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A youth descends on a rope over Israel's controversial separation barrier to enter East Jerusalem on July 11. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)
TURMUS AYYA, West Bank — When President Biden visits Bethlehem on Friday for a short meeting with the Palestinian Authority president, he will arrive in a region that since his last visit six years ago has descended deeper into autocracy, leaving an entire generation politically numb.
Biden will meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the deeply unpopular 86-year-old president who has stretched his four-year term into a 17-year stint thanks to canceled elections. For many Palestinians — especially those who have never known a peace process, never participated in Palestinian elections, and seen the Palestinian issue sidelined — the visit is a blunt reminder that the United States is no longer interested in supporting their cause.
Analysis: The Palestinians’ problem with the Authority
Fadi Quran, 34, a political analyst from Al-Bireh in the West Bank, said Biden’s visit will officially legitimize authoritarian practices in the Palestinian Authority, which he called “a glamorized, post-modern Uncle Tom to Israel’s apartheid.”
Biden will open his Middle East trip in Israel and the West Bank, but its real spotlight is its last leg. The U.S. president will fly from Israel to Saudi Arabia, a visit that Biden said in an op-ed in The Washington Post will serve as “a small symbol of the budding relations and steps toward normalization between Israel and the Arab world, which my administration is working to deepen and expand.”
He was referring to the Abraham Accords that have, with tacit Saudi support, enabled diplomatic, economic and security ties between Israel and four Arab states over the past two years — a normalization that those same Arab states, for decades, said would be possible only if Israel took steps toward ending its now 55-year-old occupation of the West Bank and establishing an independent Palestinian state.
“Biden is here for Israel, not for us,” said Hamza Ghunaim, 18, a recent high school graduate from the West Bank village of Turmus Ayya, who is hoping to use his American passport to study medicine in the United States.
Ghunaim, speaking in a supermarket parking lot in this once-agricultural village with a large population of dual American-Palestinian citizens, said he struggles to see a future in his homeland. Since childhood, Ghunaim has witnessed a rapid influx of Israeli settlers, who now number about half a million in the West Bank — land that Palestinians envision as part of their future state.
“The visit, 100 percent, helps Israel and harms us,” said Mohammad Awad, 19, joining the group of young men outside the supermarket.
The Biden administration has restored $500 million in financial aid to the Palestinians that was cut off by President Donald Trump. It has said Palestinians are entitled to the same measure of “freedom, security and prosperity” enjoyed by Israelis. But Palestinians under Israeli occupation suffer from limited freedom of movement.
Only 100,000, out of the more than 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, are eligible for permits to cross Israel’s towering separation barrier to visit family or work in Israel, typically in menial jobs like construction or food service.
Dimitri Diliani, a senior member of Abbas’s Fatah party who supports an anti-Abbas faction, said the request for financial aid probably came from Israel, which sees Palestinian economic stability as part of its counterterrorism strategy.
He also noted that Abbas is not expected to bring up the May killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who most investigations say was shot by Israeli soldiers.
“The U.S., and so the P.A., have decided to sell the blood of Shireen and American citizens to support the Israeli coverup,” Diliani said.
Israeli and Palestinian experts say Abbas and his inner circle rely on Israeli military coordination for their own safety. In return, critics say, Palestinian security forces crack down on dissent in any form. Last month, 14 Palestinian Authority security personnel who were accused of killing the vocal anti-corruption dissident Nizar Banat in 2021, were released on bail.
The court cited the risk of the coronavirus spreading in the jail. In a statement to the media last month, Ghassan Banat, Nizar’s brother, said the claim was an excuse and only further proof of “Abbas’s bloody regime.”
Anti-corruption activist dies hours after being arrested and reportedly beaten by Palestinian security forces
Omar Abu Habib, 32, from the West Bank village of Salfit, said that he agreed with most of Banat’s criticisms of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority — that they collude with Israel for their own personal gain, pocket international aid money and are “traitors” to their own people — but that he would never publicly express his opinions on social media.
“If you say one word of criticism, the intelligence services will interrogate you,” he said. “So, I self-censor.”
Abu Habib, whose father once worked with the Palestinian nationalist leader Yasser Arafat, said the two-state solution Biden supports, in which an independent Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel, is “impossible.”
“The only solution is for all the Jews to go,” he said referring to the historic land of Palestine, including Israel, “and to do that, we need armed resistance, like in Gaza,” he said, referring to the Palestinian enclave ruled by the militant Islamist group Hamas. “Their economic situation is bad, but at least they have their dignity.”
According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a Ramallah-based pollster, only 28 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution and 55 percent would welcome a return of confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Highway of hope and heartbreak: The remoteness of the two-state solution
Ahead of Biden’s visit, Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke on the phone last week, marking the first such call in five years. Hussein al-Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who is widely expected to succeed Abbas, tweeted that on the call the Palestinian leader “stressed on the importance of preparing the calm atmosphere before President Biden’s visit, which we welcome.”
But Diaa Ali, 32, a student of Israel studies at Birzeit University in the West Bank, said maintaining that “calm atmosphere” has come at the price of Palestinian democracy.
“We know that the U.S. supports some democracies and some dictatorships in the world, and we’re the latter,” he said.
Sufian Taha contributed to this report. | 2022-07-13T08:26:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Palestinians hold little hope in Biden visit to improve their lives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/palestine-biden-future-abbas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/palestine-biden-future-abbas/ |
Mallory Pugh, center, and the two-time defending world champion U.S. squad will make their first appearance in Washington since March 2017. (Fernando Llano/AP)
The U.S. women’s national soccer team will finally make its Audi Field debut Sept. 6 for a friendly against Nigeria, organizers confirmed this week.
The U.S. Soccer Federation and stadium officials had engaged in negotiations several times in recent years to bring the top-ranked U.S. squad to the 20,000-capacity stadium, which opened in July 2018.
The most recent time the Americans played in the District was March 2017 at RFK Stadium for a 3-0 defeat to France in the SheBelieves Cup. Audi Field, home to MLS’s D.C. United and the NWSL’s Washington Spirit, hosted two U.S. men’s matches in 2019.
“I’ve visited several times for NWSL games and [it’s] a fantastic venue for our team to play in front of our home fans,” U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski said.
The match falls during a FIFA international window, when the NWSL doesn’t have any games scheduled and European clubs are off. The U.S. team will also play Nigeria on Sept. 3 at a venue to be announced Wednesday.
The matches against Nigeria are the start of six friendlies in a 2½-month stretch as the U.S. team ramps up preparations for the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
It also will play two games in October and two at home in November. Venues and opponents have not been finalized.
The match at Audi Field figures to showcase many Spirit players. Seven were named to the U.S. squad for the Concacaf W Championship, which is taking place this month in Monterrey, Mexico. The Americans clinched a World Cup berth Thursday and advanced to the tournament semifinals Monday.
Before losing to France five years ago, they had won all nine appearances at RFK Stadium.
Nigeria, ranked 39th by FIFA, is seeking to qualify for its ninth consecutive World Cup this week at the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco. The Super Falcons, coached by University of Pittsburgh women’s coach Randy Waldrum, have lost all six meetings against the United States, including four at World Cups.
The U.S.-Nigeria match caps a busy stretch at Audi Field that includes an MLS game between United and the Colorado Rapids on Sept. 4 and an NCAA men’s game between Maryland and Virginia on Sept. 5.
Tickets for the U.S. game will go on sale to those who are registered with a U.S. soccer fan group beginning July 25. The general sale starts Aug 1. | 2022-07-13T08:30:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USWNT to play at Audi Field in September vs. Nigeria - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/uswnt-audi-field-friendly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/uswnt-audi-field-friendly/ |
NYC mayor defends nuclear-attack PSA: ‘Better safe than sorry’
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the PSA was simply a “very proactive step” by the city’s office of emergency management. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
“So there’s been a nuclear attack,” a recent public service announcement issued to New York City residents said. “Don’t ask me how or why, just know that the big one has hit, okay?”
Did they know something we don’t?
No, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D). It was simply a “very proactive step” by the city’s office of emergency management, he said at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday.
“I’m a big believer in ‘better safe than sorry,’ ” he said.
Adams said the video — which advised New Yorkers to “get inside, stay inside and stay tuned” — was sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It was really taking necessary steps after what happened in Ukraine, to give preparedness,” he said. New York City is a main target for attacks of all kinds, Adams noted, referencing the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001.
The video advised New Yorkers to get inside quickly upon a nuclear attack and stay away from windows. “If you were outside after the blast, get clean immediately. Remove and bag all outer clothing to keep radioactive dust or ash away from your body,” said the presenter, a calm woman dressed in all black.
The New York City Emergency Management Department released a PSA July 11 outlining three steps that New Yorkers should take in case of a nuclear attack. (Video: NYC Emergency Management)
The seemingly unprompted video, published Monday — months after Russia invaded Ukraine — raised alarm and prompted some head-scratching. The Defcon Warning System, a private organization that monitors nuclear threats, said the PSA was “not in response to any specific threat.”
John Rich of the country music duo Big & Rich was among the many surprised Twitter users, writing, “The last time I saw a video like this, I was in the 4th grade when it was Reagan vs Gorbachev. Anybody have any idea why NYC needs to get the word out about ‘what to do in a nuclear attack?’ What the hell is going on?”
Another wrote: “I just saw an NYC Nuclear Attack PSA video. Is there something Im missing!?”
And another tweeted, “Am I the only one that’s freaking out???”
The world’s nuclear arsenal is set to grow over the next decade for the first time since the Cold War, according to a report last month by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “The risk of nuclear weapons being used seems higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War,” the group’s director, Dan Smith, said in a statement.
In the early weeks of the war, demand rose for potassium iodide, which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use after exposure to radioactive iodine.
A reporter asked Adams whether the video was overly alarming, to which the mayor said, “I don’t think it was alarmist.” He added: “These are just smart things to do.” | 2022-07-13T08:43:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NYC Mayor Eric Adams calls nuclear-attack PSA 'proactive step' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/nyc-nuclear-attack-psa-eric-adams/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/nyc-nuclear-attack-psa-eric-adams/ |
EDMONTON, Alberta — Evander Kane is staying in Edmonton.
EDMONTON, Alberta — Duncan Keith is retiring after 17 seasons in the NHL, three Stanley Cups and two Norris Trophy awards as the league’s top defenseman.
INDIANAPOLIS — Defending IndyCar champion Alex Palou says he’s leaving Chip Ganassi Racing after this season. | 2022-07-13T08:57:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tuesday Sports in Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tuesday-sports-in-brief/2022/07/13/6a646a7a-027e-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tuesday-sports-in-brief/2022/07/13/6a646a7a-027e-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Zelensky mocks Moscow, touts new weapons; ...
Russian security chief Nikolai Patrushev is one of the Russian president’s few close advisers
By Catherine Belton
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev during an interview on May 6 in Moscow. (Dmitry Dukhanin/Sipa USA/AP)
While Putin seemed to flounder in the first three months of the conflict — angry, on the defensive and almost disappearing from view — Patrushev stepped forward to justify the invasion and promote Russia’s war aims. In a series of interviews with Russian newspapers, he predicted Europe would collapse under the weight of a global food and refugee crisis, while Ukraine would disintegrate into several states. He called for a revival of “historic traditions” in Russia’s education system to create “genuine patriots.” He even ventured into economic policy, calling for a “structural perestroika” — a reference to Soviet-era reform — that in part would include a new sovereign system for determining the ruble’s exchange rate.
“Of course, the president is the president, and in conditions of the special military operation, he carries out the role of commander in chief,” Peskov said using the Kremlin’s term for the invasion.
The Security Council spokesman, Yevgeny Anoshin, also denied that Patrushev was laying claim to any greater role. Patrushev “is a patriot. He is a state actor who for many years has been devoted to the Russian Federation and to Putin,” he said.
Over the past month, Putin has recovered some of his former swagger, refocusing the military campaign on capturing Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and digging in for a long war of attrition against Kyiv — and, economically, against the West. Just last week, Putin told lawmakers that Russia had not even “seriously started” its war against Ukraine and claimed that his military campaign was “the beginning of a cardinal breakdown of the American-led world order.”
But although Putin has returned to form in a series of speeches, questions remain over his health — and Patrushev continues to pick up a great deal of the slack. The Kremlin denies that Putin has any health issues.
Putin — who turns 70 this year and is a year younger than Patrushev — has not been photographed playing ice hockey, his favorite sport, since a New Year’s Eve game with Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president. In May, for the first time in 10 years, Putin missed playing at the annual gala match of Russia’s Night Hockey League.
Russia’s ultimate political survivor faces a wartime reckoning
He has made only one foreign trip since the start of the war — visiting Tajikistan and then going on to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in June for a summit of the five states bordering the Caspian sea, where, once again, he conspicuously kept a great distance from his counterparts, seated around an enormous round table.
Patrushev, in contrast, has crisscrossed the former Soviet Union, most recently visiting Yerevan, Armenia, in June for a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russia-led answer to NATO. There, he lashed out at the United States for its “reckless expansion of NATO” and claimed that it was seeking to break up Eurasian integration and turn states in the region into “puppet, colonial countries, just like Ukraine.”
Patrushev also took the lead in defending Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave, threatening “serious” retaliation over the blocking of transit supplies via Lithuania due to sanctions imposed by the European Union. In July, at a security summit in Russia’s Far East, he ventured into energy security, long Putin’s preserve, calling for the reduction of “foreign participation in projects significant for the Russian energy sector,” as well as declaring that Russia would achieve its goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine.
Patrushev’s ascendance underlines the influence of hard-line former KGB men, who have been battling liberal-leaning technocrats for Putin’s ear for more than two decades. When Putin launched the war, it seemed “Patrushev’s moment had come,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of the Russian political consultancy R.Politik. “His ideas form the foundations of decisions taken by Putin. He is one of the few figures Putin listens to.”
Patrushev’s lengthy interviews — and his recent trips — demonstrate that he “is the one allowed to explain and clarify Putin’s thoughts,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Not everyone is allowed to do this. Not everyone knows this.”
Even when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks, it is not clear whether he speaks for Putin. “Diplomats often try to guess. They don’t know what Putin wants, but Patrushev does,” Kolesnikov said.
Ever since Putin was anointed head of the FSB, the KGB successor agency, in 1998 and began his rapid ascent to the Russian presidency, Patrushev has served by his side. For Mark Galeotti, honorary professor at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Patrushev has long been the “devil on Putin’s shoulder whispering poison into his ear.”
According to a person once close to both men, Patrushev is a hard-drinking, hard-talking “silovik” — which translates as “man of force” and is used in Russia to describe former security officials in power — who forged his view of the world in the Cold War and has changed little since the fall of the Soviet Union, especially in his hostility to the United States. “He is super Soviet KGB,” the person said, speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity because of personal security fears. “He understands everything as if the Soviet Union still existed, and he sees himself in these terms.”
Patrushev first served alongside Putin when they worked in the KGB’s counterintelligence division in what was then Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in the 1970s. Patrushev moved to Moscow two years ahead of Putin, serving in senior positions in the FSB’s Lubyanka headquarters in the 1990s. When Putin suddenly leapfrogged Patrushev to become FSB chief, Patrushev was jealous, the person once close to both men said. “Putin was a nobody. Putin was a lieutenant colonel, and [Patrushev] was already a general colonel.”
A former senior KGB officer who once worked with Putin agreed. “Patrushev was older and higher in the ranks. But Putin took over because he was closer to [then-President Boris] Yeltsin,” this person said.
Later, when Putin was chosen by Yeltsin to become prime minister, Patrushev replaced Putin as FSB chief. From that moment, Patrushev has sought both to make sure Putin stayed in power and to control him, the person once close to both men said. Questions have long swirled over whether Patrushev, as FSB chief, may have played a role in a spate of deadly apartment bombings in 1999, which killed more than 300 people and were officially blamed on Chechen terrorists. Putin’s swift response as prime minister — a new Russian war in Chechnya — elevated him from little-known bureaucrat to national hero, helping propel him to the presidency months later.
Interior Ministry investigations linking one attempted apartment bombing to the FSB were quickly shut down by Patrushev, who claimed that the attempt was no more than an “exercise” to test the vigilance of residents. The Kremlin has denied any FSB role in the bombings.
In the past two years, Patrushev has been one of a handful of close advisers with regular access to the president, Moscow insiders say, cementing his influence over Putin. “Patrushev has his own relations with Putin. He was his boss. He’s older. For Putin, such things are important,” said one well-connected Moscow businessman.
Patrushev was among the very few security advisers who probably knew of Putin’s decision before the invasion was launched, Stanovaya said. And nearly five months later, neither man may see — or want — a way out.
“Putin needs a continuation of the war,” said the Moscow businessman. “In condition of war, he can control society. If there is peace, people will start asking questions about why their lives are so bad.” | 2022-07-13T09:09:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nikolai Patrushev, hawkish chief of Russia's Security Council, has Putin's ear, knows his thoughts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/nikolai-patrushev-russia-security-council-putin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/nikolai-patrushev-russia-security-council-putin/ |
BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase and other asset managers face complaints from the left — and threats from the right
BlackRock headquarters in New York. (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg News)
In recent years, big finance companies have used their clout to advance causes that are popular among liberals. The giant asset manager BlackRock, for instance, has voted against the candidacies of hundreds of corporate board members over their lackluster records on climate issues and called climate change “a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects.” JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, has stopped lending to new coal mines or coal-fired power plants.
“@BlackRock is using its massive size to drive up the price of gas & weaken national security—all so BlackRock’s rich executives can feel better about themselves,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote on Twitter last month. “The next Congress is going to take on this collusive racket.”
Financial firms lead shareholder rebellion against ExxonMobil climate change policies
State officials are moving more swiftly. This spring, Kentucky lawmakers voted to empower state officials to stop doing business with any firm that says it won’t invest in fossil fuels. The move drew praise from other Republican officials, although the state hasn’t penalized a firm yet.
The financial firms have defended their choices. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink said in his annual letter that “over the long-term” ESG issues — including climate change, diversity and board effectiveness — “have real and quantifiable financial impacts” but that BlackRock “does not pursue divestment from oil and gas companies as a policy.”
BlackRock’s Larry Fink tells fellow CEOs that businesses are not ‘climate police’
JPMorgan Chase told the Texas attorney general that it would not finance the manufacture of military-style weapons for civilian use regardless of a state’s views. And it said that it “does not ‘boycott’ energy companies” but would make decisions on fossil fuel loans “based on ordinary business reasons.”
A new paper by University of Pennsylvania Wharton School professor Daniel G. Garrett and Federal Reserve Board economist Ivan T. Ivanov argues that Texas state entities will pay an additional $303 million to $532 million in interest costs on the $32 billion in borrowing during the first eight months following the passage of two laws last September. Government regulation limiting the adoption of ESG “distorts financial market outcomes,” the paper says.
In a May 13 letter to Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, JPMorgan Chase’s general counsel, Stacey R. Friedman, said that the firm would not lend to greenfield coal mines, new coal-fired power plants, or new oil and gas development in the Arctic.
In her letter, Friedman said that the bank’s credit exposure to the oil and gas industry was $42.6 billion, with an additional exposure of $33.2 billion in the utility sector. In addition, the bank had more than $100 billion in the finance and facilitation of “clean” energy projects.
“One of the other things we’re hearing is that the attorneys general are really betraying the GOP’s long-standing belief in free markets,” said the Rev. Kirsten Snow Spalding, senior program director of Ceres’s investor network, which advocates for shareholder resolutions. “It is no longer furthering free capitalism but stifling it. It is interfering with free capital markets, and those on the right are putting their thumbs on market investments.”
Climate pressure from employees, shareholders rattles Big Oil
Conservatives disagree, with some saying that big financial firms have so much power that they can’t accurately reflect what the free market would favor. In a June 29 letter to S&P Global Ratings, five Kentucky officials objected to the agency’s decision to use “unnecessarily subjective” ESG tools in its new evaluations of the state.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said in an interview that the “sheer power that is consolidated among the three firms” — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — has caused “the massive distortion in our public markets.”
For years, investors have been attracted to index and mutual funds at big firms because of their low fees and broad diversification. Those investors have mostly given the voting power of their shares to the big advisory firms.
But the ESG trend is facing growing skepticism in Congress. Sullivan has introduced legislation that would require investment advisers with more than 1 percent of a fund’s shares to vote only upon the instruction of the fund’s investors, not at their own discretion.
The big three investment advisers — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — manage more than $20 trillion in combined assets and control around 25 percent of all votes cast at annual meetings. They are the largest owners in approximately 90 percent of S&P 500 companies. And they control between 73 percent and 80 percent of the exchange-traded fund (ETF) market, according to Sullivan.
The State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a nonprofit that includes 27 Republican state treasurers and auditors in 23 states, was part of a successful effort this year to undercut Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to the Federal Reserve. Raskin has already served on the Fed board and was deputy treasury secretary under President Barack Obama, but her views on measuring and accounting for climate change at the Fed made her a target.
The foundation’s website links to more than a dozen conservative groups, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). SFOF’s five-person advisory board includes Adam Andrzejewski, who spoke at an ALEC conference in December, and Jonathan Williams, chief economist and executive vice president of policy at ALEC. The group’s biggest donors include the conservative Consumers’ Research as well as Fidelity Investments, Mastercard, Visa and others.
The foundation’s chief executive, Derek Kreifels, said in an email that ESG standards “were designed to impose punishments or rewards on the basis of compliance to subjective criteria.” He said it was up to financial officers to make “sure financial institutions and markets remain free of political agendas and avoiding investments that would harm their own state’s financial well-being.”
Beset by pressure, BlackRock has increasingly been offering clients the power to vote their own shares. Clients representing nearly half of BlackRock’s indexed equity assets globally will now be eligible for BlackRock Voting Choice. Clients representing 25 percent of eligible index equity assets — $530 billion out of $2.3 trillion — had elected to participate in BlackRock Voting Choice by early June, the firm said.
BlackRock says this isn’t a response to Republicans’ attacks. It launched a more limited program last year and has been planning to expand it. And BlackRock — which still has 70 people doing ESG analysis and a fiduciary responsibility to vote in 1,300 index funds — will still weigh in on shareholder votes.
“BlackRock last year voted 34 percent against management. The year before, 17 percent. They were moving in a good direction in terms of risk reduction,” said Andrew Behar, chief executive of As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy group. He said the votes included climate resolutions, political spending and racial justice. | 2022-07-13T09:22:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republicans threaten Wall Street over climate positions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/12/republicans-threaten-wall-street-over-climate-positions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/12/republicans-threaten-wall-street-over-climate-positions/ |
‘Girl in the Picture’ doc restores an identity lost to decades of horror
A 1990 hit-and-run accident sent police and FBI investigators on a long journey to identify Suzanne Sevakis, who was originally identified as Tonya Dawn Hughes. (Netflix)
“Driver Sought In Hit-and-Run; Victim Critical,” read the headline in the Daily Oklahoman on May 2, 1990. The newspaper reported that police were still searching for the driver of a car that had struck 22-year-old Tonya Dawn Hughes a week earlier on a service road near a major highway in Oklahoma City.
That isn’t the type of incident usually explored in a true-crime film, but the story went far deeper, as chronicled in the chilling Netflix documentary “The Girl in the Picture,” which has been atop the most-watched movies on the streaming platform since it premiered last week. Even the original 12-paragraph Oklahoman article made the story seem simple, if sad, noting that Hughes had been staying at a nearby motel with her husband, Clarence Hughes, and their son, Michael, while in town for a doctor’s appointment.
But as the police would later discover with help from the FBI, Tonya Dawn Hughes was not the real name of the woman who later died from her injuries and was buried by friends who simply put “Tonya” on her headstone. And her husband was not Clarence Hughes nor the biological father of Michael, but rather a felon named Franklin Delano Floyd.
The Hughes aliases resurfaced in 1994 when the Oklahoman reported on the abduction of a 6-year-old boy from an elementary school in Choctaw, Okla. Police believed Floyd to be the perpetrator of the kidnapping, during which he brandished a handgun and ordered the school principal — later found tied to a tree, according to the paper — to let him take Michael from the school. By that time, Michael had been living with foster parents for three years and the paper reported that, according to Floyd’s lawyer, he had been working to obtain custody of the boy.
The article also detailed Floyd’s extensive criminal background, including a 1962 conviction for child molestation in Fulton County, Ga., his subsequent escape from prison and a bank robbery he committed in 1963 before being sent back to prison.
By the time Floyd was charged with the kidnapping of Michael, who remained missing, in November 1994, investigators had discovered the most unsettling detail: While Floyd had been married to Michael’s mother when she was killed, he had initially represented himself as her father.
The title of Skye Borgman’s “The Girl in the Picture” refers to a childhood photo of “Tonya” — the image that ultimately pointed investigators to other atrocities Floyd carried out across various state lines.
They previously lived in Georgia, where “Tonya” attended high school and was known as Sharon Marshall. Floyd went by the alias Warren Marshall. Sharon was friendly and intelligent, and in one of the documentary’s most heartbreaking moments, her friend Jenny Fisher recalls Sharon dreamed of going to Georgia Tech. She and her friends were ecstatic when Sharon received a full scholarship, but she would never enroll at the respected public university. Sharon had discovered she was pregnant and, she told Fisher, “Daddy” wouldn’t let her have the baby.
Sharon told Fisher that she and her father were headed to Arizona to put her baby up for adoption and they lost touch. The film features interviews with other members of their close-knit friend group, who remember Sharon as kind and accepting of everyone. Fisher tearfully recalls knowing something was terribly wrong in her friend’s household because she had slept over one time and witnessed Warren rape Sharon at gunpoint. “I never said a word to anybody because I was scared,” Fisher says.
Floyd and Sharon left Georgia for Florida, where a similar pattern unfolded as Sharon — who found work in a local strip club — shared very little details about her life. But friends at the club and the small mobile home community where they lived picked up on the same disquieting details: an overprotective father who encouraged Sharon to sleep with men and took inappropriate photos of his purported daughter. It was in Florida that Sharon became pregnant with Michael, who friends say was the only reason Sharon stayed with Floyd; he wouldn’t let the boy out of his sight.
Toward the end of the documentary, the full horrific picture comes into view: Floyd kidnapped “Sharon” as a little girl, having met her mother, Sandra Willet — who was struggling with her mental health — at a vulnerable moment. He promised to take care of the woman and her three daughters, but after they married, it became clear he was abusive and controlling. When Sandra was jailed for a month after writing a bad check, Floyd abducted the children, though he later put two of his stepdaughters into foster care. The other daughter became Sharon Marshall, the girl in the photo.
In January 1995, the Oklahoman featured an interview with Floyd, who claimed that Sharon had given birth to a boy and a girl before having Michael; in fact, Michael was her second child. In the documentary, this detail isn’t revealed until nearly the end. Ultimately, Floyd was found guilty of felony kidnapping and murder — for killing a friend of Sharon’s in Florida — and was sentenced to death. In 2016, after years of lying to the press and authorities about Michael’s whereabouts, he finally confessed in an interview with two FBI agents that he fatally shot the young boy the same day of the abduction. In the same interview, he revealed the real identity of “Sharon”: Suzanne Sevakis. According to the Oklahoman, Floyd — who was suspected in the hit-and-run that killed her but never charged — has never talked about her death.
Despite the horrific acts it explores, “The Girl in the Picture” ends on a hopeful note as it reveals that Suzanne’s biological daughter, Megan Dufresne, read journalist Michael Birbeck’s 2004 book chronicling the case. (Megan became aware of the book because her aunt showed it to Megan’s mother, who had met Floyd and “Tonya” before adopting Megan.) Birbeck then got an anonymous email asking if DNA could help identify the girl in the picture. “I always knew I was adopted, but it never felt weird until I discovered Matt’s book,” Megan says in the film. “Then it was a lot more than being adopted.”
The film’s final scene shows Megan, pregnant with her own child, at a graveside memorial service for her mother, surrounded by people who loved her when she was known as Sharon and Tonya. The tombstone bearing the name “Tonya” has been replaced. It now reads: Suzanne Marie Sevakis. | 2022-07-13T10:23:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Girl in the Picture’ doc restores an identity lost to decades of horror - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/13/girl-in-picture-doc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/13/girl-in-picture-doc/ |
The rising share of home purchases by investors has contributed to the lack of homes for first-time buyers, who are increasingly priced out of the housing market, according to a study from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. (Bloomberg News)
Housing payments for home buyers and renters spiked in 2021, but higher levels of construction and reduced competition for homes may ease the pressure later this year and in 2023, according to “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2022” report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
However, affordability issues are anticipated to continue to plague households with low-to-moderate incomes and people of color, according to the researchers.
Rents for apartments and single-family homes rose approximately 12 percent during the first quarter of 2022 compared with the first quarter of 2021. In some markets, rents rose by as much as 42 percent. In 25 markets, rents rose by more than 20 percent during that same period.
Black homeownership continues to lag in 50 largest U.S. cities
Nearly half (46 percent) of renters are considered at least moderately cost-burdened by their rent, meaning they spend more than the recommended 30 percent of their income on their housing payment. Nearly one-fourth (24 percent) spend 50 percent or more of their income on rent.
Harvard researchers estimate that about 4 million renters are priced out of homeownership because of the 20 percent increase in home prices combined with sharply higher mortgage rates. This increases demand for rental housing. While construction of apartments and single-family homes for rent has increased, it is not on pace to match the housing need.
Even among renters who can qualify to buy a home, it can be extremely challenging to find one that fits their budget. The rising share of home purchases by investors has contributed to the lack of homes for first-time buyers, who are increasingly priced out of the housing market.
The investor share of home purchases averaged 28 percent per month during the first quarter of 2022, compared with 19 percent a year earlier, according to the study, and far above the average share of 16 percent in 2017 through 2019. In some markets, such as Atlanta, 40 percent of homes were purchased by investors during the first quarter of 2022.
The wealth gap between homeowners and renters widened further in recent years because of the rapid appreciation in home values, but even before the pandemic and the hot housing market there were wide disparities between the groups. In 2019, homeowners had a median wealth of $254,900, about 40 times the median household wealth of renters of $6,270.
Report: Rental affordability declines nationwide
The persistent gap in homeownership rates between Black and Hispanic households and White households has kept many people from gaining wealth through home equity. But the wealth gap exists even between Black and Hispanic families who own homes and White homeowners.
According to the study, “In 2019, the median net wealth of Black homeowners ($113,100) was just over a third of that of White homeowners ($299,900) and the median net wealth of Hispanic homeowners ($164,800) was still roughly half of White homeowners. At least in part, these disparities reflect consistently lower home valuations in neighborhoods that are predominantly Black or Hispanic.”
For the full report, visit jchs.harvard.edu/state-nations-housing-2022. | 2022-07-13T10:27:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Affordability, wealth gap persist in housing market, Harvard study - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/affordability-wealth-gap-persist-housing-market-report-finds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/affordability-wealth-gap-persist-housing-market-report-finds/ |
Your column mentioned that the reader might want to hire financial planners, Realtors, real estate attorneys, CPAs and insurance salesmen. That’s everything but a code book.
Of course, I’m just teasing. I’m a regular reader because the advice is rock solid and it was again in this column. I started reading your column well before I bought my first home in 2015 and found it invaluable.
More Matters: How to make sure your mortgage is cleared once you pay it off
Ilyce and Sam respond: Thank you for being a loyal reader to our column. We know we can sound a bit like a broken record when we suggest that readers consult with various professionals about their issues. But, rarely do our readers give us enough information that allows us to provide an answer with prescriptive detail.
Another part of the issue is space. We have a limited amount of space to respond to questions.
Most questions could take several pages to answer completely. In fact, Ilyce has written books answering questions for home buyers (“100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask”) and for home sellers (“100 Questions Every Home Seller Should Ask”). Each of those books is around 500 pages.
But our fabulous editor, Carrie Williams, would break down in tears if we attempted to provide that level of detail in our columns. So, we aim to provide guidance on the big issue in each question and hint at other possibilities. That’s another reason we suggest readers seek professional advice.
Finally, some of the questions we get seem simple — they might only be one sentence long — but they are actually quite complicated to answer. Take the tax code (“Please,” as the Marx Brothers might say). If you think about it, a tax question can look simple but is actually quite technical and complicated. Since we don’t want to guess wrong on the details, we provide the basics, and then some.
For every question about tax we receive, we know that many other readers have the same question with a bit of a twist. Many don’t realize the answer to that question has far-reaching implications. So, we try to provide a general answer with a gentle push to a local pro who can provide the nuance and detail that space constraints and lack of information prevent us from providing.
Glad you’re finding the column useful and entertaining.
Comment: Regarding your article on obtaining a release of a mortgage securing a debt that has been paid, many mortgages require the lender to release the lien of the mortgage (release the mortgage) when the debt has been paid. Frequently, a mortgage will expressly state this lender obligation.
A borrower should not have to pay to get the mortgage released, and should request that the lender email the recorded release to them as part of the documents being signed when the loan payoff is being conducted.
Ilyce and Sam respond: We agree that all lenders should issue the release of mortgage or trust deed once the underlying debt has been paid off by the borrower. When a person takes out a loan for the purchase or refinance of a home, the lender takes that home as collateral. The lender does not physically take the home, but places a lien against the home using a mortgage or deed of trust.
The mortgage or deed of trust gives the lender the right to sell off the home to pay off the debt should the borrower fail to make the payments on the loan and the loan goes into default.
Your comment is about a borrower who has made all of their mortgage payments and has paid down the balance of the loan to zero, or makes one last final payment to bring the balance owed to zero. In both of those situations, the lender should release the mortgage by sending a release of mortgage to the office that handles the recording or filing of real estate documents in the county in which the property is located. In the case of a deed of trust, the lender issues a release of the deed of trust and that form too has to get recorded or filed.
More Matters: The paperwork you should receive when your mortgage has been paid in full
When it comes to loan payoffs, Sam sees two fees in his practice: the reimbursement to the lender of the recording or filing fee for the mortgage or trust deed release, and the fax fee to send the payoff letter to the borrower or borrower’s agent. The government office that handles the recording or filing of documents sets the cost for the recording or filing, and the lender doesn’t have anything to do with that. On the other hand, the cost for faxing the payoff letter is set by the lenders. That fee can range from nothing to $50.
These days, it would seem to us that faxing the payoff letter to the borrower or the borrower’s representative is cheaper than generating the paper payoff letter and sending it through the Postal Service.
Sam has yet to see a lender pay for out-of-pocket fees paid to third parties when they can get the borrower to pay those fees. In those few instances where lenders charge a fee to prepare the release of mortgage or deed of trust, we would agree with you that the lender should absorb that cost. Sam does not come across this often, as most lenders do not charge a fee to prepare those documents.
However, it seems these days that every business has unbundled the amount they charge for their goods and services. You have stores selling goods and then selling you warranty coverages for those goods. It used to be that manufacturers sold their products and included a warranty that covered you for a decent amount of time.
Now you have service providers that charge you for the service and then add on the many other fees that were once included as part of the underlying service. You can clearly see that with airlines and their pricing structure.
At this point, it seems that the only fees lenders charge at the end of a loan are the fax payoff fee and the out-of-pocket recording or filing fee. We’ll see if it stays that way.
©2022 Ilyce R. Glink and Samuel J. Tamkin. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. | 2022-07-13T10:28:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Let’s catch up with our readers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/lets-catch-up-with-our-readers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/lets-catch-up-with-our-readers/ |
Biden promised to halt all new drilling on public lands and waters but is now entertaining this idea, in part to secure passage of his climate package through Congress
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) after a private meeting with White House officials on Capitol Hill on Sept. 30. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
In the past week and a half, the White House has taken steps that would have been considered unimaginable when President Biden first took office, suggesting that it might greenlight drilling plans in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico that would produce hundreds of millions more barrels of oil.
Despite violating the president’s climate pledges, officials have opened the door to these proposals as they wait to see if their approval could help finally secure Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin III’s (D-W.Va.) vote for a historic climate package stuck in Congress. Complicating their calculus is that White House aides do not even know if approving them — or Manchin’s other preferred energy projects, such as a pipeline in West Virginia — would bring the elusive senator on board.
The difficult balancing act, described by four administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing a potential deal, is part of the White House’s last-ditch effort to salvage the chances of meeting Biden’s carbon emissions reduction targets with just months until the 2022 midterm elections. The fossil fuel projects may also prove crucial to Democrats’ broader economic package focused on energy, prescription drugs and taxes, since Manchin has so far balked at only approving the new clean energy tax credits that form the core of the party’s climate legislation.
The uncertain fate of the climate bill — and Manchin’s vote — has driven the White House to postpone decisions on energy projects with significant environmental impacts, including the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline and future drilling plans in the Gulf of Mexico and on Alaska’s North Slope.
Collectively, outside groups estimate these projects would generate anywhere between 680 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to up to six times that amount. Climate advocates argue that additional carbon pollution would undercut Biden’s pledge to reduce U.S. emissions by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Yet experts said additional carbon pollution could be worth it in exchange for new climate policies that would allow the renewable energy industry to dramatically expand.
David Victor, an energy policy expert at the University of California at San Diego, said in an interview that if the deal could usher through those programs, “it’s going to send a much clearer signal to low-carbon industries about where and how they can build.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates declined to comment on the administration’s strategy in a statement, saying, “We do not negotiate in public but are dealing with lawmakers in good faith to pass legislation that will cut costs like prescription drugs and energy, lower the deficit by having the wealthy pay their fair share, and fight inflation for the long haul.”
Manchin has taken a special interest in the Mountain Valley pipeline, which would transport Appalachian shale gas about 300 miles from West Virginia to Virginia if built. Designed to carry 2 billion cubic feet of gas a day, the project would impact hundreds of streams, wetlands and several miles of national forest land, and would increase the nation’s exports of liquefied natural gas, which the United States is sending to help Europe amid the war in Ukraine.
Though some energy analysts have said the pipeline is not needed to supply domestic or international markets, Manchin has championed the project. He has described it as “strategically important” for American energy security and the European Union’s goal of cutting its dependence on Russian gas, told administration officials the pipeline is one of his top priorities, and cited its many delays to argue that permitting hurdles are strangling U.S. oil and gas production.
The federal government’s five-year plan for oil and gas drilling in the country’s coastal waters has also become part of the administration’s efforts to court Manchin. Though Biden campaigned on a pledge to end federal leasing, the new plan put out by the Interior Department this month identified as many as 11 potential new lease sales. Biden officials proposed banning exploration off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, while still leaving the possibility of new drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska.
Yet even as the administration entertains the idea of new leasing, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has said that the plan is not final and that her department is considering holding no lease sales at all.
Biden officials have also raised the prospect of allowing a controversial oil project on Alaska’s North Slope to proceed. Known as Willow, ConocoPhillips’s multibillion-dollar venture faces stiff opposition from environmentalists and some Native Alaskans, who worry it will disrupt their subsistence lifestyle. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a close ally of Manchin, has said she wants to see construction begin this winter.
Typically, federal officials analyze a project’s environmental risks, then say which option they support. But in the case of both the Willow project and the five-year leasing plan, Interior did not indicate a preference. Adding to the confusion, Bureau of Land Management officials in Alaska initially published a different version of the Willow analysis that said the administration would probably approve the project.
An Interior Department spokesperson declined to comment.
A 'carbon bomb' or a key energy project? Biden faces a major drilling decision in Alaska.
On its own, the Willow project is expected to produce 629 million barrels of oil over its three-decade life span. Early federal estimates said the project would generate about 260 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the rough equivalent of 66 coal plants, but recent figures are even higher.
A 2017 analysis by Oil Change International, an environmental advocacy group, found that the greenhouse gas emissions from the Mountain Valley pipeline would approximate 26 coal plants or 19 million passenger cars.
From the perspective of many administration officials, such a deal would be worth making if the billions of dollars in tax incentives for renewable energy could curb rising emissions that are fueling planetary warming.
But as they weigh this trade-off, Biden officials are wary of approving these projects only to then lose Manchin’s vote on the climate and energy deal anyway. Manchin is known for refusing to be pinned down, leaving administration officials wondering what he wants, and he has used his power in an evenly divided Senate to block his party’s goals. Negotiations between Biden and the West Virginia senator have repeatedly broken down over the past year.
Manchin has said boosting clean energy — without also increasing U.S. production of oil and gas — could hurt the nation by making it more dependent on authoritarian petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, which Biden is visiting in part because the United States needs its oil. Manchin has also voiced concerns about approving hundreds of billions in government subsidies for fossil fuel projects that could be defeated by red tape or climate lawsuits, the people said.
“It’s no secret that Senator Manchin — and many others on both sides of the aisle — believes that permitting reform is essential to American energy security and our ability to decarbonize,” Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon said in an email.
Climate advocacy groups have called on Biden to stay true to his pledge to rein in the production of fossil fuels.
“We believe expanding leasing, onshore or offshore, would fly in the face of meeting the Biden administration’s climate commitments,” said Alex Taurel, conservation program director for the League of Conservation Voters.
But after watching Manchin abruptly pull his support from Democrats’ social safety net, climate and tax bill last year, some activists said they have reconciled themselves to limiting the new oil and gas infrastructure projects the senator wants rather than blocking them altogether. If Manchin has his price, advocates say, it may be worth paying to reach a compromise on the bill’s major climate change provisions.
Oil industry officials have welcomed the administration’s recent ambiguous announcements as a positive sign. Industry groups have accused Biden of slowing fossil fuel production and blamed him for record high gas prices, though energy experts say these changes are mainly driven up by pandemic supply chain disruptions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“They’ve certainly taken a step forward, but we are disappointed, particularly in the five-year program announcement, that they left a lot of room for the potential for no lease sales,” said Frank Macchiarola, the American Petroleum Institute’s senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs.
“The question of whether to hold lease sales on the outer continental shelf is not a bargaining chip — it’s a statutory requirement,” he said, noting that the Interior Department is required to issue a plan for new offshore lease sales every five years.
As the White House courts Manchin, those familiar with the process said in interviews that administration officials have not tried to influence or alter the scientific analysis of fossil fuel projects, as Trump officials sometimes did when their energy policies clashed with established science.
Instead, White House officials have taken control of the messaging strategy. The change has led to hasty rollouts that try to placate both the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists, but risk angering both. The administration released both of its recent drilling announcements on Friday evenings, when fewer people are paying attention to the news.
For career employees at Interior, the White House’s involvement has been chaotic. In the days following the announcement of the offshore drilling plan, Haaland convened several dozen employees on Zoom to thank them for their work, saying, “This was quite the roller coaster.”
While Manchin has considerable leverage in Washington — some call Democrats’ attempts to salvage pieces of the now-defunct Build Back Better bill “Build Back Manchin” — there may be limits to what Democrats can offer him. Approval for these fossil fuel projects falls outside the bounds of the Senate budget procedure the party is using to pass its budget bill, making it impossible for Democrats to codify approval for the West Virginia pipeline, or enact permitting reform, in that package.
If talks with Democratic leaders fail, it’s unlikely that Manchin could work with Republicans to expedite fossil fuel projects. But the impasse suggests that a deal between the White House and Manchin could continue to prove elusive, even if both sides can find common ground.
Michael Wara, an energy and climate policy expert at Stanford University, said that while the war in Ukraine and soaring gas prices have made the politics of combating climate change more challenging, the United States is already headed for a “wholesale change” in how it generates energy.
“In a world where transportation is electrifying at a pace that we really didn’t expect, in a world where the auto manufacturers are laying off their internal combustion design teams,” he said, decisions by the federal government to approve more fossil fuel infrastructure are not necessarily a done deal.
“Just because you give someone permission to do something doesn’t mean they’ll do it, if they can’t make money,” Wara said. “And the world is evolving.” | 2022-07-13T10:28:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House eyes fossil fuel projects to win Manchin's climate support - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/13/manchin-climate-biden-oil-drilling/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/13/manchin-climate-biden-oil-drilling/ |
What Josh Hawley doesn’t get in the discussion about ‘pregnant people’
Conversations about pregnancy should be factual — and caring
I spent much of the past calendar year as a pregnant woman. I wrote about being a pregnant woman many times in the pages of The Washington Post. Nobody ever told me I couldn’t identify as a pregnant woman in those columns. Nobody ever told me I couldn’t identify other pregnant women as pregnant women. On occasion I mentioned pregnant people who were not women — they were transgender men, or nonbinary individuals. I did not call them “pregnant women” because that would have been inaccurate and silly. I identified them as “pregnant people,” which seemed like a fairly basic and obvious solution.
If you’ve read the above paragraph and have no idea what I’m going on about, then here’s a recap: There is a discussion going on in newsrooms, on social media, in government and in the reproductive access community, about the language we use around pregnancy. Do we talk about “pregnant women,” to acknowledge the identity and specific history of the vast majority of people who carry children? Or, to be inclusive of non-women who can also get pregnant, do we say “pregnant people,” or maybe, “people with uteruses?”
“You’ve referred to ‘people with a capacity for pregnancy,’” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said to law professor Khiara Bridges in a Tuesday hearing about abortion access. “Would that be women?”
“Many women, cis women, have the capacity for pregnancy,” Bridges responded. “There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people.”
Reproductive rights and transgender rights are currently two of the country’s most hot-button issues, and the intersection of these topics has grown flammable. “Women didn’t fight this long and this hard only to be told we couldn’t call ourselves women anymore,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul wrote last week. “This isn’t just a semantic issue; it’s also a question of moral harm, an affront to our very sense of ourselves.”
The same day, Bette Midler tweeted, “WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They don’t call us ‘women’ anymore; they call us ‘birthing people’.”
Their arguments, in a nutshell: women have been assaulted, dismissed and otherwise victimized by gender-based discrimination for millennia. Women’s identities have been shaped and strengthened by these experiences. At the very least, they should get to claim the word that has been the source of their pride and pain.
We could pick at these arguments, of course, as some of them are hollow. Nobody is saying that women can’t call themselves women anymore. The examples Paul cited (wording from the websites of Planned Parenthood or NARAL) are organizations choosing to use more-inclusive language for their own work or their own branding. These organizations are not dictating what women personally are allowed to do. As for Midler: she did not clarify who “they” was, but truly there is no quicker way to look unhinged in a public forum than to rant in all-caps about an unspecified “they.”
But I have a measure of sympathy for people like Midler because the debate over the terminology of pregnancy is, frankly, a mess. It’s marred by scaremongering and subtraction, focusing on what the transgender community is allegedly taking away from women.
The debate doesn’t wrestle with the true and hard issues: what it means to carry a child, to birth a child, to navigate the American medical system while pregnant. What it means to live in a body that is both celebrated and punished for its incubation capabilities, to live in a body that the legislative and judicial systems feel they have a right to control.
There were times during the delivery of my daughter when I felt that I was experiencing something more divinely and primordially feminine than I had ever known — a connection to every mother who had come before me, who ever labored in a hut or home or hospital, testing the limits of her body and soul. Other times during the delivery my divine femininity was usurped by my possession of a single reproductive organ: one trainee nurse referred to me the entire time as “the uterus.”
More often than not the experience was a mix of both identity and biology. An anesthesiologist botched my epidural and then didn’t believe it was botched. I wondered whether he would have believed me if I were a man — and then decided, body on fire, I didn’t care whether the doctor was mistreating me because he was a misogynist, or whether he thought of me as a woman or a birthing person. I just wanted him to fix the friggin’ needle. I just wanted the care I deserved.
And that’s what we’re really talking about when it comes to this terminology that sounds like it’s about semantics but is actually about “our very sense of ourselves.” (Paul got that right, at least.) We’re talking about the care each and every one of us, every sex and every gender, deserves as human beings.
In many ways it is impossible to separate the experience of being pregnant with the experience of being a woman. Historically when the medical community has treated women, it has treated them as hysterics and hypochondriacs. It has underestimated their pain and underfunded the research that could address it. None of this history changes when a woman walks into a clinic pregnant.
And yet, people who aren’t women walk into clinics pregnant, too. They walk in with their own histories of medical discrimination and dismissal, with their own bodies in need of care and tending. That’s not an affront to womanhood, or a subtraction. It’s just a fact.
I like the way that Kate Manne has thought through this issue, as it specifically relates to abortion access. Manne, a feminist moral philosopher, has written that abortion bans are misogynistic because they “target and primarily victimize women, who are seen as no longer fulfilling their rightful reproductive and social role as mothers in particular and caregivers in general.”
But, she continues, “When I talk about who is potentially affected by abortion bans, I thus talk about people who can get pregnant.”
Legislation impacting pregnancies might have been written intending to regulate women. But these laws end up regulating anyone who has a uterus, whether that person is a woman or not. After all, a state that has prohibited abortions doesn’t care what kind of pronouns are employed by the person who wants to end a pregnancy.
Our language when discussing reproduction needs to be precise in describing what is happening and who it’s happening to. It also needs to be factual, and it ought to be caring.
And one more thing: It should be a language of addition, not subtraction. It should acknowledge the fundamental experiences that have shaped women and pregnancy since the beginning of time, and it should acknowledge the universal experiences of pregnancy that transcend beyond gender.
Or, as Khiara Bridges phrased it in her response to Sen. Hawley on Tuesday: “We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it also impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive.”
If you know you’re talking about a pregnant woman, by all means, call her that. If you know you’re talking about someone who is pregnant and not a woman, then address them how they want to be addressed.
When in doubt: Pregnant women and other pregnant people.
You’re gaining just seven extra syllables. And I promise, you’re losing nothing. | 2022-07-13T10:28:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Josh Hawley doesn’t get in the discussion about ‘pregnant people’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/13/pregnant-people-hawley-monica-hesse-column/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/13/pregnant-people-hawley-monica-hesse-column/ |
Jayland Walker’s killing didn’t spur expected protests. Here’s why.
An effective media strategy has often been crucial to rallying the public behind Black victims of fatal violence
Perspective by Kate L. Flach
Kate L. Flach is currently a lecturer at California State University, Long Beach where she specializes in 20th century cultural and political history.
Family members of Jayland Walker stand behind the podium during a news conference as attorney Bobby DiCello, whose legal team is representing the family, speaks, in Akron, Ohio, on July 11. (Karen Schiely/Akron Beacon Journal/AP)
On June 27, Jayland Walker was killed by Akron police after a car chase over a traffic violation. When Walker fled from his vehicle, eight officers fired more than 90 rounds, with Walker suffering more than 60 gunshot wounds. Anticipating protests, the city of Akron restricted downtown access and canceled its annual weekend-long Independence Day festival.
There were local demonstrations against the Akron police. Yet nationally, the incident did not galvanize the public to anywhere near the degree that George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police did in 2020. Protests across the nation have been comparatively muted. Walker didn’t even trend for long on Twitter, a platform that has been a critical organizing tool for recent protest movements.
The difference between the two cases exposes the way media plays a critical role in fueling activism. In the 21st century, that means social media. But in the 20th century, another kind of media — television — was intertwined with the growth of the civil rights movement. A look back to the 1950s and the infamous lynching of Emmett Till, and the lesser-known murder of Clinton Melton, shows how media stories and images create narratives about victims and play a crucial role in rallying the public against racial violence and injustice.
In the 1940s, television provided entertainment and the public did not view it as a way to learn about current events. Because so few Americans owned a television — roughly 3 million sets were sold in the entire decade — they depended on newspapers and radio for their news stories.
This began to change in the 1950s, when more than 5 million television sets were sold every year. With the rise of the civil rights movement, tragedy mixed with new media to help rouse the nation against segregation. The immediacy that television offered when covering the struggle for civil rights legitimized the medium as a reputable news source. Likewise, the civil rights movement also benefited from television’s interest. Video recordings allowed Black people to show the world how violent racist Whites in the South could be, while also publicizing activists’ visions of equality. Through television, Black Americans were able to challenge the racial social order in ways they could not before.
The murder of Emmett Till in 1955 provided one notable example of this. While visiting family in Mississippi, the 14-year-old Emmett was kidnapped and killed for the alleged crime of whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a White woman. Bryant’s husband, Roy, and half brother, J.W. Milam, took Emmett from his uncle’s house. They beat the boy mercilessly, shot him in the head and threw him in the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton-gin fan tied to his body with barbed wire.
Three days later, the boy’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, learned of her son’s lynching, and even in her grief, she set out to “make the whole world see” how violence was used to maintain white supremacy. To that end, she insisted on an open-casket funeral for her son and, with the help of the NAACP, invited news stations and newspapers to cover the event.
Jet Magazine, a Black news outlet, published pictures of Emmett’s mutilated body next to images of him during his last Christmas at home, smiling next to a television set. Mainstream news outlets, including the New York Times, picked up the story from the Black press and delivered it into White homes. Newspapers emphasized Emmett’s loving family and his youth, countering White racist stereotypes about Black men as sexual aggressors. Headlines, such as “Mother’s Tears Greet Son Who Died a Martyr” in the Chicago Defender, also placed Till-Mobley and her pain at the center of the story.
More significantly, television stations broadcast the funeral, at which an estimated 50,000 attendees, most of them Black, came to pay their respects. Live film captured the anguish and grief of Black visitors, and Till-Mobley herself spoke to journalists about the tragedy of losing her son to White violence.
The lynching of the boy and the subsequent trial of Milam and Bryant for his murder were widely reported, not just in the United States, but internationally. When Milam and Bryant were acquitted, the broad news coverage helped spur protest rallies in Chicago, Detroit, New York, Baltimore and beyond the United States, in Copenhagen, Paris and Tokyo.
Four months later, however, the murder of Clinton Melton generated far less collective action.
Melton, a Black father and gas station attendant, was a lifelong resident of Glendora, Miss., four miles north of the town where Emmett Till was killed. He was fatally shot while at work by Elmer Kimball — a friend of J.W. Milam, in fact — who claimed that Melton “got smart” with him when he wanted to gas up his truck. Kimball also claimed that, after a verbal altercation, Melton fired a gun first before Kimball shot back three times, killing Melton. But no evidence was found indicating that Melton even had a gun or fired any shots at Kimball. Nevertheless, Kimball claimed self-defense and was ultimately acquitted.
But there was a crucial difference between the cases. Melton’s wife, Beulah, did not seek, or seem to want, the help of the NAACP as Till-Mobley had, for fear of White retribution. Unlike Till-Mobley, who lived in Chicago, Melton lived in the heart of the Jim Crow South, which would have made trying to publicize the case or working with civil rights organizations dangerous for her.
Yet the killing of Melton still made national news. As with Emmett’s murder, newspapers — particularly those outside the South — used the grief and suffering experienced by Melton’s wife and children to tell a story of another wanton murder in Mississippi. An article in the Pittsburgh Courier even included a telegram from the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women’s Club pleading with President Dwight D. Eisenhower to sympathize, as a father, with the Melton family. The federation called upon Eisenhower to send federal troops to Mississippi to stop white supremacists from continuing what was described as a “genocide” against Black Americans.
Although newspapers reported on Melton’s killing and the trial of Kimball, media coverage was minimal compared to that of Emmett’s — a detail that journalists commented on. A local newspaper in Connecticut compared the Till trial, which had an average of 75-100 reporters in attendance each day, to the trial in Melton’s slaying, which only attracted about a dozen. Journalist David Halberstam of the Reporter suggested that one reason for this could have been that the Melton family “lacked reader appeal” because they were from the South, compared to the middle class Till family from the North.
But more important, without the springboard of print coverage, television broadcast news skipped covering the event. The story didn’t reach Americans in their homes the way Emmett’s death did, and without media coverage to help spark outrage, protests remained local and small.
In the 1950s, broadcast journalists capitalized on the frequently recurring television drama that larger protests and marches provided. And civil rights organizations understood this correlation, too. For instance, organizers skillfully shaped protests to ensure media coverage by arranging for marches to take place before 2 p.m. so network news crews had enough time to prepare their film for that evening’s broadcast. They even sang freedom songs with short, repetitive phrases — such as “We Shall Overcome” — to be sure that their message fit into short 10-second sound bites.
This symbiotic relationship between media and movements continues today with the advent of the internet, smartphones and social media.
Long ago, television amplified the horror of the lynching of Emmett Till, but it also amplified the immediacy and urgency of the crisis, much like social media has done for Black people killed by police in the 21st century. But in Jayland Walker’s case, the video of his death was caught on police body cameras, not a bystander’s phone. The reporting of his death circulated for six days before the video was released by Akron police, disrupting the way the public connected the story of Walker’s death with the visual evidence. Furthermore, Walker’s mother, Pamela, sought to blur her son’s image in the video in an effort to prevent the type of voyeurism that can fetishize Black pain.
Walker’s mother and sister, Jada, have, thus far, given few interviews. Instead they have requested privacy and peace, something George Floyd’s brother, Philonise, had hoped for before eventually choosing a public role as police reform activist.
While this is understandable, the media’s ability to personalize grief depends, in many ways, on explicit videos of public murder and on the emotional strain of mourning family members to put themselves in the spotlight. The variations in public response to these two killings, therefore, does not indicate that people are desensitized to violence against Black people. Instead it shows how normalized it has become, and how it requires something more to capture public attention. | 2022-07-13T10:28:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jayland Walker’s killing didn’t spur expected protests. Here’s why. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/13/jayland-walkers-killing-didnt-spur-expected-protests-heres-why/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/13/jayland-walkers-killing-didnt-spur-expected-protests-heres-why/ |
The Supreme Court letting states mandate morals will end badly
History shows laws will end up as weapons deployed in discriminatory ways to curtail freedom
Perspective by Nancy C. Unger
Nancy C. Unger is professor of history at Santa Clara University, and president of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. She’s the author of prize-winning biographies of Robert La Follette and Belle La Follette, and “Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History.”
Illustrations on the cover and inside of the book “Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls or War on the White Slave Trade,” edited by Ernest Bell in 1910.
A case from more than a century ago, in which the court furthered the imposition of a particular moral agenda, indicates a disastrous path ahead — with new discriminatory laws that trample upon rights and freedoms.
At the turn of the 20th century, the United States experienced a revolution in manners and morals. Concentrated areas of nightclubs, saloons, gambling parlors, brothels, dance halls, bars, cheap hotels and opium dens sprang up in the nation’s burgeoning cities. Their visibility — amplified by an increasingly sensationalist press — aroused moral panic, particularly among those who feared a rejection of religion and decency.
Prostitution was a particular worry. Most White Americans subscribed to the idea that White women were inherently sexually chaste. In contrast, they deemed recent immigrants, African Americans and other people of color to be inferior, rendering the women more susceptible to prostitution. Given these beliefs, the increased visibility of American-born White women in urban prostitution in the early 20th century created an urgent moral panic among White Americans.
Since they believed in the inherent purity and sexual passivity of White women, they saw only one explanation for this behavior: Innocent young women had been lured by the falsehoods of evildoers (often described in the press and political rhetoric as immigrants), then victimized by brute force into becoming sexual enslaved people for hire. This White slave panic reached a fever pitch between 1908 and 1913.
Rep. James Robert Mann (R-Ill.) championed paternalistic government protection of White American womanhood as a solution. In 1910, Congress passed the White-Slave Traffic Act, better known as the Mann Act, in recognition of its sponsor. The Mann Act made it a felony for “any person” to “knowingly transport … in interstate or foreign commerce … any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”
Even the congressional opponents of the Mann Act did not object to efforts to police morality, nor did they question the degree of the problem. Instead, they denied that the federal government held the constitutional power to pass such a law and preferred letting the states act. Southern representatives — cognizant of the risks to Jim Crow segregation if the federal government grew too powerful — charged that the act violated states’ rights by giving the federal government unlimited power in “regulating the morals and health of a sovereign state.”
Despite the fearmongering, police never uncovered the international White slave syndicate that Mann and others insisted was thriving. Instead, the Mann Act became a tool to persecute men who flouted society’s standards, like African American heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who ultimately served time for consorting with a White prostitute.
One of the most famous early Mann Act prosecutions exposed the staggering ramifications of the law. Maury I. Diggs and Farley Drew Caminetti were married fathers who were dating unmarried women, Marsha Warrington and Lola Norris. All four were from prominent Sacramento families, and for months, the public antics of the two illicit couples shocked California’s capital. They headed for Reno in the hopes of letting the gossip die down. But instead, police jailed Diggs and Caminetti on a variety of charges, including violation of the Mann Act. Their real crime, however, was having affairs.
Mann himself saw the case as a test of not just his legislation but of the very soul of the nation. So did prosecutors and the press. The case made national headlines.
Diggs faced trial first before an all-male jury — although California had granted women the right to vote in 1911, their right to jury service was not formally enacted until 1917. When the defense began to make its case that the two young women went willingly to Reno, Judge William Van Fleet broke in to say that the motives and character of Warrington and Norris had no bearing on the case. Women’s consent and desires were immaterial.
The jury found Diggs guilty of transporting Warrington and Norris to Reno for immoral purposes.
During jury selection for Caminetti’s trial, Van Fleet again made clear that the White-Slave Traffic Act was designed to criminalize immoral behavior: “There is no such thing as a personal liberty to commit crime, and the sooner people ascertain that fact the better it will be for society.” Caminetti also was found guilty.
Then, as now, many were convinced that the legal system could remedy what they saw as a society run morally amok. Others, including Warrington, saw a gross violation of individual freedom, bodily autonomy and women’s right to sexual agency. After Diggs’s wife divorced him, Warrington and Diggs married in 1915 (a union that lasted until Diggs’s death in 1953). The woman who was “protected” by the Mann Act proclaimed that the trial had broken them both “in fortune and in reputation, in family, in spirit.” She stated plainly that her husband was “punished for a crime he did not commit. He is not now, and he never was, a white slaver. We were of age and we went for reasons not immoral. There was no compulsion.” Her protests went unheeded because the convictions served a far larger agenda.
According to the Sacramento Bee, the men’s punishment “will be a splendid thing for the moral atmosphere of California. It will put the fear of the law, if not of God, into the hearts of despicable wretches who make seduction of young girls their chief pastime.” The Bee concluded that every state should pass intrastate versions of the Mann Act, which could be used to declare an all-out war on lax morals.
In 1916, the Supreme Court heard appeals from Diggs and Caminetti. Their counsel, former senator Joseph W. Bailey (D-Tex.) railed, “Our humanity revolts at the thought of punishing a moral lapse as a felony, and no law which does so can be properly enforced.”
The court, however, ruled that because the wording of the law included “any other immoral purpose,” the Diggs and Caminetti verdicts must be upheld. While the majority affirmed that Congress could not legislate morality within the individual states, it also made clear that Congress could make illegal any extramarital sex that involved crossing state lines. In dissent, Justice Joseph McKenna shared the concern that the words “any other immoral purpose” formed a phrase so broad as to cover “every form of vice, every form of conduct that is contrary to good order.”
The decision relieved Americans who had been disturbed by a society in flux that challenged traditional views of gender and family. They saw the case (and the Mann Act) as bulwarks against new ideas about acceptable behavior between men and women, and especially about White women’s right to sexual agency.
As legal scholar Lawrence Friedman notes, the Mann Act enabled “busybodies, people with grudges, outraged husbands, wives, parents, and miscellaneous others” to allege violations of the law in discriminatory ways that ruined lives. The FBI opened nearly 50,000 investigations just between 1921 and 1936. Some convictions, like those in the Caminetti-Diggs case, involved consensual extramarital sex. African American men who pursued women outside their race were targeted, including actor Rex Ingram (1949) and musician Chuck Berry (1962). The law also proved a powerfully effective way to punish famous White men for their left-of-center politics or flouting of social norms. Authorities filed Mann Act charges against sociologist William I. Thomas (1918), architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1926), British poet George Baker (1940) and film legend Charlie Chaplin (1944).
This abuse of the law changed only when amendments to the Mann Act in 1978 and 1986 transformed it into an important tool to fight sex trafficking.
As the history of the Mann Act show, the Dobbs decision opens the door for legislators to pass laws that — far from protecting morality — will instead trample women’s sexual agency and create and perpetuate new injustices. | 2022-07-13T10:29:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Supreme Court letting states mandate morals will end badly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/13/supreme-court-letting-states-mandate-morals-will-end-badly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/07/13/supreme-court-letting-states-mandate-morals-will-end-badly/ |
From “Past Paper//Present Marks,” published by Radius Books. (Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Odette England)
For the last four months or so, I’ve been in a bit of a funk. The brutal news cycle detailing global unrest and domestic discord has eaten away at any sense of tranquility I had. Everything seems jumbled, upside down, nonsensical.
I’m just now starting to peek out of the funk. And one of the things I’ve found to be supremely helpful is taking respite in beautiful things — or things that I can get lost in, that carry me away into a sense of reverie. The book “Past Paper // Present Marks” (Radius, 2022) by artists Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Odette England is one of the books I’ve taken some refuge in.
The book itself is gorgeous, which only boosts the pleasure you’ll get while flipping through its pages. But the content (I hate that word!) borders on the sublime. It’s a collection of photograms — or photographic images produced without a camera — made in legendary artist Robert Rauschenberg’s swimming pool at his Florida home.
The images are experimental visions of wonder. Garza-Cuen and England made them in 2018 as part of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in Captiva, Fla.
When the artists arrived at Rauschenberg’s home, they introduced themselves to the studio manager and told him they were interested in collaborating on some “process experiments.” The studio manager replied that they would be given access to some of Rauschenberg’s old photographic paper in the darkroom.
After finding the paper nestled there amid Rauschenberg’s old chemicals, processing trays and enlarger, the two artists set about their experimentation. They mixed the old chemicals, took the expired paper and began the process that would eventually give birth to the works in “Past Paper // Present Marks.”
The resulting images are soft and dreamy. But of course there’s more to them than that. Their provenance lends added weight, coming from remnants left behind by one of the world’s most admired artists, or as Garza-Cuen and England say: “Overlooked materials with latent potential for experimentation.”
To quote Walt Whitman, that phrase “contains multitudes.” Garza-Cuen and England’s photograms were made after they folded, cut, pierced and slashed Rauschenberg’s photographic paper and then tossed it into his swimming pool, where it marinated in the water and sun.
I’m almost always interested to read what artists themselves say about the process they used to make a work, and this is true here. Here’s how England and Garza-Cuen describe the process that created these images:
“We fold sheets of paper / layer and place them inside the envelopes / will them to transform // We cut / pierce / slash the cardboard envelopes and light-tight bags / set them free in Bob’s pool // Adrift / floating / sinking / dancing at the edges / exposed for hours to the sun / moon / accumulating itinerant light swimming through salt water ///”
Well, as a onetime English major, I’m reminded of a poem — or, going a step further, even life itself. After all, aren’t we all in some way cut and pierced and exposed to the elements, sun and moon, too? Isn’t this one of the very ways our personalities are formed?
As we all know, life is unpredictable. To borrow another saying, “life is what happens while you’re making plans,” right? I find the work in “Past Paper // Present Marks” to be a lovely meditation on the randomness of creativity and the very essence of life, which is wrapped up in so much personal history, dings, scuffs, collisions. It’s what makes us who we are; it’s how we create the things we leave behind that prove we existed.
That’s one way to interpret the work. Anyway, diving into this book gave me some respite from the scorching flames of a relentless news cycle. And maybe it can do the same for you. Or maybe you will take a completely different message from the images. That’s the beauty of art, isn’t it?
I would call these images “otherworldly,” but that isn’t really true. They are firmly of this world. Indeed, what you see in them are the marks that the world makes. They are not only images but poetry and music, too. Yes, they contain multitudes.
This idea is bolstered by the three essays included in the book, written by Susan Bright, a London-based curator and writer; David Campany, a curator, writer and director of programs at the International Center of Photography in New York; and Nicholas Muellner, associate professor of photography and co-director of the Image Text MFA at Ithaca College and the ITI Press.
All three have their own interpretations and responses to Garza-Cuen and England’s work. Here are some of the nuggets I pulled from their essays:
Bright: “The viewer must allow the works to lead them also, into a world of strangeness and beauty where things appear to be one thing and another at the same time.”
Campany: “So, when Garza-Cuen and England tell us very clearly where and with what materials they have made their photograms, there is nothing clear we can conclude from this. It may be that the relation of their work to Rauschenberg is similar to the relation between photography and the photogram more generally. True but tenuous.”
Muellner doesn’t even explicitly talk about Garza-Cuen and England’s work at all. He mostly ruminates on Rauschenberg and thinks about how he experienced his work as mostly about surface. But that seems to be the connection — the photograms in “Past Paper // Present Marks” are, as photographic works, surface. The relation between the two becomes more apparent, if implicit, in a quote like this from Muellner’s essay:
“One does not need the depths below, if everything about one’s experience radiates across the surface of a floating life. … If you insist on the surface long enough, it still amounts to a life.”
The essays show how the work can be interpreted in different ways, whether academic, contextual or personal. But this is true of most artistic work, and it’s one of the things that makes encountering works of art, like the ones in this book, a very rich experience.
You can read more about the book and purchase it on the publisher’s website, here. | 2022-07-13T10:29:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photograms made in Robert Rauschenberg's swimming pool - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/07/13/these-photograms-made-robert-rauschenbergs-pool-contain-multitudes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/07/13/these-photograms-made-robert-rauschenbergs-pool-contain-multitudes/ |
If Democrats listen to AOC, they’re going to lose seats
Here’s why controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress means losing control in the next election
Analysis by David Brady
Bruce Cain
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) attends a House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 26, 2019. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
According to most forecasts, the Democrats probably will lose control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. That would be consistent with the pattern for nearly 30 years: When one party controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, voters divided it up again in the 1994, 2006, 2010 and 2018 midterm elections.
Given that looming possible midterm loss, progressive and centrist Democratic politicians are once again arguing over electoral strategy. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), for instance, asserted recently that the real reason for the Democrats’ dismal midterm prospects is that they’ve failed to pass bold legislation like the Build Back Better spending package.
But our research suggests the opposite. A strongly progressive strategy would more likely alienate moderate voters and jeopardize Democrats’ ability to sustain a united government.
Lessons from the 2010 midterm elections
Consider evidence from the midterms in 2010, for example. In March that year, a Democratic Congress had passed President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which Republicans attacked as a risky departure from the existing system of private health care. In the figure below, you can see the Obama 2008 vote in the districts of Democratic incumbents by different levels (45 percent and below, 46-50 percent, 51-55 percent, 56-60 percent, above 60 percent) along with the percentage of House Democrats who won despite voting for the ACA at each level.
The higher the prior level of support, the more likely the Democratic incumbent won, despite voting for the ACA.
Centrist voters determine elections
That’s because moderate and conservative Democrats and true independents (meaning independents who say they don’t lean toward one party or the other) defect after a bold progressive move. To determine this, we looked at the YouGov/Economist survey data from the week before the elections of 2010, 2014 and 2018. Here we looked at who liberal, moderate and conservative Democratic voters said they intended to vote for during a period of unified Democratic government (2010); divided government with a Democratic president (2014); and unified Republican control (2018).
The Economist YouGov poll is done weekly and is a national sample of 1,500 adult citizens surveyed via the internet. The polls are weighted by age, gender, race, education and previous presidential vote. The data show that moderate and conservative Democratic voters turned against the party in 2010 after it passed the ACA, as you can see in the figure below.
Democrats are losing White women. Will the end of Roe bring them back?
However, by 2014, some of the moderate and conservative Democrats of 2010 began to return as they witnessed Republican control of the House and Senate. And the unified Republican government under Donald Trump brought back even more moderate and conservative Democrats by 2018.
Moderate House members pay the electoral price
Why, then, are some progressives more willing to risk losing power by dragging their party to left of the median voter?
One answer is they are far less likely to suffer at the ballot box. The figure below compares the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores of winning and losing candidates from 2000 to 2020. ADA scores members of Congress on the basis of how they voted on 20 or so roll call votes. A perfect score of 100 indicates a liberal voting record. (You’ll see that the figure doesn’t include 2006 or 2018 because no Democratic incumbents lost to Republicans in those years.)
In the nine elections in which incumbent Democrats lost to Republicans, the average ADA score for defeated Democratic incumbents was in all instances lower than the average House Democratic ADA score. In other words, Democrats who lost general elections were not as progressive as the average Democratic member of the House.
To put it another way, progressive incumbents don’t have to worry about losing general elections — because they typically represent safe seats in which the only plausible threat to a very liberal Democrat comes from someone even further to the left.
When Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress, moderates’ seats are at risk
When Democrats take control of Congress, the party promotes policies that are further left — even though the party has taken control by adding new Democratic members who flipped Republican seats, meaning that they tend to be more moderate. At the same time, losing the flipped seat shifts the Republican Party to the right, making it even harder to win their votes for Democratic legislation — and leaving Democrats solely responsible for those policies.
Expecting midterm defeat can create a “grab and go” mentality on the left: Grab the policies that they can get and accept loss of power as the price. Centrist Democratic members are in a difficult position: Defy the progressives and face a primary challenge, or go along to get along and face a difficult reelection fight in November.
The more that progressives believe that losing government control is inevitable or out of their hands because of circumstances such as inflation, the more rational it is for them to try to take what they can get in the short run. They can count on the fact that divided government will eventually place Republican dysfunction back in the spotlight, enabling Democrats to unite again around what they oppose instead of what they agree on, get back into power, and replay the grab-and-go cycle.
Congress is polarized. Fear of being ‘primaried’ is one reason.
Centrist voters and the 2022 election
Where does this leave centrist voters and candidates?
Since incumbents will be tied to the most left-leaning proposals regardless of whether they supported them, united Democratic control looks like a bad deal to them. Unsurprisingly, many prefer divided government. In the figure below, a more recent YouGov survey reveals liberal, moderate and conservative Democratic voters’ preference for control of the House in 2022. Only 69 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats, who make up 40 percent of party ranks, want the House of Representatives to be controlled by the Democrats; almost 90 percent of liberal Democrats do.
Unified government control is a bad deal for moderates, as they are seeing more and more over time. Following progressive electoral logic risks leading to Republican unified control — which would enable them to enact policies that move in the opposite direction from where all factions of the Democratic Party want to end up.
David Brady is an emeritus professor of political science at Stanford University.
Bruce Cain is a professor of political science at Stanford University. | 2022-07-13T10:29:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Should Democrats push more progressive policies? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/moderates-progressives-congress-swing-districts-majority-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/moderates-progressives-congress-swing-districts-majority-democrats/ |
The California governor has an audience as Republicans roll back rights and protections on the watch of Democrats in Washington
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) holds a bill he signed that shields abortion providers and volunteers in the state from civil judgments from out-of-state courts during a news conference in Sacramento on June 24. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
SACRAMENTO — Barely a month into his first term as mayor nearly two decades ago, Gavin Newsom took a polarizing stand: He told a clerk to defy state law and start issuing the nation’s first same-sex marriage licenses.
The 2004 episode, supporters and advisers said, helped establish the political strategy of the now-governor of California, who has plunged himself into the center of the nation’s raging fights over abortion, guns and LGBTQ rights — sometimes dividing and criticizing fellow Democrats. “Where the hell’s my party?” he asked this year.
But unlike the relatively lonely crusade he waged 18 years ago, Newsom (D) has found an audience in many Democrats who have grown dismayed at the Biden administration and party leadership in Congress after Republicans rolled back long-cherished protections on their watch. His combativeness, including a direct confrontation of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), and policy countermeasures, such as using Republican antiabortion tactics to tighten state gun laws, have stoked speculation about a possible run for president as soon as 2024.
“He’s giving a signal to others in the Democratic Party that this is not, you know, a time to be — ” Boxer said in an interview.
She paused, struggling to find the right words. “This is the time,” she continued. “It isn’t the time to be sweet and nice.”
Newsom’s aides did not make him available for an interview. The governor is in Washington this week to meet with Biden administration officials and members of Congress on issues he has sought action on — abortion rights, climate change and guns — and will also speak Wednesday as he accepts an interstate education group’s award on behalf of California, according to Newsom’s office.
“Nooooo!” groaned Samantha Sears, 33, when asked at an abortion rights protest here this month if Biden should run for reelection. She said she liked Newsom — “I have said in our house that he would be a great president” — but echoed others who don’t see a heterosexual White male as the best face for a diverse party. “He’s a cis, White, hetero man,” she said, a “My Body My Choice” sign under her arm.
Before his Florida ad aired, Newsom emphasized his support for Biden in an interview with CNN. “We need to unify the Democratic Party and not destroy ourselves from within,” he said. “We need to have our president’s back. But we also have to get on the field. He needs troops.”
Biden has moved more incrementally than many in his party have said they would like in the wake of Roe being overturned, embracing a change to Senate rules to enable Democrats to codify abortion rights only after pressure in the party built up. Democrats have also been frustrated with Republican moves to tighten voting laws in key states and target LGBTQ rights, wishing they could see a more forceful response from the Democrats who control Congress and the White House.
Biden “was nominated on the promise that he would try to draw the country together after the horrible divisiveness of Trump, and so he is never going to be the culture warrior leader that some people were hungry for,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank. He praised Biden’s approach, but added, “If we presume that the Republicans will nominate Trump or somebody just like him — and I would put DeSantis in that category — whoever we nominate, whether it’s the president or somebody else, is going to have to be ready to fight.”
DeSantis’s gubernatorial campaign declined to comment.
Newsom’s posture has rankled other Democrats. Asked in May about Newsom’s “Where the hell’s my party?” comment on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said: “I have no idea why anybody would make that statement unless they were unaware of the fight that has been going on.”
Newsom also clashed with fellow Democrats after rising from mayor to lieutenant governor in 2011. That year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Newsom criticized state government and drew some boos for saying former president Barack Obama should have done more to achieve his agenda while his party controlled Congress.
“He might win the presidency just energizing the heck out of the base,” said Evan Bayh, a centrist Democrat and former governor and senator from Indiana, speaking of Newsom. But Bayh said Democrats’ priority right now should be winning Senate seats — not “critiquing the president’s performance or setting the stage for the next presidential nominating process.”
Biden, 79, has said he plans to run for reelection, but some in the party hope he might change his mind. One liberal website that launched this week says, “With so much at stake, making him the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake.”
In such a scenario, many Democrats expect a potentially crowded primary with governors, members of Congress and Cabinet secretaries possibly making White House bids.
Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle this year that he has “subzero interest” in running for president. “It’s not even on my radar,” he said. Harris — who made her career alongside him in California — should be next in line, Newsom said. (Some of his current advisers have worked on Harris’s campaigns.)
But skeptics point to Newsom’s recent actions — including his debut on Truth Social, former president Donald Trump’s social media platform, where his first post discussed a “red state murder problem.”
The White House and a spokesperson for Harris did not respond to requests for comment. Asked this month about Biden’s efforts on guns and abortion compared with other Democrats including Newsom, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “The president been also very loud and also very focused on those two issues.” She pointed to the Biden’s leadership in the recent gun-control legislation he signed into law and added, “He welcomes other voices in the Democratic Party.”
Bakari Sellers, a surrogate for Harris when she ran for president, praised Newsom as “arguably one of our better messengers” — but said he has “a very difficult needle to thread” and “doesn’t need to be campaigning for president of the United States.”
With Democratic supermajorities in the state legislature and the ability to shape the world’s fifth-largest economy, Newsom has more leeway than many Democratic leaders in other states and Washington to champion liberal policies and produce results, at a moment when many Democrats have grown frustrated with the slow-moving agenda in the nation’s capital. Late last week, Newsom announced that California would produce its own insulin to sell “close to at-cost” as the fate of a federal bill to cap prices remains unclear.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion, state leaders moved to shield patients and providers in California from out-of-state liability. And last month, when the court curbed the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, Newsom touted the California budget’s funding to fight climate change and said blue states have to “double down, quadruple down.”
Newsom has made himself particular foil to DeSantis, who is also seen as a potential presidential candidate. DeSantis has championed “freedom” from some coronavirus restrictions and has moved to curb classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity.
“They’re banning books! This is 2022,” Newsom said during the May news conference where he urged a more forceful Democratic response. “Anyone paying attention? What the hell is going on?”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) appeals to residents of Florida to join "the fight" for freedom, which he says is under attack by Republicans in their state. (Video: Gavin Newsom)
At the abortion rights protest this month outside the California Capitol, some marchers were eager for new Democratic leaders.
Kim Coleman Berger said she would love to see Harris run in 2024. But she likes Newsom, too: “He’s the reason we’re married,” she said, standing beside her wife after the protest. The couple wore matching T-shirts with a profane message for members of the Supreme Court.
Newsom’s aggressive tone is more often adopted by leaders further to the left like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist who left the party and teaches political communications in California.
“Newsom pushes back just as hard,” Schnur said. “But from the center-left.”
The recent enthusiasm for Newsom’s style is all the more striking given his vulnerability last year, when an effort to recall him from office prompted headlines like “Why Are Democrats Freaking Out About A Race In California?” and “Newsom’s big problem in the recall election? Likability.”
Recall proponents tapped into angst over Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions and accusations of hypocrisy, after Newsom went to a lobbyist’s birthday party at an expensive restaurant, the French Laundry, despite California’s restrictions on gatherings.
Opponents in the recall and past elections have portrayed Newsom as out-of-touch with his constituents — highlighting his family connections to wealthy donors, his children’s attendance at private school amid shutdowns and his multimillionaire status as the founder of a chain of wineries, restaurants and hotels.
But Newsom defeated the recall decisively last November after casting the race as a referendum on “Trumpism” that would install a Republican in his place. He coasted to victory in this year’s Democratic primary. | 2022-07-13T10:29:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gov. Newsom taps into liberal fury over guns, abortion and sparks talk of presidential run - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/newsom-abortion-guns-2024/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/newsom-abortion-guns-2024/ |
Collin Morikawa, a year after winning the British Open, will play in the 150th event at St. Andrews. (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
“I think he’s embraced that asking questions is not a weakness,” that coach, Rick Sessinghaus, said of Morikawa. “Some people will be like, ‘If I’m asking questions, people will know [I don’t know].’ No. He’s looking at it as, ‘No, I need to do that.’”
“Yeah, I’m kind of like a silent hunter,” Morikawa said in May. “I don’t really like go and ask and just like chirp and bother these guys. I just kind of watch from afar, which sounds really creepy when I say it. But that’s what I do. Xander Schauffele has moved out to Vegas and we’ve just started playing a bunch together. … You just kind of grasp and you watch how other people do it. It doesn’t have to be Xander. It could be any guy. ...
He won two of the first eight majors he played but will remain forever anti-stagnation. He always did relish the day-to-day learning, such that Sessinghaus came home to his wife and said he found the 12-year-old Morikawa unprecedented: “Here’s a junior who shows up focused, who shows up with a smile, who shows up asking relevant questions, who loves competition, loves to compete, never makes excuses. I’m going, ‘I’ve never been around that whole package.’ I’ve been around competitive. I’ve been around [other attributes]. But not the whole package at that age, and then having supportive parents, I’m going, ‘This is different.’”
There was that time Morikawa went to a junior event in Florida and played poorly. He returned and quickly said, “ ‘Rick, I need to work on flighting my irons,’ ” Sessinghaus said. “ ‘The winds were, you know, pretty severe; I wasn’t used to that and I lost control of my ball flight, and we have to work on that.’ Again, the opposite of most juniors; they’re going to come to me and say, ‘Yeah, I shot that because it was so windy.’ And they’ll just leave it at that. So they’re going to blame wind for the score. He says: ‘I shot that score. My skills did not match what was needed. We have to go work on it, so next time I’m going to be better.’ So now he would prefer a PGA Tour event to be as windy as possible, because he has improved that skill set, because he took ownership for that. You see what I mean? So that’s the difference that makes the difference.” | 2022-07-13T10:29:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Collin Morikawa became the British Open champion with a refreshing approach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/collin-morikawa-british-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/collin-morikawa-british-open/ |
Washington will play two on Wednesday, which complicates its plan for Sunday
Manager Dave Martinez will have decisions to make before his team enters the all-star break. (Nick Wass/AP)
Before storms drenched Nationals Park on Tuesday night, the Washington Nationals had a clear rotation heading into next week’s all-star break. But after the series opener with the Seattle Mariners was postponed — forcing a spit doubleheader Wednesday — those pitching plans became less clear.
What’s known: Josiah Gray, originally scheduled to start Tuesday, will face the Mariners at 12:05 p.m. on Wednesday. Erick Fedde will follow him in the 6:05 nightcap. From there, Aníbal Sánchez is expected to make his season debut against the Atlanta Braves on Thursday, setting up Patrick Corbin and Paolo Espino for the next two contests. Sunday presents a question mark.
With two starters pitching Wednesday, none of Gray, Fedde, Sánchez, Corbin or Espino will be on full rest for the final game of the first half. One option is to recall Joan Adon for another spot appearance. Another is to activate lefty Josh Rogers, who is recovering from a shoulder injury and last pitched for Class AA Harrisburg on June 6. Or if the bullpen is even moderately rested, Washington (30-58) could tap a group of relievers for the nine innings.
The Nationals already will have to make two roster moves to activate Sánchez, who needs a spot on the active and 40-man rosters. At that point, what’s one more before the team breaks for four days?
Right after announcing Sánchez’s return Tuesday afternoon, Manager Dave Martinez picked up Sánchez’s young son in the home dugout, putting the kid on his lap. Then Martinez had the child tell his father he would make his season debut against the Braves. Truth is, Martinez had already called Sánchez with the news. But it was still a nice moment for the 38-year-old, who has been sidelined since early April with a nerve impingement in his neck.
Having returned to Washington on a minor league deal, Sánchez was expected to make the Opening Day rotation. Instead, a long recovery ended with three rehab appearances for Class AAA Rochester. In his final one, Sánchez pitched 5⅓ innings, walked three and yielded an earned run on four hits. Martinez did not share any specific limitations, only saying the team will watch Sánchez closely as the start progresses.
If he can last five or more innings, the bullpen will be in good shape heading into the weekend. Anything less, though, will further complicate the situation.
Why did Juan Soto enter the Home Run Derby again? “I mean, for me, it worked last year, right? You saw the second half that I had,” Soto said, nodding to how last year’s derby led to a spike in power. After struggling to elevate contact for the first three months of 2021, Soto smacked 18 homers and posted a 1.164 on-base-plus slugging percentage from mid-July on.
“I’m just going to try and see how it feels in there and try to enjoy the show,” the 23-year-old continued. “At the end of the day, it was really good. It was really fun. I enjoyed it a lot, and I’m going to try to do the same thing: Be around all those stars and be part of it. Even if I don’t win, I’m going to try to enjoy it as much as I can.”
Who will throw to Soto in the derby? Jorge Mejia, a former minor league instructor for the Nationals and Soto’s offseason hitting coach in the Dominican Republic. Mejia was with the organization until last offseason, when he left to join an agency and train amateurs in the Dominican. He worked with Soto when he played for Washington’s Gulf Coast League team in 2016 and 2017. And when Soto broke out in the majors in 2018, some credited Mejia with helping Soto mold his swing and approach. | 2022-07-13T10:30:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nats adjust rotation after rainout; Juan Soto explains HR Derby approach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/nats-adjust-rotation-after-rainout-juan-soto-explains-hr-derby-approach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/nats-adjust-rotation-after-rainout-juan-soto-explains-hr-derby-approach/ |
Failure to finalize a spending deal with Sen. Joe Manchin III could leave millions facing high prices — and others lacking affordable coverage altogether.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is a swing vote in his party's bid to avoid sharp health insurance cost increases for millions of Americans next year. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Roughly 13 million Americans could see their health insurance costs rise next year — and millions more may not have care at all — unless congressional Democrats can reach agreement over a critical portion of their long-stalled economic spending legislation.
The uncertainty loomed over lawmakers as they huddled again on Tuesday in pursuit of a wide-ranging deal that can balance the promises they made during the election with winning support from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the crucial swing vote in the narrowly divided chamber.
The most urgent concern involves the fate of tax credits that help low- and middle-income Americans purchase health insurance annually. Unless Congress extends these subsidies, roughly 13 million people will see their monthly premiums spike in January, according to an estimate from Kaiser Family Foundation — in some cases by hundreds of dollars per person.
Some Democrats also hope to offer new help to the roughly 2.2 million people, mostly women and people of color, who find themselves in an even tougher financial bind: They’re too poor to qualify for federal aid yet unable to enroll in Medicaid because they live in 12 states where Republican leaders have refused to expand program eligibility.
Many Senate Democrats wouldn’t discuss the confidential negotiations on Tuesday. But lawmakers exited a private party lunch insisting they are making progress despite months of delay.
“I’m fully expecting to be voting on a reconciliation bill before we leave here in August,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), adding that “continuing the subsidies” that help millions afford insurance is “very much key to it.”
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) declined to comment on the talks. Sam Runyon, a spokeswoman for Manchin, pointed to his past comments, noting the senator remains concerned about “rising inflation, a pending recession and the state of American energy security.”
For Democrats, the matter strikes at the heart of the legacy of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), now more than a decade old. Lawmakers maintain their work is unfinished in lowering the costs of coverage, reducing the price of drugs and expanding access to care in a nation where one malady can lead to financial ruin — and roughly 30 million people still do not have insurance.
On the road to winning the White House and capturing both chambers of Congress, the party’s leaders had offered a sweeping vision for further reforms. Some lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called for plans like Medicare-for-all that might have guaranteed universal coverage. But their attempts to turn their policy vision into law quickly hit serious roadblocks. Republicans immediately mobilized to block the efforts — and even some Democrats, including Manchin, grew skeptical of their colleagues’ more ambitious, costly health proposals.
“I believe we’ve got 50 votes for those prescription drug pricing provisions,” predicted Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the leader of the tax-focused Senate Finance Committee, on Tuesday.
Still unresolved, however, is the fate of the insurance subsidies. In a coronavirus relief package adopted last year, lawmakers provided more financial help to low-income Americans who purchase insurance through national or state exchanges — and they granted those benefits to middle-income Americans for the first time.
But the expanded subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year. While many Democrats hoped to make the existing aid permanent, Manchin has sought to scale that spending back. The West Virginia moderate has focused on eligibility, aiming to further limit the subsidies by income level, according to two people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to describe the deliberations. Manchin’s objection stems from a broader belief that federal benefits should be means-tested to focus only on the poorest, a more conservative approach than what is supported by others in his party, who want to ensure families in higher-cost areas receive help, too.
Any attempt to scale back the existing subsidies to meet Manchin’s concerns ultimately would raise insurance costs for some of the 13 million people currently benefiting from the program. Talks to rejigger the proposal are underway, the two people familiar with the matter said, expressing optimism they could find some solution soon.
The stark potential consequences prompted eight major health groups — such as the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and the American Medical Association — to warn about “premium shock” if Congress fails to extend enhanced financial help for ACA consumers. Officials from state insurance marketplaces, meanwhile, have begged Congress in recent weeks to act swiftly, since July is when they typically try to set their rates for the next year.
Democratic lawmakers have joined them in expressing panic, fearing the political blowback they might face in what is already a tough election year. This May, more than two dozen Democrats from swing districts called on Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to extend the subsidies and “deliver on the promises we made to our constituents to lower their health care costs and protect their care.” More than a dozen Senate Democrats delivered their own plea a month later.
The uninsured are eager for Congress to fill a coverage gap — even for a few years
Democrats first tried last year to provide premium-free health coverage for more than 2 million affected adults through the insurance exchanges through 2025. But Manchin said at the time that the federal government should not be on the hook for subsidizing some states’ benefits while others covered their own costs.
Yet Democrats have continued to press their case anyway: On Tuesday, for example, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) pointed to the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of residents in his state alone affected by the Medicaid gap. The senator, running a close reelection race that may determine control of the Senate next year, said he had made Medicaid expansion a top priority as a result.
“Imagine having Social Security or Medicare in 38 states,” Warnock said. “It’s unimaginable because it’s the law of the land.”
Some staunch proponents of closing the Medicaid gap have ramped up their advocacy efforts particularly in response to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Protect Our Care, a Democratic-aligned advocacy group, has circulated memos on Capitol Hill this week, arguing that abortion bans coupled with the lack of Medicaid expansion “impacts women of color and their families, leaving them without coverage and at risk for severe birth outcomes.”
Rep. Robin L. Kelly (D-Ill.), the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust, added in an interview that many of those affected by the Medicaid gap are women — meaning inaction could worsen maternal mortality at a moment of great uncertainty. She said Tuesday she had directly brought up the matter with Schumer, pointing out the “importance of Medicaid postpartum coverage and closing the gap.”
“There are still too many people in the richest country in the history of the world without health care or adequate health care,” Kelly said. | 2022-07-13T10:30:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats race to reach deal to prevent spike in health premiums - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/13/manchin-schumer-aca-credits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/13/manchin-schumer-aca-credits/ |
Biden, old-school backer of Israel, arrives amid turmoil in both nations
President Biden boards Air Force One for a trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia on July 12 at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. (Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP)
JERUSALEM — Joe Biden and Israel go way back. As he begins his 10th trip to the Holy Land, he can look back on visits — as a senator and vice president — spanning almost five decades and nearly a dozen prime ministers.
“I was saying to a couple of younger members of my staff, before I came over, about the many times I’ve been to Israel,” he said in December at the White House Hanukkah celebration. “I said — and then, all of a sudden, I realized, ‘God, you’re getting old, Biden.’ I have known every — every prime minister well since Golda Meir.”
It won’t be the legendary Meir, who led Israel from 1969 to 1974, hosting Biden on his first trip as president, of course, or even Benjamin Netanyahu, the longtime premier whose frenemy relationship with Biden goes back 30 years. It will be the newly minted Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the former TV news anchor who will be in his 13th day on the job when he greets the president on the tarmac.
Israel’s unsettled political scene — Lapid assumed office when the coalition government collapsed in turmoil at the end of June — means that the leaders will be navigating domestic pressures during a tightly scripted state visit, according to officials in both countries.
Lapid’s centrist party faces a November election and polls that show Netanyahu poised for a possible comeback. Biden, an old-school Democratic Israel supporter, is contending with the left wing of his own party, which has increasingly aligned itself with the Palestinians and connected the Middle East conflict to the struggle for racial justice in the United States.
Lapid, a centrist and Israel’s most moderate leader in more than a decade, is one of the few national politicians willing to endorse the possibility of an independent Palestine and the “two-state solution” that Biden has returned to the center of American policy. But the dynamics in both countries will take the most contentious issues off the table.
“Some things are just not in the cards,” said Dan Shapiro, President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Israel and now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank. “Any significant moves on the Palestinian issue are not possible during election season in Israel,” adding that the current leadership could easily be gone in a few months.
In a joint statement Wednesday ahead of the arrival, Biden and Lapid announced the creation of a “strategic high-level dialogue on technology.” The leaders said the two countries will partner to address a range of issues including climate change, pandemic preparedness and the implementation of artificial intelligence.
Biden’s trips to Israel haven’t always gone smoothly. Diplomats here still cringe at the 2010 dust-up in which the vice president nearly cut his trip short after the Israeli government announced an expansion of settlement construction soon after Air Force Two landed.
But a repeat of that sort of controversy — which Netanyahu at the time blamed on a bureaucratic mistake — is unlikely during the two days Biden is scheduled to spend in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
After Trump’s dramatic tilt toward Israel, Biden likely to restore traditional approach
For their part, many Israelis view Biden as a throwback president, a staunch supporter of Israel who is neither the right-wing booster Donald Trump was nor the ideological scold that Obama was seen to be.
Discussions between Biden and Lapid could cover very different ground than in the meetings between Netanyahu and Trump, who dramatically tilted U.S. policy toward Israel by moving the embassy to Jerusalem, approving the annexation of the Golan Heights and declaring West Bank settlements legal.
“It has to be said, this may soon look like just a blip, and we’ll have Trump and Bibi back again,” said one Israeli official familiar with government planning for the visit, using Netanyahu’s nickname, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment on internal discussions. “Both of them could be waiting in the wings.”
Biden and Netanyahu have a history going back decades. But Netanyahu infuriated the Obama White House by airing his complaints about the potential nuclear-containment agreement with Iran at a joint session of Congress. Biden, when he was declared the winner of the 2020 election, waited almost a month before calling Netanyahu, which many Israelis viewed as a snub.
Biden, as is customary, will meet with Netanyahu in his role as the official leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition. But Israeli media has reported that just 15 minutes is allocated for the session and no joint appearance is scheduled.
The president will take pains not to be seen as favoring any of Israel’s competing parties in the upcoming election, Israel’s fifth in the last three years. But Lapid’s supporters relish his chance to appear at the U.S. leader’s side just as campaigning begins.
The president will also meet with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem. He plans to visit a hospital in East Jerusalem and is expected to announce $100 million in new aid to the Palestinian health system.
But those gestures may not satisfy liberal Democrats who decry Israel’s six-decade occupation of the West Bank. When fighting broke out between Israel and Gaza in May of last year, prominent liberals admonished Israel for its military strikes and called on Biden and United States to condemn its actions more forcefully.
“We oppose our money going to fund militarized policing, occupation and systems of violent oppression and trauma,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who rose to political prominence as a Black Lives Matter activist, said in a speech on the House floor in May 2021. “Until all our children are safe, we will continue to fight for our rights in Palestine and in Ferguson.”
The dynamic has put Biden, an ardent and steadfast supporter of Israel, at odds with a growing contingent of Democrats who not only refuse to shy away from criticizing Israel, but also have called for significant policy changes in how the United States supports the country.
Beyond the most prominent critics of Israel in Congress, several politicians who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and then-South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, signaled at a 2019 event hosted by J Street, a liberal Jewish lobbying group, that they would be willing to make foreign aid to Israel contingent on the country forging more peaceful relations with Palestinians. Biden, who participated in the event, notably did not bring up the idea of conditioning aid.
Still, Israel has long enjoyed bipartisan backing in the United States, and even as the mood toward the country shifts, U.S. politicians still overwhelmingly support it. In September, for example, the House of Representatives approved $1 billion in new funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system by a vote of 420 to 9. | 2022-07-13T10:40:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden arrives in Israel to meet Lapid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/biden-israel-democrat-lapid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/biden-israel-democrat-lapid/ |
Former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton in 2020. (Jonathan Drake/Reuters)
Bolton’s comments were unusual, as U.S. officials have generally avoided the using term “coup” when speaking about U.S. foreign policy matters. The remarks went viral, with one clip on Twitter amassing more than 2 million views by early Wednesday.
Trump called impeachment a ‘coup.’ Here’s why past U.S. officials have avoided the word.
John Bolton’s turbulent tenure comes to a Trumpian end
Bolton then said he had planned foreign coups d’etat in the past, and it wasn’t what Trump did, arguing that the former president was “just stumbling around from one idea to another.”
“The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable,” Bolton later added.
Referring to Bolton’s stated résumé of planning coups, Tapper said he felt as if there’s “other stuff you’re not telling me.”
Bolton responded, “I think — I’m sure there is.” | 2022-07-13T11:07:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In interview about Jan. 6, John Bolton says he has helped plan coups - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/john-bolton-coup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/john-bolton-coup/ |
Customers drink coffee at the Starbucks at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, one of the stores unaffected by upcoming closures. (iStock)
“You’re … seeing firsthand the challenges facing our communities — personal safety, racism, lack of access to healthcare, a growing mental health crisis, rising drug use, and more,” wrote Debbie Stroud and Denise Nelson, both senior vice presidents of U.S. operations, in a letter to employees. “We know these challenges can, at times, play out within our stores too. We read every incident report you file — it’s a lot.”
Starbucks says it might close bathrooms to non-customers, for safety
It’s not unusual for Starbucks to close — and open — locations, although the reason given for shuttering such a large number appears novel for the company. According to its latest annual report, Starbucks operates 8,941 stores in the U.S. It closed 424 locations in the last fiscal year, though it opened 449 and moved 19 stores in the same time frame.
As it competes for workers, Starbucks has recently embarked on what CEO Howard Shultz described as a “significant reinvention” of the company, though it isn’t yet clear what such a revamp would look like. “We must modernize and transform the Starbucks experience in our stores and recreate an environment that is relevant, welcoming and safe,” he wrote in a letter to workers on Monday. | 2022-07-13T11:11:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Starbucks is closing 16 locations due to worker safety concerns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/13/starbucks-closures-worker-safety/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/07/13/starbucks-closures-worker-safety/ |
A body is taken from the scene of a mass shooting at a July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Ill. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/AP)
When Chicago Sun-Times editor Jennifer Kho saw the photos last week, her first thought was, “Oh, my God, we can’t run these.” They showed carnage and chaos: Victims of the July Fourth parade shooting in Highland Park, Ill., lay sprawled on sidewalks and streets, blood pouring from jagged wounds caused by a man armed with a high-powered rifle.
The images left Kho facing an old newsroom dilemma: Should they be published?
On one hand, the photos — taken by veteran reporter Lynn Sweet, who happened to be at the parade during the attack — were clearly newsworthy: graphic evidence of a mass shooting in the Sun-Times’ backyard. But Kho also knew publishing them could upset victims’ families or offend readers who aren’t used to seeing gruesome images in a mainstream publication, or be seen as exploitation.
The Sun-Times ultimately published just one of Sweet’s photos on its website; it shows a victim covered by a blanket, except for one hand, with blood flowing from the body down the steps of a plaza. The newspaper waited until the victims’ families had been informed of their deaths and placed the photo behind a screen that warned viewers before they clicked through: “This image is graphic and disturbing. … Please consider the potential for trauma and exercise caution and self-care in deciding whether to view it.” Kho decided to withhold the photo from the print newspaper so readers wouldn’t stumble across it.
“I felt like [the photo] told the story in a way that was hard to capture in other ways,” she told The Washington Post. “I’m never going to forget that picture. I wondered if it would make people see the reality of what happened.”
Even with its caveats and cautions, the Sun-Times’ decision to publish the photo was unusual. Graphic images of violent-crime victims are rarely published or aired by mainstream news outlets in the United States; few will show blood or a victim’s face. But amid an epidemic of mass shootings, some journalists argue that traditional notions of restraint amount to an evasion of journalists’ responsibility to depict reality.
“We cannot sanitize these killings,” tweeted Nancy Barnes, NPR’s senior vice president for news, after 19 children and two adults were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., in May. “That in and of itself is an editorial decision.”
“Show the bodies,” journalism dean David Boardman and interim medical-school dean Amy Goldberg of Temple University urged in a Philadelphia Inquirer column last month. “Put on display — in newspapers, on television, across the internet — a photograph or three that can, finally, help the American public understand exactly what happens when a weapon designed for modern warfare is unleashed on innocent, unarmed people. Like a 10-year-old at school.”
Even in an age of ubiquitous cellphone cameras, photos such as Sweet’s aren’t typically available to the press after a mass shooting. News photographers often don’t arrive until after police have locked down the scene of the attack. Security cameras and police crime-scene photos provide a record of the gory aftermath, but authorities often withhold this imagery from the public for long periods, reducing its news value.
Even when journalists do obtain images from mass shootings, they tend to withhold the most disturbing details. After an attacker killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas in 2017 — the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history — the Las Vegas Review-Journal mainly highlighted images of grieving survivors and police, not blood and bodies. And when the Austin American-Statesman’s website published surveillance footage this week from the Uvalde, Tex., massacre, an on-screen note advised that “the sound of children screaming has been removed.”
“As a general practice, we avoid publishing graphically violent images,” said Leroy Chapman Jr., managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We do that out of respect to the victims of violence and out of respect to our readers.” In rare cases when the newspaper breaks from that tradition, it warns readers in big, bold text before they scroll across something graphic.
Day-to-day decisions about which photos to publish “are a moving target,” said David Ake, director of photography for the Associated Press, one of the world’s largest distributors of news photos. “One day, we might [distribute] something that we wouldn’t on another day. There are no super hard and fast rules.”
News organizations have wrestled with questions about publishing violent images as far back as the Civil War, when photos of the dead at the Battle of Antietam both shocked and fascinated the public. But the modern media also knows the power of a horrific image.
Jet magazine’s photos of the mutilated body of a Black 14-year-old, Emmett Till, helped energize the civil rights movement in the 1950s. (Till’s mother explicitly solicited the photos.) Photos of death and trauma galvanized public opposition to the Vietnam War. Photos of a dead Syrian child on a beach in Greece and of a girl who died trying to cross the Rio Grande with her father brought international attention to the plight of migrants. Video of the murder of George Floyd led to worldwide protests against police violence, and widely published images of Russian atrocities in Ukraine elicited worldwide condemnation.
How journalists decide which images from Ukraine are too awful to publish
News editors should avoid creating “a sadistic image culture” that desensitizes readers and viewers, exploits victims and re-traumatizes survivors, said Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a think tank specializing in media coverage of conflict and tragedy. Often, other kinds of reporting can be more effective, he said. He suggested journalists ask themselves, “Is blood the only way to jolt the public conscience?”
In fact, it’s impossible for any journalist to know what impact a disturbing image will have on the public. Would showing the devastating effects of an assault weapon on a fourth-grader’s body alter the debate about gun ownership or merely repel people? Could publishing such photos even inspire new attacks?
The decisions often depend on the nature of the victims. Many U.S. news outlets ran photos of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s public assassination over the weekend. But most crime victims aren’t public figures; they’re almost always individuals known only to a small circle of people, raising significant privacy expectations for a news organization. Alarmed by the possibility that photos of the Sandy Hook murders in 2012 would be published over the wishes of victims’ family members, the state of Connecticut passed a law sealing all official photos and documents of homicide victims.
The reaction among Sun-Times readers to Sweet’s photo last week was generally muted, according to Kho. A few criticized the paper for an “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality, she said. But others were more favorable. One wrote, “ ‘Thanks for being courageous’ ” in showing the reality of what happened, Kho said.
The Sun-Times wasn’t the only news outlet to publish a graphic image from the July 4 shooting, which left seven dead and more than 30 people wounded. The journalist Irv Leavitt published a photo in his Substack column last week showing an older man on the ground, felled by a massive head wound, as first responders worked frantically around him.
“I believe that publishing this photo may be a sin,” Leavitt wrote. “But the greater sin is the crime it depicts. And standing by as that crime is replicated, that’s a sin, too.” | 2022-07-13T11:11:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Show the bodies’: Mass shootings spark media debate on gory photos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/13/media-july-4-massacre-photo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/13/media-july-4-massacre-photo/ |
For many Americans, higher mortgage rates make this a terrible time to buy a house.
A “For Sale” sign in Crockett, California, U.S., on Tuesday, June 14, 2022. The number of home sellers lowering prices has reached the highest level since October 2019, the latest sign that the housing market is slowing from its once-frenzied pandemic pace. (Bloomberg/Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomber)
Renting is too often — and incorrectly — viewed as just throwing good money away. The sooner you buy a home, the sooner you can become rich with home equity, is the money mantra you keep hearing.
Some folks, in part because of rising interest rates, are realizing now is not the right time to buy. In June, close to 15 percent of home-purchase agreements fell through as buyers backed out of their contracts, according to an analysis by Redfin.
Don’t forget one of the important lessons of the Great Recession, which is that home values can come crashing down. People who purchased at the height of the housing boom had to learn the hard way that homes don’t always appreciate. If you buy too high, you may not be able to sell your home and make a profit.
Don’t overestimate the tax advantage of homeownership. Often, home buyers point to a mortgage deduction as a big reason to buy a home. Yet many homeowners with mortgages don’t receive the tax break because they don’t itemize their federal tax returns.
What the Fed’s interest rate hike means for mortgages
Lenders consider your credit score in determining the interest rate and payment terms on a mortgage loan. The higher your score, the better deal you may get. Even a few points’ difference can push you into a pricing tier that can increase the cost of your loan.
“A higher credit score helps ensure that you’ll qualify for the most affordable mortgage loan,” said Bruce McClary, senior vice president of membership and communications at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. “Rising mortgage interest rates make it even more important to review your credit report and address any items that might negatively influence your score.”
“Because mortgages represent large loans that last for a long time, improving your credit score could save you a ton of money,” points out Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com and CreditCards.com. “It’s especially important to do whatever you can to improve your score before applying for a big-ticket item such as a mortgage.”
7 ways to lower your credit card debt after the Fed rate hike
Based on my own experience with various home warranty policies, having one doesn’t guarantee you will get your appliance repaired or replaced in a timely manner. For each visit to fix something that was broken, I had to pay a service fee ranging from $100 to $125, which is on top of the monthly or annual fee for the policy.
Is a home warranty a waste or a smart buy?
“Warranty companies are the subject of thousands of complaints and negative reviews at consumer agencies and groups such as the Better Business Bureau,” according to a review by Washington Consumers’ Checkbook and Checkbook.org. “Even the most comprehensive plans include long lists of fine-print exclusions.”
High monthly mortgage payments won’t leave much in your budget
When qualifying for a mortgage, lenders allow for some debt. But the lending process doesn’t account for the money you need to have in your budget to save for retirement or college savings for your child or children. | 2022-07-13T11:59:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Now may not be a good time to buy a home. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/five-reasons-to-wait-to-buy-a-home/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/five-reasons-to-wait-to-buy-a-home/ |
Earlier this year, strategists and investors came out in droves to embrace commodities to weather surging inflation. This looked like a brilliant move at first as oil, metals and grains all rallied, but investors who held on to those positions are seeing their winnings largely eviscerated by a brutal snapback. In reality, most individual investors had no business investing in commodities in the first place.
Commodities can make for great trades, but they are often lousy investments. Unless you happen to own your own warehouse, you assume a cost to store them, which means it’s hard to make any money holding them for the long term. If investors get in at a peak chasing fad portfolio construction techniques, the returns can be much worse.
The Bloomberg Commodities Index is a good illustration. On a spot basis, it is up 351% in the past two decades, a respectable 7.8% compound annual growth rate that’s just slightly behind the S&P 500 Index’s 9.3%. But that’s not what investors earn when they invest through financial instruments because it doesn’t account for the cost of rolling such futures contracts. Among other things, there’s a sizable cost associated with storing barrels of crude oil, tanks of natural gas and bushels of wheat. In part because of these additional costs, the total return version of the same index — based on financial instruments that track the commodities — is up only 50% in the same period (a meager 2% compound annual growth rate).
Perhaps as important, it’s now down 14% from April, when trendy allocations to commodities took off to chase the surge in energy and wheat prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A Bank of America Corp. fund manager survey for April showed investors were the most net overweight ever for commodities that month. Even after outflows in the past month, the Invesco Optimum Yield Diversified Commodity Strategy ETF remains a top 50 exchange-traded fund in the US by 2022 inflows.
Modern investors tend to fall back on the idea that diversification goes hand in hand with responsible investing, and there’s a tendency to assume that it is good to own as many asset classes as possible. That really depends on an investor’s time horizon, though, and it may be a fool’s errand for working-age people with decades to invest if the portfolio diversifiers curb returns. To borrow a phrase from Universa Investments founder Mark Spitznagel, the diversification cure embedded in many modern risk-mitigation techniques is worse than the disease. I’d argue that logic extends to commodities.
Consider how the various asset classes have performed over long periods: The S&P 500 is up 493% in the past 20 years, while Treasuries earned 87% compared with the 50% for commodities. If you had the time and the stomach for the volatility, it paid to simply own stocks. In other words, good-intentioned risk management may indeed smooth out single-year returns, but the same strategies can be such a drag on the long-term performance that they may not be worth it.
It’s not surprising that the market found itself grasping at straws earlier this year and ended up landing on commodities. The economy, of course, is going through a period unlike any other since the inflationary 1970s, and the tricks that seemed to work in the recent past clearly lost their magic.
Oil, wheat and bars of gold made as much sense as anything else if the economy were truly barreling toward an era of stagflation, but that doesn’t seem to be the base case at this stage. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said he’s committed to raising interest rates until inflation cracks, and global growth is diminishing rapidly, meaning the industrial metals juggernauts of earlier this year are collapsing just as fast as they went up. The slowdown in China, which drove the last commodity supercycle, is part of the reason.
Clearly, the economy is in a strange place with a multitude of confusing crosscurrents. A strong job market continues to belie other signs of strain and — who knows? — maybe oil, copper and other commodities could take another run at their highs. Those commodities allocations investors built up earlier this year could yet pay big. But even if they do, they will go down as a well-timed trade, not a reliable strategy. Odds are commodities will never be a sound long-term investment.
• Got Recession Anxiety? Think Like a Freelancer: Erin Lowry
• Now What? Tips for Retiring Into a Recession: Teresa Ghilarducci | 2022-07-13T11:59:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commodities Never Belonged in Your Portfolio - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/commodities-never-belonged-in-your-portfolio/2022/07/13/f5581a84-029f-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/commodities-never-belonged-in-your-portfolio/2022/07/13/f5581a84-029f-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Analysis by Kevin Muir | Bloomberg
As the Covid-19 stimulus and supply problems raised inflation rates to levels not seen in decades, Wall Street pressured the Fed to aggressively tighten monetary conditions. There was even talk of Paul Volcker-like rate hikes. With unemployment near the lowest level of the past 50 years, some traditional measures like the Taylor Rule indicate the target federal funds rate should be anywhere from 7.5% to 10% higher, instead of the current range of 1.50% to 1.75%. Financial markets cheered when the Fed changed its messaging from “inflation is transitory” to “we will not allow a transition from a low-inflation into a high-inflation environment.”
Contrary to his predecessor, President Joe Biden has no objection to higher interest rates and has expressed his confidence in the Fed’s ability to get inflation under control. However, there are second-order effects to higher rates to consider. When Volcker boosted rates to 20% in the early 1980s, the US had debt equal to just 31% of gross domestic product. Today it stands at 125%.
Though the federal government does not borrow exclusively at the front-end of the yield curve, over time, the cost of US debt is highly correlated to Fed policy. Currently, higher rates are desirable as inflation is deemed the biggest concern, but it might not be the case by the end of the year. According to the latest report from FiscalData.Treasury.Gov, the government is paying the following on its various forms of debt:
To understand what the Fed’s new policy might mean for the government’s fiscal situation, consider Treasury bills. Given that the Fed is in the middle of its rate hiking campaign, it’s more instructive to look at where bill rates will be at the end of the year as opposed to the current rate. Using the six-month forward six-month bill rate as a general approximation of the government’s bill financing rate for the start of next year, it has risen from 0.5% at the beginning of 2022 to 3.18% at present, marking a rise of 182 basis points. The cost of funding that portion of the government debt has increased by $64 billion.
A look at Treasury notes, which are federal debt securities with a tenor between two and 10 years, and arbitrarily choosing a five-year note as an approximation of the average duration of outstanding federal notes, shows the rate has risen from 1.43% at the end of 2022 to 3.19%. As maturing notes are rolled at the new higher rate, borrowing costs for this category will increase by $239 billion if nothing changes. Add in some bonds, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, floating-rate notes and inter-governmental holdings, and the Fed’s rate increases could have a serious detrimental effect on the nation’s balance sheet.
Back in the early 1980s when Volcker raised rates aggressively and total debt to GDP was 31%, the cost of that debt was 9%. But even though he almost doubled that rate to 16.5%, the total cost in actual dollars was just 2.3% of GDP. The thing to consider today is that the average maturity of all outstanding federal debt is about six years. Using a simple average of five and seven-year US Treasuries to approximate a six-year note, the cost of debt has risen by a much smaller amount, from 1.35% at the end of 2021 to 3.14%. However, with an elevated debt-to-GDP level of 125%, this much less substantive rise in has already cost 2.23% of GDP.
Although the Treasury market yield curve is signaling that the Fed will raise rates aggressively enough to slow the economy and inflation, it’s possible that the economy could prove resilient. In that case, an increase in the federal funds rate to 3.5% would not slow inflation meaningfully and a larger rate increase, like to 6% or 7%, might be required. Under that scenario, the cost of raising rates would be 6.25% of GDP, or $1.5 trillion.
There is currently little pushback to the Fed’s tightening campaign, but that will likely change in coming months as the cost of higher rates becomes clearer. Volcker is remembered with fond admiration for winning the battle over high inflation, but his policies were not always popular. During his tenure, farmers blockaded the main office of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington with their tractors in protest.Today, there is less fiscal space to accommodate higher interest rates and it will probably take a much smaller increase in rates to spark a similar public reaction. Under the right circumstances, the Fed could face significant pressure to not raise rates as much as needed. When the increase in the cost of funding the government’s debt results in the federal government being forced to cut back on spending, there will be a much different attitude about the Fed’s policies. So far, everyone has welcomed higher rates, but that could soon change.
• U.S. Debt Is Massive, Expanding and Under Control: Gary Shilling
• Biden Should Know That US Doesn’t Need More Stimulus: Karl Smith
Kevin Muir is a former institutional equity derivative trader who now writes the MacroTourist newsletter. | 2022-07-13T11:59:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Cost of Taming Inflation Will Be Exorbitant - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-cost-of-taming-inflation-will-beexorbitant/2022/07/13/c676b238-029b-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-cost-of-taming-inflation-will-beexorbitant/2022/07/13/c676b238-029b-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Mary McLeod Bethune in 1949. (Library of Congress)
A statue of Mary McLeod Bethune will be unveiled Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol, making her the first Black American in the National Statuary Hall collection.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will host an unveiling ceremony Wednesday morning, with many other lawmakers expected to attend.
Since 1864, each state has been able to send two statues of distinguished citizens to represent it in the U.S. Capitol, constituting the National Statuary Hall collection. Since 2000, states have been able to remove and replace existing statues with new ones. A handful of states have done so, but none of those new additions have depicted Black Americans.
Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights pioneer, advised presidents on ‘the problems of my people’
The Bethune statue will be joined by others in the next few years. Virginia removed its statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in 2020 and plans to replace it with one of civil rights leader Barbara Johns. In 2019, Arkansas decided to replace both its statues — of white supremacist James Paul Clarke and Confederate sympathizer Uriah Milton Rose — with depictions of civil rights activist Daisy Bates and musician Johnny Cash, though both of the old statues remain in the Capitol.
Including Rose’s, nine statues depicting Confederates remain in the Capitol: Joseph Wheeler representing Alabama, Alexander Stephens representing Georgia, Edward Douglass White representing Louisiana, Jefferson Davis and James Z. George representing Mississippi, Zebulon B. Vance representing North Carolina, Wade Hampton III representing South Carolina and John E. Kenna representing West Virginia.
Although the Bethune statue will be the first of a Black American in the Statuary Hall collection, it is not the first statue of a Black American in the Capitol building. There are also statues of Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks, and busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sojourner Truth. The latter three were commissioned by Congress and don’t represent any single state. The Douglass statue was a gift from D.C.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) is currently trying to get Congress to commission a statue of abolitionist and Union spy Harriet Tubman. A 2011 Maryland effort to replace one of its Capitol statues with Tubman failed in the state legislature.
Bethune was born in a cabin in South Carolina in 1875, the daughter of two formerly enslaved people. She had 16 siblings and was the only one able to attend a mission school, the only school available to Black students there at the time. She then went to seminary in North Carolina. Bethune taught in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida before starting her own boarding school in 1904. In 1936, she began serving as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration.
She also served in his unofficial “Black Cabinet” and was a close friend of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a civil rights activist and helped start the United Negro College Fund before her death in 1955.
More on civil rights history
A 1963 Klan bombing killed her sister and blinded her. Now she wants restitution.
An educational haven for Black children during segregation makes endangered places list | 2022-07-13T11:59:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitol gets Mary McLeod Bethune statue, first African American - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/13/mary-mcleod-bethune-statue-capitol/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/13/mary-mcleod-bethune-statue-capitol/ |
Eagles lyrics notes were stolen years ago. Now three men face charges.
The cache of handwritten manuscripts worth more than $1 million included the lyrics to ‘Hotel California’
Glenn Horowitz, center, alongside Craig Inciardi, right, appear in criminal court after being indicted on charges of conspiracy involving handwritten notes for the Eagles' album “Hotel California,” on July 12 in New York. (John Minchillo/AP)
Now it’s the Eagles vs. Hotel California in a federal court
The song’s creation process was documented by Henley in pages that vanished after a writer who was working on a book about the band got ahold of them. The writer — who was not identified in the indictment — then sold the items in 2005 to Horowitz, who in turn sold them to the two other men, according to court documents.
Don Henley says the Eagles are done. It was always Glenn Frey’s band. | 2022-07-13T11:59:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Three charged in conspiracy to sell stolen papers with Eagles lyrics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/eagles-lyrics-stolen-hotel-california/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/eagles-lyrics-stolen-hotel-california/ |
The Abe assassination reminds us that individuals make history
People gather at Zojoji Temple in Tokyo ahead of the funeral of assassinated former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe on July 12. (KIM KYUNG-HOON/REUTERS)
The assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe on July 8 shocked his country and the world. Beyond its obvious repugnance in moral terms, Abe’s murder challenges us to consider what implications his sudden loss might have for the political future, in Japan and globally.
As such, it tests competing views of history and what does, or does not, determine the course of public events.
According to a widely held perspective, the removal of even a major figure such as Abe, who was the longest-serving head of government in postwar Japan and still influential despite resigning due to ill health in late 2020, lacks ultimate consequence. What determined the past, and will determine the future, are broad, impersonal, social forces — religion, ideology, demography, economic development.
Yet a contrary intuition — that individual leadership matters — persists. Assassinations perversely tend to confirm it. By plucking leaders violently from atop society, these killings divide history between one period when life was unimaginable without these prominent personages and another, full of what-ifs, defined by their absence.
Surely the power to make such an impact is part of what tempts assassins. And we must admit the painful extent to which they do, in fact, shape our world, albeit through subtraction: We are experiencing history minus Abraham Lincoln, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Huey Long, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. and Robert F. Kennedy, Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat.
Tobias Harris: Shinzo Abe was the most polarizing Japanese political figure of his time
For that matter, we live in a world shaped by assassinations that failed, perhaps the most fateful of which was the attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life by coup-minded officers and diplomats 78 years ago this July 20.
Postwar Japan, a restored but aging economic power facing the rise of its ancient rival — China — might have tried to jump-start its productive capability and reassert itself in global affairs, including militarily, no matter who served as prime minister between 2012 and 2020.
Even within the constraints of a culture that prizes consensus and collective action, however, Abe pursued those objectives in his own particular way, casting Japanese reassertion as both a legitimate national interest and a contribution to the democratic world’s security. He won over Japanese voters and U.S. presidents as different as Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Japan’s surviving political leadership now seems motivated to build a monument to Abe in the form of amendments, long sought by him, that will change the country’s pacifist postwar constitution clearly to authorize military self-defense.
Though the contexts are totally different, the process could resemble President Lyndon B. Johnson’s pursuit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a tribute to his slain predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Another precedent: Congress passed civil service reform in 1883, in response to the assassination two years earlier of President James Garfield by Charles Guiteau, a frustrated federal job seeker.
These examples only illustrate that assassination can have paradoxical side-effects — they do not redeem it. Political murder is inherently destabilizing to any political system and especially antithetical to democracy. Nothing could be more contrary to popular rule than the violent decapitation of a government, party or social movement by one self-appointed executioner.
This is why the United States is wise to invest in Secret Service protection and other measures to keep public officials safe. The impact of a major assassination on the already feverishly divided U.S. body politic today would be too awful to consider. Alas, it is also all too imaginable, as shown by the recent arrest of an armed man who, according to law enforcement, had second thoughts about killing Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and surrendered to police outside the justice’s house.
If we are honest about it, the need to field a small army of official bodyguards constitutes a deeply troubling, though tacit, admission of insufficient domestic tranquility in the United States.
Happier and, in an important sense, more democratic, is the country where weapons possession is appropriately limited, the public’s attitudes are temperate — and politicians, judges and candidates feel free to walk the streets with minimal or no security.
The United States came closer to that ideal before Nov. 22, 1963, than it has since. Sweden lost a great deal of innocence in 1986, when a gunman killed former prime minister Olof Palme as he left a movie theater with his family, having previously given his security detail the night off.
As of July 8, Japan, too, was the kind of place where public officials often felt safe mingling with the voters they proposed to represent.
Now it faces the grim task of striking a new, sustainable balance, bearing in mind always that, in a democracy, no individual has the right to change history through violence — and all individuals must feel safe to try to change it peacefully. | 2022-07-13T12:00:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Abe assassination reminds us that individuals make history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/shinzo-abe-assassination-shapes-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/shinzo-abe-assassination-shapes-history/ |
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean prosecutors raided the country’s main spy agency Wednesday as part of investigations into two past North Korea-related incidents that drew criticism that the previous liberal government ignored basic principles of human rights to improve ties with Pyongyang.
10:53 AMTake a look: Highlights of the latest Jan. 6 committee hearing | 2022-07-13T12:00:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SKorea spy agency searched amid squabbling over NKorea cases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/skorea-spy-agency-searched-amid-squabbling-over-nkorea-cases/2022/07/13/34490758-02a0-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/skorea-spy-agency-searched-amid-squabbling-over-nkorea-cases/2022/07/13/34490758-02a0-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is gearing up for another round of labor negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association. (John Minchillo/AP)
LAS VEGAS — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday that the league has entered “the very early stages” of labor negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association as both sides have the ability to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement in December.
In a wide-ranging news conference following Board of Governors meetings at the Las Vegas Summer League, Silver said that he expected issues such as trade requests, the age limit, load management and the length of the 82-game schedule to come up during the next round of talks.
The commissioner touted the NBA’s “upbeat” meetings and strong financial rebound from the pandemic — noting a record $10 billion in revenue for the 2021-22 season — and said he anticipated that the upcoming 2022-23 season would unfold on its standard schedule despite the pandemic’s lingering presence.
But Silver stressed that he wasn’t pleased by ongoing trade requests registered by prominent players such as Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant, adding that he didn’t want “the game to be a sideshow” to off-court intrigue over player movement.
“We don’t like to see players requesting trades and seeing it play out the way it is,” Silver said. “The basketball was fantastic this past season. I don’t want to be naive, but I would love the focus to be on the play on the floor. … This needs to be a two-way street. Teams provide enormous security and guarantees to players. The expectation is a return that they will meet their end of the bargain.”
Because a single trade request like Durant’s can impact his teammates and the players on rival teams who might be traded for him or even mentioned in rumors, Silver argued that the NBA and NBPA should share a “mutuality of interest” in “having more stability.”
Meanwhile, the NBA’s age limit — which has stood at 19 since 2006 — will be reassessed in the upcoming talks. Though Silver preferred increasing the age limit to 20 when he succeeded David Stern as commissioner in 2014, he said he now believes it should drop to 18 because of “societal changes” and the NCAA’s implementation of Name, Image and Likeness rules.
“I think that [lowering the age limit] will be the right thing to do,” Silver said. “I’m hopeful that that’s a change we make in this next collective bargaining cycle.”
During a meeting of the NBA’s technology partners Monday, Silver decried the strategic resting of players and questioned whether it produced real health benefits. Singling out San Antonio Spurs executive R.C. Buford for popularizing the practice, which has become known as load management, Silver argued that that was “nothing more frustrating for our fans.”
Yet the Board of Governors voted Tuesday to permanently incorporate the play-in tournament into the league’s postseason schedule. Adopted in 2020 and expanded in 2021, the play-in tournament features eight teams competing for the final four spots in the 16-team postseason field. The league is weighing a possible midseason tournament as well, further adding to the burden placed on players.
“I’m not looking to shorten the season, but it’s a conversation we should all have,” Silver acknowledged Tuesday. “What’s optimal in terms of number of games on a player’s body? Let’s be realistic about that.”
The commissioner added that the next labor talks could produce language that adds “additional incentives” into a player’s contract based on the number of “games played and the results of those games.”
In a more immediate development, the Board of Governors voted to increase penalties for “transition take fouls,” intentional fouls committed in an effort to prevent a fast-break opportunity without making a “legitimate” play on the ball. Last season, defensive players committed more than 1,700 take fouls, a year-over-year increase of 55 percent, according to league data.
The league’s new approach, which will be implemented in the 2022-23 season and has been used in the G League since 2018, grants a free throw and possession of the ball to the offensive team if a defensive player commits an intentional foul in transition, whether that player is in possession of the ball. Under the old rule, the offensive team simply retained possession.
If a defensive player commits a transition foul while attempting to make a play on the ball, he will still be assessed a common foul. Take fouls will also still be allowed during the final two minutes of regulation and any overtime periods, so that defensive teams can stop the clock while attempting a comeback or committing a foul to prevent their opponents from hitting a game-tying three-pointer.
The rule change follows last season’s crackdown on “non-basketball moves” by offensive players seeking to draw contact from defenders with “abrupt, overt and abnormal” actions like leg kicks, sharp leaning or sudden stops.
The NBA and NBPA also agreed to institute a joint fund to provide annual payments to approximately 115 former American Basketball Association players who were not otherwise eligible for the NBA’s pension program.
To qualify, the former ABA players needed to have played three years in the professional league, which existed from 1967 until its 1976 merger with the NBA. The new payment program will grant $3,828 per year of service to each eligible player annually.
“Our players have a genuine sense of appreciation for those who paved the way and helped us achieve the success we enjoy today,” NBPA Executive Director Tamika Tremaglio said in a statement. “We have always considered the ABA players a part of our brotherhood.”
Silver said that the NBA and WNBA are “doing everything in our power” to bring home WNBA star Brittney Griner, who is detained in Russia after her February arrest. Griner’s case was highlighted during the NBA Finals and at the WNBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago. “Her wife was quoted the other day as saying she is satisfied with everything the Biden administration is doing right now,” Silver said. “I honestly don’t know what more we can be doing.”
After moving the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte because of the NBA’s opposition to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” the league will not weigh a state’s abortion rights laws when it selects future host cities. “The greatest impact we can have as a league comes down to how we treat our own employees and our own values, as opposed to moving into other communities and dictating to them what their position should be on these issues,” Silver said.
While Silver did not provide a specific update on the league’s investigation into the Phoenix Suns over allegations that owner Robert Sarver used racist and misogynistic language, he noted that the investigation was in the “last stage.” | 2022-07-13T12:01:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adam Silver sets NBA's agenda for upcoming labor talks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/nba-commissioner-adam-silver-labor-talks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/nba-commissioner-adam-silver-labor-talks/ |
“We can really get this club back to successful ways again,” Wayne Rooney said at his introductory news conference with D.C. United on Tuesday. “It’s going to take a lot of really hard work, but that’s what I’m here to do.” (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Wayne Rooney had already discussed how, when he inevitably wants to pull what’s left of his hair out because of the technique or work ethic of one of his new D.C. United players — even captain Steve Birnbaum — he will berate him. There are, as Rooney said, “demands, principles that the players need to stick by.” He is here to enforce them.
“There’s going to moments where he’s going to be a bit frustrated, because I will be shouting and putting him in his place,” Rooney said Tuesday, nodding back at Birnbaum, seated on a stage behind him. “That’s part of the job.”
It is apparent, even as Rooney spent fewer than 10 minutes talking about his new position as United’s coach, that merely being Wayne Rooney is a job. He is a celebrity of the first order, worthy of breathless coverage in the Fleet Street tabloids back home in England. So his introductory news conference couldn’t end without a glimpse of what that’s like on a day-to-day basis. As United officials tried to cut off the session, a reporter who “came all the way from London,” she said, followed up a question about whether Rooney’s wife was supportive of this move to the United States with a question about whether Rooney’s wife was really supportive of this move to the United States.
“So first, I think your first question, I’ve answered, so I’d appreciate if you’d listen,” Rooney said sharply. “It’s always trying to get different answers out of a just-asked question.”
This has been his life probably since he was 16, when he debuted with English club Everton, and certainly since he was 18, when he transferred to that behemoth, Manchester United. What Rooney tried to present himself as Tuesday afternoon at Audi Field, though, wasn’t some sort of above-the-lowly-MLS soccer icon. Rather, he’s a lunch-pail-toting bloke from Liverpool trying to take a blue-collar approach to climbing each rung of his sport’s coaching ladder.
“We can really get this club back to successful ways again,” Rooney said. “It’s going to take a lot of really hard work, but that’s what I’m here to do.”
That all makes Jason Levien, United’s CEO, think back to when the club brought in Rooney four years ago — as a player. Back then, Levien and club officials asked Rooney how he would like to be introduced. The answer was simple: “Let’s get to work.”
“That was his mantra,” Levien said.
Levien, who served as a player agent before investing first in the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and then in United a decade ago, understands the potential pitfalls of hiring a coach who not only instantly becomes the most recognizable figure for your franchise — and it’s not close — but also could be of iffy commitment given that, when he was a player here in 2018-19, he returned to England essentially because his family wasn’t happy.
“We asked a lot of questions,” Levien said Tuesday. “I’ve seen situations where things like this haven’t worked out.”
Levien and his team also came armed with what they had learned about Rooney when he made his first foray here. There is that “let’s get to work” attitude that is so admirable from a figure who has achieved as much as Rooney has — more goals than anyone, ever, for both Manchester United and the English national team.
“I think he has a unique soccer IQ,” Levien said.
So, then, the family. Yes, he was pressed on the question — to his frustration. But the commitment, it has to be there.
“I think I’ve seen that back in England as well,” Rooney said. “Of course, any major decision I make like this is discussed with my wife. My family for the time being will stay back in England. … That’s not an issue whatsoever from a family point of view.”
(To be clear: When reading quotes from Rooney, replace each “my” with “me” to get a sense of what he sounds like. He might be addressing D.C. soccer fans in Washington, but cut him open and he’ll forever be Liverpool to the core. The Scouse accent is here whether he’s discussing his four kids, his optimal United lineup or his preferences for his tea or his pint. Even that’s a joy!)
Back to the commitment: Levien said part of Rooney’s request as he was becoming coach was to find housing within five minutes of the club’s still-new Leesburg training headquarters. With his family coming stateside only for visits, Rooney wants to room with one of his assistant coaches.
“He wants to be able to talk soccer deep into the night,” Levien said. “He’s even talked about having room for players to stay with him.”
Now, where the celebrity might be a plus: Levien admits United has struggled to land prominent international players. Welsh star Gareth Bale, I suggested?
“We tried to get Bale,” Levien said.
Bale now plays for Los Angeles FC.
What if Rooney had already been with D.C.? Who knows?
“I think he can draw players here,” Levien said. “I think players will want to play for us because Wayne is the coach.”
Make that a massive TBD — but fun to find out.
These legendary players, they don’t always work out as coaches. This isn’t perfectly analogous, but I remember talking to Washington Nationals who played under Frank Robinson, a Hall of Famer as a player if there ever was one and a tough old soul as a manager. The players revered Frank. But they couldn’t always relate to him. Some of what Frank could do as a hitter, mere mortals couldn’t hope to ever replicate. They almost spoke different languages.
That is part of what was refreshing about Rooney’s succinct introduction Tuesday. He is here because he is Wayne Rooney, international superstar, for sure. But he is approaching this as a step in his coaching career, a career he is not building on presumptiveness and privilege but brick by brick.
“I think he’s all-in on what he said up there,” Levien said, “which is developing himself as a manager and to grow.”
If United is the venue for that growth and it results in a return to prominence for a franchise that badly needs one, then who loses? A legend has returned, albeit in a new role. Now, let’s get to work. | 2022-07-13T12:01:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wayne Rooney is a megastar. More importantly, he wants to coach. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/wayne-rooney-is-megastar-more-importantly-he-wants-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/wayne-rooney-is-megastar-more-importantly-he-wants-coach/ |
Noah Lyles sent a message with his 200-meter victory at the U.S. championships. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
The track and field world championships, the sport’s largest stage outside of the Olympics, are about to be contested in North America for the first time. Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., the spiritual home of track and field in the United States, will host the planet’s fastest runners, longest throwers and highest fliers over 10 days starting Friday.
The world championships typically take place every odd year, but the Oregon version was pushed back from its original 2021 date to accommodate the pandemic-rescheduled Tokyo Olympics, which means the reigning world champions will be defending titles won three years ago. Here is what to know.
Who are the American athletes to watch?
Who are the international athletes to watch?
What is the schedule of events?
What is the streaming schedule? | 2022-07-13T12:01:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Track and field world championships TV and events schedule - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/13/world-championships-track-and-field/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/13/world-championships-track-and-field/ |
Relentless waves of sophisticated phone and online scams are impacting people’s mental health
Couple Pamela and Michael McCarroll in their house in Fairfax County, Va., on May 7. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)
“He was very agitated. He was very angry, very threatening,” says Renee, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of being targeted again. “The first thing he said was, ‘I’m going to kill her. I’m going to get her. I don’t want to have to hurt her. I’ve been to jail before, and I don’t want to go back.’ ” | 2022-07-13T12:01:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Constant scam attempts are impacting our mental health - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/scam-fraud-fatigue/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/scam-fraud-fatigue/ |
Twitter filed a suit against Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery
Twitter is expected to file suit against Elon Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery after the billionaire tried to terminate his deal to buy the company. (Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images)
Twitter’s saga with billionaire Elon Musk, marked by months of negotiations and contentious tweets, has made its way to the court system.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, agreed to buy the social media company for about $44 billion in April, saying he wanted to promote free speech on the site and “defeat the spam bots.” But less than three months later, he filed to terminate the deal after accusing Twitter of withholding information about the bot accounts on its site.
On Tuesday, Twitter sued Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery, seeking to enforce the deal and writing that “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
What are the next steps in the rocky deal between the social media company and the world’s richest person?
Why did Twitter file a lawsuit against Musk?
When will we finally know what happens with Musk and Twitter?
Can Musk just walk away from the deal?
What are possible outcomes from the suit? | 2022-07-13T12:01:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What happens next in the Twitter lawsuit against Elon Musk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/twitter-lawsuit-elon-musk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/twitter-lawsuit-elon-musk/ |
Q: We are about to tell our sensitive 7-year-old son that we are separating and moving out of our home and into two separate places. I am so nervous. Do you have any advice? We are looking for family counselors to work with, but most don’t have availability for a few months.
We have waited as long as we can. We are both moving within our current stomping grounds, and he will still go to same camp, school, etc. Any previous mention of moving out of our house has brought lots of tears. The split is mutual and amicable.
A: I am sorry. Separating, moving and changing your life this much, no matter how “mutual and amicable,” can be quite difficult. And if you look into the literature regarding separation/divorce and children, it certainly is part of the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) list. When experienced during childhood, these events can significantly affect kids’ abilities to mature, and they can have an effect on their mental health and lead to a host of other problems.
Where does divorce fit in? Well, like everything in life, it depends. The level of dysfunction, abuse, fear and upset in the home, along with how acrimonious the separation is, can certainly lead to divorce being an important adverse event in a child’s life. But life isn’t that black and white: Every ACE — even the worst — can be helped with therapy and warm, loving relationships.
Why am I telling you this?
Our culture tends to be binary regarding separation and divorce: It is either a total disaster between the parents and, therefore, the child, or the parents are amicable and the child is “fine.” But that’s not all there is to it. How the child feels about the divorce is what matters the most. Does it matter that you are keeping his environment (neighborhood), camps, school and activities the same? You bet it does! Seeing the same supportive adults and maintaining a schedule can feel like safety to a child who may be reeling from a separation. But many parents will take on a “Your life is the same!” stance when a child may feel the opposite.
Parents also make the assumption that if the separation is amicable, the child won’t feel torn between the two parents. But even when parents express loving support for each other, a sensitive 7-year-old can feel the need to be loyal to one parent over the other. If there has been no sign of strife in the house, this can be even more confusing to your son. He can begin to question what he knew and how he understood your relationship. He may feel blindsided, and he or may not trust you, no matter how amicable you are.
I am not trying to freak you out or make you feel guilty. It is wonderful that you and your partner are clearly communicating and wanting the best for your son. More than anything, I want you to remember the power you have as parents. This isn’t just happening to your son; this is an ongoing and unfolding dynamic that I want you to feel empowered to confront as the years go on.
Divorce or not, take the time to learn more about the life of a sensitive child, and look for the signs of maturity and good mental health in your son. (I recommend books such as “The Highly Sensitive Child,” by Elaine N. Aron.) Not every behavior will be related to the divorce, so the more you understand about your son, the better equipped you will be to respond rather than react.
One of the most important factors to remember is that we are not going for a zero-sum game; your son isn’t meant to be “happy” or “unhappy.” Divorce has effects that are sometimes acute and obvious (often around holidays and vacations) and sometimes sneaky (small dinners and movie times), and your parenting work isn’t to fix or stop the sadness; it’s to welcome it in and sit with it.
As child developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld says: The more space we give an emotion, the less room it takes up. Your job isn’t to get your child to feel or not feel anything in particular; it’s to keep the emotions moving. If your son is angry, let him be angry. If he is sad, let him be sad. I cannot say this enough: Don’t assume how your son will react to this divorce, and know that all emotions are welcome.
Your job is to keep your side of the street clean. Don’t split loyalties, and never bad-mouth your co-parent. Keep your word, and keep your communications as clear as possible. Don’t assume how your son feels. Mindfully create spaces where your son can be honest with you (go for drives, play video games, etc.), and prioritize fun and joy. Life will change dramatically, but there will be unexpected joys that should be celebrated.
Play therapy could be a wonderful option, but don’t assume that it’s needed. Don’t panic, and remember: You are still your child’s best bet. The therapist doesn’t know your child like you do. You don’t need to be perfect; you simply have to show up with a full heart and with your eyes wide open. Good luck. | 2022-07-13T12:38:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How do we help our child deal with our divorce? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/07/13/helping-child-through-divorce/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/07/13/helping-child-through-divorce/ |
By Ronald S. Lauder
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid arrives for a meeting in Jerusalem on July 10. (Maya Alleruzzo/AP)
Ronald S. Lauder is president of the World Jewish Congress and former U.S. ambassador to Austria.
On July 1, Yair Lapid became Israel’s 14th prime minister. Though he will serve only as caretaker until general elections are held on Nov. 1, he has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make history as he helps his nation grapple with a complicated reality: enormous economic and political success coupled with a rising demographic challenge.
The State of Israel is enjoying a golden age. For more than 15 years — since the Second Lebanon War of 2006 — it has maintained relative calm, strategic stability and prosperity. The economy is flourishing: over the past decade the average annual growth rate was more than 3.5 percent, accelerating to an astonishing 8 percent in 2021. The national debt rate (relative to GDP) is significantly lower than that of the United States; the unemployment rate is close to zero; and the standard of living is rising steadily. The high-tech revolution has propelled Israel to the forefront of global technology, its unique innovative spirit attracting investors from around the world.
The Jewish state has signed peace accords with six Arab League nations, and its relationship with a wide swath of the Arab world is one of deepening cooperation — a de facto peace. Countries beyond the United States, including China, Japan, India, Europe and Brazil, view Israel as a strategic partner. With its population nearing 10 million and its per capita GDP eclipsing that of the United Kingdom, Israel is an astounding success story. In many respects, the Israel of 2022 has fulfilled both the Zionist dream of its founders and the Jewish people’s yearning for renewal after the harrowing tragedy of the Holocaust.
And yet, the nation faces a grave existential threat — not just from Iran’s nuclear capabilities but from its own demographics. In 2020, for the first time in many decades, the Arab population living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River rose slightly above the Jewish population, according to analysis conducted by two research groups associated with Israel’s defense establishment. And despite some changes in birthrate trends, this small Palestinian majority will become a significant one in a decade or two. This means that if the status quo persists and Israel continues to rule over the West Bank, it will in a relatively short time face a cruel dilemma: If it gives Palestinians full citizenship — and therefore full rights — it will no longer be Jewish. If it doesn’t do so, it will no longer be democratic. Either way, Israel, as a Jewish democratic state, will cease to exist.
Further complicating the situation are the profound changes sweeping Palestinian society. According to a poll conducted by Khalil Shikaki of the well-regarded Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research think tank, around 25 percent of West Bank residents today are in favor of negotiating with Israel, and only 28 percent still support a two-state solution. In contrast, 55 percent endorse an armed struggle against Israel. Younger Palestinians are turning their backs on the ideas of reconciliation, compromise and partition and embracing the idea of one state. The emerging demographic reality and the increasingly confrontational Palestinian mind-set foretell the Palestinian demand Israel will likely soon face: one person, one vote.
No external threat is as dangerous to the Zionist enterprise as this internal one. The basic premise of Zionism is that there should be one place on earth where Jews are the majority — so that this majority can exercise its right to self-determination within a democratic framework. If the Jews do not have a solid majority in their own land, Zionism will collapse.
Sadly, an apathetic public and a dysfunctional political system are preventing Israel from confronting this problem. Suffering terrorist attacks, most Israelis believe — justifiably — that they should not retreat under fire. But when the waves of terror subside, they feel no urgency to act, confident that they can continue to rule over millions of Palestinians without any truly perilous consequences. Economic prosperity, military prowess and international prestige blind them to the fact that each passing day brings them closer to the abyss.
It is time for Israel’s friends and allies to make their voices heard. Over the past 40 years, I’ve worked tirelessly for the Jewish state. I love Israel. I’m committed to it, and I’m doing everything I can for it. But today it is my duty to call upon the new Israeli prime minister to recognize his nation’s predicament and change course.
President Biden’s upcoming visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah presents a unique opportunity. So does the emergence of an American-Arab-Israeli security alliance. Lapid must seek a creative way to confront the Palestinian challenge, working hand-in-hand with the United States, the Sunni world and moderate Palestinians. Even if it appears impossible to arrive at a two-state solution, the prime minister must do everything in his power to avert a one-state catastrophe. No other mission is as important — or as urgent. Israel’s very future hangs in the balance. | 2022-07-13T13:04:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Israel is flourishing, but changing demographics could be its undoing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/israel-demographics-arabs-biden-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/israel-demographics-arabs-biden-future/ |
Father reintroduces himself with ‘Young Hot Ebony 2’
Rapper-producer Father will perform at Union Stage with fellow Awful Records OGs Archibald Slim, Ethereal and Slug Christ. (Father)
These days, the word “sequel” evokes the escalating stakes of summer blockbusters: movies that look to continue the moneymaking and storytelling of intellectual property that has come before. But while sequels exist in every art form, they’ve been particularly important to hip-hop, with rappers looking to — along with making money and telling stories — recapture lost magic or reintroduce themselves.
For rapper-producer Father and last month’s “Young Hot Ebony 2,” it’s more the latter than the former. The 31-year-old first rose to prominence in 2014 with Volume 1, a 30-minute mission statement full of shrugged-off lyrics, both sarcastic and sinister, over bare-bones beats that rang out like the ghosts of snap rap past. It also introduced the world to Awful Records, a collective of rappers, singers and producers that Father assembled who quickly established themselves as an off-kilter alternative in an Atlanta rap scene at its hegemonic heights.
Awful provided a launchpad for artists as diverse as rap wunderkind Playboi Carti and singer-songwriter Faye Webster, and the label even scored a partnership with RCA Records. But the crew outgrew its ragtag beginnings, spreading out of Atlanta and signing deals elsewhere. Father decamped to Los Angeles before returning to Georgia during the pandemic.
“I’m outside the perimeter [of Atlanta] now because the city has gotten too expensive,” he says, adding with his typical deadpan: “Also, everybody’s dying.”
Now that his partnership with RCA is over and he’s relocated to the scene of his first come-up, Father says it was time for a “hard restart.” The time was finally right for his long-planned sequel to “Young Hot Ebony.”
“What made me bring it back around now is I feel like I’m in that same position I was back then,” he says. “I’m back on the ground floor, getting a lot of things together.”
It would be a mistake to ever call Father’s music mature, but “Young Hot Ebony 2” definitely sounds like the work of an older, more experienced artist. His flows are more versatile, his beats more lopsided and his sample-digging deeper, but Father’s lyrical threats and punchlines are as explicit and toxic as ever.
“I don't take anything seriously, no matter how serious the situation is. That might be my problem, I don't know,” he admits.
With “Young Hot Ebony 2” in the world, Father has embarked on the “Good Things Come to Those Who Take” tour, which unites him with Awful OGs Archibald Slim, Ethereal and Slug Christ. This sequel to Awful’s original breakthrough sees the crew on more solid footing.
“We’re all in a good relationship with each other, better than prior, because as things got busier and major label stuff started to happen, it separated relationships,” he explains. “Everybody’s a little bit tighter even though we’re not as active with each other.”
July 17 at 8 p.m. at Union Stage, 740 Water St. SW. unionstage.com. $17-$30. | 2022-07-13T13:08:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Father reintroduces himself with 'Young Hot Ebony 2' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/13/father-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/13/father-interview/ |
Teen Mortgage is firmly un-blipped and back on tour where it belongs
Garage-punk duo Teen Mortgage is coming to Songbyrd. (Minkiewicz Photography)
The sparse art of Teen Mortgage’s “Smoked” shows an upended zombie sprawled in white space, its legs akimbo. While the image looks like something from Robert Longo’s “Men in the Cities” series as viewed through the sunglasses from “They Live,” it’s actually a reworking of an iconic subcultural image: pro skateboarder Corey Duffel wiping out as seen on the cover of Foundation Skateboards’s “That’s Life” video.
The image had been top of mind for James Guile, singer-guitarist for the garage-punk duo, who used skateboarding to pass a lot of time during the highs and lows of quarantine, social distancing and canceled concerts. Skaters spend plenty of time missing tricks and getting “smoked” — a feeling of defeat and disillusionment that has become more resonant for many, especially in the wake of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I was watching the country get smoked, and then I was also getting smoked on the skateboard,” Guile says of the last couple of years.
During that time, being a power duo made it comparatively easy to keep the band together, with Guile and drummer Ed Barakauskas essentially forming their own bubble. Despite losing a year’s worth of bookings and scuttling a U.S. tour, the band was able to take advantage of unusual opportunities, like live-streaming a show from DC9 or playing mobile shows on the back of D.C. concert venue Songbyrd’s “Byrdmobile” truck.
But Teen Mortgage is a band that needs to be experienced live, where mosh pits and tinnitus overwhelm the senses — live-streaming would never do. Life under a pandemic threatened to disconnect the band from time and space.
“I almost feel like we got blipped or something,” says Barakauskas. “I know we did stuff during the last couple years that kept the momentum going, but it feels like we just reappeared on the other side of it.”
Firmly un-blipped, the band can finally properly tour behind “Smoked.” Released last fall, the EP is an all-killer, no-filler collection of outbursts from the D.C.-based pair, loaded with searing riffs, sneering vocals and skin-punishing drumming. The songs affirm that getting smoked is an inevitability in skateboarding, making music and living life, but that dusting off and trying again is often the only way through.
“It’s the whole thing of failure as well as getting back up to do it again,” Guile says. “It makes it cathartic.”
Performing with BabyJake on July 20 at 7 p.m. at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. songbyrddc.com. $18-$22. Proof of coronavirus vaccination required. | 2022-07-13T13:08:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Teen Mortgage is finally back to touring live - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/13/teen-mortgage-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/13/teen-mortgage-interview/ |
The net result is confusion, as GOP states impose bans while liberal prosecutors say they will decline to enforce them
Protesters in New Orleans join nationwide demonstrations for abortion rights on May 14. (Kathleen Flynn/Reuters)
NEW ORLEANS — Democratic-controlled cities within Republican states have launched improvisational efforts to preserve abortion services, even as officials acknowledge they will probably fall short of protecting doctors and patients sufficiently to serve as a substitute for a constitutional right to the procedure.
The moves stem from the Supreme Court’s decision last month that invalidated a federal right to abortion, meaning that states could decide whether to allow it. Last week, the city council here passed a resolution instructing the police department not to pursue cases against abortion providers or patients.
Dozens of big-city prosecutors, mostly in the South and Midwest, have said they will not file charges against medical workers who conduct abortions or their patients. Taken together, the steps do not amount to an affirmative right, but they could make the penalties for abortion more hypothetical than Republicans running the prosecutors’ states would prefer as they invoke bans on the procedure.
“We cannot ease up, we must continue to fight, because we all know what is truly at stake,” said New Orleans City Council member Helena Moreno, arguing for the resolution last week. “We’re a blue dot here, a city that is fighting for its people, for all of its people.”
The movement is spreading, even as its chief proponents acknowledge limits to what they can accomplish. Prosecutors in Charlotte, Atlanta and Indianapolis have pledged not to use public resources to pursue abortion providers. While New Orleans is among the first to direct police not to investigate abortion cases, several others are likely to follow in the coming weeks.
Even as Democratic cities take such steps, though, abortion bans are going into effect in states where restrictions have been held up in courts since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturned the right granted in the Roe v. Wade case decades ago.
The net result is widespread confusion, with cities and states adopting different views of where the rules stand in terms of criminalizing abortion, efforts that in some places would include jail time for those performing or undergoing the procedure.
A day after the council passed its resolution here, a judge lifted a temporary restraining order that had prevented the state’s “trigger law” banning abortion from taking effect. Then, on Tuesday, another judge reversed that decision, placing the ban back into effect.
Among the nation’s strictest, the Louisiana law does not include exceptions for rape and incest. Abortions are now illegal here after the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy. The case for the law was argued by four men, including the Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who said after the Friday hearing that “the judge got it right.”
“My mother always told me that a society that places itself before its children will not last,” Landry said of the initial ruling. “I think the state of Louisiana, through its people and its legislature, has spoken again and again and again, constitutionally and statutorily in anticipation that Roe would be overturned, that the state of Louisiana would respect its children before themselves.”
Four women represented the plaintiffs in the case, which the judge initially decided should be heard in a court in the state capital, Baton Rouge, because it involves state legislation. With the new restraining order now in place, the litigation will continue.
“What’s important to know is that this was not a ruling on the merits of the case,” said Michelle Erenberg, the executive director of Lift Louisiana, a group that advocates for abortion rights. “That’s little comfort to women who were scheduled to get an abortion tomorrow. Doctors cannot show up; they are targets of this law.”
Landry’s office did not respond to several requests for comment about whether it would seek to enforce abortion laws in New Orleans. The American Medical Association also declined to comment on the city council’s resolution.
The sudden ban on abortion — and the back and forth over the restraining order — has left cities such as this one with a state-ordered obligation that officials say will divert already strained public resources to enforce. That is the argument that city councils and prosecutors are making in some Republican states to essentially ignore the ban.
“I wanted to be a prosecutor to help people, to have an impact on public safety, and these laws do not do anything to further those goals,” said Ryan Mears, the district attorney in Marion County, Ind., which covers the city of Indianapolis.
Mears is one of the more than 50 district attorneys who signed a pledge not to prosecute cases against abortion providers or patients. He faces election later this year, and he said his position has generated many angry emails in a state where Republicans have held the governorship and both houses of the legislature for more than a decade.
“I think that this is a reminder that a prosecutor’s office can serve as a real check on the power of the state government,” Mears said. “People go to the doctor’s office because they need help. And I can tell you that in 20 years, I do not want to be known as the person who locked up a bunch of doctors and nurses.”
The office of Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) indicated that Mears was within his powers to not enforce the state’s abortion law.
“The General Assembly has given prosecutors 100 percent discretion in filing criminal charges, including those regarding violations of Indiana abortion laws,” Kelly R. Stevenson, a spokesperson for the attorney general, said in a statement.
Later this month, the city council in the Democratic stronghold of Austin, the Texas capital, will vote on a resolution similar to the one passed in New Orleans last week. Known as the Grace Act, the resolution would instruct the police department to make abortion cases their lowest priority.
“We’re in a state of confusion right now in Texas, so we need to take as many steps as we can to clarify what we stand for,” said Austin City Council member Vanessa Fuentes, a proponent of the resolution. “What I am hearing most is fear: What can we do, where can we go? And for a constituency like mine, which is predominantly of color and disproportionately affected, it is a very troubling time, and we must provide some comfort.”
With a ban on most abortions in Texas, those seeking one must travel to New Mexico or farther to find a state allowing the procedure. After the trigger law took effect here, Louisianans seeking abortions must look to Illinois as the closest state where abortion is legal.
New Orleans, like many of the cities scrambling to buttress abortion rights, is a blue dot in a sea of red. Donald Trump beat President Biden in the state by nearly 20 percentage points but lost in Orleans Parish. The governor, John Bel Edwards, is a Democrat but a staunch opponent of abortion rights.
This is also a city where crime, according to recent polling, is the most pressing public concern. Violent crime spiked here during the pandemic shutdown, and New Orleans now has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation.
“We have been bracing for this possibility for some time,” said Jason Williams, the district attorney for Orleans Parish. “We will not shift priorities in our office as a result. We don’t have the resources now to address the crime surge attributable to the pandemic. We will not be policing women’s bodies.”
Williams said his position and the council’s resolution are important because, despite the state law banning abortion, city directives will determine how the policy is carried out on the ground.
But he said the state will certainly intervene if New Orleans does not enforce the abortion ban, setting up more battles in court and more confusion among doctors and patients.
Louisiana Republicans advance bill that would charge abortion as homicide
“This certainly doesn’t provide enough legal cover for doctors or women having abortions,” Williams said. “But budgets are kind of the moral code of a city and describe what its priorities are. And right now, there are no investigators in my office or in the police department trained in how to investigate women’s reproductive rights, and that is not going to change.”
New Orleans has one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the nation, a problem that public health officials say will probably worsen with the abortion ban.
What it’s like to have a baby in the states that will ban abortion
Among those who filed affidavits supporting the restraining order that had suspended the abortion ban was Jennifer Avegno, the medical doctor who runs this city’s health department. Avegno wrote that “there is a complete lack of clarity and confusion among the medical community on the ground.”
“Oncologists do not know whether, or when, they would be able to treat pregnant patients with chemotherapy when it would result in terminating the pregnancy,” she wrote. “Hospital administrators have also expressed their concerns about staffing shortages, particularly among nurses and other staff, who may refuse to participate in treating certain patients out of fear that they, too, could be criminalized for the treatment decisions of physicians and others.”
The council’s resolution was designed, in part, to clarify the police department’s role in enforcing the new law. But it was a political statement, as much as a policy directive, from a Democratic local government confronting the conservative one that surrounds it.
The resolution, which states that the city “recognizes that reproductive rights are human rights,” passed unanimously.
“Make no mistake about where we are: We are at war,” council member Jean-Paul Morrell said. “This will likely not be the last action that this council will take to correct erroneous decisions of this Supreme Court.” | 2022-07-13T13:17:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democratic cities seek ways around abortion bans in Republican states - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/abortion-bans-blocked-cities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/abortion-bans-blocked-cities/ |
Such precise, single-letter swaps could be used to fix DNA in people with rare genetic diseases caused by just one wrong letter — an A (adenine) that should be a G (guanine), for instance, or a C (cytosine) that should be a T (thymine).
(Corrects the names of the A and G nucleotides of DNA in the fifth paragraph of a column published on July 12.) | 2022-07-13T13:30:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crispr for the Masses Gets a Little Closer to Reality - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/crispr-for-the-masses-gets-a-little-closer-to-reality/2022/07/13/6fa051d0-02aa-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/crispr-for-the-masses-gets-a-little-closer-to-reality/2022/07/13/6fa051d0-02aa-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
A big bipartisan wildlife bill could be headed to Biden's desk
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202!
🚨 The White House is entertaining the approval of oil and gas projects to secure the elusive vote of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) for President Biden's stalled spending bill, our colleagues Jeff Stein and Anna Phillips report this morning. More on that below. But first:
D.C. is abuzz over the reconciliation bill. But don't sleep on a bipartisan wildlife bill.
A major piece of environmental legislation could pass the Senate and reach President Biden's desk before Labor Day, and it starts with the letter “R.”
No, it's not Biden's long-stalled reconciliation package, which is still the subject of intense negotiations between Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Rather, it's the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, an ambitious bill to conserve the nation's wildlife and habitat as the biodiversity crisis causes the extinction of animal and plant species at an unprecedented rate.
While the wildlife measure has gotten far less attention in Washington than the reconciliation bill, environmentalists say it would make a crucial investment in protecting vulnerable species before it's too late.
And unlike the party-line reconciliation package, which faces uniform opposition from Republicans, the wildlife bill has bipartisan backing in both chambers of Congress.
The House passed the $1.4 billion measure in June by a vote of 231 to 190, with 16 Republicans voting for it. The bill was introduced in the House by Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.).
On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the bill in April by a bipartisan vote of 15 to 5. It was introduced by Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
In an interview with The Climate 202 on Tuesday, Heinrich said he remains “optimistic” about the measure's near-term prospects.
“It's clear that we have the votes to be able to pass this in this Congress,” he said, adding, “The bipartisan support we have bodes well for us seeing action sooner rather than later.”
In a statement, Blunt said that “there is strong bipartisan, bicameral support for the bill, and I am hopeful we’ll be able to get it to the president’s desk this Congress.”
‘Charismatic megafauna'
For decades, hunters and anglers have paid an excise tax on certain hunting and fishing gear, with the proceeds going toward state wildlife agencies' efforts to protect vulnerable species.
However, most of that money has historically gone toward conserving what environmentalists call “charismatic megafauna” — animal species with widespread popular appeal, such as bald eagles, deer and wolves.
In other words: tough luck for uncharismatic species such as mussels, salamanders, and some small fish and birds. (In September, the Fish and Wildlife Service removed eight species of freshwater mussels from the endangered species list because none could be found in the wild.)
Proponents of Recovering America's Wildlife Act say it would provide dedicated funding for states to protect all threatened species, regardless of their popularity.
“All of these species are important,” Mike Leahy, director of wildlife, hunting and fishing policy at the National Wildlife Federation, told The Climate 202. “Salamanders, small birds and small fish are the base of the food chain in a lot of cases, and they support the larger species and the health of the overall ecosystem.”
Nick Wiley, chief operating officer at Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit dedicated to conserving wetlands and other habitats for waterfowl, agreed.
“This is a real breakthrough opportunity to help species that don't get a lot of headlines,” Wiley told The Climate 202.
Pay-fors and priorities
Despite the bill's broad support, there are lingering questions over how to offset the nearly $1.4 billion in new spending.
The House version of the bill was not paid for, causing heartburn among fiscal hawks of both parties. By contrast, the Senate version would at least partially offset the legislation with fees and fines paid by polluters.
Heinrich said he and Blunt are open to other pay-fors, although he declined to discuss the specifics before the bill hits the floor. He also acknowledged it may be difficult to get floor time in the coming months, given a host of other legislative priorities, including the reconciliation package and a China competitiveness bill.
“The schedule around here changes week to week based on who's here and who's not and a number of things that are outside my control,” Heinrich said. “But in my conversations with leadership, they want to see this bill move and they know that we have well above the 60-vote threshold. And both of those things make me optimistic.”
In the past week and a half, the White House has signaled it might greenlight drilling plans in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico despite Biden's climate pledges, as officials wait to see whether their approval could help secure the vote of Manchin for a historic climate package, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and Anna Phillips report.
However, White House aides do not know whether approving these proposals — or Manchin’s other preferred fossil fuel projects, such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia — would bring the elusive senator on board.
The difficult balancing act, described by four administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing a potential deal, comes as the White House scrambles to salvage the chances of meeting Biden's climate goals before the midterm elections.
Collectively, these fossil fuel projects would release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide in the coming decades, undermining Biden's commitment to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. But experts say the trade-off might be worth it if Manchin agrees to vote for the budget reconciliation package, which contains a suite of tax credits that would allow the clean energy industry to dramatically expand.
Hanging over officials' heads is the fear of approving such carbon-intensive projects only to then lose Manchin’s vote on the climate and energy deal anyway, as the senator is known for refusing to be pinned down.
Republican officials across the country are threatening to retaliate against big financial firms for their efforts to combat climate change and other issues, playing into the nation's culture wars, The Post’s Steven Mufson reports.
In recent years, the nation's top financial firms have used their clout to help curb global warming. For instance, the asset manager BlackRock has voted against the candidacies of hundreds of board members over their lackluster records on climate issues. JPMorgan Chase, the country's largest bank, has stopped lending to new coal mines or coal-fired power plants.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has hinted that if Republicans regain control of Congress in the midterm elections, they will pursue legislation to punish such corporate efforts.
“@BlackRock is using its massive size to drive up the price of gas & weaken national security — all so BlackRock’s rich executives can feel better about themselves,” Cotton tweeted last month. “The next Congress is going to take on this collusive racket.”
The firms have defended their stances, with BlackRock head Larry Fink saying in his annual letter that environmental, social and governance issues “have real and quantifiable financial impacts” but that the company “does not pursue divestment from oil and gas companies as a policy.”
U.S. emissions responsible for over $1.8 trillion of global economic losses, study says
The United States and China, the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, caused more than $1.8 trillion of global economic loss between 1990 and 2014 from human-induced global warming, according to a new study from Dartmouth College that linked emissions from individual countries to financial impacts of climate change in others, Steven Mufson reports for The Post.
During that period, the study found that U.S. emissions resulted in a 0.054 degree Celsius change in the global average temperature, bringing a 0.04 degree Celsius change in average temperature to Indonesia — equivalent to a loss of $124 billion in economic growth. Researchers say the study advances the theory that there is a scientific basis for legal claims for losses connected to global warming.
“This research provides an answer to the question of whether there is a scientific basis for climate liability claims. The answer is yes,” Christopher Callahan, a PhD candidate at Dartmouth and an author of the study, said in a statement.
House Republicans introduce bill to sequester carbon through land use
Reps. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), and Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) on Tuesday introduced legislation to improve the nation's ability to capture and store planet-warming gases by making use of natural carbon sinks such as trees and soil.
The Carbon Sequestration Collaboration Act would mandate a joint research effort across the Energy, Agriculture and Interior Departments to bolster the country's ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere through land use.
Lucas is the ranking member on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, while Thompson is the top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee and Westerman is the top Republican on the House Natural Resources panel.
“As a farmer and rancher, I’m well aware of how sound land use practices can conserve resources and improve our environment,” Lucas said in a statement. “We need an all-of-the-above approach to addressing climate change — one that makes use of our many resources. Research and development into innovative solutions like this will be what drives our success in greenhouse gas reductions — not restrictive mandates that raise prices on American families.”
Second glacier avalanche in a week shows dangers of a warming climate — Kasha Patel for The Post
More than 200 congressional staffers urge Pelosi and Schumer to act on climate — Ella Nilsen for CNN
Manchin, playing to the home crowd, is fighting electric cars to the end — Coral Davenport, Lisa Friedman and Hiroko Tabuchi for the New York Times
Walmart orders 4,500 electric vans from Canoo — Will Feuer for the Wall Street Journal
Sidelined by covid, Schumer goes hard from Brooklyn — Burgess Everett for Politico
Happy third hatchday to the flock, they flamingrow up so fast! pic.twitter.com/shsHGmHZoG
— Oregon Zoo (@OregonZoo) July 11, 2022 | 2022-07-13T13:31:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A big bipartisan wildlife bill could be headed to Biden's desk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/big-bipartisan-wildlife-bill-could-be-headed-biden-desk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/big-bipartisan-wildlife-bill-could-be-headed-biden-desk/ |
A woman and 7-year-old boy visiting the New York City area from Colombia were killed Tuesday after a boat capsized on the Hudson River, authorities said. (Screenshot via YouTube//Screenshot via YouTube/WABC)
A woman and a 7-year-old boy visiting from Colombia were killed Tuesday after a chartered boat capsized in the Hudson River and sent all the passengers aboard the ship into the water, according to New York City officials.
The boat flipped around 2:45 p.m. off Manhattan near Pier 84, authorities said, which is not far from the docked aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. The boat was being chartered by a group of a dozen family and friends. It was unclear what caused the boat to capsize.
A New York Police Department spokesperson identified the victims to The Washington Post as 47-year-old Lindelia Vasquez and 7-year-old Julian Vasquez, both of Colombia. They had boarded a jet boat called Stimulus Money from Elizabeth, N.J., for a family trip to the Hudson River, according to WABC.
Three people were critically injured in the incident, including the captain. The injured passengers, who have not been publicly identified, range in ages between 24 and 51, according to police. They were transported to Mount Sinai West Hospital and listed in stable condition as of Wednesday morning, police said to The Post. All the other family members aboard, all from Colombia, also suffered less serious injuries, officials said.
Assistant Police Chief James McCarthy said at a news conference that the owner of the boat “was actually on a Jet Ski following the boat.” As authorities retrieve the boat, one of the issues they will be reviewing is whether the boat was over capacity, McCarthy said.
“The cause of this incident remains under investigation at this time,” police told The Post.
Inspector Anthony Russo of the Harbor Unit told reporters that several factors could have played a role for the 27-foot Yamaha vessel capsizing near the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, including “wakes approaching from different directions, waves from different directions.”
“There’s a lot of commercial and recreational traffic during the day here. We also have a lot of people on Jet Skis, kayaks,” Russo said. “The Hudson River is always a dangerous place to operate.”
He added, “It takes some skill to operate in the Hudson River, so it could’ve been a contributing factor.”
Marine and land units responded to the Hudson River shortly after the boat capsized, according to the New York City Fire Department. Video posted to social media shows rescuers in the water scrambling to transfer the passengers off the capsized boat.
FDNY Firefighter Ryan Warnock acknowledged to reporters that a young victim can change first responders’ emotional state, “but you just have a job to do, and you do it.”
“This is a tragic day for New Yorkers,” New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a news conference. “Indeed, it may have well been worse for not the incredible effort by not only our own extraordinary first responders but also the swift response from the New York Waterway ferries who rescued nine additional people from the water.”
After arriving near the scene of the incident, New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) described the fatal capsizing as “a devastating moment.”
“Our hearts go out to a group of people who were just using the water in our city,” Adams said. “This is a devastating moment for them and those who are part of the families that were there, and as New Yorkers our heart goes out.”
The mayor also added a note of caution to anyone who chooses to go out on the Hudson this summer.
“It’s a clear reminder to us as we move through the summer months, water is an enjoyable part of New York but it can be a dangerous place,” Adams said. | 2022-07-13T13:34:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman, 7-year-old boy die after boat capsizes in Hudson River, New York City police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/hudson-river-boat-capsizing-new-york/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/hudson-river-boat-capsizing-new-york/ |
NASA releases first images from James Webb Telescope
NASA reveals five stunning images from the deep space telescope nearly 7 months after its launch.
Known as the “Cosmic Cliffs,” this is the star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. This image reveals previously invisible areas of star birth. (Nasa/Via Reuters)
NASA released the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope on Tuesday. The telescope — the most powerful sent to space — was launched December 25 from French Guiana and now orbits the sun, about 1 million miles from Earth. Webb’s camera can see infrared light, a light the human eye cannot see, from the early universe, about 13.5 billion years ago.
The Webb telescope is larger and is designed to look deeper into space than the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space in 1990 and has made more than 1.5 million observations while orbiting Earth. Most of the Hubble’s images are not infrared, so they are often clouded by dust and gas that Webb can see through.
The Webb telescope will explore four areas of science: early universe, galaxies over time, the star life cycle and other worlds. Over the next 5½ years or more, the telescope will be able to observe galaxies that formed about 400 million years after the big bang — which is the idea that the universe began at a single point and expanded from there.
The telescope was named after NASA’s second administrator, James Webb, who is best known for leading the Apollo missions, which landed the first humans on the moon.
Construction of the Webb telescope’s parts began in 2004, and assembly and testing started in 2013 at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The project involved help from other NASA facilities as well as the Canadian and European space agencies. Scientists all over the world will study the images Webb captures and perhaps find answers to questions about the early years of the universe. | 2022-07-13T14:32:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA releases first images from James Webb Telescope - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/13/james-webb-telescope-first-images/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/07/13/james-webb-telescope-first-images/ |
‘The Art of Banksy’: Unauthorized, but not a cheap knockoff
A touring exhibition dedicated to the art of the anonymous street artist and cultural prankster will amuse and surprise you
An installation view of the touring exhibition “The Art of Banksy” during its stop in Chicago. The show is now on view in a pop-up space in Gallery Place. (Kyle Flubacker)
How much Banksy himself has benefited from this appreciation in value is unknown, as is nearly everything else about him. But the semi-underground figure is not profiting from, and in fact has barely acknowledged, “The Art of Banksy,” an international touring exhibition currently installed in the former Bed, Bath and Beyond space in downtown D.C.’s Gallery Place complex. According to the show’s organizers, all of the more than 100 pieces on display were bought from the artist by private collectors and none was taken from the street.
Banksy tried to destroy his art after it sold for $1.4 million. The shredded version just went for $25.4 million.
Opinion: A single photo can change the world. I know, because I took one that did.
Gallery Place, 709 Seventh St. NW. banksyexhibit.com/washington. | 2022-07-13T14:44:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Art of Banksy' exhibition comes to Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/13/gallery-place-the-art-of-banksy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/13/gallery-place-the-art-of-banksy/ |
Southern-fried whodunit/romance is based on Delia Owens’s 2018 best-selling novel
Daisy Edgar-Jones, left, in “Where the Crawdads Sing.” (Michele K. Short/Sony Pictures)
But there’s a more curious resonance with Owens’s own personal life. According to a recent Atlantic article, the “Crawdads” author is wanted for questioning in Zambia in connection with the 1995 killing of an alleged poacher — whose execution was captured on videotape and, the article suggests, may have been carried out by a member of Owens’s family. (There is no statute of limitations on murder in Zambia.)
PG-13. At area theaters. Contains sexual material and some violence, including a sexual assault. 125 minutes. | 2022-07-13T14:44:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Where the Crawdads Sing' mixes romantic melodrama with murder mystery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/13/where-the-crawdads-sing-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/13/where-the-crawdads-sing-movie-review/ |
Hannah Georgas will perform at Songbyrd. (Vanessa Heins )
Watchhouse’s self-titled 2021 album is a reintroduction to the folk duo previously known as Mandolin Orange. Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz, who are married and based out of Chapel Hill, N.C., chose a new name that better suits what they’re trying to do with their music. It refers to a friend’s cabin on the Chesapeake Bay that Marlin visited as a teenager, he told WBUR radio, where there was no electricity and only the company of others. The duo’s music has always effused a calming aura that now matches the inspiration of their new name. Their latest project features more layered instrumentation than usual, providing a lusher experience for listeners. On “New Star,” a faraway-sounding harmonica helps tell the story of their new baby. “Someday she’ll be older / Our eyes may cry / Look what’s become of me and my former,” Marlin and Frantz sing, as they can’t help but look forward. The nimble and delicate strumming on “Better Way” sounds like stars sparkling, and the couple closes the song by sincerely singing, “Hope you find a better way to be kinder.” Regardless of the name change, Watchhouse is still giving fans the tranquil and endearing Americana that they have come to expect. July 17 at 7 p.m. (doors open) at 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com. $35.
Singer-songwriter Hannah Georgas opens her 2020 album “All That Emotion” by calling herself out. “Hide behind all that emotion / See how long you can keep going,” she sings on “That Emotion,” while subdued drums guide her through her coping. Georgas’s fourth album is produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, who also produced Taylor Swift’s “Folklore.” The 38-year-old Canadian singer’s previous works usually found her deep in thought as her sweet vocals articulated a relatable inner monologue. Georgas gives listeners more of that on her latest project while submerging herself more deeply into the nostalgia of it all. On “Same Mistakes,” she wants more for her younger self: A steady bass anchors the song as she sings, “I wish I could go back and tell my younger self / None of this matters though it hurts like hell.” She subtly refers to childhood trauma but never in explicit detail, instead letting listeners drop their own experiences in for hers so there’s a collective healing happening. Georgas beautifully executes self-introspection, letting her music speak her mind. July 19 at 7 p.m. at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. songbyrddc.com. $20-$22.
The Linda Lindas’ song “Racist, Sexist Boy” was written after the pop-punk band’s 11-year-old drummer Mila de la Garza, who is Chinese, had a boy tell her his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people. In front of stacks of books at a Los Angeles public library, the four members enthusiastically performed the song with heads banging, and the video, rightly, went viral. Frustration is at the center of the song, but the group’s ultimately optimistic perspective shines through, too. “We rebuild what you destroy,” scream-sings Eloise Wong, de la Garza’s now-14-year-old cousin, while on bass. Along with 15-year-old Lucia de la Garza (Mila’s sister) and a friend, 17-year-old Bela Salazar, on guitar, the Linda Lindas released their debut album in April. Appropriately called “Growing Up,” the project is a concise almost 30 minutes of brave confrontations of tween/teen anxieties. On “Fine,” they sing, “You hear the shouting but you say it’s absurd / The things you say are more than just words,” as sharp and quick guitar riffs cut in and out. The Linda Lindas’ ability to get straight to the point with their self-assured lyrics would be impressive even if they weren’t minors. There’s a lot to look forward to if the band continues to use its music to show us what growing up is like. July 20 at 7:30 p.m. (doors open) at Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. theblackcatdc.com. Sold out.
Julien Baker, born and raised in Memphis, is on her third album, and her commitment to blistering honesty isn’t going anywhere. On her 2021 project “Little Oblivions,” the singer’s truth-telling has more support from a fuller band of live instruments this time. Baker’s struggles with addiction have been a steady theme for her music and are the whole story on the opening song and album standout, “Hardline.” She sings the devastating line, “I’m telling my own fortune / Something I cannot escape,” just as robust drumming breaks through the background before a rousing chorus. When Baker sings, “I don’t need a savior / I need you to take me home” on “Relative Fiction,” it’s hard to believe she’s lived this much by age 26. On “Ringside,” listeners may wish she weren’t so hard on herself. “So you could either watch me drown / Or try to save me while I drag you down,” she sings, contemplating what her self-destruction is doing to those in her life with the help of a slightly chaotic guitar. However, her intense candor with herself is what makes her music resonate. Baker, and her listeners, can’t deny the truth. July 21 at 7:30 p.m. at Wolf Trap, 1551 Trap Rd., Vienna. wolftrap.org. $32. | 2022-07-13T14:44:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 concerts to catch in the D.C. area: July 15-21 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/13/concerts-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/07/13/concerts-dc/ |
Norwegian miler sets his sights on history at world outdoor championships
Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen seeks another victory in the 1,500 meters at the world outdoor championships in Eugene, Ore. (Stian Lysberg Solum / NTB / AFP via Getty Images)
Jakob Ingebrigtsen has become such a compelling and overpowering figure in track and field that when the 21-year-old Norwegian isn’t on the winner’s podium following his signature event, the 1,500 meters, shock and disbelief reverberate across the sport.
Take his finish at March’s world indoor championships in Belgrade, Serbia, where the 2020 Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in the indoor 1,500 settled for runner-up status after losing to Ethopia’s Samuel Tefera by less than a half-second.
The outcome strained credulity not only because Ingebrigtsen had broken Tefera’s three-year-old record the previous month, but he hadn’t been beaten in 11 head-to-head meetings entering the world indoors.
“I want to win,” Ingebrigtsen said last week on a Zoom call with the media ahead of the world outdoor championships, which begin Friday in Eugene, Ore. “That’s the most important thing for me personally. I’m hungry to show people that I’m better than I’ve been.”
Turns out extenuating circumstances factored into the second-place finish, with Ingebrigtsen testing positive for the coronavirus the next day after returning to his home in Sandnes, Norway, a likely reason for the sluggishness he indicated he felt following the race.
Three months later, Ingebrigtsen restored order in the 1,500 hierarchy at the Diamond League Dream Mile in Oslo, spurred by a hometown crowd that saw him establish a personal-best time of 3:46.46, which set a meet record but fell just shy of the European mark.
Still Ingebrigtsen, despite sloppy conditions in his nation’s capital, produced the 13th fastest time in history and the top time since 2001, when world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco ran the 1,500 in 3:44.95.
El Guerrouj set that world record mark of 3:43.13 in 1999, and Ingebrigtsen will get his next crack at eclipsing that standard at Hayward Field, the first time the event will be held in the United States.
“Racing is as fun as you make it,” Ingebrigtsen said. “So you have to set yourself goals short-term for each event and for every race. Of course I enjoy running fast. I enjoy trying to beat records, set records. There’s a lot of fun racing for medals, but I also like to do a lot of those things at the same time, so that’s what I’m going to try to do.”
Ingebrigtsen has been training over much of the past month in Flagstaff, Ariz., having arrived there the day after participating in the Oslo Diamond League. He has been tapering his training as of late while continuing to acclimate to the altitude, although he is familiar with the site of this week’s championships.
In May, Ingebrigtsen won the Bowerman Mile at the Eugene Diamond League in a time of 3:49.76, beating Great Britain’s Oliver Hoare and reigning world champion Timothy Cheruiyot of Kenya, the Olympic silver medalist in Tokyo, to reinforce his standing as perhaps the preeminent middle-distance runner in the world.
Ingebrigtsen has his sights set on further separating himself from the rest of the pack by becoming the second runner to win the 1,500 and 5,000 at the same world outdoor championships. The only runner to accomplish the feat was American Bernard Lagat in 2007 in Osaka, Japan.
In the longer term, Ingebrigtsen has embraced the outsize challenge of winning both events at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. He will also aim to become the second back-to-back gold medalist in the 1,500, following Great Britain’s Sebastian Coe, who accomplished the feat in Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984.
After he was informed that no athlete has claimed three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the 1,500, Ingebrigtsen immediately modified his career aspirations to include being in position for that unique place in track and field history by the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“Everybody starts with a dream, and eventually you break it down into goals,” he said. “You have to work hard, but also you have to know what you’re doing, so eventually when you’re succeeding in your work, you have [found] new meaning and set yourself new goals, and eventually you will try to write history.”
Ingebrigtsen’s ascension has been well documented via a streaming reality series about his running family entitled, “Team Ingebrigtsen.” Filming began when Ingebrigtsen was 10, and the series premiered in 2016. It remains extremely popular in his homeland, where he has grown accustomed to waves of attention.
He has more than 413,000 followers on his Instagram account, and that stardom in part has helped to elevate significantly the profile of middle-distance events, which traditionally have not generated as much interest compared to the sprints, particularly the 100 meters.
“I feel privileged,” said Ingebrigtsen, who took to running thanks to older brothers Henrik and Filip and trainer/father Gjert. “I like that people are enthusiastic and following along in my journey, but at the same time, I usually just focus on myself and try to do the best that I can in different championships and don’t necessarily think about the others that much.” | 2022-07-13T14:48:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jakob Ingebrigtsen to chase track history at world outdoor championships - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/13/jakob-ingebrigtsen-world-outdoor-championships/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/07/13/jakob-ingebrigtsen-world-outdoor-championships/ |
The release on Wednesday of the latest Consumer Price Index data just confirms what everyone already knows: that inflation is hovering at a 40-year high, seemingly out of control. The 9.1% June inflation rate and similar metrics help explain why consumers say they’re gloomier than at any time since the 2008 financial crisis, why the Federal Reserve has made credit the tightest since 1994 and why President Joe Biden keeps sinking in public opinion polls.
Minutes after the Associated Press — the wholesaler of news to broadcast, digital and print media — reported on June 30 that the “key inflation gauge tracked by the Fed remains a high 6.3%,” the most visible measure of investor behavior signaled the opposite. Bond investors showed that they expect inflation to cool by betting that the gap will narrow between the yield of inflation-protected US securities and ordinary Treasury bonds. The rates on these bets actually plummeted on that day, with the two-year breakeven measure falling to 3.29% from 3.45% and the 10-year rate declining to 2.34%, the lowest point since 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Consumers may be voicing alarm about inflation, but their behavior is surprisingly optimistic. Fears of continued inflation, the bane of the US economy during the 1970s before the Fed belatedly imposed the worst recession since the Great Depression, would show up statistically in higher demand for autos, washing machines and houses, in anticipation of future price increases. That’s not happening, according to the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, the same indicator used to show how pessimistic Americans are even as unemployment remains just two-tenths of a percentage point above the 53-year low of 3.4%.
The 45 economists who provide quarterly inflation forecasts for Bloomberg predict that the Personal Consumption Expenditure Core Price Index, the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, will decline to an average 2.9% in 2023 and 2.2% in 2024 from 4.7%. Another set of economists provides forecasts of overall US economic performance; of these 75 experts, only four predict a loss of gross domestic product in the ensuing two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Most of them could be wrong, of course. But their collective sanguinity shouldn’t be ignored when some chief executives dominate the headlines by asserting that a recession has already arrived.
While the University of Michigan’s June sentiment index fell to a record low in June amid rising expectations for inflation, real disposable income — the money people have, adjusted for inflation — still is greater today than at any point prior to 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. US GDP, similarly adjusted for inflation, increased 3.5% in the first quarter from the same period a year earlier. That sends a different message from the one conveyed by the prevalent headlines that real GDP declined 1.6% in the first three months of the year from 2021’s fourth quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. | 2022-07-13T15:02:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inflation Alarm Bells Are Actually Getting Softer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/inflation-alarm-bells-are-actually-getting-softer/2022/07/13/6b7e69fa-02b1-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/inflation-alarm-bells-are-actually-getting-softer/2022/07/13/6b7e69fa-02b1-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Federal employees aren’t happy. These agencies are especially troubled.
The Department of Homeland Security has consistently ranked at the bottom for employee engagement, an estimate of worker morale, according to an annual survey. (Lynne Sladky/AP)
The latest Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings, released on Wednesday, raise troubling issues for the Biden administration and those federal agencies whose reputations are falling fast.
Across the government, the overall 4.5 point drop in employee engagement, an estimate of worker morale, is a disturbing indication that significant improvement is needed at agencies large and small. Almost two-thirds of the agencies saw their scores drop or stay flat — not a good sign. Employee engagement scores are the key element in the annual ratings produced by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service and the Boston Consulting Group.
One agency that consistently ranks at the bottom — including this year — is the Department of Homeland Security. For 10 straight years, it has been last among 17 large agencies. The Federal Trade Commission managed to fall from second place in 2020 to 22nd among two dozen midsize agencies — with top leadership the suspected culprit. Within the Social Security Administration, its Office of the Inspector General fell sharply and resides last among 432 agency subcomponents. The National Labor Relations Board remained at the bottom of its midsize category, despite a noteworthy increase in its score.
“This is not about happy employees,” said Max Stier, the Partnership’s president and CEO. “We're looking at whether they're, frankly, more productive, whether they're actually producing better outcomes for the public. And so, this really matters.”
The ratings matter because the reputations of agencies and their leaders, including President Biden, are at stake. They matter because higher employee engagement and morale leads to better customer experience. Ultimately, the rankings relate to the quality of service the federal government provides taxpayers.
Uncertainty about return-to-work policies, following working at home for many federal workers during the pandemic, could have contributed to the poor ratings. Yet the quality and availability of leadership always is a key issue. The engagement score is calculated from three questions in the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey: Would you recommend your agency as a good place to work? How satisfied are you with your job? How satisfied are you with your organization?
“The sizable drop in employee engagement and satisfaction came during President Biden’s first year in office, during which the administration saw only 55% of its nominations requiring Senate confirmation fully confirmed,” the Partnership said in a statement. “The leadership vacancy problem presents a major challenge for the administration, which has described federal employees as the ‘backbone of our government’ and committed in the President’s Management Agenda to ‘make every federal job a good job, where all employees are engaged, supported, heard and empowered.’ ”
Here is a closer look at a few agencies where that pledge needs major work.
• With a decade in the basement, DHS seems hopeless. Stier has long emphasized the importance of leaders and DHS has had plenty of them, which probably is a big part of the problem. During its 10 years at the bottom, the department has had 11 secretaries, either confirmed or acting. Some of them — presumably — are good leaders, but the turnover has not been good for the workplace. To improve its performance, DHS said it is holding awards ceremonies, producing a weekly staff newsletter, conducting monthly senior leadership forums and improving procedures to reduce paperwork in favor of more direct service to customers.
• The NLRB demonstrated notable improvement from its 54.7 score in 2020 to 60.9 in 2021. Nonetheless, it remained tied with Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for last place in its category. “The single most important issue for improving morale at the NLRB is proper funding,” said NLRB press secretary Kayla Blado in an email. “Because we’ve been given the same congressional appropriation of $274.2 million for nine consecutive years — causing what is effectively a 25% budget cut — our dedicated staff are forced to do much more with much less. While our union election petitions are skyrocketing and unfair labor practice charges are also on the rise, we’ve lost 50% of our field staff in the last two decades. Our staff around the country are feeling this crunch, and an appropriation that seriously takes our resource issues into account will help the hard-working people at the NLRB fulfill our important mission.”
• Social Security’s inspector general plays an important investigative role. That office needs to investigate its steep engagement score fall from 56.2 in 2020 to 33.3 in 2021. Rebecca Rose, an agency spokeswoman, said those results “do not reflect all efforts we have undertaken to address employee morale” since the workforce was surveyed in late 2021, including the establishment of a full-time organizational health director and “the implementation of maximum workplace flexibilities during covid and for the steps we are taking to make the pilot permanent.”
• The FTC’s 24-point nosedive was a remarkable achievement under the leadership of chair Lina Khan. In three of four leadership metrics, the agency ranked no better than 18 out of 23 agencies. For senior leaders, a group that includes Khan, the rating was even lower at 22. That contrasts sharply with the employees’ view on their immediate FTC supervisors. Those managers closest to the workers received a high ranking of number 2 of 23 agencies. FTC workers also are very unhappy with their pay and the agency’s performance. An agency statement said Khan has “enormous respect” for the FTC’s workforce and linked the poor showing to “a period of considerable change at the FTC, which is always difficult.”
Improvement can be difficult too, but it happens with good managers.
Stier emphasized that leadership, more than anything else, drives employee engagement ratings.
“Bad management,” he said, “creates a morale problem.”
Analysis: Battles over Israel policy divide Democrats in primaries | 2022-07-13T15:02:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Best in Government survey shows federal agencies with poor employee satisfaction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/best-in-government-survey-poor-satisfaction-employees/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/best-in-government-survey-poor-satisfaction-employees/ |
After backlash, Ubisoft says it isn’t revoking access to owned games
(Video: Washington Post illustration; Ubisoft; iStock)
Following an initial miscommunication and fan backlash, video game publisher Ubisoft confirmed its 2014 title “Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD” would remain downloadable and playable by current owners on Steam.
In early July, fans took notice of the fact that on the video game storefront Steam, “Liberation” had been affixed with an ominous disclaimer: “Please note this title will not be accessible following September 1st, 2022.” The note seemed to imply that the game might become completely inaccessible, even for customers who had already purchased it.
A new note on the “Liberation” Steam page states that players who previously bought the game can still play it, but clarified that they will lose access to multiplayer and any paid DLC after Sept. 1. Past that date, the title will be delisted, meaning new customers will not be able to purchase the game.
“We don’t take the decision to retire services for older Ubisoft games lightly, and our teams are currently assessing all available options for players who will be impacted when these games’ online services are decommissioned on Sept. 1, 2022,” Jessica Roache, senior corporate communications manager at Ubisoft, told The Post.
All the ‘Assassin’s Creed’ games, ranked
Earlier in July, Ubisoft announced that it would be shutting down online support for over a dozen titles including “Assassin’s Creed II,” “Rayman Legends,” “Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands” and more. This is an exceedingly common practice in the video game industry, and Ubisoft has already retired dozens of games. For multiplayer games such as “The Matrix Online,” it’s a death sentence. For titles with single player modes such as XCOM 2, it usually means that the multiplayer is disabled but the single player functionality remains intact.
The initial miscommunication and confusion happened at an awkward time. Ubisoft is currently celebrating the 15th anniversary of Assassin’s Creed, a four month event featuring new DLC for numerous Assassin’s Creed titles, sales, merchandise, fan cosplay and even a history podcast.
Some Assassin’s Creed fans were not happy about the news, responding with memes sharply criticizing Ubisoft and review bombing the “Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD” Steam page with over a hundred bad reviews, specifically citing Ubisoft’s delisting announcement.
Ubisoft has faced numerous controversies over the past few years, from worker abuse and harassment allegations, to repeated delays of its new pirate game, “Skull & Bones,” to its much maligned push into the NFT market. After Ubisoft failed to hit its financial targets, CEO Yves Guillemot took a $327,000 pay cut, as reported by Axios.
Guillemot had also been blamed for “institutional harassment” in a complaint filed by two former Ubisoft employees and a French union in a French criminal court.
Consumers’ fears over the delisting of “Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD” hint at a broader concern: players don’t really own video games anymore. Physical copies of video games have been a niche market for years, and that market is shrinking. Digital distribution, meanwhile, offers many advantages over physical games to both consumers and distributors. Digital games can’t be destroyed, sold out or bogged down by physical production costs.
Academics want to preserve video games. Copyright laws make it complicated.
But purchasing a digital game also means you are only buying a discretionary license to play the game, not to own it. Archivists attempting to preserve old video games have been locked in copyright battles with publishers for years. From a consumer perspective, games are no longer a product. They’re a service you pay for indefinitely until the publisher decides to pull the plug.
Games can get delisted for reasons outside of a distributor’s control. For example, Remedy Entertainment announced in 2017 that its beloved thriller game “Alan Wake” would be delisted because the licenses for several songs used in the game were expiring.
Sometimes, simply offering games can become prohibitively expensive. Most digital games come packaged with a digital rights management system to protect against piracy and reverse engineering. DRM-protected games verify their authenticity by connecting to a server. Many games, even single-player ones, need a constant internet connection to run. If a game is very old, the publishers could lose money by reserving server space for a game that people barely buy or play anymore.
Some distributors such as GOG.com (a subsidiary of CD Projekt of Witcher and “Cyberpunk 2077” fame) solve this problem by selling games without any sort of DRM. However, these platforms are the exception — not the norm.
“The space and infrastructure required to host a huge library of games is something it looks like Ubisoft is running up against,” Adrienne Shaw, an associate professor at Temple University and founder of the LGBTQ Game Archive, told The Post. “All distribution companies have to consider that these days. For example, it’s not possible for Netflix to make all film and television from all over the world available simultaneously … There simply isn’t enough server space to manage and support that type of access.”
The Assassin’s Creed franchise follows a secret war between two ideologically-driven factions spanning all of human history. But despite the global nature of the conflict, most of the Assassin’s Creed games star European protagonists. “Assassin’s Creed: Liberation” is the only one that features a Black woman — the daughter of a prominent French merchant and an enslaved African woman — as the protagonist, making it an outlier not just for the franchise but in the broader industry’s offerings.
The cultural disparity in what media get preserved is something that media scholars have long considered, Shaw said.
“[Media studies scholar] Alfred Martin has pointed out that while VHS/DVD sets, copies and syndicated versions of a lot of white-cast sitcoms from prior to 2000 are easily accessible to scholars, Black-cast sitcoms are much harder to find,” Shaw said. “Early films by women directors were much less likely to be saved than those by male directors. And so yes, that [Ubisoft is] deciding to not support a game which is representationally interesting as ‘Assassin’s Creed Liberation’ is disappointing but not surprising per se.”
The unique value of “Assassin’s Creed: Liberation” as an important artifact in video game history hasn’t gone unnoticed. Social stealth — the ability to hide out in the open by blending into various crowds and public environments — is a hallmark of the Assassin’s Creed series. The hero of “Assassin’s Creed: Liberation,” Aveline de Granpré, is a fantastic example of a protagonist’s characterization synchronizing tightly with game design. Aveline is adroit at navigating through 18-century Louisiana by presenting herself as a high society business executive, adventurer or enslaved worker. Soraya Murray, an associate professor at UC Santa Cruz and author of “On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space,” delivered a presentation on precisely this, entitled “Three Faces of Aveline: an Intersectional Feminist Reading of Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation.”
“I get the technical reasons for the choice,” Shaw said, referring to Ubisoft delisting “Assassin’s Creed: Liberation” from Steam. “But we can still question how [publishers] decide what games they delist.” | 2022-07-13T15:03:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Assassin's Creed Liberation to stay accessible on Steam to owners, Ubisoft says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/13/assassins-creed-steam-delisting-ubisoft/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/07/13/assassins-creed-steam-delisting-ubisoft/ |
Protesters in Sri Lanka have poured onto the streets and taken over government buildings in recent days, demanding the resignation of the president and prime minister as an economic crisis grows more desperate.
got Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country early Wednesday, the day he said they would resign. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also pledged over the weekend to step down. But the promised resignations haven’t happened yet.
Meanwhile, protesters stormed the prime minister’s office in Colombo, the capital. Security forces fired tear gas at demonstrators before stepping aside to cheers from the crowd.
Police use tear gas as protesters storm the compound of prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office.
Security forces fire tear gas to disperse protesters as they try to enter the prime minister's office.
The dramatic scenes in Sri Lanka come after months of protests against the government’s handling of a dire economic crisis. Fuel shortages, skyrocketing food prices and growing hunger have made it increasingly difficult for many residents of the island nation to get by. Basic services have been impacted, the country defaulted on its foreign debt repayment and the prime minister told parliament recently that the economy has “completely collapsed.”
Sri Lankans have directed their ire at the powerful Rajapaksa family, which has dominated the political scene for nearly two decades and faces allegations of corruption and mismanaging the economy.
Demonstrators attend a protest outside the office of Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Military personnel in gas masks stand guard.
Police use tear gas as Sri Lankan protesters storm the compound.
Protesters took over the president’s residence on Saturday — splashing in the swimming pool, cooking in the kitchen and setting up an occupation of the elegant compound they said they would maintain until the country’s leaders leave their posts. They also stormed Wickremesinghe’s home over the weekend and set it on fire.
On Wednesday, protesters descended on the prime minister’s office. A crowd composed largely of university students climbed the walls and security towers of Wickremesinghe’s compound, chanting “Victory to the struggle!” when security forces fired tear gas. Protesters broke through metal fences and the front gate as security forces eventually stood aside.
A military helicopter flies low as protesters try to enter the prime minister's office.
Police use tear gas to disperse protesters.
ecurity forces fire tear gas to disperse protesters as they try to enter the prime minister's office.
Protesters help a security force member after he inhales tear gas.
Demonstrators carry an injured person during a clash in front of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe's office.
Police use tear gas.
Wickremesinghe, who was appointed acting president while Rajapaksa is out of the country, declared a state of emergency Wednesday and imposed a curfew in the western part of the country, an area that includes Colombo. He said he had asked the armed forces to restore order, raising the specter of increased violence. “We can’t allow people who want to override the constitution to occupy the offices and houses,” he said. “We have to protect the private citizens, too.”
Protesters storm the prime minister's office.
Protesters enter the building of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office.
Protesters storm the building.
Protesters react after storming the Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office.
Protesters react after storming Wickremesinghe's office.
A protester sits on a chair surrounded by others after storming the office.
Protesters lie on a bed after storming the office.
After protesters breached the prime minister’s office, volunteers worked to let people enter in an orderly fashion. Once inside, some distributed biscuit packets and booed army personnel.
Protesters celebrate.
Protesters celebrate after storming the prime minister's office.
Protesters celebrate. Thousands of protesters broke through police barricades and stormed into the prime minister's office.
Photo editing and production by Troy Witcher; Text by Claire Parker; Reportage by Niha Masih and Hafeel Farisz; Video editing by Jason Aldag | 2022-07-13T15:54:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The scene after protesters stormed the office of Sri Lanka’s prime minister - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/photos-sri-lanka-protesters-prime-minister-office/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2022/photos-sri-lanka-protesters-prime-minister-office/ |
‘Escape Academy’ is a delightfully frustrating co-op scramble
(Washington Post illustration; Coin Crew Games)
Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One
Developer: Coin Crew Games | Publisher: iam8bit, Skybound Games
Escape rooms are a gimmick. You’re not actually being held against your will by some kind of Willy Wonka-esque Bond villain; you’re paying to pretend to be locked in a room with your friends, to scratch your head over puzzles and enjoy the scramble and inherent silliness of trying to find a way out. “Escape Academy” understands this — and embraces it wholeheartedly. It’s a fun co-op experience that accurately captures both the frustration and giddy satisfaction of real-life escape rooms, and with a runtime of four or five hours, it manages not to overstay its welcome.
You begin the game in what appears to be a normal (if pretty janky) escape room that’s revealed to be a covert front for the Escape Academy, a school where students train to become masters of escape room puzzles. As its newest recruit, you work to earn badges by breaking out of the school’s escape rooms, securing your freedom and — more often than not — your continued survival. The faculty is fiercely committed to cultivating its students’ skill sets, and burning buildings and ticking time bombs are compelling motivators.
Just like in real escape rooms, you’ll comb through the play area looking for clues and using what you find to solve puzzles. Each stage involves a series of interlocking puzzles; maybe you notice some kind of cipher on the wall, but the key to decoding it is behind a locked door, and so on and so forth. Whenever you successfully crack a puzzle, a satisfying synthy jingle plays to indicate you’re on the right track.
At the start of one stage, for example, I needed to find the class pet rat (which, yes, you can pet) to charge a generator with its running wheel to turn the power back on. I spotted a snack machine with a single doughnut I could use to coax the little dude out of hiding. But first I had to find the coins to buy it, and of course it isn’t a normal snack machine but a snack-doku machine, so the item number that I need to tap in to buy the doughnut is the solution to a sudoku puzzle. That’s just the first stage, though. With the power back on, I can finally try to hack into the computers that unlock the next phase of the puzzle.
GeoGuessr is the hottest game on TikTok, and it's about using Google Maps
The gameplay loop gets a little repetitive, but that predictability doesn’t stop you from feeling like a genius when you’ve finally cracked a difficult cipher and all the pieces start to fall into place. The game also throws in a couple of interesting twists by incorporating items you find throughout the level. For instance, after finding a fire extinguisher, it may immediately come to mind to use it on a burning plate in the microwave, but not necessarily on a lit chimney place several puzzles later. You’ll have to keep your whole tool kit in mind to make it out quickly and safely.
The bulk of the solutions come from deciphering codes, which felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to incorporate the player’s surroundings into the puzzle-solving process, and they only get more dense as the game goes on. At one point after figuring out the key to getting into a locked van, I groaned out loud when I saw a periodic table of elements on the wall, realizing that it was part of the next puzzle. (In that same stage, a Russian-English dictionary later came into play.) Some of the later puzzles work in more physicality and spatial manipulation, particularly the final level, which is reminiscent of “Portal” in how players must use the components of the puzzle itself in unexpected ways to their own advantage. It’s something I would have loved to see more of throughout the game rather than just in its final act.
While it has a single-player mode, “Escape Academy” is best enjoyed as a co-op adventure, either through online multiplayer or good old-fashioned split-screen. The design of each puzzle incentivizes you to collaborate and share your findings. In one instance, my husband and I needed to solve a logic puzzle to fix a breaker box. Clues were posted on signs around the room, so while he walked over and read them aloud, I stayed at the breaker box and used that information to figure out the correct sequence.
My favorite stage of all involved directing a crew on a rescue mission, using hacked video feeds, blueprints and radio communications to instruct them where to go. It required frequently cross-referencing computer screens, navigational charts and other documents — all of which was much easier with two pairs of eyes.
The best couch co-op games to play with friends
“Escape Academy” reminded both of us of another co-op game, “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes,” in that there was never really a time when we weren’t communicating. One of us would find a piece of the puzzle that unlocked a flash of realization in the other — a frantic back-and-forth that felt more exciting than stressful. After each stage is a puzzle review, walking you through the steps and the time it took you to solve each one, which we often used as an opportunity to better explain our reasoning behind the rushed instructions we blabbered out after we got caught up in the high of an epiphany.
“Escape Academy” uses simple point-and-click controls, making it approachable to a broad audience — though the few mechanics it employs to assist players with puzzle-solving aren’t always the most helpful. There’s a hint option if you get stuck that recharges after each use, but nine times out of 10 the hint would tell us information we had already figured out, like pointing out the location of a clue while were struggling to decipher its meaning. Certain documents can be pinned to your screen as a helpful reference, which sometimes turned into a hindrance when it obscured the very puzzle it was meant to help you solve.
Once you finish the main campaign, there’s not much replay value since the puzzles remain unchanged, but what’s there is a charming experience. The Escape Academy staff are memorable, and they’re rendered in cutscenes in a gorgeously detailed art style in the same vein as “Hades.” Your dorm room fills up with knickknacks to reflect the puzzles you’ve solved and choices you’ve made (after getting an achievement for chatting up a lot of people, a book titled “How not to have an awkward conversation” appeared in my dresser drawer). Poking around a level and interacting with objects that aren’t part of the puzzle almost always reveals silly descriptions and at least a pun or two.
Puzzle games have to manage a delicate balancing act: If solutions are too simple, players lose interest; too difficult, and they feel cheated, like the answer was never decipherable to begin with. “Escape Academy” was opaque at times, but the answer always felt like it was within my grasp, if I just tried out this one idea, or thought about the puzzle from this other angle. Giving players that sense of empowerment is hard, and games don’t always get it right. But “Escape Academy” walks that tightrope with finesse, joining the pantheon of frantic-but-fun co-op greats. | 2022-07-13T16:24:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Escape Academy review: A co-op escape room hit that's frantic-but-fun - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/escape-academy-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/escape-academy-review/ |
“We’ve all seen those little cards in the bathrooms in guest rooms suggesting that you may decline to have housekeeping provide clean towels,” says Joshua Zinder of the JZA+D design firm. “ … This is a cost-saving strategy with little impact on the environment.” (iStock)
Greenwashing — when a company says it is environmentally conscious for marketing purposes but isn’t making any notable sustainability efforts — is rampant in the travel industry. Many travel companies relaxed their sustainability efforts during the pandemic, adding sanitizing programs that increased the use of disposable or non-recyclable materials. Even today, everything seems to be wrapped in plastic.
Or consider the recent announcement that IHG Hotels & Resorts would work with Unilever to replace mini-toiletries with bulk amenities in more than 4,000 hotels. It’s a key step in the hotel chain’s pledge to eliminate single-use items throughout guests’ stays by 2030, according to the company. | 2022-07-13T16:29:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to spot greenwashing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/13/greenwashing-hotels-airlines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/07/13/greenwashing-hotels-airlines/ |
This image provided courtesy of Massport, shows Rowdy the Cat, after being captured on Wednesday July 13, 2022, at Logan Airport in Boston. The cat has been dodging airport and airline personnel as well as animal experts since escaping from a pet carrier at Boston’s Logan International Airport about three weeks ago. Patty Nolet Sahli posted on Facebook that the 4-year-old black female cat looks great and the family can’t wait to be reunited. The family was returning to the U.S. after a deployment to Germany with the Army when Rowdy escaped her cage upon landing. (Courtesy of Massport via AP) (Uncredited/Courtesy of Massport) | 2022-07-13T16:34:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cat on the lam: Pet caught after weeks on the run at airport - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/cat-on-the-lam-pet-caught-after-weeks-on-the-run-at-airport/2022/07/13/6f8dfb2c-02c1-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/cat-on-the-lam-pet-caught-after-weeks-on-the-run-at-airport/2022/07/13/6f8dfb2c-02c1-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Dissatisfied with government? Well, federal workers are pretty unhappy, too.
FBI employees and guests attend the installation ceremony for FBI Director Christopher A. Wray at the bureau's headquarters on Sept. 28, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
In the aftermath of the pandemic and their required return to the office, federal employees are more dissatisfied than ever with their jobs, according to the annual survey published by the Partnership for Public Service in conjunction with the Boston Consulting Group.
“The 2021 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government employee engagement and satisfaction score is 64.5 out of 100, representing a 4.5-point decrease from 2020,” the Partnership wrote in a statement. “The sizable drop in employee engagement and satisfaction came during President Joe Biden’s first year in office, during which the administration saw only 55% of its nominations requiring Senate confirmation fully confirmed.”
The numbers cannot be explained by overall dissatisfaction in the American workplace. The Partnership noted that “data provided by employee research firm Mercer found the 2021 private sector employee engagement and satisfaction score to be 79.1 out of 100 among its client survey participants, 14.6 points higher than the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government index.”
One might have expected that, following the departure of a know-nothing president hostile to government and the arrival of a president with more government experience than any chief executive in recent memory, there would be an uptick in satisfaction among government workers. After all, Biden showered federal workers with praise upon taking office and reversed anti-civil-service policies that his predecessor instituted. But more fundamental problems are at work here that cannot be cured with a president who appreciates federal workers.
As a preliminary matter, Americans should understand that the federal government cannot serve the public without motivated employees willing to remain in government. Accumulated experience and institutional knowledge are valuable commodities that are lost with employee churn. Given that the workforce is already aging, it should be particularly concerning that, as the Partnership noted, federal workers “aged 30 to 39 had the lowest employee engagement and satisfaction score of any age group.” Unless the federal government can attract and retain high-skilled workers, performance will deteriorate and the quality of government services will decline.
There is no single explanation for the decline in government employee satisfaction. Uncertainly about returning to the office post-covid accounts for part of the problem. But the extraordinary number of political appointees plays a role as well. The Senate is unable to promptly confirm these nominees, leaving gaping holes in the leadership of departments and agencies.
Another significant factor in employee dissatisfaction is pay. A 5.8-point drop in satisfaction with pay was the largest decline since 2020 among all factors measured (e.g., work-life balance, leadership), no doubt a function of the minimal 1 percent pay increase. The report found that pay and lack of innovation “were the only workplace categories where scores dropped at large, midsize, and small agencies.”
At bottom, employee satisfaction requires responsive, competent leaders who focus not simply on the policy initiatives but on the management of their own workforce. The survey found that workers gave effective leadership a score of 68 out of 100. They also gave “higher scores for effective leadership at the small and midsize agencies than they did for those at the large agencies.” Improving internal communication, empowering lower-level employees and increasing levels of “interpersonal trust” are critical to improving these scores.
Moreover, when employees don’t believe their good performance matters, satisfaction plummets. This year’s survey found that the score for employee’s belief that “their good work through awards and advancement stood at just 59.8, down slightly from 2020.”
Ultimately, leaders need to be held accountable for their performance as managers. If the president truly prioritizes federal employees, he would press his administration to identify the worst workplaces and require the department or agency head to devise a plan for improvement. Unless and until department and agency heads understand that their tenure depends in part on their employees’ satisfaction, improvement is unlikely.
Looking at the scores for the largest agencies and departments, the three worst-rated workplaces are the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the Social Security Administration. Among those, the Justice Department saw an eight-point drop, one of the largest of any entity in this category. That seems like the perfect place to start addressing employee satisfaction. | 2022-07-13T16:34:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Dissatisfied with government? Well, federal workers are pretty unhappy, too. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/federal-employees-unsatisfied-government-workplace-survey/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/federal-employees-unsatisfied-government-workplace-survey/ |
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in Alexandria on Feb. 3. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
There are those moments in Virginia politics that, in real time, don’t look as important as they really are for individual politicians, political parties and the wider ambitions of both.
We got a couple of those moments in the past week, both coming from Virginia Republicans, both centered on what the GOP will do to limit abortion in the commonwealth and whether it was possible or permissible to compromise with Democrats to get something done.
The first moment came last Saturday, when 5th District Republican Rep. Bob Good led a pro-life rally on the state capital grounds. Good’s message was clear as crystal, as reported by WTVR:
“Republicans should not be negotiating the timeline on when abortion should be permitted or when abortion is OK or when it’s OK to take life in the womb,” Good said. “Republicans ought to stand openly, boldly, and unashamedly for life from conception and to protect all life in the womb.”
It was a warning to Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and the four state legislators he charged with drafting an abortion bill that bans abortion, with some exceptions, after 15 weeks — or 20 weeks, if that’s what it takes to get something through the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Youngkin expanded on the compromise idea during his Sunday appearance on Face the Nation, giving us our second consequential moment:
“The reality is that as a pro-life governor in a state like Virginia where I have a Senate that’s controlled by Democrats and a House that’s controlled by Republicans, we have to find a way to get things done.”
In other words, a compromise — whatever it takes to get self-described pro-life Del. Joseph D. Morrissey (D-Richmond) to break ranks and give the tiebreaking Senate vote on new restrictions to the chamber’s presiding officer, pro-life Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R).
It would be easy to dismiss the chances of Good and those in his ideological corner getting their views enacted in a state that still has deep purple hallmarks. It might even be difficult to get every Republican to vote for an absolute abortion ban.
But dismissing Good & Co. entirely misunderstands where a fair portion of the Republican base is on abortion. They will settle for nothing less than a complete ban — even if it means turning against Republican lawmakers who know the votes just aren’t there to pass such a bill.
And yes: That means the antiabortion maximalists would turn against Youngkin, too — if necessary. He knows it, too, which helps explain Youngkin’s earlier comments to the Family Foundation, as reported by The Post’s Laura Vozzella:
“My goal is that we, in fact, get a bill to sign. It won’t be the bill that we all want,” he said, going on to note that he believes “life begins at inception” — a slip of the tongue, according to a Youngkin spokesman, who said the governor meant to say “conception.”
That’s a politician working to prevent a split that could damage more than just a restriction bill’s passage. It’s a pol trying to give cover to Republican lawmakers and his own future political ambitions.
Youngkin’s real worry, and Job No. 1 for his four-member bill-writing team, isn’t winning Joe Morrissey’s favor. That’s all just politics.
The biggest challenge has always been how to handle the like of Bob Good, whose viewpoint is gaining traction in Virginia GOP circles.
Consider: Good’s discharge petition on his bill to extend “equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person” is starting to get more signatures. Though it’s still a long way from the majority needed to put the bill to a floor vote, there were a couple of Virginia Republicans in the mix: Ben Cline and Rob Wittman. | 2022-07-13T16:34:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Youngkin’s biggest problem on abortion isn’t Democrats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/youngkins-biggest-problem-abortion-isnt-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/youngkins-biggest-problem-abortion-isnt-democrats/ |
So what coups might John Bolton have been involved in, exactly?
Then-National Security Adviser John Bolton speaks at a news briefing on Oct. 3, 2018, at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Tuesday’s hearing held by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol led to a remarkable admission: A member of President Donald Trump’s senior team confessed to having plotted a coup.
But not the attempted coup that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, and not a member of Trump’s team at that point.
The admission came from former national security adviser John Bolton, and it came with the caveat that the coups he’d planned were targeted at foreign countries.
Bolton made the surprising claim during an interview Tuesday with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Bolton was fired by Trump in late 2019, just before the country learned of the president’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into announcing a probe of Joe Biden. Since he left Trump’s team, Bolton has been a fervent critic of his former boss and vice versa.
In the interview, Bolton objected to the idea that the events of Jan. 6 were part of “a carefully planned coup d’etat aimed at the Constitution.” His reasoning was personal: Trump was simply too much of a mess to construct anything that organized.
Tapper disagreed, saying that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”
Then, Bolton’s admission.
“I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat, not here, but other places, it takes a lot of work,” Bolton said. “And that’s not what he did.”
We can set aside the idea that Trump “didn’t do a lot of work” as he tried to retain power after losing the 2020 election. This is subjective, certainly, though one could make a robust case that Trump invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into doing precisely that. Let’s instead just consider what Bolton is blithely copping to here: helping to try to overthrow foreign leaders. He made the admission, it seems, largely so that he could contrast his own brilliance with Trump’s dopery, but he made the admission nonetheless.
Tapper, of course, had a follow-up question. It ran along the lines of: Uh, where?
“I wrote about Venezuela in the book, and it turned out not to be successful,” Bolton said. “Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to overturn an illegally elected president.”
“I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me,” Tapper replied.
“I’m sure there is,” Bolton said.
So let’s assume that there is “other stuff,” no matter how useful it is to Bolton’s public presentation that he be seen as a powerful behind-the-scenes actor. When and where might Bolton have had his fingers in foreign coup events?
The Cline Center at the University of Illinois tracks coup attempts (including one in the United States on Jan. 6, 2021). Since Bolton joined the government under the Reagan administration in 1982, there have been more than 350 coup attempts around the world, nearly 150 of them successful. That includes events (like Jan. 6) that one might not think of as a coup — like the U.S.-led toppling of the government in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Of those 350-plus coups, 191 occurred when Bolton held a position with the U.S. government. (We will assume that Bolton was not involved in attempted coups while outside government service, though, of course, who knows.) That figure, however, includes coups that occurred when Bolton was serving in positions that one might assume were less coup-adjacent, like serving as an assistant administration of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or serving as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department. There were 131 coups internationally that occurred when Bolton served in the State Department, as U.N. ambassador or as Trump’s national security adviser — the tenure during which the Venezuela coup unfolded. (I asked Bolton’s super PAC for comment and will update this article when I receive one.)
The overlap between coups and Bolton’s service is shown below.
You’ll notice I highlighted several, including both the Afghanistan invasion and the attempts in Venezuela. I did not pick out any coups that occurred while Bolton was with Justice or USAID, assuming that his involvement in any government-led nefariousness would have been limited.
Then Bolton joined State. In October 1989, there was an attempt to oust Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega. He was removed from power following an American invasion that December. In 1992, a coup in Afghanistan similarly led to the ouster of the country’s leader, a longtime ally of the Soviet Union. There were also coup attempts in a number of other countries while Bolton served under President George H.W. Bush, including the Philippines, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh and Romania, ousting general secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Bolton returned to government under Bush’s son, George W. Bush. Besides the invasion of Afghanistan, perhaps the most significant coup tracked by the Cline Center’s Coup D'état Project was the March 2004 removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti. Aristide blamed American actors for the coup. But other countries saw similar attempts, including the November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia that ousted the country’s Soviet-allied leader Eduard Shevardnadze.
In 2018, Bolton became Trump’s third national security adviser. It was during this period that rebels attempted more than once to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power, unsuccessfully. Bolton’s attempt to distance himself from the planning of those efforts — “I saw what it took” to effect an overthrow — does little to diminish American involvement.
This, again, was the only coup to which Bolton admitted involvement, despite his telling Tapper that he had helped plan similar insurrections. Perhaps he was chuffing himself up at Trump’s expense, casting himself as a brilliant strategist who’d deigned to work for the fumbling Trump. Or perhaps one of those other 131 coup attempts that occurred while Bolton served in government bore, however faintly, his fingerprints. | 2022-07-13T16:34:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | So what coups might John Bolton have been involved in, exactly? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/so-what-coups-might-john-bolton-have-been-involved-exactly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/so-what-coups-might-john-bolton-have-been-involved-exactly/ |
FILE - New Jersey Devils’ Pavel Zacha is shown during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Detroit Red Wings in Newark, N.J., Friday, April 29, 2022. The New Jersey Devils swapped forwards with the Boston Bruins, trading winger Pavel Zacha for center Erik Haula in a trade completed less than an hour before the NHL’s free agency period opened on Wednesday, July 13, 2022.(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) | 2022-07-13T16:35:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Devils deal Zacha to Bruins as NHL free agency set to open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/devils-deal-zacha-to-bruins-as-nhl-free-agency-set-to-open/2022/07/13/688dabe2-02c6-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/devils-deal-zacha-to-bruins-as-nhl-free-agency-set-to-open/2022/07/13/688dabe2-02c6-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Attorney General for England and Wales Suella Braverman gets applause at a political event in London on July 11. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
LONDON — In the race to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, and thereafter the next British prime minister, there is a Rishi, Suella and Kemi — running against a Tom, Penny and Liz — to replace a Boris.
The Tory contestants for leadership are the most ethnically diverse in British history — though not so much in ideology.
It is a topic of pride — and some boasting — from center-right Conservative leaders, who seem almost giddy that their field is more diverse than previous contests for top spots within the opposition Labour Party, a movement of the center-left, which seeks to represent minorities in Britain. It is also far more diverse than the last Tory leadership contest, won by Johnson in 2019. Of the 10 candidates to begin that race, nine were white.
This year’s multicultural field is a topic of conversation and commentary. But it is not the dominant one. Taxes and cost-of-living are, which is also remarkable. People care. But this now seems normal.
Whether Britain is evolving into a “post-racial” country, or whether it remains mired in systemic racism and colonialist attitudes, remains a subject of debate here, with evidence for both sides.
But the diversity of candidates to replace outgoing Boris Johnson is a thing.
The candidates running to be the next U.K. prime minister
Making her pitch to Conservative activists and lawmakers, Suella Braverman said: “Don’t vote for me because I’m a woman. Don’t vote for me because I’m brown. Vote for me because I love this country and would do anything for it.”
Braverman, who serves as Attorney General for England and Wales, was born in London, to parents of Indian origin who emigrated to Britain in the 1960s from Kenya and Mauritius.
British demographers use a kind of clumsy term to describe nonwhites in Britain — BAME, for “Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic,” a catch-all that has come under considerable criticism.
The United Kingdom’s population is predominantly White British (82 percent), with the second and third largest racial groups Asian British (7 percent) and Black British (3 percent).
In terms of BAME, the four of eight candidates who began the leadership contest on Wednesday were Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and Nadhim Zahawi. When the first-round votes were counted, Sunak had come out on top and Zahawi had been knocked out, along with Jeremy Hunt, who ran and lost to Johnson in 2019.
Two other prominent Tories — Home Secretary Priti Patel and former health secretary Sajid Javid — decided last-minute not to run.
Those who began the race are squarely Conservative, maybe even more so — though they differ on tax cuts and social spending, and some play more to cultural hot-button topics.
Announcing her bid on ITV, Braverman said she wanted to cut taxes, cut public spending, stop migrants illegally crossing the English Channel in dangerous rafts and also “get rid of all this woke rubbish.” Sunak also criticized “clumsy, gender neutral language.” At her launch, supporters for Badenoch, saw unisex toilet signs replaced by signs for “men” and “ladies.”
This diverse field of candidates today did not happen by accident, but design.
It began in 2005, with the election of David Cameron as Conservative Party leader, after a general election drubbing by Labour. At the time, Conservatives had only two minority lawmakers in Parliament.
“Cameron was the modernizing leader of the Conservatives, a party then seen as traditionalist and hidebound. He was young, still in his 30s. Essentially, he argued that the Tories needed to change their sales force,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
Bale said Cameron understood that many immigrants and their adult children were good targets for the party: They operated small businesses and were family-oriented, suspicious of government and resistant to high taxes.
Cameron won his leader election with a speech to his party activists that called for a “switch to a whole new generation.” He said he wanted Conservatives to feel “good about themselves” again.
So Cameron pushed his party’s local associations to find and promote younger, more diverse candidates to stand for parliamentary seats in secure Conservative Party constituencies.
Today’s leadership contestants include Badenoch, elected in 2017 to the Saffron Walden constituency, which Bale described as “old Tory and whiter than white,” considered “a safe seat” for Tories since 1922.
When launching her leadership campaign, Badenoch condemned the Johnson government’s commitment to “net zero,” a promise to slash carbon emissions over coming decades to reduce future climate change, as “unilateral economic disarmament.”
Badenoch was born in London, to parents of Nigerian origin and spent most of her childhood in Lagos and the United States.
Tanya Gold, a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, wrote that the Conservative Party’s ethnic diversity might be “confusing and irritating for some Leftists, who think these people should be Leftists because anything else is mad.”
Conservatives note that they — and not Labour — were the first party to see a woman, Margaret Thatcher, as prime minister, and then to promote another to the highest office, Theresa May.
Johnson continued the diversity push, appointing what he called “a cabinet for modern Britain.” The Economist noted, “Boris Johnson is such a vivid embodiment of white privilege that it is easy to forget how diverse his cabinet is.”
Politics being politics, two of those diverse cabinet ministers — Rishi Sunak and Javid Sunak — initiated the government exodus last week, which led to Johnson’s resignation announcement.
Sunak, the former chancellor and finance minister, was born in Southhampton, England to parents of Indian origin who had emigrated from East Africa. Sunak went to some of the most elite, most expensive schools in Britain, including Oxford. He is married to British-Indian fashion designer Akshata Murty, a billionaire daughter of the founder of the Indian IT company Infosys. The couple were the subject of recent mini-scandal that revealed that Murty was filing as a “non-domiciled” resident of the U.K., meaning she was not paying British taxes on almost all of her phenomenal wealth.
Right now, Sunak is a top contender to replace his former boss. | 2022-07-13T16:46:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The diverse race to be U.K. prime minister, with Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/uk-prime-minister-sunak-braverman-badenoch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/uk-prime-minister-sunak-braverman-badenoch/ |
Trump supporter charged after faking politically motivated arson at own home
A Minnesota man was charged with wire fraud after he staged a politically motivated arson event at his home that, he falsely claimed, was because he supported Donald Trump, according to prosecutors. (Screenshot via YouTube/WCCO)
Prosecutors allege that Molla filed a claim with his insurance company for more than $300,000 and received about $61,000. He later accused his insurance company of “defrauding him.” Molla also used donations from his “Patriots for the Mollas” GoFundMe account for a deposit of more than $17,000 into his personal bank account, according to charging documents.
Shortly after the incident, Molla and his wife, Deana, had told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that they, along with their 2-year-old son and 5-month-old daughter, were asleep in the house when the camper was set ablaze. He had initially reported to authorities that someone set his camper on fire, and told local media he had seen three people running from his home.
Molla, of Brooklyn Center, Minn., was released from custody without bail based on a promise that he would appear in court, according to court documents. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday.
If he is indicted on one of the federal wire fraud charges, Molla could face a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
The announcement of the charges came the same day that the Jan. 6 committee held another hearing in which it attempted to tie former president Donald Trump to the most violent extremists leading the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The committee again pressed its argument that Trump knew what he was doing and should be held responsible. On Tuesday, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) argued that Trump was, at the very least, “willfully blind” to the fact that his own advisers were telling him that he had lost the election to Joe Biden.
“President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child,” Cheney said. “Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. … Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by arguing he is willfully blind.”
First responders arrived at the home in Brooklyn Center just after 3 a.m. on Sept. 23, 2020. The fire from the camper ended up burning down the detached garage, totaling three vehicles and inflicting minor damage on the home. Police said at the time that first responders helped retrieve three dogs and four puppies from the home, according to the Star Tribune.
“I heard just a big, loud boom, or a bang,” Molla told WCCO at the time. He said he recalled thinking, “What’s going on?”
The family told the CBS affiliate in 2020 that Molla, a contractor, got the flag about a week after he had a workplace dispute over his support of Trump. Molla, who claimed at the time that people had driven by the house slowly when he had the Trump flag up, told KARE last year that he saw three “figures” in his yard the night of the fire, and claimed that one of those people dropped a matchbox as he chased them away.
“Our family’s safe, that’s the main thing,” he told WCCO hours after the incident. “All this is material, it’s all material. It’s not as important as our family.”
That didn’t stop Molla from filing hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance claims, according to prosecutors. When his insurance company rejected some of his claims, Molla claimed he was being defrauded, and he threatened to report the alleged bad practice to the Minnesota Department of Commerce and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D).
Molla’s case gained national attention. Two GoFundMe fundraisers in support of Molla were up for nearly two years. (They appeared to have been taken down Wednesday.) The story was promoted by conservative and right-leaning media, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“This is a message being sent by the far left, and I think people are beginning to see that arsonist behavior, looting, even murder — none of it is off the table,” Ingraham said at the time.
Yet an investigation conducted by the FBI and the Brooklyn Center Police Department found that Molla, and not a person or group of people, was responsible for the arson and vandalism, authorities said.
It’s not the first time a Trump supporter has staged a fake incident and pinned it on someone else. In 2017, Stephen Marks admitted to spray-painting playground equipment at a Hartford elementary school in an effort to frame liberals and Democrats. Marks, who wrote phrases such as “Kill Trump,” “Left is the best,” “Bernie Sanders 2020” and “Death to Trump,” was charged with third-degree criminal mischief and breach of peace, and he was ordered to stay away from the school, the Hartford Courant reported at the time.
Amber Phillips contributed to this report. | 2022-07-13T17:21:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump fan Denis Molla charged after faking politically motivated arson - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/trump-supporter-arson-charges-molla/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/trump-supporter-arson-charges-molla/ |
‘Both Sides of the Blade’ fails to cut through French baloney
The incomparable Juliette Binoche plays a woman torn between two lovers in an implausible drama from French filmmaker Claire Denis
Vincent Lindon, left, and Juliette Binoche in “Both Sides of the Blade.” (Curiosa Films/IFC Films)
StarSolidStarHalfStarOutlineStarOutline(1.5 stars)
I really wanted to like “Both Sides of the Blade.” And believe me: For a little while, I did. The latest film from French filmmaker Claire Denis — whose résumé can be hit (“Beau Travail”) or miss (“High Life”) — revolves around a straightforward love triangle. Sara (the incomparable Juliette Binoche) is a radio journalist who lives in Paris with Jean (Vincent Lindon), an ex-con who is struggling to get back on his feet. After a decade together, they are still madly in love. How do we know this? From the wordless opening montage, in which the camera of cinematographer Eric Gautier swirls, intoxicatedly, around Sara and Jean as they splash and swim and kiss and canoodle in the impossibly crystal-clear waters of an otherwise empty beach.
The whole thing looks like an ad for cologne.
When they return from vacation to reality, Sara’s former lover and Jean’s best friend, François (Grégoire Colin), suddenly shows up, offering Jean a job at the sports management agency he’s starting — and Sara an opportunity to pick things up where they left off when he dumped her 10 years ago and disappeared. “When you love someone, it never really goes away,” she says.
Oh, really? Maybe in the 16th arrondissement, it doesn’t.
The emotional and sexual complications of the ensuing story, adapted by Denis and Christine Angot from Angot’s novel “Un Tournant de la Vie,” are intriguing and occasionally defy cliche. The acting across the board is impeccable and visceral, with Gautier often seeming to insert his lens, uncomfortably, into the middle of an argument or a bedroom tryst.
But “Both Sides of the Blade” can also feel like it’s not set in the real world. To be sure, the reality of the pandemic helps ground the film (as well as serving as a central metaphor for something infectious and unavoidable). Nearly everyone wears masks, as the film was shot during Parisian lockdowns and other restrictions. And conversations about racial inequity simmer, with a real-life awkwardness, in subplots: in an interview Sara conducts, and in a conversation Jean has with his mixed-race teenage son from a previous marriage (Issa Perica), who has been expelled from school.
“A film is like a house,” Denis says in an interview accompanying the movie’s press material. But “Blade” too often feels like, well, a house of cards, more interested in driving a metaphor home than verisimilitude. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a scene, late in the film, in which a character — otherwise highly accomplished and savvy — drops a cellphone into a full bathtub, accidentally deleting all its data: phone numbers, addresses, texts, emails, photos. There’s nothing that can be done, according to the tech-support guy at the phone store, who, inexplicably — and, frankly, implausibly — never once inquires about whether the phone has been backed up, in an effort, I suppose, to make a point about memory and loss and starting over and the inability to hold onto things we cherish and love.
All of which made me want to scream out loud at the screen, “Dear god in heaven, has no one in this movie ever heard of the cloud?”
Unrated. At the AFI Silver. Contains coarse language, nudity, sex, sensuality and smoking. In French with subtitles. 116 minutes. | 2022-07-13T17:25:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Both Sides of the Blade' fails to cut though French baloney - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/13/both-sides-of-the-blade-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/07/13/both-sides-of-the-blade-movie-review/ |
A natural gas platform off the coast of Fort Morgan, Ala., in 2007. (Rob Carr/AP)
President Biden’s proposed program for offshore drilling leases, released this month, was immediately met with heated criticism. Industry groups suggested it would further drive up oil prices, which increased sharply after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Environmentalists characterized it as a setback to climate action, contrasting it with Mr. Biden’s campaign pledge to end fossil fuel leasing on federal lands for good.
In reality, neither argument is convincing. The Biden administration’s proposal — which opens the door to up to 11 potential lease sales, 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and one off the coast of Alaska — would have little impact on current energy prices. It would take between five and 10 years to produce oil after a new offshore lease issuance, according to the Interior Department, while more than three-quarters of already-leased offshore federal waters are not in production.
The Post's View: Biden’s new drilling plan isn’t the end for the climate
At the same time, environmental groups claiming the proposal undermines Mr. Biden’s climate commitments overstate the degree to which this poses a threat to U.S. and global climate goals. It scales back the Trump administration’s draft plan to open 47 lease sales across every coastal area in the country and bans exploration on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Moreover, offshore drilling in federal waters makes up a fraction of fossil-fuel production.
The proposed program, which will now open to public comment for 90 days, leaves open the possibility of holding no lease sales at all. This would be unwise. The world must urgently transition away from fossil fuels, or it risks the increasingly catastrophic impacts of climate change. But as that transition is underway, people will still need to consume some oil and gas. Ending new leases today would not slash U.S. consumption of fossil fuels; it would, however, transfer the risk of producing them to other countries, including those that have fewer regulations in place to protect oceans, wildlife and people.
A better approach would be to target the demand for dirty energy by placing a price on polluting fuels that reflects their social and environmental costs. For offshore drilling, this could start with increasing royalty rates, which have been set at 18.75 percent for most leases since the George W. Bush administration. An analysis by Brian C. Prest of Resources for the Future, an independent research nonprofit, suggests that raising this rate to 25 percent for all federal leases would not result in a major increase in oil prices but would raise billions of dollars in federal revenue.
While Mr. Biden’s offshore drilling proposal is a convenient target for ire, there are far more consequential policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and transition to a greener economy. We have long advocated for a carbon tax, which offers the most efficient way to drastically cut emissions. Beyond that, the administration should focus on making cleaner fuel and greener products more affordable and available, investing in research and innovation and boosting efficiency programs. A deal with some of these elements is still on the table, as Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats continue negotiations.
Ultimately, those policies are what will make or break Mr. Biden’s climate agenda. | 2022-07-13T17:47:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden’s offshore drilling plan won’t make or break his climate agenda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/biden-offshore-drilling-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/biden-offshore-drilling-climate-change/ |
Saudi troops salute a screen displaying images of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his father, King Salman, on July 3. (Amr Nabil/AP)
When Air Force One lands in the coastal city of Jiddah this week, President Biden will set foot in one of the most dangerous places in the world for LGBTQ people: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
How homophobic? Last month, when Biden signed his executive order advancing LGBTQ equality and announced that the State Department would allow U.S. embassies and diplomatic outposts to fly the pride flag on the same flagpole as the U.S. flag, the Saudi government launched a crackdown on LGBTQ expression everywhere in the kingdom.
The Saudis went so far as to ban nearly anything bearing rainbow colors. The threat? The colors, they said, might evoke the pride flag and thus promote homosexuality in children.
Don’t think for one second that displays of anti-gay hatred in Saudi Arabia come at the instigation of a group of rogue religious extremists that gets in its licks while an enlightened Saudi leadership, focused on heady affairs of state, isn’t looking.
It was the Saudi Commerce Ministry, which is under the thumb of King Salman and the country’s 36-year-old de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that posted a Twitter video showing its officials combing through stores, bags and backpacks for items bearing rainbow colors.
Official bigotry didn’t stop with Twitter messaging, either.
The government also arranged for a reporter at a state-owned television channel to trail government workers through Riyadh as they confiscated offending materials. In a voice-over, a government employee is heard stating that the regime is focused on any item that “indirectly promotes homosexuality” and turns toys into “nothing but poisoned messages that target the innocence of children.”
The Saudis have been going to great expense to portray their oil-rich desert kingdom as a modernized, business-friendly bastion of reform in the Middle East. They indeed have loosened a bit of their tight grip on women, who may now drive cars. But discriminatory treatment of women is baked into Saudi culture, as is the suppression of religious expression except for Islam. And in few places on Earth will you find more clerically sanctioned hatred of homosexuality. Grand Mufti Sheik Abdulaziz bin Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority, has declared consensual same-sex sexual conduct to be “one of the most heinous crimes,” adding that gay people are a “disgrace and shameful in this world and the hereafter.”
The president is headed to the kingdom with all that as a backdrop — and with the brutal murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi laid at the crown prince’s feet. Biden spelled out why he’s going to Saudi Arabia in a Post op-ed. Establishing “a more stable and integrated Middle East” and “normalization between Israel and the Arab world” are his twin goals. If he can come away from Saudi Arabia with Israel locked in securely with its Arab neighbors, with an ensured supply of Middle East energy resources to the United States and the West, and with a firm blockade against China’s economic incursion, then Biden may well consider the trip time well spent — notwithstanding the heat he’s taking for turning a blind eye to Saudi human rights transgressions.
Post publisher Fred Ryan, in response to Biden’s trip, has explained clearly and quite bluntly what is wrong with the foray at this time and under these circumstances.
Fred Ryan: Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia erodes our moral authority
Over the years, I have had my say about Saudi Arabia, which I continue to keep tabs on since traveling there as a banker in the ’80s.
Today I’m fixed on those moments when Biden will be on Saudi soil.
“No one should face discrimination because of who they are or whom they love,” the White House said during Pride Month. Biden took credit for having “championed the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans and people around the world” since taking office.
Biden has a chance to let leaders from across the Middle East know in no uncertain terms where the United States stands. The Jiddah summit will include members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates), Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.
In laying out his vision for the region, Biden should use that platform to call for a Saudi kingdom and Middle East that promote and protect — not trample and destroy — the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. He should announce for all the world to hear that a strategic partnership with the United States also rests upon recognition of fundamental human rights, including respect and dignity for all people to live without fear no matter who they are, where they live or whom they love.
Change the minds of those who deride the Saudi visit? Maybe not. But to go to Saudi Arabia and, in the end, fail to speak out on human rights publicly and forcefully would also be a disgrace. | 2022-07-13T17:47:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | LGBTQ people need a voice in Saudi Arabia. Biden should do his part. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/biden-saudi-arabia-trip-defend-lgbt-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/biden-saudi-arabia-trip-defend-lgbt-rights/ |
A health worker administers a dose of a coronavirus vaccine in Chester, Pa., on Dec. 15, 2021. (Matt Rourke/AP)
The issue of booster shots is increasingly cloudy. Waning vaccine effectiveness and rapid evolution of the virus have raised questions about whether it would be wise for those under 50 years old to get a second booster now or wait for a new generation of shots due in a few months.
For people over 50 years old and those who are immunocompromised, a second booster is unquestionably a good idea. So far, however, vaccine uptake has been poor. In the age group of 50 to 64 years old, only 8.8 percent of the eligible population opted for the second booster. Only 22 percent of those eligible over 65 years old got a second booster, and they are the most at risk. This is a sorry record and it ought to be a priority to improve the situation.
As of now, a second booster has not been approved for those under 50 years old, except for the immune compromised. The administration is debating whether to expand the eligibility at a time when the spreading BA.4/BA.5 subvariants are propelling another wave of infections, and hospital admissions are again climbing. The subvariants are highly transmissible, better at immune escape and are causing re-infections. Among those 18 to 49 years old, more than two thirds got the primary shots, but only 27 percent got the first booster. Would they go for a second booster?
We know that vaccine effectiveness wanes. Those who had their last booster more than six months ago are increasingly vulnerable. But what to do about it is not clear-cut. The existing boosters are aimed at earlier variants, and may provide less protection against the BA.4/BA.5 subvariants, which now account for 80 percent of cases in the United States. On June 30, the Food and Drug Administration recommended vaccine manufacturers build a bivalent, or two-component, vaccine for the autumn, aimed at earlier strains plus the newer subvariants. The U.S. government has put in an order for 105 million doses of vaccine from Pfizer for the booster, but no one is certain when they will be available; maybe October, or maybe later. Nor is it certain how effective a bivalent booster will be, nor what the prevailing variant will be later this year. Moderna says it has achieved some promising results. Does it make sense for the under-50 population to get a second booster now?
White House officials said in a July 12 briefing that getting a second booster now will not preclude getting the updated booster in the autumn. The final government decision about boosters for those under 50 years old will have to come from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and as always, they should apply the most rigorous scientific judgment. The choice will also be up to individuals. Those who are young, healthy and willing to use other mitigation measures might wait. But expanded eligibility now for a second booster for people under 50 would help protect first responders, essential workers and those who must mingle with large crowds. That seems worth it, rather than just leaving the doses on the shelf. | 2022-07-13T17:47:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | When should I get a covid shot booster? The answer is unclear. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/booster-shot-confusion-get-them-now-or-wait-better/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/booster-shot-confusion-get-them-now-or-wait-better/ |
The House’s fringe right thinks ‘2000 Mules’ should be taken seriously
It should not be.
Dinesh D'Souza speaks to an audience at the "American Freedom Tour" event in Memphis on June 18. (Karen Pulfer Focht/Reuters)
During Tuesday’s House select committee hearing focused on Jan. 6, 2021, committee member Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) described a meeting at the White House a few days before the riot at the Capitol. A number of members of Congress attended the meeting, including Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). The point of the meeting, Murphy said, was to brief allies on the plan to have Vice President Mike Pence block submitted slates of electors at the joint session of Congress that day.
This was not the only news involving Biggs and Greene that emerged Tuesday. The two members of the right-most wing of the House Republican caucus reinforced their fealty to Trump’s effort to retain power by signing a letter demanding an investigation into purported fraud in the 2020 election.
But not just any purported fraud. According to a copy of the letter obtained by Townhall, Biggs, Greene and nine of their colleagues want an investigation into “potential illegal activities ‘revealed in the documentary film ‘2000 Mules.’ ”
To be clear, there are no potential illegal activities revealed in conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza’s film. It is centered around the idea that thousands of people were paid to submit ballots in drop boxes in the 2020 election — the titular “mules,” described using a term meant to evoke drug smuggling — but completely fails to provide any evidence to that end. It certainly creates the impression that such activity occurred, which is the point, but that’s by no means the same thing.
I’ve explored that lack of evidence previously, but given the letter that Biggs reportedly took the lead in distributing, it’s worth a recap.
D’Souza, using analysis from a guy named Gregg Phillips, claims that geolocation data place those thousands of people at multiple ballot drop-boxes where they deposited several ballots each time. Except that they don’t show any such data or any such movement. At one point, they show a map that purportedly tracks a “mule” in Atlanta — a map that I noted was obviously false and that Phillips said was “not literal.” What’s more, the data couldn’t show drop-box visits, both since it was not precise enough (being apparently based on cell-tower pings and not GPS, among other problems) and because there’s no indication that Phillips even knew where at drop-box sites the boxes were located.
The film relies heavily on surveillance video from drop-box sites to suggest that various actors are engaged in shuttling ballots around but, critically, zero people are shown depositing ballots at more than one drop box. Only a handful of people are shown depositing more than one ballot, something that isn’t necessarily illegal. (One snippet in the movie shows a man who deposited ballots on behalf of his family, perfectly legally.) At no point is there even an allegation that any of those shown depositing ballots went to X number of other locations to deposit Y additional ballots. It’s all just credited to Phillips’s analysis, as D’Souza explained in an interview.
That’s a problem because Phillips is fundamentally noncredible. In 2016, he announced publicly that he’d discovered millions of votes cast illegally, potentially meaning Donald Trump won the popular vote. Trump hastily embraced the claim, of course — but Phillips never provided one iota of evidence … since no such evidence existed. In the film, D’Souza and Phillips purport to show how useful their geolocation data was by implying they helped crack a cold-case murder. But that murder wasn’t a cold case and it was solved before Phillips’s purported analysis was completed.
The reason for the film is obvious. There is a huge demand for “proof” that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. D’Souza, adept at understanding the right-wing economy, created something to meet that demand. The most obvious tell is the segment of “2000 Mules” that attempts to tally the total number of ballots submitted by the “mules” — ballots, mind you, that wouldn’t even necessarily be invalid even if everything D’Souza claims is true. He takes estimates of mules per state and estimates of average drop-box visits and an estimate of the average number of ballots submitted to figure that hundreds of thousands of votes were cast in this way. Beyond this all, once again, relying on Phillips’s behind-the-scenes magic, consider just the idea that Phillips could know the average number of ballots deposited. He couldn’t! It’s impossible! But D’Souza needed a big number to meet his demand and snooker those who wanted or found it useful to believe his claims.
A group that includes Biggs and Greene, among others.
“The film exposes potentially widespread illegal activities related to the 2020 election by using geolocation information to identify thousands of individuals who delivered thousands of illegally harvested ballots to drop boxes in five states,” their letter falsely asserts. “Collecting and delivering ballots in this manner is a violation of the law in the locations where the activities occurred.” This, too, isn’t true: In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, collecting ballots was not illegal in 2020.
Members of Congress should theoretically know better than to treat “2000 Mules” seriously. Greene has an established track record of credulity on incredible claims, of course, but one would hope that any objective observer should see through what D’Souza offers.
But of course, it’s useful to elevate “2000 Mules” as credible as the House select committee continues to present evidence of how Trump and his allies worked to overturn the election. The most common defense of the former president is that he truly believed the election to have been stolen; by treating things like D’Souza’s movie as credible, the idea that Trump was warranted in that belief is bolstered.
This suggests that Biggs’s letter is offered in bad faith. That he is advocating an investigation simply as a counterweight to reality. That’s probably the case.
After all, consider another revelation from the House select committee last month. On Dec. 27, less than a week after those Republican legislators met with Trump in the White House, there was a different meeting during which acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue recorded telling comments from the president.
The acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, told Trump that the Justice Department wouldn’t overturn election results.
It didn’t have to, Trump replied, according to Donoghue’s notes. Then he added: “just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen.”
The “R. Congressmen” are still at it. | 2022-07-13T17:47:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The House’s fringe right thinks ‘2000 Mules’ should be taken seriously - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/houses-fringe-right-thinks-2000-mules-should-be-taken-seriously/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/houses-fringe-right-thinks-2000-mules-should-be-taken-seriously/ |
Amber heat warnings have been posted in England, which could near its highest temperature on record: 101.7 degrees
The European model simulates temperature anomalies in Europe on Sunday, when highs could spike to 15 degrees or more above average. (WeatherBell)
“We have a big pool of warm air across Spain and Portugal at the moment. As we go into Sunday, a door will open and it will shoot its way to the U.K., giving the already warm U.K. a boost,” Snell said.
The highest recorded temperature for the U.K. is 101.7 degrees (38.7 Celsius), which was set in Cambridge in 2019. Snell said there was a 30 percent chance that this record could be broken.
This is the second instance of excessive heat blasting Western Europe in recent weeks as human-caused climate change fuels higher temperatures.
Portugal, Spain and France
Portugal, Spain and France face a prolonged bout of unusually high temperature, which began early this week.
In France, the heat will last until Tuesday. Thirty-one departments across the nation are under some form of heat alerts, and the government is reactivating a phone helpline for residents with questions or concerns about the heat.
“The thermometer is soaring this afternoon,” Météo-France, the country’s equivalent of the National Weather Service, wrote in an online forecast discussion Tuesday. “It displays 23 to 28 degrees [73 to 82 Fahrenheit] on the Channel coast, but everywhere else the highs are generally between 32 and 36 degrees [89.6 to 96.8 Fahrenheit], with locally up to 37/38 degrees [99 to 100 Fahrenheit] in the South- west and in the middle of the Rhone valley. The heat wave will last several days in the south of the country.”
In the Rhone Valley, temperatures over the next several days could reach 104 degrees (40 Celsius). In Paris, highs could surge well into the 90s by early next week, while the average high is closer to 77 (25 Celsius). Weather.com forecasts a high of 100 degrees (38 Celsius) on Tuesday.
The island of Yeu off the west coast of France on Monday tied a record for its hottest temperature ever recorded, having spiked to 95.4 degrees (35.2 Celsius)
Joint all-time heat record for the small French island Île d'Yeu with 35.2°C. This equals the record from 1952.
The heatwave is only getting started. 43-44°C in Spain & Portugal meanwhile much cooler in central Europe (for now). pic.twitter.com/izAu9GO20i
Sixteen out of 18 districts in Portugal are under top-tier red heat alerts; the two remaining are under a yellow or orange alert. Santarém, the capital city in a district of the same name, was projected to hit 113 degrees (45 Celsius) Wednesday. The hottest temperature ever recorded in the country was 117.3 degrees Fahrenheit in Amareleja on Aug. 1, 2003.
In Spain, an “extreme risk” of heat has warranted a red alert to be issued Wednesday for Campiña Sevillana and Vegas de Guadiana, where maximum temperatures were predicted to peak at 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit). Spain has 50 provinces; the remaining are mostly under orange “important” heat alerts and lesser yellow alerts.
It will take until late in the weekend or early next week for the heat to reach the U.K.
“From Sunday, but more likely Monday, peak maximum temperatures could be in excess of 35C [95 Fahrenheit], most likely central and southeast England. Elsewhere, maxima will generally range from high 20s to low 30s of Celsius [80 to 90 Fahrenheit],” Met Office deputy chief meteorologist Dan Harris said in a news release.
Weather.com calls for London to hit 90 on Monday and 95 on Tuesday.
Some places, including downtown London, won’t see lows dipping below 70 degrees (21 Celsius) at night. Coming off a day in the 90s, that translates to homes that may struggle to fall below 75 or 80 degrees (24 or 27 Celsius), particularly since very few U.K. households have air conditioning.
“Population-wide adverse health effects are likely to be experienced, not limited to those most vulnerable to extreme heat, leading to potential serious illness or danger to life,” the Met Office wrote in its warning.
A few computer models have simulated temperatures as high as 104 degrees (40 Celsius) in the U.K., which would shatter its all-time record, but the Met Office notes that potential has waned some.
“Some models had been producing maximum temperatures in excess of 40C [104 degrees Fahrenheit] in parts of the UK over the coming weekend and beyond,” Harris said in the Met Office’s news release. “Recent evidence suggests the chances have decreased.”
Still, he added, a few locations could see highs in the upper 30s Celsius, or either side of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Will it really hit 40 C within the next week? ☀️🥵
Here's Alex with an explanation of whether or not we think it's likely to happen 👇 pic.twitter.com/KnsPkJ2qql
The heat will ease over the U.K. and France by the middle of next week but spread into Central Europe, scorching Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic on Wednesday and Thursday.
It has been just over three years since an unprecedented heat wave baked Europe, sending temperatures skyrocketing. Paris hit an all-time high of 109 degrees (42.8 Celsius). Last month, a heat wave set hundreds of records throughout Europe.
Snell said the Met Office tracks how many years the U.K. has reached 35 Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) on a single day. Since the 1970s, this has happened nine times — four of which were in the past decade. “It shows how the frequency of hot weather in U.K. is increasing,” he said. “The frequency of these hot spells across Western Europe will increase as climate change continues.”
Karla Adam reported from London. | 2022-07-13T18:00:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amber warning: Extreme heat forecast in United Kingdom, Western Europe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/13/heat-europe-amber-temperature/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/07/13/heat-europe-amber-temperature/ |
Former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne speaks at a news conference for the America Project in Orlando on Feb. 25. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
With a career-ending affair with a Russian agent, attacks on a professional nemesis he named “the Sith Lord” and constant references to a “deep state,” Patrick Byrne often pushed conspiracy theories and found himself ensnared in controversy — long before the former chief executive of online retailer Overstock promoted Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a rigged election.
Byrne, one of corporate America’s most vocal proponents of the former president’s falsehoods about the 2020 election, will be the latest figure from Trump’s orbit to meet with House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The longtime cryptocurrency advocate is scheduled to meet privately with the committee on Friday.
Byrne’s involvement in efforts to overturn the election were revealed Tuesday during the committee’s hearing. The former furniture industry executive joined lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, as well as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, days after the electoral college certified that Joe Biden had won the presidential election. While many of Trump’s legal advisers had accepted that he had lost the election, Byrne and others were pushing an idea that the president could use the National Guard to seize voting machines.
Byrne’s Oval Office access appeared to agitate those staffers hoping to redirect Trump’s attention away from conspiracy theories.
“First of all, the Overstock person — I didn’t even know who this guy was,” former White House counsel Pat Cipollone said in a videotaped interview aired Tuesday during the hearing.
“I looked at him, and I said, ‘Who are you?’ ” Cipollone said he asked Byrne.
Although the White House staff was unfamiliar with Byrne, his unfounded hypotheticals about how the election could have been stolen captured Trump’s ear. At some point, the meeting moved to the Yellow Oval Room in the White House residence. As the fighting between White House aides and the conspiracy theorists continued, Trump served the group Swedish meatballs, which were a hit with Byrne, who was “nonstop housing meatballs — he ate so many meatballs,” according to one person familiar with the gathering.
Byrne’s embrace of the baseless claims about Dominion’s voting machines led to the company filing a lawsuit seeking $1.7 billion in damages.
Dominion sues Newsmax and One America News over election fraud claims
Before making headlines for his politics, Byrne led Overstock for two decades before resigning in 2019 after his affair with Maria Butina, a Russian woman who tried to penetrate conservative American political circles, became public.
Byrne said he had been romantically involved for three years with Butina, a Russian gun rights activist who served 15 months in prison for trying to influence U.S. policy ahead of the 2016 election. She later was deported.
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne resigns after saying he aided in ‘deep state’ Russia investigation
Since the 2020 election, the 59-year-old Byrne has become increasingly vocal about his support for Trump and the president’s false claims of widespread voter fraud. The multimillionaire financed a film called “The Big Rig,” which encouraged right-wing media outlets, podcasts and social media outlets to promote false claims about the 2020 election.
In addition to his intense belief that Biden did not legitimately win the presidency, Byrne has regularly expressed support for other conspiracy theories: He accused a competitor he named after a Star Wars villain of trying to take down Overstock. He toured the country in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, giving anti-vaccine speeches, and he has spread misinformation about covid-19 on websites and via social media.
Byrne grew up in New England, the son of an insurance industry executive who had befriended noted investor Warren Buffett. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Chinese from Dartmouth before going on to become a Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge. He later became a teaching fellow at Stanford, where he earned his doctorate. Byrne would eventually work for Buffett himself, whom he called his “Omaha rabbi,” before launching out on his own. He held a number of executive positions at smaller companies before becoming chief executive of Overstock.
At the time of his resignation from Overstock, Byrne, who had a low-level security clearance, claimed to be working with federal authorities in their “Clinton investigation” and “Russia investigation.”
The investigation “turned out to be less about law enforcement and more about political espionage conducted against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and to a lesser degree, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz),” he said in an August 2019 statement. | 2022-07-13T18:00:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is Patrick Byrne, former Overstock CEO and election denier? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/13/trump-jan-6-byrne-overstock/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/13/trump-jan-6-byrne-overstock/ |
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday to extend the mandate of the U.N. mission helping to implement a December 2018 cease-fire agreement between Yemen’s government and Houthi rebels. The deal calls for the withdrawal of fighters from the key port of Hodeida, two smaller ports in the province and Hodeida city. | 2022-07-13T18:06:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UN extends mission helping implement Yemen port cease-fire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-extends-mission-helping-implement-yemen-port-cease-fire/2022/07/13/07116e54-02d4-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-extends-mission-helping-implement-yemen-port-cease-fire/2022/07/13/07116e54-02d4-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Fairfax City Council votes to rename Confederate-themed streets
Confederate Lane and Reb Street in the Mosby Woods neighborhood of Fairfax City. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
The Fairfax City Council voted to rename 14 streets and highways honoring the Confederacy, part of an ongoing reckoning over race and equity in Virginia that in the city sparked heated debate about the identity of one neighborhood built around a Civil War theme.
After two years of community meetings, the council voted Tuesday night to change the names of Lee Highway, Old Lee Highway and most of the streets in the Mosby Woods neighborhood.
The mid-20th-century development is named after Confederate commander John S. Mosby, with streets such as Confederate Lane or Plantation Parkway.
“This affirms the values of the city of Fairfax,” David L. Meyer, the city’s mayor, said Wednesday of the nearly unanimous series of votes. “We simply do not want to bequeath to the next generation some of these divisive legacies from our history.”
The council, which began grappling with the issue after racial justice protests sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, also recently voted to remove the image of a Confederate soldier on the city seal.
Council member Sang H. Yi, who recently announced a bid for mayor, opposed renaming all but two streets: Rebel Road in Mosby Woods and Stonewall Avenue, which is in a different neighborhood. Council member Joseph D. Harmon opposed eight of the name changes.
In Mosby Woods, the debate over the streets — where many residents in the quiet community hold fond memories of block parties or first crushes — was nuanced.
Some opposed to the changes argued against wiping away a part of history that had become deeply ingrained in the local landscape, with Confederate monuments erected during the mid-20th century standing sentry while Fairfax City and its surrounding communities experienced steady demographic change. While Mosby Woods is still mostly White, Fairfax City has a growing Asian and Latino community.
A civil war among neighbors over Confederate-themed streets
Others, living on streets with names whose ties to the Confederacy were more ambiguous — such as Traveler Street (named after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s horse) — were annoyed by the inconvenience of having to change the address on driver’s licenses and other legal documents. On Tuesday, the City Council directed the Fairfax staff to develop a program to compensate residents who incur costs related to the name changes.
“I’m disappointed — that would be a mild way to put it,” said Francis Dietz, who spearheaded an effort to keep his street, Ranger Road (named after Mosby’s troops), from being renamed.
“They [the council] didn’t listen to their constituents,” Dietz said. “Not the ones who live here.”
Neighbors who pushed for the name changes celebrated.
Ryan Finley, who with his wife, Mako Honda, lives at the corner of Confederate Lane and Plantation Parkway, said he is relieved to know the street signs in front of their home will soon come down.
“I’m hoping that once we get new street signs in here, people can put this behind them a little bit,” Finley said. “There’s been a little more contention than what you’d like to see in the neighborhood.”
That division in the community, however, may take time to mend as the City Council prepares for the next step in the process: coming up with new street names. Meyer said that decision — also requiring community input — isn’t likely to occur until sometime before Thanksgiving.
In the meantime, some Mosby Woods residents plan to advocate for the neighborhood name to also be changed — a decision that would be made by the local community association.
Amy Chase, who lives on Ranger Road and was in favor of a name change, said she would like to see the neighborhood be called something different.
But, she said, she realized some people will have a hard enough time accepting that their street names are changing. That includes her own children, who know Ranger Road as the place where they’re growing up.
“I tried to explain all the reasons why I think the change is important, [but] they’re still really disappointed that their street names are changing,” Chase said. Still, she said, “I’m really glad they’re changing because of all those unconscious messages that can be sent if we leave things status quo.”
Dietz, vowing to explore other ways to keep his street’s name intact, said the fight isn’t necessarily over.
With mayoral elections in November and Meyer stepping down after 14 years on the council, the issue is likely to factor into the race to replace him, Dietz said.
“It will be raw for a while,” he said, about the anger among some neighbors. | 2022-07-13T18:22:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Confederate-themed streets in Fairfax City to be renamed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/fairfax-confederate-streets-rename/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/fairfax-confederate-streets-rename/ |
Goaltender Darcy Kuemper signed a five-year deal in Washington on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
Colorado wanted to re-sign Kuemper but his price tag was too high for the Avalanche, which prioritized signing a handful of free agents to keep its core intact.
“Darcy is an established starting netminder who proved that he can win on the game’s biggest stage, and we are excited to welcome him to Washington,” Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan said in a statement. “We feel this signing will provide our team confidence and stability in net.”
Washington also signed backup goaltender Charlie Lindgren, on a three-year, $3.3 million deal on Wednesday. Lindgren played in five NHL games last season with the St. Louis Blues and went 5-0-0 with a 1.22 goals against average and a .958 save percentage. He spent the majority of the season with the Springfield Thunderbirds of the American Hockey League.
The Capitals were on the lookout for not one but two goaltenders through free agency. They traded Vitek Vanecek to New Jersey last week and elected to not extend a qualifying offer to goaltender Ilya Samsonov on Monday.
Instead, Samsonov, 25, hit the open market Wednesday and signed a one-year, $1.8 million deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He appears likely to back up Matt Murray in Toronto.
The goalie market was rapidly changing early Wednesday, with Jack Campbell signing with the Edmonton Oilers on a five-year, $5 million deal. Campbell was connected to the Capitals over the last few weeks but Washington was focused on Kuemper.
Washington could also go after another forward in free agency. Winger Tom Wilson and center Nicklas Backstrom are all but certain to start the season on long-term injured reserve, and winger Carl Hagelin, who had eye surgery in March, could join them. | 2022-07-13T19:05:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitals sign goalie Darcy Kuemper to five-year deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/capitals-sign-darcy-kuemper/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/capitals-sign-darcy-kuemper/ |
D.C. school enrollment expected to drop after years of increases
The shift is driven by declining birthrates and people leaving the city or changing schools during the pandemic, study finds
A student leaves Tubman Elementary School in Northwest Washington. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/for The Washington Post)
Enrollment in D.C.’s traditional public and charter schools is expected to drop over the next five years, a disappointing turn for a city that had celebrated more than a decade of growth in its public schools.
The current enrollment stagnation and anticipated decrease in the coming years — according to a study released Wednesday by the local research group D.C. Policy Center — was propelled by declining birthrates and adults leaving the city or pulling their children out of public schools during the pandemic.
Enrollment fluctuated at public schools across the country during the pandemic, with families leaving big cities, opting for home schooling or private schools, or delaying putting their young children in schools altogether. That has caused financial strain on some districts because schools typically are funded based on the number of students enrolled. During the pandemic, D.C.’s enrollment didn’t decline as it did other places but remained stagnant, adding just about 29 students per year, according to the study.
The District, which now has about 87,000 students in its traditional public and charter sectors, had anticipated long-term enrollment growth, justifying the opening of new schools based on that increase. That enrollment count does not include adult students, thousands of whom are enrolled in specialized charter schools to get their high school diplomas or professional certifications.
Between the academic years 2007-2008 and 2019-2020, D.C.’s public schools increased by an average of 1,598 students per year. The growth stalled during the pandemic and, if trends continue exactly as they are, enrollment could tumble to as low as 81,000 students by 2026, the study predicted.
“It’s such a sharp change from previous enrollment trends,” said Chelsea Coffin, author of the study. “This is really important to look at. D.C. has been planning for growth and we are used to planning for school sizes growing.”
The city’s current enrollment remains far behind its historical peak. D.C. public school enrollment has been in steady decline since the 1960s, when it was about 150,000. In 1995, enrollment had dropped to just shy of 80,000 students.
The D.C. Policy Center’s study relied on government data. D.C. officials did not dispute the findings, though they said they were not ready to make long-term projections.
In May, the deputy mayor for education’s office published a report examining the city’s birthrate, which showed that after years of growth, the rate began to decline in 2016. That year the city reached 9,854 births; the figure dropped to 8,869 births in 2020. Nationally, birthrates had been dropping since 2008, according to the report.
In the District, Ward 8 — overwhelmingly Black and with a high concentration of poverty — experienced the biggest drop in births, from more than 1,600 in 2016 to 1,400 in 2020, though it still has highest number of births. Ward 8 currently has the largest number of students in public schools of any ward, and the birthrate declines there suggest it could also see significant enrollment drops.
The District’s public schools saw their biggest declines in the prekindergarten years during the pandemic, with enrollment in that segment dropping by 5.9 percent, according to the city. The city offers free prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds in its elementary schools, but it is not federally mandated to attend school until kindergarten.
Both city officials and Coffin said many families with 3- and 4-year-olds might have wanted to keep their children home these last academic years until they could get vaccinated, or they may have found alternate child-care arrangements during the pandemic.
In the short term, the city’s education budget shows enrollment increasing slightly next academic year, though Coffin suspects those numbers are too high and rely on a high number of prekindergartners returning to public schools.
“Our pre-K student enrollment was down overall, and our elementary enrollment was down overall,” Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn said at a news conference in February on the education budget. “These are areas that we anticipate, as we move through the pandemic, our public school population to tick back up and increase.”
D.C. announces massive public education budget with more mental health funding
During the pandemic, the city experienced growth in its middle and high school age groups, according to the study. That’s due to the once-growing younger grades moving into middle and high school, and perhaps in smaller part linked to the rising graduation rate during the pandemic.
There are still many unknowns regarding the city’s long-term school enrollment. School lottery application numbers — the lottery system that places students in prekindergarten classes, charter schools and traditional public campuses that are not their assigned neighborhood school — were up this year, but still notably down from before the pandemic.
The D.C. Policy Center study illustrated three potential scenarios for D.C.’s enrollment. In one scenario, everything remains as it is now, with birthrates declining and the lower grade level enrollment continuing to decrease. That would put enrollment at 81,402 students in fall 2026, about 6,000 fewer than current numbers.
A second scenario maintains the declining birthrates but keeps the percentage of babies born in D.C. who eventually enroll in D.C. public schools at the same pre-pandemic rates, putting enrollment about where it was before the pandemic.
The third scenario is similar to the second, except all the children who left during the pandemic return to D.C.’s public schools, giving enrollment a one-time jolt and bringing it to 89,212 students.
“School planning may have to be readjusted to reconcile with the realities of lower enrollment,” the report states. “The school system should start anticipating these changes and prepare for hard decisions, especially if enrollment does not show signs of a rebound in 2022-23.” | 2022-07-13T19:31:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. school enrollment expected to drop after years of increases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/13/dc-schools-enrollment-drop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/13/dc-schools-enrollment-drop/ |
The digital currency market has shed billions in value throughout 2022. (Paul Yeung/Bloomberg)
A federal bankruptcy court has frozen the assets of Three Arrows Capital, the once-prominent crypto hedge fund that managed as much as $10 billion in assets until it fell into liquidation last month
In an emergency hearing Tuesday, Judge Martin Gleen of the Southern District of New York granted a motion allowing liquidators to “transfer, encumber, or otherwise dispose” of any Three Arrows Capital assets located in the United States. In addition, the court authorized subpoenas for the founders, whose whereabouts are unknown.
The Singapore-based company, also known as 3AC, was founded a decade ago by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, who both studied at Columbia University in New York City and worked for the same investment bank before making their names as crypto influencers and managers of a multibillion-dollar fund. It did not, however, survive the broader crypto market meltdown that has erased hundreds of billions in value this year. Bitcoin, the most valuable digital currency, is trading below $20,000, having shed more than 70 percent of its value since last fall.
On June 27, crypto broker Voyager Digital said that Three Arrows Capital had not made payments on a loan worth more than $665 million. The same day, a court in the British Virgin Islands ordered the fund into liquidation. Four days later, 3AC filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 15 of the U.S. bankruptcy code, which allows a foreign debtor to deal with their U.S. assets.
The court-appointed liquidators — Russell Crumpler and Christopher Farmer of the global advisory firm Teneo — cited a “lack of cooperation to date” by Zhu and Davies in a July 8 filing, whose whereabouts they say are unknown. Though the fund’s lawyer, Christopher Anand Daniel of Singapore-based Advocatus Law, has been in contact, liquidators say, the co-founder have not begun to cooperate “in any meaningful manner.”
Shortly before the judge granted the emergency motion, Zhu tweeted two screenshots of email communications between Daniel and the liquidators, including one in which the 3AC lawyer called the July 8 filing “baiting.”
“It has come to our clients’ attention that you have made an application in the United States of America,” Daniel wrote to Crumpler, “it appears, therefore, that contrary to your representations that you were seeking to engage our clients in good faith, and constructively, you had already prepared to make that application, and were in fact baiting our clients.
“Our clients, and their families have received threats of physical violence, and have had to field queries from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in the last week, or so, which has meant that they have been working under a lot of time pressure,” Daniel added.
But in Tuesday’s hearing, Teneo’s attorney Adam Goldberg said that the information provided was “by no means a sufficient form of cooperation,” CNBC reported.
The broader digital currency market has been getting battered for months. In May, Terra’s popular stablecoin terraUSD and its sister token luna collapsed, causing investors to lose nearly $60 billion. That helped bring down Three Arrows Capital, where Zhu and Davies had heavily promoted luna, and made the crypto lender suspend withdrawals. Terra’s founder, Do Kwon, was among the defendants named in a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court of North Carolina.
Last week, crypto lender Vauld announced it had suspended all withdrawals, trading and deposits for its 800,000 members after the steep fall in crypto values. The next day, London-based rival Nexo agreed to buy as much as 100 percent of the company. The crypto bank Celsius also was forced to freeze withdrawals in June.
Experts say the extreme volatility is sure to amplify calls for more oversight.
“Regulation is coming, and it’s coming soon,” said Kene Ezeji-Okoye, president of UK-based digital currency company Millicent, “Many in the industry will oppose this idea, but equally many are embracing calls for smart regulation, understanding that it’s the only way for the industry to truly reach mainstream adoption. However, regulators must be careful not to stifle genuine innovation.”
Ben Caselin, head of strategy and research at digital currency exchange AAX, said a path is opening to make the cryptocurrency market more sustainable.
“If anything, these liquidation events should pave the way to turn towards a more sustainable market structuring more strongly tethered to those core principles which inspired the creation of bitcoin but which for too long, during this bull market, have been marketed if not evangelized but not actually delivered by too many projects.” | 2022-07-13T19:35:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge freezes assets of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/judge-freezes-assets-crypto-hedge-fund-three-arrows-capital/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/07/13/judge-freezes-assets-crypto-hedge-fund-three-arrows-capital/ |
An ABC on ESG and Sustainable Investing’s Flavors: QuickTake
Analysis by Saijel Kishan | Bloomberg
Wind turbines in a field in the Seine-Maritime department of Normandy, France, on Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. France, located at the heart of Western Europe’s power grid, with its fleet of nuclear reactors has for decades been the continent’s largest electricity exporter, supplying the U.K., Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany at times of peak demand. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
You’ve probably heard of ESG, and may know it as a form of investing and finance that involves considering material financial risks from environmental factors, social issues and questions of corporate governance. If you’re like most people, you’re probably not clear on the difference between ESG and socially responsible investing, impact investing and similar, sometimes overlapping approaches -- in part because ESG has come to means different things to different people. That vagueness has helped fuel rapid growth in recent years. But with that growth has also come increased scrutiny from regulators cracking down on banks and investment firms making exaggerated claims. In the US, ESG has also faced backlash both from conservatives who deride it as “woke capitalism” and from insiders who say it isn’t creating the kinds of real-world impacts it seemed to promise.
Here’s a guide to the basics.
1. What’s the big idea?
The broadest umbrella term for the strategy of which ESG is a part is sustainable investing. Proponents say the goals of sustainable investing, which covers fund assets valued globally at $2.7 trillion by Morningstar Inc., are to achieve societal impact, align with personal values or manage risks. And make money along the way, of course.
2. Where did ESG come from?
The acronym was coined in the mid 2000s. A British law firm wrote a report for the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative in 2005 that argued that the use of ESG factors in financial analysis was compatible with investors’ fiduciary responsibilities. The idea was that incorporating ESG data would help protect investments by avoiding material financial risks from things such as climate change; worker disputes and humans rights issues in supply chains; and poor corporate governance and resulting litigation. As time has passed, the label has come to be slapped on investments that run the gamut from predictable things such as owning renewable-energy stocks to things you wouldn’t expect, like funds that track benchmark indexes containing oil companies or assets in autocratic nations such as Russia.
3. How big is ESG?
Estimates vary depending on what people count as ESG. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, assets are set to climb to $50 trillion by 2025 from about $35 trillion now. They have grown from $30.7 trillion in 2018 and $22.8 trillion in 2016, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Association.
4. How is ESG different?
The popularity of ESG has depended in part on a belief that it will play a positive role in making the world a better place. But critics say that such a warm-and-fuzzy feeling helps asset managers blur a key distinction -- that ESG is mainly about using data to identify risks that might undermine investment performance, or to find opportunities to make money. That’s a contrast to some other branches of sustainable investment that sometimes go further:
• Ethical and Values-Based Investing: These are broad strategies that enable investors to shun or invest in companies that reflect their political, religious or philosophical beliefs and values. Its earliest practitioners were religious groups such as the Quakers who shunned investments in things like alcohol, weapons and gambling. Church-affiliated groups in Sweden began the first ethics-based mutual fund in 1965. The Pax World Fund began in the US in 1971.
• Socially Responsible Investing: Galvanized by anti-Vietnam War protests, consumer boycotts of napalm producers and efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, a group of investors in the 1980s and 90s sought to do good by not only avoiding companies that harm society but investing in those that are improving their business practices. They may also focus on companies that are engaged in clean-technology efforts.
• Impact Investing: While socially responsible investing tends to focus on publicly traded companies, impact investing centers on private projects. It’s a niche strategy where investors target specific outcomes that can be measured, such as the promotion of sustainable agriculture or companies that provide affordable housing.
• Systems-Level Investing: A nascent strategy that has yet to take off in a big way. As people increasingly point to the failure of ESG in catalyzing large, real-world impacts, they are looking at systems-level investing. This involves making decisions that take into account the entirety of one’s portfolio and how its elements intersect across all assets in the long term. An example would be climate change: A systems-level approach would examine how it affects entire portfolios, from shares in energy and insurance companies to sovereign bonds and foreign exchange. Systems-level investors are then meant to work with other investors to collectively push companies to improve their business practices by creating industry standards, sharing data with other investors and pressing for public policy changes.
5. What do critics think about ESG?
Some think the term has become so broad as to lose much of its meaning. Many point to the prevalence of greenwashing, which happens when companies exaggerate the environmental benefits of their actions. Even the man who coined the acronym has said the finance industry has sprinkled “ESG fairy dust” on products that don’t merit the label, and that there will be an industry shakeout in the coming years. Other criticisms focus on the way fund managers rely on ESG ratings that rank companies by how they are performing on ESG factors. There is a lot of inconsistency in those scores -- in some cases, companies are ranked by the risks that ESG factors pose to them rather than, say, the risks the companies pose to the environment and society.
6. What do regulators think?
With the ESG label now widely used by money managers and bankers selling everything from mutual funds to complex derivatives, European and US regulators are clamping down on firms exaggerating their ESG bona fides. In May, German authorities raided the offices of Deutsche Bank AG’s fund unit amid allegations that it overstated its ESG capabilities to investors. The following month, it emerged that US regulators are looking into whether ESG funds sold by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset management group are in breach of ESG metrics promised in marketing materials.
7. What is being done?
The US Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a slate of new restrictions in May aimed at ensuring that ESG funds accurately describe their investments, and which may require some money managers to disclose the greenhouse gas emissions of companies they’re invested in. These proposed rules come off the back of new laws in Europe, the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulations, where investments have to be labeled under categories commonly referred to as “light green” and “dark green,” according to the priority placed on sustainability.
8. Does sustainable investing actually make a difference?
A cohort of ESG executives and academics have bemoaned the lack of far reaching and long-term impacts the strategy has had. Of course, sustainable investors have made some strides, such as pressing companies to reduce their plastics use, addressing workers rights and performing so-called civil rights audits. They have also succeeded in replacing directors on Exxon Mobil Corp.’s board to help the oil giant position itself towards cleaner fuels. Other proponents have said that had investors in U.K.’s Deliveroo Plc taken ESG issues into account, they could have avoided losses after the company faced a backlash over gig-economy exploitation and worker pay last year. Still, detractors say the idea that ESG investment alone is enough to address complex problems is being shown to be wrong and that more government intervention is needed to address societal issues such as living wage minimums and greenhouse gas emissions.
9. How do these approaches stack up in terms of investment returns?
Across three categories -- Europe-focused, US-focused and global — ESG large-cap equity funds have done better this year, on average, than their non-ESG counterparts. While they have lost money -- in line with the broad market selloff -- those losses are smaller. Globally, ESG funds are down 11.7% this year through June 10, compared with the 14.8% slump of the MSCI World Index. But there have been some early signs that investors are souring on ESG. They pulled a record $2 billion net from US equity exchange-traded funds in May, ending three years of inflows, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. | 2022-07-13T19:35:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An ABC on ESG and Sustainable Investing’s Flavors: QuickTake - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/an-abc-on-esg-and-sustainable-investings-flavors-quicktake/2022/07/13/c8fffdf2-02d7-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/an-abc-on-esg-and-sustainable-investings-flavors-quicktake/2022/07/13/c8fffdf2-02d7-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
We watched Tuesday’s revealing episode with a Georgetown Democrat, Howard University students and a Trump documentarian to hear their reactions
Roxanne Roberts
Jada Yuan
From left, Howard University students Channing Hill, Dream Bryant, Ciana Cummings and Kierstyn Heaven watch a hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
In most ways, the hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol are like any hot TV show of the moment: Loyal viewers dissect each episode, go to bed still thinking about it, bite their nails over its latest reveal, yell back at the screen, recap it breathlessly for one another (or let the Rachel Maddows of the world recap it for them), send around links to critical analyses, implore those who haven’t been watching to get with it, catch up, join the program. In other ways, it’s this inexorable, anxiety-producing drag — you know you should tune in, pay attention as democracy dangles off a cliff, but your heart just can’t take it.
And so we turn to the superfans: How do they watch? Where do they watch? Why do they watch? We sent three reporters to hang out with a few of these viewers as they absorbed Tuesday’s episode, which focused on President Donald Trump’s role in galvanizing and encouraging his followers to gather in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and prevent Congress from affirming President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
In Georgetown, with poodles
Ellen Charles is watching Tuesday’s hearing surrounded by an audience of four: Hazel, a toy poodle and the alpha dog; Harry, a champion standard poodle; Porter, another standard poodle; and Cashew, a toy poodle and Hazel’s son. They’re all in the living room of her Georgetown home, an oasis of understated good taste, comfy chairs and family photos befitting a doyenne of Washington’s social and charitable worlds. There’s iced tea and root beer and snacks served on very fine china.
Harry is nuzzling for attention. Chairman Bennie G. Thompson calls the hearing to order.
“He’s a wonderful man,” Charles says. “Both he and Liz Cheney are so even-tempered. They always have something interesting to say.”
Charles, 85, hasn’t missed a minute of these hearings and believes it’s her civic obligation to stay informed. “As a citizen, I feel I have duty to help our country,” she explains. “I call myself a moderate Democrat. I have one son who thinks I’m very liberal. The other two think I’m perfectly normal.”
She watched all the Watergate hearings, too, and thought they were fascinating if somewhat procedural and filled with legalese.
On Jan. 6, 2021, she was having lunch at a friend’s house when they got a call to turn on the television and saw the Capitol being breached: “I couldn’t even put my arms around it. It was something I never thought would happen.”
The experience of these hearings is more like diving in a well-written mystery: You might think you know the basic plot, but the telling details suddenly put everything in a new light. “You lived through it, but now you’re really seeing,” as Charles puts it.
So the extent of the conspiracy and planning around the “big lie” surprises her. The profane screaming match in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, disgusts her. The violent rhetoric from right-wing groups in the weeks before the Jan. 6 riot shocks her. “It still gives you goosebumps, doesn’t it?” she says. “We’re awfully lucky that they didn’t get away with it. It could have been a bloodbath.”
The highlight of the hearings so far? Cassidy Hutchinson. “It was exciting to watch a young woman be that brave.”
The usual suspects pop up on the screen, and she has thoughts: Roger Stone is “such a dreadful person,” and so is Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone testifies that Sidney Powell should have never been appointed to any position; Charles nods in agreement. “She’s crazy,” says Charles as Trump’s former attorney gulps Diet Dr Pepper.
The former president is a minor character in this hearing, but he violates all the moral codes drummed into Charles growing up.
“Win or lose, you’re a good sport – and you don’t cheat,” she explains. “Trump cheats at golf. This is a man who cheats all the time and has gotten away with it.”
Critic's Notebook: A Trump-shaped monster returns to the Jan. 6 hearings
Charles met him a few times at Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach mansion once owned by her grandmother, heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. “I have to say he’s a good steward of the property. His taste may not be mine, but things are well-maintained.” Does that influence how she watches these hearings? “No.”
Porter tries to crawl on her lap; Hazel growls at him. Harry takes a swipe at the chocolate chip cookie on the table before the dish is whisked away. The poodles don’t share their opinion of Trump — but would they trust a president who doesn’t like dogs?
Repentant rioter Stephen Ayres is testifying, saying that he lost his job and his home after breaching the Capitol because he believed the election had been stolen. Charles watches intently as he warns that this could happen again. She shakes her head: “This is so scary.”
By the end of the hearing, she’s unsettled.
“This was much heavier going,” she says. “I felt more comfortable after the other ones. I’m concerned again — and rightly so.” — Roxanne Roberts
At Howard, with student activists
Channing Hill bought an HDMI cable just for this occasion; that’s how juicy the Jan. 6 hearings have been.
Like any 21-year-old, Hill, who’s prelaw and a rising senior at Howard University, has been watching the drama play out on YouTube rather than her dorm’s common room TV. But for Tuesday’s seventh session, she’s gathered with five other politically minded seniors, plus several who are beaming in on Zoom, on an array of couches abutting a pingpong table so they can debate the Capitol riot that took place just two miles from their school’s campus.
That is, if she can get this dumb cable to connect her laptop to the TV. “Ugh, I accidentally shut off the Zoom!” she groans, sending out a flurry of apologetic texts.
Hill, who’s wearing a T-shirt that reads “All We Ever Did Was Be Black” and “Black By Popular Demand," may not be a tech expert, but she is a campus legend. In November, she led a 34-day sit-in to protest Howard’s housing conditions, which earned her a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Youth Activist of the Year. (She’s also president of the group’s Howard chapter.) The hearings have her riveted out of perverse curiosity, mixed with a dash of hope. Could Trump actually face consequences? Probably not. Stay tuned!
“It’s like watching ‘Dateline’! Fact, fact, fact!” Hill says. That’s both a compliment of the fast-paced reality-TV-style editing of the hearings, and a bit of an eye roll. “I like it and I don’t like it. Why is it so dramatic?,” she says. “What happened is very simple.”
Trump broke the law “in front of our faces,” she says.
“These are the same people who were calling peaceful [Black Lives Matter] protesters, who were peaceful protesters, criminals, thugs, rioters,” says Dream Bryant, 21, a political science major who’s also vice president of DC College Democrats. “They literally looted the Capitol! You broke in and assaulted public service workers!”
“Yo, people died,” Hill says.
Critic's Notebook: The Jan. 6 hearings and the spectacle of comeptency
Getting Hill’s crew of busy, powerhouse Howard women together in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon is about as easy as, well, scheduling a congressional hearing. Some arrive still dressed in slacks and flats for their internships at political consultancy or public interest firms. Bryant, 21, is gearing up to start an internship for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Jada Bourne, 20, who’s from suburban Dallas and majoring in legal communications, is juggling two internships. Isis Alexander, 21, went from interning for Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) right after the Jan 6. insurrection to interning for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
None of them watched the entirety of Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony. Who has time? Besides, none of them think Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, deserves the praise that’s been heaped on her.
“I don’t think they should be considered heroes …” says Alexander, a political science major and a charter member of Howard’s chapter of Black Girls Vote.
“... for doing what they’re supposed to do…” says Kierstyn Heaven, a pre-dental student from North Carolina.
“... and they should have done earlier,” says Hill, finishing up.
“It’s kind of like you tell someone over and over again, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t touch that.’ And they keep doing it. And then one time they don’t touch that hot stove, then you’re like, ‘Good job!’” Bryant says.
“Yeah, my dad used to say you don’t get rewarded for doing what you’re supposed to do,” says Hill.
“That’s such a Black people phrase!” says Bourne, laughing.
The mood is jovial, like a debate that might happen over bowls of free cereal in a college cafeteria, or like the ones Hill says always break out at night clubs if too many Howard students wind up in the bathroom. They throw out theories about who the hearings are trying to reach: Trump supporters who need video evidence? Reluctant witnesses the committee is trying to convince to testify? There are sidebars over what color Telfar bag to buy (Hill and Bourne are carrying the tan and cream versions) and the NBA draft. They laugh recalling Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump being so angry after his Attorney General William P. Barr publicly denied there was widespread voter fraud that he threw a plate, leaving the wall streaked with ketchup. “I wasn’t even surprised by that,” says Bryant. “I pictured him eating a McDonald’s.”
There’s also a heaviness, a feeling of being witnesses to history and not in a good way. Is this their generation’s Watergate, or maybe their Monica Lewinsky hearing? For these Howard seniors, their entire adult lives, so far, have been dominated by Trump. They were sophomores in high school when he was elected, had their college lives brought to a halt by the pandemic he sometimes downplayed, watched police throw tear gas at Black Lives Matter protesters so Trump could pose with a Bible in front of a D.C. church, and later encourage a mob to descend on the Capitol, bearing a noose and Confederate flags.
As the Oath Keepers’ ex-spokesperson Jason Van Tatenhove testifies about the way that the group legitimized their actions by calling themselves an “educational outreach group” or “veteran support” instead of a militia, Hill shakes her head in awe. “I’m not gonna lie ... that’s some great twisting. That’s some good spin.”
“Olivia Pope couldn’t even,” Bryant says, referring to the D.C. fixer from the TV drama “Scandal.”
“Olivia Pope could never!” Hill says.
The committee ends with a teaser of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony that’s so much like a TV serial, everyone bursts out laughing. “Stay tuned for next week!” Bryant says. And she will. She really wants to see the witness who Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chairwoman of the panel, says Trump attempted to contact.
As for Hill, she could host another hearing party, but she’s more excited about using that HDMI cable for a future movie night. “I feel like my eyes got opened to a whole new world.” — Jada Yuan
In New York, with promotional buzz
Alex Holder does not watch the hearings of the Jan. 6 committee the way you do.
Really, why would he? He’s one of the few viewers actually involved with them. The 33-year-old British documentarian captured important scenes of the insurrection, and he just released “Unprecedented” on Discovery Plus, a three-part film about the former president’s reelection campaign and what happened after he lost, It’s edited and produced by Marcos Azevedo.
“Unprecedented” — which focuses on the lead-up and aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021, with a particular spotlight on (and interviews with) the Trump family — premiered Sunday on the streaming network, availing itself of its opportune role in the episodic drama provided by this summer’s hearings. “If you have to describe what the committee is doing, it’s almost a synopsis of our film,” Holder says.
The network has him in sell mode. Days consist of interview after interview. “Face the Nation,” Jake Tapper, Stephanie Ruhle. None match his closed-door interview before the House committee in late June, after it subpoenaed the eight-ish hours of footage which would be edited into “Unprecedented.”
When asked whether he sleeps lately, he praises the makeup that accompanies those TV appearances. Knowing now what it’s like to be both in front and behind the camera, he’s dressed sharp but casually, down to a pair of John Lennon sunglasses. He walks with the aura of someone having a moment.
The subtle stagecraft of the Jan. 6 hearings
Fittingly, he and Azevedo watch Tuesday’s hearing (well, part of it) from a luxury suite sofa at the Conrad Hotel in Lower Manhattan, where he isn’t staying, while a reporter and photographer watch them watching. As the House committee members make their case that Trump knowingly ordered an assault on the Capitol, the two men pick at the complimentary fruit plate left there earlier in the day.
In some sense, they have skin in the game. They view the proceedings with admiration, maybe a tinge of jealousy, utterly enraptured — at least for the first hour or so.
“It’s almost like it’s our competition,” says Azevedo, who repeatedly points out the slick splicing of the live hearing to archival footage and interview clips. “As an editor, I find it to be quite striking, because they are building a narrative. Literally, it’s a film. … Like a really, really great TV show. … They have cliffhangers!” he adds. “They wrote a script. That’s the genius.”
The proof is in the laughter. A grainy clip of a masked Jason Miller, a Trump strategist, produces chuckles, because he looks “creepy, all pixilated.” He “looks like Bane,” Azevedo jokes.
But the Diet Dr Pepper. That’s the moment. The committee presents a clip of Trump’s former lawyer Powell offering testimony while visibly holding the calorie-free soda. After she finishes speaking, the camera lingers as she takes a huge swig from the can. Everyone in the suite — and probably anyone, anywhere who is watching it — erupts in laughter. It feels so incongruous in such a historic piece of television, the kind of awkward, human moment that happens during a casual Zoom meeting.
“Product placement,” Azevedo says.
“Yeah, at least we didn’t have that,” Holder replies.
The only moment that may produce more laughter — for a similar reason — is when Rudy Giuliani, another of Trump’s endless parade of former lawyers, says a crude word associated with felines but synonymous with “coward,” and not suitable to publish here. “It’s remarkable [the cable news networks] allow swearing,” Holder says.
He lights up when people who appear in his docuseries show up on-screen. (Ivanka Trump? “I saw her three days earlier!” Katrina Pierson? “She’s in the film!”) But his tone is one of almost disbelief when he sees the very room in which he gave his own closed-door testimony, an experience he describes as “totally surreal,” “totally mad.”
“When would you imagine you’re going to hand your footage to Congress?” asks Azevedo.
Eventually, the pair’s interest begins to wane. Power outlets need to be found, phones need charging. Holder receives a transcript of an interview he recently gave to the legendary documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, and he’s struck by just how surreal his life has become. “The Washington Post interviewing me as we’re watching this, and I’m getting emails from Errol Morris is just mad,” he says, delighted.
It’s all so totally mad, but it’s only natural that the pair begins to lose focus on the hearings. They’ve spent years living in this world — and still are. When asked if he’s heard from anyone in the Trump family in the days following his documentary’s release, Holder smiles and murmurs demurely. The answer is probably yes, but he won’t talk about it.
Their brains are saturated with Jan. 6. It’s exhausting — for them, for America. Holder thinks its important to distinguish the intent of his project from the goals of the committee. “I wasn’t going to do a hatchet job or a hit piece on Donald Trump. I wanted to understand who these people were,” he says. If they were going to be buried by it, he wanted to “allow them to take themselves down.”
By 3 p.m., no one in the suite is really watching intently — and Holder and Azevedo need the room to themselves. They are still in promotional mode, and have a hard out. Holder needs a smoke before his next interview. — Travis M. Andrews | 2022-07-13T19:36:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meet the fans who follow the Jan. 6 hearings as must-see TV - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/13/fans-jan-6-hearings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/07/13/fans-jan-6-hearings/ |
White House wants transparency on American investment in China
National security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks at the White House on July 11, 2022. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The Biden administration says it supports congressional action to require U.S. companies to notify the government before investing in critical sectors in China, endorsing in its first public statement on the matter a bipartisan push for transparency that pits business interests against national security.
After more than a year of debate, the White House has achieved a consensus among relevant government agencies on an approach to legislation that mandates notification but empowers the president to go further: to develop regulations restricting and even prohibiting what officials say would be a broad set of investments in a narrow range of sectors that it believes undermine national security.
The issue arises as the pandemic has thrown into relief Western reliance on Chinese suppliers for essential items such as surgical masks, ventilators and drug ingredients, and as concern rises in Washington about China’s military buildup and its efforts to overtake the United States and allies’ lead in critical technologies.
While the U.S. government screens foreign investments in American firms that may harm national security, it has no corresponding program to scrutinize U.S. investments in countries of concern, such as China. The fear is that such investments could aid China’s production of key technologies and weaken the United States, leaving the country dangerously reliant on Chinese imports.
After several years of false starts, a somewhat unlikely coalition of Democrats and Republicans in both chambers have drafted a proposal — with administration input — that would require U.S. firms to disclose plans to invest in advancing Chinese sectors, such as semiconductors, quantum technology, artificial intelligence, critical minerals and materials, and high-capacity batteries. The lawmakers also want to give the president authority to include “any other sector” he deems to be a “national critical capability” based on its significance to national security, according to a June 30 draft obtained by The Washington Post.
“The administration supports the bipartisan and bicameral effort in Congress to provide greater transparency on U.S. investment into China and other countries of concern, particularly for transactions in critical sectors that could undermine America’s national security by blunting our technological edge or undermining our supply chain resilience,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.
And if Congress passes notification legislation, “we also think it is important to have the ability to limit narrow classes of investments that raise national security concerns, using rulemaking that would engage a broad variety of stakeholders,” Sullivan said.
The legislation is called the National Critical Capabilities Defense Act. Drafters say the bill is critical to keeping factory jobs in the United States and preventing China from surpassing U.S. industry in emerging technologies.
FBI director says the threat posed by the Chinese government to Western companies is "getting worse"
“From [masks and ventilators] to computer chips, the pandemic shined a spotlight on just how vulnerable U.S. supply chains are,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), a member of the Finance Committee who introduced the bill last year with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “When we export American expertise and know-how to China, we are ceding our manufacturing power to foreign adversaries, hurting American families and our economy.”
But the effort faces head winds from free-market Republicans and the business community, who say it will hurt American competitiveness. “In order to compete in today’s economy, companies have to be able to invest internationally,” said John Murphy, senior vice president for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“The idea that the U.S. government may start vetting how and where a business can invest is concerning,” Murphy said in an interview. “It’s potentially a completely new and onerous set of constraints on companies that do business globally.”
A vocal opponent is Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), the top Republican on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, who has criticized the lack of public hearings on the legislation and the prospect of a new bureaucracy to screen investments. He also argues that existing export controls are adequate to address any issues.
“I have yet to be convinced that existing export-control laws are falling short,” said Toomey. “Moreover, I’m concerned that what may begin as ‘notification’ will soon evolve into a new federal agency with sweeping authorities to dramatically disrupt and halt the free flow of trade and investment, risking slower economic growth and higher prices for consumers.”
The legislation’s prospects, which appeared pretty good last month, have been caught up in a largely unrelated political tussle in the Senate over Democratic attempts to try to pass a scaled-down version of Build Back Better — President Biden’s package to lower health-care costs and fight climate change. If the Democrats proceed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has vowed to scuttle a major bipartisan package of China legislation that includes the outbound-investment bill.
The threat of inaction, lawmakers say, is real. They point to the U.S. semiconductor software design leader Synopsys, which has invested in a Chinese chip manufacturing software firm Amedac. Such investment, they say, essentially fuels China’s capability to replace American chip design software. Synopsys told The Post it was a “small minority investor” in the firm, but corporate registration records show that it has a nearly 20 percent stake and is the single largest shareholder.
American chip technology going into supercomputers used in China's hypersonics weapons program
They note that U.S. tech giants such as Microsoft have set up labs in China devoted to AI research and that Microsoft, for example, collaborated on “deep neural network” research with a Chinese military-run university that was on a Commerce Department export blacklist. But being placed on Commerce’s Entity List does not bar such research or American investment. “We really have nothing at this point in time that can deal with any outbound-investment issues,” said Emily Weinstein, research fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Microsoft declined to comment.
The administration is worried about capital flow but also knowledge transfer, or what is sometimes referred to as “smart capital.” Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital, a prominent venture capital firm, and its affiliate Sequoia Capital China, have a “massive footprint” across China’s high-tech sector and venture capital industry, Weinstein said. Sequoia Capital China’s executives sometimes sit on the boards of firms they invest in. Lending that management expertise and credibility to companies trying to establish themselves in the global market is “huge,” she said.
Sequoia Capital stressed that its U.S. entity is run by American and European investors, while its Chinese entity is run by Chinese investors.
Over the last several months, the bill’s scope has narrowed from covering more than a dozen sectors to a handful. The types of transactions covered, meanwhile, now also include joint ventures and “greenfield” investments in which a U.S. company opens a facility overseas, according to the draft.
Proponents say the effort is necessary precisely because the Commerce Department has failed to act. In 2018, Congress directed that the agency impose controls on exports of foundational and emerging technologies to China.
“The expectation was we would be seeing export controls in these areas,” said Matt Turpin, a National Security Council China director in the Trump administration. “Commerce has had four years to act with little to show for it.” | 2022-07-13T19:36:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House supports legislation on investment in key sectors in China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/13/china-investment-transparency/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/13/china-investment-transparency/ |
John Bolton said he planned foreign coups. The global outcry was swift.
Ana Herrero
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 30: national security adviser John Bolton listens as President Donald Trump talks with President Buhari of the Federal Republic of Nigeria during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on Monday, April 30, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When a former White House national security adviser and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says that he was involved in planning coups abroad, the world takes notice.
John Bolton, speaking to Jake Tapper live on CNN’s “The Lead” on Wednesday afternoon, said the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was not a “carefully planned coup d’etat” — and that he would know.
“As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat — not here, but, you know, other places — it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what [Trump] did,” Bolton, who served as the top national security official in the Donald Trump administration for 17 months before a bitter exit in 2019, told Tapper.
Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia who was ousted from office in 2019 by the military amid murky election claims, tweeted Wednesday that the remarks showed that the United States was “the worst enemy of democracy and life.”
Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called on Thursday for an international investigation into Bolton’s remarks.
“It is important to know in which other countries the United States planned coups d’etat,” Zakharova told Radio Sputnik.
“This is no surprise,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily news conference on Thursday. “The admission simply shows that interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and overthrowing their governments have become the standard practice of the U.S. government.”
“This is very much part of the U.S. rule book,” Wang said.
Bolton did not specify what coups he had been involved in planning, if any, during the interview. When Tapper pressed him, he pointed to the unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2019, but also added that the United States did not have “all that much to do with it.”
That was a strange example. For one thing, Bolton had said the attempt oust Maduro was “clearly not a coup” in 2019.
Maduro’s government has accused the United States of helping promote political instability in Venezuela.
Maduro did not offer a response after Bolton’s comments on Tuesday. But Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s permanent representative to the U.N., jumped on Twitter to respond that Bolton was correct, coups did take a lot of work. “For this reason, he also failed with his local agents in Venezuela,” Moncada wrote.
Bolton did not respond to a request for comment.
For America’s foreign critics and foes, Bolton often plays the role of a boogeyman, representing the worst of U.S. foreign policy and neoconservative interventionism.
As an official, his hard line views have made him few friends internationally. But he appeared to relish his reputation, writing in one book that being labeled “human scum” by North Korean state media in 2003 was “the highest accolade” he had received.
Bolton had two stints in high positions. Under President George W. Bush, he served in senior arms control roles before becoming ambassador to the United Nations in 2005. He was a major backer of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.
After the Bushyears, Bolton spent years in the foreign policy wilderness — though he hardly went hungry, accepting positions at right-wing think tanks in Washington, working with a global private equity firm and serving as a Fox News contributor.
He returned to government office in April 2018 as the Trump White House’s national security adviser — its third in less than 18 months.
He didn’t last long, leaving the administration in September 2019. Foreign policy appeared to be one major source of dispute, with Trump later tweeting that despite Bolton’s reputation as a hawk, Trump actually had “stronger” views on Cuba and Venezuela.
In Turkey, local media supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan linked Bolton’s latest remarks to the failed attempt to overthrow the Turkish government in July 2016. Bolton, who was not then in government, was a critic of Erdogan at the time.
Takvim, a pro-government tabloid, print an article Wednesday pointing to statements Bolton made in 2016 in support of the “treacherous” coup attempt. The newspaper noted that Bolton had spoken in support of Kurdish groups in Turkey and neighboring countries.
Takvim pointed to a 2016 appearance on Fox News, during which Bolton argued that Erdogan had been seeking to “recreate the Ottoman caliphate” with an Islamist government. Bolton criticized Erdogan for not supporting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“If he goes down, I don’t shed any tears,” Bolton said “. I don’t think he’s been a friend of the United States.”
In a 2008 interview with Al Jazeera, he said that coups can sometimes be “a necessary way to advance American interest” and defended the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
“I think the U.S. should have that capability,” Bolton said, referring to Iran and North Korea as two areas that the United States should focus on toppling hostile regimes.
But despite the speculation, on Tuesday, a number of former U.S. intelligence operatives responded with derision to Bolton’s remarks.
“Bolton never touched a coup,” Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s, wrote on Twitter. “And anyone who thinks fomenting coups is a good idea just doesn’t get out enough.” | 2022-07-13T19:38:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Bolton said he planned coups. The global outcry was swift. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/john-bolton-coup-backlash/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/john-bolton-coup-backlash/ |
A farm struck by a Russian missile in eastern Ukraine, seen on July 13. (Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images)
In late June, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that 1.2 million Ukrainians had been forcibly deported to Russia, including 240,000 children. 2,000 of the children were orphans. The head of the Russian National Defense Control Center Mikhail Mizintsev said 2,359,000 Ukrainian “refugees” had moved into Russia, including 371,925 children.
Last week, Courtney Austrian, the deputy chief of the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in a speech that 18 “filtration camps” had been identified along both sides of the Ukraine-Russian border. With the help of proxy groups, Russian officials had set up camps in schools, sports centers and cultural institutions in Russian-occupied territories.
Ukraine says Russia forcibly relocated thousands from Mariupol. Here’s one dramatic account.
Blinken’s statement cites witness accounts of Russian authorities transporting tens of thousands of people to detention facilities in Donetsk, a Russian-controlled region in eastern Ukraine.
“It just adds to the sad litany of systematic violations of the most basic prohibitions that we have in the law for things that we did not think that we would see again, since World War II, but they’re happening,” he said.
From 1941 to 1952, a total of half-a-million people from the Baltic states were deported to Russia. The objective of the expulsions was principally political, aimed at purging the region of anti-Soviet forces. Among the first group of people were the men of the Baltic elite, including educators, writers, lawyers and other professionals, along with their families. Later, during “Operation Priboi,” women and children were deported and sent to farms to work. Many died..
Robyn Dixon in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report. | 2022-07-13T20:54:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine forced deportations: At least 900,000 sent to Russia, Antony Blinken says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/ukraine-russia-forced-deportation-antony-blinken/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/ukraine-russia-forced-deportation-antony-blinken/ |
Abortion rights activist rally at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 25. (Aj Mast/AP)
An Ohio man has been charged in the rape of a 10-year-old girl who had to travel to Indiana to undergo an abortion, a case that’s been decried by President Biden in the days since the story garnered international attention.
Columbus Police Detective Jeffrey Huhn testified that the arrest was made after a referral from Franklin County Children Services, which had been in touch with the girl’s mother on June 22, according to video of the arraignment from WXIN — two days before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The girl had an abortion at an Indianapolis clinic on June 30, Huhn said.
The detective added that Fuentes’s DNA is being tested to confirm that he was the father to the aborted fetus, according to video of the hearing.
Neither Clark Torbett, Fuentes’s attorney with the Franklin County Public Defender’s Office, nor a representative with Franklin County Children’s Services immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday. Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Dan Meyer told The Washington Post that the office’s policy “is to not comment on ongoing investigations.”
The girl had to travel to Indiana for her procedure because abortions are now banned in Ohio after six weeks. Ohio was among the 13 states with “trigger bans” designed to take effect once Roe was struck down. Since the Dobbs decision, Ohio has imposed a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest. While performing an abortion before six weeks remains legal in Indiana, lawmakers are expected to meet this month to consider further abortion restrictions.
The story quickly received international attention. In impassioned remarks on the future of abortion, Biden expressed outrage over the reported case. “She was forced to have to travel out of the state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life,” Biden said at the White House last week. “Ten years old — 10 years old! — raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized, was forced to travel to another state.”
Biden decries case of 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel for abortion
Soon after Biden’s speech, Republicans — including Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Rep. Jim Jordan — expressed skepticism over the story. In a Tuesday evening op-ed titled, “An Abortion Story Too Good to Confirm,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board criticized Biden for giving his “presidential seal of approval on an unlikely story from a biased source that neatly fits the progressive narrative but can’t be confirmed.”
“The abortion debate is intense and passions run high,” the Journal’s editorial board wrote. “But the American people deserve better from their President than an unproven story designed to aggravate those passions.”
Earlier in the week, Yost told Fox News host Jesse Watters that his office had heard “not a whisper” about the reported case of the 10-year-old victim. “We have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs — not a whisper anywhere,” Yost said on Monday.
The attorney general doubled down to the USA Today network on Tuesday, saying, “Every day that goes by the more likely that this is a fabrication.”
Bernard, the doctor who first brought the story forward, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When asked earlier in the week if there was a way to help corroborate her account of the 10-year-old, she declined, saying, “the things you’re asking for are HIPAA violations.”
“I am not going to put anyone else in Fox’s line of fire,” she wrote in a text message to The Post.
Yost initially issued a one-sentence statement when the arrest was announced Wednesday: “We rejoice anytime a child rapist is taken off the streets.” Yost expanded on the news in a statement to The Post.
“My heart aches for the pain suffered by this young child. I am grateful for the diligent work of the Columbus Police Department in securing a confession and getting a rapist off the street,” he said. “Justice must be served and BCI stands ready to support law enforcement across Ohio putting these criminals behind bars.”
Jordan, who called the story a “lie” on Tuesday in a tweet that has since been deleted, joined Yost in celebrating the arrest.
“Gershon Fuentes should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the congressman wrote. Jordan also did not address his previous remarks about the case being a “lie.”
Abortions performed on patients younger than 15 in the country are extremely rare. In 2019, 0.2 percent of reported abortions were performed on patients that young, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During the arraignment hearing, Meyer, the prosecutor, noted that the girl had only recently turned 10, the Dispatch reported — meaning she may have been 9 at the time she was raped and impregnated. | 2022-07-13T21:02:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gershon Fuentes charged in rape of 10-year-old victim in Ohio who had abortion in Indiana - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/abortion-girl-rape-victim-arrest-ohio/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/abortion-girl-rape-victim-arrest-ohio/ |
After defying the Texas abortion ban last fall, Braid will shutter his clinics in Texas and Oklahoma
Alan Braid inside of the Tulsa Women's Clinic in Oklahoma on April 6. (September Dawn Bottoms for The Washington Post)
A high-profile abortion provider is opening new clinics in Illinois and New Mexico and shuttering his two clinics in Oklahoma and Texas, where abortion has been banned in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Alan Braid, who defied the Texas abortion ban last fall, selected locations most accessible to patients who can no longer access the procedure in their home states. One of his clinics, in Albuquerque will be located near a major airport, while the other, in Carbondale, Ill., will open 24 miles from Illinois’ southern border, within striking distance of the vast abortion deserts spreading throughout the Southeast and Midwest.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, providers in antiabortion states have been wrestling with whether to stay put — and offer other health-care services to women in their communities — or uproot their operations to a state where abortion is still legal.
The untold story of the Texas abortion ban
While Braid expects to care for many women from Texas and Oklahoma in his new clinics, he said, he knows many patients in the communities he served for years won’t be able to make the trip.
San Antonio, where Braid’s Texas clinic was based, is an 11-hour drive from Albuquerque and a 14-hour drive from Carbondale.
“They will be forced into carrying their pregnancy to term,” he said. “Or they will seek other means that are not safe, and we’ll see a return to the ’60s and ’70s when women died.”
Braid has been an outspoken advocate for abortion access for years, fighting against increasingly strict antiabortion restrictions in Oklahoma and Texas. His clinics have been plaintiffs in approximately 10 lawsuits filed against antiabortion legislation. Rather than close his doors in 2015, when new restrictions forced approximately half of all abortion clinics in Texas to shutter, Braid took out a loan and began building a $3 million state-of-the-art facility to comply with the laws.
In September, Braid performed an abortion on a patient who had passed Texas’s new six-week legal limit and wrote about it in a Washington Post op-ed — a move designed to bait lawsuits from antiabortion activists and, he’d hoped, overturn the state law.
“I fully understood that there could be legal consequences,” Braid wrote in the op-ed, “but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.”
Alan Braid is known for defying the Texas abortion law. He’s spent years challenging antiabortion laws.
Texas’s six-week abortion ban, which withstood multiple legal challenges, has been replaced by a pre-Roe abortion ban from 1925 that took effect after the Supreme Court ruling and outlaws almost all abortions.
Local antiabortion activists say they’re thrilled Texas patients will no longer have easy access to Braid’s clinic.
Women “used to stream in like fish down the river,” said Norma Reyna, an antiabortion activist who has been protesting outside Braid’s San Antonio clinic for years. When the clinic closes its doors, she said, she’ll be “ecstatic.”
“It’s hard to even describe how happy I’ll be,” she said. “It’ll be just heaven.”
Now that Braid will be operating in two Democrat-run states, he said, he plans to focus on providing top-notch medical care to his patients.
“No more Zoom calls with lawyers,” he said. “I can just be a doctor again.”
Braid’s clinic in San Antonio, Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services, was forced to stop providing abortions as soon as the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
They had about 15 patients in the waiting room, Braid said.
“We had patients break down hysterically, and patients very angry who took out their anger on us,” he said.
One by one, Braid said, he and his staff talked each patient through her options, referring most to New Mexico, where clinics were already scheduling appointments several weeks out.
Other clinics based in states where abortion is now illegal have announced plans to move to New Mexico to help absorb a surge of out-of-state patients, including Whole Woman’s Health, a network that had four clinics in Texas, and Jackson Women’s Health Organization, widely known as “the pink house,” which had been the only clinic in Mississippi.
A refuge for Texas patients, Oklahoma clinics brace for abortion ban
The moves to New Mexico and Illinois will be logistically challenging, Braid said. Only a few of his staff members will be able to relocate. While he hopes to fill the open positions with people who live in Albuquerque and Carbondale, he said he expects he’ll have to fly in doctors from other states, patching together a schedule with a mix of local and out-of-state providers.
For now, he said, he plans to keep his home base in San Antonio, flying to Illinois and New Mexico as often as he can.
He hasn’t had time to think beyond the next few months, he said.
“Up until the very moment we heard from the court, I had this unrealistic hope that there would be some relief,” he said.
“Then all of a sudden it became very real.”
The latest: Sen. Graham files to block Fulton County subpoena | 2022-07-13T21:03:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas abortion provider Alan Braid will reopen clinics in Democrat-run states - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/abortion-roe-texas-illinois-new-mexico-alan-braid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/abortion-roe-texas-illinois-new-mexico-alan-braid/ |
The significance of the new Steve Bannon tape
It’s not news that Trump aimed to prematurely declare victory on election night. But the tape fills out the picture of how Trumpworld might have viewed the utility of that -- by causing a “firestorm."
Stephen K. Bannon prepares to talk to reporters a court appearance in November. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
We don’t know whether Stephen K. Bannon will ultimately testify for the Jan. 6 committee. It seems pretty likely his offer to do so was a last-minute ploy to avoid criminal liability for flouting the committee’s subpoena. The committee reiterated Wednesday that Bannon must deliver the documents it has requested before it will enter into negotiations over testifying.
But there is little question that Bannon could be a significant witness. That was confirmed by a new piece of evidence that landed even as the Jan. 6 committee was holding a hearing Tuesday.
Mother Jones is out with a new Bannon tape from Oct. 31, 2020, in which Bannon talks in detail — presciently, it turns out — about how Donald Trump would claim victory on election night regardless of where the vote count stood.
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right?” Bannon told associates. “He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
Bannon added: “As it sits here today, at 10 or 11 o’clock, Trump’s gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. Game over. Suck on that.' ”
On the tape, Bannon acknowledged something emphasized in the Axios story and elsewhere: that it was quite possible that Trump would be ahead on election night because his voters were more likely to vote in person, and more Democratic-heavy mail ballots are often counted later — something dubbed the “red mirage.” He came out and admitted that Trump would seek to exploit this misleading setup.
Bannon then predicted with apparent glee that this would set off a “firestorm.”
“We’re going to have antifa crazy, the media crazy, the courts are crazy,” he said. “And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting s--- out. ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.’ ”
Bannon added: “Also, if Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s gonna be even crazier.”
Bannon doesn’t come out and describe the utility of this “firestorm” in the comments reported by Mother Jones. What purpose could be served by inflaming antifa and the media, besides stoking grievances that have proven politically useful to Trump? Perhaps Bannon just reveled in the idea of owning the libs.
But there are other, earlier Bannon comments that suggest that perhaps he saw some real, electoral utility in manufacturing such a “firestorm” — and that he had an eye for January 2021 all along.
In an interview with Showtime’s “The Circus” released in early October — about a month before these other comments — Bannon predicted that there would be such uncertainty that Congress would be forced to decide the election. Bannon couched it in terms of Democrats supposedly seeking to overturn the election by counting mail ballots that he described as “uncertified,” but even that framing suggested that this supposed uncertainty could well be manufactured. And the practical effect was him predicting a situation much like the one Trump would ultimately gun for on Jan. 6.
He even used the same word: “firestorm.”
“It’s gonna be crazy lawsuits on naked ballots, on every different aspect of it,” Bannon said, adding: “With this scale of votes, we’ll go into January, and that’s when the firestorm starts.”
Host John Heilemann pressed him on what seemed like a crazy idea at the time. Was Bannon really saying this would be decided by Congress two months after the election?
Bannon predicted: “Right before noon on [January] 20th, in a vote in the House, Trump will win the presidency.”
It didn’t get past the night of Jan. 6, but only because Vice President Mike Pence and enough Republicans snuffed out the idea. Trump and Co. weren’t able to create enough smoke to convince enough Republicans to go along with their desperate gambit.
Bannon’s theorizing didn’t come out of nowhere. A few days earlier on his show, a former Trump White House official had talked about just such a scenario. The following day, Trump himself talked about the advantage he could have if it ever went to Congress, by virtue of there being more GOP-controlled congressional delegations than Democratic ones. Trump said, “We have an advantage if we go back to Congress. Does everyone understand that? I think it’s 26 to 22 or something, because it’s counted one vote per state.”
(The House would award one vote per delegation in such a scenario. And at the time, Republicans had majorities of 26 delegations to Democrats’ 22 — though that was subject to change in the 2020 election.)
So in total, Bannon predicted Trump’s premature victory declaration, which came true. He predicted that all hell would break loose on Jan. 6, which came true. He predicted that uncertainty about election results spurred by a bunch of lawsuits would force Congress to decide the election, which wound up essentially being Trump’s plan. And he suggested that unrest was perhaps desirable and/or could be of some utility in all of this, which evidence suggests Trump might well have agreed with on Jan. 6.
We don’t know just how much coordination there was between Trump and Bannon, though the Jan. 6 committee noted Tuesday that the two men spoke at least twice Jan. 5, including before Bannon’s prediction about Jan. 6. It’s certainly possible Bannon was engaging in guesswork. But it also seems possible that he was privy to some of the strategizing about what was to come.
The Jan. 6 committee has focused on proving that Trump was repeatedly told his wild voter-fraud claims were false, in the service of proving he acted corruptly in seeking to overturn the election. What Bannon was saying publicly was that Trump was going to do all of this regardless of the actual results, which suggests that indeed the details really didn’t matter to Trump. If that stemmed from talks with Trump and his team, that would drive home the corruptness.
Whether Bannon testifies or not, that’s a significant piece of the puzzle. | 2022-07-13T21:03:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The significance of the new Steve Bannon tape - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/significance-new-steve-bannon-tape/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/significance-new-steve-bannon-tape/ |
Amber Heard appears in court in late May. (Steve Helber/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
A judge on Wednesday rejected Amber Heard’s request for the high-profile defamation case involving her and her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, to be declared a mistrial. Heard lost to Depp last month.
“There is no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing,” Judge Penney Azcarate stated in the court order.
Representatives for Heard have not responded to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
Depp sued Heard for $50 million over a 2018 Post op-ed in which she described herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse (without mentioning Depp by name). Heard countersued for $100 million after a former lawyer for Depp, Adam Waldman, referred to her allegations as a hoax.
Following six intense weeks of testimony in Fairfax County Circuit Court — the trial took place in Virginia because The Post’s printing presses and servers are located there — a seven-person jury on June 1 found that Heard had, in fact, defamed Depp with the op-ed. He was awarded $15 million, a sum reduced to $10.35 million because Virginia law caps punitive damages. Heard was awarded $2 million after the jury found that Waldman had defamed Heard, one of three points made in her countersuit.
After the Depp-Heard verdict: confusion, elation and — for a few — disappointment
Earlier this month, Heard’s lawyers filed to have a mistrial declared over multiple factors, including their claim that one of the seven jurors was not actually the person summoned for jury duty in April. The lawyers argued that the jury panel list included someone who “would have been 77 years old at the time,” but that the juror who participated was a 52-year-old with the same name who lived at the same residence.
“As the Court no doubt agrees,” the lawyers wrote, “it is deeply troubling for an individual not summoned for jury duty nonetheless to appear for jury duty and serve on a jury, especially in a case such as this.”
In Wednesday’s court order, Azcarate denied several of Heard’s post-trial motions for “reasons stated on the record” but provided a detailed explanation for why the juror’s service was not reason for a mistrial. The summons did not include a birth date, according to Azcarate, and the juror wrote their birth date on a questionnaire that “met the statutory requirements for service.” The judge noted that both parties questioned the jury panel and declared it acceptable: “Therefore, Due Process was guaranteed and provided,” she wrote.
Azcarate also stated that Heard’s team was provided the jury list “five days prior to the commencement of the trial” and had numerous opportunities to object throughout the weeks-long proceedings.
More on the Depp-Heard trial
Jury rules actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamed each other
Why Johnny Depp lost his libel case in the U.K. but won in the U.S.
The trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was too much and not enough | 2022-07-13T21:07:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge rejects Amber Heard’s motion for mistrial in Johnny Depp case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/13/amber-heard-johnny-depp-mistrial-denied/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/13/amber-heard-johnny-depp-mistrial-denied/ |
WASHINGTON — Surging prices for gas, food and rent catapulted U.S. inflation to a new four-decade peak in June, further pressuring households and likely sealing the case for another large interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve. Consumer prices soared 9.1% compared with a year earlier, the biggest yearly increase since 1981. The persistent price acceleration underscores the brutal impact inflation has inflicted on Americans, with the costs of necessities, in particular, rising much faster than average incomes. Lower-income and Black and Hispanic American have been hit especially hard. As consumers’ confidence in the economy declines, so have President Joe Biden’s approval ratings.
WASHINGTON — Inflation’s relentless surge didn’t merely persist in June. It accelerated. For the 12 months ending in June, the government’s consumer price index rocketed 9.1%, the fastest year-over-year jump since 1981. And that was nothing next to what energy prices did: Fueled by heavy demand and by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy costs shot up nearly 42% in the past 12 months, the largest such jump since 1980. Even if you toss out food and energy prices — which are notoriously volatile and have driven much of the price spike — so-called core inflation soared 5.9% over the past year.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration and Democrats are warning of dire consequences if Congress fails to act on computer chips legislation. They say Congress needs to pass a bill by the end of July that’s designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. Advocates say the plan is important for the economy and national security. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says computer chipmakers are being offered lucrative incentives from other countries such as South Korea, Japan, France, Germany and Singapore to locate plants there. Raimondo says “there are very real, very devastating consequences if Congress doesn’t do its job in the month of July.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix has picked Microsoft help deliver the commercials in a cheaper version of its video streaming service expected to launch later this year with a pledge to minimize the intrusions into personal privacy that often accompany digital ads. The alliance announced Wednesday marks a major step toward Netflix’s first foray into advertising after staying commercial-free for 15 years. Netflix announced it would create an ad-supported option three months ago after disclosing it had lost 200,000 subscribers during the first three months of the year amid stiffer competition and rising inflation. Netflix still hasn’t disclosed the price of its ad-backed service.
ISTANBUL — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Russian and Ukrainian officials meeting in Istanbul have taken a “critical step forward” to ensure the export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar says the sides reached agreements concerning joint control of vessels as they leave and arrive at ports and the safety of the transfer routes. Military officials from Russia, Ukraine and Turkey and U.N. envoys met Wednesday in Istanbul for talks on a plan to export Ukrainian grain to world markets through the Black Sea. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. and its allies are working on new measures to cap the price of Russia’s oil, its main source of revenues. Leaders of the Group of Seven industrial nations have tentatively agreed to back a cap to force Russia to accept below-market prices for oil. The goal is to help bring Russia’s war on Ukraine to a halt while possibly lowering energy costs. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is touring Indo-Pacific countries to lobby for the price cap proposal. In Japan on Tuesday, U.S. and Japanese officials agreed to explore the feasibility of price caps. Russia hasn’t signaled a response. The Kremlin could retaliate by taking its oil off the market, which would cause more turmoil.
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s government has declared an “energy emergency” in response to supply disruptions and skyrocketing energy prices in Europe. A government official told a news conference in Budapest that there is “unlikely to be enough gas in Europe for the autumn and winter heating season.” The official said Wednesday that Hungary would increase its domestic energy production capacities to ensure adequate supply. Hungary is heavily dependent on fossil fuels from Russia and gained concessions from the European Union in May when the bloc aimed to impose sanctions on Russian oil exports. | 2022-07-13T21:07:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: Inflation surges, stocks end lower - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-inflation-surges-stocks-end-lower/2022/07/13/129367c4-02ec-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-inflation-surges-stocks-end-lower/2022/07/13/129367c4-02ec-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Why China Has U.S. Congress Focused on Computer Chips
Analysis by Brittney Washington | Bloomberg
Images of mobile devices at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) Museum of Innovation in Hsinchu, on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. TSMC reported a sixth straight quarter of record sales, buoyed by unrelenting demand by Apple Inc. and other customers for chips produced by the world’s largest foundry. Photographer: I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
A desire to spend more than $50 billion to bolster the US semiconductor industry seemed to be a rare point of bipartisan consensus in Washington. But legislation to carry out that initiative -- with the goal of increasing US competitiveness with China -- now faces an uncertain fate, caught in a larger struggle between Democrats and Republicans over spending.
1. What does Congress propose to do?
Similar but not identical bills passed by the House and Senate would provide $52 billion over five years in emergency funding for semiconductor research and development, legacy chip manufacturing, packaging research and microelectronics development. (Legacy chips are frequently used in cars, aircraft and a variety of military hardware.) The vast majority of that money, $50 billion, would be distributed through a new fund overseen by the Commerce Department; the other $2 billion would be overseen by the Defense Department. On top of that, the House version authorizes $45 billion for grants and loans to support supply chain resilience and manufacturing of critical goods in the US. Both measures authorize billions more for research and development at the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
2. Why is this necessary?
While the U.S. is a leader in chip design, roughly 90% of global chip manufacturing capacity is elsewhere -- primarily in Taiwan and South Korea. That puts the U.S. at high risk of supply chain disruptions in the event of trade disputes, military conflicts or, as seen in the past two years, a pandemic. China’s state-led industrial policies, which aim to achieve self-sufficiency in all stages of chip production, also threaten U.S. competitiveness. The Chinese government plans to boost its domestic production using government subsidies and tax preferences.
3. How are the House and Senate bills different?
The House bill would contribute $8 billion over two years to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations-overseen initiative to help developing countries address climate change. Republicans are opposed; Representative Michael McCaul of Texas said the money would go to an unaccountable “slush fund.” The two bills also take different approaches to creating a new directorate at the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that funds basic research in science and engineering. The Senate’s version would focus it on technology issues. The House bill would focus it on research and development to address societal issues such as climate change and inequality. Another sticking point is on trade -- the Senate bill would create a new exclusion process for tariffs on Chinese imports and reinstate previous exemptions that have expired. The House bill is silent on tariffs but would extend a trade assistance program for US workers displaced by foreign trade.
4. In what way are the bills aimed at China?
Neither bill explicitly states the U.S. is in a race with China for semiconductor sovereignty, but lawmakers regularly describe the bills that way. The Senate bill “will allow the United States to out-compete countries like China in critical technologies like semiconductors,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last May. Any doubt that China is the real target of the bills is put to rest by the many provisions unrelated to semiconductors.
5. What are those provisions?
Both bills include funding to develop alternatives to Chinese 5G telecommunications equipment, which the U.S. worries could be used to carry out cyberattacks or espionage. (China denies that.) Both bills would impose sanctions on China for its treatment of the predominantly Muslim Uighurs in the far-western region of Xinjiang and elevate the rank of U.S. special coordinator for Tibetan issues at the State Department. The Senate bill would require U.S. agencies to treat Taiwan’s elected government as the “legitimate representative of the people of Taiwan” and to stop using China’s preferred term, “Taiwan authorities.” The Senate would also impose additional sanctions on China for cyberattacks and theft of trade secrets. The House bill would allow Hong Kong residents to apply for temporary protected status in the U.S. and extend an export ban on certain crowd control equipment to the Hong Kong police. After the Senate passed its bill last June, Chinese lawmakers said the legislation “smears China’s development path and domestic and foreign policies” and “interferes in China’s internal affairs under the banner of innovation and competition.”
6. What are the prospects?
Lawmakers have been working on reconciling the two versions of the bill since May, and Democratic leaders want to bring a compromise measure to the floor by the August recess. But the bill hit a snag when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced that he would pull his support for the bill if it’s tied to other Democratic domestic proposals, such as prescription drug price cuts and tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations. McConnell has been backed by other Senate Republicans, including John Cornyn of Texas, a key player in crafting the China bill. Some lawmakers, including Cornyn, have pushed to pass the chips funding by itself or as a part of priority legislation like spending bills or the annual defense authorization. Republicans are also pressuring Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold a vote on the Senate-passed version of the bill without reconciling it with the House’s version, clearing it for the president’s signature. | 2022-07-13T21:07:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why China Has U.S. Congress Focused on Computer Chips - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-china-has-us-congress-focused-on-computer-chips/2022/07/13/f6b19430-02e2-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-china-has-us-congress-focused-on-computer-chips/2022/07/13/f6b19430-02e2-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
University of Michigan names Santa Ono as its next president
He will be the university’s first leader of Asian descent and will succeed a predecessor fired amid scandal
Santa Ono addresses the media after being introduced as the new president of the University of Michigan on Wednesday. (Carlos Osorio/AP)
A veteran higher education leader and biomedical researcher, Santa J. Ono, was chosen on Wednesday to become the next president of the University of Michigan, filling a vacancy created after the previous president was fired amid scandal in January.
Ono, 59, who is of Japanese heritage, will be the first Asian American to lead the public university. He has been president and vice-chancellor of the University of British Columbia since 2016 and previously was president of the University of Cincinnati.
Michigan, one of the most highly regarded public universities in the country, was rocked in January when the governing board abruptly removed Mark S. Schlissel from the presidency following an investigation into an alleged affair he had with a subordinate.
Schlissel fired as University of Michigan president
Also that month, the university announced that it had agreed to pay $490 million to settle claims from more than 1,000 people who said a longtime sports doctor on the Michigan staff, Robert E. Anderson, sexually abused them over many years.
Michigan’s interim president is Mary Sue Coleman, who was also Schlissel’s predecessor as president. Ono will take over from her on Oct. 13, leading a university with more than 47,000 students on its main campus in Ann Arbor and thousands more on regional campuses in Dearborn and Flint. He will receive an annual base salary of $975,000 a year.
“My major agenda is to ensure that Michigan remains, in my view, one of the great public universities of the world,” Ono said in brief telephone interview. “That’s not something I take for granted.” He said he wanted to make sure that the university is affordable and accessible, and he wants to promote research to help solve problems such as climate change.
“Michigan is a stunning research university, a world-class one,” he said. “I view this as an opportunity.” As a researcher himself, Ono has studied the immune system and eye disease.
Denise Ilitch, a member of the governing Board of Regents, praised Ono in a statement as “someone who could build trust, lead with integrity and actively engage the full range of Michigan’s constituencies.”
Ilitch added: “It is readily apparent to me after getting to know Dr. Ono and learning about his experiences as a university administrator, that he is the right person to lead the University of Michigan at this moment in time.” | 2022-07-13T21:07:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Santa Ono named University of Michigan president - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/13/santa-ono-university-michigan-president/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/13/santa-ono-university-michigan-president/ |
FILE - In this image provided by the Serum Institute of India, vials of freshly manufactured Novavax COVID-19 vaccines wait to be labeled in 2022, in Pune, India. The U.S. is getting another COVID-19 vaccine choice as the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday, July 13, 2022, cleared Novavax shots for adults. (Serum Institute of India for Novavax via AP) (Uncredited/Serum Institute of India, Novavax) | 2022-07-13T21:07:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US regulators OK new COVID-19 shot option from Novavax - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/us-regulators-ok-new-covid-19-shot-option-from-novavax/2022/07/13/9248a9aa-02ee-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/us-regulators-ok-new-covid-19-shot-option-from-novavax/2022/07/13/9248a9aa-02ee-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Either there is a right to privacy or there isn’t
Law enforcement officers gather in front of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's home in Chevy Chase on July 2. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Regarding Ruth Marcus’s July 10 op-ed, “All justices have a right to privacy”:
I’m sorry, but I thought the Supreme Court just decided that there is no such thing as a right to privacy. If there is none for women seeking abortions, there is none for Supreme Court justices seeking a little peace and quiet in their own home without picketers exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech. Nor can a Supreme Court justice expect to have a quiet dinner when out in the public sphere.
James C.L. Brown, Milton, Del.
Regarding Alexandra Petri’s July 9 op-ed, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of … a nice steak?”:
It was such fun reading Ms. Petri make mincemeat out of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s right to enjoy his steak at Morton’s free of protests against his Supreme Court vote to halt women’s self-determination over their own bodies.
The clincher, though, was Morton’s choice of words in defending its prominent patron that politics should not be allowed to interrupt the justice’s dinner “regardless of your side.” Will it be a baked potato or french fries then? Nice to know Morton’s supports a choice about something.
Marilyn Urwitz, Washington | 2022-07-13T21:08:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Either there is a right to privacy or there isn’t - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/either-there-is-right-privacy-or-there-isnt/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/either-there-is-right-privacy-or-there-isnt/ |
Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) makes remarks as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders host a statue dedication ceremony honoring Mary McLeod Bethune at the U.S. Capitol. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Since 1864, each state in the nation has sent two statues of distinguished citizens to represent it in the U.S. Capitol. None of the figures in the National Statuary Hall collection have depicted Black Americans, a shameful omission that was finally corrected Wednesday, when the statue of famed educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, representing Florida, was unveiled as part of the collection.
“Today we are rewriting the history we want to share with our future generations. We are replacing a remnant of hatred and division with a symbol of hope and inspiration,” said Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) at the unveiling of the 11-foot, white marble sculpture. Bethune, a fighter for the rights of Black people and women, a presidential adviser, and a teacher who helped start the United Negro College Fund, replaced Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith.
Starting in 2000, states were allowed to remove and replace existing statues with new ones; though a handful of states did so, until this week none of the replacements depicted Black Americans. The selection of Bethune came after Florida lawmakers voted in 2016 to replace the Smith statue amid a nationwide backlash against Confederate symbols that followed the massacre of nine Black worshipers at a historic Black church in Charleston, S.C. Use of Bethune’s likeness was approved in 2018 by lawmakers and then-Gov. Rick Scott (R).
In the next few years, there will be other Black Americans taking their rightful — but long denied — positions in the historic hall. Virginia has decided to replace Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee with civil rights leader Barbara Johns, and Arkansas will honor civil rights activist Daisy Bates. States that still choose to have themselves represented by treacherous defenders of the Confederacy — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia — should follow the lead of states that have recognized that those who fought so fiercely to try to tear apart the union have no place in the seat of its government.
On the pedestal of the statue of Bethune, sculpted by Florida artist Nilda Comas, the first Hispanic female master sculptor chosen for the Statuary Hall State Collection, are these words: “Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it may be a diamond in the rough.” Just as her words and her life inspired her contemporaries, so will her selection as the first Black American to be represented in Statuary Hall enlighten future generations. | 2022-07-13T21:08:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Mary McLeod Bethune statue in National Statuary Hall is inspiring - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/mary-mcleod-bethune-statue-capitol-building/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/mary-mcleod-bethune-statue-capitol-building/ |
Democratic governors show the fight their voters crave
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) (Richard Vogel/AP)
Though Democrats are in power in Washington, much of the nation’s political agenda is being set by an aggressive Republican Party, particularly the radicalized Supreme Court. And if you want to find a vigorous Democratic response, you have to venture out of the capital.
The White House might find that unfair; their constant message is, “We’re doing everything we can!” That isn’t completely wrong, but it shows why Democratic voters are so frustrated with the Biden administration, and why more compelling things are happening at the state level.
Take California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed the latest in a series of gun restrictions passed by the legislature this year. The bill allows the state attorney general, local prosecutors, and any “person who has suffered harm” from gun violence to bring civil suits against manufacturers and sellers of guns if they can show the businesses violated California’s expansive state laws on how guns are made, marketed and sold.
The law was modeled in part on Texas’ S. B. 8, the “vigilante” abortion law that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion. When the Supreme Court allowed that blatantly unconstitutional (at the time) law to go into effect last September, liberals immediately asked whether they couldn’t do the same thing on guns.
California Democrats stepped up and did it.
Will the Supreme Court strike this new gun law down? “They’re going to have a hell of a time taking this law and not applying their same principal point of view that they applied on the Texas abortion law,” Newsom said. “We’re going to use that door they opened … to get these guns off the street.”
That of course assumes that the court’s conservatives are intellectually consistent, applying legal principles evenhandedly whether they produce their preferred policy outcomes or not. And who believes that’ll happen?
But here’s what matters: Even if they know these laws could be struck down, Newsom and California Democrats decided it was worth doing anyway. They got a short-term policy victory that might be sustainable, and they’ve shown the people who elected them that they aren’t going to hesitate to act on goals those voters find important.
Democrats in New York did something similar: After their long-standing gun regulation was struck down by the Supreme Court, they passed a comprehensive new law restricting concealed carry. They didn’t say “Why bother, because this might get struck down too.” They moved ahead.
The same thing is happening on abortion: Governors and legislators in blue states are trying to be creative and aggressive in guaranteeing reproductive rights, because it’s the right thing to do and it’s politically smart.
Contrast that with the White House response to the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe. President Biden and his advisers seemed caught by surprise, though everyone saw this coming from the moment Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed, and especially since the S. B. 8 decision last year. As The Post reports, White House officials have “been reluctant to put forward policy proposals that are likely to be struck down in court.”
You can call that realism. Or you can call it defeatism.
Meanwhile, Biden’s communication director took the opportunity to insult the people who have spent years working to protect abortion rights, saying Biden wouldn’t try to “satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party.” Instead, she said, he’ll seek to “assemble a broad-based coalition to defend a woman’s right to choose.”
It isn’t hard to see why that enraged liberals.
Part of the problem is that this White House is extremely focused on process, always seeming to start by asking what their available options are within the legal and procedural systems as they exist. They might say that’s the nature of governing: to get things done you have to understand and navigate that system.
But that process-oriented approach can also become a straitjacket, not only limiting your options but pushing you toward a politically enervating incrementalism.
No one would deny that a governor such as Newsom has a level of freedom Biden doesn’t have. Democrats have a supermajority in both houses of the California legislature. There’s no filibuster. Newsom doesn’t have to kowtow to one or two obstinate legislators in his own party, or search for support among 10 conservative Republican senators. Which is what Biden had to do on guns.
As Newsom and other governors know, there are times when ambitious gestures are useful as part of your strategy — not all of the strategy, but a part of it. Politics isn’t separate from policy, they work together: Today’s good politics can make tomorrow’s electoral victories more likely, and those in turn will make it easier to enact the policies you want.
Even within the constraints that bind him, there’s room for Biden to get more aggressive. He just has to overcome his natural impulses and do it. | 2022-07-13T21:08:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Gavin Newsom shows extravagant gestures are just what his party needs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/newsom-biden-guns-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/newsom-biden-guns-abortion/ |
The Feed the Family Pantry, which gets about 100 families a week and has been in operation for more than a year, might soon close. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)
Petula Dvorak’s July 8 Metro column, “A food bank opened on a swank D.C. block. It’s about to be shut down.,” implied that Van Ness residents pushed for a food bank to be closed because of their selfish desire to drive out lower-income neighbors. The property is owned by the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), which also owns several buildings near the Van Ness-UDC Metro stop. I don’t think there has been public outcry against the food pantry. Many neighbors actively contribute to (and use) it.
UDC seems to have done little to fill the retail space in its buildings or to use the buildings at all. The empty storefronts leave the neighborhood looking abandoned. That doesn’t make UDC a good neighbor or a good steward of D.C. resources. Its retail space should be bringing in revenue to support the school or be used to house school activities. Instead, in recent weeks, we hear that the food bank is being evicted and a local restaurant tenant closed, after reporting a drastic rent increase and unwillingness by the school to agree to a long-term lease.
The fact that the neighborhood is not a food desert is certainly one of the reasons that the new residents quoted in the article like living there. The pricey stores Ms. Dvorak alluded to have a different landlord and have been active in the neighborhood for decades.
It was unnecessary to attack both the long-term and newer residents of the Van Ness neighborhood.
Heidi Markovitz, Washington | 2022-07-13T21:09:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Van Ness welcomes its lower-income neighbors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/van-ness-welcomes-its-lower-income-neighbors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/van-ness-welcomes-its-lower-income-neighbors/ |
Where the conspiracy starts
Signage outside Google's new Bay View campus in Mountain View, Calif. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
Geoffrey A. Fowler’s July 10 Business column, “Don’t be evil, Google. Delete the data that endangers women.,” noted that our search data could be used to precipitate antiabortion criminal proceedings in state courts. But wait — it gets worse. If we made Google searches relating to “abortion” or “pregnancy test,” and anyone deletes (or conspires to delete) that data, would that also be a crime?
Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1512, provides, in part:
(c) Whoever corruptly —
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. Long live, big brother.
Richard A. Golden, Burke | 2022-07-13T21:09:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Where the conspiracy starts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/where-conspiracy-starts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/where-conspiracy-starts/ |
By Mauricio Savarese and Diane Jeantet | AP
SAO PAULO — Under tight security and wearing a bulletproof vest, former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended a political rally in the capital city of Brasilia. After passing through a metal detector, hundreds of Workers’ Party backers gathered near the stage, where da Silva called for them to remain peaceful and avoid confrontations with adversaries. | 2022-07-13T21:10:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil's Lula da Silva asks for calm after ally's killing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/brazils-lula-da-silva-asks-for-calm-after-allys-killing/2022/07/13/7d0f0492-02e6-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/brazils-lula-da-silva-asks-for-calm-after-allys-killing/2022/07/13/7d0f0492-02e6-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Increasing turnout isn’t ‘rigging’ elections. It may be unrigging them.
A voter places her ballot in an official drop box in Milwaukee on Nov. 3, 2020. (Sara Stathas/The Washington Post)
On Friday, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court banned the use of ballot drop boxes in the state’s elections.
At issue was whether the Wisconsin Election Commission had the power to allow the use of drop boxes in 2020 as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. The court determined that it did not. But should anyone have been under any misapprehension that the decision was not deeply rooted in partisan politics, the majority opinion will clear that up.
“[T]housands of votes have been cast via this unlawful method, thereby directly harming the Wisconsin voters,” it states as the author argues that the voters who filed the lawsuit had standing to do so. “The illegality of these drop boxes weakens the people’s faith that the election produced an outcome reflective of their will.”
In other words, that ballots were cast by drop box and because those drop boxes have now been determined to be illegal … people’s faith in the election is weakened? This is an argument that could have been lifted directly from a Newsmax segment about the need for “election audits.”
Predictably, Donald Trump and his allies quickly celebrated the ruling. This, they argued, was validation of a central tenet of their complaints about the 2020 election: It had been “rigged” against the sitting president! The ruling was touted as undercutting the idea that the election had been fair and prompted calls for the results in the state to be decertified.
It is certainly true that the ruling marked a reversion to the status quo. But the idea that the status quo of voting in the United States marks some sort of ideal that must be preserved is flawed. If anything, the expansion of access to voting seen in Wisconsin was one of a number of efforts to unrig elections, to expand access to voting and increase participation.
Remarkably, even that seemingly uncontroversial idea — that more people who are eligible to vote should do so — has been cast as somehow tainting election systems. The Republican-led state Senate in Wisconsin tapped conservative lawyer (and former member of the elected state Supreme Court) Michael Gableman to conduct a review of the state’s 2020 election. That probe was summarized in a report that was released in March, casting efforts to increase access to voting as inherently suspect.
At its heart, the report focused on funding provided to several Wisconsin municipalities to increase turnout. The grants came from a group called the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) which had received a substantial chunk of money from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. So the funding was cast pejoratively as “Zuckerbucks” and the efforts to get more to people to vote as inherently partisan.
That, again, is at the heart of much of the “rigging” argument — which, I’ll quickly note, emerged largely as a way for Republicans to nod along with Trump’s claims about the election without having to agree with his nonsensical “fraud” allegations. If you actively try to get more people to vote, you’re acting in a partisan way … since groups that tend to vote less frequently are often more heavily Democratic.
But see how this works in the other direction, too? The system as it is facilitates turnout among groups that are less likely to vote Democratic. Isn’t it fair to argue, then, that it’s already rigged on behalf of Republicans?
Consider one factor in turnout: residency. The Census Bureau tracks turnout data on a number of demographic lines, including where people live. One thing that’s consistently the case is that people who live in rental properties are less likely to vote than are people who live in residences occupied by the owner. (This is a lamentably clunky descriptor, but it’s more accurate.) Relatedly, people who have lived in the same place for a longer period of time are more likely to vote — in both midterm elections like 2018 and in presidential races.
Why is that? In part it’s because voting is tied to your residence. Who you vote for depends on where you live, so if you move, you often need to re-register to vote. Renters move more often than homeowners for obvious reasons, meaning they need to register to vote more often. They’re also less likely to have lived in the same place for an extended period.
Other data from the bureau shows a link between how often people move and the challenge of updating registration. In both 2018 and 2020, those who have lived in their residences for a relatively short period were more likely to say they didn’t vote because of issues with their voter registrations. Moving more decreases turnout.
There are other factors, too. In many places, voting sites don’t change much, so people who’ve lived in the same place for decades know exactly where to go to vote. This also overlaps with age: Older Americans are more likely to own homes. They’re also more likely to have time to vote. In the Census Bureau’s research, 18 percent of nonvoters under 25 said they were too busy to cast a ballot in 2020. Only 2.1 percent of nonvoters 65 and older cited the same challenge.
Municipalities and counties often reward more frequent voters, even if unintentionally. Voting sites are placed in retirement homes and senior centers since residents vote more often and have limited mobility.
So let’s look specifically at Wisconsin. In 2016, there was a relationship between the population density in a county and the number of polling places. That’s understandable: Urban areas have more people in a small vicinity allowing fewer polling places to serve a larger group.
But then, it also means that there may be longer wait times in those places. Research suggests that urban voters do wait longer to cast a ballot — undoubtedly spurring some to simply give up.
That’s also true because some of this overlaps with income. Renters have less economic stability than homeowners and may work lower-paying jobs with less-flexible schedules. That plays into the “too busy to vote” question as well.
Looking again at Wisconsin, we see that places with more renter-occupied housing are also ones with lower per-resident polling locations. The trend is a bit hard to pick out here, so I can summarize: The quarter of counties with the lowest densities of renters had 1.5 polling places per 1,000 residents. The quarter with the highest had 0.8 polling places.
That includes Milwaukee County, the large dot at far right. It’s one of the five counties identified in Gableman’s report as having received money from CTCL; those counties are indicated with dotted circles. Three voted for Trump in 2020 anyway. But all are low on this chart, meaning that all had relatively few polling places per resident.
They stand out more on this graph, which compares the density of renters with the percentage of White residents. The five CTCL counties were less densely White and more densely made up of renters.
Those factors, too, overlap. Hispanic and Black people are less likely to own homes and often have lower incomes. They also have longer wait times to vote, according to Brennan Center analysis, even once you control for other factors. It makes sense, then, that those counties would be a target for efforts to increase turnout.
The effect was small, incidentally. The five counties that received CTCL funding saw the number of polling places per 1,000 residents rise from 0.47 to 0.49 from 2016 to 2020. In the rest of the counties, the ratio stayed flat at 0.79. Even in Gableman’s report, he alleges a smaller increase in turnout thanks to CTCL’s investment than President Biden’s margin of victory (though the increase alleged is itself dubious).
It’s worth walking through the path to this point. Trump claims that the election was stolen from him. His allies, unwilling to be on the hook for his obviously false fraud claims, generate this alternative explanation for how Trump was wronged, centered on efforts to make it easier to vote (that were often a response to the pandemic). This gets intertwined with a sense that an expansion of voter access is necessarily beneficial to Democrats since younger people and non-White people vote less heavily in the first place. But instead of seeing the system as rigged to their benefit in the first place, they cast efforts to decrease their own advantage as an effort to rig results for the left.
This impulse to decry expanded voting in cities is not one confined to 2020 or pandemic responses. In recent weeks, far-right activists have focused on Biden’s call to expand voting access as a nefarious plot to undercut democracy. Increasing turnout has by now simply been accepted as nefarious, and any interruption of that effort, like the decision in Wisconsin, a just victory.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote the dissent in that state’s drop-box case.
“The majority/lead opinion’s sky-is-falling rhetoric not only defies the facts,” she wrote, “but also is downright dangerous to our democracy. … [C]oncerns about drop boxes alone don’t fuel the fires questioning election integrity. Rather, the kindling is primarily provided by voter suppression efforts and the constant drumbeat of unsubstantiated rhetoric in opinions like this one, not actual voter fraud.”
But her side lost the argument. | 2022-07-13T21:50:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Increasing turnout isn’t ‘rigging’ elections. It may be unrigging them. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/increasing-turnout-isnt-rigging-elections-it-may-be-unrigging-them/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/increasing-turnout-isnt-rigging-elections-it-may-be-unrigging-them/ |
(AHMET YARALI/Getty Images/iStockphoto)
“There’s nobody nicer than a ten-year-old,” child development expert Louise Bates Ames wrote in her 1989 guide to older children and young teenagers. “If now and then your own Ten’s behavior is less than ideal, keep in mind that growing up isn’t easy, nor is family living.”
I’ve been thinking a great deal about what it means to be 10 lately, thanks to a truly horrible viral story.
The Indianapolis Star reported this month that an Ohio girl who had recently turned 10 traveled to Indiana to receive an abortion. She was six weeks and three days along when her pregnancy was confirmed. Ohio had just banned abortion after doctors can detect fetal cardiac activity, which can happen as early as six weeks. On Wednesday, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a suspect had been arrested and charged with raping the child after confessing to attacking her at least twice.
It’s impossible to take in the full gravity of this story without thinking carefully about how young a 10-year-old is.
Ten-year-olds are of an age when Dr. Benjamin Spock said children are finally prepared “to cross a heavily traveled street without adult supervision.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood development guidelines for children this age emphasize that they are still learning to build deep friendships and understand concepts such as responsibility.
They are usually in fourth or fifth grade, depending on when their birthdays fall, and they are being assessed on concepts such as reading comprehension and fractions. They’re at the right age for Pixar movies, but not for Marvel action extravaganzas; they can handle Amelia Bedelia and Willy Wonka and maybe the later Harry Potter books.
Gift guides for 10-year-olds recommend STEM learning toys and plush comfort animals. Ames’s research suggested that 10-year-olds are still learning to tell jokes; that they’re prone to losing or frittering away money; that they think dating is something for the future.
As the CDC noted in a 2020 health statistics report, only 10 percent of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the years 2013 to 2017 had their first period by age 10. Ten-year-olds may not even be entirely sure how sex and pregnancy work. If they live in one of the 30 states that mandate sex education (along with the District of Columbia), they may be too young to receive those classes. Only 22 states mandate that such education be “medically, factually or technically accurate.”
A healthy 10-year-old girl is between 50 and 59 inches tall, and weighs 54 to 106 pounds; at 18, the range is 60 to 68.5 inches and 100 to 178 pounds. An adult woman with a healthy body mass index might be expected to gain between 25 and 35 pounds over the course of her pregnancy.
The mind revolts at the horror of a raped and pregnant 10-year-old.
For abortion rights advocates, including President Biden, this story became an immediate example of the dangers of a post-Roe v. Wade world. Then there were the skeptics. The charitable reading of those who questioned the anecdote is that it was so awful they simply didn’t want to believe it could be true — and that they were wary because the Indianapolis Star had cited only a single source.
Not all doubters deserve such credit, however. Ohio Attorney General David Yost (R) surely had better things to do than going on a media tour to suggest it was “likely” this monstrous crime against a child had not taken place.
Let’s not forget, too, that the political moment guaranteeing that this atrocity would become a national talking point enabled a different kind of infringement on childhood.
To a certain extent, I understand why Caitlin Bernard — the Indianapolis obstetrician and gynecologist who was consulted about the child’s care and brought her story to national attention — spoke out. Anecdotes such as these are galvanizing, and pro-choice advocates rightly fear that the post-Dobbs world could be even crueler than the pre-Roe one. (I have much less sympathy for people who attacked the story less out of an interest in journalistic integrity, or hope that there is a limit to the world’s barbarity, than out of a desire to tear down advocates for girls and women.)
Yet even if the girl in Ohio remains anonymous — and the national media attention, the arrest of her alleged rapist and his naming in the press make that seem unlikely — she will someday know that her 10-year-old self was treated not as a person the whole nation had an interest in protecting, but as a political chess piece.
There’s nobody nicer than a 10-year-old. And no greater shame than a nation that put a 10-year-old in the worst possible circumstances through an unnecessary ordeal, and then argued about whether she was a hoax. | 2022-07-13T21:50:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | This is what 'a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim' means - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/ohio-10-year-old-rape-abortion-childhood/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/ohio-10-year-old-rape-abortion-childhood/ |
Baltimore’s squeegee killing puts urban poverty on national display
The squeegee kids exist in different forms in every major city across the country
A squeegee worker walks to clean the windshields of cars in exchange for cash in Baltimore. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
I once stepped outside of a West Baltimore high school, got in my car and watched a child throw a brick at a school bus. He missed his target, and the brick landed instead directly on my windshield.
The glass shattered, completely.
It was late in the day and I was parked next to a notorious housing project, one where shootings occurred frequently enough that small children didn’t hesitate to duck when they heard popping. I knew I couldn’t drive back to D.C. with a windshield that resembled a giant spiderweb. I also knew that I shouldn’t leave my car unsecured in the neighborhood overnight. That left me with one option: Find a glass repair service that was still open and willing to come to a Baltimore housing project in the evening.
It wasn’t easy. I called and begged, and then I waited and waited.
Three teenage boys who attended the school had seen what had happened, and even though we’d only spoken once in passing, they decided to wait with me. They wanted to make sure I got home safely. It was a kind gesture during a frustrating moment, and during that wait, I witnessed something occur that has long stayed with me.
One of the teenagers reached for a bag in my front passenger seat. It contained the parts of my lunch I hadn’t had time to eat — a bag of chips and an apple — and I told him he could have both. Before eating them, he looked closely at the bag. “Pppp. Aaa. Nera,” he sounded out.
He was a teenager about to graduate high school, and he could barely read.
We have failed him, I thought at that moment.
Coming of age in a city coming apart
I didn’t include that detail in the story I ended up writing about the school, which had lost three students to violence in as many months, including one at the hands of another teenager who had been learning to read. But I think about that moment whenever I hear people who have never spent any time in Baltimore’s roughest neighborhoods talk about what’s best for the young people who come from them. And that’s been happening a lot lately.
A killing by one of Baltimore’s squeegee kids — who stand on the city’s streets waiting to wash people’s windshields — has turned a locally divisive issue into a nationally divisive one. Suddenly, people from across the country are paying attention to those young workers and expressing opinions on what the city should do about them. The suggestions range from employing them to arresting them.
In those mostly Black boys and young men, some people see entrepreneurs who are just trying to take care of their families and others see a threatening presence that keeps people from wanting to drive through the city.
The thing is both can be true. The squeegee kids are individuals with different personalities, family situations and unmet needs, and trying to cram them into one description takes away their humanity. People also bring their own perceptions, misunderstandings and hostilities to their interactions with them.
Baltimore police said the driver who was killed, 48-year-old Timothy Reynolds, parked his car, grabbed a metal baseball bat and swung it at a group of squeegee workers before one of them shot him. Reynolds, an engineer and father of three, was pronounced dead at the hospital. Police have described a 15-year-old as a person of interest in the shooting.
Many details surrounding Reynold’s death are still unknown, but the incident has prompted others to describe violent encounters with the squeegee workers. Of course, any unjustified violence is wrong and is deserving of prosecution and punishment. At the same time, the response should not be to view all the squeegee kids as “thugs,” “lawless” and the other names they’ve been called in recent days. One squeegee kid told a Baltimore Sun reporter that he was called a racial slur.
A former cop created a program to help Baltimore kids. Now, she’s hoping to give them more: a permanent safe haven.
“The squeegee kids are not a monolith, a gang, a political talking point, fodder for social media debate, an issue, a problem to be solved, a thing to figure out, a safe space to stash your trash opinions about Black youth until it’s safe to trot them out into the light (again),” Donte Johnson, the general manager of Revival Baltimore, wrote in an opinion piece that ran in the Baltimore Banner. “They are not punchlines or punching bags, they are not target practice. They ARE underserved, they are ambitious, they are bright, they are intelligent, they are responsible, they are humble, they are funny, they are quiet, they are loud, they are introverted extroverts and extroverted introverts. They are hard-working. They are us.”
They are us. They are the product of a nation that has allowed urban poverty to leave many children without. Without enough food. Without enough security. Without enough ambition to believe they deserve more than to stand on a street, wiping dirt from other people’s cars.
The squeegee kids exist in different forms in every major city across the country. I grew up in a struggling neighborhood, and while the population was majority-Latino, not majority-Black, I knew young people just like the squeegee kids. I had friends just like them. They were children who carried adult responsibilities. They were students who weren’t told enough that they could want more, do more, be more. They were teenagers who carried more grit than made people comfortable.
The people who are calling for police to crack down on the squeegee kids need to consider what will be gained and lost by that. Whom will that make more comfortable and whom will that make more disconnected?
“What I’ve been hearing in the media, on social media, from citizens, business owners and elected officials alike is that we need to use law enforcement to solve this problem. But, is this what we need? The same tired response that leaves young adults less employable when they are arrested on the corner than they were before the officer showed up?” Baltimore City Council member Kristerfer Burnett said in a statement earlier this week. “I want to remind everyone of the circumstances which bring a lot of these youth to these corners … most of which, if not always, are out of necessity to survive through challenging circumstances.”
pic.twitter.com/8RZMbAompp
In that statement, he told of an 8-year-old child who worked on a corner with siblings. Their mother was fleeing domestic violence and needed them to squeegee to help pay for a hotel her salary alone couldn’t cover. His staff and others were able to help them, he said, but many families don’t get the support they need.
“The City Council and the Mayor’s Office need to better support programs that provide direct outreach to these corners and help these young people transition,” Burnett said. “Residents need to step up too — programs that are seeking mentors are often short of people willing to lend a hand … Community cannot wait for the government to solve this problem without getting involved. We are all at fault. We all need to do more.”
We do. The squeegee kid killing has put urban poverty on national display. What happens now will show whether we’re okay with what we see. | 2022-07-13T22:16:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baltimore's squeegee kid murder gets nation's attention - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/baltimore-squeegee-murder-poverty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/baltimore-squeegee-murder-poverty/ |
Man dies after collision on River Road in Montgomery County
Wreck occurred about 1:50 p.m. Wednesday near Stoney Creek Road
A man died Wednesday after the vehicle he was driving collided with another vehicle on River Road near Stoney Creek Road.
The wreck occurred about 1:50 p.m. in the Travilah area of Montgomery County. Police and medics went to the scene, where the victim was pronounced dead. No further details were immediately released. | 2022-07-13T22:17:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man dies after collision on River Road in Montgomery County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/river-road-wreck/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/river-road-wreck/ |
Youngkin defends portrayal of gay-marriage rights as business ranking slips
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin delivers remarks at a restaurant in Woodbridge, Va., on June 22. (Steve Helber/AP)
RICHMOND — Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Wednesday that he was right to tell a national TV audience that Virginia law protects same-sex marriage rights, even though such unions would be banned in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court reverses itself on that issue.
Youngkin, a Republican who has leaned into some culture wars but mostly sidestepped LGBTQ issues, defended his remarks as the state he’s led for six months slipped in an annual best-states-for business ranking — due in part to a lower score for “life, health and inclusion.” The state’s workforce grade also took a hit in the CNBC ranking, which covers a period partly governed by Youngkin’s Democratic predecessor, Ralph Northam.
During an interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Youngkin gave the impression that same-sex marriage rights would be secure in Virginia regardless of whether Supreme Court reconsiders and reverses its 2015 decision legalizing such unions nationwide.
The governor’s appearance was part of a recent mainstream-media blitz that Youngkin, a former private equity mogul who poured $20 million of his own money into last year’s campaign, launched last month amid hints he’s considering a 2024 presidential bid.
The political newcomer walked a tightrope to the Executive Mansion, selling himself as a social conservative to the GOP base and as a cheery, common-sense business leader to suburban moderates. His sometimes-artful, sometimes-awkward balancing act — more pronounced than ever amid the 2024 tease — was on display during the Sunday interview as Youngkin responded to questions about abortion and former president Donald Trump as well as same-sex marriage.
In a conference call Wednesday, Democratic legislators called the dip in state’s CNBC ranking proof that Youngkin’s conservative social agenda has made the state less appealing to business. Virginia snagged the top ranking two years in a row under Northam before falling to third place this year, behind North Carolina and Washington state.
“High-tech companies want a welcoming and friendly Virginia,” state Sen. Jennifer B. Boysko (D-Fairfax). “That’s why they left other states. … Governor Youngkin is focusing on socially divisive issues because he thinks it’s going to give him a leg up in a presidential nomination with a bunch of people trying to out-right themselves. And it’s hurting Virginia.”
Youngkin, who ran contending that the state was in an economic “ditch,” has attracted some big-name companies, including Boeing, Raytheon and Lego. Lego, however, expressed some trepidation about the governor’s conservative stances on race and the environment as it announced plans to build a $1 billion factory in Chesterfield County.
Lego prepared for questions on Youngkin and critical race theory in Va.
Youngkin noted that Virginia’s scores improved “materially” in two areas he’s focused on: infrastructure and business friendliness.
“The key here is to get this economy moving and we’ve had to dig out of a hole,” he said.
Youngkin’s comments on same-sex marriage came during an in-studio interview with CBS’s Robert Costa. Noting the Supreme Court’s rightward turn, Costa asked Youngkin if he would move to codify same-sex marriage rights in Virginia if the court ever overturns its 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
“We actually do protect same-sex marriage in Virginia,” Youngkin responded. “That’s the law in Virginia and, therefore, as governor of Virginia, we protect same-sex marriage.”
But state law does not protect such unions. In fact, the Virginia Constitution bans same-sex marriage under an amendment adopted in 2006 that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. While the ban became defunct after Obergefell, the language remains in the constitution and would become operative again if the Supreme Court were to reverse itself. Republicans in the House of Delegates killed an effort this year to remove that language.
“That amendment makes it clear that no other relationship may, by law, be given the status of a legal marriage,” said A.E. Dick Howard, a University of Virginia law professor who helped write the most recent version of the state constitution. “If Obergefell were to be overturned, then, in Virginia, the marriage amendment would take precedence over any conflicting provision of state law. Same-sex marriages would not be recognized in Virginia.”
Asked on Wednesday at an appearance in Richmond if he had misstated Virginia law to Costa, Youngkin insisted his comments accurately reflect the current state of same-sex rights given the protections granted nationwide under Obergefell.
“I didn’t misspeak with the current law in Virginia,” he said. “Same-sex [marriage] is protected in Virginia and it will continue to be so. And I understand the media loves to live in the world of hypotheticals. … We’ve had a Supreme Court ruling that stands up for gay marriage in Virginia and this is where the law is. … I can’t live in the world of hypotheticals.”
Youngkin gave no indication to Costa that he was refusing to entertain a hypothetical, post-Obergefell United States. His response, therefore, gave the impression that Virginia law would protect same-sex marriage rights if the national protections went away — a possibility that some legal observers think is more likely given the court’s conservative makeup and willingness to overturn far more established precedent in Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old decision that had established abortion rights nationwide.
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter called the possibility of the Supreme Court’s reconsidering Obergefell an “extreme hypothetical situation.”
In his concurring opinion in the case that overturned Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should reexamine the constitutional underpinnings of a number of court precedents, including Obergefell. None of the other justices joined his opinion.
Sen. Adam P. Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who was the state’s first openly gay legislator when he took office in 2012, does not see the loss of same-sex marriage rights as an unlikely hypothetical.
“The Virginia Constitution’s anti-marriage equality amendment would serve as a de facto trigger law in the event that the Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality would be up to the states as they recently did with abortion,” he said.
Youngkin has some allies among conservative LGBTQ groups, including Log Cabin Republicans, to whom he made some highly cautious overtures during Pride Month. Some of them share Ebbin’s wariness about losing marriage rights if the state does not amend its constitution.
Gov. Youngkin, who ran on culture wars, takes cautious approach to Pride
“I see the potential for [the Supreme Court] to turn it back to the states for sure in the same way they did for Roe v. Wade,” said Casey Flores, president of Log Cabin Republicans of Richmond and a Youngkin appointee to the state’s LGBTQ Plus Advisory Board.
At a private luncheon with Log Cabin Republicans at the mansion in June, Youngkin made no policy statements or promises but seemed to listen as guests said they would continue to push for the same-sex marriage ban’s repeal, Flores said.
To change the constitution, a resolution would have to pass the General Assembly twice before going to a public vote in a general election. Governors do not have the chance to sign or veto resolutions, but they can play an important role by advocating for or against them.
“I would hope that he would” support the effort, Flores said. “Frankly, I’ve seen him pressed on this [before]. … It doesn’t seem like there’s ever been a solid answer.” | 2022-07-13T22:21:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Youngkin defends portrayal of gay-marriage rights as business ranking slips - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/youngkin-virginia-gay-marriage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/13/youngkin-virginia-gay-marriage/ |
By Jamie Stengle, Jake Bleiberg and Sean Murphy | AP
In this photo from surveillance video provided by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District via the Austin American-Statesman, authorities stage in a hallway as they respond to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022. (Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District/Austin American-Statesman via AP) (Uncredited/Austin American-Statesman) | 2022-07-13T22:39:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TIMELINE: Texas elementary school shooting, minute by minute - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/timeline-texas-elementary-school-shooting-minute-by-minute/2022/07/13/90fc07d8-02fb-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/timeline-texas-elementary-school-shooting-minute-by-minute/2022/07/13/90fc07d8-02fb-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html |
Michael Ressler, project scientist for the JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument, speaks in front of an image of the Carina Nebula, captured on the James Webb Space Telescope, during a news conference at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on July 12, in Pasadena, Calif. (AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
For anyone who has stared up at the stars and contemplated how small we are in the grand scheme of the cosmos, the photos are nothing short of mind-blowing. That the telescope, which was calculated to have no less than 344 single points of possible failure, successfully launched into orbit and works even better than planned is a miracle to behold and a testament to human ingenuity. In a time plagued by rampant cynicism, Webb’s stunning images give us reason to hope: for scientific progress, for the potential of life on other planets, for inspired young scientists who will lead us into the future — and, to bring things back down to Earth, for the success of the U.S. government when it works as it should.
Sergio Peçanha: Stop for a minute. These space images are worth your time.
The facts and figures in explanation of Webb’s new images are hard for most people to fathom. The first image released from the telescope, “the deepest infrared image of the universe yet,” offers a glimpse at a patch of space from approximately 4.6 billion years ago. It shows thousands of galaxies within a billion years after the Big Bang. Yet for all of the photo’s wonders, it barely scratches the surface of what the universe has to offer: Hold out just one grain of sand at arm’s length — that’s how much of space Webb captured in its first photo. The other three pictures are just as spectacular: “young” stars tugging at one another, “cosmic cliffs” glittering with stars newly born, dying stars swirling out gas and dust in a final dance.
The Webb telescope is a crowd-pleasing success story now, but its cost and delays were often hard for U.S. government officials to stomach. First planned in 1996 as a follow-up to the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb was delayed more than a half dozen times over more than 20 years. It cost about $10 billion — more than five times NASA’s initial estimate in the early 2000s. Most space funding went to Webb, derided as “the telescope that ate astronomy” and “a black hole for taxpayer money.” Congress almost scrapped it entirely in 2011; NASA’s then-chief had to plead for government support to continue.
David Von Drehle: The years and billions spent on the James Webb telescope? Worth it.
With the release of Webb’s first images, we can look back at the project not only as a success but also as a worthy investment. Given the project’s heavy use of resources, Congress appropriately tasked the Government Accountability Office in 2011 to issue annual reports on Webb’s cost and schedule to Congress’s Appropriations Committees. Given the high stakes of even a tiny technical mistake, NASA’s scientists, administrators, contractors and everyone else involved appropriately approached the monumental task with care and caution. There were missteps along the way — chiefly poor project management and cost estimation — that NASA should learn from in its future endeavors. But Webb ultimately shines millions of specks of bright light on the country’s scientific future, and other agencies pursuing ambitious projects should learn from its success. | 2022-07-13T22:39:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | James Webb space telescope photos represent effective government - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/nasa-space-telescope-photos-effective-government/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/nasa-space-telescope-photos-effective-government/ |
Josiah Gray gave up three home runs in a loss to the Mariners on Wednesday afternoon. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Josiah Gray’s starts are the starts Washington Nationals fans must look forward to these days, which is saying something. They are not the starts of Max Scherzer, and not close. They are not the starts of Stephen Strasburg, and not close. They are not the starts of a fully developed pitcher but a representation of what’s happening all summer — and into next year — at Nationals Park. Pain is part of it. A big part. Ouch.
“The journey, it isn’t a straight line,” Gray said. “It’s up and down. And that’s part of the progress I know I’m going to make.”
The most important work Wednesday at Nationals Park wasn’t what Gray did on the mound in the first game of a doubleheader against the Seattle Mariners, a 6-4 loss in which he missed the strike zone with his first five pitches; he walked two and coughed up a three-run homer before he recorded two outs; and he squeezed out five innings and yielded five runs.
“It’s part of the process,” he said, a 21st-century sports cliche if there ever was one. But he happens to be right.
Put Gray aside for a second. The most important work at Nationals Park this week is going on under the stands and behind closed doors, where General Manager Mike Rizzo and Kris Kline — his long-ago minor league roommate, his longtime scouting director now — are working with the club’s scouts to build their draft board. The Nats have the fifth pick in Sunday’s first round. With any luck, the player they select will join Gray in the big leagues sooner rather than later. With any luck, players selected later will be impact major leaguers. With any luck.
This is a franchise in so much flux that progress is sometimes impossible to see, even if it is in fact happening. Just because Gray’s last start, in Philadelphia, produced six innings of two-run ball to go with 11 strikeouts — the Nats’ lone win in their past dozen games entering Wednesday’s nightcap — doesn’t promise the next start builds on that success. The line bends and twists, jolts and jags. It’s all necessary.
“We definitely know there’s going to be some ups and downs,” Manager Dave Martinez said, “and there’s going to be a whole lot of teaching moments.”
That’s for Gray. But it’s a good reminder for fans, too.
After Wednesday’s start, Gray’s 17th of the season, his ERA bumped up to 4.40 and his walks and hits per inning pitch settled at 1.27. The average major league starter this year: 4.10 ERA, 1.27 WHIP. He’s been average-ish.
Let’s take a look at the same numbers from other pitchers in the first season in which they made 20 starts: 4.26 and 1.49; 3.88 and 1.32; 4.30 and 1.22; 4.02 and 1.33; 4.44 and 1.21. Those belong to, in order, Clayton Kershaw, Sandy Alcantara, Luis Castillo, Max Fried and Joe Musgrove — all of whom are on this year’s National League all-star team.
Similar to Gray, right? Now, is that fudging it a bit? Sure, because it doesn’t include NL all-star Corbin Burnes’s first 20-start season, though it’s worth noting that Burnes’s résumé includes a year in which he made 32 appearances — 28 in relief — and had an 8.82 ERA. It also doesn’t include fellow all-star Tony Gonsolin because the Los Angeles Dodgers have so babied his development that he doesn’t have a 20-start season yet.
The point is that what Gray was Wednesday — without his legs under him, his fastball sailing all over the place — isn’t who Gray will be next year or the year after. Shoot, Scherzer’s first season of at least 20 big league starts produced a 4.12 ERA and a 1.34 WHIP. Scherzer’s past six non-pandemic seasons have resulted in ERAs below 3.00. His first five were above that number.
“I got to understand where we’re at with him and just guide him and teach him,” Martinez said. “I think he’s going to be really, really good. I could see him as a number two, as a number three starter. He’s got the stuff for it. But we’ve got to get him consistent.”
Part of that is making sure he controls his fastball from the first batter. Gray’s curveball and slider are good enough to retire major league hitters, but they’re far more effective when he can work ahead with his fastball. Another piece in his development will be to more frequently rely on his change-up. By the time he threw one Wednesday — a middle-middle offering to Adam Frazier — it was the fourth inning, and his fastball had almost been eliminated. Frazier jacked the pitch out, one of three Mariners homers off Gray.
Wednesday was Gray’s 29th start for the Nationals, a stint that began with last summer’s franchise-altering trade that sent Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers and brought in Gray and the man who caught him against Seattle, Keibert Ruiz. In Class AAA, Los Angeles and Washington last year, Gray threw just 86⅓ innings. Wednesday’s five-inning outing brought him to 92 in 2022 — and the all-star break isn’t even here yet.
“We’re going to have to really keep an eye on him and watch his workload,” Martinez said. “But he’s a competitor.”
That is not lost on his teammates. After the two first-inning walks and Eugenio Suârez’s day-dampening three-run homer, Gray got a strikeout looking on a slider and a strikeout swinging on a curveball. After he allowed solo homers to Jesse Winker and Frazier in the fourth, he worked a 1-2-3 fifth. It will be forgotten over the course of his career. On a day when the Nats needed to play twice — and when they probably lost reliever Tanner Rainey for the year — every inning mattered.
“I like the way he’s always grinding,” said Juan Soto, who — lookie here — used a three-run homer and three walks in the opener to lift his on-base-plus-slugging percentage to .886. “He never give up. That’s just a huge thing for a pitcher.”
That quality won’t go away, even as the supporting qualities improve. Gray probably will never be Scherzer or Kershaw, but who is? Could he be — well, pick another starting pitcher on the NL roster for Tuesday’s game? Sure.
The best part about that decidedly-not-straight-line journey: Gray understands it. He doesn’t have to like it, but he accepts it.
“Unfortunately, today happened,” Gray said. “But it’s not unexpected. It’s part of becoming a big league pitcher. It’s part of continuing to establish myself. I’ll continue to go through it.”
The fan base has to continue to go through it with him. Along the way, there will be days like Wednesday. Around a corner that’s somewhere in the middle distance, there will be better days more consistently. Josiah Gray’s next start probably won’t be till after the all-star break. Tune in for the journey, and wait for the trajectory to straighten out. | 2022-07-13T22:40:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Josiah Gray's Nationals career will progress in fits and starts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/josiah-gray-home-runs-nationals-mariners/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/13/josiah-gray-home-runs-nationals-mariners/ |
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