“We need to be specific with the nature of mental illness that we’re going to allege might exist,” said Brian K. Parker, one of the defense lawyers. “We also have to alleged the nature of how that forms a psychiatric defense.”
A defendant may also argue he was suffering from an “extreme emotional disturbance” at the time the crime occurred, which would make him eligible for a manslaughter conviction instead of murder. The bar to prove that standard is significantly lower.
Buffalo suspect charged with federal hate crimes, could face death penalty
Gendron — wearing a neon orange set of jail scrubs, his hands and feet shackled — appeared in front of Eagan just three days after the most recent American mass shooting, an attack on a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., that killed seven and injured dozens more.
Among those in the courtroom in Buffalo on Thursday was Michelle Spight, 51. She lost her aunt and her cousin in the May 14 shooting, which claimed the lives of 10 victims and injured three. Spight said she intends to return for all future court dates until Gendron’s case concludes.
The mass murder in Highland Park, and a schoolhouse rampage weeks earlier in Uvalde, Tex., have been “very triggering,” she said outside the courthouse. “Something has to stop — this has to stop.”
In neighborhoods plagued by violence, gathering at a July 4 parade can be unthinkable
Eagan denied a bid by defense lawyers to put off the state court case for a year while a different set of attorneys in the federal hate crimes case argues to the Justice Department that it should not seek the death penalty. The state trial lawyers said allowing their case to go forward would interfere with efforts to save their client’s life in federal court.
“What could be more pressing … than doing everything in our power to see to it that our government doesn’t kill him?” argued attorney Robert Cutting.
Prosecutors said legal precedent didn’t support pushing their state case aside while the federal issues got worked out, and the judge declined to put the case on hold.
“This Court owes both the defendant and the people a timely resolution of this matter,” Eagan said.
Spight said that for herself and other grieving family members, prolonging an already tedious legal process “would have been horrific, and it would have been disheartening.”
“Especially when all the facts and evidence are there,” she added. “Let’s move forward — there’s no sense in wasting time.” | 2022-07-08T00:08:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buffalo suspect Payton Gendron's lawyers say they may seek psychiatric defense - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/07/payton-gendron-psychiatric-defense-buffalo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/07/payton-gendron-psychiatric-defense-buffalo/ |
Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe changed their sports — and their country
President Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to gymnast Simone Biles. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
On Thursday, Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe flanked the most dignified room in Washington.
As Biles walked in first, the smiling eyes and applauding hands of the vice president followed her to the stage. Rapinoe wore an all-white suit and sat closest to the full-length George Washington portrait. In between them on rows of gold-legged chairs sat a gathering of Firsts and Founders; to name a few, the first American to receive the coronavirus vaccination outside of clinical trials, and the founder of a center defined by its constitutional education and debate.
Inside the East Room, one of the largest of the White House and still too small to host this day’s event, Biles and Rapinoe were the only two athletes among the panel of 17 awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to civilians.
All around them were people whose life stories could fill history books about the best ideals and worst impulses witnessed in modern America. Front row, masked and resplendent in pink was Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; back row, center sat former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who had to learn to walk and talk again after being shot in the head; next to her was Laurene Powell Jobs, attending on behalf of her late husband Steve, the co-founder of Apple.
The two athletes bookended the rows of civil rights icons and decorated politicians, and yet they blended in perfectly.
Rapinoe and Biles crashed into the nation’s conscious as Team USA athletes. Through two Olympics, Biles became the most decorated American gymnast in history. Rapinoe cemented her legacy as a two-time World Cup champion and Olympic gold medalist, spreading her arms, leaning just so and striking the pose of triumph after one of her clutch goals. Their achievements on the mat, beam or pitch have changed their respective sports, but that’s not why the women were invited to the White House on Thursday.
As transcendent as they are as athletes, Rapinoe and Biles have proved to be far greater in their roles as brave and unbowed advocates.
The last time Biles made a public appearance in Washington, she was testifying on Capitol Hill. Though it was the last place she wanted to be, Biles told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as the viewing public about the emotional scars she dealt with after surviving the sexual abuse from Larry Nassar, the disgraced doctor formerly affiliated with USA Gymnastics. As a testament to her greatness, Biles still stands above all other American gymnast medalists even though she added only a bronze during the 2020 Games.
In the lead-up to Tokyo, dealing with the trauma proved to be “too much,” she later said. Biles withdrew from the individual all-around competition, specifically to focus on mental health. Her choice made her more human than G.O.A.T. And sports can use more humans.
President Biden started the presentation by focusing on Biles — she had the alphabetical advantage. More than that, she has the distinction of being the youngest Medal of Freedom recipient ever at just 25 years old.
“She turned personal pain into greater purpose, to stand up and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves,” Biden said. “Today, she adds to her medal count.”
Then, reading off a prompter in the back of the room, Biden turned his attention to the first soccer player honored as a Medal of Freedom recipient.
“Where’s Megan? Megan, where are you?” Biden asked before starting his remarks. He didn’t notice the pink-haired Rapinoe sitting directly behind him so, cheeky as ever, she leaned closer and waved.
Everything about Rapinoe’s colorful hair and playful personality makes her an easy choice to pitch submarine sandwiches, vodka or credit cards. In 2021, the money from her endorsements placed her just outside the top 10-earning female athletes, according to Forbes. But while helping the U.S. women’s national soccer team remain the most dominant in the world, Rapinoe and her teammates were paid less than the men.
The national team filed a class-action lawsuit that became a six-year ordeal, and Rapinoe also took her cause to Washington. Last year, she testified on gender discrimination before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and later appeared with Biden as he signed the Equal Pay Day proclamation.
“I know there are millions of people who are marginalized by gender in the world and experience the same thing in their jobs. And I know there are people who experience even more, where the layers of discrimination continue to stack against them. And I and my teammates are here for them,” Rapinoe said during that White House event. “We on the U.S. women’s national team are here today because of them.”
In February, the USWNT reached a settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation for $24 million. Before he recognized this achievement, Biden made a detour into story time. He turned toward Rapinoe while recalling the excitement his granddaughter, who was a high school athlete, had over meeting her. She has punched in goals and posed like a Greek god, but for future generations, Rapinoe’s legacy will be her fierce advocacy off the field.
“She helped lead the change for, perhaps the most important victory for anyone on the soccer team or any soccer team — equal pay for women,” Biden said as resounding applause broke out in the room.
The ceremony continued. Fred Gray, the attorney who represented Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and the NAACP during the fight for civil rights, sat cross-legged, flashing his red socks until standing up on his own to be adorned with a medal. At 91, he still practices law. Cindy McCain dabbed at her eyes as Biden remembered her late husband, Sen. John McCain. Sandra Lindsay, the New York City nurse and vaccine advocate, reached over and placed her hand over McCain’s for comfort. And after the Gold Star father, the Catholic priest, the son of the late president of the AFL-CIO, the gymnast and the soccer player and all the others had received their medals, the president made a final declaration.
Read more about sports and social issues
“But while Osaka Inc. is thriving, Naomi, the woman, is hurting. Tennis doesn’t seem to be helping. And she doesn’t owe it to anyone to keep trying — not her sponsors, not her fans and not the game.” Read Candace Buckner on Naomi Osaka.
“I can’t escape into sports. Nor should I. I don’t even want to try, even during this most absorbing stretch of the sports calendar. March Madness for me is no competition for the real madness that, while overseas this time, seems oh so close.” Read Kevin B. Blackistone on the war in Ukraine.
“It was all true. The members of the women’s team had been wronged. For years, they had to play more, and win bigger, to be paid anything close to their male counterparts. They got less pay for better work.” Read Sally Jenkins on the USWNT settlement with U.S. Soccer.
“Who’s lying here? Probably, to some degree, both sides. The NFL expecting Snyder to stop lying, covering up, blocking and bullying is a little bit like expecting a poisonous cobra not to bite you. You are who you are.” Read John Feinstein on Daniel Snyder and the NFL. | 2022-07-08T00:21:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe earned their Presidential Medals of Freedom as advocates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/simone-biles-megan-rapinoe-medal-freedom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/07/simone-biles-megan-rapinoe-medal-freedom/ |
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