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Carter Kieboom did not expect to spend his summer in West Palm Beach, Fla., rehabbing from elbow surgery. But that's exactly what he's doing. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
How Carter Kieboom expected to spend this spring and summer: winning the third base job, improving his defense, finally establishing himself as a key part of the Washington Nationals’ future — or a part at all — after doubt followed him like a shadow in recent seasons.
How the 24-year-old has spent this spring and summer: relearning to open a door with his right hand, then brush his teeth, then touch his shoulder when his range of motion allowed.
Tommy John surgery changes everything. Kieboom is learning by the day.
“When I first got hurt, I thought, ‘Well, that was my chance,’ ” Kieboom said in a phone interview last week. “Obviously I knew this was a huge year for me. So my initial feeling is that it was horrible, that I could be done for the season and never get this opportunity again. It took maybe 48 hours before I remembered that I’m still young and getting started. It was a speed bump that seemed huge in the moment, but you have to look at the big picture.”
A first-round pick in 2016, Kieboom has struggled in limited chances with the Nationals. He debuted in 2019 and was sent down after 11 games. In 2020, after Anthony Rendon departed in free agency, Kieboom couldn’t grab the everyday role. And in 2021, given another crack in spring training, Kieboom was sent down to start the season, was promoted midsummer and finished with a .207 batting average, a .301 on-base percentage and a .318 slugging percentage in 249 plate appearances.
Still, the first full season of a rebuild was a prime opportunity for Kieboom. The Nationals wanted him to play through growing pains. The pressure would be low. For insurance, they signed Maikel Franco to a minor league deal during the lockout. Then at the start of camp, Kieboom had lingering elbow soreness, leading the medical staff to diagnose him with a strained flexor mass. The plan was to rehab and try to avoid surgery.
But at every step, the pain returned. Kieboom underwent Tommy John surgery in late May. Franco has started at third in 79 of the Nationals’ 88 games.
“No one wants to have season-ending surgery if they can help it,” Kieboom said. “But it got to a point where I couldn’t keep trying to rehab something that clearly wasn’t right. I couldn’t miss two seasons. When was enough enough, you know? Trying to figure that out and then be at peace with the decision was one of the bigger mental challenges I’ve faced.”
Recounting his recovery, Kieboom laughed about the mundane tasks that now feel like huge victories. This past Friday was the six-week mark, meaning he no longer has to wear a brace. Living near the Nationals’ facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., he goes on long walks to stay in shape. He expects to start throwing and hitting in October. He has no problem saying he’ll be ready next spring, when he could be greeted by another shot to stick.
What he’s battling, though, is loneliness. He typically arrives in the morning to an empty clubhouse. Those playing for the Nationals’ Florida Complex League team are all on the minor league side. And after watching the first 50 games of the season, give or take, Kieboom is picking and choosing more.
He always checks the box scores. He is glued to any National League East matchup, figuring he’s likely to face at least some of those pitchers in the future. But catching every inning took a toll. TV on or not, there’s a great physical and metaphorical distance between Kieboom and his teammates, the ones trudging through a season that could end with more than 100 losses. Kieboom knows that only time can close it.
“Baseball is not all I have ... but it is all I’ve ever really worked for,” he said. “I thought this was the year my career was going to get on track. Now that was delayed, and it’s okay. I mean, it has to be okay. I’m still so far from being finished.” | 2022-07-12T13:11:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Nationals' Carter Kieboom rehabs from Tommy John surgery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/carter-kieboom-nationals-rehab-tommy-john/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/carter-kieboom-nationals-rehab-tommy-john/ |
Tiger Woods spoke frankly about the LIV Golf tour on Tuesday at St. Andrews. (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
SAINT ANDREWS, Scotland — Tiger Woods has arrived at the crazy-historic 150th British Open and has brought along his voice, all earned and found and seasoned. He sounded statesmanlike on Tuesday morning as he spoke without reluctance about the blaring, glaring issue disrupting his sport: the breakaway, Saudi-funded LIV Tour. He even recoiled at the idea of loud music.
He started early at his news conference, fielding a question about the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews’s decision to disinvite Greg Norman because of the distracting noise Norman’s presence might cause given his chairmanship of the LIV Tour.
“The R&A obviously have their opinions and their rulings and their decision,” Woods said. “Greg has done some things that I don’t think are in the best interest of our game, and we’re coming back to probably the most historic and traditional place in our sport. I believe it’s the right thing.”
He specified a few answers later: “I know what the PGA Tour stands for and what we have done and what the tour has given us, the ability to chase after our careers and to earn what we get and the trophies we have been able to play for and the history that has been a part of this game. I know Greg tried to do this (a rival tour) back in the early ’90s. It didn’t work then, and he’s trying to make it work now.
“I still don’t see how that’s in the best interests of the game. What the European Tour and what the PGA Tour stands for and what they’ve done, and also all the professional — all the governing bodies of the game of golf and all the major championships, how they run it. I think they see it differently than what Greg sees it.”
And he did not flinch in his calm answer to a question about the cluster of players who have defected already, and who include major winners Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed and Louis Oosthuizen.
“I disagree with it,” Woods said. “I think what they’ve done is they’ve turned their backs on what has allowed them to get to this position. Some players have never got a chance to even experience it. They’ve gone right from the amateur ranks right into that organization and never really got a chance to play out here and feel what it’s like to play a tour schedule or to play in some big events. And who knows what’s going to happen in the near future with world-ranking points, the criteria for entering major championships. The governing body is going to have to figure that out.
“Some of these players may not ever get a chance to play in major championships. … We don’t know that for sure yet. It’s up to all the major championship bodies to make that determination. But that is a possibility, that some players will never, ever get a chance to play in a major championship, never get a chance to experience this right here, (or) walk down the fairways at Augusta National. That, to me, I just don’t understand it.
“I understand what Jack (Nicklaus) and Arnold (Palmer) did (when they started the PGA Tour in the late 1960s) because playing professional golf at a tour level versus a club pro (level) is different, and I understand that transition and that move and the recognition that a touring pro versus a club pro is.
“But what these players are doing for guaranteed money, what is the incentive to practice? What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt? You’re just getting paid a lot of money up front and playing a few events and playing 54 holes. They’re playing blaring music and have all these atmospheres that are different.”
He trolled ever so gently.
“I can understand 54 holes is almost like a mandate when you get to the Senior Tour. The guys are a little older and a little more banged up. But when you’re at this young age and some of these kids — they really are kids who have gone from amateur golf into that organization — 72-hole tests are part of it … It would be sad to see some of these young kids never get a chance to experience it and experience what we’ve got a chance to experience and walk these hallowed grounds and play in these championships.”
Woods did pronounce himself “very optimistic” about the sport’s future, noting “the greatest golf boom ever right now because of covid,” and how golf became an outdoor respite from indoor isolation. “Just look at the tour,” he said, “the average age is getting younger and younger, and they’re just getting better earlier and faster and they’re winning at earlier ages.
He spoke at fond length about the most hallowed of those grounds, Saint Andrews, as it celebrates an anniversary with the number “150” omnipresent on shirts and signs around here. “It is my favorite,” he said of the course, and he recalled playing the 1995 event as an amateur alongside Ernie Els and Peter Jacobsen the first two days. He spoke of how the timelessness has outweighed the technology, so that with rude winds on Tuesday, “On 10, I hit a 6-iron from 120 yards.”
And he spoke as an oldster when he said, “And with the fairways being fast and firm, it allows players who are older to run the ball out there and have a chance.”
This course will not challenge his body as did the severe undulations of Augusta National at the Masters in April or the slopes of Southern Hills in Tulsa at the PGA Championship in May. In those cases, the walking bested the golfing as a challenge to a lower right leg damaged and infused with hardware after his frightening car crash in California in February 2021.
“It’s still not easy,” he said. “Granted, the inclines are not steep in any way. They’re not — the declines are not steep. But it’s the unevenness that is still difficult on me. I have a lot of hardware in my leg.” He said, “Playing Augusta, I didn’t know. My leg was not in any condition to play 72 holes. It just ran out of gas. But it’s different now. It’s gotten a lot stronger, a lot better.”
Where once he came here and ordered a wood plank to his room to harden the mattress for his back, he said, now he orders “more ice.”
At the end, he took another question apt for a statesman, about whether he believes the new generation shares his appreciation for history. And while he said they could check history in their phones nowadays, he waxed more about the golf history he knows. “I saw Bob Charles out there on 18 hitting,” he said. “I think he won in ’63 (accurate) or something like that. Just to be able to see that in person, live, god, it was so special. I just hope the kids appreciate that.” He ended, “Nothing’s ever given to you. You have to go out there and earn it, and I earned it through the dirt. I’m very proud of that.” | 2022-07-12T13:11:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tiger Woods calmly condemns Greg Norman, LIV Golf at British Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/tiger-woods-liv-british-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/tiger-woods-liv-british-open/ |
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ becomes reality, at last, at Building Museum
The cast of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the Folger Theatre’s production staged in the Great Hall of the National Building Museum. (Brittany Diliberto)
It was spring 2020 when the Folger Theatre was finalizing designs and budgets for its production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the National Building Museum — part of planned off-site programming while its home campus undergoes renovation. Then the coronavirus hit.
The Folger may be closed for renovation, but its public programming will continue.
Over the next two years, the play’s festival stage sat unbuilt in two trailers outside Baltimore. The leadership behind the production, meanwhile, underwent an overhaul: Karen Ann Daniels stepped in for the retiring Janet Alexander Griffin as the Folger Theatre’s artistic director and director of programming, Chase Rynd passed the National Building Museum’s reins to Aileen Fuchs, and Victor Malana Maog replaced Robert Richmond as director of the play.
This week, Folger’s staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at last begins performances at the National Building Museum as part of a museum-wide theatrical experience called “The Playhouse.” But while the production has been years in the making — using a temporary stage and seating that have been set up in the museum’s Great Hall — audiences will experience an altogether different interpretation of William Shakespeare’s magical comedy than what the original creative team dreamed up.
“We thought a lot about, what’s the story we need to tell today?” Daniels says. “Not the story that was thought about two and a half, three years ago — that was for that time. But we’re in a very, very different time and a very different moment. I keep thinking of it like we’re coming out of the cave. What does it mean to come back out into the light?”
Turning this “Midsummer Night’s Dream” into a reality will be Maog, who collaborated with Daniels on a virtual musical at Saint Mary’s College of California in spring 2021. When Daniels began at the Folger last fall, she turned to Maog as Richmond’s replacement — partially because of his experience helming large-scale productions in unconventional spaces for Disney Parks from 2016 to 2018.
“I’ve gone through all my life looking at every empty space and wondering if there can be a performance there,” Maog says. “Not only do I have to think artistically, but I have to think as a project manager in accomplishing all these things.”
Although there were significant changes to the cast and creative team, one constant has been production designer Tony Cisek. The Folger veteran has been working since fall 2019 on how to incorporate the portable festival stage — designed by South Carolina theater professor Jim Hunter and imagined as an outdoor touring venue after this production — amid the museum’s imposing Corinthian columns.
Throughout the production’s iterations, Cisek has seen his job as an effort to tie disparate elements together into a cohesive whole: uniting the festival stage, the “Playhouse” theme (including scavenger hunts, backstage tours and an installation based on Joanna Robson’s pop-up book “A Knavish Lad”), and the sprawling Building Museum itself.
“The person is very small when placed anywhere near those Corinthian columns,” Cisek says. “At the same time, the building itself has such power and such character, and what we didn’t want to do was cover all of that up and create a closed space inside of this otherwise magnificent space. That would sort of be a waste. So try to find a way where both can exist was the exciting challenge.”
The solution is what Maog and Cisek call a “cocoon,” in which dramatic blue curtains fill the space between the columns and drapes close off the surrounding corridors. The design choice also obscures some of the extensive mechanical rigging and infrastructure added to a space that was not designed for theater. And audiences will enter the “cocoon” via a lavish tunnel envisioned as their pathway into “Midsummer’s” enchanted woodland.
“Even though you’re sitting in this cavernous space, hopefully we’ve sort of catered or customized your peripheral view, your peripheral awareness, so you feel like you’re in a much smaller space than you are,” Cisek says. “That’s the hope, so that you can relate to these human-sized actors that are in front of you.”
Those actors will be performing a 90-minute adaptation of “Midsummer” with an emphasis on dance and movement, differentiating itself from the contemporary, 2½-hour production that played to rave reviews at the Folger in 2016. Maog hopes his take on Shakespeare’s tale of meddlesome fairies, lovelorn youths and hapless thespians will do justice to the museum’s grandiose setting and prove accessible for young audiences as families take in the larger “Playhouse” experience.
“Even though we are still very much language-centric and story-centric, we brought in the idea that this must be able to fill the space, both visually and orally, and understand that the room itself is a character,” Maog says. “This is a very kinesthetic production, one that is both muscular with language but also just physically tiring. We talk about scaling up to the truth and to the nature of the space, but also to the mythic roles that they’re playing.”
“We have this very large, grand space, which then allows us to be huge when we want to be huge,” adds Jacob Ming-Trent, who plays the bumbling character Bottom, an actor in “Midsummer’s” play within a play. “There are times, too, when we’re whispering to the audience that’s 10 feet away from us. We can play that intimacy and really connect and make eye contact with those folks. So it gives us license as storytellers to use our full instruments, which is always exciting.”
Sculpting the work to the times, Maog also teases that this version challenges “the notions of patriarchy within the play, and who can love whom.” And Daniels hopes that the evening performances serve as a fittingly enchanting complement to “The Playhouse’s” daytime attractions as the Folger stages its first production since “The Merry Wives of Windsor” played at its Elizabethan Theatre in early 2020.
“If there’s something we need, right now, it’s to hope, right?” Daniels says. “If we can offer that space, the ability to both depart and spiritually rebuild as we’re doing it, that’s what we can do with this show. And I have seen that idea come together in really beautiful ways.”
National Building Museum, 401 F St NW. 202-544-7077. folger.edu.
Prices: $20-$85.
“The Playhouse” events: “All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare wrote in a different pastoral comedy. The theater-themed activities taking place around the National Building Museum continue even when the actors aren’t performing. Programs include behind-the-scenes tours of the Playhouse stage and a chance to deliver lines onstage; lunchtime poetry readings; a Hip-Hop Shakespeare Workshop from Aug. 5-7; and a “Brews & Banter” pre-show happy hour with cast members on Aug. 12. Daily activities for children include crafting masks and wands, story time, and a scavenger hunt through the museum. Face painting is offered on Saturdays and Sundays. Most activities are free with museum admission. | 2022-07-12T13:48:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Folger Theatre's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' becomes reality at National Building Museum - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/07/12/midsummer-folger-building-museum/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/07/12/midsummer-folger-building-museum/ |
Rising global temperatures are weakening glaciers around the world in mountainous areas, where millions of people rely on these reservoirs as a source of freshwater.
On Friday, a glacier collapsed in the Tian Shan mountain range. (Harry Shimmin via ViralHog)
On Friday around 2:45 p.m., British tourist Harry Shimmin reached the highest point in his trek along the Jukku pass in the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. He separated from the group to take pictures from the edge of a cliff when he heard deep ice cracking behind him. He turned around to an avalanche of glacial ice and snow rushing toward him and within moments found himself in a blizzard.
“When the snow started coming over and it got dark / harder to breath, I was bricking it and thought I might die,” Shimmin wrote an Instagram post. Shimmin and his group survived, although one member was sent to the hospital.
A group of hikers were unharmed after an avalanche struck the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan on June 8, 2022. (Video: Harry Shimmin via ViralHog)
The avalanche was the second glacier collapse of the week, demonstrating the perils of human-caused climate change amid a blistering hot summer in parts of Europe and Asia.
On July 3, a glacier chunk as large as an apartment building detached in Italy’s Dolomites region and killed at least 11 hikers. The block separated from a melting glacier on Marmolada Mountain and triggered an avalanche of ice, rock and debris below, where many tourists hike during the summer.
The avalanche in Italy occurred during a record-breaking extreme heat wave occurring during the country’s worst drought in 70 years, which was caused partly by a lack of winter snow in the mountains.
Researchers say these events underline the dangers of a rapidly warming world and are expected to increase, unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed.
Rising global temperatures are slowly weakening glacier systems around the world in mountainous areas, where millions of people rely on these reservoirs as a source of freshwater. Climate change is also inducing more extreme heat waves, which can push the weakening glaciers systems over the edge.
“There’s no other directions glaciers are going other than retreating” as global warming increases, said Peter Neff, a glaciologist at the University of Minnesota. “The feeling from the event in Italy and [Kyrgyzstan] is this is coming more often.”
The glacial events in Italy and Kyrgyzstan have similar backbones, said glaciologist Jeff Kargel. In the days preceding the collapse on the Tian Shan mountains, temperatures hit as high as 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 Celsius) at nearly 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) high. Similarly, temperatures soared about 50 degrees in the days leading to Italy’s fatal glacier accident. Both are just samples of heat waves that have plagued the northern hemisphere in recent months, some of which have been found to be more intense and frequent due to climate change.
Both were also glacier ice avalanches rather than primarily snow, in which a glacier broke off and collapsed under the force gravity. The high density of ice added speed and weight to the avalanche.
In the Tian Shan event, Neff pointed out that there was no apparent snow around the mountain so the avalanche was largely a solid chunk of glacial ice. In high mountain regions with permafrost, warm temperatures not only destabilize the glacier ice, but also the density of the ice around it. “It’s very dense more like a landslide than an avalanche,” he said.
“The British trekker is indeed, as he is aware, very lucky to be alive in the case of the Kyrgyzstan event,” Kargel added.
Kargel said ice and snow detachments occur every spring and summer as the glaciers approach the peak of their melt season, building up mass throughout the winter and gently flow down a valley. Often chunks of the glacier become unstable, break off and produce ice avalanches.
Ice avalanches “happen all the time, and they would be happening without climate change also,” said Kargel. “However, it does seem, qualitatively, that there have been many, many more of these in recent years, over the past decade or so than in previous decades.”
He said more fatalities and damage from such events have likely increased too, as more trekkers, villages and infrastructure appear closer to these mountainous areas.
One of the most notable glacier collapses of the past decade that Kargel recalls occurred in 2016 in western Tibet, where the entire lower parts of two adjacent glaciers broke within months of one another. One of the avalanches covered more than 3 square miles of land and reached speeds of 90 miles (140 kilometers) per hour, killing nine people and hundreds of animals. Kargel said these two collapses “almost certainly are connected to climate,” as the glaciers experienced unusually high quantities of heavy rains and meltwater, which helped grease the underside of the glaciers.
While the glacier collapses in Kyrgyzstan and Italy were much smaller (about 1,000 times smaller in volume than other deadly glacial collapses), Kargel said they probably also have a connection to climate change.
“A pretty solid hypothesis is that as temperatures warm [and] climate warms, the amount of melting increases,” he said. “The effects of meltwater on destabilizing ice masses increases, and so the number, the frequency and magnitude of glacier ice avalanches should be increasing … and that does seem qualitatively to be the case.”
Daniel Farinott, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich, agreed. “It is long known that meltwater caused by high temperatures increase the pressure in the glaciers’ subglacial drainage system, which in turn can accelerate glacier motion,” said Farinott in an email. “This increase in pressure and motion have certainly a role to play in such collapses.”
One of the greatest downstream effects from such mountain glacier loss and collapses are on fresh water systems, said Neff. For instance, glaciers in High Mountain Asia play a critical role in funneling freshwater into river basins used for drinking, irrigation and hydropower by nearly 1.5 billion people.
“We’re putting [these glaciers] into a state of change,” said Neff. “Ice is going to melt faster and deplete drinking water.”
And more collapses could be on the way as the melt season progresses.
“When the melt season gets going in earnest, I would expect we’ll see more of them,” said Kargel. “But, hopefully there won’t be more deadly ones.” | 2022-07-12T14:14:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Glacier avalanches in Italy and Kyrgyzstan highlight warming climate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/12/glacier-avalanche-collapse-italy-kyrgyzstan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/12/glacier-avalanche-collapse-italy-kyrgyzstan/ |
U.K.'s elite Cambridge University opens inquiry into student deaths
Students return for the spring term at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. (Graeme Robertson/Getty Images)
LONDON — Britain’s prestigious University of Cambridge has opened an inquiry after several student deaths have been reported in recent months, as the student union warns of a growing mental health crisis.
The leafy university, about 60 miles northeast of London, has reported five student deaths between March and June this year. The university says one has been “confirmed as suicide,” while the other four are suspected suicides awaiting investigation by the coroner.
The university’s Vice Chancellor Stephen Toope said he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths in a statement on Tuesday. “At this distressing time, our community’s thoughts remain with the families and friends of the students who have died.”
He said the safety of students is “of fundamental importance” and that the university was working to “review these tragic events” and put in place plans to support mental health and well-being.
Founded in 1209, Cambridge has more than 20,000 students and is a global academic institution. It boasts more than 121 Nobel Prize laureates and 47 heads of state among its alumni and affiliates.
In a separate statement a day earlier, Cambridge said it had set up a “rapid Incident Response Group,” — a separate inquiry from the coroner’s investigation — in coordination with public health officials and local suicide prevention groups, to review the deaths.
For the first four deaths, the group found that “no common cause or clear linkages were evident,” the university said. It is still reviewing the fifth death.
“We are shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic deaths,” said Graham Virgo, senior pro-vice-chancellor in a statement on Monday. “All of these students were valued members of our community,” he added, noting that the school was “in contact with the parents of those students who have died to support them at this extremely difficult time.”
However, the university’s own student union, an elected body that represents students, issued a statement in response to the deaths casting blame on some of the university’s policies.
“It’s wrong to speculate on the circumstances surrounding each student’s death, but we should not shy away from the fact that there is a student mental health crisis at Cambridge,” it said.
It called the number of deaths “troubling” and said it felt obliged to take a public stand “against the series of failures that we have witnessed in the University and across the colleges.”
The deaths took place at different colleges within the university, which is made up of 31 constituent colleges.
The Student Union accused a university-wide suicide prevention strategy of being “shamefully unambitious” and “diluted beyond recognition,” labeling it a “dereliction of duty.” It called on school leaders to “urgently review” suicide safety strategies and commit to a preventive approach.
The university did not comment on the explicit accusations but pointed The Washington Post to Toope’s statement on the work being done to support student well-being.
Pandemic leads colleges to revise, improve mental health efforts
It said it was investing about $6 million a year on an action plan to support mental health including a new student support division, student well-being advisers, cutting mental health help wait times, and training in suicide awareness for front line staff.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our students,” it said in Monday’s statement. “Sadly, across universities here in the UK, and internationally, we are seeing growing numbers of young people using counseling services and reporting struggles with their mental health.”
Despite the concern over the recent deaths, public health experts have emphasized that overall, suicide rates for college students in both the U.K. and United States have been trending downward in recent years. The most recent data from Britain’s Office for National Statistics found suicide rates for higher education students in the academic year ending 2020 was three deaths per 100,000 students — the “lowest rate observed over the last four years.”
In the U.S. too, suicide rates are also generally falling for almost all demographic groups, according to the American Association of Suicidology, although suicide still ranks as the second leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds.
However, the coronavirus pandemic and cost of living crisis are recent factors that public health experts say have led to an increase of mental health issues among students.
Steve West, president of Universities UK, a membership body that represents 140 universities across the country, said there had been a rise in mental health issues reported across student populations in the United Kingdom.
“Universities should be safe and mentally healthy places to live, work and study,” he said in an email to The Post, “every life lost through suicide is a tragedy.”
“Whilst there is no evidence that overall numbers of student deaths by suicide are increasing, risk factors such as self-harm, depression, debt, disengagement and loneliness mean that universities need to be vigilant to spot the signs and respond quickly.”
A spokesperson from the National Union of Students, a confederation of nearly 600 students’ unions representing 7 million students, told The Post they were “shocked and saddened to hear of cases of student suicide,” which showed “universities are not separate from wider society.”
“Our research has shown that students are overwhelmingly burdened by anxieties, often rooted in poverty and academic pressure — and now sadly exacerbated by the cost of living crisis,” the NUS said.
Pandemic exposed mental health divide among college students, study says
Pressures on students globally has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic as they have weathered shifting academic schedules, online learning, mask protocols and restrictions on socializing.
Data from a 2021 Healthy Minds Network Study showed 34 percent of American college respondents had anxiety disorder and 41 percent had depression — rates that have risen in recent years. More broadly, nearly 73 percent in the Fall 2021 American College Health Association National College Health Assessment survey reported moderate or serious psychological distress.
“There’s no doubt that young people are under considerable pressure out there at the moment,” said Ged Flynn, chief executive of Papyrus, a British charity that works to prevent young suicide.
There was some “good news,” he added, with national data trends showing that overall suicide rates had stayed the same or dropped in recent years. However, he added, this was not the case for 11- to 19-year-olds, an age group presenting the “biggest worry.”
Flynn said academic institutions should do more to reach this age cohort and “make it clear they’re not on their own.” He added, “we firmly believe that many suicides can be prevented and we want there to be positive outcomes.” | 2022-07-12T14:18:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cambridge University opens inquiry into student deaths feared to be suicides - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/12/cambridge-university-student-deaths-suicide/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/12/cambridge-university-student-deaths-suicide/ |
She’s running for Congress, despite the anti-Asian attacks against her
Yuh-Line Niou is campaigning to represent New York’s 10th District, which now includes two Chinatowns
By Soo Youn
On July Fourth, while much of the country was attending cookouts and celebrating with fireworks, Yuh-Line Niou was dealing with something far less pleasant: She took to Twitter to post about the harassment she said she’s faced as a Taiwanese American New York State assemblywoman.
“The attacks on me have been and are getting more and more dangerous to my life. I am a human being too. I hope when people write things they think about what can happen as a consequence,” she tweeted.
The tweet wasn’t necessarily new information to her followers; she has opened up before, both in interviews and on social media, about the death threats and sexual harassment she said she receives regularly online. Niou, 38, knows it comes with the territory, she said: “A lot of women of color who run for office get that.”
Still, “some of the things have gotten really extreme. When people send you pictures of their penises and their guns, it’s a very strange message,” she recently told The Washington Post.
A day after her July 4 post, Niou talked more about that type of harassment in a virtual discussion with comedian and actor Ronny Chieng. The event capped off a long day of campaigning for what she hopes is her next role — in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A year after the Atlanta shootings, Asian women live in fear: ‘How are we all going to stay safe?’
“My mom and my dad were very concerned for the more elevated scrutiny and the more disturbing commentary towards me,” Niou told Chieng of her profile as an outspoken state legislator during a time of increased harassment and violence against Asian Americans. “They did not feel like I was always going to be safe. But they also recognized the fact that the only way to stop the terrorism, the hatred, the hate, is to be more visible.”
This experience — dealing with harassment amid an increasingly tense climate for Asian American women — is part of what Niou said helps her understand key elements of her New York State Assembly district, one that she has represented throughout a surge in anti-Asian rhetoric and violence since the beginning of the pandemic.
But looking forward to the Aug. 23 Democratic primary for the U.S. House seat, Niou faces an unusually crowded field. To win, she’ll have to beat 14 other Democrats, including former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, to represent New York’s newly delineated 10th District. In a solidly blue district, the winner of the Democratic primary is all but guaranteed to go to Capitol Hill.
The new congressional district — which, Niou often points out, includes two Chinatowns — was redrawn to reflect the 2020 Census results. It also includes Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, Wall Street and the Financial District, and the Lower East Side. In addition, there’s Brooklyn’s Park Slope, Sunset Park — home of the borough’s Chinatown and a large Latino community — and parts of the Orthodox Jewish enclave of Borough Park.
Although significant portions of the 10th District are White and wealthy, Niou often speaks in terms of the most marginalized when it comes to policy, arguing that the rights of the most vulnerable are universal. Disability, racial, social and economic justice issues affect everyone, she said, and “we all benefit from making sure that we have diverse representation.”
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Niou has served in the state legislature for six years, during which she has worked toward increasing financial resources for less resourced communities and increasing funding for New York City Housing Authority repairs, as well as advocated for tenant protections. She was also one of the legislators who established the state’s first Asian Pacific American Legislative Task Force.
Niou aligns with the liberal wing of her party, to the left of current Democratic leadership. She said she supports single-payer health care, the Green New Deal, investment in public housing and eliminating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“It’s important that we’re holding accountable people who rigged our economy, trashed our climate, profiteered during a pandemic, cheered on the rise of white supremacist violence like Buffalo,” Niou said. “It’s important to fight and vote for laws that will actually bring material change to so many lives, policies to make sure that no one in our community gets left behind.”
In June, she received a key endorsement from the Working Families Party, which had endorsed several of her rivals in previous races. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (D) and New York state Sen. Julia Salazar (D) have also endorsed her.
But the road ahead remains challenging.
“She’s distinguished herself in the state legislature and has been a strong advocate for her constituents during covid and a rise in anti-Asian violence,” said Basil A. Smikle Jr., director of the public policy program at Hunter College. “But the Manhattan portion of the district that contains her assembly seat and where she’s strongest is still going to be very competitive. To win, she’ll have to overperform based on previous elections.”
She’s also part of a continuous groundswell of women, and women of color specifically, running for political offices, propelled by Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 presidential election, experts say.
“Basically, the number for the Democratic women House candidates doubled between 2016 and 2018,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
This year could beat another record for women running for the House of Representatives. For Democrats, the numbers hit a record in 2018 and held in 2020. A record number of Republican women ran in 2020, too.
“It’s also fair to say we’ve seen an increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of those women candidates who are running” in both parties, Dittmar said.
Niou’s identity has been inextricably linked with representing her community. She’s organized vigils, attended funerals and helped families cope with the death of loved ones, including that of 35-year old Christina Yuna Lee, who was fatally stabbed in her own apartment in February.
Christina Yuna Lee’s killing ‘hits so close to home’ for Asian American women in NYC
But as more women, especially women of color and LGBTQ women, run for office, they face increasingly targeted harassment, Dittmar said. And for female political candidates, the goal of these attacks is very clear, she added: “to push women out of the political sphere.”
“The underlying motivation is to prevent the increase in women’s political power,” she said. “It can be physically harmful, it can be mentally harmful, but it can also be harmful in a way that it actually prevents the very thing that would change these institutions, which is getting more women and more diversity of women within them.”
Niou gets emotional talking about the challenges she’s faced in her time as an assemblywoman — but not necessarily as it relates to her own run for office. Instead, she said, she’s been driven to action after watching those in her district suffer during the pandemic.
“It was so hard, and it’s still not over. We don’t have time to grieve, we literally keep going,” she said. “Our constituents really are the ones that had to fight for themselves in a lot of ways because our state, our city, our federal government, wasn’t helping.” | 2022-07-12T14:41:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Yuh-Line Niou on harassment, her run for Congress and more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/12/yuh-line-niou-house-campaign-harassment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/12/yuh-line-niou-house-campaign-harassment/ |
Illustration by Lamia Benalycherif for The Washington Post; photos by Melina Mara/The Washington Post (left) and Seth Wenig/Associated Press
Reconsidering Sarah Palin
It’s all too easy to ridicule her. As she runs for Congress, I wanted to tell a different story.
Perspective by T.A. Frank
Sarah Palin, the most famous Alaskan of all time, irritates the hell out of journalists. Journalists like availability; Palin hides. Journalists like policy nerds; Palin sloganeers. Journalists like reliability; Palin flakes. Reporting on her current run for Congress is a trial in patience and persistence, not least because her rare public appearances are revealed only hours or, at most, a day or two before they occur.
On May 4, I discovered that Palin, 58, would be attending a four-person candidate forum less than 48 hours later in Bethel, a remote town of 6,500 in western Alaska, reachable only by water or air and closed off to regular cellular service. Getting there in time to see her would be expensive and difficult, but I would at least get a glimpse of her in person, maybe even get a chance to ask a few questions. I arrived in Bethel the next evening, made it to my lodgings and tried to get some sleep, despite the sunlight still streaming in through the window at 10 p.m.
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This year Alaska rolled out ranked-choice voting, an elaborate system that allows voters to choose more than one candidate and order their preferences, making the state’s congressional election complex enough. Then, in March, the legendary congressman Don Young, a Republican who had held his seat — Alaska’s only one in the House — for nearly 50 years, died. Forty-eight candidates ran to finish Young’s term in a June 11 primary, which would pick four finalists to run in the special election on Aug. 16, when yet another primary will take place to determine candidates for a full term of the congressional seat, whose occupant will be chosen in the Nov. 8 general election. If that’s too confusing, skip it. The point is that Sarah Palin is trying to go to Washington, and, regardless of who wins, it’ll be a wonder if anyone understands how it happened.
Palin’s tendency to shut out reporters spares her any unwitting embrace of a viper, but it also arguably makes coverage of her even less friendly. I dived into her story with an avowedly open mind, hoping to understand who she is today, nearly 14 years after she first became world-famous as the vice-presidential pick of Republican nominee John McCain, and 13 years after she stepped down as a half-term governor. As others had before me, I encountered such a wall of silence, not only from Palin’s campaign but also from most people in her circle, that I started casting wistful looks at people assigned to write about Kim Jong Un. When I sent a FedEx introducing myself to Palin’s campaign manager, Kris Perry, a loyalist going back to Palin’s days before she was governor, I got no answer. When I managed to catch Perry on her home phone, she excused herself and promised to call the following day. My next calls went unanswered. I broke through to her house phone again a few weeks later when I called from an Alaska area code and was told by her husband, Clark Perry, also a longtime Palin friend and supporter, that his wife requested that I call back at around 1. Guess who didn’t pick up at 1.
Others were evasive too. I considered it a happy day when a source turned down an interview, because I appreciated the human contact. Many of those who were willing to talk to me were Palin’s detractors, with dirt to share. And so, like a new prison warden who vows to set a kinder tone only to find himself stabbed in the leg with a shiv made from a paper plate, a journalist can settle into the more obvious path. The main story becomes the muck: The betrayed supporters and ex-friends. The evasive and incoherent policy positions. The appalling statements (“waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists”; “more power to” Trump for “paying for researchers to find out why President Obama would have spent $2 million to not show his birth certificate”; and many others). The low-rent hustles like her political action committee, her failed online news network or her right-wing content farm.
These affronts are certainly a major part of the Sarah Palin story. But are they all of the Sarah Palin story? Might there be compelling reasons why people admire her and she still has old friends? Some of it may have to do with Palin’s manner — which is one of informality, vulnerability and consideration. She is the sporting aunt who, in 2019, went on a goofy cannabis-focused podcast co-hosted by her nephew to be quizzed for an hour about matters such as whether she’d ever tried marijuana. (Yes, she said, and “I’d rather deal with somebody who has a little buzz on than somebody who’s drunk.”) She is the motor-coach owner who, as RV enthusiast Andrew Steele recalled in a video, would chat with him about his detailing business and take selfies with him — lodging in his memory as one of the nicest people he had ever worked for. She’s the community member who, if you ran into her at the grocery store, would ask about people in your family by name, says former high school dance instructor Sharon Peek. “She made you feel good,” Peek says. She’s the mother, speechwriter Matthew Scully told me, who could attend to a whirlwind of children while practicing her speech to the Republican convention, taking time to run up to the teleprompter technician to introduce herself as “Sarah.” At her best, Palin comforts and inspires. She also makes many Americans feel heard.
This is a time when we all hate one another. You hate me, and I probably hate you, whoever you are. We know it isn’t good for us, however. We know that when we meet many of these adversaries in the flesh, they have qualities that don’t fit into easy theories or diagnoses. We might be able to share a meal, or a yard, or even a country. I spent some time digging for the 573rd piece of dirt on Palin, because we all know it’s out there — but my heart wasn’t in it. In reporting terms, there is nothing new and bad left to say about her. Even if it turns out she’s been running, say, a Ponzi scheme involving caribou antlers, it’s all footnotes, something to be added to a long-standing negative narrative half the country will embrace or reject. I instead resolved to fight my own mental shortcuts — such as viewing her moneymaking pursuits as cynical — and come up with the most generous theories of Palin that I could, given the facts on hand. It’s something we ought to be doing more of these days, anyway, if we’re to feel our way back to getting along.
Bethel, Alaska, has one paved road, and its building structures come across as a haphazard collection dropped out of a plane and left to make a go of it wherever they landed. Trees are few and small, because of tundra conditions, and mud plentiful, drying in warmer seasons to a fine dust that settles over everything. Statistics on education, crime and employment are all grim. The beauty of the place is in the Kuskokwim River, which runs through the town, and the language and arts of the Indigenous Yup’ik people. I took it as evidence of Palin’s sincerity about her run for office that she was going to attend an event here, the only non-Alaska Native to do so.
Goods are often double the price of what other Americans would pay in the Lower 48; my room at the Sleepy Salmon — a bed-and-breakfast that looked like a double-wide on stilts, with dozens of beat-up wood pallets in stacks out front — was $190 a night, plus tax, with a shared bathroom. (It was nice inside, though.) Internet service in Bethel is expensive enough that a sign on the refrigerator instructed guests not to use high-bandwidth applications like FaceTime, or face having the service shut off. Transportation was by a shared taxi, which delivered me to the Long House Hotel, where the candidate forum was to be held.
The few customers at the restaurant on the hotel premises all seemed to be involved with Alaska politics. City Council member Perry Barr, a former state trooper and mayor of Bethel from 2019 to 2020, sat in a booth having a burger and fries. Barr told me about the challenges of law enforcement in rural Alaska, his admiration for the Republican Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, and his skepticism of Palin, whom he called “Tina Fey,” a reference to the actor and writer who famously impersonated Palin on “Saturday Night Live” in 2008. At another table was congressional candidate Emil Notti, the first president of the Alaska Federation of Natives and one of the legends of Alaskan history, who recounted for me his role in lobbying for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which passed under Richard Nixon in 1971 and transferred about 10 percent of Alaska’s lands to Native corporations. Notti, who is now 89, first ran for Congress in 1973, against Don Young.
But Bethel was fogged in, and flights carrying the candidates from Anchorage were delayed. The forum got pushed to later in the afternoon. Eventually, the event organizer, Ana Hoffman, president of Bethel Native Corp., had an announcement to make to the waiting audience. Not all of the candidates would be coming, she said. Earlier in the day, when it looked as if Alaska Airlines would be unable to send a plane out of Anchorage to Bethel in time for the forum to be held, Hoffman had called off the event. Minutes later, however, Hoffman had learned that the plane was about to depart, and reinstated the debate. In that interval, Palin’s team had canceled their tickets and, they informed Hoffman, found themselves unable to regain seating on the flight.
My efforts to give my story subject the benefit of the doubt were already meeting with a challenge. I recalled what former Palin aide Frank Bailey described in his memoir as a tendency by Palin to look for any excuse to wriggle out of non-preferred commitments. Republican candidate Tara Sweeney, who was taking the same flight, had decided to wait a few minutes to see if the fog would clear and flew in without any trouble.
After the event, Hoffman invited the candidates and some other attendees, including me, to dinner at her home, an elegant new house overlooking the Kuskokwim. Notti found an armchair by the windows while I set myself at an island in the kitchen. Over a bowl of moose chili, I talked to Sweeney, a close associate of Don Young’s who had served as assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs in the Trump administration, and Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, a former state representative and Bethel resident. Peltola wore a stylish red overshirt with a hood and generous pockets, a Native garment called a kuspuk, which, she told me, she hopes will become an Alaskan export product, especially for tourists. The vibe was warm and close-knit, a reminder of how big and small Alaska is at the same time: more than four Californias in size, less than one Seattle in population.
I also thought to myself that Palin would probably not have felt comfortable at this gathering. Before 2008, yes; she would have liked it, I suspect. But not today. She seems to have become accustomed to more controlled settings and too anxious about unfriendly media. If she had chosen to exploit a loophole to bail on her commitment, was it not understandable? No one doubted she’d make it through the primary anyway.
Sarah Palin has had a rough decade. In the past few years, she has been in the headlines mainly for her long-running defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, filed over a 2017 editorial tying Palin’s political action committee to a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson that killed six people and wounded 12 others, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat. In February, a Manhattan jury rejected Palin’s claims, but no one, including the Times, disputed that the offending editorial had been unfair.
Before 2011, Palin was riding high. Millions of dollars flowed into SarahPAC, her political action committee established in 2009. Tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars rolled in for speeches, and she received a reported $1.25 million advance for her first book, 2009’s “Going Rogue,” a bestseller. Her political endorsements helped sweep Republicans like Kentucky’s Rand Paul and South Carolina’s Nikki Haley into office. She starred in a nine-part reality show called “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” produced by TV titan Mark Burnett, giving the world an often-charming view of her family and state.
The Tucson shooting marked a turning point. Journalists and editorial boards stampeded into ascribing the incident to hatred ginned up by the right, and Palin in particular, because of a SarahPAC graphic that had included crosshairs over vulnerable Democratic districts on a U.S. map. When an upset Palin released a statement condemning such accusations as a “blood libel,” a new storm of negative press erupted over her use of a freighted term. The outrage was selective (many other public figures had used the phrase over the years), but it was fateful. Palin’s favorability numbers, already sagging, began to tumble.
Palin stayed busy and released some more books, including “Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas” (2013) and “Sweet Freedom: A Devotional” (2015). She also made more political endorsements that banked a lot of chits. Ted Cruz, who gained momentum in 2012 after securing Palin’s endorsement in a tough primary in Texas, has said he “would not be in the U.S. Senate today if it were not for Governor Sarah Palin.” Even in 2014, six years after her vice-presidential run, Palin could draw a crowd in many states. In Kansas that year, when she spoke at a rally for then-Sen. Pat Roberts, organizers expected a couple hundred people to show up; the number quickly hit 500 and kept growing. Roberts remembers Palin having an electric effect when she spoke. “Lord have mercy, she just blew the house away,” he told me. But her influence overall was declining, and so was revenue to SarahPAC, which shut down at the end of 2016.
The rise of Donald Trump might have heralded a revival of Palin’s fortunes, after she took a risk and endorsed him early during the primaries. But Trump did little to repay the favor, even freezing her out at the Republican convention in 2016, claiming Palin had bowed out because Alaska “is a long ways away.” In the end, Palin was rewarded with a dinner at the White House, bringing, among others, Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, her daughter Willow and her close friends Clark and Kris Perry, the ones who treated my phone calls like door knocks from the Grim Reaper.
There was also trouble on the home front. In the summer of 2019, Todd Palin initiated divorce proceedings. Palin has said that the split felt as if “I got shot.” When Focus on the Family founder James Dobson was trying to get in touch with her to follow up on arrangements for an appearance, she avoided his calls, as she later admitted in an interview with him, for fear of being told not to come after all. Once news of the divorce became public, Twitter and late-night television erupted in jokes. “It just happens,” offered Bill Maher. “They grifted apart.” (Todd Palin did not respond to a request for comment.)
Today, Palin’s campaign filing shows assets of at most $2.4 million and possibly as little as $950,000. She gets about $90,000 in advertising revenue from a right-wing content farm that she has operated with the aid of some conservative media entrepreneurs. Most of her money these days comes from Cameo, a service that allows people to buy a personalized greeting from a celebrity, which earned her about $212,000 last year.
Palin still lives in her longtime home on Lake Lucille in Wasilla, Alaska, splitting custody of her youngest child, Trig, 14, who has Down syndrome and attends public school nearby. Of her adult children, only Track, 33, still lives in the area. Her 31-year-old daughter, Bristol, lives in Texas, as does Willow, 28, while 21-year-old Piper lives in Arizona. In a 2021 episode of a cooking show called “Cooking Crazy Style With Molly B,” Sarah shows the host, Molly Blakeley, how to make a rhubarb pie, and the house — which in “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” was buzzing with family — now echoes like a cavern. Early this year, Palin confirmed she was dating former NHL star Ron Duguay, 65. “Hockey mom and hockey player,” Duguay told me. “We enjoy being around each other.” But Palin lives in Alaska and Duguay in Florida, so the relationship is a long-distance one.
All of this helps explain what was going on when Palin made the decision to sue the New York Times. You could argue that it was just “cynically transactional,” as John F. Harris has suggested in Politico. In this version of the narrative, Palin was looking for a way to get some attention for herself once more, and she picked a target hated by many on the right, creating an opening for opportunists of all sorts, from lawyers to political strategists. But in a more charitable reading of the events, Palin kicked up a fuss because she felt sincere grievance. At a time when she was in a steep career decline and adrift, the Times editorial had reopened a painful wound in an unworthy manner. “I didn’t have any TV contracts, I didn’t have that platform,” she later told a courtroom. “There I was up in Wasilla, Alaska, going up against those who buy ink by the barrel, and I had my No. 2 pencil on my kitchen table.” It might have been a canned line, but it wasn’t a bad one.
If Palin’s bunkering makes it hard for her to attract positive coverage, the problem is compounded by the cheery availability of her opponents. Palin’s most formidable challenger, Nick Begich, a Club for Growth-style conservative businessman endorsed by the Alaska Republican Party, spent an hour with me over coffee in Anchorage going over arcane policy details about resource extraction and the push for broadband. I asked Begich why he had agreed to meet with a reporter for a national publication that is often criticized by many of his fellow conservatives. “The business case for Alaska has to be made to the nation, not just the people we encounter on a regular basis,” Begich said. “If a candidate is unwilling to make that case, they’re not prepared to do the job.”
On the evening of May 25, I attended a candidate forum in Anchorage, for Republicans only, hosted by the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club. The club’s president, the charmingly cantankerous Judy Eledge, griped during her opening remarks that Palin had been noncommittal about attending. Finally, at the last minute, Palin’s campaign declined, saying the candidate was too busy. “She was busy returning from Georgia,” Eledge growled, referring to a trip Palin had taken over the weekend to stump for Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue. To mark Palin’s absence, the organizers put out an empty chair with “Palin” on the back, to which was attached a “Yes”/“No” sign handed out to the candidates for a speed round, the “No” side facing the crowd. When candidate John Coghill got an impish question about what Alaskans “need to know about Sarah Palin,” he held his microphone up to the empty chair, drawing one of the bigger laughs of the evening.
The Anchorage and Bethel forums weren’t the only ones Palin missed. She had also skipped a forum in Juneau, the capital, a week earlier. “You mess with some of these Republican women, and they’ll reach down your throat and yank out your lungs,” Suzanne Downing, publisher of the conservative website Must Read Alaska, told me over dinner in Anchorage. While Begich has been endorsed by many local organizations and luminaries, including (ouch) Todd Palin’s father, Jim Palin, Sarah Palin’s endorsements have mostly been national, with Donald Trump most prominent among them. Her local endorsements tend to come from people who have no obvious connection to politics or government and are described on Palin’s Instagram feed with terms like “Anchorage Businessman” or sometimes nothing at all.
But Palin has more license to follow her own rules. She doesn’t need any introduction, and she doesn’t need the standard party networks. Even when she was in state politics, she could be prickly toward fellow Republicans. She has paid the price for this. When she resigned as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004, citing corruption, it was over a Republican misusing his perch, and she gave up a $122,400 salary, a small fortune for the Palin family at the time. Stuff like that burns bridges because loyalty and anti-corruption are not natural bedfellows. But maybe opposition to corruption really is as central to Palin’s values as she claims, regardless of any ethical breaches she has been accused of herself. And perhaps her independent streak explains why she feels at liberty to forgo interactions with a party establishment that has never much cared for her anyway.
John McCain did something terrible to Palin when he offered her the spot as his running mate. At the time, she was a governor with high approval ratings in her home state, north of 80 percent in some polls. She was a staunch conservative but not a firebrand, and she didn’t mind working with the opposition party. As Joshua Green laid out in a 2011 article in the Atlantic, Palin worked with Democrats to come up with a deal that raised taxes on oil producers and yielded enormous revenue for the state. Many Republicans still resent her for it. You could say that Palin seemed to point the way to a different sort of GOP, one that stood for social conservatism but also for Alaska-style libertarianism and working-class-friendly economics. Had she completed her term, or two of them, and stayed popular, she would have been a serious contender in national politics.
But Palin had a blind spot when it came to career timing. Her focus was on opportunity, not, it seems, on her own preparedness. “Okay, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere — this is what I always pray — I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door,” Palin told Fox News in 2008. If that is your prayer to God, you will not say no to the offer of a lifetime.
All vice-presidential candidates are expected to launch attacks, playing bad cop to the presidential good cop, and Palin does not seem to have thought twice about taking shots at Barack Obama in her GOP convention speech, delivered on Night 3 of the Republican National Convention. “My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery,” she said, in one blood-drawing line. “This world of threats and dangers, it’s not just a community and it doesn’t just need an organizer.” It was a speech that changed everything: One side now wanted to coronate her and the other wanted to destroy her. When an ebullient Chuck Heath, Palin’s big brother, ran into Joe McCain, John’s little brother, in a hallway after the speech, Joe cautioned, “You have no idea what they’re about to do to your sister.”
The onslaught was brutal. The news media cannot be blamed for having probed Palin’s understanding of national and international affairs and revealing it to be dangerously inadequate, or be faulted for reports on Palin’s ethics controversies and other baggage back in Alaska — this, after all, is the job of journalists. Nor can it be denied that Palin sometimes used the media to her advantage and played up a sense of injury whenever it seemed to work in her favor. What’s not clear, however, is why, if the truth was so damning, reporters needed to write so many falsehoods. As the conservative writer Matthew Continetti chronicled in his book “The Persecution of Sarah Palin,” she was described in mainstream outlets as someone who opposed contraception, joined the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, pushed for bans of library books and didn’t know that Africa was a continent. All those claims were either false or wildly distorted. And Palin never said she could “see Russia from my house”: That was a Tina Fey line. “Palin revealed something about elites,” says Continetti, “especially elites in the media, who were extremely quick to judge her character negatively, often rushed stories into print that turned out to be wrong, and revealed contempt not just for her, but for people like her.”
If journalists of late have been revisiting past episodes of sexist treatment of women in public life, from Hillary Clinton to Britney Spears, mainstream reassessments of the treatment of Sarah Palin have been slower to arrive.
The personal attacks also went way further than normal, even in the rough-and-tumble realm of opinion journalism. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen suggested McCain’s pick of Palin was like Emperor Caligula appointing his horse consul. A Salon columnist called her a “power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty” who made the writer feel “as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.” Then there were the crackpot claims that Palin was not the real mother of Trig. As I began this article, I checked old stories of mine to see if I’d ever written anything nasty about Palin. Yes, it turns out, I had: a cringe-inducing parody in 2009 for the Guardian of “Going Rogue” that epitomized everything people hate about journalists. It mocked her manner of speaking, suggested she was a fabulist, made fun of her education and in general hit on every cliched target in the snottiest way possible. Welp.
If journalists of late have been revisiting past episodes of sexist treatment of women in public life, from Hillary Clinton to Britney Spears, mainstream reassessments of the treatment of Sarah Palin have been slower to arrive. Yet it’s hard, looking back at 2008 and 2009, not to ask if Palin’s gender allowed people to feel freer not just to hate but also to condescend. Perhaps McCain’s campaign — which she has described as treating her in a highhanded manner — would have behaved the same toward a male sitting governor. But it’s fair to wonder.
When Palin returned to Alaska, she assumed, as she put it in “Going Rogue,” that “everything would go back to the way it was before.” She couldn’t have been more wrong. Democrats and Republicans in Juneau both held grudges against her now. She faced lots of legal bills, and her opponents filed a barrage of ethics complaints. Reporters and opposition researchers descended upon the state, digging into her past and looking for a knockout blow. Bitter McCain campaign insiders also dished on her in the national press. Cynics have said Palin chose to resign as governor in the summer of 2009 because she wanted to grab a book deal and run. But the book deal was already signed. Maybe Palin believed, as she implied in a meandering statement, that she was no longer good for Alaska.
The 10 weeks that Palin spent as a vice-presidential candidate left her in a trap. She was loved as never before but also hated as never before. There was no obvious way out of this conflict: Sustaining the love of her supporters, which she appeared to crave, also meant stoking the hatred of her opponents, which she seemed to fear. In the end, she worked to please the only team she had by surfing the waters of partisan outrage and mastering social media in all its varieties. Twenty-five years ago, Sarah Palin was a cheerful small-town mayor carting her kids with her to yoga class. Today, she seems to be someone who spends a lot of time online while worrying that half of Americans want to destroy the country. But strangely enough, many of us, right and left, have walked a similar path.
People often say that Sarah Palin anticipated the rise of Donald Trump, but you could say the same of Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot or Herman Cain, depending on your focus. Trumpism is perhaps best understood as two things: populist-right mood and populist-right policy. The mood is one of resentment toward predatory or incompetent elites, and the policy (in theory, at least) is one of strength through self-containment — whether regarding immigration or commerce or military deployment. J.D. Vance, running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, represents Trumpism mainly as policy, while Palin represents it mainly as mood.
This can make Palin maddeningly hazy on issues that many conservatives and liberals alike care about most. On foreign policy, she has veered from McCain-style hawkishness to seeming anti-interventionism and back. The same goes for something like the bailouts of Wall Street in 2008. All of this makes her look unserious in comparison to Trump, who, for all his antics, offered a worldview that challenged settled notions of left and right.
Perhaps, however, Palin chooses to be vague because she has different priorities. Like most politicians, she fights for a few core convictions and leaves the rest up for grabs. Rather than war or trade, she has shown herself to be most passionate about ending abortion, cleaning up government and promoting Alaskan resource development. Palin also had a coalition to maintain; confining herself to easy targets allowed her to retain the fandom of very different sorts of conservatives. Anyone who could be the darling of both Bill Kristol and Steve Bannon, as Palin was just over a decade ago, was going to disappoint one of them eventually. Certainly, Palin’s equivocation on big issues can still be brazen. She has condemned the “idiots who did storm the Capitol” on Jan. 6, 2021, yet at the same time claimed Trump wasn’t to blame for the unrest. But she also must know that she’ll have no chance to advance her central causes if she loses support by taking a clear stand on what she sees as peripheral matters.
People often point to personality traits shared by Palin and Trump, such as thin skin and self-absorption. But the resemblance is superficial. Both have thin skins, but Trump’s covers a hearty and insensate core; Palin described being excluded from McCain’s funeral as a “gut punch” and told Fox host Sean Hannity that she could watch Tina Fey’s impression of her only with “the volume all the way down.” Trump enjoys riling the other side, while Palin, despite her flame throwing, seems most eager to please her own side. Trump clashed with journalists but clearly enjoyed the fight. Palin, although she got along well with reporters before 2008, now keeps journalists at a distance. Trump insists on being called “Mr. Trump” and likes the trappings of royalty, while Palin goes by her first name and keeps things simpler. In conversations, Trump talks about himself. Palin asks people about their families.
Because Palin has always spoken in buzz phrases and generalities with what often looks like minimal regard for accuracy, detractors have said she anticipated Trump’s disregard for facts. Most of Palin’s howlers, though, fit within current parameters of political exaggeration and obfuscation. What makes these comments especially noticeable to journalists, I would argue, is that she is on the right, and most journalists are not. Untruths in service of a listener’s preferred narrative are never as jarring as untruths in service of an unwelcome narrative. You’ll draw far fewer brickbats for calling Florida legislation the “don’t say gay” bill than you will for suggesting that Obamacare would lead to “death panels,” as Palin infamously did in 2009, even though both are forms of agitprop. This isn’t to excuse agitprop, especially at a time when we’re drowning in it, but Palin isn’t unusual for producing it.
Palin’s religious faith alarms many of her critics in a way that Trump’s religious faith, if that’s what you can call it, never did. For two decades, until 2002, Palin attended a Pentecostal church where, as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2008, “congregants speak in tongues and are part of a faith that believes humanity is in its ‘end times.’ ” Of course, her views on an issue like abortion are partly grounded in her religion, which makes those convictions look firmer than Trump’s and therefore scarier to her opponents, but when it comes to self-aggrandizement, her faith also appears to discourage her from Trumpian excesses. Pentecostalism, says R.R. Reno, editor of the conservative religious journal First Things, is the “most American form of Christianity,” one that’s intensely egalitarian. Palin has written that her faith allows for “comfort in admitting shortcomings” and has stressed the virtue of staying “grounded” by doing something like changing a diaper before a big speech. Strong libertarian themes also run through her work, and the word “freedom” appears 134 times in her 2010 book “America by Heart.”
Like Trump, Palin appears to hold grudges, but she also acts as if she grasps the importance of avoiding pettiness when the nation is watching. Months after the 2008 election, she kicked off her 2009 state of the state address by congratulating Obama on his inauguration, saying that “if President Obama governs with the skill, grace and greatness of which he is capable, Alaska’s going to be just fine.” She got some rough treatment from McCain, who revealed in 2018 that he regretted not choosing Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate, but she continued to speak admiringly of her one-time political partner. (Trump, by contrast, continued to bash McCain even after his death.) In 2018, when a young man who had gone to jail for hacking Palin’s email in 2008 died of complications related to progressive multiple sclerosis, Palin posted a message to Facebook sending “heartfelt condolences” to the family, saying “the 2008 incident does not define David” and asking “to let David’s good memory supersede anything else.” Trump rarely manages to rise above grievances. Palin, at least sometimes, does.
On June 11, Alaska tallied up the results of its special election primary, and Palin finished in first place, with 27 percent, followed by Republican Nick Begich at 19 percent, independent Al Gross at 13 percent and Democrat Mary Peltola at 10 percent. Gross dropped out, so Palin now faces Peltola and Begich in the special election.
The pre-2008 Palin, who was less predictable, might have been a stronger candidate. Because Alaska has only one vote in the U.S. House, there’s a tactical advantage to being a little bit capricious. If your vote is up for grabs, people will offer you concessions, perhaps on matters like infrastructure or access to natural resources, and Alaskan legislators in D.C. have used that to the state’s advantage. Whether Palin will have such flexibility in her current incarnation is questionable. She has pledged to join the Freedom Caucus, a group known for rebelling against Republican leadership and pushing for more hard-line policy. That might give her credibility, but it may also mark her as too much of a dissident to cut useful deals for her state.
On July 9, Donald Trump made it to Anchorage to hold a rally — at which he spoke mostly of Donald Trump, but still managed to include a politically valuable endorsement of Palin. It was a reminder that, in contemporary politics, to be for or against Trump defines almost everything. And so, if elected, Palin will once again be hated, a potential trophy for hunters. Because her life is messy — very messy — they may yet get her. In a war, you want to take out the other side’s icons, and she’s an important one. The question is whether everything needs to be on a war footing in the first place.
Two years ago, I was researching the question of how to get Americans to unite on something as modest as a set of shared facts. During my reporting, it became clear that the problem was one of feelings more than metaphysics. As the philosopher Linda Zagzebski, author of the 2012 book “Epistemic Authority,” explained to me, “Emotional goodwill precedes the sharing of facts.” To put it another way, we don’t hate one another because we have a different sense of facts. We have a different sense of facts because we hate one another. Chip away at the distrust and animosity, and facts can be pooled once more. If we can tell a human story of Sarah Palin, maybe people can wish her victory or defeat instead of vengeful triumph or destruction. Maybe we can do that for all sorts of people, even when our gut hates the idea.
On March 11, 2020, the reality show “The Masked Singer” featured a performer in a fuzzy pink-and-blue ensemble of dress, boots and giant bear head who rapped Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” famous for its opening line, “I like big butts.” The judges, whose job it was to attempt to guess the star’s identity, were stumped, although one suggested Tina Fey. When the singer took off the bear head and revealed herself to be Palin, jaws dropped. “It’s unity,” Palin said. “It’s something our country needs right now, too.” Was she wrong?
T.A. Frank is a writer at large for Vanity Fair. | 2022-07-12T14:41:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sarah Palin Reconsidered - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/12/sarah-palin-reconsidered/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/07/12/sarah-palin-reconsidered/ |
Hudson Rowan’s entry to the Ulster County Board of Elections “I Voted Sticker contest” (Courtesy of Ulster County Board of Elections)
When voters in Ulster County, N.Y. head to the polls in November, they’ll walk away with an “I Voted” stickers that looks a little different.
Instead of the traditional themes of red-white-and-blue, stars and stripes and eagles, this sticker will feature a multicolored, discombobulated human head set atop six turquoise legs resembling that of a spider (or crab) — next to the message, “I Voted.”
It was designed by a local teen who isn’t even old enough to vote.
Hudson Rowan, 14, is the clear frontrunner in a contest organized by the Ulster County Board of Elections to design the sticker that will be given to county residents who vote in the November general election, after his unusual design went viral, generating buzz that local election officials believe will lead to more voter turnout in the county.
“This sticker is going to increase turnout,” John P. Quigley, the Republican election commissioner for Ulster County, said with confidence — or at least, “we think it will,” added Ashley Dittus, the Democratic commissioner.
As for the artist, Rowan says: “I did not expect it to take off the way it did at all."
The sticker — which he describes as a “colorful human head on, I guess, spider legs?” — is similar to the “kind of crazy, chaotic” drawings Rowan, who is from Marbletown, N.Y., about 100 miles north of New York City, says he has been doing for years.
The contest is part of the Ulster County Board of Elections’s outreach program to young voters. All 13- to 18-year-olds in the county were invited to submit a sticker design, and anyone could vote on their favorite of six finalists until the end of July.
The 14-year-old’s design has captivated the internet, generating TikToks and news coverage — and every time, more votes for the humanoid-spider-crab. As of this writing, Rowan’s sticker had more than 159,700 votes out of nearly 171,000 total votes. Ulster County in its entirety has a population of about 180,000.
“It took me, like, 10 minutes to draw it,” Rowan told The Post. “It was a quick … little sketch, and then I submitted it. And a couple days later, my mom was like ‘Hudson, your thing has like a couple thousand votes.’ And I was just freaking out, cause I didn’t know how that happened, and how so many people voted.”
On Reddit, one user wrote sarcastically of the sticker, “I can’t imagine a better metaphor for the current state of US politics.”
A post shared by Hudson Rowan (@hudson_rowan123)
“We all laugh, but this sticker alone might unironically increase voter turnout in Ulster County,” another wrote on Twitter.
Dittus and Quigley, the Democratic and Republican election commissioners for Ulster County, hoped for a reaction like this when they picked Rowan’s design as a finalist — but were blown away when it actually came.
“John and I are sort of different from your typical election commissioners in New York state,” Dittus told The Post in an interview.
“If you combine both of our ages, we’re probably about the average age of a standard elections commissioner. I’m 36, John just turned 30. So, we know how the internet works. And our office is relatively young, too. And we all kind of thought this could happen. Did we think it would? No.”
“We had a bit of a hunch that it was going to take off,” Quigley added.
Since the contest went live, the Ulster County commissioners have been flooded with emails from people in different states wanting a sticker, and counties across the country wanting to learn from their efforts to get young people engaged in the electoral process.
Dittus always tells them the same thing. “It doesn’t take a lot of time and anybody could do it. And if this gets replicated because of what we did, then I would be so proud of us for inspiring people to engage with ... a part of their community that usually doesn’t get as much attention as they might need.”
Voting for the contest will close on July 29. If Rowan’s sticker wins, he’ll receive an award from the Ulster County Legislature. All the finalists who don’t win will receive school supplies — and the chance to have their stickers handed out at an upcoming primary and special election in late August, when the 19th Congressional District, which Ulster County is part of, is set to elect a new congressperson and New York state senator.
Boosting voter turnout wasn’t Rowan’s goal when he designed the sticker, but he says he’s glad of the attention it has received. “I’m super glad I’m inspiring people to … take the time to vote to get my sticker,” said the teen, who will attend Rondout Valley High School next year.
Imagining people “walking around with my art on them — it’s crazy,” he says. | 2022-07-12T14:41:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Viral 'I Voted' sticker could increase election turnout in Ulster County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/i-voted-sticker-contest-ulster-county-ny/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/i-voted-sticker-contest-ulster-county-ny/ |
A pair of seals chased after a large group of people at an ecological reserve in San Diego on July 11. (Video: The Washington Post)
With beating flippers and bouncing bellies, two sea lions charged along the sands of California’s La Jolla Cove on Friday, forcing visitors to flee in a scene one observer likened to being chased by “Godzilla” — much to the delight of social media users who praised the animals for reclaiming their natural habitat.
While some people ran uphill toward safety and those in the water swam in the opposite direction, one woman watched from afar, capturing the incident on video and posting it on TikTok. “These sea lions made my day yesterday,” she wrote shortly before the footage went viral, generating almost 11 million views on the platform.
“I started recording because it was really funny to watch, for me to see all these tourists getting blown away by these giant sea lions,” the woman, who was later identified as Charlianne Yeyna, told NBC San Diego.
Yeyna said she was watching the “massive” sea lions sleep on the beach when a woman approached to take a photo and “got really close” before one “just woke up and started chasing everybody.” Yena estimated that the woman came within four feet of the animal.
Sea lions are often spotted at La Jolla Cove, and visitors are asked to keep a safe distance. “Do not approach” signs are erected along the beach during pupping season in a bid to protect mothers and their young.
Eric Otjen, a sea lion expert from SeaWorld San Diego, told the Associated Press that despite the social media comments on the creatures chasing beachgoers, Friday’s incident was actually expected and often seen in the summer months when breeding season is in full swing.
“This behavior is not uncommon at all. The reason why the video has gotten like 10 millions views is because everybody is running like Godzilla is chasing them,” he said.
Otjen said that it was unlikely the animals were targeting members of the public and that they were instead fiercely preparing to reproduce.
“He’s got swimmers all around him on his way back out, but they don’t bother him,” he said. “What this is all about is his right to mate.”
‘Cheeky’ sea lions are returning to New Zealand’s shores — and locals are learning to share the coast
On social media, many who viewed the footage declared they were proudly “team sea lion,” praising the animals for chasing sunseekers away.
“I’m personally rooting for the sea lions,” read one tweet. “Somebody get david attenborough on the phone immediately we need this clip narrated,” read another. (Sir David Attenborough is a well-known English broadcaster and naturalist.)
Some questioned why the strip of sand, which has long been popular with the animals, had not been permanently closed off by city officials.
Male sea lions can grow up to eight feet long and can weigh up to 600 pounds, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo. Female sea lions can reach up to six feet in length and can weigh about 400 pounds. They are usually found grouped on rocky shorelines, piers and islands.
Sea lions are considered highly territorial. “Breeding males, and females with newborn pups, may threaten and chase intruders,” according to information shared by SeaWorld.
Unlike their more demure “second cousins,” the seals, who are known for their quiet grunts, sea lions display a more boisterous streak — barking incessantly — especially during mating season, which runs from May to October.
During mating season, male behavior is “most aggressive,” according to experts who say they push, shove and chase to assert dominance over one another.
Earlier this year the city council said it had noticed a pattern of harassment at the tourist destination, adding that attempting to take selfies with the wild animals at Point La Jolla was “dangerous.”
No injuries were reported in Friday’s sea lion incident. | 2022-07-12T14:41:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California sea lions chase beachgoers at La Jolla Cove San Diego - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/sea-lions-beachgoers-san-diego/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/sea-lions-beachgoers-san-diego/ |
Canada’s internet outage should encourage us to dismantle our telecom oligopoly
By David Moscrop
The headquarters of Rogers Communications in Toronto on Nov. 6, 2016. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)
Last week, a telecommunications outage left millions of Canadians without access to internet and cell services for hours. It was a stunning reminder that Canada must revolutionize the industry and dismantle the oligopoly that runs it.
On Friday, more than 10 million customers of Rogers Communications were left without internet and cell services when a maintenance update went sideways. At least two days later, some customers were still without service, while others had unreliable access. It was the second time in 15 months the Rogers service failed.
The system breakdown was more than a mere disruption to streaming services or texting friends. The country’s social, political and economic infrastructure was compromised. Customers were left unable to work. Family members could not contact vulnerable loved ones. Folks were cut off from 911 services. Payment systems were unavailable. Banking was disrupted. The Canada Revenue Agency’s telephone services were interrupted. The ArriveCan app, which is required to enter the country by air, was not loading. And all this during a pandemic. The outage was a catastrophe that only the most privileged and fortunate could brush aside as a fleeting inconvenience.
Rogers took its sweet time communicating the reason for the system disruption and getting service restored. On Saturday, Rogers President and CEO Tony Staffieri released a statement indicating “our services have been restored, and our networks and systems are close to fully operational.” But services had not been fully restored, since some were still experiencing disruptions, so the explanation and apology left much to be desired.
Staffieri suggested the problem was “a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network, which caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning.” The company is offering a paltry credit of a few bucks to compensate users for the disruption — a credit, automatically applied, for the time of the outage. “We let you down yesterday,” Staffieri wrote. I’ll say. An apology, piddling credit and promise to do better in the future aren’t enough.
Three companies control 90 percent of the telecommunications market in Canada. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne met with the heads of those companies on Monday to discuss the Rogers outage and the state of the industry. He directed them to “improve the resiliency and reliability” of the country’s networks “by ensuring a formal arrangement is in place within 60 days.” That arrangement is meant to include “agreements on (i) emergency roaming, (ii) mutual assistance during outages, & (iii) a communication protocol to better inform the public and authorities during telecommunications emergencies.” He also noted the Canadian Radio-television and Communications Commission (CRTC) will investigate the outage. That’s fine. But Parliament should launch its own investigation, too. The CRTC is captured by industry and cannot be trusted.
The outage came just days after Rogers held talks with Canada’s antitrust authority to discuss its plans for a $15 billion takeover of another internet company, Shaw Communications. It’s now clear that Canada ought to forbid Rogers from merging with Shaw and further marching the industry toward monopoly. It should also move toward nationalizing telecom infrastructure and creating a public service provider. SaskTel, which is a crown corporation owned by the government of Saskatchewan, could work as a model. It has been done. It can be done again.
Canada’s telecommunications industry is critical to the country, an essential component to the systems through which we live our lives. The Rogers outage demonstrated once more that leaving the operation and security of telecommunications to a handful of corporations — which are more than happy to use the constrained market to bilk customers — is unwise and dangerous.
The network failure isn’t just a consumer issue. It’s also a national security issue. The Rogers outage wasn’t a cyberattack, but it could have been. A bill before Parliament seeks to address this issue, giving the state capacity to force telecom companies to protect against and report cyberattacks. But that isn’t enough. If the risk is serious enough to warrant such a bill, it’s serious enough to give the government a reason to operate and secure the network itself.
As disconcerting as the Rogers failure was, some good might come of it yet. Maybe people have finally had enough of being used and abused by a handful of unaccountable companies in an industry everyone relies upon. Maybe we’ll see a shift in how we think about telecom services — and what we do to make them work for us.
Opinions about Canada
Canada decriminalizing drugs in British Columbia will prolong suffering
Has Justin Trudeau been ‘Americanized’ — or is he just left-wing?
Trudeau’s sweeping gun control bill is no knee-jerk reaction | 2022-07-12T14:42:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Canada's Rogers outage should encourage us to dismantle our telecom oligopoly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/canada-internet-outage-rogers-dismantle-telecom-oligopoly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/canada-internet-outage-rogers-dismantle-telecom-oligopoly/ |
Emmy nominations 2022: The full updating list
The Television Academy announces the 2022 Emmy nominees in Los Angeles on July 12. (Video: The Washington Post)
Emmy nominations will be announced Tuesday, and they’re sure to reflect online chatter from the past year: Expected nominees include dramas such as Apple TV Plus’s “Severance” and Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” as well as comedies such as ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.”
Those titles alone constitute a slightly healthier mix of streaming services and more traditional platforms than last year, the latter group’s showing likely to be boosted by critically acclaimed HBO series such as “Barry” and “Succession” (both of which, of course, also stream online). “This Is Us” stars Sterling K. Brown and Mandy Moore are likely to once again make the case for network television in the major acting categories, which will otherwise probably be dominated by performances from streaming originals.
But it’s “Squid Game” that has a chance to make history. The blockbuster Netflix could become the first non-English-language series to be nominated for best drama.
Will your favorite show be recognized? Stay tuned as this post updates with the nominees announced by J.B. Smoove of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Melissa Fumero of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and Frank Scherma, chairman and CEO of the Television Academy. The 74th Emmy Awards will air Monday, Sept. 12, on NBC.
Read on for a list of the 2022 nominees.
Jodie Comer, “Killing Eve” (AMC)Sandra Oh, “Killing Eve” (AMC) | 2022-07-12T15:45:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emmy nominations 2022: The full updating list - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/12/emmy-nominations-2022-full-list/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/12/emmy-nominations-2022-full-list/ |
Uber signage at Los Angeles International Airport on July 10. (David Swanson/Reuters)
Uber is well known for brawling in its early days — but a recent investigation reveals just how dirty the company was willing to fight to set its wheels in motion. The ride-hailing start-up deserves credit for revolutionizing transportation, and criticism for causing so much harm along the way.
The Post reported this week on a 18.7-gigabyte store of data, including 83,000 emails, direct messages, presentations and other files, that was obtained by the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The documents cover the years 2013 to 2017, during co-founder Travis Kalanick’s tenure as chief executive — a time when his firm was notorious for its ruthlessness, rule-breaking and toxic corporate culture. In that regard, many of this week’s revelations are, well, less than revelatory: The world already knew that Uber operated illegally until lawmakers could be bullied into authorizing its operations; that it lobbied aggressively; that it made rides cheaper than it could afford and paid drivers more than it could sustain, then pulled out the rug.
Nonetheless, a number of the newly detailed practices are galling. Uber’s so-called kill switch that it could use to cut off access to its internal systems when regulators attempted to investigate it, or its effort to block access to cars around police stations so that authorities couldn’t benefit from its services, speaks to a company with no interest in accountability. Worse still is the company’s response to physical attacks on its drivers during clashes with the taxi industry, which it treated as a strategic opportunity to be exploited rather than a crisis to avert at all costs. “Violence guarantee[s] success,” Mr. Kalanick allegedly texted fellow executives. (A spokesperson has denied the exchange occurred.)
Many people are inclined to forgive Uber’s more mild sins. The taxi industry, after all, needed shaking up. A noncompetitive market benefited only a narrow, privileged class of medallion-holding drivers, at the expense of riders who waited too long and were charged too much. Uber was never going to get permission to roll into cities and change the game, so it gate-crashed instead. The numbers suggest its intervention helped: A 2015 study, for instance, found that cab complaints in New York and Chicago decreased when Uber burst onto the scene. Anecdote suggests the same: When was it ever this easy to get to the airport?
Yet there’s another side to this coin. Cheering on an upstart, or start-up, for flouting too-burdensome regulations as a means of improving the status quo can turn once-firm lines blurry. And it can encourage that same plucky underdog, as well as others, to violate all manner of laws and norms that exist for good reason. The same sort of story describes plenty other Silicon Valley unicorns that have made society better and worse at the same time. Uber might be the model case for the age of disruption — not because it always did the right thing, but because it didn’t. | 2022-07-12T16:12:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Uber whistleblower showed what happens when a firm moves fast and breaks things - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/uber-files-whistleblower-startup-culture/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/uber-files-whistleblower-startup-culture/ |
Why Croatia Sees Joining the Euro as Path to Security
Analysis by Jasmina Kuzmanovic and Alexander Weber | Bloomberg
A Euro symbol at a currency exchange bureau in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. Russian markets brushed off reports that the U.S. and its allies are considering sanctions targeting the country’s banking sector should President Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Croatia, the European Union’s newest member, is set to adopt the euro as its currency early next year. The move will vault the nation of around 4 million people into the EU’s core, making payments easier and cheaper and giving its financial system a safety net in future crises. The country, whose economy is highly dependent on foreign tourists, also aims to join the Schengen zone, allowing Croatians to travel more easily around Europe.
1. Why is Croatia joining the euro?
Croatia began its push to join the single currency as soon as it won accession to the EU in 2013, a step that was delayed by the bloody wars in the 1990s sparked by the breakup of Yugoslavia. The move is partly aimed at cementing a Western alignment after about half a century of communist rule following World War II.
2. What about the economic logic?
That’s arguably even more compelling. The country relies more than any other EU state on tourists, who generate a fifth of gross domestic product and find holidaying much easier when they don’t have to grapple with exchange rates. Meanwhile, most private and corporate bank deposits in Croatia are held in euros, along with more than two-thirds of debt totaling about 520 billion kuna ($74 billion). Euro-area membership would lower interest rates, improve credit ratings and make Croatia more attractive to investors, according to central bank Governor Boris Vujcic.
3. What are the pros?
Adopting the euro would formalize a chunk of economic activity that’s already carried out using the common currency -- from apartment and car sales to short-term rentals for vacationers. It would trim foreign-exchange costs outside tourism to the tune of about 1.2 billion kuna a year, according to the central bank. Croatia would gain access to ECB liquidity and potential bailout financing from the European Stability Mechanism during periods of crisis. With Greece’s troubles now largely in the rear-view mirror, there’s popular support to switch to the euro. Almost all political parties back the move.
4. And the cons?
In terms of monetary policy, there’s not much to lose by relinquishing control to the ECB since the kuna’s exchange rate has been locked in a tight trading band to the euro and, before that, to Germany’s mark since the 1990s. Croatia’s expected euro adoption will cost local banks about 1 billion kuna annually in lost conversion fees, but the switch will reduce currency risks and improve stability, according to the national association of banks. Euro adoption is also expected to cost banks between 80 and 100 million euros (between $80 million and $100 million) in one-time expenditure aimed at adapting their IT services and ATM networks.
5. What hurdles did it face?
Croatia joined the euro-area waiting room known as ERM-2 in 2020. Inflation has proved the biggest challenge after the war in Ukraine sent prices of energy and other commodities soaring. But it’s a problem that’s gripping the whole euro area: Consumer prices there jumped by a record 8.6% in June from a year earlier. On June 1, the European Central Bank said Croatia had met euro-zone entry requirements, with inflation remaining sufficiently in line with other euro members over a one-year period. The ECB cautioned, however, that policy makers must remain watchful. EU member states gave their final approval for Croatia to join the single currency on July 12.
6. What other countries want to join the euro?
One certainly is: Bulgaria. But it has pushed back its timetable by a year to 2024 after being accepted into ERM-2 at the same time as Croatia. Romania has also expressed a desire to follow eastern European peers Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia into the currency bloc. Despite being obligated to join themselves at some point, however, the biggest countries in that region aren’t rushing. Poland, for one, attributes its ability to survive the 2008 global financial crisis without a recession to it retaining an independent monetary policy.
8. What will Croatia’s new coins look like?
The coins are expected to feature the checkerboard pattern found on Croatia’s coat of arms, which is considered one of the oldest national symbols in Europe. They’ll also have images of a kuna, or weasel in the Croat language, and will feature Nikola Tesla, one of the world’s great inventors, who was an ethnic Serb born in the present-day Croatian town of Smiljan. Serbia’s central bank has said it would take action if Croatia was allowed to use Tesla’s image.
• Bloomberg articles on the European Commission’s recommendation on Croatia, the country’s central bank urging citizens to move their savings into banks, and its plans for euro coins.
• A Bruegel analysis of the euro coming of age.
• A Brookings Institution study on whether European integration increases people’s life satisfaction in Croatia and elsewhere. | 2022-07-12T16:12:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Croatia Sees Joining the Euro as Path to Security - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-croatia-sees-joining-the-euro-as-path-to-security/2022/07/12/13fe0e12-01fb-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-croatia-sees-joining-the-euro-as-path-to-security/2022/07/12/13fe0e12-01fb-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Dartmouth study says there is a scientific basis for climate liability claims and has quantified each nation’s culpability
A gas flare at a petroleum refinery illuminates the sky on Aug. 21, 2019, in Norco, La. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The Dartmouth College study, published in the journal Climatic Change, linked one nation’s emissions of heat-trapping gases to losses and gains in the gross domestic product of 143 countries for which data is available. It found that just five of the world’s leading emitters of greenhouse gases caused $6 trillion of global economic losses through warming caused by their emissions from 1990 to 2014. Economic losses caused by Russia, India and Brazil exceeds $500 billion over that period for each of those three emitter countries.
“This research provides an answer to the question of whether there is a scientific basis for climate liability claims. The answer is yes,” said Christopher Callahan, a PhD candidate at Dartmouth and an author of the study, in a statement. “We have quantified each nation’s culpability for historical temperature-driven income changes in every other country.”
White House climate envoy John F. Kerry said at the close of the Glasgow climate summit that he understood the push for loss and damage payments but that there was no spending mechanism. | 2022-07-12T16:12:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dartmouth study links past U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to global economic damages - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/12/united-states-china-global-economic-damages-emissions-study/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/12/united-states-china-global-economic-damages-emissions-study/ |
Sicker patients, antibiotic overuse, and staff and equipment shortages led to 15 percent increase
Traveling registered nurse Patricia Carrete, of El Paso, Texas, walks down the hallways during a night shift at a field hospital set up to handle a surge of COVID-19 patients in Cranston, R.I. on Feb. 10, 2021. (David Goldman/AP)
Public health efforts had driven down these resistant infections in hospitals by nearly 30 percent between 2012 and 2017. But in 2020, the pandemic pushed hospitals, health departments and communities “near their breaking points,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky wrote in the report.
Sicker patients overwhelmed hospitals. They needed more frequent and longer use of medical devices, such as catheters and ventilators. Devices that break the body’s natural protective barrier — the skin — increase infection risk.
Clinicians unfamiliar with the new covid-19 disease relied heavily on antibiotics as the first option to treat patients with fever and shortness of breath — symptoms of the viral illness. From March 2020 to October 2020, almost 80 percent of patients hospitalized with covid-19 received an antibiotic, the report said. Those lifesaving drugs work against bacteria, not against viruses. High levels of antibiotic prescribing can put patients at risk for side effects and allow drug-resistance to develop and spread.
“In addition to having devastating impacts for the millions of people who got covid and the millions of people who died of covid, the covid pandemic had a profound and far-reaching impact on the safety of patients in the United States,” said Arjun Srinivasan, the top CDC official leading the agency’s prevention efforts to control superbugs. “One of the knock-on effects of covid … is with these antibiotic-resistant infections, infections that are very difficult to treat, in some cases untreatable, with very high rates of mortality.”
Some patients recovered from their covid-19 illness, he said, only to face “a horrible outcome”: dying from a drug-resistant infection.
There was also a 60 percent increase in hospital infections of a deadly superbug yeast called Candida auris, and a 35 percent increase in hospital infections of carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE), also known as “nightmare bacteria.” CRE are a large group of bacteria of major concern for patients who require catheters and other devices, long courses of some antibiotics or long hospital stays. The superbugs are resistant to all or nearly all antibiotics, kill up to half of patients who contract bloodstream infections, and can transfer their antibiotic resistance to other related bacteria, potentially making the other bacteria untreatable.
The CDC had previously categorized the toll that 18 pathogens are taking on humans, ranking the threat of each as “urgent,” “serious” or “concerning.” But the agency is missing data for nine of those germs, including many that are spread outside hospital settings. They include sexually transmitted drug-resistant gonorrhea and drug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae, a leading cause of bacterial pneumonia and meningitis. | 2022-07-12T16:12:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Antibiotic over-prescription amid covid pandemic helped fueled superbug infections and deaths, CDC says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/12/superbug-infection-antibiotic-resistance-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/12/superbug-infection-antibiotic-resistance-pandemic/ |
This image released by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, shows the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth, according to NASA. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI via AP) (Uncredited/NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI) | 2022-07-12T16:12:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA's new telescope shows star death, dancing galaxies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/nasas-new-telescope-shows-star-death-dancing-galaxies/2022/07/12/5790b922-01f6-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/nasas-new-telescope-shows-star-death-dancing-galaxies/2022/07/12/5790b922-01f6-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Biden promised during his campaign to make the kingdom a ‘pariah.’ He has now agreed to visit, but the sensitivities are evident and the results uncertain.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before a Formula One race in Jiddah on Dec. 5, 2021. (Andrej Isakovic/Pool Via Reuters)
JERUSALEM — Shortly after taking office, President Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to declassify their assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of the Saudi government.
Biden was eager to distinguish himself from former president Donald Trump, who had been criticized for his closeness with the Saudis and had cast doubt on the conclusion that the crown price had ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist. Biden pointedly took a step Trump would not, imposing sanctions and travel bans on Saudis connected to the killing.
But Biden did not actually sanction the crown prince, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich kingdom. That obvious omission signaled an early decision by Biden that, despite his campaign pledge to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” and notwithstanding the country’s brutal human rights violations, he would end up engaging with the country, according to White House officials.
Now Biden finds himself in an uncomfortable position as he visits Saudi Arabia later this week, trying to signal simultaneously that he values the country as an ally and that he harbors significant reservations about visiting. That discomfort has created uncertainty around what, exactly, will be the outcome of the president’s four-day swing through Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“The Biden team, and President Biden himself, are fumbling their articulation of why they’re even going,” said Brian Katulis, the vice president for policy at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. “There seems to be almost a sense of chagrin about going. That’s unfortunate, because that sends messages over to the region and makes the likelihood of success in their trip lower.”
White House officials say the trip’s goals are clear: to help integrate Israel further into the region; to solidify a delicate cease-fire between Saudi Arabia and Yemen; to align Saudi Arabia, Israel and other Arab partners on a stalled nuclear deal with Iran; and to counter China and Russia’s influence in the Middle East.
Biden will sit down face-to-face with the crown prince, but only as part of larger meetings with Saudi King Salman, who at 86 is the country’s nominal head, and leaders of other Persian Gulf nations, White House officials said.
But when asked about the meeting last month, Biden said, “It’s in Saudi Arabia, but it’s not about Saudi Arabia. And so there’s no commitment that is being made or — I’m not even sure; I guess I will see the king and the crown prince, but that’s — that’s not the meeting I’m going to. They’ll be part of a much larger meeting.”
Biden’s visit is part of his first trip to the Middle East since taking office. On Wednesday, Biden will arrive in Israel, marking his 10th trip to the country. He has long been an ardent supporter of Israel, often touting his relationships with its leaders dating back to Golda Meir, who was prime minister in the early 1970s.
On Friday, Biden is to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Biden will also hold bilateral meetings with leaders of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq while in Saudi Arabia, according to a senior White House official.
The engagement with Saudi Arabia, however, will be his most complicated diplomatic test.
Discussions about a possible presidential visit to Saudi Arabia began in February, when Biden told his national security team he wanted to visit the Middle East, a senior White House official said. Over months of sometimes contentious internal discussions, Biden and his senior aides concluded that the United States’ security and energy relationship with Saudi Arabia was too important to isolate the country, according to the White House official and two other top administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations.
Still, Biden had reservations about meeting with the crown prince, hesitant to reward a leader who has an extensive record of human rights violations, according to two of the officials.
Biden sent Brett McGurk, his chief Middle East adviser, and Amos Hochstein, his special envoy for energy affairs, to Saudi Arabia to determine whether a presidential visit would be justified. By May, Biden and his aides had decided that he would visit the country, the White House official said.
But Biden’s ongoing discomfort was reflected in his public refusal to acknowledge the decision, telling reporters in early June that he had “no direct plans at the moment” to visit Saudi Arabia.
The importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship came into sharp relief after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which prompted the United States and its allies to ban imports of Russian oil, causing domestic gasoline prices to spike.
Saudi Arabia has so far increased oil production by only a limited amount, prompting leading Democratic lawmakers to complain in a letter last month that its “refusal to stabilize global energy markets is helping bankroll Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine, while inflicting economic pain on everyday Americans.” Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries have expressed only tepid support for the Western campaign to isolate Russia.
Biden hopes to change that, but the visit will require engaging an indisputably harsh regime. According to human rights activists, Saudi authorities regularly repress and torture dissidents and human rights activists. The country does not tolerate public worship by followers of religions other than Islam and even discriminates against Muslim minorities, and its judges sanction people suspected of having sex outside marriage, activists say.
The crown prince has implemented modest reforms, such as allowing women to drive. But the Saudis’ brutal record was punctuated by the 2018 murder of Khashoggi, who investigators have concluded was killed and dismembered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Human rights activists have criticized Biden in part because the White House has scheduled no news conference for the visit to Jiddah, which would have allowed him to voice his criticism on Saudi soil. Some Democratic senators called on Biden to set conditions for his meeting with Mohammed, including an admission of wrongdoing for the killing of Khashoggi and progress on the fragile cease-fire in the Yemen war.
Saudi strikes against Yemen relied on U.S. support
Biden and his aides defend their record on Saudi Arabia, pointing to Biden’s moves to declassify the U.S. intelligence report on Khashoggi’s killing; impose sanctions on Saudis tied to the killing; encourage the Saudi-Yemeni cease-fire; and reverse Trump’s “blank check” policy toward the kingdom.
In a column published Saturday in The Washington Post, Biden said a top goal is to ensure that Saudi Arabia does not fall into the orbit of a hostile power. “We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world,” Biden wrote. “To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said administration officials had been in touch with Khashoggi’s family, although Biden personally had not. Sullivan said Biden would make a “major statement” on his vision for the Middle East before the end of the trip.
Asked whether Biden regretted his comments promising to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” Sullivan said no.
“The president has not expressed regret about his statements,” Sullivan said. “He’s been focused on his view that the United States has important interests to advance and protect, including the partnership with Saudi Arabia, and among other things the need to increase the prospects of peace in the region.”
As a candidate, Biden vowed to restore U.S. global leadership on human rights after the Trump era and said he found “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.” Given such comments, even some of the president’s top aides initially harbored reservations about this trip.
But once in office, Biden found himself battling an ascendant China for global influence while seeking to fend off Russia’s growing aggression. At the same time, Biden has taken a political hit from the sharp increase in the price of gas, although it has come down in recent days.
The nations of the OPEC Plus bloc announced last month that they would increase production by 648,000 barrels per day in July and August, a modest acceleration of existing plans to reverse production cuts related to the pandemic. But the decision is seen by many energy analysts as likely to have only a modest impact.
Biden’s broader Middle East priorities have been vague, as he took office determined to avoid getting bogged down in the intricacies of the region’s diplomacy that had enmeshed previous administrations.
Biden made clear that countering China was his administration’s top foreign policy goal. That was reflected inside the White House, where the directorates overseeing the Indo-Pacific region and China were enlarged in comparison with those offices in past Democratic administrations, and fewer spots at the National Security Council were allocated for staffers working on the Middle East, according to officials familiar with the strategy.
But very quickly, it became clear that simply staying away was not an option.
Just a few months after Biden took office, a violent conflict broke out in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas. After 11 days of fighting, the two sides agreed to a cease-fire, but it took a flurry of diplomatic activity, including more than 80 calls and contacts among U.S., Israeli and Arab officials — and six direct conversations between Biden and then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The crisis was tamped down, at least temporarily, but that did little to clarify Biden’s longer-range goals in the Middle East.
“I haven’t heard an articulation of the objectives for the trip, and it may be they’re not confident about what response they might get from the other side — certainly from Saudi Arabia, so they are being cautious about setting expectations,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama administration official who is executive director of the McCain Institute. “It would be really helpful if the president could articulate a clear Middle East strategy, so that our allies and partners could help the United States in achieving those objectives.” | 2022-07-12T16:13:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden heads to Saudi Arabia amid discomfort and criticism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/biden-saudi-arabia-mbs-khashoggi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/biden-saudi-arabia-mbs-khashoggi/ |
Democrats’ desire to turn the page on Biden in 2024 is highly unusual
President Biden waves to reporters as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House this weekend. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
The good news for President Biden in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll is that, for all his problems and unpopularity, he retains a fighting chance in a hypothetical rematch with former president Donald Trump in 2024; he’s at 44 percent, while Trump is at 41 percent.
The bad news is pretty much everything else.
And leading that list is a startling finding: Democratic voters say by more than 2 to 1 that they would prefer someone else as their nominee in 2024. Fully 64 percent say they would prefer to nominate someone not named Biden, while 26 percent want him as their nominee again.
There is very little if any precedent for this in recent political history.
The writing has been on the wall on this for a while. Even when Biden was very popular among Democrats (85 percent approval) and not quite as unpopular overall late last year, a poll still showed a plurality of Democratic-leaning voters preferred someone else as their 2024 nominee. And as Biden’s numbers have continued to decline — his approval rating is at 33 percent overall in the NYT/Siena poll — his party’s desire to renominate him has accordingly fallen.
Both polls appear to be the first of the 21st century to show more supporters of a president’s party opting for nominating a hypothetical someone else, according to a review of the Roper Center’s polling archive. And Biden’s unhappy distinction probably traces back significantly further.
Neither Trump nor President Barack Obama saw supporters of their party ever entertain such a desire to turn the page. Whenever the question was asked about them, at least two-thirds said they wanted to renominate the incumbent president. (Even when Trump was highly unpopular overall, about 8 in 10 Republicans wanted to renominate him.) Biden, by contrast, has seen nearly two-thirds of his party say they want someone else.
(Many of these polls asked the question in a different way, with some testing who people perceived as the strongest nominee, rather than asking their personal preference, for instance. Some are also among Democratic voters only, while others include Democratic-leaning independents.)
Going back further, such questions are fewer and further between. And finding views only within a president’s party are difficult. But there’s little evidence of any real analog in the last four decades.
In May 2004, 67 percent of all registered voters in a Fox News poll wagered that Republicans were happy to renominate President George W. Bush. In November 1989, 39 percent of all voters said they wanted the GOP to renominate President George H.W. Bush — suggesting strong support within his own party.
About the closest we’ve come to significant numbers of a president’s base wanting to turn the page came in early 1995, shortly after President Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party got drubbed in the 1994 midterm elections. A CBS News poll in January 1995 showed 37 percent of Democrats preferred “someone else,” but 56 percent still wanted to renominate Clinton. But that’s still nowhere near Biden’s numbers.
A Pew Research Center poll the month before showed 66 percent of Democrats said they wanted someone to run against Clinton in the primary. But that’s not quite the same as saying you definitely want someone else as the nominee. And the later polling suggests the appetite for voting for the alternative wasn’t the same, either.
Dating back further, most such questions matched the incumbent president up against would-be primary challengers — rather than an undefined “someone else.” About the closest analog to where Biden is right now is a June 1979 CBS News/New York Times poll that showed Democrats favored Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) over President Jimmy Carter 52-23. Another candidate got 8 percent. Carter went on to win renomination over Kennedy, anyway.
It’s undoubtedly true that the “someone else” poll question can be misleading. People are invited to imagine their ideal alternative to Biden, rather than flawed actual challengers. But the few primary polls we do have of 2024 suggest there is indeed an appetite even for specific challengers. Some have shown Biden’s share of the vote right around that 26 percent who want him to run again, with many Democrats opting for alternatives or keeping their powder dry rather than signing off on putting Biden back on the ticket.
And certainly, findings like this matter when it comes to Biden’s 2024 calculations. Only one elected president has ever lost renomination: Franklin Pierce. (Four other incumbents were denied renomination, but each ascended to the presidency rather than winning it in their own right.) And that came before the modern primary system began in the 1970s.
It’s quite possible Biden could still win a primary even with his current standing. And perhaps big-name Democrats would stand aside. (Only one big name has left open the possibility of challenging him, according to a recent story by CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Of course, that could always change.)
But the resounding — if still very early — message of all the data seems pretty clear: Democrats like Biden just fine, but they also think that maybe 2024 is a time for someone else to pick up the torch and carry it forward.
Who is Jamie Raskin?
3:48 PMAnalysis: What happened at Dec. 18, 2020, White House meeting looms large
3:46 PMAnalysis: Background of Raskin, Murphy make them good fit for hearing
3:26 PMMichael Flynn, likely hearing subject, looms large in extremist QAnon ideology | 2022-07-12T16:13:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats’ desire to turn the page on Biden in 2024 is highly unusual - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/democrats-desire-turn-page-biden-2024-is-highly-unusual/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/democrats-desire-turn-page-biden-2024-is-highly-unusual/ |
The Proud Boys didn’t need to be told what to do on Jan. 6
We have smoke and we have a gun. Is a smoking gun even necessary?
People march toward the U.S. Capitol with those who say they are members of the Proud Boys in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
In the summer of 2018, the Clark County, Wash., Sheriff’s Office completed an investigation into a former employee named Erin Willey. A former boyfriend of Willey’s had allegedly engaged in a weird bit of post-relationship revenge, providing a local newspaper with a photograph showing Willey dressed in gear associated with the Proud Boys. The subsequent investigation had determined that Willey “knowingly and willingly affiliated herself” with the group, of which the ex-boyfriend was a member.
This was a problem, the report suggested, because “[t]he FBI categorizes the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism.”
The FBI later publicly denied any such characterization, saying that the sheriff’s office’s interpretation of an FBI presentation was incorrect and that identifying groups in that way is “not what we do.” But identifying threats is what federal law enforcement does. In October 2020, the Department of Homeland Security identified domestic extremists broadly as “the most persistent and lethal [terrorist] threat” to the country. Violence from such actors, the report said, would most likely manifest with the use of “small arms, edged weapons, [and] arson.”
DHS didn’t mention the Proud Boys by name, but the pattern of violence from members of the group was by then well-established. In 2019, the HuffPost obtained chat logs showing how Proud Boys planned acts of violence against counterprotesters at rallies. That pattern increased in 2020, analysis from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project determined.
“Proud Boys activity has been strongly correlated with the fortunes of former President Trump,” that analysis read. “Ninety-seven of the 152 demonstration events in which Proud Boys participated [in 2020] — or nearly two-thirds — were explicitly in support of then-President Trump.”
Trump was asked to have the Proud Boys “stand down” during a presidential debate. He didn’t, instead asking them to “stand back and stand by” — likely a bit of verbal fumbling but one that was interpreted by many members of the group as encouragement — understandably, given that the group had ties to people close to Trump. It had partnered with the president’s longtime adviser Roger Stone in the past, thanks in part to sharing roots in southern Florida. The group’s chairman at the time of the election, Enrique Tarrio, had been photographed with a number of Trumpworld figures.
Looks like Enrique Tarrio, head of Miami's Proud Boy chapter, is seated right behind Trump on camera pic.twitter.com/RqmY4DaMHU
— Jerry Iannelli (@jerryiannelli) February 18, 2019
All of this context is important for considering what happened in the weeks after the election and through the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This period will be of particular concern in the House select committee investigating the riot’s hearing on Tuesday, with vague suggestions that there are more robust ties between the Proud Boys and the White House than are publicly understood.
But even without a smoking gun connecting the White House to the Proud Boys, it’s clear that Trump and his allies did nothing to deter the Proud Boys from engaging in the sorts of demonstrations and violence that were magnified that day on Capitol Hill. Trump didn’t need to tell the Proud Boys what to do, and that’s the point.
Again, the group’s pattern of violence was well-established by Nov. 3, 2020, and only increased afterward. Members of the Proud Boys participated in two other pro-Trump demonstrations in Washington in November and December 2020, with violence breaking out after each. In December, there were multiple stabbings and an act of arson, as the DHS bulletin two months before had warned. The arson was committed by Tarrio, contributing to his arrest shortly before the riot.
Unlike the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys don’t appear to have shifted focus to Jan. 6 until after Trump’s Dec. 19 tweet in which he encouraged people to show up in Washington that day. “Will be wild!” he pledged, accurately. That tweet and that date comes up a lot in legal filings associated with those arrested for participating in the Capitol riot. The Proud Boys’ planning began in earnest on Dec. 20. On Jan. 6 itself, Proud Boys were present when the first barrier was overturned to allow access to the secure area, and a member of the group allegedly broke the first window on the building’s west side through which the initial breach occurred.
There have been indications for some time that the Proud Boys were in contact with the White House in the post-election period. Tarrio posted photos from the White House complex a few days before the December rally, claiming he’d been invited to be there. (A White House spokesman said he’d been on a public tour.) Two months after the Capitol riot, the New York Times reported that the FBI had uncovered a point of contact between the White House and the group, one that didn’t involve Roger Stone.
The House committee offered a possible hint about that report during its last hearing. The flood of remarkable revelations from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson helped bury her assertion that she could “recall hearing the word ‘Oath Keeper’ and hearing the word ‘Proud Boys’ closer to the planning of the January 6 rally, when [Trump attorney Rudolph W.] Giuliani would be around” — a comment lifted from her recorded testimony but presented by the committee. Giuliani was part of a contentious White House meeting Dec. 18, 2020, that the committee will reportedly highlight as a driver of the Dec. 19 “wild” tweet.
Again, though, a direct connection isn’t necessary to make obvious how the Proud Boys and Trump’s allies worked to the same goal. In February, a federal-district court judge determined that Trump, the Proud Boys and others, including the Oath Keepers, probably met the standard of having engaged in a “civil conspiracy” with the “intent to disrupt the Certification of the Electoral College vote through force, intimidation, or threats.” Such a conspiracy doesn’t necessitate direct agreement on a plan of action, just a shared effort toward a common goal — in this case, keeping Trump in power.
For years, outside observers and even the government understood what the Proud Boys were. In the months before the 2020 election, the group’s agitation on Trump’s behalf increased without any constraint from the president. In the weeks after the election, they engaged in precisely the sorts of violence that federal law enforcement had warned about on Trump’s behalf, and immediately understood Trump’s pointing at Jan. 6 as a call to action. In D.C. on that day, they were at the leading edge of the violence that unfolded.
Maybe that came after a call from someone in the White House. But the Proud Boys are really just a natural microcosm of what unfolded that day: people loyal to Trump whose violent predilections and indications were willfully ignored (“they’re not here to hurt me”) and whose actual violence was then allowed to occur without intervention.
Just like the mob the group hoped to exploit, the Proud Boys didn’t need to be told what to do. | 2022-07-12T16:59:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Proud Boys didn’t need to be told what to do on Jan. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/proud-boys-didnt-need-be-told-what-do-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/proud-boys-didnt-need-be-told-what-do-jan-6/ |
This daughter and dad are driven to photograph birds
Karsyn Sterns has been taking nature photos with her father, Stephon, since she was 6. This summer, the two left Northern Virginia on a 7,000-mile journey in search of new birds to photograph. (Stephon Sterns) (Stephon M Sterns)
Summer vacation began for Karsyn Sterns when school let out at 1 p.m. on May 25. By 2:15, the 11-year-old was on the road headed west, her father, Stephon, behind the wheel of his Toyota RAV 4 hybrid.
“Her goal was to get to Arizona,” said Stephon.
Treasure awaited: Grace’s warbler, Harris’s hawk and dozens of other birds. The rising seventh-grader and avid nature photographer from Dumfries, Va., was embarking on an epic road trip across the American West.
“We set out to photograph as many birds as we could,” said Stephon, 56.
This has become a regular thing for the pair, ever since Karsyn was 6 and Stephon handed her his old camera after buying a new one for himself.
“I don't think she said anything, but she took 123 pictures that day: around the house, out the front window, birds at the feeder,” Stephon said. “I knew there was an interest. It blossomed from that point. I bought her her own camera.”
In 2017, they drove to Yellowstone, in 2018 to the Grand Canyon, in 2019 up to Maine. The pandemic put things on hold until this year, when Karsyn vowed to photograph at least 60 new species.
Stephon retired from the Army in 2007 then worked for a few years as a contractor in Afghanistan. Since Karsyn’s birth, he has structured his jobs around spending time with her, recently as a substitute teacher in Stafford County. He and Karsyn’s mother are divorced and Karsyn lives with him over the summers. They pack in a lot.
“I’m just going to do the best I can with the time that I’m given,” he said. “The very best I can do is squeeze as much good into the summer as we can.”
Stephon has taught Karsyn the basics of photography, helping her set up her camera.
“It’s not always about the birds,” he said. “One of the first lessons I gave her was don’t take a picture because you see me take a picture. Take a picture because you see something beautiful. She has always done that. I’ll turn around and she’s flat on her back looking straight up into leaves in the trees. She’ll say, ‘I see something abstract and I haven’t taken anything abstract today.’ ”
Karsyn was 7 when she won her first photo contest, in the junior category at Huntley Meadows. Some of her photos are part of the hummingbird exhibit at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria.
Stephon’s house in Dumfries — he lives in his childhood home — is filled with photos he and Karsyn have taken on their adventures. They print up photo books and make gifts of prints. Karsyn’s history teacher at Stafford Middle School has a classroom decorated in shades of purple and green.
“I have a picture of a hummingbird that’s green,” Karsyn said. “I gave that to her and she put it in her room.”
These annual road trips — the latest one put 7,000 miles on the odometer — are a far cry from what Stephon did at Karsyn’s age, when summers meant going to West Virginia to stay with some cousins.
“We really didn’t do much,” he said. “When you grow up and go into the military and see there’s a great big world out there, I think it changes you. You come back and you know there’s more than what you were exposed to. You should do better by your kid.”
As a proud survivor of life with preteen girls, I asked Stephon if there isn’t the occasional friction when cooped up together for hours.
“Her enjoyment is picking at me, making fun of me, finding the things that slightly annoy and irritate me,” he said. “I mock pretend like I’m upset.”
Karsyn is in friendly competition with some of the other birders she and her father bump into around here. She has other interests, too: soccer, basketball, video games.
“I’m trying to make my daughter into the most well-rounded person in the world that I can,” Stephon said. “People ask me, ‘Is she going to be a photographer?’ I don’t ask her that question. That’s not a decision for me. That’s not even a question to pose to her. My job is to expose her to as many things as possible. Whatever she chooses is totally up to her.”
I asked Karsyn if there’s anything other kids interested in bird photography should know.
“A lot of times they’re going to have to get up early in the morning, especially when it’s like 80 degrees at 5 in the morning,” she said. “He has to wake me up.”
That’s what fathers are for. | 2022-07-12T17:00:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bonding over birds: An 11-year-old's 7,000-mile photo safari - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/father-daughter-bird-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/father-daughter-bird-photos/ |
A supporter of abortion rights holds up a sign in Miami last month after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturned the landmark decision in Roe v. Wade. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
Memo to the New York Times: It’s a bad time to publish inaccurate information about pregnancies.
In a July 4 guest essay on ectopic pregnancy for the Times, Leah Libresco Sargeant used language that doesn’t meet medical standards for discussion and treatment of such conditions, as a social media furor promptly pointed out. In an apparent effort to host an array of opinions, the Times privileged the author’s linguistic preferences over the greater imperative to convey precise, factual information to readers. That mistake comes at a fraught moment to be writing about women’s health, as new battles over reproductive rights have turned the beat into a linguistic and ideological minefield.
The Supreme Court’s decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade has not clarified the regulatory environment but upended it. Concerns arising from the conflicts in state abortion policies include how medical providers will treat patients with pregnancy complications. STAT, for instance, reported that a woman experiencing an ectopic pregnancy days after the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health had to wait for a Missouri hospital’s ethics committee to sign off on her treatment.
Ectopic pregnancies are potentially fatal for the mother — and always fatal for the fetus. Will hospitals treat these cases as aggressively as they did before the court’s decision in Dobbs? “The lack of specificity over what counts as a threat to the mother’s life means some doctors feel pressure to sit and watch patients’ health deteriorate until they’re able to intervene,” reported STAT.
In her Times piece, Sargeant defined ectopic pregnancy as one in which “the baby implants somewhere other than the uterus.” And the essay noted that the “situation is fatal for the baby” and dangerous for the mother.
In the vast majority of ectopic pregnancies, the embryo lodges in the fallopian tubes — a perilous development, physician Beverly Gray explains to the Erik Wemple Blog. “It’s a very narrow tube, and you have an embryo that’s traveling along the tube. The tube is not hospitable for the development of a pregnancy and what happens is it stretches to the point where it’s super thin and that can cause an emergent situation: Hemorrhage and bleeding,” says Gray, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University School of Medicine.
Given that background, consider this line from the Times guest essay: “From a pro-life perspective, delivering a baby who is ectopic is closer to delivering a baby very prematurely because the mother has life-threatening eclampsia,” writes Sargeant, who according to the Times bio is an author and leader of “an online community that focuses on the dignity of dependence.”
Boldface added to highlight a big problem: Never is an ectopic “baby” “delivered.” “We are not delivering anything when we perform surgery for an ectopic pregnancy,” says physician Louise King, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School. “It’s not a delivery. A delivery is a term that actually has meaning in medical parlance.”
Asked about the use of this terminology to describe an ectopic pregnancy, a Times spokeswoman told the Erik Wemple Blog: “This is a guest essay which reflects the author’s views. The author is clear about ectopic pregnancy: ‘an ectopic pregnancy definitely won’t survive.’”
With that statement, the Times endorses factual contradiction in its pages. The idea that doctors deliver ectopic “babies” is central to Sargeant’s essay, which calls for wide-ranging compassion in these situations. A key paragraph:
My goal for a post-Roe world is that we can offer more love and material support to mothers and children, especially in the hardest cases. The logic of abortion has been that you have to pick a side between the baby or the mother. But even in the case of ectopic pregnancy, you can side with both — treating mother and child with dignity. Both can benefit from the attention paid to the other.
To get just that perspective, Sargeant went to see a “Catholic surgeon” when she experienced an ectopic pregnancy. She was pleased with his approach: “He began by expressing his condolences. He talked about our options, he talked about our baby as a baby.”
Gray came away from the opinion piece with a certain interpretation. “I think the thing that stood out to me the most is this narrative that physicians who provide abortion care are not compassionate,” she says. “I had a very strong reaction to that.” So did King: “I was frankly offended on all of our behalves.”
Physicians meet patients “where they are,” says King — meaning that if someone wanted King to use the language of “delivery” and “baby” during treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, she would gladly do so with her patient, as well as trying to accommodate them in other ways. “If a patient asks me to pray with them before surgery, I will pray in the way that is most meaningful for them,” says King.
None of those considerations, however, changes the science underlying the treatment, says King, who would note in medical records that she’d removed a fallopian tube, terminated the pregnancy and collected “products of conception.”
Journalism on ectopic pregnancy has immense stakes. NPR reported that after Texas passed restrictive abortion laws — before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs — “at least several OB-GYNs in the Austin area received a letter from a pharmacy in late 2021 saying it would no longer fill the drug methotrexate in the case of ectopic pregnancy.” Methotrexate is a drug that treats ectopic pregnancies without surgery.
“Misinformation about ectopic pregnancies is absolutely out there and I think it’s influencing how a lot of people approach ectopic pregnancies,” says Carmel Shachar, executive director at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
Guest essays don’t represent the institution that publishes them. As such, outlets must accommodate and respect the views and experience of the essayist — but that duty cannot conflict with facts and science. Run a correction, New York Times. | 2022-07-12T17:08:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | New York Times stands by essay on ectopic pregnancy with big error - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/new-york-times-essay-ectopic-pregnancy-error/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/new-york-times-essay-ectopic-pregnancy-error/ |
Angela and Willie Scott celebrate their 58th wedding anniversary at the Potomac Knolls Community Center on July 10, 2022, in Fort Washington, Md. (Markel Gale/shotbykel)
Willie Scott, just two weeks shy of 81, was dapper in a royal-blue suit and silver-blue paisley tie. He used a walking cane lightly as he strolled to the front of a large room filled with family and friends. After turning smoothly to face them, he twirled the cane until it locked under one arm, Fred Astaire-style, and began a tutorial on how to make a marriage last.
“It’s not easy,” Mr. Scott began. “It’s give-and-take, and sometimes you take more than you give.”
He and his wife, Angela, who is 76, were celebrating their 58th wedding anniversary at a community center in Fort Washington on Sunday. The average marriage in the United States lasts only about eight years, according to the Census Bureau. So the guests were understandably curious about how the Scotts had managed eight years times seven plus two.
“It’s a rough road, but you can make it easier if you do it the right way,” Mr. Scott continued. “She gives and I give —” He paused, smiled. “And the next thing you know, we have six children.”
Mr. Scott’s risque innuendo caused the room to erupt in laughter, while Mrs. Scott put her hand on her forehead as if to hide her embarrassment. Actually, she was stifling a giggle. Mr. Scott did not include joking in his secrets to a long marriage. But making people laugh — or blush — was one of the qualities that his family found most endearing.
“Father is a cut up,” said Sharon Scott, the eldest of the six children. “We are a family that laughs a lot, and we get that from father.”
Of course, there was more to marital bliss than guffaws, as I learned when I first met the couple in 1989.
I’d been walking past the open front doors of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Catholic Roman Church, on East Capitol Street in Southeast D.C., when I heard organ music and decided to peek in. Willie and Angela were standing at the altar, renewing their wedding vows after 25 years of marriage.
The ceremony was so uplifting that I wrote about it.
And here they were in 2022, with an additional three decades of proof that what they had discovered really works.
Willie and Angela Scott married in 1964. Angela was 17, a recent graduate of Dunbar High School in D.C. Willie was 21, also a Dunbar graduate. He had held jobs as a cabdriver, a grocery store employee and a construction worker.
The odds of marriages succeeding that involve teens with only high school diplomas are not good.
But the young Mr. Scott had convinced Angela’s mother to permit the marriage, making his case in part by sharing what he’d learned from his father about manhood.
“Pops always told me, to be a man you have to take care of your family,” Willie Scott recalled at the celebration. “If you have children, you have to provide for them, set an example for them, show them right from wrong, show them how to respect one another because you want your kids to be proud of you and you proud of them.”
After the marriage, Angela Scott got a job at the Agriculture Department and later at the Interior Department. Willie Scott made a career as a professional roofer. They bought a house in Seat Pleasant, continued to grow their family and became pillars of the community. They now have 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
There have been losses, too. In 2018, Gary Scott, the third oldest of their six children, died of a heart attack. He was 50. In 2019, Willie Scott had a close call when he began experiencing atrial fibrillation and needed a pacemaker implanted to save his life.
Because of the pandemic, a renewal of vows scheduled for 2020 was canceled. Some of their closest friends contracted the coronavirus and died.
But the Scotts decided to go for it this past weekend. They had a beautiful anniversary party, with lots of guests getting a glimpse of what it takes to keep the flame of love burning bright.
“I have a name that I call him, and when I call his name my voice is always sweet,” Mrs. Scott said. “I call him my love dove. He is agape love, unconditional love, and together we weather the storms of life, all of the hurricanes and tornadoes.”
Mr. Scott chimed in with a rendition of Sam & Dave’s 1966 hit, “You don’t know like I know what that woman has done for me …”
“Mrs. Scott,” he said, turning to his wife, “It’s been a long, long road, and we have traveled it together.” He referenced the column I had written about them in 1989. “In that article, it said we had a long kiss. Well, let me show you something.”
Cheers and squeals filled the room as he took her in his arms. And when their lips finally parted, another secret to their enduring marriage had been revealed.
Black dads helped win the Civil War. But not so their sons could kill each other. | 2022-07-12T17:17:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Willie and Angela Scott celebrate a bounty of love and mark 58 years of marriage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/willie-and-angela-scott-and-their-enduring-marriage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/willie-and-angela-scott-and-their-enduring-marriage/ |
Pennsylvania GOP aims to bypass governor’s veto on abortion restrictions
Similar constitutional amendments have succeeded in other states
Pennsylvania legislators at the Capitol in Harrisburg. (Mark Pynes/Patriot-News/AP)
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has vowed to use his veto pen to block Republican efforts to restrict abortions in the state. He’d already done so three times before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month.
The state’s GOP is not taking those rebuffs lying down. On Friday, the Republican-controlled General Assembly took the first step to bypass Wolf’s veto by approving a constitutional amendment that would clear the way for a statewide abortion ban in the future.
Republicans say abortion restrictions, which have been repeatedly thwarted by the governor, should be decided by voters. “Giving one branch of government sole control over abortion laws does not represent a balanced approach to this issue.,” Rep. Kathy L. Rapp (R) said on the state House floor on Friday.
But the aggressive tactic raised allegations of undemocratic dealings from reproductive rights advocates. “Of course they don’t want to have to deal with the governor and the veto,” said Elizabeth Randol, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. “But that’s not how democracy is supposed to operate.”
The proposed constitutional amendment in Pennsylvania, which says that “there is no constitutional right to taxpayer-funded abortion or other right relating to abortion,” would allow lawmakers to skirt a Democratic governor who would block similar measures approved in a bill. It would also insulate future abortion restrictions passed through legislation from being challenged in state court. The amendment must be approved again in the next legislative session before voters can weigh in on the ballot.
The strategy reflects Republican lawmakers’ mounting frustration with Wolf, who has vetoed more bills than any other since the 1970s amid growing polarization in the Capitol. Although Pennsylvania voters are split fairly evenly between parties — Democrats actually have a slight edge in registrations — Republicans have controlled both chambers of the state legislature since 2011, in part because of a gerrymandered redistricting map that was ultimately thrown out by the state Supreme Court.
Despite the party’s tight hold on the legislature, Wolf has tempered the GOP’s ambitions since he took office in 2015.
“Things have gotten so much more hardball in the presence of this partisan divide,” said Craig Green, a law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania Republicans have increasingly turned to the constitutional amendment as Wolf has repeatedly opposed their legislative goals. After fraught disagreements over pandemic shutdowns, the GOP used the amendment process in 2020 and 2021 to limit the governor’s emergency powers. Because of the change, Wolf was able to enact certain public safety measures, such as mandatory masking, for only 21 days without legislative approval. In the same measure that would put abortion on the ballot, lawmakers also proposed questions that would tighten voter ID requirements and allow gubernatorial candidates to select a running mate to run for lieutenant governor.
According to Green, constitutional amendments that make it on the ballot almost always succeed. Since 1968, 49 amendments have been approved by Pennsylvania voters — six have been rejected.
“The stability of the Pennsylvania Constitution depended on political norms,” he said, “but those political norms are under really serious and multifaceted attack.”
While debating the proposed amendment on Friday, Republican lawmakers insisted that the language would not amount to an abortion ban and focused instead on the “taxpayer-funded” aspect of the change.
“Senate Bill 106 is a constitutional amendment that reiterates the status quo, that the Pennsylvania Constitution does not grant a right to an abortion or the taxpayer funding of abortion,” Sen. Judy Ward (R) said in a statement. “If approved, it will prevent taxpayer dollars from funding elective terminations and will preserve the authority of elected officials — not the judicial branch — to enact future abortion laws.”
Democrats did not buy the assurances that little would change if the amendment became enshrined in the state constitution. As discussion of the bill dragged on into Friday evening, Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta questioned why Republicans would need to vote on a bill that did not change the state’s laws.
“They’ve suggested numerous times that if we pass S.B. 106, nothing will change,” he said on the state House floor. “They’ve said it so many times that this bill would not actually ban abortion. That this bill would do nothing to make this commonwealth more pro-life. This bill is just more of the same. Why are you here ... to do something that does nothing?”
Rapp similarly said on the state House floor that the amendment would “not end abortion in the commonwealth.” But after the vote, she championed the amendment for aiming to free the legislature “to protect life post-Roe v. Wade.”
“They were legislating peoples’ bodies in the middle of the night,” said Signe Espinoza, executive director of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates and PAC.
One more obstacle remains before Pennsylvania voters might see the abortion question on their ballots. Both houses of the state’s General Assembly must approve the amendment one more time in the next session, which takes place after the November elections. If they do so, the amendment could be on ballots as early as the May primaries next year.
Still, reproductive rights activists hope that the issue would draw out voters to rebuke Republicans’ efforts to elude the governor’s veto.
“Abortion is still legal in the state of Pennsylvania,” Espinoza said. “But our rights are at risk.” | 2022-07-12T17:21:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pennsylvania GOP aims to bypass governor’s veto on abortion restrictions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/pennsylvania-republicans-abortion-constitutional-amendment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/pennsylvania-republicans-abortion-constitutional-amendment/ |
The suspected assassin of Shinzo Abe told police he held a grudge because the former prime minister had ties to a religious group he blamed for his mother's financial troubles, local media reported. (Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg News)
With door-to-door sales tactics that targeted grieving elderly people and the cultivation of prominent political leaders, the Unification Church has spent decades establishing Japan as its most dependable profit center, according to investigators who study the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s many-tentacled spiritual and financial global empire.
Now, after the suspected assassin of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe told police that he blamed a religious group for his mother’s bankruptcy, and the Unification Church confirmed that the shooter’s mother was a member of its Japanese branch, the role of the church, long controversial in the country, is once again being scrutinized.
The suspected shooter, Tetsuya Yamagami, told police that his mother had been financially ruined after being pressured to donate large sums of money to a religious group, according to Japanese news reports.
Tomihiro Tanaka, who runs the church’s Japanese branch, said at a news conference Monday that Yamagami’s mother joined the organization in 1998, then left for a time and returned to the fold this year. A church official said he did not have information about the mother’s donations to the organization and had no record of Yamagami himself having ever belonged to the church. Police have not yet named the religious organization.
On Tuesday, Japanese media outlets reported that bullet holes were found on the facade of the Unification Church building in Nara. The suspect told investigators he had tested his gun there before shooting Abe, according to the Japanese television station Fuji News Network.
The Unification Church controls dozens of ministries in Japan, including one in Nara, a few hundred yards from where Abe was shot Friday.
Abe, like many other world leaders, had appeared at Unification Church-related events as a paid speaker, most recently in September on a program that also featured former president Donald Trump, who spoke via video link.
In his remarks at the “Rally of Hope,” which was organized by Moon’s widow, Hak Ja Han Moon, who is known in Unification circles as “True Mother,” Trump called her “a tremendous person” and praised “her incredible work on behalf of peace all over the world.” He added thanks to both Moons: “The inspiration that they have caused for the entire planet is unbelievable.” Sun Myung Moon died in 2012, and his wife and children have battled over control of his businesses and other organizations ever since.
In the same program at which Trump spoke, Abe expressed to Hak Ja Han Moon “my profound thanks for your tireless efforts in resolving disputes in the world, especially in relation to the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula.”
Sun Myung Moon, who called himself a messiah, preached that Jesus had instructed him to continue his work on Earth.
Throughout its history, Moon’s church and its affiliates have paid top dollar to attract world political leaders, celebrities and prominent clergy of other religions to speak at conferences, part of a long-standing campaign to win credibility by associating Unification organizations with famous and respected figures.
“They’ll pay for anybody who will give them legitimacy,” Larry Zilliox, a longtime researcher focused on Moon’s business and political initiatives in the United States and around the world, said Saturday. “The big names draw the smaller names, the people who can help them with their local ventures.”
In the mid-1990s, for example, former presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, as well as comedian Bill Cosby and former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, spoke at Moon-sponsored conferences in Japan and Washington. Bush spoke just months after a Japanese court awarded more than $150 million in damages to thousands of Japanese people who sued the Unification Church and a Moon-owned company, Happy World, after they were pressured to donate millions of dollars to guarantee their late loved ones’ happiness in the afterworld.
(After The Washington Post reported on his appearance, Bush decided to donate his speaking fee, which at the time generally ran about $80,000, to charity.)
For more than six decades, the Unification Church and its various offshoots have relied on Japan as the profit center that helped subsidize their operations around the world, including in the United States, according to several studies of the church by academic scholars and government investigators.
Even as some of Moon’s most famous initiatives, such as the Washington Times newspaper and media ventures in many other countries, lost money, the church could count on its Japanese arm to produce a strong revenue flow based primarily on what it called “spiritual sales.”
Church members in Japan “would scan the obituaries and knock on people’s doors and tell them that ‘your dead loved one has communicated with us and they want you to go to your bank and send money to the Unification Church so that your loved one can be elevated in the spirit world,’ ” Steve Hassan, a onetime Unification Church member who became a mental health counselor and author of books about destructive cults, said Saturday.
Despite the church’s roots in Korea, it was Japan that traditionally provided as much as 70 percent of the church’s wealth, according to historians who have studied the church. A former high-ranking Japanese church member once told The Post that Moon’s organizations had brought $800 million from Japan into the United States from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s.
“Moon sent bags of cash, big fat bags, stacks and stacks of hundreds, from Korea and Japan to Manhattan Center,” one of the church’s primary properties in New York City, a former Unification executive, Ron Paquette, told The Post in 1997. “Whenever we asked where the money was coming from, the answer was it just came ‘from Father,’ ” the term church members used for Moon.
In Japan, it was common for many years to see Unificationists selling ginseng products and religious items such as miniature stone pagodas made by Moon-owned companies in Korea. The church members’ hard-sell tactics, as well as their claims that their products held spiritual powers, led to class-action suits in Japan, with hundreds of claimants winning settlements.
Akihiko Kurokawa, the leader of a small political party in Japan, the NHK Party, said on a TV broadcast last month that the Unification Church was “an anti-Japanese cult” and blamed Abe’s grandfather, former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, for the church’s initial move into Japan in 1958. Moon started his first newspaper in Japan in 1975 and brought his signature mass marriages of followers to the country soon thereafter.
In Moon’s theology, his native Korea is the “Adam” country, home of a master race destined to rule the world, and Japan is the “Eve” country, subservient to Korea, Hassan said. The Unification Church taught that Eve had had sexual relations with Satan, leading mankind to fall from grace, with Moon now appointed to bring humanity to salvation.
Moon’s widow now controls the official successor to the Unification Church, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. A rival group launched by Moon’s son Hyung Jin, also known as Sean, has also spread its operations into Japan. Based in Newfoundland, Pa., the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Church, better known as the Rod of Iron Ministries, preaches that AR-15 assault weapons are an important part of religious ceremonies designed “to defend ourselves against an aggressive satanic world.”
Hyung Jin’s brother Kook Jin (Justin), known in church circles as “True Son,” owns an arms- manufacturing company, Kahr Arms, in Greeley, Pa., and was sent to Japan by his father in 2010 to push back against efforts to strip the church of its legal status there.
“It was a very difficult time,” Kook Jin said in a speech that year, “because the police were conducting quite an extensive investigation of our church. They actually have had nearly 10,000 law enforcement officers investigating our church. They were conducting arrests of our church members and they were raiding our churches — not just one or two places, but many, many.”
In the speech, Kook Jin denied that the church was pressuring Japanese people to make large donations to save the spirits of their deceased loved ones. He said he had interviewed many of the church’s big donors in Japan: “I asked them, ‘What moves you to donate so much money?’ And you will see that in so many cases, our brothers and sisters will tell you that their ancestors came to them and told them to do it.”
Julia Mio Inuma in Tokyo contributed to this report. | 2022-07-12T17:21:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Suspect in Abe assassination was upset with the church's treatment of his mother - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/12/unification-church-japan-shinzo-abe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/12/unification-church-japan-shinzo-abe/ |
Senate poised to confirm ATF director nominee Steve Dettelbach
An afternoon vote could give the agency a permanent leader while the country is contending with rising gun violence
Steve Dettelbach in Washington on April 11. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
The Senate is expected to confirm Steve Dettelbach, a former top federal prosecutor, to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a vote that would boost the agency as the country struggles with rising gun violence.
A vote is expected Tuesday afternoon.
The ATF, which is tasked with regulating the firearms industry, has long lacked resources and steady leadership, operating under a string of acting directors while multiple nominees failed to win confirmation. The bureau, which has more than 5,000 employees, has also been a punching bag for the firearms lobby and other opponents, stumbling into self-inflicted wounds including the botched Obama administration gun operation known as “Fast and Furious.”
When he was nominated by President Biden this year, Dettelbach, 56, pledged to tackle “an epidemic of firearms violence” in America. He would take command of the bureau, whose budget exceeds $1 billion, at a fraught moment, with recent shooting rampages in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tex. and Highland Park, Ill., horrifying a nation that has become painfully familiar with such mass carnage.
B. Todd Jones, the only ATF director to win Senate approval since that became a requirement for the job in 2006, said Dettelbach’s “challenge will be to focus the limited resources” of the bureau on significant issues, such as firearms used in crimes and ghost guns.
Having a confirmed director in place can matter for how others perceive the bureau, Jones said, because people inherently give “some level of cachet” to an official who is presidentially named and Senate-approved. The “acting” label, he said, might imply to others that “you’re a placeholder, that you’ve really just sort of maintained steady state operations.” A confirmed director, he said, can be “meaningful within the bureau” for morale.
Jones, now the NFL’s special counsel for conduct, worked in both capacities, serving as the acting ATF director from 2011 until 2013, when then-President Barack Obama nominated him for the permanent job in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn. After getting confirmed, Jones continued in the position until 2015.
In affluent Washington D.C. suburb, gun violence is rising sharply, police say
The bureau’s challenges do not come from the title of the person leading it, Jones said, but from its limited resources and intense opposition from supporters of gun rights. The NRA once published a full-page newspaper ad pillorying ATF as “a rogue agency,” and there have been calls over the years to abolish the bureau outright or merge its work with another agency.
Dettelbach issued a staunch defense of the bureau and its workforce when he was nominated, saying that “the men and women of the ATF and the public that they protect deserve better support from us.”
For Dettelbach, the ATF job is a homecoming of sorts. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in the Justice Department, which is ATF’s parent agency. During most of the Obama administration, he served as the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Ohio.
Activists against gun violence said June 11 in Washington that their lives were directly affected by shootings and called for more restrictive gun laws. (Video: Hadley Green, Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post, Photo: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Washington Post)
During that time, the office worked on a reform agreement with the Cleveland police and prosecuted cases against an Indiana man who tried to burn down a Toledo-area mosque and another man who threw explosives at a city hall and courthouse, a case Dettelbach tried himself.
After stepping down in 2016, Dettelbach returned to BakerHostetler, the law firm where he had been a partner before serving as U.S. attorney. Before his first stint with the firm, Dettelbach worked as a federal prosecutor in Maryland and Ohio. In 2018, Dettelbach ran for Ohio attorney general, losing to Republican Dave Yost.
Dettelbach is “very much a consensus-driven leader,” said Carole S. Rendon, a longtime friend, who is also a partner at BakerHostetler, worked as Dettelbach’s top deputy at the U.S. attorney’s office and, when he stepped down, succeeded him in leading it.
“He wanted to hear everybody’s opinion and truly valued people’s input, whether they agreed or disagreed with him,” she said.
Dettelbach’s nomination received support from a range of groups including Giffords, the gun-control group led by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which said he “understands the importance of federal and state law enforcement’s collaborative efforts to combat and prevent violent crimes”; and organizations representing police chiefs and federal law enforcement officials.
The National Rifle Association, in contrast, called Dettelbach “anti-gun,” while the National Sports Shooting Foundation, the firearms industry’s trade group, said after he was nominated that it had “significant concerns” about some of his previous statements, including those supporting universal background checks. A group of more than a dozen Republican state attorneys general wrote to senators urging them to reject his nomination, saying that “it appears he would likely continue or even accelerate ATF’s attempts to restrict Americans’ rights and erode constitutional restraints on federal power.”
The ATF plays a pivotal role in helping local and state law enforcement officials, Bouchard said, bringing “specific types of expertise that aren’t matched by any other federal agency.” A confirmed director chosen by the president, Bouchard noted, will automatically have a prominent seat at the table.
“The ATF will get more resources if they have somebody who can talk to the White House,” Bouchard said. “It’s their person. They’re going to trust what this person is saying.”
‘Active shooter’ attacks in 2021 doubled over recent years, FBI says
Biden’s previous nominee, David Chipman, spent decades with ATF before going to the Giffords advocacy group.
The White House pulled his nomination last fall during opposition from Republicans and some Democrats in the Senate — and from the NRA, which said it spent millions to oppose Chipman and called him “a grave threat to the Second Amendment,” saying he spent a decade “working for gun control groups and lobbying on Capitol Hill to restrict Americans’ rights.”
The tragedies also appear to be spawning a new wave of grief-driven advocacy, echoing efforts that followed earlier shootings in Newtown and Parkland, Fla.
On Tuesday, survivors of the recent rampages in Highland Park and Uvalde were scheduled to visit Capitol Hill to push for more gun-safety measures. Among them was Emily Lieberman, a pediatrician who survived the Fourth of July parade attack, fleeing to safety inside a winery bathroom with her 5-year-old daughter and more than a dozen other people.
“There is no way to settle this issue until assault rifles are banned from civilians,” Lieberman said in an interview. “Gun control does not have to be a Republican or a Democratic or even a bipartisan issue. This is not political. This is the safety of our country.”
School shootings in America
Photos: The scene following a deadly elementary school shooting in Texas | 2022-07-12T17:43:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vote expected on Steve Dettelbach to become ATF director - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/dettelbach-atf-guns-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/dettelbach-atf-guns-senate/ |
Boris Johnson, U.K. prime minister, right, Rishi Sunak, U.K. chancellor of the exchequer, center, and Sajid Javid, U.K. health secretary, depart from number 10 Downing Street ahead of a news conference in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021. Johnson announced a tax hike on workers, businesses and shareholders to help rescue the National Health Service from soaring backlogs that built up during the Covid-19 pandemic and reform the “broken” social care system. (Bloomberg)
The candidates for the Conservative Party leadership are strikingly diverse. Six of the 10 declared candidates are members of ethnic minorities; three (Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid) are the children of immigrants; two (Nadhim Zahawi and Rehman Chisti) were born abroad, in Iraq and Pakistan respectively; and one (Kemi Badenoch) was brought up in Nigeria. Four are female. Only two are White men.
Whatever happened to the party of the White patriarchy?
The presence of prominent women candidates should come as no surprise given the party has already produced two female prime ministers — Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May — to zero for opposition Labour. The Tory membership can think of nothing better than a return to the glorious days of Thatcher (which is why one of the leading candidates, Liz Truss, is forever striking Maggie-like poses).
The prominence of minorities is new. In 2005, the Conservatives had only two non-White MPs. That’s changed dramatically — all the way to the top ranks of the party, including the last three chancellors of the exchequer in a row: Javid, Sunak and Zahawi. Before the recent party ructions they also held the jobs of home secretary (Priti Patel), health secretary (Javid), business secretary (Kwasi Kwarteng) and education secretary (Zahawi).
The Conservative Party has done a much better job of diversifying than other parts of the British establishment, which has focused instead on the politically correct trappings of rainbow flags and diversity courses. The civil service has always been run by a White man. The armed forces have not yet produced a BAME chief of staff. A tiny slither of FTSE 100 chairs, chief executive officers, chief financial officers and company directors are from minority backgrounds. The intelligence services are still the same color at the top as they were in the days of George Smiley, John Le Carre’s fictional spymaster.
Few other right-of-center parties around the world come close to what the Tories have done. Indeed, under Donald Trump, the Republican Party was in danger of becoming the party of White reaction against an increasingly diverse society. Among GOP up-and-comers, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley dropped her first name, Nimrata, and converted to Christianity from Sikhism; and former Louisiana governor Piyush Jindal called himself “Bobby” and converted to Christianity from Hinduism. In the UK, Sunak took the oath of office as chancellor with his hand on the Bhagavad Gita and placed Diwali candles on the steps of his office on Number 11 Downing Street.
How did this extraordinary revolution come about? The Tories grasped the enormous power of “sponsored mobility” — that is, spotting potential superstars when they are still young and promoting them rapidly through the party ranks. The Labour Party should have far more potential ethnic minority leadership candidates than the Conservatives, given that Labour won some 62% of that demographic at the most recent election compared with the Conservatives’ 24%. But Labour relies on talent bubbling up on its own rather than being given a helping hand. The result is that many Labour minority MPs are unimpressive machine politicians and a few are self-dealers. Labour’s leader, deputy leader and shadow chancellor are all White.
The Tory breakthrough came in 2005. David Cameron came up with the idea of the party’s central office nominating A-list candidates for local districts to consider. That preserved the constituencies’ much-prized sovereignty but forced them to consider people different from the White men they’d traditionally favored. Sunak wowed the voters in Richmond, Yorkshire, despite the fact that he was practically the only South Asian face in the constituency.
The left might instinctively think of minorities as victims of structural oppression who bristle at the sight of a union flag or a statue of Winston Churchill. That tells us more about the delusions of White university lecturers than it does about the beliefs of immigrants. Many revere the symbols of the country that they have chosen as their home and loathe the virtue-signaling version of “equity, inclusion and diversity” that is institutionalized on the left.
Javid likes to point out that he made it to the top of British society despite the fact that his father worked as a bus driver. Britain provided him with a first-class education and a career as a banker before he became a politician. In her maiden speech as an MP, Kemi Badenoch thanked her chosen country for giving her a chance to live the “British dream.” She’s so anti-woke that, at her launch event, her staff used masking tape to divide the unisex lavatories into male and female.
The Conservative Party is particularly appealing to two groups of upwardly-mobile minorities: scholarship boys and girls who won places in Britain’s great public (i.e, private) schools, on the one hand, and the children of small business people, on the other. Sunak’s parents — a doctor and a pharmacist — had to scrimp and save to send him to Winchester College. He repaid their efforts by becoming head boy, going on to Oxford and Stanford Business School, and eventually making a fortune in finance. The ranks of ethnic minority Old Etonians include Kwarteng and, a future star, Bim Afolami. Patel’s parents were refugees from Idi Amin’s Uganda; they established a chain of newspaper shops in the UK. Badenoch grew up in Nigeria and returned to Britain at 16 where she supported herself working at McDonald’s.
The Conservative Party’s diversity contains big warnings to the left. One that you need to fight the opposition that you have rather than the one that you wish you had. Jolyon Maugham, a prominent leftist Queen’s Counsel, recently made a fool of himself, not for the first time, by asking Sunak, the current front-runner and former chancellor in a tweet, “Do you think the members of your party are ready to select a brown man, Rishi?” Today, a poll by Conservative Home shows Rishi among the top three contenders — the other two being, a White woman, Penny Mordaunt, and a Black woman, Badenoch.
The diversification of the Conservative Party is a good thing for both Tories and the UK. It’s obviously good for the party because it provides it with a stream of talent while also increasing its appeal to other minorities (and White liberals). But it’s also good for the country because it prevents politics from polarizing along racial lines — and also because it prevents the left from having a monopoly on questions such as assimilation and diversity.
Britain has plenty of serious problems at the moment — not least, the fact that the country’s long-standing problem with productivity was, at the very least, allowed to fester thanks to the combination of Brexit and the incompetence of Boris Johnson. But the UK remains a global example when it comes to assimilation. Britain was the first country to have a Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli; the first to have a female one, Thatcher; and may well be on the verge of becoming the second major Western democracy to have a non-White leader. All three achievements will belong to the Conservatives.
Boris Johnson Exits, But the Damage to the UK Will Linger: Max Hastings
• Britain’s Imperial Nostalgia Should Follow Johnson Out: Pankaj Mishra | 2022-07-12T17:43:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the Tories Are Britain’s Party of Diversity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-the-tories-are-britains-party-of-diversity/2022/07/12/7e24dbb0-0203-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-the-tories-are-britains-party-of-diversity/2022/07/12/7e24dbb0-0203-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
The hit comedy ‘Abbott Elementary’ is really a tragedy
Actors on the ABC comedy television show “Abbott Elementary.” (Prashant Gupta/ABC)
“Abbott Elementary,” the hit mockumentary on ABC about a high-poverty school in Philadelphia with an incompetent principal, a blackmailed superintendent and dedicated teachers of varying experience, is racking up award nominations that cite its humor, humanity and intelligence.
But there’s nothing funny about the reality that undergirds its humor. It’s a national scandal.
The talented creator and writer of the show, Quinta Brunson, has never taught, but you might be fooled: She hits on some of the most inane and troubling aspects of public education as if she had lived it.
The season’s animating conversation comes in the first episode, when second-grade teacher Janine Teagues can’t afford to replace a rug that a boy peed on because the toilets weren’t working. Janine pleads that she just wants to help students, and veteran teacher Melissa Schemmenti tells her: “We do this because we are supposed to. It’s a calling. You answer.”
Here’s what she didn’t say: It’s a profession, and you come and do your job, and should expect to be treated as a professional.
Are teachers professionals?
In 2022, this country still expects teachers to go to work without adequate pay, supplies or support for their work and their students’ needs — all of which negatively affects student achievement. And teachers are expected to play multiple roles.
In 2019, teachers earned 19.2 percent less than workers with comparable education and experience, according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. The average teacher salary, according to the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest labor union, is estimated to be $66,397 for the 2021-2022 school year — on average $2,179 less per year than a decade earlier, when adjusted for inflation. In many places, teachers get second and sometimes third jobs to pay their bills. In Mississippi during the 2020-21 school year, teachers earned an average of $46,862 — $19 more than the year before, according to the NEA. In New York State, teachers earned an average of $90,222 in 2020-21 — $1,841 more than the year before.
As for public school funding, it is no secret that some districts are so strapped for cash that buildings — like Abbott Elementary — are crumbling, and there aren’t enough teachers, and schools go without librarians, nurses and other support stuff. At one point in the television show, so many teachers have left the chaos at the school that a custodian who voted for Kanye West for president is teaching social studies. During the pandemic, schools were recruiting parents and sometimes high school students to teach.
There is also a question of a community’s priorities. As Janine says to the camera: “I’d say the main problem in the school district is yeah, no money. The city says there isn’t, but they’re doing a multimillion-dollar renovation to the Eagles’ stadium down the street from here. So we just make do.”
Data from the federal government shows big disparities in school funding across school districts, with schools in at least half of U.S. states getting fewer dollars per student than the national average of $13,187 per pupil, adjusted by inflation. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), an arm of the Education Department, reported that in the 2019-2020 school year (the latest for which data is available) Idaho spent $7,950 per students, while New York spent $24,882 — but the amount within states differed substantially. And according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, New York state remains one of the most inequitable when it comes to school funding.
As for Pennsylvania — Abbott Elementary is fictionally located in Philadelphia — the state spent $16,892 per pupil, adjusted for inflation, according to NCES. Yet according to public education advocates, the state sometimes spends more money on schools in wealthy areas than it does on those in high-poverty areas.
In May, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) agreed with plaintiffs in a major lawsuit filed by six school districts, parents and others who say the state — which contributes significantly less to local districts than many other states — is underfunding public education and severely disadvantaging students of color and those who live in poverty.
Shapiro filed a brief in William Penn School District et al. v. PA Department of Education et al. saying that the state was violating the Pennsylvania constitution by not ensuring that every child was receiving a “comprehensive and effective public education.” Testimony in that lawsuit — in which closing arguments were held in March — showed, among other things, that:
· The Greater Johnstown School District has two reading specialists and no math interventions for 1,200 elementary school students, the majority of whom need individualized or small-group support to catch up and read on grade level.
· William Penn, a majority-Black district of 5,000 students outside Philadelphia, has split one principal between two elementary school for years because of a lack of funding, and kindergarten teacher Nicole Miller testified that she can have as many as 30 students in her class at a time, giving each no more than 20 minutes of individualized instruction no more than twice a week.
· In Panther Valley School District, where more than half of the students are considered economically disadvantaged, Superintendent David McAndrew testified that there are no librarians, and there is only one social worker funded through a grant. In one school, he said, 75 kindergarten students use a single toilet and two urinals.
This is what inadequate funding at a public school looks and feels like — as told by an entire faculty
Though Philadelphia is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Pennsylvania State University assistant professor Matt Kelly believes it needs $1.1 billion more than it gets for all students to be college- and career-ready and graduate high school on time.
One amusing “Abbott Elementary” episode has the optimistic and chatty Janine making a snazzy video to beg for basic classroom supplies that her school can’t afford. She pastes pictures of three U.S. presidents in an old social studies book to make it seem more current.
In fact, teachers wind up spending many hundreds of dollars, and sometimes thousands, from their own wallets to buy basic supplies for themselves and their students. (One survey of teachers taken in 2021 found that on average they spend $750 of their own money on supplies.)
Year after year, teachers post wish lists on social media and are treated to discounts by supply companies offering reduced prices — all part of a system that has baked in the idea that educators will absorb the costs themselves because their job is a “calling” and not a profession. They are so moved to help the children in their classes that they will sacrifice personally for it in ways other professionals wouldn’t dream of — or be expected to. And every year, school boards and superintendents and state education departments and state legislatures let it happen.
Two years ago, I wrote about what teachers go through after hearing from more than 1,000 of them. One of them, Becky Cranson, who teachers English at Bronson Jr./Sr. High School in rural Bronson, Mich., said at the time: “I am a scavenger. My friend who works in the Michigan [Department of Natural Resources] office gives me their used binders, and my husband brings me furniture and supplies that the hospital he works at is throwing away.”
‘I am a scavenger’: The desperate things teachers do to get the classroom supplies they need
Yet, schools spend billions of dollars on education technology every year — exactly how any billions is not known — despite no evidence that most of it helps improve achievement. That was the point of an “Abbott Elementary” episode titled “New Tech.” The teachers get a new tablet mandated by the district with software that is supposed to make it easy to teach kids to read and keep real-time data. One teacher objects, saying: “I prefer the tried-and-true methods over whatever the latest doohickey is. I have yet to see the program that can do what I do by, you know, teaching.” It is ridiculously complicated, and no teacher can figure it out, but the exercise is ended when it is discovered that it was meant to be used in prisons.
Justin Reich, an associate professor of digital media at MIT and director of the Teaching Systems Lab, wrote in 2021: “Evangelists for education technology tend to describe their inventions as akin to Swiss army knives, capable of serving numerous functions and solving myriad problems. But, in truth, they more closely resemble a scattered pile of mismatched tools. Many are useful for specific tasks, but the whole collection adds up to less than the sum of its parts.”
If there is one thing that research has shown decade in and decade out about education, it is this: Poverty matters. We know that poverty and characteristics of children’s families are associated with children’s educational experiences and their academic achievement. Living in a household without a parent who has completed high school, living in a single-parent household and living in poverty are associated with poor educational outcomes — including receiving low achievement scores, having to repeat a grade and dropping out of high school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, an agency of the Education Department. It reports that in 2020 (the latest year for which data is available), some 16 percent of children lived in poverty.
But the child tax credit expansion ended last December, and there is no push in the nation’s capital to restore it. None.
So what do we do? We watch “Abbott Elementary” and laugh.
The show has been so well-received that it won seven Emmy nominations Tuesday. It has also received five nominations at the Television Critics Association’s 2022 TCA Awards, the year’s most-nominated show, and has been named a finalist for prizes given by the nonprofit Humanitas group that recognizes “television and film writers whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced way.” It has nine nominations for the Black Reel Television Awards and three for the Dorian Awards.
“Abbott Elementary” is funny, yes. But the conditions it highlights are scandalous. | 2022-07-12T17:43:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hit comedy ‘Abbot Elementary’ is really a tragedy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/12/abbot-elementary-really-tragedy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/12/abbot-elementary-really-tragedy/ |
Caught up in controversial F1 decision, ex-race director leaves FIA
Former FIA race director Michael Masi will “relocate to Australia to be closer to his family and take on new challenges” five months after he was reassigned as a result of his handling of the 2021 season finale. (David Davies/AP)
Former Formula One race director Michael Masi has left his role with the sport’s governing body seven months after his controversial decision helped tilt the outcome of last year’s drivers’ championship. Masi will “relocate to Australia to be closer to his family and take on new challenges,” the FIA said in a statement.
Masi served as race director for three years, where he oversaw the employment of safety measures such as red flags or safety cars during races. He assumed the role in 2019 and held it until February, when he was reassigned following his handling of December’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The battle between Verstappen and Hamilton has been less contentious — and less competitive — in 2022, with new vehicle regulations reshuffling the usual hierarchy. After 11 races, Verstappen holds a sizable advantage over Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (208-170) atop the standings. Hamilton, who fell short of a record eighth drivers’ title as a result of Masi’s December decision, sits in sixth-place. | 2022-07-12T17:44:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former F1 race director Michael Masi leaves FIA - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/michael-masi-f1/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/michael-masi-f1/ |
United States cricket players walk off the pitch after beating Singapore by 132 runs in a cricket World Cup qualifier match in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, July, 12, 2022. The U.S. has advanced to the semifinals in Zimbabwe of a qualifying tournament for the T20 World Cup in Australia in October. One more win, and the Americans are in. (AP Photo/KB Mpofu) (KBMpofu/AP) | 2022-07-12T17:45:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US cricket team one win from reaching first World Cup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/us-cricket-team-one-win-from-reaching-first-world-cup/2022/07/12/76aac804-0208-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/us-cricket-team-one-win-from-reaching-first-world-cup/2022/07/12/76aac804-0208-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
An American tourist fell into Mount Vesuvius over the weekend while trying to take a selfie, according to Italian officials. (Stefan Rousseau/AP)
An American tourist in Italy survived a fall into the crater of Mount Vesuvius after he attempted to reach for his phone to take a selfie, according to Italian police and local officials.
A 23-year-old man from Baltimore was hiking up the famed volcano with his family Saturday when they accessed the top of Vesuvius through a forbidden trail, Naples police told local media. When the family reached the top of the volcano, known for destroying the Roman city of Pompeii, the man, identified by NBC News as Philip Carroll, reached for his phone to commemorate being atop the 4,000-foot-high volcano.
Cappelli told Il Mattino, a Naples newspaper, that a team of volcano guides on the other side of the rim used binoculars to realize that the man “had slipped inside the crater and was in serious trouble,” noting that the American tourist was stuck.
“Four volcanological guides were set in motion instantly and, arriving on-site, one of them was lowered with a rope for about 15 meters to allow them to secure the unwary tourist,” Cappelli said, according to a Google translation. He noted that Carroll could have plunged 300 meters, or nearly 1,000 feet, into the crater.
A photo Lametta posted to social media shows the man with bruises on his legs, arms and back, as well as bloody scrapes on his elbows. Lametta wrote that the man was unconscious when the guides recovered him. Police told CNN that the man was treated at the scene in an ambulance, but refused to go to a hospital.
Cappelli told local media that Carroll was taken into custody by the local Carabinieri police. It’s unclear what charges he may face.
Nearly two millennia after a deadly eruption in A.D. 79 left the cities of Pompeii, Oplontis and Stabiae blanketed in ash, Mount Vesuvius remains one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country. While Vesuvius technically remains an active volcano, the last eruption was in 1944 and the volcano is in a state of repose, according to Vesuvius National Park’s website. The highest point of the volcano is about 4,190 feet. Vesuvius’s crater is nearly 1,000 feet deep, with a diameter of about 1,500 feet.
The Baltimore man survived, but others who’ve tried taking photos of themselves in picturesque and dangerous locations haven’t been so lucky. A 2018 study from researchers associated with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a group of public medical colleges based in New Delhi, found that more than 250 people worldwide had died while taking selfies over a six-year period. Of the 259 deaths reported between October 2011 and November 2017, researchers found the leading cause to be drowning, followed by incidents involving transportation — for example, taking a selfie in front of an oncoming train — and falling from heights. Other causes of selfie-related deaths include animals, firearms and electrocution.
More than 250 people worldwide have died taking selfies, study finds
There are more recent examples of deaths linked to selfies. Richard Jacobson, a 21-year-old hiker from Arizona, fell hundreds of feet to his death in January after he walked toward the edge of a cliff to take a selfie in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. Police told local media that an investigation into Jacobson’s death, which showed no signs of drug use or foul play, amounted to “just a very tragic accident.”
Cappelli and Lametta praised the volcano guides for quickly recognizing that the American tourist was in danger of plummeting further into Mount Vesuvius.
Allyson Chiu contributed to this report. | 2022-07-12T18:31:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | American tourist falls into Mount Vesuvius volcano crater after failed selfie attempt, officials say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/12/mount-vesuvius-american-tourist-falls-selfie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/12/mount-vesuvius-american-tourist-falls-selfie/ |
Russia still holding 400 passenger jets hostage in global sanctions fight
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Putin to visit Tehran; U.S. says Iran plan...
The country’s airlines are refusing to return the planes they’d leased from foreign companies; the planes are worth billions
Ellen Nakashima
Aeroflot passenger planes parked at Sheremetyevo International Airport outside Moscow on March 1. Russian airlines have refused to return more than 400 planes worth billions of dollars to the Western companies that own them. (Pavel Golovkin/AP)
Early last month, an employee of Sri Lanka’s court system walked into the nation’s biggest airport brandishing a judicial order grounding an Aeroflot flight that was about to take off for Moscow.
The aircraft’s nearly 200 passengers were deplaned and taken to local hotels, their travel foiled by an Irish company that had leased the jet to Aeroflot and was now demanding its return to comply with Western sanctions on Russia.
The incident kicked off a diplomatic row on the tropical island south of India, which is heavily dependent on Russia for tourist income and, of late, for fuel. First, Aeroflot halted all flights to the island, blocking the flow of leisure travelers. Then, in private talks, according to a European official familiar with what took place, Moscow threatened to cut off energy deliveries as well — something that would have worsened an economic crisis that was already causing food and fuel shortages and widespread unrest.
Within days, the court, acting after a request from the government, issued a new ruling clearing the jet to fly, and it left for Russia, where it now flies regularly between Moscow and Kyrgyzstan.
For Sri Lanka, the battle over the Irish-owned airliner was just a blip in a long string of developments that last week led to chaos as protesters stormed the homes of the president and prime minister, forcing them both to promise to resign. But for Russia, it was a victory in a hard fought campaign against a four-month Western sanctions campaign, demonstrating the lengths Moscow is willing to go to defend its economy, particularly in vulnerable nations where it has leverage.
There are signs that the sanctions are starting to bite. Russian government statistics show that auto production plummeted by 96.7 percent in May compared with a year ago, threatening a sector that employs 600,000. Economists say that reflects a broad collapse in manufacturing as foreign-owned factories close and domestic ones struggle to import Western components.
Hundreds of foreign companies have ceased operations in Russia, inflation is running at 16 percent and the country’s gross domestic product will contract by 8.5 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund predicts. Economists say Russia’s long-term prospects remain dire. “The potential for the decline is far from exhausted,” Sergey Aleksashenko, a former top official in Russia’s Finance Ministry and central bank, who now lives in the United States, wrote June 30 in a newsletter.
But some factors continue working in Russia’s favor, including lucrative oil and gas exports that fund the military and social safety net. Russia earned about 93 billion euros — roughly $93 billion, or $1 billion a day — in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first 100 days of the war, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a nonprofit in Finland.
And Moscow is fighting hard where it can to blunt the sanctions’ impact. Aviation is one of those sectors.
To date, Russian airlines are refusing to return more than 400 planes and a slew of aircraft parts that they leased from Western companies, forcing the leasing companies to file $10 billion in insurance claims, according to data and research provider Cirium.
“Sanctions may be serving the long-term purpose of isolating Russia,” said Risto Maeots, chief executive of an aviation-servicing company in Estonia that has been unable to recover several engines from Russia. “But in the short term, they weren’t as painful as they were meant to be.”
For all the attention given to the seizure of yachts belonging to Russia’s oligarchs, what happens with the aircraft is of far greater import, he added.
Fiji court lets U.S. seize Russian oligarch’s $300 million superyacht
“What will the West do with the yachts — go fishing? Russians can do much more with the jets,” he said. “So short term, they got a fairly good deal.”
Russia’s embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t respond to a request for comment. Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the incident a commercial dispute and said the government did everything to not escalate it into a diplomatic one.
Aviation sanctions were designed to target one of Russia’s key vulnerabilities — it relies on Boeing and Airbus jets manufactured overseas and owned by Western leasing companies. Of the 968 planes in Russia’s commercial fleet on the eve of the Ukraine war, 515 belonged to non-Russian leasing companies, according to Rob Morris, global head of consultancy at Cirium.
Even aircraft manufactured inside Russia, such as the Sukhoi Superjet, a regional aircraft, and the Irkut MC-21, intended to compete with the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, use engines, avionics and software from the United States and Europe. A Russian state-owned company is attempting to develop a fully domestic engine for the MC-21, but it’s going to take time, analysts say.
Sanctions required Western companies to terminate their leases and recall their planes. And an unprecedented set of export controls imposed by a coalition of 37 countries in Europe, North America and Asia also banned companies from selling new planes, parts or software to Russia, from servicing Russian-operated aircraft or providing them online software updates. Even refueling a Boeing jet leased by a Russian entity was off-limits.
But in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin delayed some of the pain by signing a law allowing airlines to keep foreign aircraft for use on domestic flights. So far, Western companies have recovered only about 80 of the 515 planes they leased to Russia, according to Cirium.
“The lessor community as a whole has accepted the fact that most aircraft they have placed within Russia will not be repossessed,” said Mike Stengel, a consultant with Michigan-based AeroDynamic Advisory.
AerCap’s tortured pursuit of the jet that escaped seizure in Sri Lanka shows how poorly the recovery efforts have gone. The Irish company, the world’s largest lessor of commercial aircraft, says it alone has more than 100 planes stuck inside Russia, for which it has submitted $3.5 billion in insurance claims.
According to court documents in Sri Lanka, AerCap wrote Aeroflot demanding the return of the Airbus A330-300 within two days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. It followed up with five more letters by mid-April, but Aeroflot kept using the plane, worth an estimated $17.3 million, to shuttle tourists to and from Sri Lanka — providing the nearly bankrupt nation a rare source of income.
When AerCap won the court order that grounded the plane on June 2, Aeroflot protested, canceling all of its flights to the country and claiming that Sri Lanka had given Russia a “state guarantee” that its aircraft could fly in and out unmolested. Moscow’s Foreign Ministry warned Sri Lanka’s ambassador of “negative impact” on bilateral relations.
Among Moscow’s threats, according to the European official, was to cut off energy deliveries. Those had proved crucial on at least one occasion in late May, when a shipment of Russian oil allowed Sri Lanka’s sole refinery to restart for the first time in over two months, Bloomberg News reported.
In an interview with a local paper published June 5, Sri Lanka’s justice minister said he instructed the attorney general to “sort it out because there are consequences beyond the law. Our country can be affected prejudicially due to such orders.”
The next day, Sri Lankan government lawyers representing the state-owned airport joined Aeroflot in asking the court to overturn the grounding order. The court obliged, saying the order had been improperly served, and the plane promptly took off for Moscow.
Last week, a month after the plane left Sri Lanka, the nation’s president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, tweeted about a phone call with Putin.
“While thanking him for all the support extended by his gvt to overcome the challenges of the past, I requested an offer of credit support to import fuel to #lka in defeating the current econ challenges,” he tweeted, using an abbreviation for Sri Lanka.
AerCap isn’t the only leasing company affected. Maeots, the chief executive of Estonian company Magnetic MRO, said that before the invasion, he had four Boeing engines leased to Russian airlines. With the imposition of European export controls, he had one month to get them back. The Russian airline simply refused to return them. “My assets are still there,” he said.
Even if the companies eventually regain the planes, that’s not the end of their worries, said Jason Dickstein, the general counsel of the Aviation Suppliers Association, a U.S.-based group representing aircraft parts distributors. Because Russian companies have been given permission to try to produce spare parts for the planes, it’s likely the planes will contain parts that haven’t been submitted to rigorous inspection by Western agencies.
“There is a fear among leasing companies that if and when they ever recover [their planes] they won’t be able to use them because they won’t be able to verify their air worthiness,” he said.
Farisz reported from Colombo, Sri Lanka. | 2022-07-12T18:52:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia still holding more than 400 Western-owned aircraft - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/12/russia-aircraft-seizure-sri-lanka/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/12/russia-aircraft-seizure-sri-lanka/ |
Police are investigating the incident after a video circulated on Reddit
Fairfax County police are investigating an incident in which officers pointed their guns at a juvenile who was filming them taking someone into custody, authorities said.
The incident, a video of which circulated on Reddit, began around 7 p.m. Saturday, according to a Fairfax County police statement.
Police said a group of three to four juveniles entered the IHOP on Arlington Boulevard in the Falls Church area, and one of them threatened a hostess and another lifted his shirt and revealed what appeared to be a handgun in his waistband. Police at that point were not contacted about the matter, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman said.
Hogan calls viral video of officers using force on teenager in Ocean City ‘disturbing’
The juveniles left, police said, but returned around 11 p.m., trying to get the hostess to come out to the parking lot. This time, someone called police, the spokeswoman said. When officers arrived, according to the police statement, the group ran into a nearby parking lot, where officers detained two of them. Police said they did not locate a weapon.
After that, according to the police account, another person approached with something in his hands. Police said the person matched the description that officers had of one of the juveniles involved in the earlier incident. Police said that, “Due to the nature of the call and not locating a weapon, officers ordered the subject to the ground at gunpoint.” They said the officers “determined the juvenile was holding a cell phone and filming.”
The video on Reddit seems to be taken by someone approaching the area where officers are taking a person into custody. An officer appears to yell “stop him,” and another officer draws a gun and approaches, pointing it in the direction of the person filming.
The person asks why the officer pointed the gun at him, and the officer responds, “Because you have a weapon.”
“What weapon?” the person responds. Another officer then approaches with a gun drawn and appears to order the person to get on the ground. Efforts to identify and reach the person filming were not immediately successful.
Police said the juveniles were detained and later released to their parents. A police spokesperson said that a detective in the Criminal Investigation Division is investigating.
An IHOP manager declined to comment on the incident.
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeffrey C. McKay (D-At Large) said on Twitter that a “thorough investigation will take place,” and its findings will be shared publicly. McKay said that the pointing of a firearm prompts an internal review that will be monitored by the independent police auditor, who reports directly to the Fairfax County board.
“Ensuring our officers are following departmental policies and the expectations of our community are of paramount importance,” McKay wrote. McKay also said in an email statement that his office will continue to monitor the situation. | 2022-07-12T19:06:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax police pointed guns at a juvenile who was filming an arrest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/fairfax-police-point-guns-reddit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/fairfax-police-point-guns-reddit/ |
The real estate market is starting to show signs of cracking in some of the most expensive cities in the country, and other pricey areas should brace for a rough stretch ahead.
In the early part of the year, the prevailing real estate narrative suggested that housing prices would stay buoyant because of a historic shortage of available inventory even as mortgage rates surged. But for all the signs that the market was facing headwinds, few people were prepared for mortgage rates that approached 6% recently, which put monthly payments out of reach for many buyers.
What’s more, housing supply varies widely across the country, and sellers are sensing a closing window of opportunity to lock in profits, rushing additional inventory into the market.
The upshot is that the market is already starting to turn in some places. On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, home values fell in June in seven of the 100 biggest housing markets, four of which are in California, plus Austin, Texas; Seattle; and Ogden, Utah, according to Zillow data.
These places have several common characteristics. First, they all became expensive either in dollar terms, in relation to local household incomes or both. Second, the much-touted inventory shortfalls weren’t as dire to start with, and some of them have begun to return to a semblance of normal levels, erasing the scarcity cushion that was supposed to buttress prices.
Finally, many of them are related to the US tech and startup ecosystem, which faces layoffs as well as the effects of a sharp drawdown in share prices that curbs the value of stock-based compensation and employee wealth. Silicon Valley wasn’t exactly the prime example of the pandemic housing boom — that was Sun Belt communities and smaller cities in Utah and Idaho — but prices surged there nevertheless and from an already high starting point in 2019.
It stands to reason that US housing prices would come under pressure in this economy. Much like consumer prices, stocks and even cryptocurrencies, home prices surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, and now those sky-high prices are running up against a Federal Reserve committed to stabilizing inflation by tightening financial conditions. If the Fed overdoes it, it risks pushing the economy into a recession, which would certainly hurt real estate further.
Yet with inflation expected to rise to another 40-year high in the consumer price index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday, the Fed’s policy rate is likely to keep climbing, and mortgage rates could be elevated for the foreseeable future. Buyers who remember the average 13% mortgage rates of the 1980s might not think the current 5.3% is so bad, but when combined with expensive house prices, it has made homeownership untenable for many. Last week, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard suggested that an adjustment in housing prices would be natural:
It wouldn’t surprise me if we have to cool off some in the housing market. I mean that was a boom – an absolute boom in the last two years – in housing, and even now I’m not so sure that the prices are really coming off, at least in the aggregate statistics.
When a Federal Open Market Committee voter says the housing market might have to “cool off,” it’s worth listening to.
Of course, national home values are still increasing for the time being, thanks in part to those inventory restraints that don’t look as if they will resolve themselves soon. On the one hand, housing is a slow-moving market in which sellers are reluctant to accept that they can’t get the same price that their neighbors did in the recent past. Transaction volumes are clearly cooling, and that should eventually feed into prices, at the very least cooling price appreciation by the end of the year.
On the other hand, home prices are part of the inflation measures that the Fed tracks though a component called “owners’ equivalent rent,” and their resiliency could encourage the Fed to push up interest rates even higher. It’s a losing battle either way.
That isn’t to say that the broad market is poised for a 2007-like crash; it probably isn’t. Lending standards have vastly improved since then, and it seems unlikely that many homeowners will find themselves forced to sell. Yet with some key markets already slipping, it would be foolhardy to assume that the rest of the housing market couldn’t end up in a similar position soon as long as the Fed remains committed to tight financial conditions. The run-up in prices has been stunning, and it’s only logical to suspect that they could go in reverse for a while. | 2022-07-12T19:14:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Housing Inventories May Not Save Prices After All - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/housing-inventories-may-not-save-prices-after-all/2022/07/12/8e1c9386-0213-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/housing-inventories-may-not-save-prices-after-all/2022/07/12/8e1c9386-0213-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
U.S., allies bend to Russia’s demand to limit Syria aid extension
A convoy transporting humanitarian aid crosses into Syria from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing on July 8, 2022. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images)
Accusing Russia of holding millions of desperate Syrians “hostage” to its demands, the United States and its allies nonetheless agreed Tuesday not to veto a new Moscow-backed resolution at the U.N. Security Council that limits continued delivery of food, medicine and other assistance to six months.
The Security Council vote came after Russia on Friday vetoed a resolution, sponsored by the West and requested by the United Nations and international aid organizations, that would have allowed delivery across the Turkey-Syria border without interruption for a year.
Agreement came after a weekend of tense negotiations during which Russia refused to yield, leaving others with what they said was no choice. In comments after the vote directed toward the United States, Britain and France, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said, “It’s time for you to start respecting the opinions of other states.”
The three abstained from the vote, allowing its passage with approval from the council’s 12 other members.
“This vote is what happens when one member of the Security Council takes the entire international community hostage,” said Deputy U.S. Ambassador Richard M. Mills, calling Russia’s intransigence a “heartless play” that “will only serve to hurt the Syrian people.”
U.N.-managed aid shipments to more than 4 million Syrians, many of them displaced by the country’s 11-year civil war and crowded into Idlib province in Syria’s northwest corner, stopped abruptly on Sunday evening, when the previous U.N. mandate expired. The area, controlled by militant groups, is one of the last redoubts of opposition to the government of Russian-backed President Bashar al-Assad.
Sending shipments across borders requires a U.N. mandate. Russia, which argues that the operation is a violation of Syrian sovereignty and that all aid should go through Damascus, has used its council veto in past years to limit access, progressively reducing aid corridors from four to one, at Bab al-Hawa. The single-corridor mandate was extended for a year last summer when Russia backed down from insisting on only six months, after extensive negotiations that included a summit between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Expiration of that mandate on Sunday came as Washington and Moscow are on opposite sides of the war in Ukraine and no longer speaking to each other. Mills, in his comments Tuesday, asserted that “some of the most dire needs” in Syria and around the world “are the direct result of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine,” where it has blocked grain exports. “The simple truth is that Russia does not care,” he said.
The mandate will have to be renewed again by Jan. 10, requiring a new debate, and a new resolution, in the middle of Syria’s harsh winter. Aid organizations, Mills said, “told us it was better than nothing. That is why we did not stand in the way of this resolution.”
Ireland and Norway wrote both the one-year extension vetoed Friday and Tuesday’s six-month resolution. “We have settled for six months. That’s not what we wanted,” said Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason.
“Look, there are no secrets here,” she said after the meeting adjourned, in response to questions from reporters about the role played by the Ukraine conflict. “We’re dealing with a very difficult geopolitical context.”
“This is not about politics,” Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul said. “This is about making sure that we can continue to deliver humanitarian assistance to people in need.” Juul added that “we need to remind ourselves that the Russian position this year, as the previous year, is that they don’t want to have this mechanism” for aid delivery. “That’s their starting point. We managed to have it continued for another six months.”
Aid deliveries have averaged around 800 trucks a month through Bab al-Hawa. Humanitarian groups, while not achieving the goal they sought, expressed relief. “Millions of lives depend on it,” said Mark Cutts, the United Nations’ deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis. | 2022-07-12T19:15:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.N. approves six month mandate for humanitarian corridor into Syria - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/syria-humanitarian-corridor-un/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/syria-humanitarian-corridor-un/ |
This image released by Netflix shows Lee Jung-jae, center, Park Hae-soo, right, and Oh Yeong-soo in a scene from the Korean series “Squid Game.” Both Park Hae-Soo and Oh Yeong-Su were nominated for an Emmy Award for best supporting actor in a drama series. Lee Jung-jae was nominated for lead actor in a drama series. (Netflix via AP) (Noh Juhan/Netflix) | 2022-07-12T19:15:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emmy surprises: 'Squid Game,' Dave Chappelle, 'This Is Us' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/emmy-surprises-squid-game-dave-chappelle-this-is-us/2022/07/12/a9018a24-020b-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/emmy-surprises-squid-game-dave-chappelle-this-is-us/2022/07/12/a9018a24-020b-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
This image released by HBO shows Nicholas Braun in a scene from “Succession.” Braun was nominated for an Emmy Award for best supporting actor in a drama series. (HBO via AP) (Uncredited/HBO)
LOS ANGELES — Nicholas Braun of “Succession” was pacing on the street around Soho in Manhattan, unable to stop moving and feeling “a little manic.” “Squid Game” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk was hunkering down at an island retreat to write season 2, but took a break for a bottle of Champagne. They and many others expressed joy after being nominated for the Emmy Awards. Some reactions: | 2022-07-12T19:15:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nominees from 'Succession,' 'Squid Game' react to Emmy nods - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nominees-from-succession-squid-game-react-to-emmy-nods/2022/07/12/ac514abc-0214-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nominees-from-succession-squid-game-react-to-emmy-nods/2022/07/12/ac514abc-0214-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Green algae blooms are seen on Lake Okeechobee in Port Mayaca, Fla. on July 10, 2018. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Now that summer’s in full swing, it’s time to hit the water. But wait, why is the beach green?
Harmful algal blooms — excessive vegetation growth in bodies of water, often caused by runoff polluted by fertilizer — are the problem. These blooms deplete waters of oxygen, causing mass die-offs of plant and animal life. Some harmful algal blooms release toxins deadly enough to kill fish, birds and mammals, even humans in rare circumstances. Others discolor or stink up water, poisoning drinking sources and shutting down recreational fishing, boating and beaches. Congress has already directed the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to address this issue. But the two-decade-old interagency working group, bogged down by bureaucratic back-and-forth, needs to move faster.
At the request of Congress, the Government Accountability Office released a report in June on the effectiveness of the interagency working group. To their credit, the two agencies have done good work in researching harmful algal blooms, monitoring harmful marine events and assisting local, state and tribal actors. The interagency working group itself has been punctual in submitting required reports to Congress, creating action strategies and coordinating harmful algal bloom work between agencies. But, as detailed in the GAO’s report, the interagency working group has yet to implement a national harmful algal blooms program, one of its main congressional directives. It also lacks performance measures to assess just how effective their agencies’ efforts are in managing harmful algal bloom events.
When asked what exactly a “national program” entails, J. Alfredo Gomez, the director of the GAO’s Natural Resources and Environment team, told The Post a program “would identify goals, strategies, and plans to achieve them and the available resources … and need for additional resources to achieve them. It would also report on progress toward goals.” Why — after two decades — is so much more planning needed before the actual implementation of the national program starts?
Not only devastating to the environment and to public health, harmful algal blooms also damage many industries and local economies. A 2006 study showed that the blooms cause an estimated $82 million in losses annually in the United States — a figure that is likely to have increased, as blooms are becoming more frequent and more toxic due to climate change and nutrient pollution. The problem has been documented in all 50 states, in marine environments as well as in freshwater sources such as the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. Thanks to the GAO, NOAA and the EPA have their tasks clearly laid out in front of them. They should heed the GAO’s advice — and do so quickly, resisting the urge to slowly come up with the perfect plan before taking action. | 2022-07-12T19:15:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | EPA, NOAA need to work faster on algal blooms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/algal-blooms-epa-noaa-working-group/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/algal-blooms-epa-noaa-working-group/ |
President Biden departs from the south lawn of the White House on July 8. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
If you want to understand President Biden’s troubles, just look at all the news about gas prices.
Or to be more specific, look at the lack of media coverage, now that gas prices are falling precipitously, dropping 35 cents just in the last month. Yet the news does not lead every night with stories in which producers scour the country for the least expensive gas so they can put up one picture after another of signs showing how low the price has gotten.
Biden had very little to do with that price decline, just as he had very little to do with the increase that preceded it. Yet the increase was given maximum attention, with lots of discussion of how it would hurt him; the decline is essentially ignored.
It’s just one example that shows how the political and media system in which we all reside is built to make every president look like a failure — right up until they win reelection.
Right now Biden is in an approval trough, one many prior presidents experienced around the same time. The initial honeymoon, driven by all the hope and possibility of a new era, wears off once the difficult work of governing begins.
Legislative successes may come in the first year of a presidency, but then they get harder to come by. The president’s supporters, realizing he’s unable to wave a wand and bring about the paradise he promised during the campaign, begin to feel dissatisfied. Since almost every president sees their party suffer a brutal midterm loss, the news is full of discussion of his coming defeat.
Perhaps most importantly, bad news is always treated as more important than good news, so everything that is bad for the president gets amplified. That applies to gas prices and inflation, and it applies to the president himself: A new poll showing him with surprisingly high approval ratings will get a fraction of the coverage of one showing him with surprisingly low approval.
So you probably saw extensive media coverage of a New York Times poll that came out Monday, showing a majority of Democrats saying they want another presidential nominee in 2024. While no one would say it doesn’t show weakness for Biden, it’s an old story; here’s an article in The Post from September of 1982 about a poll showing a majority of voters saying Ronald Reagan shouldn’t run again in 1984. You may remember how that election turned out.
It’s a good reminder of how presidential approval tends to ebb and flow. Obviously, real-world events make a big difference, whether it’s the economy or foreign crises or natural disasters. But what we often see is that after the first midterm defeat, presidents slowly recover the public’s esteem, and everything changes once the public is presented with a binary choice between the president and a challenger.
That isn’t to deny Biden could have done plenty of things better. Like other liberals, I’ve been critical of some of his choices and his handling of a number of issues. I worry that he has been unable to manage his party’s base to keep them engaged and energized. And there are legitimate questions about his age (he’d be 86 at the end of his second term).
But we should also be careful when we discern a causal connection between whatever substantive or stylistic critique we have of the president and his low approval ratings.
Here’s an example: One criticism Biden’s supporters make is that he can be too downbeat, that to demonstrate sympathy with people’s struggles only reinforces the idea that things are bad. It’s a reasonable point, but it’s also sometimes accompanied by the observation that if Donald Trump were in the same situation, he’d say that even the most incremental improvement anywhere is the greatest thing that ever happened in world history and we should all be down on our knees thanking him.
Whenever there’s a good jobs report or even a decline in gas prices, some liberals will say, “If this was Trump he’d be on the news taking credit for it!” Which indeed he would. But people often forget that it didn’t actually work.
Trump never convinced most Americans he was doing a great job; he was the only president in the history of polling never to crack 50 percent approval, not even for a single day. His party was blown out in the 2018 midterms, and then he lost his reelection bid.
You may believe that in a just and rational world, Trump’s approval would have never been higher than 5 or 10 percent, but even so, all his preening and bragging clearly failed. And while it might not hurt for Biden to have a more relentlessly positive message, there isn’t much reason to think doing so would have an enormous effect on how voters think of him.
None of this means Biden is a secret political genius. But other presidents — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — found themselves in similar situations and recovered to win reelection and leave office in the glow of public affection. The same could happen to Biden, and the good news for him is that if there’s a story the media loves almost as much as the one that says everything is terrible, it’s the one about a dramatic comeback. | 2022-07-12T19:16:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Joe Biden's bad news problem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/biden-bad-news-problem/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/biden-bad-news-problem/ |
Effort is latest Biden administration response to Supreme Court ruling last month that overturned Roe v. Wade
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta (Allison Zaucha for The Washington Post)
The Justice Department is launching a “reproductive rights task force” to marshal federal legal resources aimed at preventing overreach from state and local governments seeking to impose new bans on abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, officials said Tuesday.
Justice officials said the move should consolidate work that was underway in the months leading up to the high court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down federal safeguards for abortion that had stood for five decades.
The task force, led by Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, will be charged with monitoring and evaluating state and local legislation and weighing legal action against states that ban abortion medication or attempt to block a woman from traveling out of state for an abortion, among other measures. The effort will include dedicated staff and representatives from a wide swath of the Justice Department, including the civil rights division, U.S. attorneys’ offices, the Office of Access to Justice and the Office of the Solicitor General.
Abortion is now banned is these states. See where the laws have changed.
Some Democratic activists and lawmakers have expressed frustration over the White House’s response to changes in abortion law in recent weeks, urging the Biden administration to push the bounds of what it believes it can do in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling. In response, President Biden delivered a fiery speech Friday as he signed an executive order asking his administration to pursue an array of measures aimed at bolstering abortion rights.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced one such measure included in Biden’s directive. The agency updated guidance reminding doctors that they must terminate a pregnancy if doing so is necessary to stabilize a patient in an emergency medical situation.
Similar to the announcement of the Justice Department task force, the HHS memo doesn’t include new policy, but rather seeks to cut through the confusion providers are facing on the ground in states where abortions are newly restricted. Senior U.S. health officials reiterated their belief that federal law supersedes state abortion bans, protecting clinicians’ judgment when administering treatment during an emergency.
In a statement, Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the new Justice Department task force “a meaningful step in providing a framework for enforcing federal protection for those helping patients navigate access to abortion, and we look forward to seeing its work quickly take shape.”
Since the Supreme Court ruling, she said, she has traveled to several states to discussed the impact of the decision.
Gretchen Whitmer's abortion fight -- from the porch with her daughters
Justice officials said they have been working for months to prepare for the Supreme Court’s decision and the likelihood of a flurry of legislation in Republican-led states to restrict abortion and, potentially, criminalize efforts from doctors to assist women in gaining access to the procedure.
Since the court’s ruling, more than a dozen states have moved to ban or severely restrict abortions, according to The Washington Post’s tracker. Those efforts have been met with a spate of lawsuits from abortion rights groups. The legal arguments vary, though they often contend that the state constitution protects a patient’s right to obtain an abortion. Federal judges have blocked abortion bans in states such as in Utah and Kentucky, but allowed them to go forward in states including Texas and Louisiana.
Some Republican-led states also have moved to ban the practice of medicine around abortion pills, such as blocking them from being shipped or prescribed during telehealth visits — setting up likely litigation in the courts. The Food and Drug Administration approved the medication in 2000, saying the drugs were safe and effective for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.
Some experts argue there’s a strong argument that the FDA approval of a drug preempts state action — and that new restrictions in states where abortion is being curtailed or outlawed wouldn’t hold up in federal courts.
Attorney General Merrick Garland signaled last month that the Justice Department would engage in the fight to protect those seeking legal means to abortion access, calling the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs a “devastating blow to reproductive freedom.”
Justice officials said the new task force would respond to a provision in Biden’s executive order to encourage private attorneys and law firms to provide pro bono services for patients and health care providers. The agency also will gather online resources, including legal briefs, and provide technical assistance to congressional lawmakers around legislative efforts to codify abortion protections. | 2022-07-12T19:49:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Justice Dept. announces task force to fight overreach on abortion bans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/justice-abortion-task-force-gupta/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/justice-abortion-task-force-gupta/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Putin to visit Tehran; Russia, Ukraine to ...
Samantha Power, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, makes remarks as other officials honor those who participated in Operation Allies Welcome, a federal initiative to resettle Afghan refugees at the State Department on Oct. 13, 2021. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
The request comes as the United Nations’ World Food Program warns about what it is calling a global emergency, saying the number of people who are acutely food insecure has nearly tripled since 2019 to some 345 million. The agency, which provides food relief, requires some $22 billion to meet emergency needs in 2022 but faces a major funding gap given soaring prices of basic commodities.
Experts say the war in Ukraine, normally a major grain exporter, has worsened a slow-building crisis created by a combination of global conflict, climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and increasing concentration in the worldwide food production and distribution system.
The United States and its allies, seeking to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion, have promised strong support for food insecurity, but advocates say more is needed. Countries in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, among those who typically rely on imports from Ukraine, are among the worst affected.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, USAID has provided more than $2 billion for emergency food assistance, the agency has said.
But the senators allege that USAID is moving too slowly, failing to get approved funding out the door, meaning that aid approved in a March assistance package for Ukraine may not reach recipients until the fall. They said the agency has a woefully inadequate system for overseeing food aid contracts, with a staff of fewer than five contracting officers to manage more than 1,200 contracts.
The lawmakers, led by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), also cited reports that USAID leaders were “responsible for the relatively slow rate of programming by second guessing humanitarian priorities and seeking to deviate funding to support irrelevant development priorities, thereby undermining humanitarian requirements to scale-up and respond quickly to save lives and alleviate human suffering.”
USAID’s press office did not provide an immediate response to the letter, whose signatories also included Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), the top Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, respectively.
Ernst, along with Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Delware), is spearheading a separate effort to waive requirements that half of U.S. food aid under certain authorities be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels, which can make aid delivery slower and more costly. | 2022-07-12T20:24:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Move faster in aiding global food crisis, senators urge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/united-states-food-aid-global/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/united-states-food-aid-global/ |
'He is not an impressionable child’: Cheney lays marker on Trump and crime
If there’s one member of the Jan. 6 committee most focused on guiding the Justice Department to charge Donald Trump, it’s Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). Cheney was the first, back in December, to preview the crime that the committee would ultimately focus on: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. Cheney later objected when Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said the committee wouldn’t be making a criminal referral to the DOJ. Cheney said last week that, in fact, multiple criminal referrals could be on the way.
Cheney has now made another statement on this front, continuing to try to point the Justice Department in a specific direction.
At the start of Tuesday’s hearing, Cheney roundly and somewhat preemptively dismissed the idea that Trump was merely being guided in his actions by those around them.
“Now, the argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by others outside the administration, that he was persuaded to ignore his closest advisers and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong,” Cheney said.
She added: “The strategy is to blame people his advisers called, quote, ‘the crazies’ for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child.”
She said the record, in fact, showed quite the opposite — that he was told over and over again that he had in fact lost his reelection. The committee has shared lots of evidence that he had been told this, and it would play new evidence to that effect Tuesday.
Then came the key line from Cheney: “No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.”
Cheney’s choice of words is important. In sum, Cheney dismissed the idea floated by some legal experts that perhaps Trump could be guilty by virtue of his “willful blindness” to the fact that he had lost. Courts including the Supreme Court have established that when it comes to crimes like the one the Jan. 6 committee is focused on — obstruction of an official proceeding — proving that someone chose to remain “willfully blind” to the facts can be used to prove culpability.
Some witnesses, such as former attorney general William P. Barr and former deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue, have gestured in that direction, noting that when they debunked Trump’s voter-fraud claims in front of him, he merely moved on to the next claim without demonstrating much in the way of engagement with the facts or curiosity about them.
That said, while “willful blindness” would seem a lower standard to prove, it’s not without its pitfalls. For instance, going with that standard would mean Trump’s defense team could fight back by arguing that he actually believed the bogus voter-fraud theories he espoused. (“Delusional pigheadedness is indeed a defense,” Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman has summarized.) And surmising what Trump actually believes is a minefield plenty have stumbled through over the past seven years, with Trump often deliberately providing contradictory indications of where his mind’s at.
After Cheney’s comment, the committee presented significant new evidence that those around Trump knew he had lost and that Trump would have been aware of this as well. To wit:
In new testimony taped last week, former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone said that he agreed with Barr’s Dec. 1 statement that the evidence of fraud was not sufficient to call the results of the election into question.
Cipollone also confirmed that chief of staff Mark Meadows was telling people that Trump would eventually agree to a graceful exit.
Barr testified that Meadows told him “I think that [Trump is] becoming more realistic and knows that there’s a limit to how far he can take this. And then Jared [Kushner] said, you know, ‘Yeah, we’re working on this.’ ”
Trump deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere said that, after the electoral college validated Biden’s win on Dec. 14, “I told him that my personal viewpoint was that the electoral college had met, which is the system that our country is set under to elect a president and vice president. And I believed at that point that the means for him to pursue litigation was probably closed.”
The thrust of all of it is clear: Lots of people knew how ridiculous all of this was. And rather than focusing on pursuing Trump’s claims, they just wanted to know when it was all going to be over. These aren’t the conversations you have when you’re taking what Trump is doing seriously. Crucially, it also suggests that Meadows, who very much assisted in Trump’s crusade, knew better and was telling people (based on what, it’s unclear) that reason would ultimately prevail.
This isn’t the first time the committee has asserted that its goal is to prove Trump knew — and nothing less. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has said, “I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew.”
But some close to the situation continue to push the idea that ne’er-do-wells were whispering in Trump’s ear and manipulating him — a view that’s consistent with how aides have long talked anonymously about how Trump’s worst impulses came to be. Cheney laid down a marker, asserting that the committee won’t settle for that, even if it could conceivably be used to prove Trump broke the law. | 2022-07-12T20:37:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Cheney lays marker on Trump and his alleged Jan. 6 crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/cheney-trump-willful-blindness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/cheney-trump-willful-blindness/ |
A large crowd marches on Cedar Avenue during a University of Minnesota student-led protest in Minneapolis after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade on June 24. (Renee Jones Schneider/Star Tribune, via AP) (Ren�e Jones Schneider/AP)
Along the Gulf Coast, abortion rights have become severely restricted in recent weeks, with states rushing to enact bans on all or most procedures after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
Meg Autry, an obstetrician and gynecologist and a professor at University of California San Francisco, has an idea to preserve access to the procedure: a floating clinic. She and a team of other health-care providers would offer surgical abortions and other reproductive health services aboard a ship in federal Gulf Coast waters. It would be outside state jurisdiction, yet closer than other states where the procedure is protected.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Autry called it “an option for patients who don’t have other options.”
She said she had been mulling the concept for several years as abortion rights eroded. She consulted with lawyers and incorporated a nonprofit called PRROWESS, or Protecting Reproductive Rights of Women Endangered by State Statutes.
The effort became more urgent when the conservative justices became the majority on the Supreme Court, and then even more urgent when the court decision came down last month, ending the nationwide right to an abortion in place since the landmark Roe ruling in 1973.
“When the decision became final, we said, ‘We need to capitalize on this moment. This is now a reality,'” Autry said.
A Dutch organization, Women on Waves, has taken a similar approach. The group, created by physician Rebecca Gomperts, provides medication abortions in international waters off the coasts of countries that restrict the procedure. Its abortion ships have sailed in previous years to Mexico, Guatemala, Poland, Morocco, Spain and Ireland.
Now the U.S. is among countries where abortion bans are in effect. Nationwide access has given way to a patchwork of restrictions since the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision, with 16 states banning or mostly banning the procedure and three more expected to do so imminently. An additional three are likely to implement bans.
Southern states are among the most restrictive. Laws banning abortions are on the books in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee. Florida prohibits the procedure after 15 weeks, and Georgia has a six-week ban pending in the courts.
For residents of those states, accessing an abortion requires travel to one of 20 states or the District of Columbia, where it remains legal. That can involve significant costs and time away from home, family and work. A floating clinic, Autry said, would be “closer and quicker.”
“The biggest thing behind this idea really is that wealthy people in our country will be able to get the services that they want,” she said, adding: “The people that are impacted by these practices are poor people, people of color, marginalized communities.”
Depending on the size of the vessel, the clinic could serve at least 20 patients per day, Autry said. The goal would be to offer care at little or no cost to the patient. Services would include surgical abortion up to 14 weeks, contraception, and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
It is “a huge venture” expected to cost about $20 million to get up and running, Autry said. Her nonprofit has begun collecting donations, and while she declined to provide a figure, she said the response has been “phenomenal.”
“This is something that most of the country doesn’t believe in,” she said of the Supreme Court’s decision. “So we have to be creative.” | 2022-07-12T20:37:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Doctor proposes floating abortion clinic in Gulf of Mexico - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/floating-abortion-clinic-gulf-mexico/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/floating-abortion-clinic-gulf-mexico/ |
A man was fatally shot outside a shoe store in Northeast Washington on June 15. (Peter Hermann/The Washington Post)
D.C. police have arrested a man in a fatal shooting that occurred outside a shoe store last month at a shopping center in Northeast Washington, according to authorities.
Darius Anderson, 21, of Northeast, was charged with first-degree murder while armed. A D.C. Superior Court judge on Tuesday ordered Anderson detained and set a hearing for July 22.
Anderson’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
The shooting occurred about 11:44 a.m. on June 15 in front of Shoe City in the 3900 block of Minnesota Avenue NE, in the East River Park Shopping Center in the Benning neighborhood.
Police identified the victim as Israel Mattocks, 30, from Southeast Washington.
An arrest affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court says Anderson and Mattocks were in a different shoe store across the street from Shoe City when they began arguing. Police said Mattocks left that store and went into Shoe City, and police allege Anderson followed him and shot him as the victim came outside.
Police said Mattocks had been shot seven times and that he had a .40-caliber handgun loaded with 14 bullets tucked inside his waistband.
Police said in court documents that Anderson also had a gun when he was arrested on Monday.
According to the arrest affidavit, Anderson told police he had argued with Mattocks, who did not know, over shoes. Anderson reportedly told police he feared Mattocks was reaching for a gun at the time of the shooting, according to the affidavit. | 2022-07-12T20:41:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police arrest man in killing outside Shoe City in Northeast Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/homicide-arrest-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/homicide-arrest-dc/ |
Lawyer Alex Murdaugh walks into his bond hearing on Sept. 16, 2021, in Varnville, S.C. (Mic Smith/AP)
South Carolina authorities have informed the family of Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced patriarch of a legal dynasty in the state, that criminal charges will be brought against him for the double murder of his wife and son, Murdaugh’s brother told local media.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) has been investigating the killings of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, who were fatally shot outside the family’s Islandton, S.C., home in June 2021. The double homicide, which has rocked the small rural community in the state’s southern Lowlands, was even more striking because of the Murdaugh family’s prominent status in South Carolina, where three generations of Murdaughs once served as elected prosecutors for 87 consecutive years.
John Marvin Murdaugh, Alex’s younger brother, told the Post and Courier in Charleston that SLED met with the Murdaugh family Tuesday to give them a heads-up that criminal charges would be presented to a grand jury this week.
“The entire family has been consistent that regardless of what goes on, we want the truth,” the brother said to the newspaper.
News of the upcoming charges were first reported by local outlets such as FitsNews.com and the State newspaper in Columbia, S.C.
SLED spokeswoman Renee Wunderlich told The Washington Post that the investigation into “the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh is still active and ongoing.”
“Agents are committed to the integrity of the investigation, thus no additional information from SLED will be provided at this time,” Wunderlich said in a statement.
Robert Kittle, a spokesman with the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office, told The Post on Tuesday that the office “cannot confirm anything that’s being reported about criminal charges against Alex Murdaugh.”
Jim Griffin, one of Murdaugh’s attorneys, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Dick Harpootlian, another of Murdaugh’s attorneys, told the State that he had “no official word from anybody about anything.”
John Marvin Murdaugh did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The case has remained unsolved during a 13-month stretch in which the story has gained national attention, as people across the United States have been captivated by the double homicide involving a prominent family at Moselle, their 1,772-acre rural estate in Colleton County, S.C.
A prosecutor’s son got threats after fatal accident, his family says. Then he and his mom were shot to death.
Once seen as a standard for a successful lawyer, Alex Murdaugh, 54, has seen his life come unglued. In addition to being accused of killing his family, authorities also allege he was part of a multimillion-dollar insurance fraud scheme. Since November, 15 state grand jury indictments containing 79 charges have come down against Murdaugh, who prosecutors say defrauded $8.4 million from victims.
On June 7, 2021, Murdaugh called 911 to say he found his wife and son shot outside, near dog kennels at the estate.
“My wife and child have been shot badly. … Please hurry!” Murdaugh yelled, according to a 911 call. “They’re on the ground out at my kennels.”
Murdaugh told authorities at the time that he had left the estate earlier in the night.
“As soon as I answered the phone, I knew something was wrong,” John Marvin Murdaugh told “Good Morning America” in June 2021. “He said, ‘Come as fast as you can. Paul and Maggie have been hurt.’ ”
In the months that passed, authorities did not name suspects in the case.
The mystery surrounding the Murdaugh family continued last September, when his family law firm not only fired Alex Murdaugh but also accused him of stealing from clients, according to the State. Then after Murdaugh initially told authorities that he was the victim of a shooting in September, police charged Murdaugh with hiring a hit man to kill him so that his surviving son, Buster, could collect a $10 million life insurance payout, according to SLED.
Alex Murdaugh surrenders in alleged suicide-for-hire plot as police launch new probe into housekeeper’s death
Police arrested Curtis Edward Smith of Walterboro, S.C., on charges of assisted suicide, assault and battery of a high aggravated nature, pointing and presenting a firearm, insurance fraud and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. Shortly thereafter, authorities allegedly obtained a confession from Murdaugh admitting to the insurance fraud plot. Murdaugh later announced that he was entering rehab to confront an opioid addiction.
Murdaugh is still being held in the Richland County jail on a $7 million bond on the financial-related charges.
If he is convicted of murder in the killings of his wife and son, his could receive the death penalty, according to state criminal law. | 2022-07-12T20:41:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Alex Murdaugh, S.C. attorney accused of killing wife and son, to be charged, brother says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/alex-murdaugh-attorney-murder-charges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/alex-murdaugh-attorney-murder-charges/ |
8 nominated in race to succeed Johnson
Eight candidates will be on the ballot Wednesday in the first round of voting for Boris Johnson’s successor as Conservative Party leader and British prime minister.
Britain’s next leader will be selected by Conservative members of Parliament and dues-paying members of the Conservative Party, which will remain in power. Conservatives are aiming to announce their next leader on Sept. 5, with that person installed as prime minister soon after.
To stand, candidates needed to meet a Tuesday deadline to get the support of at least 20 fellow Tory lawmakers.
The contenders include Rishi Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor of the exchequer helped launch the revolt against Johnson; Penny Mordaunt, a junior trade minister who served as Britain’s first female defense chief; and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
Also in the running: Conservative backbench lawmaker Tom Tugendhat; former health secretary Jeremy Hunt; YouGov polling founder and newly appointed chancellor Nadhim Zahawi; Attorney General Suella Braverman; and former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch.
— Karla Adam
Renowned filmmaker arrested in crackdown
The arrest of award-winning director Jafar Panahi and the wider pressure on filmmakers follow a wave of recent arrests as tensions escalate between the hard-line government and the West. Security forces have detained several foreigners and a prominent reformist politician as talks to revive Tehran’s 2015 nuclear accord with world powers hit a deadlock and fears grow over the country’s economic crisis.
Panahi had gone to the prosecutor’s office in Tehran on Monday to check on the cases of two colleagues detained last week when security forces scooped him up, as well, the reports said.
A colleague who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals said authorities sent Panahi to the notorious Evin prison to serve out a term dating to 2011. Panahi received the six-year sentence on charges of creating anti-government propaganda and was banned from filmmaking for 20 years. However, the sentence was never really enforced.
Israel grants more Palestinian permits ahead of Biden visit: Israel said it would increase the number of work permits issued to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and allow thousands more Palestinians to gain legal status ahead of President Biden's visit to the region this week. Israel will allow an additional 5,500 Palestinians to be included in the Palestinian population registry so they can get ID cards. Rights groups say tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza lack such status, forcing them to live under severe movement restrictions. Israel said it would grant an additional 1,500 permits for Palestinian laborers in Gaza to work in Israel, bringing the total number to 15,500.
Man convicted in 2015 Paris attacks reportedly won't appeal: The only surviving attacker from the November 2015 massacre in Paris has renounced the right to appeal his murder conviction and his sentence of life imprisonment without parole, his attorneys said. Salah Abdeslam was found guilty last month of murder and attempted murder in relation with a terrorist enterprise, among other charges, for his role in the attacks, which killed 130 people. His attorneys said he decided "to give up his right to appeal for reasons only known to him."
Mali arrests nearly 50 troops from Ivory Coast: Malian authorities arrested nearly 50 troops from Ivory Coast who came to Mali to work for a contractor for MINUSMA, the United Nations mission there. Mali called the Ivorians "mercenaries." The arrests could raise tensions between the two West African countries. A U.N. mission spokesman said the Ivorians "are not part of one of the MINUSMA contingents but have been deployed for several years in Mali as part of logistical support on behalf of one of our contingents." He said their arrival as relief would have been communicated beforehand to Malian authorities. | 2022-07-12T20:41:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: July 12, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-12-2022/2022/07/12/26d6e0d0-01ed-11ed-bdea-f300220ae4dc_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-july-12-2022/2022/07/12/26d6e0d0-01ed-11ed-bdea-f300220ae4dc_story.html |
Federal Reserve rate increases have hit the stock market and are cooling housing prices
The Federal Reserve building in Washington on July 6. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News)
The Federal Reserve Board, as many of you know, is widely expected to announce on Wednesday that it’s raising interest rates by three-quarters of a percent. That would be the second such increase in two months — and 1.5 percent over two months is a very, very big deal by Fed standards.
Not since the days of former Fed chairman Paul Volcker combating inflation 40 years ago by tanking the economy to wipe out double-digit inflation have we seen anything remotely resembling what the Fed is doing these days.
This week’s expected rate hike, which is likely to be followed more hikes, will be yet another sign that the free ride that the economy got when the Fed cut interest rates to zero in March 2020 to combat the financial and social dislocations caused by the pandemic downturn has come to an end.
The rate cut, an emergency move to help combat the coronavirus’s impact on the economy and financial markets and a huge covid-drivenincrease in unemployment, was the start of the free ride.
The rate cut set off a boom in home prices because mortgage rates fell into the ultralow three percent range.
The cut helped support the stock market by making it clear that future corporate profits would zoom upward. In addition, those now-higher projected future profits had a higher present value because stock analysts and other financial types discounted them at lower rates.
Finally, many savers trying to live off their investment income were forced into the stock market because yields on safe, interest-bearing investments, such as money market mutual funds and short-term Treasury securities, had fallen sharply because of the Fed’s rate cuts.
But the bill for that free ride so many of us got is now coming dues in a variety of direct and indirect ways.
Largely because of Fed rate increases, mortgage rates have risen sharply, slowing down and in some cases reversing the increase in the value of homes, which are millions of Americans’ biggest financial asset.
Rate increases have also hurt the stock market because they threaten to reduce corporate earnings and have decreased today’s discounted value of these lower projected profits.
The increases have also hurt the stock market because they not only threaten to reduce corporate earnings but the higher interest rates decreased today’s discounted value of those lower projected profits.
In addition, average money market fund yields have been rising sharply (to 1.22 percent as of Thursday, according to Crane Data, up from 0.02 percent a year ago), making them more attractive compared with dividend yields on S&P 500 and Total Stock Market index funds. So some money is moving out of the stock market into interest-bearing investments such as money funds and short-term Treasury securities, whose yields have been rising rapidly.
Unlike, say, a chemistry class experiment where you mix different things into a beaker and can quickly see the results, it’s impossible to precisely measure the impact of what the Fed is doing.
Despite the Fed’s rate increases, unemployment has held steady at a historically low level of 3.6 percent so far.
However, barring some sort of economic miracle, unemployment seems likely to rise, slowing down wage inflation and reducing the need for price increases but inflicting serious pain on people who find themselves out of work.
Some major tech firms have slowed hiring and companies such as Tesla, once an avid hirer, have been laying people off.
What is a recession? Your economy questions answered.
Would this have happened if the Fed hadn’t been raising rates and telling all and sundry that it’s trying to slow down the economy to slow down inflation? There’s no way to know.
But it’s clear that fear of a Fed-caused economic slowdown is affecting corporate behavior — and that the impact of less hiring, more firing and less expansion inflicts all sorts of pain up and down the economic food chain.
How long will the Fed keep clamping down on the economy to fight inflation? It doesn’t know yet.
But amid the gathering gloom, you can find some encouraging — albeit modest — signs that some of inflation’s worst days may be behind us.
The price of gasoline, a major economic and psychic contributor to inflation fears, began falling last month according to AAA, which tracks gas prices all over the country. AAA says the average price for regular gas Tuesday was $4.66 a gallon, down from a high of $5.00 on June 14.
That’s still up almost 50 percent from the $3.14 average price a year ago, but it’s better than it was. And it’s been falling steadily.
And some day, Russia’s horrific attack on Ukraine, which has inflicted massive economic damage on global energy and grain markets — in addition to killing thousands of people, destroying Ukraine’s economy and sending millions of Ukrainians into exile — will come to an end.
Yes, more pain is on the way as the economic free ride from 2020 comes to an end.
But with any luck, by this time next year, our 2022 inflation problem will have become history rather than current events. And the Fed will have stopped raising rates. | 2022-07-12T20:46:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fed rate increases end economy's free ride - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/12/fed-rate-increase-economy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/12/fed-rate-increase-economy/ |
Antiabortion activists sentenced for trespassing at Alexandria clinic
Two claimed to have obtained the remains of more than 100 fetuses from a D.C. abortion clinic and called on the city to investigate whether they were aborted legally
Lauren Handy, director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, is seen in April. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Two antiabortion activists who claimed earlier this year to have obtained dozens of fetuses from a D.C. facility that provides abortions were sent to jail Tuesday for trespassing at an Alexandria women’s clinic last year.
Lauren Handy, who faces similar charges in multiple cases around the country, was sentenced in Alexandria District Court to 30 days in jail, starting immediately. Terrisa Bukovinac was sentenced to four days.
The two were among six activists who, in November 2021, trespassed in the waiting room of the Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, handing out roses to women and advocating against abortion, according to news reports and a news release from the women. The other four were Joan Andrews Bell, Kristin Turner, Cassidy Shooltz and Jonathan Darnel.
5 fetuses found in D.C. home of woman charged in abortion clinic blockade
Bell, another longtime activist, was also sentenced to 30 days. Turner, Shooltz and Darnel were sentenced to four days apiece, according to court records.
This was the first time the four who received the shorter sentences have been jailed, said Caroline Smith, a member of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), a group to which Handy, Bukovinac and most of the others belong. Handy has been jailed for her activism before, Smith said, but 30 days will be her longest stint.
The Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic declined to comment Tuesday.
“Our actions reflect that we accept consequences,” Handy told The Washington Post before she was sentenced. “I think it brings legitimacy to our movement.”
PAAU said it will be holding nightly vigils outside the Alexandria Detention Center.
Late last month, Handy was found guilty by a jury of trespassing and resisting police during a protest at a Flint, Mich., abortion clinic in 2019, WNEM reported. She is scheduled to be sentenced there in September and faces up to two years in jail, she said.
Smith said Handy faces similar charges in California and Ohio.
In March, the Justice Department charged Handy and eight others with federal civil rights offenses in connection with an alleged blockade at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in D.C. in 2020. No trial date in that case has been set. If convicted of the offenses, the defendants each face up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $350,000.
After a secret funeral for fetal remains, a priest faced a choice
The same day in March that the federal indictment was announced, D.C. police removed five fetuses from a rowhouse where Handy had been staying.
Handy and Bukovinac said they had obtained them and other fetal remains from a medical waste company worker who was picking them up from the Washington Surgi-Clinic.
The medical waste company has denied that its workers handed the activists any remains. Handy and Bukovinac have said that they buried most of them with the help of a Catholic priest at an unknown location. | 2022-07-12T20:46:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lauren Handy, DC antiabortion activists sentenced for trespassing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/lauren-handy-dc-abortion-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/lauren-handy-dc-abortion-trial/ |
By Joshua Goodman | AP
In this photo provided by the Kenemore family, Jerrel Kenemore stands at a Colombian checkpoint in the middle of the Simon Bolivar international bridge connecting San Antonio del Tachira, Venezuela with Villa del Rosario, Colombia, the second week of March 2022. Kenemore, from the Dallas area, is one of at least three American citizens who were quietly arrested in 2022 allegedly trying to enter Venezuela illegally and are being held at a maximum security prison facing long sentences, The Associated Press has learned. (Kenemore family via AP) (Uncredited/Kenemore family) | 2022-07-12T20:46:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | AP Exclusive: Venezuela jails 3 Americans amid US outreach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ap-exclusive-venezuela-jails-3-americans-amid-us-outreach/2022/07/12/2de43252-0219-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ap-exclusive-venezuela-jails-3-americans-amid-us-outreach/2022/07/12/2de43252-0219-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Brittney Griner’s fate poses a warning to U.S. sports and Hollywood
Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom outside Moscow on July 7. The WNBA star is on trial on drug charges stemming from her arrest in February. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
Audiences in authoritarian countries might buy American products — but that doesn’t mean they buy American values.
That is an unpleasant truth the American sports and entertainment industries must grapple with now that Brittney Griner, the WNBA star, is facing 10 years in a Russian prison for an alleged drug offense.
The free-trader’s argument for cultural and athletic engagement with authoritarian countries has long been that American cultural products are great ambassadors for American values. But, too often, the price for access to those markets has been silence — or at least quiet — on everything from the basic facts about Taiwan’s status as an independent nation to the murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Griner’s detention suggests that the cost could get much higher, if dictators see an opportunity to turn stars into bargaining chips.
Which raises the question: Are these dangers and compromises truly worth it?
Sure, global audiences have shelled out billions of dollars for the thrill of watching the physics-defying high jinks of street racer Dominic Toretto in the “Fast and Furious” franchise or dinosaur death matches in the “Jurassic World” movies. And LeBron James is a giant international basketball star — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in salary and endorsements.
But there is nothing particularly democratic about such exports. And stars and executives seeking the right to pursue these business opportunities might have been compensated handsomely — but many have also paid with their integrity and dignity.
In early 2019, for instance, Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings acknowledged that the company had censored an episode of Hasan Minaj’s “Patriot Act” that criticized Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in exchange for the ability to air shows with explicit sexual content in the kingdom. Last year, actor John Cena made a groveling Mandarin-language apology to his Chinese fans for the sin of referring to Taiwan as the independent nation it is.
Disney, which hoped its live-action remake of “Mulan” would be a hit in China, disgraced itself two years ago by thanking Xinjiang government agencies, including those allegedly involved in the suppression and surveillance of ethnic minorities, in the film’s credits.
But another dust-up exacted higher stakes.
In fall 2019, then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey briefly tweeted, then deleted, support for pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong. His abortive exercise of free speech preceded a trip to China by Adam Silver, commissioner of the National Basketball Association. The NBA released a statement saying that Morey’s remarks “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.” In China, James asked Silver whether Morey would be disciplined for the trouble he had caused the league, a discouraging display of preference for profit over principle from a star who has been outspoken on other issues.
This time, though, the consequences weren’t limited to a domestic public relations disaster. Figures in the Chinese government and business community demanded Morey be fired. China Central Television, which had the exclusive broadcast rights to NBA games, banned them (with the exception of one 2020 playoff) and returned to a normal broadcast schedule only this spring. Chinese sponsors cut ties with the league. In April 2021, Silver estimated that “the total revenue loss across all of our business lines in China” was “in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Chinese fans, businesses and government officials may like American basketball teams. But it turned out they liked U.S. deference to China’s territorial claims even more. The NBA wasn’t able to use its popularity in China to champion American values. Instead, an authoritarian regime proved it could, and would, use the league’s success against it.
There are echoes of the NBA’s misfortunes in the far greater calamity that has befallen Griner and her family. Griner was arrested in Moscow in February on her way to play for Russia’s UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA’s offseason and charged with bringing two vape cartridges containing hashish oil into the country. Her detention coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, giving the impression that the Kremlin had effectively taken a high-profile hostage. Earlier this month, she pleaded guilty, saying she had packed the cartridges by accident.
If the optimistic logic of American cultural exports held true, Griner’s Americanness and star status should have protected her. But the Russian government’s decision to arrest and prosecute Griner reveals a blunt calculation: Americans value Griner more than Russians ever could. And the Putin regime can use her as leverage in its showdown with the United States without provoking domestic disgruntlement.
It should have been clear long before now that what’s good for Hollywood or American sports isn’t inherently good for the United States. With China letting in fewer American movies and Griner in a Russian jail, U.S. sports leagues and entertainment companies need a reckoning.
Appeasing tyrannical governments has never been a good look — especially when the rewards are laced with poison. | 2022-07-12T20:47:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Brittney Griner’s fate poses a warning to U.S. sports and Hollywood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/brittney-griner-russia-prison-warning-hollywood-sports/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/brittney-griner-russia-prison-warning-hollywood-sports/ |
The decades and billions spent on the James Webb telescope? Worth it.
The James Webb Space Telescope's full-color images. (ESA/Webb/AFP via Getty Images)
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” So says Hamlet to his school chum after a chilling encounter with a ghost. The line went through my mind as I looked at the first image released by NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope, the marvel of engineering and audacity recently parked and unfolded in an orbit roughly 1 million miles from home.
Operating so far away gives the Webb supersensitivity to infrared light that cannot be seen by the human eye. It can see much, much farther than the low-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. And because light travels at a constant speed, seeing farther in distance is the same as looking more deeply back in time.
The image is a picture from 4.6 billion years ago. This is only the first of many mind-boggling concepts contained in the spellbinding frame. A pitch-black background is speckled with thousands of distinct lights, some starlike in their brilliance, others smudgy, and still others smaller than pinpoints.
All these distinct lights are contained in a tiny speck of space. How tiny? Scientists proposed this way of envisioning: Take a single grain of sand, hold it out at arm’s length, and compare it to your entire field of vision. That is the speck of space Webb looked at to acquire its first observation.
David Von Drehle: The James Webb Space Telescope is human hope on a rocket
Those thousands of lights in that speck of space are not individual stars like our sun. They are entire galaxies. The one galaxy we know best, our own Milky Way, contains anywhere from 100 billion to 400 billion stars.
And here it might be helpful to spend a moment with the concept of a billion.
The word gets tossed around a lot, but the scale of it is not easily grasped. If you spent eight solid hours each day counting off the seconds, every day of the year without a break, starting at age 5, you would need to live almost to age 100 to reach 1 billion. In 100 such lifetimes, a person might count the stars of this single galaxy — one of thousands in a speck of the universe.
Thankfully, some people are better able to absorb such vastness, to get their heads around it and to think on such a scale, than I am. Their philosophies (as Hamlet might put it) are sufficient to conceive an instrument that records infinitesimal waves of energy emitted around the time the Earth was formed; to deploy that instrument at a position in space four times farther than the moon; and thus to take a picture of thousands of galaxies containing trillions of stars.
Other images, released by NASA on July 12, demonstrate the versatility of Webb’s magnificent eye. Peering at the blur of light that Hollywood’s Frank Capra imagined as an angel, in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” the new telescope compiled a detailed image of newly forming galaxies crashing into and through one another, tugging at one another’s stars and triggering the formation of new stars as one of the galaxies swirls around a massive black hole emitting the energy of 40 billion suns.
Another startling image looks like a painted mountain range studded with brilliant flecks of light, but is actually a picture of cosmic dust and superheated gas driven by the energy of new star formation across distances many times larger than our solar system.
Yet another dazzling pair of images unpacks the story of a star’s gradual death, its energy pulsing away in rings. And in the background, deep in time, are galaxies and more galaxies and more galaxies.
It’s not too much to say that a handful of images published over the space of 24 hours has already justified the decades of work and $10 billion invested in the Webb telescope. This is Hubble on steroids, the closest humans have yet come to glimpsing the true dimensions and inner workings of the universe. Our too-solid flesh prevents us from traveling across such distances, but we can look.
And perhaps by gazing outward, we will be inspired to examine anew our own existence. Earth is so small and humanity so transient, yet as far as we know we are the only ones watching and deciphering this cosmic unfolding. We turn steadily around a small but reliable star, and were it not for the problems we cause ourselves, we would live in a near utopia.
The more we can see the scale of the universe — the innumerable heavens and countless earths — the smaller our part in it feels. Smaller, yet more precious. For the farther we see, the humbler we become, and the fruit of humility is gratitude. | 2022-07-12T20:47:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The years and billions spent on the James Webb telescope? Worth it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/james-webb-space-telescope-worth-billions-and-decades/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/james-webb-space-telescope-worth-billions-and-decades/ |
Transcript: “American Cartel” A Conversation with Alex Gibney, Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham
MR. GIBNEY: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Alex Gibney. Today it’s my great pleasure to introduce two Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalists, Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham, who are going to discuss their new book, “American Cartel,” which is just an extraordinary work.
Welcome, Scott and Sari.
MR. HIGHAM: Thank you, Alex. Thanks for having us.
MS. HORWITZ: Hi, Alex.
MR. GIBNEY: Remember, as we proceed through this discussion, we always want to hear from you out there, our audience. So you can share your thoughts and questions for our guests on Washington Post Live by tweeting @PostLive.
All right. So let's get into this. Sari, let me start with you. You know, we're talking about companies that create and fuel the opioid crisis, and to some extent some people may feel, well, haven't we heard that story? We've heard this story about the Sacklers and indeed the Sacklers have been identified, and if criminal charges haven't been brought at least they've been vilified in the press.
But correct me if I'm wrong. This goes way beyond the Sacklers, does it not? This is not just the story of one bad apple.
MS. HORWITZ: You are exactly right, Alex. Most people, when they hear about the opioid epidemic, they think the Sacklers. They think Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin. But it's so much bigger than that. We found, in our two-year investigation and the writing of this book, a constellation of companies that fuel the deadliest epidemic, drug epidemic, in American history. Some of these companies are some of the largest in this country. Some we've heard of. They are household names--Walgreens, Walmart, Johnson & Johnson--some we've never heard of, and Scott is going to tell you a little bit more about one of those.
But these companies, over 20 years, distributed millions of opioids across the country. Actually, we found 100 billion pills that they distributed throughout the country. And you know, what was really shocking, Alex, is Scott and I traveled to many of the hardest-hit areas--Ohio, West Virginia, New England--and we talked to people in recovery, we talked to people struggling with rehab, in so much pain. And we met people and communicated with people like Ed Bisch and Cheryl Juaire whose sons were killed in this epidemic.
And you contrast, you juxtapose that pain, that grief of those families, and so many others who were touched by this epidemic, with what we found, internal emails from these companies where the people in the companies were laughing at the addicts. They were making fun of them. They were mocking them.
We found, by looking through thousands of documents, internal emails, for example, one company, AmerisourceBergen, passed around an email that was a parody of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song from that sitcom, and they were making fun of the "Pillbillies" from Appalachia. It's really shocking stuff.
And one of the companies we had never heard of, and you probably have never heard of out there--I know Alex has--was Mallinckrodt, and Scott can tell you a little bit about Mallinckrodt.
MR. HIGHAM: Yeah, we have been investigating this for quite some time, and when we first started investigating the opioid industry we had never heard of this company, Mallinckrodt. They are a very old-line pharmaceutical company founded around the turn of the last century out of St. Louis. And they jumped into this market that Purdue Pharma created and they started manufacturing 30-milligram oxycodone pills. They were blue in color. They had a "30" stamped on one side and an "M" stamped on the other. And these pills became so popular in the United States that users and dealers were referring to them as "blues" or "30s" or "M's." And Mallinckrodt produced 30 times the number of pills that Purdue Pharma produced, that we saw in the data that we obtained by going to court and intervening in a huge court case and trying to get access to DEA data that tracks all this information.
The company's conduct was so egregious, Alex, that at one point DEA called them, literally, a "kingpin." And this company also is responsible for some of the emails that were really kind of dehumanizing the victims of this epidemic. There was one guy who was a national sales manager for Mallinckrodt, and one of his customers was saying, you know, "We need more of these oxy 30s. I can't get enough of them. It looks like people are addicted to these things. Oh wait, they are." And this national sales manager, Victor Borelli, wrote back and said, "Just like Doritos. Keep eating. We'll make more."
MR. GIBNEY: Wow. So listen, Scott. I want to stay with you for a second, and then, Sara, I want to get back to you. You know, you identify a lot of the malefactors in this book, but I think one of the really important contributions of this book is that there is an Empire Strikes Back element to it. You also identify a couple of heroes, people who are--well, more than a couple but a number of heroes, people who are really trying to fight back and do the right thing and hold some people to account.
Talk about two of them, Joe Rannazzisi and Paul Farrell.
MS. HORWITZ: Yeah, this is a David-and-Goliath story, and it's told in two parts. It's told through characters, and two of our main characters, one appears mostly in the first part of our book and the second in the second half of the book. And the first half of the book is kind of like a police procedural. It's a detective story. And there's a guy named Joe Rannazzisi who is vaunted DEA agent who is in charge of the division that oversees the pharmaceutical industry for the DEA. And he and his team start to try to figure out, where are all these pills coming from? Which companies are responsible? What is happening here?
And he starts going after these companies, and they start fining them, they start shutting down their warehouses. And some of these companies are Fortune 500 companies with huge amounts of influence and power in Washington. They have big law firms that they rely upon in D.C. They have members of Congress who are on their side. And these companies began to push back, and they literally got Joe Rannazzisi removed from his position, and the members of his team were also removed from their position, and the whole operation was shut down.
And so in the second half of the book picks up with another hero, a guy named Paul Farrell, who is a small-town lawyer from Huntington, West Virginia, and he sees his town being ravaged by opioids. And he's having breakfast one morning with his family and, you know, he's been doing some medical malpractice cases and some other things along that line, and they start talking about this explosive story that's in the Charleston Gazette that morning, about how many pills were being distributed in West Virginia. And Paul's brother, who was a fighter pilot in the Iraq war, turns to his brother and says, "Paul, isn't this what you do for a living?"
And so that launches Paul on this journey to figure out how to hold these companies accountable, and he starts filing lawsuits, and pretty soon there's an entire collection of some of the biggest and brightest and smartest attorneys on the plaintiff's side going after these companies in this David-and-Goliath battle.
MR. GIBNEY: So we've got the civil actions and we have, to some extent, the actions of regulators like Joe Rannazzisi. But then, of course, Joe Rannazzisi gets sidelined. Sari, talk to me a little bit about the larger context of how business works in Washington, in terms of the revolving door, and explain a little bit about what the revolving door is and how it really helps to explain how this crisis became more and more problematic.
MS. HORWITZ: Such a great question, and we really deal with this a lot in our book. This story is a revolving door in Washington at its worst. So you have regulators like Joe Rannazzisi who are going after these companies, shutting down the warehouse, extracting millions of dollars in fines, going after what he calls "drug dealers in suits," basically. And they're trying to protect us. They're trying to protect the American people from dangerous narcotics.
Meanwhile, the drug companies, they are smart. They decide to lure away the best and the brightest if they can from the DEA and the Justice Department to help them as they are selling opioids, and they are very successful. They hired dozens of people from DEA and the Justice Department to work for these companies. So again, these are the people who are trying to protect us, working for the DEA and the Justice Department. They are lured away to the companies who are selling addictive painkillers that are killing people.
And one of the examples that I like in our book is a man named Linden Barber. He was a lawyer who worked at the DEA, and he worked with Joe Rannazzisi, closely with Joe Rannazzisi, while Joe was going after the companies, especially the distributors who were breaking the law. And Linden Barber leaves and goes and works to represent the drug industry. But he takes a step further. The drug industry started suing in court, and they were losing, and so they realized, okay, we're losing. We've got to change the law.
So they use Linden Barber. He helps them rewrite a law that can undercut the DEA's law enforcement tools, really, and of course, Linden Barber knows how to do that because he's been at the DEA.
So at the height of the opioid epidemic, we have people from the DEA who have left for bigger salaries, working with the drug industry, helping to pass legislation that stops the DEA from protecting Americans. It was really shocking.
MR. GIBNEY: It's really shocking, and even more cynical than that, when he testifies before Congress, as I understand it, he used his authority as a former DEA lawyer to convince or to give cover to Congresspeople that actually, as a law enforcement official, as somebody who cared deeply about it, this is actually going to be better, when in fact it's just the opposite. Is that right?
MS. HORWITZ: Yes. There was, in fact, a very explosive, dramatic hearing where Joe is there to testify and Lyndon Barber is there to testify. And, you know, the members of Congress really didn't seem that interested in hearing from Joe. They wanted to get past him, especially Marsha Blackburn, who was a co-sponsor of the bill that undercut the DEA. She asked Joe questions--this is in one of our chapters in our book--she asked him questions that were written by the industry. She doesn't really want to listen to his answers. She keeps interrupting him. And she actually says, "We want to get to the next panel," and the next panel had Linden Barber on it.
MR. HIGHAM: And what's kind of shocking is these members of Congress, after this hearing I talked to one of the key staff members about this piece of legislation, which basically made it almost impossible for the DEA to go after some of these big companies. It raised the standard of proof for them to a point that it was almost impossible for them to reach.
And so I asked the staffer, I said, "Why are you guys all supporting this legislation?" and he said, "Well, we just had a DEA agent testify up here, he's a lawyer for the DEA, about, you know, how important this was for the industry and for the DEA." And I said, "Who was that?" and he said, "Oh, Linden Barber." And I said, "Do you know who Linden Barber works for?" and he said, "No." I said, "He's an attorney for the drug industry."
So they had no idea the stealth campaign that was being launched by the industry, by these lobbyists, with a ton of money and a lot of influence, and people on their side who used to work at the DEA and the Department of Justice now on their very good payrolls.
MR. GIBNEY: Yeah. We should spend a little bit more time on this because it kind of testifies to a number of things. Obviously, these Congresspeople are enormously busy. A lot of times they're busy raising money, which they have to do almost 24/7, and they don't have a lot of time to focus on the details. My understanding is that this change in the law was actually passed by unanimous consent.
But it's like the ability--Sari, expand on that a little bit further, because as I understand it Linden Barber was actually materially involved in helping to write the law. So a lot of the people don't really understand that the laws aren't being written by the lawmakers. They're actually being written by the lobbyists.
MS. HORWITZ: Exactly. Linden Barber helped write this law.
You know, it's so interesting, Alex, because the attorney general, when the law was first introduced, was Eric Holder, and he and Joe talked about this, and Joe explained to him how much this would hurt the DEA in trying to protect Americans. And so Eric Holder came out and spoke out against the law. He said, "We can't pass this. It will take away the tools of the Drug Enforcement Administration to take on these companies and stop them from distributing massive amounts of opioids into communities across the country."
But Eric Holder left office, and another version of this bill was introduced. So we're getting into the weeds here, but another version was introduced. And Joe, as Scott explained, was basically forced out of government, so there was no one to speak out. And the members of Congress passed this bill. It sailed through. President Obama signed it. And it was only after The Washington Post wrote about it and said, "Whoa, does everyone know what this bill does?" that people like Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, one of the hardest-hit areas in the country, came out and said, "Whoa, we didn't know what this said. They pulled the wool over our eyes. We didn't understand what was in this bill."
MR. HIGHAM: Well, and it was only about four paragraphs long, Alex, as you recall. We worked together on a documentary that Alex did called, "Crime of the Century," which if you haven't watched it, it's a remarkable documentary. And there was really only two sentences in this bill that changed almost 40 years of settled law, and nobody read it. It just sailed through Congress, became law, and to this day the DEA no longer really has the power to immediately shut down a drug company's operation if it's a danger to the public, because the standard has been changed and it's so much higher. The burden of proof is so much higher.
So as Joe Rannazzisi would say, they didn't want to obey the law so they just went ahead and changed the law. And in our book, we follow Joe, you know, his demise at the hands of the drug industry and of his own people, but then Joe comes back and he gets his payback. He becomes an expert witness for the plaintiffs who are now suing--there's roughly 4,000 towns and cities and municipalities, Indian nations, that are suing two dozen companies in the largest civil action in American history. And Joe is now one of the star witnesses in that case. So there is a story of redemption there where Joe now gets to come back and say, "You know, look, this is what you guys were doing all along. This is what you knew. This is when you knew it, and you didn't do anything about it." And his testimony has been very, very powerful. In fact, he was the lead witness in a case that concluded recently in Cleveland against Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens. And a jury came back and found them guilty of violating federal drug laws, and those companies are now facing serious, serious fines.
MS. HORWITZ: One thing--
MR. GIBNEY: So we have a Twitter question. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Sari, and then I'll pop in with a Twitter question.
MS. HORWITZ: Okay. I'll just say this pretty quick. I just want to say that we're talking a little bit about some history here, but what's important for people to realize is that right now we are in the midst of the deadliest drug epidemic in American history, and it's all fentanyl now. But the stories that we tell in our book about the prescription pill epidemic led to where we are today. And to give you just a little context of it, it's like the equivalent of a Boeing 727 jet, completely filled with people, going down every single day and killing everybody on board. That's how many people today, still, are dying in the opioid epidemic.
MR. GIBNEY: Okay. I'm glad you raised that. I'm going to wait for just a second and then I'll get to the Twitter question in a moment. But as long as we're on that let's stay with fentanyl for a second because I think a lot of people are aware of the scourge of fentanyl, and we see stories, particularly on the border, our southern border in California. And prior to that we knew about fentanyl coming in from China. And it seems like this is just standard--not standard; I don't want to minimize the problem, but it seems like this is old-school criminal cartels.
What does this criminal cartel business of fentanyl have to do with these respectable corporations that you profile in your book? What's the connection between the two of them?
MR. HIGHAM: Sari and I have been talking to a lot of federal agents, and what they'll tell you is that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry basically set the table for the Mexican drug cartels. The pharmaceutical industry's conduct resulted in the addiction of millions and millions of Americans to opioids, and fentanyl is an opioid. Fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone is the same molecular structure.
And so the conditions were set. There was a ready market in the United States. When these companies started getting shut down, when they started getting fined, when they started getting sued, the pills dried up. It was almost impossible for people on the street to get these pills any longer. And the Mexican drug cartels saw a market, and they began to stamp out fake oxycodone pills that are blue in color, with an "M" on one side and a "30" on the other, just like the Mallinckrodt blues that were so popular on the street, except these pills are fentanyl.
I was just down on the border twice in the last six weeks, and there are garbage bags full, truckloads full of these pills coming through the ports of entry. Fentanyl is so hard to detect, it's so cheap to make that the cartels are seeing a huge opportunity here. So if one shipment gets snagged at the border they know that 10 more are going to get through these ports of entry like Nogales or San Ysidro in San Diego or Otay Mesa. And these pills are now washing across the United States.
It's terrifying because some people, they know that these are counterfeit. Hardcore users know they're counterfeit because they know they can't buy these pills on the street anymore. But there's a lot of unsuspecting people who think that these are oxycodone. They have no idea that they're fentanyl. They're so well made. And you take one of these pills and that's it. Lights out. Your respiratory system fails and you die.
We lost 100,000 people last year to overdoses, and most of them are due to fentanyl. And epidemiologists and others who have studied this believe that we are on pace to losing hundreds of thousands of people to the fentanyl epidemic.
MR. GIBNEY: So let's go to our Twitter question now, and the Twitter question, Sari, I'll give this one to you. "Where does San Francisco-based McKesson Corp fit into this and how have they managed to fly under the radar for so long?"
MS. HORWITZ: McKesson, we write a lot about in our book, because they are a drug distributor. A lot of people don't realize the supply chain. There are companies who manufacture opioids--that's Purdue, that's Mallinckrodt, that's Johnson & Johnson--and then there are these distributors who distribute them to the pharmacies. That's the supply chain. And McKesson was one of the companies that Joe Rannazzisi and his team really went after and actually fined them, I believe, twice. Is that twice? Twice.
MR. HIGHAM: Yes.
MS. HORWITZ: And the problem with McKesson is while the manufacturers, the issue with the manufacturers is misleading advertising, telling doctors and telling people that you can't get addicted. It's less than 1 percent of people get addicted to opioids. With the distributors there is a law, and this is the law that McKesson was supposed to abide by, which said that when you see a suspicious order from a pharmacy, when you see a suspiciously large order, change in the habits, maybe they order more often, you're supposed to, as a distributor, stop, check with the pharmacy and see what's going on, why are you ordering so many more, thousands of more pills, and notify the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Well, distributors like McKesson, and they're one of the big three, didn't do this, and that's one of the companies that's now being sued and is part of a historic, landmark settlement between the, as Scott talked about, the 4,000 towns, cities, counties, Indian reservations. They settled with the big three distributors, McKesson being one of them, and Johnson & Johnson, for $26 billion that is supposed to be paid over 18 years to these localities. And, you know, there are a lot of questions. Will the money get on the ground, and that remains to be seen. But there's been a clearinghouse set up to monitor this $26 billion and make sure that it gets to the communities that so desperately need it for addiction treatment, prevention, and education.
MR. HIGHAM: Alex, in "American Cartel," like Sari said, we have a lot of information about McKesson, but we have another character who we follow. His name is David Schiller. And he was like a cowboy DEA agent. He was one of the best DEA agents in the agency. And he started developing a national case against McKesson, and he believed that they were the El Chapo of America. He put together I think like 10 or 12 different U.S. attorneys' offices around the country that were seeing the same pattern of conduct, and he wanted to charge them criminally. He was basically overturned by his supervisors at the Department of Justice, and he left the agency after a long and storied career, deeply upset about what took place in this case.
You know, if you talk to families, and Sari and I have talked to a lot of families who have lost people, they'll say that while these big settlements are important because that money is going to go back to communities and it's going to help fund drug rehab programs, et cetera, but what these families really wonder is why have none of these companies been held criminally responsible.
You know, there are 40,000 Americans who are in jail right now on marijuana charges, believe it or not, and there are zero executives of Fortune 500 companies who were involved in the opioid trade who haven't even been charged. There's not been a single charge brought against them. There have been a couple of other charges that have been brought against, you know, Purdue Pharma, which is a very small company, another company called Insys, but the really big corporations, the ones that have massive amounts of money, influence, and power, are able to wield that in Washington, and in "American Cartel" we deal, in detail, how much influence and how much power they have, and how they have been able to avoid criminal charges and pay basically civil fines and settlements to avoid accountability.
In fact, the day that Johnson & Johnson and McKesson, AmerisourceBergen signed this settlement agreement, along with Cardinal Health, all of their share prices went up. So what does that tell you?
MR. GIBNEY: I want to stay on this point. Sari, I'll throw to you and you can continue on to what you wanted to say. But one of the other issues, and I've talked to some of the victims also, in addition to wanting to know why people aren't being held to account, one of the things that's often missing in these settlements is either (a) an admission of guilt or (b) very often an evidentiary record of exactly what happened. In other words, so often in settlements it's like, well, no fault and the evidence is buried. That's one thing that comes out in the trial is the truth. So talk a little bit about that if you would.
MS. HORWITZ: You're exactly right, Alex. The frustration for these families, and there are so many of them across the country who have been touched by this epidemic, is that, yes, there have been big settlements, and that money will be going forward to help communities. But there's been no apology, no accepting of responsibility by any of these company executives. In fact, the companies deny responsibility. They have agreed to pay the money but they deny responsibility, and that is really difficult for the families.
And I would just add that there was just recently a trial in West Virginia about a week ago where the judge ruled for the distributors and against West Virginia, and the parents feel, in that case, that there was a such a miscarriage of justice for this to happen in the epicenter of the opioid epidemic.
MR. GIBNEY: This is a tough question to ask but I'll ask it anyway, which is, okay, where does that leave us? In other words, how do we reckon with this idea that there has been this big crime committed, some fines have been paid, some traffic tickets have been paid. But how do we go forward? How do we prevent this from happening again? How do we hold these companies to account? What's the solution?
MR. HIGHAM: Well, if you talk to the families, they say that they believe that if the Justice Department were to file criminal charges, or if state attorneys general were to file criminal charges, and actually go through with them and bring these cases to trial you would have accountability, you would have a deterrent. It would be sent to the corporate community that this behavior is unacceptable. You would also have what you were talking about before, Alex, is an evidentiary record, because all of this material would then come out in court. You would have depositions. You would have testimony. You would have documents. Everything would be on the public record. And so going forward you would have a deterrent to the corporate community.
And this is something that didn't take place during the meltdown in 2008 in the housing crisis or in all the Wall Street scandals. One person went to jail in the Wall Street scandals and not one major executive of any of the Wall Street firms went. So what kind of signal does that send to the rest of the corporate community, regardless of what industry you're in, that bad behavior, the only consequence is paying fines. And if you listen to people like Joe Rannazzisi and David Schiller, they'll tell you that those fines just basically amount to traffic tickets to these companies. They pay them. It has no impact whatsoever on their bottom line, on their bonuses, nothing.
So the families, I think, if you talk to them, would like to see some kind of action on that front.
MR. GIBNEY: Okay. I think we're just about out of time, but Sari, do you have a final thought?
MS. HORWITZ: Well, I think it's sort of discouraging because fentanyl is just pouring over the border and it's very hard to stop that, and that's where we are right now. I'm sorry but I've got to do a little plug for our book here, but I think that it's important for people to read what we found in our two-year investigation and be informed of what happened, sort of the horror show of what happened, the shocking things we found out, so it won't be repeated again. Because what these companies did was just a horrific chapter in American history.
MR. GIBNEY: Terrific. Thank you so much, Sari, and thank you so much, Scott, for a terrific conversation, and a magnificent book. I hope everyone reads it.
Look, thank you all out there for joining us today. I’m Alex Gibney. To check out what interviews are coming up please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and find out more information about all of their upcoming programs. Thanks again for joining us. | 2022-07-12T20:48:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: “American Cartel” A Conversation with Alex Gibney, Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/12/transcript-american-cartel-conversation-with-alex-gibney-sari-horwitz-scott-higham/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/12/transcript-american-cartel-conversation-with-alex-gibney-sari-horwitz-scott-higham/ |
Transcript: The Path Forward: American Competitiveness with Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel
MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for the Post.
Today I'm joined by Pat Gelsinger, the chief executive of Intel, America's largest chip maker. We're going to be talking about computer chips and about a high‑voltage, increasingly high‑wire effort by Congress to pass significant new legislation to support that industry.
Pat Gelsinger, welcome to Washington Post Live.
MR. GELSINGER: Hey, David. Great to be with you today, and it was great seeing you at Sun Valley last week. So, you know, what a pleasure to be able to follow up again with you today. Thank you so much for letting me join you all.
MR. IGNATIUS: Well, it's great to have you.
Pat, if you would begin just by giving our audience a brief 30‑second explanation of what these computer chips are and why they're so important for our national security, for American industry, and our competitiveness.
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. You know, semiconductor is a 50‑year‑old, now, industry, $600 billion invented on American soil, a lot of DARPA and AT&T, you know, and now this industry is now pervading everything. As I say, you know, computing, connectivity, infrastructure, you know, AI is permeating every aspect of human existence, and I would just ask any of the listeners, what aspect of your life is not becoming more digital? Work from home, education from home, remote health care, our social experience, our cars becoming autonomous and electric, every aspect of home electronics. You know, my thermostat now has a sophisticated computer in it. Everything is becoming digital, and everything digital runs on semiconductors.
So, essentially, as I've said, you know, where the fabs are for the next several decades is more important than where the oil reserves have been for the last several decades in defining geopolitics, economic, and national security. It's that important to our future.
MR. IGNATIUS: So let's turn now, Pat, to the saga of the CHIPS Act, as it's called. This bill has a number of different names, but essentially, it would provide $52 billion in support for your industry. Explain what difference that would make to your industry, your company, in terms of your ability to compete.
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. Thank you, David. And, you know, if we were here in 1990, we would have about 40 percent of this industry on American soil, you know, similar numbers on European soil, so 80 percent of the world's supply in U.S. and Europe and about 20 percent in Asia. Fast forward to today, we now have 80 percent of this industry in Asia and just 12 percent in the U.S. and just 8 percent in Europe.
When did we vote to move this industry off our shores? That vote never happened. The votes that did happen were in Taiwan, Korea, China, where they put in place enormous incentive programs, industrial policy to attract this industry into Asia, and now we're acutely dependent on very few areas in the world for something that is essential to every aspect of human existence, our economy, our national security.
And the chips period, as we went through the COVID, where we saw this spike in demand, all of a sudden, this huge dependency became transparent to everybody in the world, and if I was building a new fab in Asia, you know‑‑and a new fab module is about a $10 billion investment per fab module, you know, enormous capital investment‑‑it's about 30 to 40 percent cheaper to do it in Asia. Strong incentives, ecosystem, and other factors are associated with it, but by far, the biggest is the capital incentives that are in place in those Asian companies‑‑countries.
And what the CHIPS Act does, it levels the playing field. It simply gives us the incentives to build those factories in the U.S. that, you know, has us competitive. If you're going to put that kind of capital to work, you have to be competitive in the global market with it. So the CHIPS Act creates capital incentives. You know, for every dollar that they put in, there's at least three dollars that are unleashed. So it requires multiplicative impact and a number of long‑term research initiatives as well to keep us ahead in this industry for decades to come, about $40 billion in capital incentives, about $12 billion in research and R&D, and to me, it really is this fundamental shift that the U.S. goes from declining to flattening and starting to rise again.
The moon shot I've suggested, David, you know, by the end of the decade, that we're 50‑50, you know, that we've gone from 80‑20, 20‑80, to 50‑50 by the end of the decade, and the CHIPS Act is this critical moment that allows us to turn the tide of investment and rebuilding this industry on American soil.
MR. IGNATIUS: So let me just explain to viewers how this got snarled up politically. More than two years ago, a bipartisan group of senators put this proposal together. The bill passed the Senate in June of last year. It passed a different version, passed the House, I think, in February of this year. A conference began in April, and here we are in July, and the bill still hasn't been passed.
You have been monitoring this with intense interest and sometimes frustration. Tell our viewers where things stand right now, as of today, in terms of getting this darn thing passed.
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. And I've only talked to three senators today, so it's a busy morning already, and with Congress coming back, you know, an important lunch, right, you know, with McConnell and this‑‑you know, Republican senators coming up today. So, you know, we are at game time on this right now, and today where it is is USICA, the Senate version, right, COMPETES, the House version that's been passed. We've been going through this conference process, as you mentioned, David, and, you know, we are now down to sausage making where most of the periphery, you know, the ornaments have been moved away. And we now have a version of the bill that largely has passed this conference process.
But, unfortunately, McConnell has taken a strong view that, hey, I'm not going to let that move forward if the reconciliation bill continues to be pushed forward by Democrats. So it's become a bit of a political football, and we've made super clear to McConnell, to the Democrats, to the Republicans that if this doesn't pass, I will change my plans.
You know, the Europeans have moved forward very aggressively, and they're ready to give us the incentives that allow us to move forward, you know, without limitations, putting euros in our bank. And I think it's embarrassing that the U.S. has started this process a full year before the Europeans, and the complex, you know 27‑member state, Europeans, have moved forward more rapidly. It's just implausible, but we're caught in this political sausage‑making process right now, David, that has it tied up really somewhat as a political football because there is good support, Republicans, Democrats, bicameral, that CHIPS needs to get done. It is economic and national security imperative, but we're stuck in a complex political process. And, you know, this is where, hey, I need help from this audience. We need this done now.
MR. IGNATIUS: You said at the Aspen Ideas Festival just a couple weeks ago, "Please don't dither in Congress over petty partisanship," but as you say, that's exactly what's happening.
MR. GELSINGER: Mm‑hmm.
MR. IGNATIUS: I'm just curious about the pressure that you and other industry leaders who care deeply about this can bring. I'll just quote for our viewers, the tweet from Senator Minority Leader McConnell: "Let me be perfectly clear. There will be no bipartisan USICA"‑‑that's the Senate name for this chips bill‑‑"as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill." In other words, it is, as you said, very much tied up in political bickering. How do you break through that if you're somebody like you who cares about the bill?
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. And, you know, we're working hard, and I just got off the phone with Senator Portman, and obviously, we're, you know, building a big plant in Ohio. So he's one of my key leaders on this. Senator Young and Senator Schumer‑‑you know, unfortunately, Senator Schumer came down with COVID, so he's‑‑you know, I'll say he's working the phone lines aggressively on our behalf. They were the original sponsors of the bill, you know, and we are, I'll say, really doing two things. One is we are emphasizing that there are real‑time consequences of this doesn't pass. I know I will make a decision to delay our project in Ohio if it doesn't pass. We're going to go forward in Ohio. As I said, the speed and the size is dependent on U.S. industrial policy to make this happen, and that's embodied in the CHIPS Act.
But I firmly believe and having talked to CEOs and many of the other semiconductor leaders in the company, you know, that our two fabs, but at least three other fabs are dependent on this getting across the line. So do we want five fabs built in the U.S. getting underway this year, or do we just want everything being pushed out to either Europe or Asia and further delayed? So we are emphasizing the urgency that this must pass right now. It has meaningful consequences economically.
We're also bringing our national security allies in very aggressively, also industries like the auto industry, Jim Farley, Mary Barra, you know, emphasizing to their congressional leaders. You know, I've even asked Mary. I said, "Hey, every Kentucky car distributor needs to be calling McConnell's office today to emphasize that this cannot be a partisan football." So we need to bring political pressure, but we also have to realize, hey, you know, compromises. We're ready to negotiate. We're working. And that was a lot of my conversation with Senator Portman just now is what are the options. You know, how can we create a skinny bill that has less issues and good bipartisan, bicameral support?
MR. IGNATIUS: And, Pat, what would you say? You're obviously intimately involved in this process. If I had to ask you to make a bet as to whether this bill will pass, skinny version or whatever version, this month, because it's got to be done this month or it won't happen this year, what would your answer be?
MR. GELSINGER: You know, I'm an optimist by heart. I find it easier to live that way, David. So, you know, I believe at the end of the day, you know, we'll‑‑you know, I'm greater than 50 percent that it will get done in August, but, you know, I hear many others that say, well, there's still a lot of risk here, Pat, to getting this done. And so I'm an optimist. I believe that‑‑you know, as one political comment was, you know, our democracy works, but all other options have been exhausted, and I do believe that that may just be the case here, you know, that, hey, we're going to‑‑made it painful, we're going to have gone to the last second, but, you know, we are telling every one of our congressional conversations, do not leave for August recess without this being done.
MR. IGNATIUS: So just to pull the camera back a bit, this bill is called in the House, the "America COMPETES bill," and I wrote recently that a better name for it, for the process that we're watching is "Why America Doesn't Compete" because we seem unable to get this done. It's been‑‑it's been more than a year since this was passed‑‑
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah.
MR. IGNATIUS: ‑‑by a bipartisan majority in the Senate. Let me just ask you as somebody who knows the country, our system well. What's going on here? Why are we unable to do something that there seems to be consensus bipartisan support for?
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. You know, I think, you know, my‑‑I've somewhat thought through that question also in the context of why the Europeans could start a year later than us and now be ahead of us. You know, literally, our proposal for our German fab is now being reviewed for approval by the European competition community. Essentially, you know, the ones who would be responsible for that in the U.S. would be the Commerce Department, you know, with Secretary Raimondo.
We're now in the final stages of approval in Europe, and I say why has that gone so well, right, when this has gone so hard in the U.S.? And, fundamentally, I think that the U.S. decided that industrial policy is bad, and where exactly that emerged and how that's emerged over decades now, that, you know, being involved in deciding where we want industries, do we want manufacturing on American shore, you know, what do we care about for the long‑term success of the nation, that it's no longer appropriate for us, that we're going to be solely allowing that to free market behavior.
You know, and I'm a free marketer, and I'm, you know‑‑let's compete in the global market‑‑you know, a globalist, but fundamentally, when for three decades we've seen nations‑‑and this is number, you know, in the top five of China's last five‑‑‑five-year plan. So for two and a half decades, this has been‑‑the semiconductor industry has been on the top of their list. Taiwan has had industrial policy in place. Korea, you know, Japan, in these areas for decades. And we've just said let free market reign. Well, you know, when they're putting 30, 40, 50 percent incentives for these massive capital investments, free market leads to 80 percent shift into Asia. It's a very natural outcome, and we've seen our supply chains where cost, you know, Wall Street‑driven cost estimates are the only thing that matters. So we've gone to just in time, minimize cost post‑COVID. We have to go to resilient just in case. Just in time to just in case.
And I think our version to any form of industrial policy has created a backdrop that makes it so politically hard to get anything done versus Europe where, you know, they're very oriented with this idea of industrial policy, that we must be taking steps for the outlook for our national interests for the long term, and so much of that is embedded in key technologies and key industries for the future.
MR. IGNATIUS: And just to ask the skeptical question that I'm sure some of our viewers have, why should our American taxpayers support an industry that's already very profitable? Understanding what you say about the competitive challenges, you're still in business on behalf of your stockholders, and you're doing pretty well by them. Folks would ask, why should we help you out? And more to the point, I guess, what guardrails would you have in place to make sure that the money that you're receiving doesn't end up going to support stock buybacks or things that‑‑
MR. IGNATIUS: ‑‑make some rich folks even richer?
MR. GELSINGER: [Laughs] Yeah. Well, you know, one thing I'm happy to say is when I showed up as CEO, you know, I just thanked my predecessor for doing stock buybacks because he did enough that I'm never going to do any, so take that off the table.
You know, and we've also, right, you know, certainly speaking from the Intel lens‑‑you know, I've‑‑I took‑‑you know, went to Wall Street and said, "Hey, I'm taking the free cash flow of the company negative for the first time in over three decades." You know, we just put it on the table for us.
Now, those concerns, though, I think are very‑‑you know, very appropriate, and I do think there's some aspects of guardrails, you know, that, you know, clawbacks, other things, if, you know, the guardrails that are established for this are exercised properly. So, you know, we're not bothered by those discussions.
There's also questions of, you know, China competitiveness and export policies, you know, but the U.S. government has a lot of tools in these areas already, you know, and it's an incentive package. You want to create the motivation for companies like ours but also companies like TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Texas Instrument. These companies invest more in the U.S.
You know, the fact that we've gone from almost 50 percent of this industry to 20, to 12 percent of this industry over 30 years, it's broken.
You know, when I had this conversation with EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, you know, she says, "Why should we get involved?" The same question, why should there be government subsidies? And she said, "We should only get involved where there's market failure," and I said, "Margrethe, Europe has gone from 44 percent to 8 percent and predicted to be less than 5 percent. If that's not market failure, please tell me what is." And I think against this, you have to say that, generally, you know, free market is the right policy. It is the power of our nation, but that is inadequate when major industrial effects across the world are not playing by the same rules.
You know, we need to be building our policies for the outcomes we desire, not just based on a simple policy view that, you know, was established for decades and was never really negotiated as a policy. You know, it was viewed as an essence of an open‑market consideration.
I do believe that, fundamentally, we have to say certain technologies, certain industries are critical to the nation's future, but furthermore, it's also critical for our national security, right? You know, hey, you know, how many F‑35s can we put in the air when we depend on foreign chips as well? This matters.
But, also, the economic implications of this, why did we let so many manufacturing industries, you know, the job creation‑‑you know, this is a great industry. We create wonderful jobs, you know, across the entire spectrum. You know, construction, you know, leaving construction, every job I put in place, our estimates show we create seven jobs in the communities that we're in. You know, we're not building a fab; we are building a small city, David, when we start these types of projects.
There is so much economic good, national security good, and long‑term policy good. That's why this deserves the support of the United States.
MR. IGNATIUS: In the spirit of self‑criticism and a frank discussion of this, I want to ask you about Intel itself. Intel was once the unrivaled, dominant force in your industry. It created the modern semiconductor industry, and even given what you say about subsidies from abroad, part of the story of America losing its lead goes to companies like Intel and the management that preceded you. I'm not asking you to second‑guess your predecessors beyond the basic question of whether Intel's management let some of that incredible advantage we had slip away. It wasn't just foreign subsidies. It was mistakes that were made at home.
MR. IGNATIUS: Am I right?
MR. GELSINGER: Absolutely. You know, and I'll have to say, you know, Intel, you know, lost its way, and we had nontechnical leadership of the most important technology company in America for a decade and a half. You know, some of that falls‑‑you know, the choices that were made, some of that clearly goes to the board of directors and the choices that they made. Some of it was, hey, we tried certain things. We stumbled and we failed on different programs as well. But the confluence of those board decisions, management decisions, technology, you know, stumble has taken one of the great technology icons of America and we're not leading anymore.
And part of my coming in was to turn the company around, and as I made the decision‑‑I had a great job as a CEO. We just had our great‑‑eighth grandchild. Life was good, and life was comfortable. And, David, when my wife and I made the decision to take this assignment on, we saw it as restoring Intel, the great technology icon, in honor of the founders.
You know, I grew up at the feet of Andy Grove, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, the icons of the semiconductor industry. I just named a site after Gordon Moore. We're soon going to name one after Andy Grove. We are going to honor our legacy and rebuild this icon.
But, second, we need to rebuild our supply chains. You know, clearly, COVID has shown that we became, you know, dependent on narrow, fragile supply chains. This is so important to the world. We need globally balanced, resilient supply chains.
And, third, we need to rebuild this technology underpinning for our great nation as well.
And that's why I've taken this job, and it is a big, tough assignment, but it is so critical for the future of the company, the technology industry and our nation, that, hey, I believe this is where God wants me, and this is the assignment I have today, to fix the stumbles that I will certainly admit. Yep, Intel had those, and it's now my job to restore this great company to the leadership position for our nation.
MR. IGNATIUS: I should just note for our viewers that Pat Gelsinger actually was, I believe, a chip designer. You didn't come in on the financial end of this business but on the technology side.
MR. GELSINGER: [Laughs] Yeah. In fact, the picture behind me here is the 80486. I'll just turn my camera slightly on the wall here. You know, that was my‑‑that was my, you know, Rembrandt, if you could, was my‑‑you know, I was the architect, designer of that. I did 14 generations of chips for Intel over my career here. You know, I helped to create USB and WiFi, so a technologist, but also a passionate, you know, member of the, you know, Intel legacy and somebody who deeply believes in the national priority that this has for us.
You know, I was with the company 30 years, as I say, took an 11‑year vacation. You know, it's almost to the day, David, how much time Steve Jobs was outside of Apple, and now I'm back to where I began. You know, I joke I started here at Intel so young, I went through puberty at Intel, you know, as a young technician as I grew through the company, and now it's an honor of a lifetime to lead this company at this most critical period in history.
MR. IGNATIUS: So this whole debate is about our competitiveness with China, and we have an interesting question from one of our viewers. Ahmet Altekin in Turkey asks, "Will international trade restrictions"‑‑and by that, I assume he means things like the entity list designation of Huawei‑‑
MR. GELSINGER: Mm‑hmm, mm‑hmm.
MR. IGNATIUS: ‑‑"really help the United States recover competitiveness, or is it just as ploy for creating a breathing space?" A good, good question, I think.
MR. IGNATIUS: Are we really going to succeed in this long‑run competition, or are we just going to get a little jolt of hormones that's not going to get us far enough?
MR. GELSINGER: Mm‑hmm. Yeah. You know, any technologist, you know, will clearly say there is no permanent advantage. The only permanent advantage is continual pace of innovation and staying ahead of competition. So, you know, the real answer to the question is how do you stay ahead, well, compete long term, right? You know, keep innovating, keep staying ahead over time.
Now, the way the bill is structured, it also complements a number of export policy issues, and the $52 billion bill, $12 billion is all about long‑term innovation establishing the National Semiconductor Technology Center for long‑term innovation, and I think that fundamentally is the critical aspect of the question. Compete, innovate, you know, be ahead for the long term.
You know, the capital incentives are, boy, we've been seeing this drift away. We have to reverse that trend, building factories, building capacity, having jobs in the U.S.
You know, but third is the export policy aspects, and I do believe this is a critical topic, and I've had numerous conversations, for instance, with the president's national security advisors on this topic, you know, and there are limitations on what technologies are available to China and what technologies aren't available to China to establish, I'll say, you know, sustainable gaps between where they are capable of and where we are capable of building. And I also believe those are appropriate, and they're going to certainly be debated, and our export policies become, you know, the combination, right, of technology limitations, but I'd also emphasize that we want to continue to have strong exports.
You know, we want every country in the world building on our technologies, and in fact, the more of our export they are using, the more empowering our export policies are. So it isn't to stop doing business in China. Quite the opposite, do more business in China, but carefully manage the technology flow to China consistent with our export policies, and we think that combination of things‑‑long‑term research, rebuild the manufacturing base, and carefully constructed export policies to maximize product but carefully control technology for, you know, export‑‑is the right combination.
MR. IGNATIUS: So we've talked, Pat, about financial capital and resources, haven't talked so much about human capital, and I need to ask you, frankly, whether you think the American semiconductor industry has the talent pool to be able to make this competitive leap forward or whether we need to think about changes in our immigration policies that allow more high‑quality engineers to come here from other countries. What do you think?
MR. GELSINGER: Yeah. You know, I think it really has to come to both of those, and the question on the first one is, you know, are we graduating the engineers? Are we making this an exciting domain for young talented individuals to enter into? And, you know, clearly, you know, since we've announced our Ohio project, for instance, the outpouring of interest, you know, from our top universities‑‑Arizona State, Ohio State University, Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue‑‑all of these, you know, they are excited to build the semiconductor manufacturing curriculum to build us that long‑term workforce. And there's elements in the bill specifically in those areas. You know, we have to be rebuilding those areas of our colleges, universities, also community colleges as well. So, clearly, that's a priority. We've committed funding to that. We've committed, for instance, in the Ohio project, $50 million of funding, which is complemented by $50 million from NSF funding specifically on talent development.
At the same time, you know, I do believe our immigration policies‑‑anybody who receives a master's or a Ph.D. from a U.S. school can get a green card stapled to it, right? We want the best talent in the world coming here, staying here, and, you know, some of the different versions of USICA and COMPETES, you know, in the House and the Senate version specifically, you know, also include provisions around immigration.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, Pat Gelsinger, the chief executive of Intel, thank you for a very frank and illuminating conversation about a big issue that's before the Congress and the country. Thanks for joining us.
MR. GELSINGER: Hey, thank you, David, and anytime, anyplace you want to chat on any subject, I'm in. Thank you so much.
MR. IGNATIUS: Great. Deal.
So thanks to all of you for joining Washington Post Live today. To check out what interviews we’ve got coming up, go to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and get the information about our schedule and plans. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks. | 2022-07-12T20:48:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: The Path Forward: American Competitiveness with Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/12/transcript-path-forward-american-competitiveness-with-pat-gelsinger-ceo-intel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/12/transcript-path-forward-american-competitiveness-with-pat-gelsinger-ceo-intel/ |
The lawsuit is the first legal volley in what will likely be one of the most watched and contentious business trials in recent history
(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
Twitter filed suit Tuesday against Elon Musk to force the billionaire to make good on his promise to purchase the company, issuing the first legal volley in what is expected to be one of most high-profile business trials in recent history.
For months Musk has publicly threatened to walk away from the sale of the influential social network, efforts that culminated last week in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing claiming he was “terminating” the agreement because Twitter hadn’t given him enough information about spam and bots on its service.
Now a judge in a specialized business court in Delaware must determine whether the world’s richest man can exit the $44 billion deal, despite a contract binding him to complete the acquisition barring a major change to the company’s business.
“Twitter brings this action to enjoin Musk from further breaches, to compel Musk to fulfill his legal obligations, and to compel consummation of the merger upon satisfaction of the few outstanding conditions," the filing continues.
Twitter retained Wachtell, Lipton Rosen & Katz intending to sue Elon Musk after the Tesla founder announced plans to drop a $44 billion takeover deal on July 8. (Video: Reuters)
Experts said they anticipated months of agonizing legal drama to play out in the Delaware Court of Chancery, a tiny, clubby court that has decided the outcomes of some of the biggest business squabbles in the U.S. The court has just seven judges — one chancellor and six vice chancellors — who have enormous discretion to force companies to take specific actions.
The process will likely submit Twitter to a grueling level of public scrutiny, forcing the platform to open up its books and expose internal deliberations in ways that might further damage its stock price and reputation, already-battered from the market downturn and months of sparring with Musk.
The lawsuit is the latest in a tumultuous saga that began in April, when Twitter’s board accepted the billionaire’s surprise offer to purchase the long-struggling social media service.
Soon after, Musk began to throw wrenches in the deal, using his popular Twitter account to call out individual company executives and to highlight what he indicated were misleading estimates of spam and fake accounts on the platform. In May, Musk tweeted that the deal was “on hold” over the bot problem.
The fight escalated last Friday, when Musk’s legal team said he was pulling out of the agreement in its letter to the SEC. Twitter executives and board members, who had long anticipated this sort of move from Musk, said they were prepared to take him to court to force him to follow through with the contract.
“We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” Twitter Board Chair Bret Taylor tweeted last week.
Twitter views its chances in the court system as favorable because Musk had not pressed the platform on the bot issue before signing the contract — though the company had offered public quarterly estimates of spam and fake accounts for years. Twitter estimates that spam and bot accounts comprise fewer than five percent of the accounts on its service of 229 million daily users, but some outside researchers have projected that the number could be far higher. But Twitter doesn’t share comprehensive usage data with researchers, preventing significant external evaluation of the issue.
Twitter’s leadership believes that sharing such extensive information would violate user privacy and could run afoul of data privacy laws, according to people familiar with internal discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them.
Experts on Delaware’s Chancery Court system say the rigid contract, combined with the fact that Musk failed to amend it, will make it difficult for the billionaire to win in court.
“From the outside, it seems like Musk has an uphill climb,” said Jeremy Eicher, an attorney with over a decade of experience representing clients with cases in the Delaware Chancery Court. “He’s a sophisticated buyer with a highly competent legal team that could have asked about these issues before. It’s not just a deal between two guys.”
Musk's question about spam and bots is nothing new for Twitter
But Eicher noted that in recent years, Chancery Court decisions have become fairly unpredictable and that the outcomes are frequently dictated by whims of any particular judge, who is known as a chancellor or a vice chancellor.
And Musk’s argument, that he and his team relied on and trusted Twitter’s bot estimates, and only found out later that those estimates might not be accurate, could be viewed as reasonable by a judge.
Attorneys involved in the case, as well as experts, expect that Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, head of the Chancery Court and the highest-ranking of the seven judges in the system, will take the case herself. Last year McCormick forced private equity firm Kohlberg & Co. to go through with a deal to buy cake-decorating supply company DecoPac after the firm tried to get out of the deal.
But the court has also allowed companies to get out of deals in cases where the judge determined that business being acquired was not forthright. In one notable case in 2018, a Chancery Court judge allowed medical care company, Fresenius, to terminate its planned purchase of generic pharmaceutical company, Akorn, after finding that Akorn had not disclosed major “data integrity” issues to the acquirer.
Experts said they expected the case to last four to six months, a far speedier timeline than other types of court cases and one reason that businesses prefer to headquarter in Delaware.
Twitter threatened to pursue legal action against Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO said he was pulling out of the $44 billion dollar deal to buy Twitter. (Video: Reuters)
Both Twitter and Musk have hired law firms with close ties to the Chancery Court, a refection of the tightly-knit system. Last week Twitter hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Leo Strine, Jr., former Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and Chancellor of the Chancery Court is corporate counsel at Wachtel. And a current Vice Chancellor of the Chancery Court, Lori Will, hails from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP, a firm which is representing Musk. Will also formerly clerked for Strine.
There’s a multitude of ways the disagreement could be resolved, legal experts say, though most doubt that Musk will be able to walk away without forfeiting some sort of payment.
“If I had to call it today, Twitter’s got the better of the argument,” said Lawrence Hamermesh, executive director, Institute for Law and Economics, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. “What remedy the court will give is harder to forecast.”
The court could order that Musk pay the $1 billion breakup fee specified in the contract, which may not satisfy Twitter, which has faced a sinking stock and an increasingly beleaguered workforce as the deal created uncertainty around the future of the brand.
The court could also order Musk to go through with the $44 billion deal, a decision that would be “momentous,” said Anthony Casey, a professor of law and economics at the University of Chicago Law School.
But it’s not unheard of. In a 2001 decision, the court ruled Tyson Foods needed to complete its acquisition of IBP, Inc. after the foods giant tried to call it off.
Forcing Musk to go through with the deal could lead to a court appeal and an uneasy tension between a reluctant owner and his new team. Already many Twitter employees have protested his ownership.
Some legal experts think the most likely outcome is for the two sides to reach some sort of settlement agreement, either one that allows Musk to buy Twitter for a lower price or that requires him to pay a higher breakup fee to Twitter. But Musk is the wild card.
“I think Musk is a little less predictable than most litigants,” Casey said. | 2022-07-12T21:29:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Twitter sues Elon Musk, setting stage for epic legal battle - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/12/twitter-elon-musk-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/12/twitter-elon-musk-lawsuit/ |
The winners (HBO) and losers (movie stars) of the Emmy nominations
‘Squid Game,’ ‘Severance’ and ‘Abbott Elementary’ are some of the new shows to break through in an awards race that’s never been more competitive
Creator and star Quinta Brunson and her show “Abbott Elementary” are up for a number of Emmy nominations. (Ser Baffo/ABC via AP)
It’s no one’s favorite time of the year: the day of Emmy nominations. This is true even for TV critics, who generally complain that the Television Academy, which votes on the awards, tends to reward the same (middlebrow) fare year after year.
But the Emmys are getting better, and one of the highlights of tracking the nominations is seeing which new shows break through, hopefully giving deserving freshmen a boost in attracting a larger viewership. This year, those shows were “Abbott Elementary” and “Only Murders in the Building” on the comedy side and “Severance,” “Squid Game” and “Yellowjackets” on the drama side.
Here are the biggest winners and losers among the 2022 nods, which reflect industry trends and argue mostly successfully for the Emmys’ continued relevance.
Winners: The overdogs. We won’t be in for many surprises on Emmys night on Monday, Sept. 12. Still the king of the networks, HBO (and its streaming offshoot, HBO Max) ruled over the TV realm with 140 nominations, more than any of its rivals. And based on the cascade of nods bestowed on last year’s comedy winner, “Ted Lasso” (which received another 20 nominations Tuesday), and 2020’s drama winner, “Succession” (which added 25 more nods to its proverbial mantle), the Apple TV Plus breakout and HBO heavyweight are pretty much a lock. (“Succession” ceded the category to “The Crown” in 2021, since it didn’t produce a season eligible for last year’s ceremony.)
Of those two, “Ted Lasso,” which delivered a divisive second season, is the slightly weaker contender, squaring off against stalwarts like “Hacks” (HBO Max) and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon Prime Video) as well as newcomers like “Abbott Elementary” (ABC) and “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu). “Succession” should hold strong against first-time nominees “Yellowjackets” (Showtime) and “Severance” (Apple TV Plus), but there’s a 1 in 456 chance that “Squid Game” (Netflix) pulls off an upset.
As ever, limited or anthology series is the only category where the victor doesn’t feel preordained, with a dead heat this year between Hulu’s Elizabeth Holmes series “The Dropout,” the same streamer’s opioid drama “Dopesick” and HBO’s eat-the-rich satire “The White Lotus.”
Emmy nominations 2022: ‘Succession’ earns most nods; ‘Squid Game’ makes history
Losers: Movie stars. An Oscar proved no guarantee of an Emmy nod this year, portending the end of the industry trend where A-listers “slumming it” on TV are guaranteed a trophy for their troubles. Julia Roberts got zilch for her turn as tangential Watergate player Martha Mitchell in Starz’s “Gaslit,” as did Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway for their WeWork revisit “WeCrashed” (Apple). John C. Reilly was fantastic in HBO’s “Winning Time,” but the basketball series about an unstoppable team was forced off the court. Michelle Pfeiffer and Viola Davis fared no better with their larger-than-life (or, depending on who you ask, scenery-chewing) performances as Betty Ford and Michelle Obama on Showtime’s shamelessly awards-baiting “The First Lady.” Even freshly minted Academy Award winner Jessica Chastain got snubbed by the TV Academy; only her “Scenes From a Marriage” (HBO) co-star, Oscar Issac, proved the exception to the rule.
If you can’t drum up much sympathy for the impossibly rich, beautiful and famous, perhaps spare a few thoughts for the smaller snubs that bummed me out: Naveen Andrews, who, as Elizabeth Holmes’ lover and business partner, was at least as great as Amanda Seyfried in “The Dropout”; Brian Tyree Henry, who served as the emotional anchor of a rootless third season of FX’s “Atlanta”; and Sarah Lancashire, who put her own inimitable spin on Julia Child in HBO Max’s “Julia.”
Winner: ’90s nostalgia. It looks like we won’t be done reexamining quarter-century-old scandals anytime soon. Despite a mixed critical reception, Hulu’s revenge-porn tale “Pam & Tommy” scored 10 nominations, including three for stars Lily James, Sebastian Stan and Seth Rogen. The even more coolly received “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” FX’s star-studded but listless retelling of the relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, received five nominations, including a surprise nod for Sarah Paulson, who played Linda Tripp and received flack for the increasingly controversial practice of actors donning fat suits.
Perhaps that’s why the original premise of “Yellowjackets,” which jumps in time between the ’90s and now, feels so refreshing. (That, or the implied cannibalism.) The Showtime genre series garnered nods for beloved former child stars Melanie Lysnkey and Christina Ricci, who play the haunted, middle-aged versions of teenage girls who survive a plane crash and are determined to live at all costs.
Losers: “This is Us” and “Black-ish.” For most of their runs, the NBC weepie and ABC family sitcom kept network programming on the Emmys radar. But both shows were locked out for their valedictory seasons — a notable development especially for the nighttime soap’s buzzy final year, which included a fan-favorite performance from Mandy Moore. But loyalists of the broadcast networks — if that’s a thing — needn’t despair. ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” the first-year mockumentary comedy set in a Philadelphia public school, has picked up the baton, with (richly deserved) nominations for cast members Quinta Brunson, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Janelle James and Tyler James Williams.
The nominees for the 74th Emmy Awards were announced on July 12. “Squid Game” became the first non-English-language series to be nominated for best drama. (Video: Allie Caren/The Washington Post)
Winner: Hulu. Despite its uncertain future as a Disney streaming site in competition with its majority owner’s much larger player in the streaming wars (Disney Plus), Hulu enjoyed a fantastic morning, with multiple nominations for “Dopesick,” “Pam & Tommy,” “Only Murders in the Building” and the Russian royalty comedy “The Great.” If Hulu execs want to make the case to Big Mouse that they should stay an independent venture, they could certainly start with Tuesday’s Emmy tallies.
Losers: Sophomore slumpers. By and large, it’s still the case that Emmy voters tend to nominate the same shows over and over again, no matter how downhill a show goes. (Case in point: the self-indulgent and messy-as-hell second season of HBO’s “Euphoria,” which picked up 16 nods this go-round.) But the TV Academy took note of other shows that experienced significant sophomore slumps, with “The Morning Show” (Apple TV Plus), “The Flight Attendant” (HBO Max), “Russian Doll” (Netflix) and “Bridgerton” (Netflix) declining precipitously in voters’ regard.
Winner: The widening TV landscape. “Adventurous” certainly isn’t a word one would use to describe the academy’s overall taste. But in recent years, they’ve increasingly demonstrated that they aren’t entirely out of touch with the changes in the industry. They championed Apple TV Plus early, for instance, even if they overcompensated by practically salivating all over “Ted Lasso.”
Academy members have continued their occasional forays beyond the nominees spoon-fed to them by expensive awards campaigns this year, nominating programming from Paramount Plus and the Roku Channel, while, in a pleasant surprise, dipping their toes into grisly genre fare with “Yellowjackets” and “Squid Game.” The latter became the first non-English-language nominee in the drama category — recognition that viewers are more willing than ever to overcome the “one-inch barrier” of subtitles, per “Parasite” director Bong Joon-Ho’s memorable phrasing. But the most homegrown and comforting TV, like an “Abbott Elementary,” got some love from the Emmys this season, too. Television should offer many types of excellence, and the Emmys are finally getting closer to acknowledging that. | 2022-07-12T21:33:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The winners (HBO) and losers (movie stars) of the Emmy nominations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/07/12/winners-losers-emmy-nominations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/07/12/winners-losers-emmy-nominations/ |
Trump has never been held accountable for impeding inquiries. It shows.
Then-President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on May 30, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
Tuesday’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot ended on a familiar, if ominous note. After the hearing’s evidence was presented and its witnesses interviewed, vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) revealed a new development in the committee’s efforts to complete its work.
“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Cheney said. “That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us.” The committee, in turn, told the Justice Department.
You’ll remember that Cheney made a similar announcement at the end of the last hearing, the one featuring White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. She described how two others had been cajoled not to cooperate with the committee’s work, adding that, “I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns.”
Most Americans, perhaps. But not Donald Trump. After all, why should he? He’s been obstructing federal efforts to investigate his actions for years without facing any accountability for doing so.
We can start with the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. That probe was ultimately turned over to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose team spent months compiling a lengthy report of the ways in which Russia tried to influence the vote that year and places where those efforts intersected with Trump’s team. The report covered multiple volumes and some 400 pages — nearly half of which were dedicated to documenting Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation.
Mueller’s team delineated 10 separate incidents in which it believed Trump had tried to block their work. Those ranged from firing the director of the FBI (and triggering the appointment of Mueller) to encouraging allies not to cooperate with the investigation.
Prosecuting those attempts was left to the Department of Justice — and to Attorney General William P. Barr, who was overtly committed to not doing so. In part, Barr wrote in a letter dismissing Mueller’s findings, this was because he didn’t believe there was an underlying crime involving Trump.
After repeatedly suggesting that he’d happily offer sworn testimony to Mueller’s team, Trump ultimately responded to a flurry of questions through an attorney. Of his 22 responses, 19 consisted in full or in part, “I don’t remember.”
Mueller’s report was released in April 2019. Within three months, Trump had triggered another investigation into his use of presidential power, withholding aid from Ukraine until its president announced an investigation into Joe Biden. As Congress began investigating that issue with a series of hearings that ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment, it became clear that Trump would show the House no deference in its constitutionally mandated power to investigate the executive branch. Trump and his administration refused to cooperate with the House probe and took advantage of Congress’s limited ability to enforce subpoenas and requests for testimony.
When he was impeached at the end of 2019, it was on two charges. The first was abuse of power, related to his efforts to strong-arm Ukraine. The second was obstruction.
“President Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply with [House] subpoenas,” the second article read, in part. “President Trump thus interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, and assumed to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the ‘sole Power of Impeachment’ vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives.”
In short order, the Senate acquitted Trump of the charge — reinforcing the message that he would face no consequences for, among other things, quite explicitly attempting to prevent duly charged entities from holding him to account.
At the beginning of 2019, shortly after Democrats had regained control of the House, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was invited to testify about his experience working for the president in the private sector. Cohen described his work in explicitly Mafia-esque terms. Pressure was put on people both directly and indirectly, the latter to preserve deniability. Trump had learned how to stay at a distance from sketchy behavior, and apparently he carried that into the White House.
Given that background, why would anyone be surprised that Trump would continue to try to exert similar influence? When he explicitly instructed aides and allies to mislead the public about his contacts with Russia and when he reached out to potential witnesses to remind them of his friendship during the Mueller probe, federal law enforcement shrugged. When he refused to cooperate with the first impeachment — much as some allies and aides have tried to obstruct the House select committee by refusing to respond to subpoenas — Republican senators told the world they were fine with it.
That Cheney is drawing repeated public attention to Trump’s efforts now is certainly in part a function of both her hope that it will tamp down on similar future efforts and that the revelations might potentially lead to some repercussions. But it’s in service to a broader, more important effort: ensuring that the country understands what happened in the weeks before the Capitol riot and on Jan. 6, 2021, itself.
It’s in service, in other words, to ensuring that Trump faces some accountability for his actions that contributed to the riot. Without accountability, we’ve seen that Trump repeats the same patterns. The effort to hijack a presidential election is not a pattern we should want to see repeated. | 2022-07-12T21:46:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump has never been held accountable for impeding inquiries. It shows. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/trump-has-never-been-held-accountable-impeding-inquiries-it-shows/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/trump-has-never-been-held-accountable-impeding-inquiries-it-shows/ |
D.C. Council to let drivers with unpaid tickets stay on the road
A truck turns on Grant Circle in D.C. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
D.C. lawmakers moved forward with a plan on Tuesday to end the practice of preventing residents from renewing their driver’s licenses if they have unpaid traffic fines, despite several council members’ concerns that leniency could worsen unsafe driving in the District.
Several council members argued that drivers who have repeatedly been ticketed for running red lights or driving far above the speed limit should not be able to renew their licenses without paying the fines for their violations, lest they keep putting other drivers and pedestrians at risk.
But others said that blocking a person from a driver’s license is a severe economic hardship, which tends to fall most often on those who live in low-income neighborhoods with many traffic cameras, and the city’s years-long practice of preventing low-income people from renewing their licenses because they can’t afford to pay off fines is unjust.
That argument prevailed, and the council passed the bill — introduced by member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) — to block the city from stopping anyone from renewing a license because of unpaid fines.
Council members Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), Christina Henderson (I-At Large) and Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) were in the minority, voting for an amendment that would have narrowed the bill to allow the city to keep withholding license renewals from those who have at least three unpaid tickets for certain violations like speeding and running red lights.
“Make no mistake, we are sending a message that will go out and tell people they can run red lights, they can go significantly over the speed limit, and nothing will happen to them. They won’t have to pay their tickets,” Cheh said. “We’re inviting dangerous drivers. We’re making our streets less safe.”
Some lawmakers pointed out that D.C. doesn’t have alternate means of traffic enforcement that some jurisdictions have. The District doesn’t use points on driver’s licenses that cause a driver to lose their license after accumulating too many violations, and D.C. police have been cautioned not to chase motorists and to avoid most traffic stops for violations like speeding. That leaves most of the District’s traffic enforcement to automatic cameras that send fines to speeders.
“We are running out of tools to address speeding violations and dangerous moving violations,” Pinto said.
Tuesday’s vote was the council’s second on the bill. It heads now to Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s (D) desk.
Some of the lawmakers who supported the bill said the District needs to crack down on dangerous driving, but did not see fines as the right way to do so.
“Are we just going to be punishing poor low-wage folks with tickets while wealthy reckless drivers can pay them off and keep being reckless drivers?” said Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4). “We know dangerous driving needs to be tackled by a systemic investment in roadway design … rather than trying to penalize or ticket our way to safety.”
Others focused on the importance of ending the practice of blocking low-income residents from driving. The debt-focused legal nonprofit Tzedek DC (whose name means “justice” in Hebrew) first drew attention to the issue with a 2021 report that said the law may be blocking tens of thousands of D.C. residents from renewing their licenses, and that the practice had disparate racial impact, with Black drivers 19 times more likely to be arrested for driving without a permit than White ones.
McDuffie pointed out that only Texas and Illinois share the District’s practice of tying driver’s license eligibility to unpaid fines. “It’s preventing many low-income D.C. residents from getting work. It’s preventing them from taking their kids to school. It’s preventing them from going to the doctor. … It’s preventing them from accessing healthy food,” he said.
But Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who ultimately supported the bill, cautioned that while Black residents are disadvantaged by traffic fines, they are also at the greatest risk from unsafe drivers being allowed to stay on the roads.
“I looked at the crash data in terms of who is dying when it comes to traffic deaths, and there’s a racial equity issue there as well,” Silverman said, pointing to a Washington Post report on the far greater incidence of traffic deaths east of the Anacostia River, where a history of racism in infrastructure planning has left more high-speed roads in low-income, mostly Black neighborhoods. “It’s a racial equity issue on both sides.” | 2022-07-12T21:51:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. Council to let drivers with unpaid tickets stay on the road - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/dc-drivers-tickets-licenses/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/dc-drivers-tickets-licenses/ |
Maryland, behind in cleaning up Chesapeake, beefs up restoration efforts
A view of the Honga River near the Chesapeake Bay at sunrise in 2020. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
The clock is ticking for the Chesapeake Bay’s surrounding jurisdictions to meet a 2025 goal set under a federal lawsuit settlement to implement policies and practices for bringing the nation’s largest estuary back to health after decades of pollution.
Last year, Maryland fell short in meeting federally set targets under the settlement for nitrogen and phosphorous, the two pollutants that have fueled algae blooms leading to low-oxygen “dead zones” harmful to fish and other aquatic life, according to a June evaluation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Overall, the state has achieved 58 percent of its 2025 goals for nitrogen and 74 percent of its phosphorous reduction target, according to a separate assessment published in June by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
In hopes of accelerating the state’s efforts, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced Monday that 22 bay restoration projects — including stream restorations, rain gardens and storm pond retrofits — would be awarded a combined $18.8 million in grants.
“Each of these projects plays a critical role in improving the quality of the bay, and making our ecosystem more resilient,” Hogan said in a statement.
Since 2019, Maryland has spent nearly $500 million on bay-related restoration projects, the most so far of any of the neighboring jurisdictions.
The commitment is part of what has become a race against time to reduce the effects of urban pollution in an area of the country that continues to grow. Automobile oil on roads, construction-site debris and general pollution are all flowing into surrounding streams that feed into the bay’s larger tributaries, including the Potomac River.
In more rural areas, agricultural runoff, including fertilizer and pesticides, have been contributing to the problem.
“If you look at pollution coming from urban and suburban land, pollution increases, and a lot of that is because we’re converting more land into developed land,” said Beth McGee, director of science and agricultural policy at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Now, we have a lot more land that’s in that category.”
In 2020, Washington-region jurisdictions and Delaware sued the EPA for what they claimed was a lack of aggressive enforcement of the 2010 settlement in states that were far behind in meeting the 2025 goal, especially Pennsylvania, undercutting their efforts.
With the bay’s health slightly improving, that case is currently in settlement discussions.
Under the 2010 court settlement reached with the EPA and the bay’s neighboring jurisdictions, if the 2025 timetable is not met, permits for projects with new sources of pollution must be withheld, including for sewage treatment plants and other major projects.
Last year, Maryland’s reduction efforts were stymied when major pollution violations were found at the state’s two largest wastewater treatment plants, leading to millions of gallons of bacteria and nutrient-laden wastewater dumping into waterways flowing into the bay. Still, the state is on track for meeting its goals for reducing sediment.
Virginia has reached 75 percent of the 2025 reduction goal for nitrogen, 68 percent of the reduction goal for phosphorus and 100 percent of the reduction goal for sediment, the foundation found.
The District has so far been on target with meeting its goals for all three pollutants, according to the EPA.
The efforts have led to stream restoration projects across the region, with each project aimed at meeting state-mandated reduction targets — known as “total maximum daily loads” — for those pollutants.
The 22 projects receiving money through Maryland’s Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund include the Croydon Creek-Calvin Park Tributary Stream Restoration project in the city of Rockville. That $3.2 million effort will get $2 million in new state funding.
Montgomery County will get $550,000 for four storm-water pond retrofits and a tree-planting project near the Wheaton Branch storm water management pond outside Sligo Creek.
Baltimore County will receive $1.4 million for its Kings Eye Stream and Riparian Corridor Restoration project near the eroded banks at Piney Run.
Several rural counties will receive money to restore floodplains, create wetlands and, in Kent County, re-create a beaver dam to help filter pollutants that have made their way into Turner’s Creek.
McGee said meeting the 2025 implementation goal “is gonna be a stretch” for most of the jurisdictions unless they accelerate their efforts.
“It seems to be a little bit of a long shot, but we’re going to keep the pedal to the metal until 2025,” McGee said.
More coverage on Maryland
Maryland health workers, lawmakers want answers as problems persist a month after cyberattack
Trail tunnel planned for downtown Bethesda faces another construction funding battle
Gun-control activists push to ban untraceable ‘ghost guns’ in Maryland | 2022-07-12T22:12:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland beefs up Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts after falling behind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/maryland-chesapeake-restoration-grants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/maryland-chesapeake-restoration-grants/ |
On eve of Biden visit, a court case shows the limits of Saudi tolerance
Saudi special forces salute in front of a screen displaying images of Saudi King Salman, right, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, July 3. (Amr Nabil/ AP Photo)
A week before President Biden’s scheduled visit to Saudi Arabia, lawyers for a Saudi company controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman delivered a jarring message in a filing with a federal appeals court: National security arguments made by America’s top intelligence official were being used to support a “strategic fiction.”
This dismissive tone on the eve of a presidential visit meant to repair the U.S.-Saudi relationship illustrates a problem that will confront Biden when he visits MBS, as the crown prince is known. When it comes to sensitive topics, such as the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi or other human rights problems, the Saudi leader doesn’t seem interested in accountability or compromise.
The underlying legal dispute is complicated, but it evokes some fundamental issues. As the United States reengages with the kingdom, is Saudi Arabia ready to bury past feuds? Can it provide assurances that human rights violations, such as the Khashoggi murder, won’t happen again? Are the two countries truly ready to work together on a shared counterterrorism agenda?
The sharp language from the kingdom’s lawyers came in a brief filed Friday in a case involving Saad Aljabri, a former senior Saudi counterterrorism official who has emerged as a chief nemesis of MBS. The kingdom accuses Aljabri of stealing $3.47 billion in funds from Sakab Saudi Holding Co., a government front company. Aljabri has responded that he can’t defend himself without disclosing the secret counterterrorism activities that Sakab was funding in cooperation with the CIA.
Aljabri’s warning that the case could reveal sensitive intelligence was bolstered by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. She filed a sworn statement last August, supported by the Justice Department, invoking the “state secrets” privilege to ban discussion of issues in the case that, if revealed, could cause “exceptionally grave” harm. U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, who was hearing the Sakab case, ruled in October that Aljabri couldn’t defend himself without the banned information. Gorton dismissed the Saudi case in December.
It was the judge’s action, following a recommendation from America’s top spy chief, that prompted Friday’s Saudi riposte. Aljabri’s “supposed inability to litigate this case without disclosing U.S. state secrets is a strategic fiction,” argued the kingdom’s lawyers, denouncing the district court’s “draconian remedy of dismissal.” The brief was filed with a federal appeals court in Boston.
MBS’s lawyers appear to be reaching a similar dead-end in parallel litigation in Canada. Canada’s attorney general sought an injunction last month, at the request of the U.S. government, to prevent Aljabri from disclosing secret information to defend himself in the case. If Aljabri can’t respond fully to the allegations in Canada, that case may be dismissed, too.
The Aljabri battle is wrenching for senior U.S. officials who worked closely with him on counterterrorism projects when he was a top adviser to former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who MBS toppled in 2017 to assume de facto control of the kingdom. Former CIA directors George Tenet and John Brennan, and many other senior CIA officials, have praised Aljabri’s work as a counterterrorism partner.
A grim consequence of MBS’s seeming vendetta against Aljabri was the arrest and imprisonment in March 2020 of his two youngest children, Omar and Sarah, then 20 and 21, and the arrest and torture of his son-in law, Salem Almuzaini. According to Aljabri, MBS told him that his children would be released if he returned home to face inquiries, making the children, in effect, hostages. A U.N. working group on arbitrary detention called for the three Aljabri family members’ release in a report issued in May.
A final footnote to this case is that Aljabri has offered to pay back money that MBS alleges he stole, if his family members are released. That restitution proposal was made to MBS’s lawyer in the kingdom on Feb. 7, 2022, according to a source familiar with the offer. Details of this settlement offer have been shared with the White House, the source said, adding that the Saudis haven’t responded.
Biden’s rationale for meeting with MBS is that, despite these human rights issues, Saudi cooperation is important for long-term U.S. national security reasons. That’s realpolitik, direct and simple, but Biden needs to get a real partnership in exchange for his pragmatic approach.
A key issue is whether MBS will drop his grudges and focus on common interests, too. His diversion of Saudi security services to attack political enemies, such as Khashoggi and Aljabri, has been a costly distraction. For example, the Saudis missed the radicalism of Air Force 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, who killed three Navy sailors during training in Pensacola, Fla., in December 2019. Even the notorious bone-saw doctor, Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy, who allegedly dismembered Khashoggi’s body in Istanbul in October 2018, was trained to use modern forensic tools, such as DNA evidence, against terrorists.
Biden can’t bring back Khashoggi. But he can ask MBS to release Saudis who are unjustly detained in the kingdom, such as Aljabri’s family. If it’s time for a Saudi-American restart, as Biden believes, then it should be a two-way process. | 2022-07-12T22:18:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Saudi Arabia's conduct in a U.S.-based lawsuit suggests it's not ready to bury past feuds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/biden-saudi-aljabri-state-secrets-avril-haines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/biden-saudi-aljabri-state-secrets-avril-haines/ |
Don’t let crypto get a foot in the vault
A bitcoin ATM in January at Reiter's Books in D.C. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
I was disappointed to read in the July 5 news article “Experts fear part of new bill could destabilize traditional banking system” that some lawmakers are proposing allowing cryptocurrency companies to have access to the banking system without the safeguards that apply to traditional banks.
I don’t own any investments involving cryptocurrency and probably never will. Frankly, I don’t understand what purpose cryptocurrency serves other than something to gamble on. I don’t want my taxpayer dollars to be used to bail out risky crypto firms that are unable to meet their obligations. I lived through that during the 2008 financial meltdown.
So, if crypto firms are afforded the privilege of having access to the banking system like traditional banks, they should be subject to the same rules that apply to traditional banks, including the requirements to maintain financial reserves and pass a financial stress test.
Bob Benna, Potomac | 2022-07-12T22:18:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Don’t let crypto get a foot in the vault - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/dont-let-crypto-get-foot-vault/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/dont-let-crypto-get-foot-vault/ |
Humanities are alive — if you know where to look
George F. Will’s tone-deaf whining about kids these days in his July 10 op-ed, “Those aggressively illiberal millennials,” was about what you’d expect from its title. It was remarkable, mostly, for claiming that “abundant data confirm” its sweeping generalizations about all Americans younger than 30 while providing precisely none of that data.
I, as a younger millennial, learned more tools, and more useful tools, for media analysis by reading, watching and participating in discussions online than I ever did in my English classes. Mr. Will might wish it were otherwise, but Aristotle’s analysis of highly formalized live theater productions created on specified themes for contests simply has nothing much to add to discussions of the long-term episodic storytelling and serialized epics that form the core of the modern media landscape.
As to the decline in humanities majors, it has become increasingly obvious that “the humanities” are a frankly incoherent category.
And, of course, I would be foolish not to point out that discussion, production and analysis of the “literature” he mourned is alive and well in many an online space.
Ben Reis, Washington | 2022-07-12T22:18:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Humanities are alive — if you know where to look - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/humanities-are-alive-if-you-know-where-look/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/humanities-are-alive-if-you-know-where-look/ |
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a hearing in D.C. on July 12. (Shawn Thew/AP)
This week’s hearing by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol underscored the connections between key Trump associates and right-wing militia groups along with others who participated in the insurrection. The “unhinged” six-hour long meeting in advance of Jan. 6, filled with expletives and shouting so loud it could be heard outside the closed Oval Office, remains disturbing as ever. So does the draft executive order presented to the president that would have authorized the Defense Department to seize all voting machines. More alarming still is the revelation that lawyer Sidney Powell believed she had been appointed special counsel, another part of that plan.
The committee’s focus on Tuesday, however, was on how the then-president’s words inspired his followers to violent action. At least one pro-Trump group moved up plans for a rally later in January to the 6th; the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers coordinated with the help of longtime ally Roger Stone to honor Mr. Trump’s wishes; conservative influencers promoted the protest as a “red wedding,” a “Game of Thrones” reference that invokes mass slaughter. Most important, text messages showed that Mr. Trump’s exhortation to march to Capitol Hill was planned rather than spontaneous — and that those involved in coordinating the rally sought to conceal this intention, because they knew it would get them into trouble.
These lies matter — to democracy, and to individual people. They can wound, the way they did when a crowd pushed, kicked and sprayed with chemicals a police officer who, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) explained on Tuesday, will now never return to the force. They can kill; at least seven people lost their lives in connection with the violence of Jan. 6. Brad Parscale, the former Trump campaign manager, said after the attacks that he felt guilty for helping his boss win. | 2022-07-12T22:18:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Jan. 6 hearing showed how lies can kill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/jan-6-hearing-trump-lies-dangerous/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/jan-6-hearing-trump-lies-dangerous/ |
A soccer ‘phenom’ has an unlikely connection to the State Department
Bruce Murray at his home in Potomac on June 24. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
National Soccer Hall-of-Famer Bruce Murray is the spitting image of his gentlemanly father and was (in the likely words of his expat Scottish father) but a “wee lad” when I had the distinct pleasure of acquaintance with the family back in the 1970s, and I wish him nothing but goodwill through his current health issues, as reported in the July 6 Sports article “ ‘We just don’t know.’ ”
The “phenom” 1990 World Cup player was noted to have learned the game at the Bretton Woods Recreation Center in Germantown.
Lest it be forgotten or overlooked, it is worth noting — in the current political climate in which some wish to deny systemic racism — that the Bretton Woods Recreation Center was the creation of the State Department back in the late 1960s. The State Department sought a local venue where Black African diplomats might enjoy golf or tennis outings with public- and private-sector individuals. There was no local country club at the time whose bylaws allowed participation by these diplomats, even as a guest, much less a member.
Progress on this front has admittedly been made, but that was not such a very long time ago, and there is a long way to go yet.
Rocky Semmes, Alexandria | 2022-07-12T22:18:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A soccer ‘phenom’ has an unlikely connection to the State Department - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/not-that-long-ago-not-that-its-taught-anymore/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/not-that-long-ago-not-that-its-taught-anymore/ |
Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and Jason Van Tatenhove, a former member of the extremist Oath Keepers group, are sworn in on July 12 before a hearing of the House select committee investigating the insurrection. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
It was Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone, who summoned and loosed the mob that sacked the Capitol, threatened Congress and the vice president and imperiled our democracy. That is the powerful message that emerged from Tuesday’s televised hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee. And these hearings make clear just how dangerous it would be for the former president to be elected again.
That was his decision, not anyone else’s. As Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s vice chair, said in her opening statement: “President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child.” That might be how Republicans eager to exploit his candidacy saw him in 2016. And it’s the accidental subtext in efforts to exculpate him for Jan. 6. But it’s not true. | 2022-07-12T22:19:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump is responsible for Jan. 6. He can never hold power again. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/trump-owns-january-6-never-give-him-power-again/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/trump-owns-january-6-never-give-him-power-again/ |
Pohue Bay on Hawaii’s Big Island is pictured April 11, 2022. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, was given new land in a deal that will protect and manage an ocean bay area that is home to endangered and endemic species and to rare, culturally significant Native Hawaiian artifacts. (Trust for Public Land via AP) (Uncredited/Trust for Public Land) | 2022-07-12T22:19:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hawaii national park gets land where ancient villages stood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hawaii-national-park-gets-land-where-ancient-villages-stood/2022/07/12/ef97a0e2-0222-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hawaii-national-park-gets-land-where-ancient-villages-stood/2022/07/12/ef97a0e2-0222-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Delon Wright is eager for an opportunity to spread his wings in Washington like his former college teammate Kyle Kuzma did. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
One of Kyle Kuzma’s personal goals after the Lakers dealt him to the Washington Wizards last summer was to turn an unexpected trade into an opportunity. In quieter, smaller D.C., with fewer stars orbiting, Kuzma vowed to prove he could be more than a decent role player — he could be a leader.
That worked out splendidly for the forward, who led the team in total points scored last season. Now, Kuzma is spreading the good word around the NBA, and it sounds something like this: Come to Washington. There’s space here to make a name for yourself.
“He saw me last year playing behind Trae [Young], playing like 12 minutes, some days I might not play,” said Delon Wright, one of the Wizards’ newly acquired guards. “Here, I feel like the opportunity to show more of what I can do. I’ve been bouncing around a lot, adjusting to different systems. [Kuzma] knows what I can do, so that was his recruitment pitch.
“He was probably a better recruiter than Tommy [Sheppard]. He has GM in his future.”
Wright was one of three players the Wizards introduced this week as free agency slows and rosters around the league — at least those with no space for Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving — round into form.
Wright, a 6-foot-5 guard; Monte Morris, a 6-2 point guard; and Will Barton, a 6-6 wing, have a few things in common, none stronger than a hunger to make hay on a roster begging for players to step into starring roles. Wright, 30, has played on six teams since 2018-19 and is striving to make the league’s all-defensive team. He felt he wasn’t being used adequately in Atlanta, his most recent stop, and said Tuesday that Kuzma — his former college teammate at Utah — sold him on Washington as a team that needs strong defenders.
Morris, too, is eager to show he can be a fulltime starter. The 27-year-old was traded to the Wizards along with Barton after spending five seasons in Denver, where he worked his way onto the roster from the G-League and has contributed to four straight playoff appearances. Last season, he started 74 games while Jamal Murray was recovering from a torn ACL and averaged 12.6 points and 4.4 assists.
For Barton, who was a frequent member of the starting lineup over his eight years in Denver, the trade to Washington represents a different kind of opportunity.
Barton, 31, is a Baltimore native and views the chance to play in front of family and friends as strong motivation. He averaged 14.7 points and shot 36.5 percent from three last season, when he became the Nuggets’ all-time leader in made three-pointers with 769. He’s also a standout passer for his position and dished 3.9 assists per game.
“Knowing that the open man is the best man,” Barton said Tuesday of his philosophy. “Get some easier shots, get some threes and just make the ball pop. I feel like when the ball is popping and moving, you have more fun just playing that style of basketball.”
Barton knows his style of offense will be welcomed in Washington because he knows Coach Wes Unseld Jr. well from their time together in Denver.
That’s another thing Wright, Morris and Barton have in common — they all had strong ties to the Wizards before touching down in D.C.
Morris and Barton were with Unseld when he was an assistant with the Nuggets; Wright and Morris are close with Kuzma; and Barton is from the region. He described himself as a big brother to fellow Baltimore native Isaiah Todd, Washington’s second-year forward.
For Morris, comfort equates to confidence. He’s looking forward to reuniting with Unseld and playing with his “best friend,” Kuzma, a fellow Flint, Mich., native whom he has known since their elementary school days. Walking onto a new team where the coach already knows his game and he already has a supporter in the locker room means the point guard is more likely to use his voice.
It should be a welcome asset on a team that has struggled to communicate on the court in past seasons.
“I’m not going to be scared to speak up, I’m not going to be scared to give my experience with me playing a lot of playoff games,” Morris said. “...Guys are going to be looking at me to speak up and give my knowledge because I’ve played in the playoffs every year I’ve been in the league.”
Barton feels the same level of comfort with Unseld. Beyond that, nestled in the combination of playing for a new team near his old city, he senses a familiar opportunity to create something strong and lasting with Unseld.
“We helped turn that thing around,” Barton said of their time in Denver. “That’s the goal here, to do the same.” | 2022-07-12T22:20:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | For three new Wizards players, D.C. is familiar and an opportunity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/three-new-wizards-players-dc-is-familiar-an-opportunity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/three-new-wizards-players-dc-is-familiar-an-opportunity/ |
By Kevin Ambrose | Jul 12, 2022
Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes ahead of an approaching thunderstorm on June 24, 2014.
Kevin Ambrose/Washington, D.C.
A forked cloud-to-ground lightning strikes near the Washington Monument, July 19, 2016.
Big cloud-to-ground lightning photographed from inside the Jefferson Memorial, July 23, 2020.
The Lincoln Memorial with distant lightning, July 19, 2016.
Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes on Aug. 27, 2003.
A lightning panorama photographed at the Tidal on Sept. 27, 2012. Three photos were combined to make this panorama.
Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes as a thunderstorm approaches Washington D.C., July 23, 2020.
Three simultaneous lightning bolts strike ground, Sept. 28, 2011.
Lightning photos captured during a severe thunderstorm on July 23, 2020.
Lightning appeared to strike the Washington Monument on Aug. 25, 2007, but upon closer examination of the photo, lightning struck ground behind the monument, but was well-aligned with its tip.
Lightning strikes behind the Washington Monument on July 19, 2016.
Lightning flashes behind the Marine Corps War Memorial, Aug. 26, 2020.
A rogue lightning bolt struck near the 14th Street Bridge after a thunderstorm moved through the D.C. on Aug. 13, 2019. This photo was taken from the Lincoln Memorial.
Lightning flashes under a rainbow on July 8, 2014. This image was captured by video.
Cloud-to-cloud lightning photographed on Sept. 7, 2018.
Cloud-to-cloud lightning at sunset with the Lincoln Memorial, Aug. 20, 2015.
A big cloud-to-ground lightning strike on Aug. 12, 2017.
A distant thunderstorm produces a lightning flash during the evening of July 19, 2016.
Lavendar Lightning from a thunderstorm on July 23, 2020.
Distant lightning strikes ground southeast of the Jefferson Memorial on May 27, 2014.
Multiple lightning flashes were photographed on Aug. 12, 2017, from the Lincoln Memorial.
A bright cloud-to-ground lightning flash with multiple bolts behind the Jefferson Memorial, Sept. 28, 2011.
A view of the D.C. skyline with a distant lightning flash on July 11, 2011. This photo was taken at the Netherlands Carillon.
A stormy view of the Lincoln Memorial on July 3, 2014.
The Air Force Memorial spires appears intertwined with lightning bolts during this impressive lightning flash from a developing thunderstorm over Fairfax County on June 22, 2008.
A display of cloud-to-cloud lightning over Washington, D.C. on Aug. 15, 2016.
Lightning with the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial on Aug. 31, 2018.
A massive display of cloud-to-cloud lightning over Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2015.
This image shows ten lightning photos stacked together from a thunderstorm approaching Washington, D.C. on July 23, 2020.
kevin ambrose
A lightning stack composed from three lightning photos shot June 12, 2021.
A stacked lightning image (right) and eight of the dozen lightning photos that went into the stack (left). This storm occurred Aug. 25, 2007.
Cloud-to-ground lightning photographed July 19, 2016.
A stacked lightning image (bottom) and four of the five lightning photos that went into the stack (top). This storm occurred Sept. 28, 2011.
Lightning flashes behind the Lincoln Memorial during the evening of Aug. 5, 2005.
This tiny thunderstorm formed over Fairfax along the outflow boundary of another thunderstorm, Sept. 8, 2021. The crescent moon is visible to the right of the thunderstorm.
Cloud-to-cloud lightning flashes over Washington, D.C., May 22, 2022.
Sometimes a rainbow will steal the show during a lightning photoshoot, May 22, 2022. | 2022-07-12T22:20:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Twenty years photographing lightning in our Nation’s Capital - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/interactive/2022/twenty-years-photographing-lightning-our-nations-capital/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/interactive/2022/twenty-years-photographing-lightning-our-nations-capital/ |
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) speaks with reporters about aid to Ukraine, on Capitol Hill on March 10. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Every time I think of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), which is a lot these days, Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” starts in my head and Chris Martin belts out lyrics that seem to have been written for him: "I used to rule the world/ seas would rise when I gave the word/ now in the morning, I sleep alone/ sweep the streets I used to own."
"I used to roll the dice/ feel the fear in my enemies’ eyes/ listen as the crowd would sing/ now the old king is dead, long live the king."
Or not, in which case, that song again: "People couldn’t believe what I’d become/ and revolutionaries wait/ for my head on a silver plate/ just a puppet on a lonely string/ Aw, who would ever wanna be king?" | 2022-07-12T22:39:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Will Lindsey Graham explain his 2020 call to Brad Raffensperger? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/will-lindsey-graham-testify-raffensperger/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/will-lindsey-graham-testify-raffensperger/ |
In Highland Park, mother who died saving her toddler is honored
Mourners hug on July 12 as they head into a Wilmette, Ill., funeral home for the funeral for Irina McCarthy. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times/AP)
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. — Eight days after the Highland Park shooting, mourners filled a funeral home to honor Irina McCarthy, who was killed protecting her 2-year-old son Aiden. McCarthy’s husband, Kevin, also died in the rampage, which left seven dead and dozens injured, including an 8-year-old whose spine was severed by a bullet.
“Our hearts are shattered,” Rabbi Dovid Flinkenstein told mourners during a service at Weinstein & Piser Funeral Home in nearby Wilmette. “The pain is unbearable. There are rivers of tears. We don’t want to be here, nor should we be here today.”
Family and friends described McCarthy, 35, as a loyal friend and fierce mother to Aiden. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering were in attendance, along with about 150 others.
During the service, friends described Kevin McCarthy as the love of Irina’s life and promised their son would be taken care of. One family friend said Aiden “will have a family, a home and will thrive and grow with us.”
McCarthy’s colleagues at the North Chicago-based pharmaceutical company AbbVie spoke as well, describing her as “more than a colleague, she was a friend.” The Chicago Tribune reported that McCarthy was a manager in oncology, according to LinkedIn.
Plans for Kevin McCarthy, 37, have not yet been announced.
McCarthy’s funeral was only the latest reminder of the tragedy that struck this still-traumatized town. On Monday, community members gathered at the recently reopened site of the shooting. Some brought flowers and photos; others came simply to bear witness.
Mackenzie Mottlowitz, 30, had been at the parade with her whole family when the shooting began. Her family had attended the Fourth of July festivities for 25 years, always in the same spot. Last week, as the gunman fired into the crowd from a rooftop, she and her family dove to the ground amid broken glass and fallen bodies.
Since then, Mottlowitz has been waking up in tears, dreaming of running from a shooter and hiding. “I came down here to make sure I could put a visual to what was replaying in my own head,” she said.
Mottlowitz said she and her sisters Madison, 29, and Miranda, 27, have been inseparable since the shooting.
Lindsey Hartman, 41, was at the parade too, along with her husband, Danny, and their 4-year old daughter Scarlett. When the shooting started, she and Danny huddled on top of their girl.
When she returned to the scene Monday, there were still traces of glass on the ground and bullet holes just above where she lay on the ground. “It put a punctuation mark on just how close we were,” Hartman said.
As she laid down seven rocks collected by her daughter, Hartman cried. “In Jewish culture you leave a stone at the cemetery,” she said. “I sat by each individual’s memorial and sobbed.”
Others wept, too, she said. Strangers suddenly felt like family.
At Highland Park High School, therapists and social workers were on-site to talk to those affected. Some of them had traveled from other states, and many had recently worked with victims of the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex. As those seeking help arrived, they received color-coded bands — blue for those who had been at the shooting, white if not. Toys had been donated by local businesses, a distraction for children waiting their turn.
Hartman said she had spoken with someone at the school, and it had helped. “This is their job, and yet it felt you were talking to friends or family,” she said. She said her daughter is doing well, though she requires a few more hugs.
Others are having tougher time.
“No one should hear their 7-year-old say he is glad ‘none of his friends were killed’ before you tuck him in at night,” said Jordana Greenberg, 40, a lifelong resident of Highland Park who also attended therapy at the high school. “No one should hear their 5-year-old say she no longer wants to ride her bike because her last memory of it was during ‘the parade where people were hurt.’ I would not wish this pain and uncharted parenting territory on anyone.”
Susan Isaacson, 68, was at the parade with her children and two grandchildren. They sheltered in a wine store and were not injured. But they are struggling.
“I’m not happy,” Isaacson said. “I don’t feel like making dinner or doing anything. I just don’t feel like myself. At night, when it’s quiet, the thoughts come back.”
She returned Sunday morning to the scene of the shooting, sitting on a bench with a young woman with three little children.
“We both cried,” Isaacson said. “I just cannot get it out of my mind. I will never feel the same. … [The shooter] took our innocent city and made it a statistic.” Her 7-year-old granddaughter is not sleeping. The 5-year-old is acting out, she said.
Isaacson said therapy has helped. And she appreciates the way the community has come together to mourn and honor those who risked their lives responding to the shooting. Recently she attended a large dinner for first responders. Her grandchildren drew pictures that firefighters promised to hang on the wall.
Many who attended the parade say they feel they were playing the odds. One second running in a different direction and the outcome could have been tragic. Many describe everyday sounds of cars backfiring, alarms and loud voices as triggering. Others say they are still in shock and will need time to recover.
“This is trauma with a capital ‘T,’” Mottlowitz said. | 2022-07-12T22:43:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Irina McCarthy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/highland-park-irina-mccarthy-funeral/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/highland-park-irina-mccarthy-funeral/ |
Can you spare a minute to look 13 billion years back in time?
This is a nebula — a giant cloud of gas and place where stars are born. It’s called Carina Nebula.
Astronomers don't know the full story of how these features formed.
These are stars just formed in our galaxy from the dust in the nebula.
It would take about 7 years traveling
at the speed of light to cross this area.
It would take about 11 years traveling at the speed of light to cross this area.
Carina is one of the largest star-forming regions in the Milky Way. It is about 7,500 light-years away.
This means that it would take 7,600 years traveling at the speed of light to go from Earth to Carina’s region. So this is not Carina Nebula as it looks today but as it did 7,600 years ago, when the light recorded by the new James Webb telescope left its source.
5,600 B.C.
The time shown in
the picture above.
is born.
4 B.C.
U.S. signs
of Independence.
Egyptians build
pyramids at Giza.
Around 2,500 B.C.
Declaration of
Jesus Christ is born.
Bonkers, right?
1 million miles
Earth’s orbit
The very first Webb image made public showed thousands of galaxies as they appeared about 13 billion years ago — that’s almost as far back in time as the Big Bang itself:
Brighter points such as this one are stars in our own galaxy.
The orange distorted galaxies are farther, some 13 billion light years from us.
Whiter blurs are galaxies that are closer to us.
Remember, most of the colored circles and smudges in this image are galaxies — not stars. Galaxies can contain billions of stars and planets. And the square above represents just a tiny speck of space — NASA compared it to the patch of sky that would be covered by a grain of sand held at arm’s length on the surface of the Earth.
About 13 billion years
The oldest point in the
image above.
The Sun and
are formed
4.5 billion years
the Earth are formed
The Big Bang itself is not something we’ll be able to see with the Webb telescope. But the images the telescope produces will help us learn when and how the first celestial objects were formed as the universe cooled.
To give you an idea of what the Webb can do, this is what we could see in the same region of sky before and after the Webb telescope.
Before: An image from the
After: The same region photographed
by the Webb
Images from NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Before: An image from the Hubble telescope
After: The same region photographed by the Webb
After: The same region
photographed by the Webb
The Webb will help us better understand much more than how galaxies form. The photo below shows how a star similar to our sun looks as it is dying:
The reddish core of
a dying star in our galaxy.
A second, normal star, here.
This is a cloud of gas made of chemical components ejected by the dying star.
Scientists got their first clear peek at a second, normal star, here.
As the star loses strength, it sheds its outer layers, creating a cloud of gas — the colorful ring surrounding the core. Such images will help us understand how dying stars spread atoms and molecules into space, and how that changes the chemistry of the universe.
With the Webb, we’ll also be able to see how stars are born. This image shows a group of five galaxies. Some of the galaxies are so close that they crash into each other, forming new stars. Younger stars are blue, older ones are red.
The five galaxies labeled form the first group of galaxies ever discovered, in 1877.
The galaxies are clashing here.
Orange dots are galaxies much farther away.
A star in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
This is the closest galaxy in this photo,
40 million light-years away from us.
The other four are about
290 million light-years away.
Scientists believe that these clouds are a sign of a black hole in the middle of this galaxy.
This area shows gas from the merging galaxies.
Finally, the Webb telescope allows scientists to collect data of the chemical composition of stars and planets outside our solar system. This kind of detailed information will ultimately help us look for signs of life elsewhere in our galaxy.
These stunning images are a major achievement for us Earthlings. And given everything absurd we’ve witnessed on Earth of late, they are more than that. If nothing else, the humongousness of the universe ought to put our problems into perspective. A little insignificance isn’t such a bad thing.
Sources: Yvette Cendes, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, helped to label the images on this page. Mercedes López-Morales, also from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Nikolay Nikolov, from the Space Telescope Science Institute, were also consulted for this piece. | 2022-07-12T22:47:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What's in the James Webb space telescope photos? We can explain. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/james-webb-space-telescope-photos-explanation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/james-webb-space-telescope-photos-explanation/ |
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House Jan. 6 select committee, swears in witnesses on July 12. (Shawn Thew/AP)
1Trump knew he lost the election but refused to concede
2Far-right militia groups responded to Trump’s call for action and coordinated in broad daylight
3Trump and his cronies revved up the violent mob he had summoned to D.C.
4The mob members believed Trump wanted them to fight to reverse the election
5Trump tried to contact a witness
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), in her opening remarks during the Jan. 6 House select committee’s hearing on Tuesday, rebutted the new, favored defense from Donald Trump’s camp that he was bamboozled by advisers and couldn’t tell right from wrong. The former president “is not an impressionable child,” she said. “Just like everyone else in this country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”
It was an apt remark considering the evidence presented in the committee’s latest hearing. The session detailed the interaction between Trump and his most crazed advisers, and how Trump’s public statements stirred up violent, right-wing groups to storm the Capitol on his behalf to stop the electoral vote count.
Trump knew he lost the election but refused to concede
Committee member Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) walked through documents and testimony showing that not even Trump’s craziest enablers had evidence of fraud. Trump was told this repeatedly.
It was powerful to see Eugene Scalia, a favorite on the right who served as Trump’s labor secretary, as well as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, former attorney general William P. Barr and even Trump’s daughter Ivanka testify in video depositions that they told the president that the jig was up after the electoral college met on Dec. 14, 2020. It was time to concede, they said. Barr testified that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows eventually came to the same conclusion. Trump was not persuaded.
Instead, Trump plunged forward, culminating in a Dec. 18 meeting in which a team of outside advisers paid Trump a visit and clashed with his White House staff. Raskin explained, “The meeting has been called unhinged, not normal and the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.”
Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well as Trump associate Michael Flynn, arrived bearing a draft executive order to “seize” ballot boxes and appoint Powell as a special prosecutor with the power to make election-related charges against people. Cipollone testified that he vehemently opposed the scheme, deeming it a “terrible idea” and “not how we do things in the United States.”
The heated meeting reportedly lasted more than six hours as Cipollone challenged the bizarre conspiracy theories that “Team Rudy” was passing along to Trump, involving foreign countries’ tampering with the results.
Far-right militia groups responded to Trump’s call for action and coordinated in broad daylight
After it became clear that the plan to seize the ballot boxes wouldn’t pan out, at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19, Trump sent out a tweet targeting the joint session of Congress at which the electoral votes would be certified. He called on his supporters to come to D.C. on Jan. 6 and insisted it would be “wild.”
Far-right online personalities such as Ali Alexander beckoned their followers to promote the event. An anonymous Twitter employee, who had tracked extremist Trump supporters after he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate, testified to the committee, “I was concerned the former president, for the first time, was speaking directly to extremist organizations and giving them directives.”
As a result of Trump’s invitation, far-right groups online turned ugly, violent and apocalyptic. The founder of one pro-Trump site referred to Jan. 6 as “D-day.” Trump continued to whip up his supporters on Twitter in the days before Jan. 6. Donell Harvin, a former top intelligence official for the District of Columbia, testified that previously unaligned groups were coordinating and planning a violent event.
Trump and his cronies revved up the violent mob he had summoned to D.C.
The committee showed chilling video experts of speeches from Flynn, Trump confidant Roger Stone and far-right media personality Alex Jones on the night before Jan. 6. The committee also showed that both Flynn and Stone had connections to violent militia groups.
On the same day, Trump continued to issue tweets urging the mob not to let the country fall to the left. The Twitter employee testified that there were efforts to de-platform Trump from the site, anticipating the violence from the “locked and loaded” crowd. They failed.
Even one of Trump’s allies feared what would happen. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said on Jan. 5: “We also have Trump supporters who actually believe that we are going to overturn the election. And when that doesn’t happen — most likely will not happen — they are going to go nuts.”
Despite warnings of violence, Trump insisted on adding incendiary lines to his rally speech on Jan. 6 calling on Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes. The White House counsel’s office edited the line out, but Trump demanded that it put back in after Pence told him on the morning of Jan. 6 that he wouldn’t do his bidding. Trump ad-libbed even more lines that incited the mob.
The mob members believed Trump wanted them to fight to reverse the election
Stephen M. Ayres, one of the insurrectionists who swarmed the Capitol on Jan. 6, appeared before the committee on Tuesday alongside former Oath Keeper spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove. Ayres was the first participant in the insurrection that Americans could hear from firsthand.
Ayers described himself as a normal American before being caught up in the Trump cult. In describing the social media chorus that brought him to the Capitol on Jan. 6, he said, “I felt like I needed to get down here.” He also testified that it “definitely” would have made a difference to him had he known that Trump lied about the election being “stolen.” At the conclusion of his testimony, he called on others to “take off the blinders before it’s too late."
Van Tatenhove’s statements provided a window into the mentality of far-right militias. “We have to stop with the dishonesty,” he said, adding, "This could have been a spark that started a new civil war.” He practically pleaded with the country to pull back from the abyss. “We’ve been exceedingly lucky,” he said.
Their appearances before the committee were a sad, almost pathetic illustration of the people Trump preyed upon.
Trump tried to contact a witness
At the end of the hearing, Cheney revealed that Trump tried personally to contact a witness who has not been publicly named. The witness told his lawyer, who then alerted the committee. The committee has referred the matter to the Justice Department.
“Let me say one more time," Cheney said, "we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.” This is yet another vivid reminder that Trump remains a threat to the rule of law.
Five things we learned from the Jan. 6 committee latest hearing | 2022-07-12T22:47:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Jan. 6 hearing reveals Trump's relationship with violent right-wing groups - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/jan-6-hearing-violent-groups-revelations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/jan-6-hearing-violent-groups-revelations/ |
A regular guy believed the lie, joined the riot, apologized. Now what?
From left, Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty in June to charges related to the Jan. 6 riot, and Jason Van Tatenhove, former national spokesman for the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers, prepare to testify. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Two men came to Capitol Hill to testify before a committee where they might find redemption. One had been among the rioters who stormed into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The other had been a mouthpiece for the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist organization whose members have been accused of attacking the seat of democracy with militaristic precision.
These men came to bear witness publicly in front of the Jan. 6 committee. And in doing so, they allowed their fellow citizens to get a good look at them, hear them out and make an assessment. Can we make community with these men who tested the seams of our democracy? Can they make peace with those whose votes they discounted and whose lives they threatened?
Stephen Ayres and Jason Van Tatenhove walked into the hearing room with wildly differing attitudes about how best to present themselves for public consumption. They were like characters from wholly different tales. One man seemed to long for a return to anonymity, to the safety and quiet of simply being ignored. The other looked keen on being a person of note.
Ayres described himself as a “family man” who’d worked at a cabinet company in northeastern Ohio for 20 years. He’s a guy who speaks in short, gravelly voiced sentences, sometimes mere fragments. He’s a regular guy, whatever that might mean, who enjoys camping and playing basketball. He arrived at his place at the witness table because he was also a man who spent a great deal of time on social media absorbing the lies of former president Donald Trump about a stolen election. Ayres wasn’t part of a club or an organization when he went to Washington with his friends. He was a citizen borne forward on anger, patriotism and the assurance of like-minded pals that he was doing the right thing.
Trump tried to contact committee witness, an effort referred to Justice Department, Cheney says
He believed his president when that president told him that the country was in danger. Instead of sitting by the sidelines, he took action. And if Ayres had been right, if Trump had not been lying, he may well have been a hero.
Ayres has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol and awaits sentencing; he was turned in by family who saw him bragging about it on social media. He lost his job, Ayres said, and sold his home. “It changed my life — and definitely not for the good.”
He was dressed as though he was trying to disappear, as if he was trying to fade back into a guy that no one notices on the street. He was wearing a gray suit and a blue shirt and a narrow red plaid tie. His hair was clipped short and his glasses were modestly stylish. And when Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) asked him if he still believed the election was stolen, he sounded not so much like an evangelist preaching the gospel of truth but like a man who was just plain exhausted.
“Not so much now,” Ayres said. “I got away from all the social media when Jan. 6 happened, basically deleted it all. You know, I started doing my own research and everything. And for me, for something like that to be that, to actually, for that to actually take place, it’s too big, you know.”
“There’s no way you can keep something like that quiet,” he said. “With all the, you know, all the lawsuits being shot down one after another, that was mainly what convinced me.”
And then later, when Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) asked him what lessons he wanted the American people to take from his testimony, he offered a word of warning to his friends and neighbors: “I felt like I had, you know, like horse blinders on. I was ... I was locked in the whole time,” Ayres said. “Biggest thing for me is take the blinders off. Make sure you step back and see what’s going on, before it’s too late.”
Van Tatenhove is a family man, too. He told the committee that he has three daughters and a granddaughter, and he fears what might happen after future elections. He came to the committee to explain the Oath Keepers. “They may not like to call themselves a militia, but they are. They’re a violent militia,” Van Tatenhove said.
When committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) asked Van Tatenhove to describe the Oath Keepers’ vision of America, his response was vague, which perhaps is an accurate reflection of their vision. It is a blur of upheaval. “It doesn’t necessarily include the rule of law,” Van Tatenhove explained. “It includes violence. It includes trying to to get their way through lies, through deceit, through intimidation, and through the perpetration of violence.”
Van Tatenhove began his remarks by admonishing the committee, telling them that they needed to be more precise in their language and suggesting that they need to ring the alarm even louder about the threat to democracy. But the alarms are already sounding and if anything the country is going numb to them. We’re learning how to live with the constant ringing in our ears.
Van Tatenhove did not appear to be a chastened man or a repentant one. He was someone who’d come to gift the country with his wisdom. He’d come to set the Jan. 6 committee straight about Jan. 6. “I think we need to quit mincing words and just talk about truths,” he said, “and what it was going to be was an armed revolution.” But frankly, we know this.
Van Tatenhove spoke his truth like it was a revelation when, in fact, it’s something that Thompson’s committee has been saying and showing for weeks now. Are we listening?
From the moment he entered the hearing room, Van Tatenhove set himself apart. In a room full of suits and ties and sports jackets, he was a man in jeans and a denim jacket. He wore the black T-shirt of a punk rock band and a pair of sneakers. His refusal to kowtow to the traditions of Congress was writ large. His attire wasn’t shocking; it was aspiring to be memorable. Who was the guy who testified in jeans and a T-shirt? Oh, right. Van Tate-something or other. He was with that militia group that tried to foment a coup.
Van Tatenhove was covered in tattoos with several just visible below his sweptback gray hair. Thompson introduced him as a former journalist and an artist. But mostly he was a man who did not want to become a blur in the glare of the spotlight. Viewers may well remember the sight of Van Tatenhove at the witness table. They may remember him saying that he finally quit the Oath Keepers when he heard members denying the Holocaust. And perhaps people will applaud that or simply turn away in disgust that he was involved with them at all.
Ayres was the guy in the bland suit. The forgettable one who thought he was saving democracy. The man who believed the lie until he’d broken a pact with the country he’d gone to Washington to protect. He was the witness who Tuesday shook hands with the police officers who had been abused and attacked and beaten on Jan. 6 and apologized to them. That isn’t enough to mend our democracy. It wasn’t much at all. But for now, it’s all we’ve got. | 2022-07-12T23:44:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A regular guy believed the lie, joined the riot, apologized. Now what? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/regular-guy-believed-lie-joined-riot-apologized-now-what/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/12/regular-guy-believed-lie-joined-riot-apologized-now-what/ |
Toll lane critics cite possible flaws in Maryland traffic analysis
Opponents of widening I-270 and part of the Beltway say the federal government should order an independent review of the state’s analysis
Maryland plans to add toll lanes to the western part of the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270, seen here near where the two highways meet. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Critics of Maryland’s plan to widen Interstate 270 and part of the Capital Beltway with toll lanes cited possible flaws in the state’s analysis of whether the new lanes would relieve traffic congestion, saying the federal government should order an independent review.
In a Monday letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation, transit advocates said the state hasn’t explained why its latest computer traffic models produced “substantially different” results from an earlier study. The more recent findings, critics said, further support the state’s argument that the highway widening would reduce backups. However, they said, numerous discrepancies appeared designed “to obtain a desired result.”
The traffic modeling was done as part of a federally required “final environmental impact statement” (FEIS) that the state released last month of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s plan to alleviate traffic congestion. State officials have said the highway widening also would free up more room in the regular lanes, but critics have said it would attract additional traffic and exacerbate climate change.
In the letter, Ben Ross, chair of the Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition, said the Maryland Department of Transportation declined to explain the different findings or changes in its modeling. The “anomalies,” Ross wrote, “create serious doubt whether the new traffic forecasts could have been generated by correcting previous errors and suggest possible falsification of model outputs.”
Project spokesman Terry Owens said the traffic analysis was reviewed by experts and “followed accepted professional practices” approved by the Federal Highway Administration.
The latest regional traffic model used in the analysis “follows industry standards and has been thoroughly reviewed and validated,” Owens wrote. MDOT, he said, “has provided a vast amount of high quality data supporting the FEIS.” The state’s efforts, Owens wrote, “far exceed the [federal] requirements.”
In releasing the FEIS, MDOT said it had “modified analysis methodologies” and “conducted new analysis” based on public comments it had received. The state did not elaborate.
Maryland toll lanes wouldn't ease evening traffic without other improvements, study says
Ross, a Bethesda resident who is retired from reviewing computer models for groundwater flow, said he found the problems “buried in a blizzard of numbers” in an appendix of the state’s FEIS released last month.
“The numbers simply do not look like what a computer model would produce,” Ross said in an interview.
In one example, Ross said, the state’s latest analysis found “drastically” improved drive times on the Beltway’s inner loop during the evening rush between Connecticut Avenue and Interstate 95 compared with its previous analysis. However, he said, the calculations didn’t appear to consider, as traffic models typically would, that more motorists would switch to the faster Beltway from other roads to save time, which would add traffic and slow speeds.
Maryland says it could curb environmental effects of widening Beltway, I-270
The critics’ accusations come as the Federal Highway Administration considers the project’s FEIS for approval. Environmental approval is required to receive federal funding and typically is a target of federal lawsuits seeking to block major infrastructure projects. Questions over Maryland’s ridership projections for the Purple Line, which is more than four years behind schedule and $1.46 billion over budget, were at the heart of a legal challenge that delayed the light-rail line construction by almost a year.
MDOT needs the federal environmental approval before it can secure a 50-year contract worth billions for a private consortium led by Australian toll road operator Transurban to build the lanes. Project supporters say Hogan (R), who is term-limited, is eager to secure the contract before he leaves office in January, when a new governor could change the plan, slow it down or stop it.
Maryland governor's race could decide fate of Beltway, I-270 toll lanes plan
MDOT’s first contract on the project also is being challenged in court, where a losing bidder has alleged that the state improperly awarded a “predevelopment agreement” to the Transurban team to design the lanes and negotiate the longer-term contract to build and operate them.
Under MDOT’s plan, the state would add two toll lanes in each direction to the Beltway between the Virginia side of a new and expanded American Legion Bridge and the exit for Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda. From there, the lanes would extend up I-270 to Frederick, with the lower part to I-370 being built first.
The regular lanes would be rebuilt and remain free. One of the toll lanes on lower I-270 would come from a converted carpool lane. | 2022-07-12T23:44:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland toll lane critics cite 'possible scientific fraud' in traffic study - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/12/maryland-toll-lanes-traffic-study/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/12/maryland-toll-lanes-traffic-study/ |
Lawmakers offer prayers as the hearse carrying the body of late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, not pictured, travels past the National Diet building in a final farewell in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. The funeral was for the family and close associates of Abe, who was fatally shot at close range last Friday as he was making an election campaign speech outside a train station in the western city of Nara. Larger-scale memorial services are to be held at a later date. (Bloomberg)
Japan’s former leader, Shinzo Abe, was always a polarizing figure. But the fissures that emerged during his return to power in 2012 were largely brushed aside as the world united in grief over his murder.
At the time, a Japan specialist at the Obama-era state department said that one would need “a microscope to find one iota of an upside” in Abe’s becoming prime minister again after his first term in office six years earlier. John Kerry, then secretary of state, named Japan as the biggest problem in Asia rather than its more aggressive neighbors(1).
And they were far from outliers. The Economist termed his cabinet “dangerously nationalistic,” while the New York Times fretted that his “nationalist fantasies” would pose challenges for the US. After Abe’s assassination Friday, such arguments were back in fashion: One take deemed him a “divisive arch-conservative;” another called him the “most divisive leader” in recent history, who left a “complicated legacy.”
Such skepticism of Abe should be a relic of a bygone age. He wanted no more than to make Japan a normal country — one not beholden to the legacy of events that took place before more than 90% of the country’s population was born. Abe sought a nation that could stand up for itself in a hostile part of the world, surrounded by three belligerent neighbors, rather than depending entirely for its security on its occasionally flaky ally in Washington.
Fretting about Japanese remilitarization might have made sense in 2006, when Abe first became prime minister in his abortive initial term. In 2022 though, it’s wholly out of place. Abe dreamed of revising Japan’s pacifist constitution, but subsequent events show how necessary that is. Since then, we have seen North Korea come into possession of not just regular nuclear weapons but hydrogen bombs; Russia has annexed Crimea and then invaded Ukraine; and the regime in China has let its mask slip with its determination to extinguish basic freedoms in Hong Kong.
To say that Japan, which counts these countries among its closest neighbors, does not need a more aggressive posture is an argument that should carry very little water. It was Abe who pushed for a structure to preserve the rule of law in the Asia-Pacific region; Abe who recognized the threat that a growing China posed when most other nations saw only dollar signs before their eyes.
He sought to throw off the shackles of wartime guilt that many of Japan’s neighbors use for politically convenient purposes. Yet he also worked to improve relations with almost all those countries. Abe helped repair relations with China: Even though his meeting with Xi Jinping in 2014 began with a legendarily lackluster handshake, it led to a visit to Beijing in 2018.. He was still preparing to host Xi in 2020 until Covid struck.
Japan’s relations with its ostensible ally South Korea have always been sensitive. Abe sought to draw a line under the awful history of “comfort women” — the women and girls who had been forced into sexual slavery during Japan’s occupation of Korea — reaching an agreement with the administration of President Park Geun-hye that was meant to “finally and irreversibly” resolve the issue.
As well as expressing “eternal, sincere condolences” and a “deep repentance” for the “immeasurable damage and suffering” Japan caused, Abe said that Japan “must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”
Fundamentally, he wanted Japan to move on, and to have rights that most other countries take for granted — a military with which to defend itself, a country that can be proud of itself despite its brutal and violent past. In any other country, he would likely be an average center-right politician.
In death, it seems the attitude may be starting to shift. It was a surprise to see the largely liberal Washington Post now backing Japan’s quest to revise its constitution and urging the US to endorse the move. Support for Abe was evident across Asia in the days after his death. Taiwan sent its highest-level official in decades for the funeral. India declared a day of mourning.
Beyond his tendency to divide opinion, the mood Tuesday was captured best by the throngs of people who packed Tokyo’s Nagata-cho, looking to bid farewell as his hearse circled Japan’s centers of political power in a final goodbye before he was cremated. One woman was heard repeatedly shouting words of thanks to the former prime minister, while another man angrily berated bemused police for what is seen as their failure to protect him.
(1) Both incidents are detailed in Tobias Harris’s biography of Abe, “The Iconoclast.” | 2022-07-12T23:48:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the World Got Wrong About Shinzo Abe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-world-got-wrong-about-shinzo-abe/2022/07/12/2cb5f096-0237-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-world-got-wrong-about-shinzo-abe/2022/07/12/2cb5f096-0237-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
The fight over presidential age is unfolding in the oldest America ever
President Biden listens during a meeting with Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Biden is ... not young. He was born under Franklin Roosevelt — the third FDR term, not the final one. He’s not a baby boomer; they were born after him.
Framing Biden’s life in that way is certainly uncharitable, but it’s also misleading because it suggests that he’s wildly unusual. In fact, there were in 2020 16.6 million other living Americans born in the same year as Biden or earlier, 1 in 20 Americans overall. Biden is the oldest American ever to serve as president — but, then, America itself has a higher density of older people than it ever has had before.
The subject of Biden’s age arose this week as the New York Times reported on skepticism from within his own party about his serving a second term in office. Most Democrats would like the party to nominate someone besides Biden in 2024 and, when asked why, about a third said they were concerned primarily about his age.
That spurred an unlikely sort-of defense from the man Biden beat to earn his current position. On Truth Social, Donald Trump clarified that the problem wasn’t age, but Biden.
“President Biden is one of the oldest 79s in History, but by and of itself, he is not an old man," Trump wrote. "There are many people in their 80s, and even 90s, that are as good and sharp as ever. Biden is not one of them, but it has little to do with his age. In actuality, life begins at 80!”
The reason for this is obvious: Trump himself would turn 80 during his second year in office, should he be elected again in 2024. It’s not that 80-year-olds are problematic, Trump insists. It’s that this particular almost-80-year-old is. (Biden turns 80 in November.)
In 2020, the most recent year for which we have Census Bureau data, there were nearly 55.7 million people in the United States aged 65 or over — 16.9 percent of all U.S. residents. That’s the highest percentage in American history — but also a percentage that was passed in 2021 and in 2022 and will be passed again in 2023 and 2024. The bureau projects that by 2060 nearly a quarter of U.S. residents will be aged 65 or over.
There are two reasons for this.
The reason for the immediate surge in the percentage of older Americans is the aforementioned baby boom. The boom lasted from 1946 to 1964. Subtract 65 from 2022 and you get 1957, near the heart of that population surge. Over the coming years, more and more people born during that population spike will slip into that age bracket.
The other reason is that people are living longer. Improvements in health care and preventative medicine mean that, horrible setbacks like global pandemics notwithstanding, both younger and older Americans can expect to live longer than past generations.
In 1984, the United States elected Ronald Reagan to a second term in office. He became the oldest person ever to be inaugurated at 73. (Biden is now the record-holder.) But in 1984, the median age in the country was just over 31, compared to 38.3 in 2020. So relative to the population, Reagan was older at inauguration in 1985 than Biden was last year.
(On that chart, I used dotted lines to connect the same candidate/president when they appear more than once. This was done mostly because I thought it looked neat.)
Of course, age relative to the population isn’t really the point. The questions about Biden’s age aren’t really questions about age, as such, but about capacity. Since the 2020 campaign, observers have cast him (often willfully uncharitably) as mentally diminished. The Times’s determination that Democrats view him as too old is, to a large extent, a determination that many Democrats worry that he isn’t up for the job. Trump, a nexus of such attacks on Biden, is making the same point.
But as America continues to grow older (in the population sense, not the “existing as a nation” sense), we can continue to expect to see older candidates seeking office — and to see their opponents highlight this as a potential point of weakness.
The Times poll, conducted by Siena College, included an interesting detail. The Democrats most likely to point to Biden’s age as a concern were the oldest Democrats. Perhaps the poll marks a sort of age-related form of the Bradley effect. That term describes how White poll respondents in 1982 purportedly overstated their support for Black California gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley because they wanted the pollsters to think they weren’t opposed to voting for a non-White candidate. Maybe younger Democrats are also concerned about Biden’s age — but didn’t want to make such an admission to a pollster.
Again, Biden is, in fact, old. So is Trump. So are millions of other Americans. Life certainly doesn’t begin at 80, as Trump had it, but it doesn’t necessarily end there, either. The question at hand, then, isn’t whether an 82-year-old is fit to begin a term as president. It’s whether Biden is. | 2022-07-12T23:49:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The fight over presidential age is unfolding in the oldest America ever - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/fight-over-presidential-age-is-unfolding-oldest-america-ever/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/12/fight-over-presidential-age-is-unfolding-oldest-america-ever/ |
Wearing a nebula-patterned skirt and James Webb Space Telescope earrings, Camille Calibeo looked around the auditorium in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and saw people who had worked for years, for longer than she has been alive, to make the day a reality.
On Tuesday the 25-year-old, known as the Galactic Gal to her 339,000 followers on TikTok, watched the scientists, some in tears, as a slideshow revealed the first photo from the Webb telescope — a cluster of galaxies in a distant patch of space, approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length — to the last of the Carina Nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that is the birthplace and graveyard of stars.
“On one hand, I feel really insignificant, just to see that deep field was a single grain of sand and now we have the entire sky to look at,” she told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “On the other hand, I feel powerful. Powerful and important and beautiful. Because the chances of us living and existing as we do now are essentially zero.”
Literally decades in the making, the photos, including an exploded star, the field of galaxies and an alien planet, delighted those in the astronomical community who have waited for this moment, from space enthusiasts to scientists whose careers will be forever shaped by today. Despite constant delays, a ballooning budget and a number of other challenges that had become “a running joke," according to scientists, the Webb telescope has traveled nearly a million miles for the past six months, sending back images that no one had ever seen before.
Finally seeing a series of unforgettable scenes from the cosmos during the NASA presentation on Tuesday, many were emotional, including those involved in the project over the years.
Jane Rigby, a NASA astrophysicist and operations project scientist for the Webb Telescope, recalled the moment she initially saw images of a standard star from the telescope, the first time she realized how well the observatory operated, she said.
"I went and had an ugly cry,” she told reporters, “because it works.”
Some compared the global excitement to the new images from the Webb telescope to that of the discoveries of the Hubble Telescope, its predecessor that first captured astronomical objects, including two previously unknown moons of Pluto, and pinned down the age of the universe.
Sarafina El-Badry Nance, an astrophysics PhD student at the University of California, Berkley, would look back at the photos from Hubble’s website whenever she struggled with physics and math in school to remind herself what she was studying. As the 29-year-old watched the clearer, higher-resolution photos from Webb broadcasted by NASA from the edge of her living room couch with her partner Taylor, also a space enthusiast, she said she saw a future of discoveries.
“As astronomers and humans who look to the night sky and try to get some sort of perspective, to try to understand our existence in the cosmos, these images allow us to really gain that perspective in a beautiful way,” she said, her voice shaking with excitement.
She posted her reactions, jaw drops and all, on Twitter for her 135,000 followers as NASA shared each image that mapped the cycle of life and death in space.
“oh my god it’s like Christmas morning,” she wrote.
As she peered at the image of the Southern Ring Nebula, a dying star sending rings of gas and dust out into space, Nance saw more and more details come into view, and she imagined her future. Nance, who studies supernovas, looks forward to the Webb telescope sharing new images of nebulas and providing more potential data she will research during her career.
“That’s why I’m studying and doing the research to really try to understand those beautiful, exotic features of the cosmos,” she said. “Hubble at the time I thought was the best of the best, and to have this is just the best gift I could imagine.”
Scientists have already applied to use the data gathered for research — and others say they will be applying in the next round, including Nance. In a broadcast Tuesday, NASA researchers encouraged scientists to think ambitiously about research that could stem from Webb’s findings.
Like Hubble, the discoveries of the Webb telescope could propel not just science but a global fascination with space.
After she immigrated from Iraq as a teenager, Diana Alsindy realized her love of science, and she went on to study chemical engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and intern at NASA, where she first encountered the telescope as it was still being built.
“It seemed unattainable with the delays and the challenges that seemed surreal," she said.
The telescope — that some lawmakers had considered canceling at one point — had a fraught path to make it nearly 1 million miles away. In fact, NASA calculated there were 344 potential ways the $10 billion telescope, the largest space observatory ever built, could fail. Originally planned to launch in 2010 and cost $1 billion, it was sent up on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in December 2021, years behind schedule and billions over budget.
But on Tuesday morning, Alsindy turned on her television to the first public signs of success — an inspiring moment for the now 28-year-old engineer for Blue Origin.
“Oh my god,” Alsindy said in a video on her Instagram as the image of the planetary nebula appeared on her screen. She shared the developments of the day in Arabic and English with her 121,000 followers. “There’s no way this is real. Wow.”
Alsindy said in an interview with The Post that she expects Webb’s images shared through social media will make science more accessible and interesting to many, including those like her who do not initially have the opportunity to study space.
“I didn’t really grow up to know what space is or wanting to be an astronaut,” she said. “We were kind of in survival mode... So what it means to me to showcase the science in a fun, accessible manner in English and Arabic, it’s great because you are inspiring the next generation.”
“It’s such a phenomenal time to be alive,” she added. | 2022-07-12T23:50:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Webb Telescope photos delight space community - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/12/webb-telescope-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/07/12/webb-telescope-reaction/ |
The Washington Mystics are in position to make a push to the top of the standings coming out of the all-star break. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Ariel Atkins produced a subtle smirk as she sat courtside inside Crypto.com Arena and talked about the next month of Mystics basketball. This is the stretch the team has been talking about all season while dealing with inconsistency, but it still sits in the No. 5 playoff slot coming out of the all-star break.
Everything the team hopes to accomplish is still in front of it. The Mystics were 14-10 and just three games back of the first-place Chicago Sky (16-6) ahead of Tuesday’s game at Los Angeles, which was scheduled to tip off at 10:30 p.m. The schedule is favorable with just 12 games remaining and it offers both challenge and opportunity. Four of those games are against teams — Seattle, Las Vegas, Chicago — higher up in the standings. There’s a chance to move up and also make an impression against potential playoff opponents.
Seven of the last 10 games are at home.
“We know that our destiny is in our own hands,” Atkins said. “We get to either take them down or put a little thought in their mind of, like, ‘Dang, we might have to see them in the playoffs.’
“You just want to make people hate when you have to come to their gym or hate when they have to come to you. That’s kind of like the psychological part of the game. I just want you to know every time you see our jersey that you’re going to have a hard life that night.”
Coach Mike Thibault has pointed to this stretch since training camp. He knew there would be ebbs and flows with players in and out of the lineup early and then needing time to play together after the absences lessened. The goal was to peak heading into playoffs.
The biggest need, Thibault said, is similar to what the team has needed the last two months — consistency. He specifically pointed to rebounding, transition defense and free throw shooting as areas that have been up and down. The Mystics lead the WNBA in points per game allowed and have formed a defensive identity that starts with perimeter harassment from Atkins, Natasha Cloud and Alysha Clark. Atlanta Dream Coach Tanisha Wright recently talked about the difficulty Washington’s perimeter defense presents, and three-time all star Kayla McBride of the Minnesota Lynx recently tweeted, “I wish I could explain to y’all what sucks about the clark, cloud, atkins combo but you gotta go thru it to understand... literally.” McBride ended the tweet with the hashtag that read: “I just wanna take an open shot.”
“It’s in our lap to take care of it,” Thibault said. “Here’s where we are and here’s where we can be. Lock in on the little things.”
One thing that will help with that consistency is having Elena Delle Donne for a higher percentage of games than before the break. She played 15 of 24 games and averaged a team-high 16 points to go along with 6.1 rebounds as the team was cautious with her surgically repaired back. The offense has run much smoother with the two-time MVP in the lineup as she forces mismatches and double teams that create creases in opposing defenses and open shots for teammates. She is scheduled to play Tuesday in Los Angeles, Thursday in Phoenix and at home against Minnesota on Sunday. After that, the Mystics are scheduled to play one game over a 10-day span. That’s good for Delle Donne’s back and provides for some rest and practice time that was rare before the all-star break.
Delle Donne wants the team to focus on communication and offensive pace as the season closes. There is some comfort in being a veteran team that has the experience of winning a championship, but the group isn’t taking that for granted.
Cloud has repeated throughout the summer that they need to stop talking about being a championship team and play like it.
“It’s really important to keep building and getting better each game,” Delle Donne said. “I think we’re in a great position. Obviously, we have to show it now.
“But we’ve got really great leadership among a big group of vets. A lot of us have been here before and we know the importance of getting better in games and practices because it’s still such a fast season, but I feel good about where we’re at.”
Outside of those four games against teams ahead of the Mystics in the standings, Washington still has to face those fighting for their playoff lives. That starts Tuesday night against the Sparks, who enter the game in the No. 7 playoff slot, and includes five games against teams trailing the Mystics in the standings that are either in the top eight or within a half game.
Washington went into the break with wins in three of its past four games and hopes that momentum will continue on the other side as it truly starts a push toward a championship run. | 2022-07-12T23:50:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Time is now for Mystics to start their push for the title - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/mystics-title-push-post-all-star-break/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/mystics-title-push-post-all-star-break/ |
“I’m trying to learn and develop myself as a coach, but also I feel I can create a team here which can rise up the league,” Rooney said. “I really believe that — the way I work, the way I want the team to play, I think it will excite the fans.” (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
On June 24, Wayne Rooney informed Derby County, a soccer club in England’s East Midlands burdened by financial problems and recently relegated to the third division, that he was stepping down after 18 months in his first head coaching job.
In Washington, wheels began turning — a process that culminated Wednesday with Rooney’s appointment as boss of another troubled soccer team, D.C. United.
“When I saw that he was going to step down, I said, ‘This is a moment,’ ” chief executive Jason Levien said. “I thought there was a narrow window that maybe the timing would be right to bring him here and to help lead us forward.”
Things had gone south quickly for United too, even after a coaching change in April. Longtime assistant Chad Ashton was named the interim boss but slated to oversee the team the rest of the season. United, however, never found its groove, prompting Levien and the front office to reach out to Rooney — more than 2½ years after he ended a short but mostly sweet playing tenure in Washington.
“The results weren’t going our way,” said Dave Kasper, United’s president of soccer operations. “We said, ‘Well, this may be something we need to address now.’ ”
Team officials contacted Rooney’s agent, Paul Stretford. There was already a strong relationship in place. Even after Rooney ended his MLS playing career, he remained in communication with former teammates and Levien, who on occasion picked his brain about potential player signings and other soccer topics.
After leaving Derby, Rooney said he planned to weigh his coaching options in Europe, and the assumption around the English game was he would land a job in the Premier League or with a second-division club.
The more thought he put into it, though, he “wanted to experience something different outside of England.”
“There are many managers who don’t take that risk,” he said. “I know it’s a risk because I have to do well. But I’m willing to take that chance to come here and prove myself in a different country in a different league. I’m ready to take the challenge.”
United also interviewed three other candidates in recent weeks, two of whom were not White, satisfying MLS’s diversity policy, two people familiar with the search said.
Rooney, though, was undoubtedly the top choice. To prepare himself, he said he watched several matches on tape and the past two live. “The last game was difficult to watch,” he said of a 7-0 defeat at Philadelphia on Friday.
Over the weekend, a deal was struck. He arrived Sunday night and signed a guaranteed contract through the end of the 2023 season, with a team option for 2024. Terms were not disclosed, but people close to the situation said United will pay him the highest coaching salary in its history, topping $1 million annually.
Until he receives a work visa in a few weeks, Rooney cannot be on the sideline. Ashton will continue to oversee the squad, which resumes play Wednesday against Columbus.
“I’m trying to learn and develop myself as a coach, but also I feel I can create a team here which can rise up the league,” Rooney said. “I really believe that — the way I work, the way I want the team to play, I think it will excite the fans. It will take a little bit of time, but ultimately when we get the players used to it, it will benefit us.”
Rooney had cut short his stay as a player for family reasons. Namely, his wife Coleen wasn’t happy living abroad full-time after a lifetime in the Manchester-Liverpool area. On Tuesday, though, Rooney said the family dynamic this time is “no issue whatsoever.” He said if his wife had told him to not take the D.C. job, he wouldn’t have accepted it.
“It’s more work as a manager [than a player], so probably best for the time being for my wife and children to stay and allow me to really put my teeth into the job,” he said. He then joked, “I think the kids are ready to get rid of me for a while!”
Coleen Rooney and their four children will remain in England the remainder of this MLS season, which, unless United (5-10-2) rallies for a playoff berth, will end in less than three months. They’ll visit periodically, and he’ll spend much of the offseason in England.
“That was the most important question I had for him when we started talking: ‘How’s it going to work with your family?’ ” Kasper said.
Rooney reassured the organization he is committed to the mission, Kasper said, and won’t abruptly head home for good. Still, United officials acknowledged Rooney isn’t likely to stay for more than a few years.
“I’m hoping he stays quite a long time,” Levien said, “but the realities of people’s personal lives are always a challenge.”
Rooney also said that, though he is focused on turning United’s fortunes, he’s also looking to set himself up for bigger coaching roles in Europe.
“Playing at the top level, you can really choose which club you want to go to,” he said. “As a manager, I’m at the beginning of that journey. I am at a point in my managerial career where I have to put the work in, I have to put the hours in. Of course, I am an ambitious person. One day I want to manage at the top level. This is part of that process in terms of coming here.”
United noted his leadership qualities as a player here and in his coaching tenure at Derby County, which, amid a 21-point penalty in the standings because of financial issues, almost avoided relegation.
“His soccer IQ is unbelievable,” United captain Steven Birnbaum said. “The way he would discuss things in the locker room [in 2018-19] and the adjustments we’d have to make a halftime, it was basically having a second coach.”
As United looks to improve the roster, the club is banking on the Rooney name carrying weight.
“Players are already calling him off the hook,” said Kasper, who is aiming to sign two high-end designated players, among others, before the transfer window closes Aug. 4. “When you tell perspective players Wayne Rooney is the coach, their ears perk up.”
Notes: Greek forward Taxi Fountas (nine goals, three assists in 11 matches) was named to the MLS all-star team, which will play the Liga MX all-stars form Mexico on Aug. 10 in St. Paul, Minn. | 2022-07-12T23:50:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wayne Rooney introduced as D.C. United's new coach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/wayne-rooney-dc-united-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/wayne-rooney-dc-united-coach/ |
Patagonia CEO discusses the impact of recent SCOTUS decisions
As one of the major outdoor lifestyle retailers in the country, Patagonia is known for prioritizing environmental sustainability and its loyalty to staff, both of which were recently impacted by Supreme Court decisions. Join Washington Post Live on Thursday, July 21 at 2:00 p.m. ET for a conversation with Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert about the intersection of corporate responsibility and politics in the aftermath of recent Supreme Court cases and private sector leadership during the pandemic.
CEO, Patagonia Works and Patagonia, Inc. | 2022-07-12T23:51:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Patagonia CEO discusses the impact of recent SCOTUS decisions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/21/patagonia-ceo-discusses-impact-recent-scotus-decisions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/07/21/patagonia-ceo-discusses-impact-recent-scotus-decisions/ |
LeBron James criticizes U.S. effort to bring home Brittney Griner
LeBron James spoke out about Brittney Griner's detainment in an episode of his YouTube talk show, set to air in full Friday. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
As WNBA star Brittney Griner approaches her fifth month in Russian custody, LeBron James criticized the U.S. response to her detainment and questioned whether she would even want to return to her home country.
“Now, how can she feel like America has her back?” James said in a trailer for the latest episode of his talk show, “The Shop: Uninterrupted.” “I would be feeling like, ‘Do I even want to go back to America?’ ”
The episode — which features a wide-ranging discussion between James, co-host Maverick Carter, show creator Paul Rivera, actor Daniel Kaluuya, British soccer star Marcus Rashford and artist Rashid Johnson — will air in its entirety Friday on YouTube.
It’s unclear when the episode was filmed, but the NBA superstar’s comments were released days after Phoenix Mercury Coach Vanessa Nygaard mentioned James while speaking about Griner’s situation.
“If it was LeBron, he’d be home, right?” Nygaard said during a news conference last week. “It’s a statement about the value of women. It’s a statement about the value of a Black person. It’s a statement about the value of a gay person. All of those. We know it.”
James is one of several high-profile athletes who have publicly advocated for further efforts to bring Griner home. In June, the Lakers star shared a tweet calling on President Biden and Vice President Harris to “bring Brittney home swiftly and safely by taking action today.”
Uninterrupted, a multimedia company founded in part by James, sold shirts stating “We Are BG” this week to benefit the advocacy fund set up by Griner’s family.
Griner was arrested Feb. 17 and charged with carrying vape cartridges allegedly containing cannabis oil in her baggage at Sheremetyevo International Airport outside Moscow. If convicted, she could face up to 10 years in prison. Griner pleaded guilty to the charge in a Russian court on Thursday.
Earlier this month, Griner wrote a letter to Biden. In it, she said she was “terrified” she might be in Russia “forever” and urged Biden to work for her release and that of other Americans detained abroad.
“I realize you are dealing with so much, but please don’t forget about me and the other American Detainees,” Griner wrote. “Please do all you can to bring us home. I voted for the first time in 2020 and I voted for you. I believe in you. I still have so much good to do with my freedom that you can help restore. ... I am grateful for whatever you can do at this moment to get me home.”
President Biden told Griner’s wife, Cherelle, in a call on Wednesday that he is working to secure the basketball player’s release “as soon as possible,” the White House said. | 2022-07-13T00:23:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LeBron James criticizes U.S. effort to bring home Brittney Griner - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/lebron-james-brittney-griner-youtube-show/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/12/lebron-james-brittney-griner-youtube-show/ |
Storms fell trees, cut off power to tens of thousands
Hail, high winds and heavy rain strike the Washington region
Wind tore down a tree at an intersection in Northwest Washington on July 12 amid a huge storm that blew through the region. (D.C. Fire and E.M.S.)
Severe thunderstorms packing high winds toppled trees and knocked out power Tuesday evening to more than 200,000 homes and businesses throughout the Washington region.
At one point, 179,000 utility customers across Maryland were without electricity, according to the PowerOutage website.
Trees fell onto houses and roads in many places as winds gusted to more than 60 mph amid a period of pelting rain and clattering hailstones. The storm swept west to east across the region, sparing few, if any, jurisdictions.
In only a single example of the storms’ impact, the city of College Park canceled a 7:30 p.m. meeting of its mayor and council, citing the loss of electricity throughout the city.
In College Park and nearby Berwyn, thickets of fallen trees and broken branches sprawled across storm-soaked streets, according to a witness.
The storm, darkening the skies as it swept from West Virginia toward the Washington area, proved a riveting spectacle to many, as lightning flickered repeatedly and raced to the ground in jagged streaks.
Trees that withstood the furious onslaught writhed and twisted under the lash of the wind. A 70 mph gust was measured near Centreville in Fairfax County, Va., according to a report received by the National Weather Service.
At Reagan National Airport, instruments measured a gust of 52 mph.
As always with such summer storms, the impact varies from one jurisdiction to another, or even from street to street.
In Montgomery County, at least two houses were struck by falling trees in the Olney area alone, according to Pete Piringer, spokesman for the county fire and rescue service.
In upper Northwest Washington, two people were in a car at 42nd and Chesapeake Streets NW when a tree toppled onto the vehicle. Both occupants were removed uninjured, according to the D.C. fire department.
The weather reportedly forced cancellation of a baseball game at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, Md. A photograph showed a large tree, shorn off near the base of its trunk, laying in the parking lot. | 2022-07-13T00:40:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Powerful storms knock out power throughout Washington region - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/storms-trees-power-dc-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/12/storms-trees-power-dc-maryland/ |
Trump hid plan for Capitol march on day he marked as ‘wild’, panel says
New evidence and testimony showed the president’s tweet promoting a protest on Jan. 6 united extremist groups and led to calls for violence
A tweet by President Donald Trump encouraging people to come to D.C. and protest on Jan. 6, 2021, is shown on a screen July 12 as the House select committee holds a hearing on the attack on the Capitol. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The tweet was issued at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19, 2020, after an hours-long meeting with outside advisers about seizing voting machines that a White House adviser described in real time as “unhinged.”
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” wrote the president. “Be there, will be wild!”
The message marked a turning point in Trump’s efforts to stay in power and, in the telling of Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), “would galvanize his followers, unleash a political firestorm and change the course of our history as a country.”
Notably, the committee member said, the president’s move to advertise a protest on Jan. 6 caused the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, two right-wing extremist groups that have not historically worked together, to join hands and coordinate their planning, including with maps of D.C. that pinpointed the location of police.
The tweet also illustrated, said committee members, Trump’s pattern of escalating efforts to thwart the peaceful transfer of power at every moment when he had an opportunity to dial them down.
That tendency, they argued, was illustrated by his disregard for the advice of his lawyers. A clip of new testimony from White House counsel Pat Cipollone showed he was among those pushing back on baseless conspiracy theories launched by pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, demanding during an extended encounter in the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, “Where is the evidence?”
And the same inclination has continued to shape Trump’s behavior, claimed Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s vice chair, who said the former president had recently tried to call a witness in the panel’s investigation. She said the committee had notified the Justice Department of the episode, promising, “We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.”
As she has throughout this summer’s hearings, Cheney insisted on Trump’s ultimate responsibility for instigating an insurrection that was built on a lie. “President Trump is a 76-year-old man,” she said. “He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”
The committee presented evidence showing that Trump’s tweet on Dec. 19 altered planning for the protest activity that would ultimately bring deadly mayhem to the Capitol. Originally, a pro-Trump group called Women for America First had been preparing for a rally after the inauguration of Joe Biden on Jan. 20. But, following the president’s tweet, the group changed the permit to Jan. 6, according to documents displayed by the House panel.
Among pro-Trump influencers who enjoy broad online followings, the tweet was a siren. Alex Jones, the far-right host of Infowars, said, “President Trump, in the early morning hours today, has tweeted that he wants the American people to march on Washington.” Tim Pool, a prominent YouTuber, said of Jan. 6, “This could be Trump’s last stand.” And Matt Bracken, a right-wing commentator, became specific, envisioning “storming right into the Capitol.”
Further afield, the tweet caused violent rhetoric to course through anonymous pro-Trump sectors of the internet. “Trump just told us all to come armed,” one message read. Another user said volunteers were needed “for the firing squad.” Jim Watkins, the owner of the online message board where the extremist QAnon ideology took root, told the House panel he was moved by Trump’s tweet. “When the president of the United States announced that he was going to have a rally, I bought a ticket and went.”
Some of the messages were “openly homicidal,” Raskin said, and littered with racist and genocidal rallying cries. One asked, “Why don’t we just kill them. … every last democrat ….” Another said, “white revolution is the only solution.”
A post on a popular pro-Trump forum, thedonald.win, envisioned police officers “laying on the ground in a pool of blood.” The site’s founder, Jody Williams, told the committee that the president’s tweet focused attention on Jan. 6.
“After it was announced that he was going to be there on the sixth to talk, then yes, everything else was kind of shut out, and it was just going to be on the sixth,” Williams said.
A post on that forum pressed, “JOIN YOUR LOCAL PROUD BOYS CHAPTER AS WELL.”
The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, some of whose members have been indicted on charges of conspiracy related to Jan. 6, “responded immediately to President Trump’s call,” Raskin said.
Kelly Meggs, the head of the Florida branch of the Oath Keepers, took to Facebook on the morning of Dec. 19 to declare an alliance between the two groups, writing, “We have decided to work together and shut this … down,” with an expletive for emphasis.
The next day, the Proud Boys “got to work,” Raskin said, launching an encrypted chat called the “Ministry of Self Defense,” in which they used maps of D.C. and other tools to engage in “strategic and tactical planning about Jan. 6.”
The lawmaker said members of both extremist groups worked with Flynn — the former lieutenant general who attended the Dec. 18 meeting in the White House and had been pictured just days before being guarded by an Oath Keeper — as well as with longtime Trump friend Roger Stone. Both men were pardoned in the final weeks of the Trump administration.
The committee obtained encrypted content from a group chat called “Friends of Stone,” or F.O.S., that Raskin said included Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, among others. In the chat, Rhodes said anyone not able to travel to D.C. should instead launch protests in their state capitals. He also called on Trump to invoke martial law, according to video shown by the committee.
Flynn did not respond to a request for comment. Stone, in a text message, said, “Any claim assertion or implication that I knew in advance about, was involved in or condoned any illegal act at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is categorically false.” He defended his decision to give a speech on Jan. 5 “consistent with my constitutional free-speech rights to skepticism about the anomalies and irregularities in the 2020 election. I am certainly entitled to my apocalyptic view of America’s future as expressed in my speech.”
Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Trump attacked the committee on Truth Social, the social media platform developed by his allies after he was banned from Twitter, saying the investigation was an effort to harm his poll numbers.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), who co-led Tuesday’s hearing, presented evidence that Trump planned in advance to direct his supporters to the Capitol but kept his intentions veiled.
An undated draft tweet, marked as being seen by the president, promoted his Jan. 6 speech at the Ellipse and concluded, “March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!”
A Trump campaign spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, wrote in an email after a Jan. 2 call with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the president’s “expectations are to have something intimate at the Ellipse and call on everyone to march to the Capitol.”
Rally organizers indicated they had advance knowledge that the president would issue the call at the last minute. “POTUS is going to call for it just unexpectedly,” Kylie Kremer, a leader of Women for America First and an organizer of the rally at the Ellipse, wrote in a text message on Jan. 4. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Ali Alexander, another organizer of pro-Trump protest activity, also exhibited prior
knowledge of the president’s plans in a text message the following day. “Trump is supposed to order us to the capitol at the end of his speech but we will see,” he wrote.
Alexander said Tuesday he could not recall who notified him about the president’s remarks. “Plans were changing daily,” he said. “We went with the flow and were focused on compliance.”
But Murphy said the “evidence confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the president.”
When he executed that strategy — and ad-libbed remarks instructing his supporters to “show strength” and “fight like hell,” in changes to his prepared speech revealed by evidence from the National Archives and witness testimony, according to Murphy — the images of violence emerging from the Capitol hours later left some of his former top aides uncomfortable.
Five takeaways from the hearing on extremism and Trump
Brad Parscale, his onetime campaign manager who had stepped away from the reelection effort, reacted to Trump’s conduct in a text message that evening to Pierson. “A sitting president asking for civil war,” he wrote.
“If I was Trump and knew my rhetoric killed someone,” he added. When Pierson pushed back, saying, “It wasn’t the rhetoric,” Parscale replied, “Katrina. Yes it was.”
Parscale is now advising Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, and has been paid $150,000 by the group since he sent those text messages. He declined to comment. But a person familiar with Parscale’s thinking said he was angry with Trump at the time for dismissing him as campaign manager and thought the president should have commented hours before he did to tell people to leave the Capitol. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said Parscale has since made peace with Trump. The two spoke Tuesday after the texts were revealed, the person said, adding that Parscale would be involved in a prospective 2024 campaign.
Trump’s mood was brightest during the post-election period on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, former White House aides told the committee, according to clips from their depositions. That’s because he could hear his supporters gathering from his perch in the Oval Office, they said.
Those supporters, said Murphy, “believed him” when he said falsely that the election had been stolen.
“And many headed towards the Capitol. As a result, people died. People were injured,” she said. “Many of his supporters’ lives will never be the same.”
He said he marched to the Capitol on the president’s instructions, recalling, “We basically just followed what he said.” Ayres said he left the Capitol after Trump instructed the rioters to do so in a video message that also called them “very special,” and would have gone home sooner had the president asked.
Instead, Raskin said, Trump “became the first president ever to call for a crowd to descend on the capital city to block the constitutional transfer of power.”
“The creation of the internet and social media has given today’s tyrants tools of propaganda and disinformation that yesterday’s despots could only have dreamed of,” he said.
Ayres, asked to reflect on lessons from Jan. 6, said, “The biggest thing for me is take the blinders off, make sure you step back and see what’s going on before it’s too late.”
Josh Dawsey contributed to this report. | 2022-07-13T00:40:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | January 6 hearing: Trump hid plan for Capitol march on day he marked as ‘wild’, panel says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/january-6-hearing-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/january-6-hearing-trump/ |
Washington, DC - June 13 : A video of former President Donald Trump attorney Sidney Powell speaking is shown on a screen as the House select committee tasked with investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol hold a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday, June 13, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The rolling, hours-long shouting match was absurd, committee member Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) said. But nevertheless, the night was “critical,” he argued, since it provided a forum for Trump to watch as his own advisers shot down, one by one, the false theories to which he had been clinging in hopes of staying in office.
The wild session — during which Trump weighed seizing voting machines from key counties, deploying the National Guard to potentially rerun the election or appointing lawyer Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election — had been widely reported in past accounts of Trump’s final weeks in office.
But the committee, at its seventh public hearing on Tuesday, brought forward powerful and vivid personal testimony from six different participants — both those who wanted the president to act and those begging him not to do so — weaving them together in a video montage that intercut voices from both sides.
It took place four days after the electoral college met and, confirming the popular vote in key states, formally elected Joe Biden the next president. The committee showed clips of testimony demonstrating that Trump was told by everyone from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to Attorney General William P. Barr to Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia — a lawyer and son of a deceased conservative Supreme Court justice — that there was no longer a legal path for him to remain in office, and it was time to concede.
Yet somehow, the delegation that included Flynn and Powell prevailed on a junior staffer to escort them into one of country’s most secure facilities, where the group met for a time with Trump alone before any White House staffer even realized they were in the building.
Testifying to the committee via remote video, wearing oversized glasses and an animal print top and sipping periodically from a can of Diet Dr Pepper, Powell — who had filed several unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the election — wryly explained that Trump’s aides came running when they realized what was happening.
“I bet Pat Cipollone set a new land-speed record,” she said, referring to the White House counsel.
For his part, Cipollone testified that he got a call that he needed to be in the Oval Office and rushed into the room. There, he spotted Flynn and Powell and another man he did not recognize
“I walked in, I looked at him and I said, ‘Who are you?’” said Cipollone, in one of a number of clips played by the committee of testimony given by Cipollone last week, after months of negotiations.
The man was Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of the discount furniture outlet Overstock.com, who was helping to organize and fund Powell and Flynn’s efforts. Cipollone told the committee he was chagrined. “I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice. And so I didn’t understand how they had gotten in,” he testified.
Cipollone was joined by other White House aides including Herschmann and staff secretary Derek Lyons, and the group listened as Flynn, Powell, Byrne and another lawyer working with Powell named Emily Newman assured Trump the election had been stolen. Meadows arrived eventually. Trump at times called other campaign aides and placed them on speaker phone.
“At one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world, and who was communicating with whom via the machines and some comment about, like, Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet,” Herschmann recalled.
The group recommended that Trump sign an executive order — they had brought a draft — that would appoint Powell as special counsel and instruct the Defense Department to seize voting machines, testimony showed.
But, according to Cipollone, the group was unable to answer one key question from Trump’s White House advisers.
“We were pushing back and asking one simple question as a general matter: Where is the evidence?” he recounted.
According to Cipollone, Powell and the others reacted with anger, suggesting that even asking the question was a sign that Trump’s White House team was insufficiently loyal to him. The committee emphasized the point by then showing a clip of Powell.
“If it had been me sitting in his chair, I would have fired all of them that night and had them escorted out of the building,” she testified.
All parties agreed the meeting was heated.
Three people familiar with the hours-long session told The Washington Post that the committee’s presentation captured the broad outlines of the meeting. They each spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the private meeting.
“The only thing that they didn’t quite capture was how loud and how profane it was. It was literally people just screaming and swearing and yelling at each other for hours,” one person said.
“Sidney Powell was screaming at the president that we were trying to undermine him the whole time,” said another person, who added that much of the meeting revolved around discussion of voting machines and Powell’s promise that if she could seize the machines, she could prove her theories.
A third person told The Post that Cipollone had his jacket on to leave for dinner with his family when he got the call about the meeting. “He thought he was going to be there for a few minutes, and he was there for many hours,” the person said.
It was Lyons’ last day as a White House official, and he planned to go to dinner with friends but was unexpectedly delayed in the Oval Office. Shouting could be heard from down the hall, the person said.
Herschmann testified that the screaming got “completely, completely out there.”
“It’d been a long day. And what they were proposing, I thought was nuts,” he testified.
The committee then immediately played a video of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who had made his way to the White House that night and joined the meeting already in progress. Seated jacketless in a leather armchair and speaking in gravelly tones, Giuliani explained to the committee what he told Trump’s closest advisers that day: “I’m going to categorically describe it as, ‘You guys are not tough enough.’ Or maybe I put it another way, ‘You’re a bunch of pussies.’”
By the end, after midnight, Powell testified that she believed that Trump had agreed to name her special counsel and extend her top secret clearance. Cipollone declined to explain to the committee what Trump said in the meeting but insisted no paperwork was ever filed to complete the appointment. Regardless, Lyons said Trump came away convinced the outsiders were working to keep him in office, as he desired. The meeting ended as it had started, Lyons testified: “Sidney Powell was fighting, Mike Flynn was fighting. They were looking for avenues that would enable it would result in President Trump remaining President Trump for a second term.”
At 12:11 a.m., with apparent relief, Hutchinson texted Anthony Ornato, then deputy chief of staff, that Powell, Flynn and Giuliani had left the building. She expressed amazement that Byrne — the former Overstock CEO — had been with the group. “Dream team!!!!” she wrote.
She then sent someone a photograph she had just taken of her boss, Trump’s chief of staff, escorting Giuliani from the building “to make sure he didn’t wander back to the Mansion.”
The White House aides might have been relieved to bring the meeting to a close. But at 1:42 a.m., Trump made clear which side in the debate had won his heart.
“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” he tweeted. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.” | 2022-07-13T00:41:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The White House meeting that preceded Trump’s ‘will be wild’ tweet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/trump-white-house-meeting-jan-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/trump-white-house-meeting-jan-6/ |
By Harry Brumpton and Vinicy Chan | Bloomberg
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. is in talks with KKR & Co.-backed MYOB Group Ltd. about an acquisition of the Australian accounting software business.
ANZ and KKR “are yet to reach agreement in relation to the acquisition and there is no certainty it will proceed,” the bank said in a statement Wednesday. That followed an earlier report from Bloomberg News that the parties were in advanced discussions for a deal that could value MYOB at more than A$4 billion ($2.7 billion).
“MYOB is one of Australia’s leading providers of business management, financial and accounting solutions for SMEs, Enterprise and Accounting Practice customers,” the Australian bank said in the statement. A representative for KKR declined to comment.
ANZ shares fell as much as 0.8% in Sydney trading as of 10:23 a.m.
ANZ has been building up on its balance sheet, partly because the bank is keen to capture new opportunities, its Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in May. Last week, ANZ announced it would sell its A$715 million investment lending portfolio to Bendigo & Adelaide Bank Ltd., while Bloomberg also reported the bank has started exploring a sale of its stake in PT Bank Pan Indonesia.
Founded in 1991, MYOB provides accounting and management systems with clients in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and other Asian countries, its website shows. It serves more than 1 million customers and over 10,000 accounting professionals in Asia Pacific. In 2019, KKR took MYOB private in a deal that valued the Australian firm at about A$2 billion.
(Recasts with ANZ confirmation throughout. Adds share price reaction and other recent ANZ dealmaking) | 2022-07-13T01:20:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | KKR Eyes Over A$4 Billion Value for MYOB in ANZ Talks, Sources Say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/kkr-eyesover-a4-billion-value-for-myob-in-anz-talks-sources-say/2022/07/12/14a60d7c-0243-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/kkr-eyesover-a4-billion-value-for-myob-in-anz-talks-sources-say/2022/07/12/14a60d7c-0243-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
The cybersecurity community was set alight last week by the announcement of new cryptographic algorithms designed to protect our digital futures. Now the race us on to roll out software and hardware that will secure computers against a threat that still only exists in theory.
After a six-year search, the US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology on July 5 announced it had found four algorithms “that are designed to withstand the assault of a future quantum computer” that will be included in its set of official standards. Another four remain under consideration and may be included in the list later. The final standards, which will include parameters and implementations of the algorithms, will be finalized over the next two years.
An algorithm is a mathematical recipe for taking one set of information and converting it into another form. In cryptography, such algorithms are deployed to make messages hard to read by an external party, or to verify the legitimacy of data such as a signature or password. Many of those examined by NIST have been around for decades, meaning there’s plenty of time for researchers to break the algorithms — some were shown to be insecure during the selection process.
It’s a common misunderstanding that secure cryptography is impossible to break. Instead, computer scientists use the term infeasible — meaning an encrypted message can be reverse engineered, in theory, but it would take an extremely long time to do so.
Current security approaches hold because modern computers use binary units — bits — to reduce all numbers to 1s and 0s, and then perform calculations. But quantum computers can function on more than two binary bits at a time (they’re known as qubits), meaning they can crunch huge amounts of data faster. What might take years on a classic computer could take hours or even minutes with a quantum computer. That makes everything we keep secure — from encrypted messages to cryptocurrencies — vulnerable to quantum attack.
The caveat is that no such quantum computers exist. Scientists have been rushing to master related concepts such as quantum entanglement, but no one has yet worked out how to create a system that is stable, accurate and reproducible. Simply knowing that such a breakthrough will come is enough to force governments to start preparing now.
The last time the world was united around such a huge digital task was a quarter century ago. A bug, known as Y2K, occurred because many digital calendars only accounted for two digits. As a result, the one-year shift from 1999 to 2000 would be incorrectly viewed as a 99-year jump backwards. Everything from banks to aviation systems to traffic lights were considered vulnerable, so software was rewritten to handle the error.
Now it’s time to prepare for the post-quantum era.
“It’s kind of like the Y2K problem, except that we don’t actually know the date,” said Nicolas Roussy Newton, Taipei-based co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of BTQ, which is developing post-quantum software and semiconductors. “There’s the threat that data stolen today could be decrypted in the future by quantum computers.”
In May, US President Joe Biden ordered all federal departments to develop plans to safeguard against the looming threat ahead of NIST choosing its recommended algorithms. Germany and France had already announced their choices, giving them a small head start.
NIST’s announcement serves as the starter’s gun for government and civil-society organizations to make preparations. Some of it will be pretty straightforward because even though the final standards aren’t decided, the broad approaches are already known. Semiconductors and computers will take longer.“If you do anything in software, you can start migration immediately,” said Andersen Cheng, London-based chief executive officer of Post-Quantum, a startup which developed software to survive quantum-computing attacks, including a virtual private network and biometric identity systems. “But if you do it in hardware, it takes time for parameters to be decided, which could take another 18 months.”
The rollout won’t come all at once, and could take decades. Those organizations with more money and a greater need for secrecy will start first — likely the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency — before trickling down to banks and communications providers. Within 20 years even email services and webcams will have post-quantum algorithms built in to ensure security.
The road to a post-quantum world is a long one. Unfortunately, we don’t know how long. But at least preparations have begun.
• A Billion Files Leaked by Sloppiness, Not Hacking: Tim Culpan
• Expensive Hacks Are Becoming Part of Web3 Life: Parmy Olson
• Global Cyber Guerrillas Coming to Ukraine’s Aid: Culpan & Olson | 2022-07-13T01:20:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Race Is On to Fight a Cyber Threat That Doesn’t Exist - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-race-is-on-to-fight-a-cyber-threat-that-doesnt-exist/2022/07/12/8ceca222-023f-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-race-is-on-to-fight-a-cyber-threat-that-doesnt-exist/2022/07/12/8ceca222-023f-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
‘Yellowstone’ actress pilfered $96K in disability funds, officials say
Q'orianka Kilcher in 2018. (Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
“Yellowstone” actress Q’orianka Kilcher has been charged with workers’ compensation fraud after allegedly pocketing more than $96,000 in undeserved disability benefits, the California Department of Insurance announced Monday.
Kilcher, 32, faces two felony charges of workers’ compensation insurance fraud, according to the department.
Michael L. Becker, Kilcher’s attorney, told The Washington Post in a statement that Kilcher had never accepted disability payments to which she didn’t believe she was entitled.
“As such, Ms. Kilcher will vigorously defend herself and asks that she be afforded the presumption of innocence both in and outside the courthouse,” he said.
Kilcher starred as Pocahontas in the 2005 film “The New World” alongside Colin Farrell and Christian Bale, and as the title character in 2009’s “Princess Kaiulani,” the story of the last heir apparent to the Hawaiian throne.
While filming “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” in October 2018, Becker said, Kilcher was riding in a production vehicle when her neck and right shoulder were injured.
She saw a doctor a few times that year but allegedly stopped treatment for her injuries and quit responding to the insurance company handling her claim, according to the California Department of Insurance’s investigation.
Kilcher allegedly contacted the insurance company in October 2019, telling her doctor that she needed treatment and that she had been offered jobs since her injury but had not been able to take them because her neck pain was so acute, investigators said.
Kilcher then filed for and received temporary disability benefits.
The investigation found that Kilcher worked on the Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone” from July 2019 to October 2019 even though she had filed a claim saying she was unable to work for a year.
She received disability payments five days after working on the show, according to investigators.
Becker, her attorney, rebuffed the notion that she had received the payments with intentional deception, and he said she provided regular updates to her Division of Workers’ Compensation caseworker.
“Third-party doctors verified her injury and entitlement to benefits,” he said. “Ms. Kilcher was at all times candid with her doctors and treatment providers.”
The doctor on her claim told insurance investigators he would never have approved her disability payments had he known about her recent employment, the Department of Insurance said.
Kilcher surrendered and was arraigned May 27, according to the Department of Insurance. Her next scheduled court date is Aug. 7.
If convicted, Kilcher could face up five years in state prison and a $50,000 fine for each count. | 2022-07-13T01:20:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Q’orianka Kilcher filed fraudulent disability claims, investigators say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/12/qorianka-kilcher-accused-of-fraud/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/12/qorianka-kilcher-accused-of-fraud/ |
A video of the testimony of Pat Cipollone, former Trump White House counsel, plays during a hearing of the Jan. 6 committee. (Doug Mills/AP)
If the Jan. 6 committee featured a prosecution and defense, much time and effort could have been spared Tuesday with both sides stipulating that right-wing extremist groups are bad and that they played a significant role in the U.S. Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
Despite breathless previews of coming attractions, little has changed since the hearings began beyond what was already established: By insisting against all credible evidence that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, President Donald Trump incited the Capitol riot, dangerously directed his anger toward his own vice president and, most damning of all, refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 20, 2021.
But the effort to connect Trump to some grand conspiracy involving a shadowy network of fanatical backyard warriors and armchair militants is a bridge too far. It risks making him seem a victim of this overzealous and partisan committee, as evidenced by a new New York Times/Siena College poll showing Trump in a virtual dead heat with President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 rematch — a reality check in the midst of these “bombshell” hearings.
The effort to link Trump to the actions of militant groups, such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, continues to fall flat. On Tuesday, the committee failed to demonstrate any direct coordination beyond the delusions of the militia members and right-wing media personalities. Likewise, the video testimony of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone provided nothing new; it has long been known that he quickly accepted the election results and tried to persuade Trump to do the same.
One felt sympathy for the live witnesses who were mercilessly used by the committee. The first, Jason Van Tatenhove, is a former member of the Oath Keepers who had no involvement in Jan. 6 and therefore no material testimony to offer. His presence was apparently to provide a warning to everyone to stay away from groups like the Oath Keepers and to allow him to share his opinions of the danger he thinks Trump poses for the future. Duly noted.
The second was a sadder case. Stephen Ayres was a Trump supporter from northeastern Ohio who came to Washington on Jan. 6 to support the president but who — like many who find themselves facing criminal charges — now regrets his actions. His testimony offered a cautionary tale — but mostly on the dangers of getting caught up in the dark hole of social media addiction.
Of all the Trump tweets and sound bites routinely rolled out by the committee, it’s revealing that this part of Trump’s address to the Ellipse crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, is never presented: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” On Tuesday, Trump’s replayed remarks were abruptly clipped just before he delivered that line once again. Why? Because Trump’s call to march peacefully to the Capitol undermines the narrative. Likewise, the sloppily edited video testimony of others is suspiciously clipped, sometimes midsentence. Someday, it will be informative to watch it in toto.
The case against Trump is often focused on “things Trump almost did,” such as ordering the seizure of voting machines or appointing Sidney Powell as a special counsel. The committee also enjoys presenting salacious tidbits of information for the purposes of titillation. In the last hearing, it was a tale — later contested — of Trump grabbing a steering wheel and lunging for a person’s throat while demanding to be taken to the Capitol. On Tuesday, it was a Dec. 18 White House meeting featuring a screaming match and a near-physical altercation over how far to go to contest the election. Lots of sound and fury in both cases, but in the end they signify nothing.
Van Tatenhove did offer one good piece of advice: We need to quit mincing words and call things what they are. In that spirit, let’s acknowledge that this politically slanted committee is designed for the sole purpose of indicting Trump and his supporters — first in the realm of public opinion and then by motivating the Justice Department to bring charges. With such a clear agenda, the committee is cheered by those who already despise Trump but dismissed as a partisan witch hunt by Trump’s followers, who are ignoring the hearings.
Some of the committee’s supporters concede that it is not uncovering truly revelatory information but still defend its work as meticulously constructing an official record of events. Fine. But when an unfolding mystery was being unraveled by a much less biased Watergate committee in 1973, about 75 percent of American households watched at least some of the hearings. This one-sided record-building exercise pales in comparison: Only 13 million Americans (out of nearly 330 million) tuned in for the “bombshell” Cassidy Hutchinson testimony. Seems about right. | 2022-07-13T01:20:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Jan. 6 committee has a single purpose -- indicting Trump and his supporters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/jan-6-hearings-trump-cipollone-/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/12/jan-6-hearings-trump-cipollone-/ |
“I do think there is a lot of promise from these medications,” said Leeman, who also directs a program providing prenatal and maternity care to women with substance abuse problems. “If this does go ahead, let’s do this really safely, let’s make sure we have people who are well trained (to administer the psychedelics) ... Let’s make sure that people have counselors to see afterward.” | 2022-07-13T01:20:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Doctors urge access to psychedelic therapies in New Mexico - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/doctors-urge-access-to-psychedelic-therapies-in-new-mexico/2022/07/12/b7134c6c-0240-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/doctors-urge-access-to-psychedelic-therapies-in-new-mexico/2022/07/12/b7134c6c-0240-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
The company will focus on hiring engineering and technical roles
Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View, Calif. (Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images)
Google will slow down its pace of hiring in response to an “uncertain” global economic outlook, chief executive Sundar Pichai wrote in an email to employees that was obtained by The Washington Post.
The company has already hired thousands of employees this year and will continue to hire, but it will start focusing its hiring efforts on engineering and other “technical” roles, Pichai wrote in the memo.
“We need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days,” Pichai said.
Tech companies have slowed investment and hiring over the past several months as rising interest rates have sparked concerns about a possible recession in the United States and abroad. Several start-ups have said in the past two months that they would cut staff, and venture capital investors have warned companies to prepare for tougher conditions ahead.
Stocks continued to fall Tuesday as the euro sank, reaching nearly the same price as the U.S. dollar. The Dow Jones industrial average shed more than 192 points.
“There has been an enormous amount of pessimism in recent months,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist for Invesco, told The Post.
Google’s parent company Alphabet had nearly 164,000 employees as of its last quarterly report. | 2022-07-13T01:21:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Google CEO Sundar Pichai said it will slow hiring in memo - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/12/google-slows-hiring/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/12/google-slows-hiring/ |
Ala. inmate charged in death during escape
Inmate charged in death during escape
Casey White, 38, has been indicted on a murder charge in the shooting death of Vicky White, Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly announced Tuesday. The pair’s disappearance from an Alabama jail in April sparked a national manhunt that came to a bloody end in Indiana, where Casey White was captured and Vicky White died.
White will plead not guilty at an arraignment hearing, defense attorney Mark McDaniel said in a statement.
Casey White in April walked out of an Alabama jail in handcuffs in the custody of Vicky White, the assistant director of corrections at the facility, prompting a national manhunt for the pair. On the day of the escape, Vicky White, 56, told co-workers that she was transporting the inmate to a mental health evaluation, but authorities later learned no such appointment existed.
Friends and colleagues had said they were bewildered by the involvement of Vicky White, who had worked for the sheriff’s office for 16 years, with the inmate, who was already serving a 75-year prison sentence for attempted murder and other crimes.
Volcanoes park on
Big Island gets bay land
Pohue Bay is home to endangered hawksbill sea turtles, green sea turtles, endangered Hawaiian monk seals and other species found only in Hawaii. The area houses anchialine ponds — landlocked pools with a mix of fresh and salt water — where some of Hawaii’s rarest shrimp live.
Trust for Public Land acquired the privately owned land on Tuesday and gave it to Volcanoes National Park the same day.
Man trapped in pizza oven vent rescued
The man was taken to a hospital, and the extent of his injuries was unclear.
The man walked to an ambulance shortly after being removed. Police did not identify him or announce any criminal charges. | 2022-07-13T02:51:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ala. inmate charged in death during escape - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2022/07/12/121b0948-ff34-11ec-87e4-55be07124164_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2022/07/12/121b0948-ff34-11ec-87e4-55be07124164_story.html |
Dear Carolyn: You have given advice for years along the lines of, “This person/situation will not change, so you need to face reality and change your expectations to align with this reality.”
I hear that. I have relationships with family members where I need to do this exact thing. But … how do I get over the hurt? Why can’t my family members themselves change and become more healthy? How do I get through the pain of realizing the “new” reality and my “new” expectations mean I’ll always be disappointed or hurt by what they should be doing?
Or does this mean I’m actually NOT facing reality, and I haven’t adjusted my expectations?
— Hurt
Hurt: Yes, that. To be disappointed or hurt “always” is a sign you’re still going into situations looking for them to do something different, say something different, be different, and still having those incremental hopes dashed.
Dropping your hopes to zero is not a magic wand. It’s not realistic to suggest you can let go of expectations, longings or entire relationships and not feel any ill effects. It’s still going to feel sad; the goal is merely for it not to feel frustrating or disappointing anymore on an endless, soul-sucking loop.
That’s why a good companion to letting go of expectations is letting go of assumptions, too. You don’t know why they are this way — what they’re able to do, what they want to do, how they feel. Your family members have reasons for not changing that are complicated and fully theirs. The word “should” is not your friend.
A practical take on this is to replace “Why can’t they”-type questions with telling yourself, “They just can’t,” because it will always be true in some respect. They can’t until they do.
About that. You phrase my advice as, “This person/situation will not change,” but that’s not necessarily accurate. They might. Who knows. Other people just won’t change to our specifications on our timelines under our control or pressure. They’ll change or not change based on their own calculations.
We can only ask for the treatment we prefer and accept their answers as final, then choose our path forward accordingly.
Let’s look at your “old” and “new” reality and expectations. First, have you: (a) Identified changes to the way you want to be treated, and (b) asked your family members for them, with (c) consequences attached? To use a common example:
“My relationship status/lifestyle/family planning/body/career is my business (a), and I ask that you stop commenting on it (b).” After which you never again respond to such prying from them except by calmly, calmly, calmly changing the subject, ending the call or leaving the room (c).
If you haven’t taken these steps, then summon the courage to do so. Use your agency in its simplest form, by exercising your right to choose what conversations you will and won’t have.
If you have done this, then have you held your line firmly? And given that strategy enough time to work? Unhealthy people push back against new boundaries, often intensifying the very behaviors you’re saying no to. It can take weeks, months or longer for people to process that you will no longer react or respond to their antics.
If you have done this, then have you accepted that you’ve progressed with them as far as they’re able, and must behave with them accordingly?
Again, no magic here. Although, when you start to trust yourself — when you’re confident you’re doing the right thing and your limits will hold? It can feel suspiciously good. | 2022-07-13T04:22:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: How to stop the hurt when family relationships fall short - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/13/carolyn-hax-family-relationships-hurt-boundaries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/07/13/carolyn-hax-family-relationships-hurt-boundaries/ |
By Eric Yoder
President Biden meets with leaders from NASA at the White House on July 11. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
“After two years of experiencing a huge amount of work on the covid-19 front lines, responding to completely new missions they had never had to undertake before, at the end of 2021 federal employees had a lot going on,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, the Partnership’s vice president for research, evaluation and modernizing government.
Because of changes to the survey since the rankings began in 2003, the decline from 2020-2021 cannot be directly compared with any other point in the survey’s history — but it is notable in contrast to the previous year, Stier and other Partnership officials said. | 2022-07-13T04:23:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal employees less satisfied, engaged with jobs, Partnership for Public Service finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/federal-employee-satisfaction-survey-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/federal-employee-satisfaction-survey-biden/ |
The agency repeatedly ranked as one of the best mid-size government agencies to for workers. But in 2021, it slid to No. 22 on the list.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan speaks during a Capitol Hill hearing. (Graeme Jennings/Pool/Washington Examiner/AP)
The Federal Trade Commission used to celebrate its reputation as an attractive employer with a website banner advertising its second place perch atop the “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” list.
But the emblem was removed this spring amid reports of declining employee morale within the agency under its new chair, Lina Khan. The authors of the rankings had more bad news Wednesday morning for Khan: The FTC has slid to No. 22 on their newest list.
The agency’s plunge comes on the heels of Khan’s tumultuous first year in office, which has been blunted by partisan divisions, limited resources and an ever-expanding political agenda — with the FTC facing pressure from the White House to act on a disparate array of issues including reining in gas prices and protecting health data in the fallout of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.
After months of deadlock, Lina Khan is unleashed
Khan’s critics attribute the declining happiness to frustration with Khan and her allies’ public discontent with the FTC’s track record. Shortly after Khan’s confirmation, Biden referred to the last 40 years of competition policy as a “failed” experiment. FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan has said that the surveys reflect a period of considerable change, which is “always difficult,” and that she has “enormous respect” for FTC workers.
Khan alluded to the tumult in a recent interview, telling The Washington Post the “best is yet to come.” But her ability to follow through on her big promises to transform tech regulation and improve the agency hinges on the morale of her staff.
The rankings, which are compiled by the Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group, were long a source of pride for the FTC, which has been at the top of the list in its category for several years. The agency’s engagement and satisfaction score dropped to 64.9, down 24.2 points year over year. The decline was significantly higher than the 4.5 point year-over-year decrease reported across government, which the rankings’ authors noted came amid leadership vacancies in the Biden administration’s first year and a continued pandemic.
The majority of the data used to develop the rankings was collected through the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which was taken in November and showed that overall satisfaction with the agency dropped from 89 percent to 60 percent. (The Information first reported on the survey.)
The decline in morale could dampen the agency’s ability to retain and recruit top lawyers, technologists and other staff who play a critical role in working on cases against well-resourced companies, like the agency’s ongoing suit against Facebook parent company Meta, and investigations into other corporate giants, including Amazon. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Workplace happiness is a particularly important for the FTC, an agency that must lure talent with a technical skill set from more lucrative opportunities.
“You’re asking people to work private sector hours for public sector pay,” Kovacic said. “There has to be a spiritual component of the compensation; it has to be real. If that vanishes, you’re in trouble.”
Khan faces pressure to address the internal uncertainty at the agency as her agenda is expected to confront major hurdles in courtrooms. The FTC will also probably be subject to more combative oversight after the midterms if Republicans regain control of Congress.
Will Lina Khan bring a reckoning to Silicon Valley? She’ll face major challenges.
Since the employee surveys were released, Khan has been playing defense. After keeping an arm’s-length from the media during the majority of her first year in office, she did interviews with publications, including The Post, in early June. She wrote a letter to the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, outlining the steps she was taking to strengthen communication and feedback within the agency, and embarked on a listening tour with individual staffers. She is also encouraging staff to submit anonymous suggestions to her.
“I take these results seriously and am using them to identify root causes and to take actions that allow for positive changes,” she wrote in the letter to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who had demanded to know how she was addressing the new rankings. “Serving as the FTC’s Chair is a true honor, and I want you to know how important it is to me that everyone at the FTC feels fully supported and valued.”
Addressing the new workplace rankings, Wicker in a Tuesday statement called on Khan to move quickly to “restore faith in the agency.”
Lina Khan’s first big test as FTC chief: Defining Facebook as a monopoly
Khan’s critics say the decline in the rankings reflects staffers’ dissatisfaction with the antitrust reformers now at its helm, a group that had long criticized it before joining. Christine Wilson, a Republican commissioner who has condemned Khan’s leadership style, says the agency has “suffered greatly” under her leadership.
“I understand that Chair Khan seeks sweeping legal reforms in the antitrust arena — but I disagree with her willingness, in search of that goal, to inflict harm on the agency and deprive the FTC of the talent that has made the agency a Best Place to Work since 2012,” she said in a statement to The Post.
Yet other employees within the agency were optimistic that morale was on the upswing, especially as the agency moves on more competition and consumer protection issues. Many of Khan’s plans have been stymied for months as the commission waited for the Senate to confirm Alvaro Bedoya, the agency’s tiebreaking Democrat.
“We have very talented people, and they don’t want to see their matters, their cases, their rules get stuck,” said one agency employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the rankings publicly. “When we see a growing number of actions coming out of the agency … people feel good about that.”
Jessica L. Rich, who spent 26 years working at the FTC, including as the director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the drop in morale goes beyond anything she saw during her tenure.
“The FTC staff can deal with change — that’s what it does every election,” she said. Yet she said there’s clearly “something not working” with Khan’s leadership style. Rich noted the figures are backward looking, and she said Khan has the opportunity to “right the ship” moving forward. | 2022-07-13T04:24:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FTC plunges in workplace rankings during Lina Khan’s first year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/ftc-lina-khan-rankings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/ftc-lina-khan-rankings/ |
President Biden starts a four-day tour of the Middle East on Wednesday. His swing through Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia will mark his presidential debut in a region that has long possessed and vexed the foreign policy establishment in Washington. For Biden, the visit comes at an inopportune time: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sucked up much of the West’s geopolitical oxygen. At home, swirling economic head winds may presage looming electoral disaster for Democrats in November’s midterms.
Biden has framed his mission in pragmatic, geopolitical terms. In an op-ed for The Washington Post this weekend, he said the meetings were part of a broader bid to reckon with the challenge of Russia and China by working “for greater stability in a consequential region of the world.”
Yet as he goes about what appears to be a jam-packed itinerary from Jerusalem to Jiddah, the shadow of two slain journalists will hang over his trip. There is, of course, the legacy of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and Washington Post contributor whose gruesome abduction and murder is assessed by the U.S. intelligence community to have been approved by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
On the campaign trail, Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” and to dramatically reevaluate Washington’s relationship with Riyadh. But Biden’s visit later this week will underscore how little has changed — and how hollow his earlier rhetoric about democratic values and human rights has proven. Biden will likely meet the crown prince, though coronavirus protocols may spare him the humiliation of a handshake.
Then there is also Shireen Abu Akleh, the veteran Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera who was fatally shot on May 11 while covering unrest in the West Bank town of Jenin. Forensic, open-source investigations by numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, concluded that, contrary to initial Israeli claims, Abu Akleh was hit by a bullet likely fired by Israeli security forces.
Palestinians pointed to her killing as only the latest example of the impunity with which Israel carries out its military occupation of the Palestinian territories. They were hardly buoyed by U.S. State Department findings, which concluded that Israeli gunfire was “likely responsible” for Abu Akleh’s death, but said it had “no reason to believe that this was intentional.”
“The United States has been skulking toward the erasure of any wrongdoing by Israeli forces,” noted a letter from Abu Akleh’s family, who have also demanded Biden meet with them during his visit. “It is as if you expect the world and us to now just move on. Silence would have been better.”
Despite a protest planned in Abu Akleh’s honor Thursday in Jerusalem, many analysts doubt Biden will be pressed to do much to reckon with her death. Indeed, there are low expectations for the entire trip to Israel and the West Bank: In the former, Biden meets lame-duck Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who was recently installed and already in the throes of an upcoming election cycle.
In the latter, he will meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose custodianship over the moribund process toward a two-state solution looks more forlorn than ever. Biden did not even pay lip service to Palestinian aspirations for statehood — as successive U.S. presidents have in the past — in his weekend op-ed.
“The administration has gone out of its way to absolve Israel of any moral responsibility” surrounding Abu Akleh’s death, Khalid Elgindy, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told me during a webinar hosted by the Washington-based think tank. “We already knew that the Palestinian issue was really lowdown on the list of priorities for this administration … They don’t seem to be particularly concerned with Mahmoud Abbas’s declining popularity or legitimacy. It’s really just a courtesy call, at best.”
New op-ed: Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan writes that by visiting Saudi Arabia, the president is turning 'a blind eye' to murder of Jamal Khashoggi.https://t.co/6UqnvMJgdV
Yet Israel — and its place in the region — is at the heart of Biden’s trip. The U.S. president will champion Israel’s new engagement with a clutch of Arab monarchies, a legacy of the Abraham Accords ushered in by former president Donald Trump that Biden is taking forward. With efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal failing, the Biden administration is keen to help better integrate the region’s anti-Iran forces. Once-fanciful talk of an “Arab NATO” has revived, this time with the once-improbable role of Israel as a key partner alongside Gulf monarchies like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Biden may also tacitly be trying to boost more moderate forces within Israel as he is expected to announce a new “strategic partnership” against a nuclear Iran with Lapid at his side. “By definition, a presidential visit will make Lapid look prime ministerial, which is what he needs to boost his case against [Benjamin] Netanyahu, the longest-governing prime minister in Israel’s history,” wrote former U.S. diplomats Aaron David Miller and Steven Simon. “Biden will almost certainly talk about the United States’ unbreakable bond with Israel and its deep commitment to Israeli security. Lapid’s inaugural speech denounced extremism, reached out to Palestinians, and warned Iran. These are themes Biden can work with.”
The Saudis, too, can work with their mutual antipathy toward Iran. They will host Biden in the context of a broader regional summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council — the main bloc of states on the Arabian peninsula. It’s a form of multilateral engagement that U.S. officials may hope will dull criticism of Biden reaching out to those who orchestrated Khashoggi’s killing. Some analysts also argue that it was foolhardy to try to alienate the Saudis in the first place, given their centrality to global oil markets and close relationships in Washington.
“Biden’s move to bury the hatchet with the Saudi crown prince is a necessary and understandable reaction to the world as it is: not just the broken politics of the Middle East but also the global disruptions caused by the Russian war in Ukraine,” wrote F. Gregory Gause III in Foreign Affairs. “It is an acknowledgment that working for some amount of order in the messy Middle East requires dealing with rulers who preside over relatively stable states and who exercise influence outside their borders.”
But others wonder whether it’s worth it. “When the Biden visit is inevitably presented as advancing normalization between Israel and Gulf monarchs, we cannot ignore the uncomfortable reality that the accords have become a get-out-of-jail-free card for the brutal subjugation of democratic dissent,” wrote Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration official. “How does that fit within a global struggle between democracy and autocracy?”
That’s a question Biden won’t want to answer. | 2022-07-13T04:24:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Killings of journalists Shireen Abu Akleh and Jamal Khashoggi haunt Biden’s Middle East trip - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/killings-shadow-biden-middle-east-trip-khashoggi-abu-akleh-journalists/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/killings-shadow-biden-middle-east-trip-khashoggi-abu-akleh-journalists/ |
Rishi Sunak, the Lonely Tory Defending UK Fiscal Restraint
Rishi Sunak, U.K. chancellor of the exchequer, departs from number 11 Downing Street with his ministerial dispatch box on his way to present his spending review in Parliament in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Sunak is set to lay out the government’s autumn budget with new forecasts from the Office of Budget Responsibility. Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
As the race to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the UK Conservative Party and British prime minister heats up, the sole candidate not promising tax cuts needs to stick to his fiscal guns.
Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the exchequer, is the current frontrunner. He faces a tough fight, though, with all of the other candidates pledging to reverse much of his fiscal legacy by cutting taxes. Populism is alive and kicking.
It’s likely Sunak will proceed to the next and final stage of the somewhat Byzantine election process, as voting by his parliamentary colleagues winnows the field down to two. But winning over a majority of the 200,000 Conservative party members, a broadly right-wing leaning audience, will prove more difficult. Plenty of economy-boosting policies will be dangled by his opponents, but Sunak is offering thin gruel. At his official campaign launch on Tuesday he emphasized he would not cut taxes until inflation is under control. That may be too long a wait for many of those who get to select the country’s next leader; Sunak’s emphasis that there won’t be a “fairy tale” ending when it comes to fiscal discipline is a tough line to defend when the UK is faced with the sharpest cost-of-living crisis in living memory. ”Whilst that may be politically inconvenient for me, it is also the truth,” Sunak said on Tuesday.
There is near unanimity across the rest of the field in reversing Sunak’s scheduled hike in corporation tax, set to rise to 25% from 19%, as well as unwinding a 1.25% increase in national insurance — an income tax on employees and employers — that came into effect in April. According to Bloomberg calculations, eliminating these measures would cost 34 billion pounds ($40 billion) annually.
Among Sunak’s rivals, Liz Truss would enact both of these measures, promising to lower taxes from “day one,” as well as further reducing fuel duty. Jeremy Hunt pledges to cut the basic rate of income tax to 15% (currently 20% but set to fall to 19% next year) in his first budget. Penny Mordaunt has announced plans to reduce the levy on fuel, but otherwise both she and Kemi Badenoch have restricted themselves to unspecified intentions to reduce the tax burden.
Sunak has to defend a record of huge spending during the pandemic twinned with his subsequent relatively restrictive plan to balance the government’s budget. In the meantime, economic growth has vanished, inflation is about to hit double digits, and energy bills are set to rise again this autumn to close to 2000 pounds annually for the average household. It’s an extremely odd time to be tightening the fiscal screws, and it’s worth noting no other major economy is trying this particular experiment.
No wonder some of the other prospective candidates are engaging in fantasy politics and promising the Earth while pretending the largesse can all be funded. Even Sunak will eventually find it impossible to resist loosening the purse strings, saying it is a question of “when, not if” he cuts taxes too; but it’s the size and immediacy of the splurge that differentiates him from other the candidates. “Tax cuts, but not yet” is a difficult message to deliver.
The perennial challenge for governments everywhere is curbing the ever-constant desire to spend more, which can be financed either by raising taxes or selling more debt. There will be some fiscal headroom to play with in the October budget, as tax revenue has risen by more than 20% over the past year, helped by a sharp rise in stealth levies such as a freezing of tax thresholds and booming fuel-duty receipts. While borrowing more is the easiest solution optically, it comes at a cost: Under Sunak, Britain’s ratio of debt-to-gross-domestic-product has risen close to 100% from 75% before the pandemic.
The UK government bond market expects gross issuance worth 131 billion pounds this fiscal year, leaving a relatively small net supply of 24 billion pounds after redemptions. There is an unknown though, as the Bank of England, having stopped its quantitative-easing bond purchases, is considering actively selling some of its holdings. Another consideration is that planned issuance of long-dated bonds in excess of 10 years is the highest for over a decade. So while raising extra debt is certainly feasible, it needs to be done carefully to avoid sending borrowing costs higher.
This is where the Office for Budgetary Responsibility comes in. It judges how the government is adhering to its own rules, marking its homework. Under current government rules, the overall budget has to balance, planned spending not exceeding estimated tax receipts, over a rolling three-year forward projection. Of course, the next chancellor (no doubt under directions from the new prime minister) can move the goalposts, widening the definition of what falls outside regular spending, or extending the timeline to, say, five years. This looks like a racing certainty under all the other candidates other than Sunak.
However, it’s one thing to become party leader by making big promises to a narrow constituency, but winning the next election will require a level of competency and delivery that escaped the Johnson administration. It’s just how much of a break from the past that Conservative members decide is needed to win the next election that will determine the successor. Their bigger fear is of a Labour government, or a coalition with smaller parties, than the merits or drawbacks of any one individual. Ultimately, electability will be the characteristic that transcends all other considerations; the coming weeks will decide whether Sunak’s campaign pledge to “restore trust, rebuild the economy” is enough to get him to the top of the greasy pole of British politics. | 2022-07-13T05:54:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rishi Sunak, the Lonely Tory Defending UK Fiscal Restraint - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/rishi-sunak-the-lonely-tory-defending-uk-fiscal-restraint/2022/07/13/7b75d610-0269-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/rishi-sunak-the-lonely-tory-defending-uk-fiscal-restraint/2022/07/13/7b75d610-0269-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
The Need for Global Stablecoin Standards
Analysis by Jon Cunliffe and Ashley Alder | Bloomberg
Money has taken different forms throughout history. However, one basic rule remains constant through technological and economic change. If something is accepted and used as a means of exchange, then there must be trust in the money itself and the institution behind it to provide a guarantee of its value. Users must have the confidence it will continue to be accepted as money.
History has demonstrated time and again that when that confidence is broken, and users no longer trust the stability of money, the inevitable consequence is a costly, destabilizing and often immediate run.
This rule applies to current forms of fiat money — banknotes and coins — and the commercial bank money that sits in our bank accounts. It also applies to cryptocurrencies seeking to be used as money, whether for transactions with other cryptos or in the wider retail world. This was evident from the turbulence in crypto markets in recent weeks,
The disruption faced by Tether and Terra, while no doubt very painful for many of those involved, was not a systemic event. The impact was contained and did not spill over to impair wider confidence in money or finance. But it is a lesson for the future. It underlined the speed with which confidence can be eroded and the potential volatility of stablecoins, and cryptos more generally. Such events could become systemic in the future, especially given the strong growth in the amount of money circulating in these markets and the increasing linkages between crypto-assets and traditional finance.
Two years ago, in anticipation of difficulties arising from unregulated money-like assets, the international community tasked the relevant regulatory standard-setting bodies — the Bank for International Settlements’ Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) — to look at stablecoins. Regulators and central banks around the globe have now set out guidance on the application of relevant standards where stablecoins are used as money, to make payments. Last year, the CPMI and IOSCO issued a consultation document and we have issued the final guidance today.
It is important that the lessons are learnt and these standards are reflected in national legislation quickly, before stablecoins become systemic.
What do the standards say? They are detailed, as you would expect, but we would highlight two principles which illustrate the importance of this guidance. They apply to stablecoins the same standards that govern other forms of money used in systemically important settlement. This is to ensure that risks are managed so that they produce an equivalent regulatory outcome in terms of financial stability, safe and efficient payment systems as well as investor protection.
First, stablecoins intended to function as money and used in systemically important arrangements should ensure users will be able to convert their claims at par into other liquid forms of money, such as deposits at the central bank or at a commercial bank as soon as possible (at least by the end of the day). There should also be a clear and robust process for fulfilling holders’ redemption claims in both normal and stressed times. In short, where stablecoins are intended to function as money in payments, they need to guarantee timely convertibility into other forms of money we accept in our economies. This is the standard we apply to commercial banks today. This requirement will determine the nature — price stability and liquidity — of the assets backing a stablecoin and the legal, technical and operational arrangements for paying out stablecoin holders.
Second, stablecoin arrangements should have clear and direct lines of responsibility and accountability, for instance, by making clear what the responsible legal entity is (and who the people responsible for operating that entity are). In addition, human intervention to oversee the workings of the stablecoin should always be possible to ensure that, even in dynamic and changing environments, expert judgment and discretionary decision-making is available, if required, to deal with unforeseen situations.
It will be for individual jurisdictions to develop laws, regulations and rules to give effect to these principles. What is important is that, with international standards in place, regulators must have robust standards against which to judge how they are being met.
International standards are important whether these monies be used across borders or domestically. Of equal significance is the location of the providers, especially when stablecoin arrangements can provide their services across borders. Standards must be implemented in a harmonized way, which will require global cooperation between regulators, central banks and other relevant authorities. CPMI and IOSCO will continue to play a key part in these collective efforts.
Jon Cunliffe is chair of the Bank for International Settlements’ Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and deputy governor of the Bank of England.
Ashley Alder is chair of the board of the International Organization of Securities Commissions and chief executive officer of the Securities and Futures Commission, Hong Kong. | 2022-07-13T05:54:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Need for Global Stablecoin Standards - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-need-for-global-stablecoin-standards/2022/07/13/7bc6c764-0269-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-need-for-global-stablecoin-standards/2022/07/13/7bc6c764-0269-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Anastacia Galouchka
A woman walks past a heavily damaged apartment building on July 1 in Severodonetsk, Ukraine, in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — No one was coming to rescue Arif Bahirov.
Bahirov, 45, who worked in public relations, knew this “road of life” well from working for months as a volunteer helping to evacuate hundreds of residents of Luhansk, a sprawling region in Ukraine’s east bordering Russia. He had seen plenty of Russian missile attacks targeting cars and trucks out here, but now as he pedaled, he clung to one thought: “No one would shoot a man on a bicycle.”
The complete capture of Luhansk would mark the first time an entire region has fallen to Moscow-backed forces and their separatist proxies since the start of the Feb. 24 invasion. Recent gains in Ukraine’s east move Russian President Vladimir Putin closer to his stated goal of seizing Donbas, made up of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
On July 3, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the “liberation” of Luhansk, but its regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, reported that Ukrainian forces were still holding out against the Russians in a “very small” area.
Luhansk, an ethnically and linguistically diverse region, is part of Ukraine’s industrialized east. The area has been at war since 2014, after Moscow-backed separatists seized a large swath of territory and established the self-proclaimed “People’s Republic of Luhansk.” That conflict has displaced tens of thousands and severely damaged cities and villages. In a sign of the area’s complicated ties to Ukraine and Russia, Russian state media broadcast videos of some local residents cheering the arrival of Russian troops.
The region’s capital and most populous city, Severodonetsk was one of the hardest hit. By late May, an estimated 90 percent of the city’s buildings and all of its “critical infrastructure” had been destroyed, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Valuyki
Starobilsk
Area held
by Russia-
Feb. 2022
Shakhty
Rostov-on-Don
Sources: Institute for the Study of War | 2022-07-13T06:20:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukrainians from occupied Luhansk struggle to make new lives elsewhere - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/ukraine-luhansk-residents-flee-russians/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/ukraine-luhansk-residents-flee-russians/ |
‘Vintage’ performance from Elena Delle Donne propels Mystics past Sparks
Elena Delle Donne led all scorers with 26 points Tuesday night as the Mystics (15-10) opened the season's second half with a victory in Los Angeles. (Katharine Lotze/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES — Natasha Cloud shouted at DJ Mal-Ski, the Sparks’ in-game DJ, more than 90 minutes before the game began Tuesday night as he stood in front of his turntables inside Crypto.com Arena. She had taken the court to warm up and he had yet to start playing music for the evening.
Cloud, and all of the Mystics, were ready to go early.
The Mystics looked like an offensive juggernaut in the first half of a 94-81 victory over the Sparks, their fourth win in their past five games. Washington (15-10) led 53-44 at halftime, which matched its highest-scoring half of the season, in the first game after the all-star break. The 94 points were also a season high.
“I missed their annoying [behinds],” Cloud said with laugh. “We’re energized. The first half is what it is and the second half is go time. We know what we have in our locker room and so I think we’re just seeing a different focus, too.”
A 15-7 first-quarter run gave the Mystics a 24-14 lead as Washington never trailed after falling behind 2-0. Washington, which shot 50.8 percent from the field, was almost giddy during the morning shoot-around and that energy carried over to the game.
The Phoenix Mercury host the Mystics on Thursday.
“We had energy at practice yesterday,” Coach Mike Thibault said. “We had good focus this morning. We’ve been shooting the ball a little bit better, although we didn’t make layups tonight, and it paid off.”
Elena Delle Donne showed exactly why she is a two-time MVP by matching a season high with 26 points on 10-for-14 shooting, including 4 for 5 from beyond the arc. It was her second consecutive game hitting the 26-point mark. The ball was moving and it was a stellar offensive night for the entire team, but Delle Donne consistently made plays that few others in the league can. The Sparks sent multiple defenders throughout the night at the 6-foot-5 forward and it still didn’t matter as she unleashed a bevy of pump fakes, up-and-unders and fadeaways to create space. Thibault called it a “vintage game” from the franchise cornerstone.
“Best player in the world,” Cloud said. “She allows our offense to flow. She allows my job to be a lot easier. Teams have to really figure out what they're going to do to maintain her and then play the rest of us. So just her presence alone.
“Elena doesn't even have to touch the ball if she doesn't want to and she would make all of our jobs a lot easier. Just her poise, her leadership, her experience, and her IQ on both ends of the floor just makes us better.”
Still, Los Angeles hung around and trailed by just five with 6:13 remaining in the fourth quarter when Delle Donne and Cloud slammed the door shut. The Mystics used a 14-4 run to open a 15-point lead with Delle Donne burying three three-pointers and Cloud adding one of her own. Cloud scored 10 of her season-high 21 points in the fourth quarter and also had nine assists and four rebounds.
The time is now for the Mystics to start their push for a title
“When Tash is scoring and attacking, we're terrifying,” Delle Donne said. “She's worked so much on her game and you see it and you see the confidence in her. ... I don't know how Tash does it. Her motor is ridiculous. The amount of minutes she plays. She's always playing the best offensive player on the other team, and then she has to come down and run our offense. But she does a phenomenal job.
“I don't ever want to play with anyone else.”
Shatori Walker-Kimbrough scored 12 points off the bench and Ariel Atkins finished with 10 after playing in the All-Star Game on Sunday.
Katie Lou Samuelson and Brittney Sykes scored 16 apiece as the Sparks were without Nneka Ogwumike, who was out with a non-covid illness. Whereas turnovers were an issue the last time Washington ventured to Los Angeles, the Mystics scored 27 points off 18 Sparks turnovers this time around.
The game had a little extra incentive for the Mystics, who acquired the right to swap first-round picks in the 2023 in a draft-day deal with the Atlanta Dream in April. Atlanta owns the Sparks’ first-round pick next year, so the Mystics would benefit from Los Angeles being as far down in the standings as possible.
“I think about that every week when I watch them play somebody else, too,” Thibault said before the game. “I never like to wish [ill] on very many teams, but when you have a chance to get their pick and it can be better than the one we have, you’ve got to feel that way.” | 2022-07-13T06:41:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elena Delle Donne's vintage performance powers Mystics past Sparks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/elena-delle-donne-mystics-sparks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/elena-delle-donne-mystics-sparks/ |
Corruption cases tarnish image of Iran’s hard-line president
By Babak Dehghanpisheh
The ruins of the 10-story Metropol building, which collapsed May 23 in the southwest Iranian city of Abadan. The case has come to symbolize official wrongdoing. (Iranian Senior Vice President's Office/AP)
A luxury-building collapse, a grain-import swindle, an incompetent minister accused of nepotism — a string of cases linked to government corruption has cast a grim light on the year-old presidency of Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line judge who came to power promising to clean up the system.
The cases — some involving government ministries or implicating high officials — have stoked popular anger at a moment when Iranians are reeling from rising prices and an economic downturn, conditions caused by a combination of Western sanctions, an accelerating global economic crisis and the government’s removal of subsidies on basic goods.
“Mister President, does this corruption with this large volume eventually have an end point or no?” Seyed Morteza Hosseini, a member of parliament, said two weeks ago, referring to recent accusations that a private company with an Agriculture Ministry contract to import wheat and barley never delivered the goods, despite being paid.
Shortages, sanctions, protests and pandemic: Daunting challenges await Iran’s new president
The allegations have been especially embarrassing for Raisi, who campaigned last year on an anti-corruption platform in an election in which most of the competition was sidelined and less than half of the electorate voted. Now, the credentials of some of his political allies are being called into question by lawmakers and the public.
In late March, a branch of the Agriculture Ministry signed a contract with a private company called Ario Tejarat Soheil to import 13.7 million tons of livestock goods, with the company subsequently selling 500,000 tons of it.
None of the goods were ever delivered to buyers, Zabihollah Khodaian, the head of the General Inspection Organization, a government watchdog, said during a judiciary meeting in late June, according to Mizan, the judiciary’s news site.
He said ministry officials wrote a letter to the Central Bank claiming that the importation of the goods had been completed and asking that $735 million be transferred to the private company.
The head of the department that had arranged the deal was ousted in late June, according to state media.
“I hope the government realizes that what happened in the Agriculture Ministry isn’t only economic corruption but an action against the food security of the country,” a Twitter user named Hassan Sadeghinejad said in a post last month.
That controversy followed a shake-up at the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare in mid-June. For months, critics had been accusing Cooperatives Minister Hojatollah Abdolmaleki of hiring friends and family members to work at the agency, a charge he denied, according to state media. Abdolmaleki was also accused of not doing enough to address protests by teachers, retirees, bus drivers and laborers who have been hit hard by the country’s dismal economic situation.
On June 13, Abdolmaleki resigned, tweeting that he had stepped down to increase “coordination” in the government. He was the first minister to resign since Raisi took office last August.
In a parliament session in May, lawmaker Seyed Naser Mousavi Laregani said that Abdolmaleki had lacked experience and that choosing him for the post was “an injustice to the government and the country,” according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
What to know about Iran’s president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi
The case that was most damaging to Raisi’s reputation, however, was the collapse in southwestern Iran of a luxury 10-story commercial building into an avalanche of rocks and debris on top of dozens of people.
Crowds of anguished friends and relatives gathered at the site seeking news of their loved ones, only to discover that the local emergency services had barely started rescue work. Civilians clawed through the rubble with bare hands and rudimentary tools in search of survivors.
The May 23 collapse of the Metropol building in Abadan, which is in restive Khuzestan province, was mourned as a national tragedy at the time, but when reports emerged that the municipality had a financial stake in the building and that construction had proceeded despite warnings from supervising engineers, the case quickly came to symbolize official wrongdoing.
Enraged crowds held protests for several days in Abadan, chanting slogans against local authorities and the central government, while security forces retaliated with tear gas and arrests. The official death toll in the building collapse was 43, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency, but locals claimed that many more people were still buried under the rubble.
Among the dead was the politically connected owner of the building, Hossein Abdolbaghi, officials said, although, in a measure of the deep distrust of the government, many Iranians took to social media to accuse authorities of faking his death as a way to avoid arresting him. State media has since reported that 14 people associated with the building have been arrested, including the serving mayor and at least two former mayors, along with engineers supervising the project.
Last Friday, two well-known film directors, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, were arrested for “creating insecurity” after the Metropol collapse, according to state media. The two were among dozens of filmmakers who signed an open letter asking security forces to lay down their weapons rather than attack protesters in the aftermath of the collapse.
Famed director Jafar Panahi, who also signed the open letter, was arrested Monday when he went to a Tehran judiciary building to check on Rasoulof’s case, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency, which did not cite a reason for Panahi’s arrest.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a statement of condolence in the collapse — but not until three days afterward, fueling a perception that the country’s leaders are out of touch.
Iran nuclear talks to reconvene
The problems with the Metropol building were hardly a secret while it was being built. After talking to engineers supervising the construction, Saeed Hafezi, an Iranian journalist now living in Germany, posted a video online in 2020 saying the building would collapse.
“The engineers told me there are errors in the way the columns are calculated and the building has no foundation and it will collapse,” Hafezi said.
The blame for the Metropol collapse and other recent scandals has fallen on Raisi’s government, but they have for many become a symbol of a deeper rot, prominent lawyer Saleh Nikbakht said in a telephone interview from Tehran.
“In the Islamic republic, these types of issues aren’t something that appear once and are dealt with,” he said. “It’s not the first time or the last time that something like this has happened. This could happen in any city or any province.” | 2022-07-13T07:26:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Metropol building collapse and corruption cases tarnish Iran's Ebrahim Raisi - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/iran-metropol-collapse-ebrahim-raisi-corruption/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/iran-metropol-collapse-ebrahim-raisi-corruption/ |
Sri Lankans storm government office, impatient for president’s resignation
A protester near a Sri Lankan presidential office on July 13. (Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images)
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Protesters stormed the office of Sri Lanka’s prime minister on Wednesday, as thousands of other demonstrators descended on the street of the capital, once again demanding the ouster of the country’s top leaders, as the deadline for the president’s promised resignation arrived.
Security forces tried to push back demonstrators who had gathered outside the prime minister’s office by deploying tear gas. But crowds chanting “victory to the struggle” swelled and by mid morning vastly outnumbered the forces in riot gear.
Beleaguered Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country early Wednesday, accompanied by his wife on an air force plane that left for the Maldives, defense officials said.
“We are duty bound to safeguard the constitution and the request for the plane was within the constitutional powers vested in the president,” said Group Capt. Dushan Wijesinghe, a spokesperson for the air force.
Nilan Chamod, a 22-year-old protester hit by tear gas, said more would join the demonstrations if authorities attempted a crackdown.
“We need a systemic change, not just a change of people in power,” said Sandun Ravihar, 23, who was heading toward the protest at the prime minister’s office.
Disgraced Sri Lankan president flees in predawn hours before resignation
At Temple Trees, the official residence of the prime minister that is now occupied by protesters, a man who had climbed a tree threatened to kill himself if the resignations did not come in soon.
Rajapaksa, 73, had refused to step aside for months even as public fury mounted against his family, whom many people hold responsible for the country’s economic ruin. But the dramatic takeover of his residence on Saturday by thousands of protesters — ignoring concerns of a crackdown, they swam in the president’s pool and even cooked dinner in his kitchen — forced his decision.
The storied Rajapaksa dynasty has dominated Sri Lankan politics for decades. But the recent years of the family rule were marred by allegations of corruption and disastrous economic policies. The country is beset by record inflation, medicine shortages and is nearly out of fuel and money to pay for it.
It is unclear what will happen to the Rajapaksa family now, with a frustrated public seeking a reckoning. Many demand he and his family be tried for corruption, but Rajapaksa enjoys immunity as the sitting president.
“He fled like a coward without apologizing to the country,” said Hirushi Lakshika, a 25-year-old protester near the prime minister’s residence, of Rajapaksa’s early morning departure.’s residence, of Rajapaksa’s early morning departure.
On Tuesday, his brother, former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, was blocked from fleeing the country on a flight to Dubai. A report in the Hindu newspaper said that the United States had rejected a recent visa request by the president.
Sri Lanka is undergoing its worst economic crisis in decades, with millions of people struggling for survival. The economy has “completely collapsed” and the country is “bankrupt,” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told the Parliament in recent days.
Though the coronavirus pandemic was a huge factor, with lockdowns cratering the tourist industry on which many workers depend, policies of the Rajapaksa government also proved highly damaging, including heavy tax cuts and an overnight ban on chemical fertilizers paralyzed agricultural production.
The protest movement against the government began months ago, first forcing out his elder brother Mahinda as prime minister and other family members from cabinet positions.
But things worsened in recent weeks. As fuel shortages grew, schools and offices were closed. In a desperate attempt to stave off impending food shortages, the government asked workers to grow food at home. Rajapaksa unsuccessfully dialed Russia for fuel credit, and Wickremesinghe tried to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package.
Aid agencies have warned that the country needs millions of dollars in food aid. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on oil and grain prices globally have greatly exacerbated Sri Lanka’s woes
At the stately colonial-era compound where Rajapaksa lived amid elegance and luscious gardens, the past few days resembled a carnival. The protesters who took over there remained past the weekend.
Prasad Sinniah, a 40-year-old marketing professional, was there Monday night with his children. “We wanted them all gone,” he said of the Rajapaksa family. “We lived comfortably until all this happened. Now, it’s a daily struggle.”
A former military veteran, Rajapaksa lived in the United States for several years before returning to Sri Lanka in 2005. His brother Mahinda, who was then the president, appointed him as a senior defense official to oversee the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a Tamil separatist outfit in the country’s north.
By 2009, Sri Lankan forces crushed the group, brought a 26-year-old civil war to an end and emerged as heroes for the Sinhala Buddhist majority. Human rights groups have accused the two brothers of committing war crimes, especially in the last and most bloody phase of the war. They denied wrongdoing and were never charged.
The Mahinda-led government lost power in 2015. Four years later, the family made a comeback.
In the wake of suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State that killed more than 250 people, Rajapaksa was elected president after an aggressive campaign that focused on national security and hardline Sinhala nationalism. As president, he sought to increase his power by amending the constitution granting himself the authority to appoint judges and allow dual nationals to serve in Parliament. The latter paved the way for his brother Basil, a dual citizen of Sri Lanka and the United States, to take over as finance minister. | 2022-07-13T07:26:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Impatient for Rajapaksa resignation, Sri Lankans storm government office - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/sri-lanka-president-resigns-gotabaya-rajapaksa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/sri-lanka-president-resigns-gotabaya-rajapaksa/ |
Amadeo Modigliani’s 1908 “Nude with a Hat,” is hung upside down because another painting by him, “Maud Abrantes,” on the reverse side of the same canvas is oriented correctly, while on display at Haifa University’s Hecht Museum in Haifa, Israel, June 28, 2022. Curators at the museum using x-ray technology have discovered three previously unknown sketches by the celebrated 20th century artist hiding beneath the surface of the painting. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) | 2022-07-13T07:26:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Israeli museum finds sketches hidden in Modigliani painting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israeli-museum-finds-sketches-hidden-in-modigliani-painting/2022/07/13/0c98c956-0272-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israeli-museum-finds-sketches-hidden-in-modigliani-painting/2022/07/13/0c98c956-0272-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
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